A Lust For Lead

by Robert Davis

  Shane saw Chastity standing close to the doorway. She held Buchanan’s Smith and Wesson revolver awkwardly in her tiny hands and there was smoke curling from its barrel. Her face was like china. Her eyes were ablaze.

  Shane found a hidden reserve of strength somewhere deep inside of himself and rolled to his feet just a split second before she fired at him. The heavy revolver bucked in her grasp and blew a hole in the floorboards where he had lain. It was a much bigger gun than she could handle and the recoil lifted her hands up into the air. She brought them level again and fumbled to draw back the hammer. In that time, Shane lurched for cover. He vaulted clumsily over the shop’s counter just as she fired and felt the bullet rip past the side of his head, narrowly missing him. It struck a bottle on the shelves in front of him and blasted it into shards.

  He dropped down behind the counter, breathing heavily, and clutched painfully at his bruised ribs. The sudden movement had hurt him badly.

  Beyond the counter, he heard Chastity cock the hammer.

  The sound gripped him with a icy chill. The wooden front of the counter was perhaps an inch thick at best and offered no protection from the .44 calibre slugs that Buchanan’s revolver fired. He scrambled forward on his hands and knees, ducking flat to the ground as Chastity fired blindly at him. The first bullet smashed through the counter behind him and embedded itself in the wall beyond. The second was aimed in front of him and showered him in the face with splinters.

  He came to an abrupt halt, gasping for breath. On the other side of the counter, he heard her draw back the hammer and knew that the next shot was coming straight at him. He grabbed hold of the counter and vaulted over it just as she fired. The bullet smashed through the wood, passing beneath him as he jumped.

  He cleared the counter and landed running, pushing his body to the limit of his endurance. He rushed Chastity head-on and tackled her, propelling her down to the ground. The gun toppled from her hands as she tried to cock it again and she screamed with frustration. She kicked and scratched him and spat and wailed.

  Shane smothered her in his grasp and pinned her to the floor, holding her immobile while she raged. She was fierce, but she was also tired and she quickly wore herself out. As she quietened down, Shane eased back and sat down with his back against the wall. He felt exhausted. Wincing at the pain in his ribs, he pulled Chastity into his lap and sat there, nursing her while he got his strength back.

  Chapter 24

  From the upstairs window, Travis could see all the way across Covenant to the far side of town. South and West Street divided it into quarters and the old clock tower reared up at the crossroads, looking like an enormous headstone in the night.

  The streets were bathed in a luminous grey smoke that seemed oblivious to the shifting patterns of the wind and seemed to flow instead in whatever direction the strange new gunmen went. Here and there, Travis saw the smoke light up with muzzle flash and heard the rumbling thunder of gunfire, and knew that the strangers had tracked down another isolated group of invigilators.

  He saw all of these things, but he could not see the one thing that he was looking for: the man who was trying to kill him.

  Parker and Eddings were both dead. They were the two sharpshooters who manned the nests on either side of his position. Parker had abandoned his post shortly after the fighting had broken out. He had gotten scared and decided to make a run for it. Travis had been thinking about shooting him himself when Parker’s head had suddenly split open and the sharp crack of a rifle shot had pierced the night.

  Eddings had died next. It had happened quietly. Travis had heard the shot and some time later he had noticed Eddings’ arm hanging off the side of the roof where his body had fallen.

  Now Travis knew he was next.

  He had expected this. Travis handled a rifle so well that it was often said that he had been born with one in his hands. He was proficient enough that he had just recently begun to hear it whispering at the back of his mind. He knew what was loose in the town, killing the other invigilators, and he suspected that one of them – a Cordite rifleman – was coming for him.

  There had been rumours that one of the dead sharpshooters, Penn, had been taken by the Fastest Guns and invited to join their number. His body had gone missing from the charnel house and Travis had a feeling that it was Penn who was stalking him now.

  He hoped it was. Travis had respected Penn, had been envious of his talent and the expensive rifle that he carried. He had often wondered if he could beat him in a fight.

  He searched the dark rooftops for him, peering watchfully through his rifle’s optical sight. He was crouched far enough back from the window that he felt confident that he could not be seen.

  Sniping was a waiting game. Whoever moved first, died; and Travis was confident that Penn – or whoever it was – would have to come out into the open in order to take a shot at him. And when that happened, Travis would get him.

  He scanned the line of buildings in front of him, keen eyes dwelling especially on those places where a man would be able to get a good shot at him. He saw nothing but shadows.

  And then a figure appeared abruptly, stepping from an open doorway about a hundred yards away.

  Calmly but quickly, Travis brought his aim to bear and made a quick adjustment to take the distance, air temperature and wind speed into consideration.

  Through his scope, he saw the man bring his rifle smoothly to his shoulder and take aim. He zeroed in precisely on Travis’ position.

  ‘Shit!’ Travis cursed.

  The glass lens of his optical sight shattered into fragments and the back of his head exploded. He fell down with a heavy thump, bleeding through the hole where his right eye had been.

  Madison regained consciousness with a groan. She sat up and clutched at the side of her head, which she must have banged on the floor when she fell. Her head ached and she felt nauseous.

  She saw Buchanan’s body lying only a short distance away and her breath caught sharply in her throat. For a moment, she had thought that it was Shane. Groaning, she looked around and saw Shane sitting against the wall, holding Chastity in his lap. The girl looked tired. Shane looked exhausted. His face was bruised and bloody and she could tell that he was in pain.

  ‘What did I miss?’ she asked croakily.

  ‘Chastity killed him.’ Shane replied, matter-of-factly. ‘And then she tried to kill me.’

  ‘Oh my god! Are you all right?’

  ‘I’ve been worse,’ he replied with a groan, and rose awkwardly to his feet, leaning against the wall for support. ‘Can you take her?’ he asked.

  Madison nodded and took the girl away from him, leading her gently by the hand. Chastity was half-asleep and she did not try to resist her. Shane retrieved his knife from where he had dropped it and was just about to move towards the door when a figure suddenly appeared within it.

  Madison started in alarm and stepped behind Shane for protection. There was no time to run for cover. Shane gripped the handle of his knife and grimly resigned himself to another fight.

  The figure moved forward into a dim shaft of moonlight and they saw that it was Whisperer. He was slightly out of breath and walked favouring his right leg. He gestured for Shane to lower his knife.

  ‘You’ve nothing to fear from me,’ he said. ‘For what it would cost me to have you, you and Chastity are not worth the risk.’ He saw Buchanan lying on the floor. ‘Your doing?’ he asked Shane.

  ‘The girl’s.’

  He accepted Shane’s explanation without question; Whisperer understood Chastity’s nature perfectly. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

  He moved to Buchanan’s side and knelt down. Shane stepped back and watched while he made a few strange passes in the air above Buchanan’s torso with his hand. The darkness seemed to thicken under his palm. It moved like the tail of a tornado, becoming more and more solid as Whisperer stirred the air.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Madison asked, peering over Shane’s shoulder.


  Shane said nothing. He thought he knew but wanted to have his suspicions confirmed before he said anything.

  Buchanan’s body began to twitch. His arms and legs jerked fitfully and then his whole body began to shake like a fish dragged from the water, his toes kicking at the floor. The spiral of darkness that Whisperer gathered under his hand grew more substantial until Shane thought he could see a face within it. A face that resembled Buchanan’s. His eyes were wide, like a man trapped in a nightmare, and his mouth stretched open in a silent wail.

  Abruptly, Whisperer clenched his fist and Buchanan’s body became still. There was a sound, distant and confused, like the howling of a far off wind, and then Whisperer rose. He lowered his fist and turned to leave.

  ‘Nanache was wrong about you.’ Shane told him.

  ‘Oh, in what way?’ Whisperer asked innocently.

  ‘He said you were devil-kind but you’re not, are you? You’re the real deal.’

  The tall man smiled knowingly. ‘Now that would be telling,’ he answered. ‘And these walls have ears.’

  Shane understood now why Whisperer scared him so badly. A full-blooded demon was bad news, and one who openly crossed the Cordites on their own ground was sure to be powerful. He took hold of Chastity’s hand and steered her and Madison towards the back door. He had not gone far when Whisperer called out to him.

  ‘This is only the beginning, Mister Ennis. You do know that, don’t you? The Cordites are young. They have not yet learned the extent of what they have become, but that will change. They will grow stronger and they will not forget about you.’

  ‘They won’t forget you either.’ Shane reminded him.

  Whisperer gave a shrug. ‘Maybe not, but by the time they catch up with me they will have had plenty of time to learn my worth. No matter who you are, it always pays to have a good merchant on your side.’

  He fell silent, hearing the sound of footsteps on the boardwalk outside. Grabbing Madison by the arm, Shane steered her behind counter and they hurried for the back door. Whisperer did not try to stop him. As Shane glanced back, he saw that the tall man no longer stood alone. He was surrounded by half a dozen shadowy figures, each of whom was tethered to him by chains of ethereal steel. Their bodies looked smoky and insubstantial, naked and painfully thin.

  One of them turned to face Shane and opened his mouth in a silent cry of anguish. It was Castor Buchanan.

  At that moment, the footsteps outside drew level with the shop doorway and a Cordite strode into the room. Whisperer unleashed his wraiths and the Cordite’s gun blazed. Shane did not wait to see the outcome of the fight. He fled out the back door and hurried away.

  Alex and Jim Bening were brothers, both in their late-twenties, both professional killers, and both hired by Nathaniel to serve as invigilators. It had been Jim’s idea. He was the oldest by three years and the most headstrong. He had only to hear of the Fastest Guns to know that he wanted to be one of them. His younger brother Alex had been more cautious but a job was a job, especially since they were hard up for money.

  The two of them were now running for their lives, together with a third man, Glenn Short.

  When the shooting had started, the three men had gone to bolster a counter-offensive. They had found themselves battling just one man, but that one man alone had wiped out all of their companions. He would have killed them too, but they had had the sense to run away. They had tried to reach the stables but the route was blocked by another gunman, who had fired his revolver with preternatural speed. Fanning his hand against the hammer, he had blazed off a hail of lead that drove them into the mouth of an alley in search of cover. His shots chipped splinters off the wall.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here, man?’ Glenn spat. He risked sticking his head round the corner and saw that another group of invigilators had blundered onto the street. They looked like they were running from somebody else, but their path took them straight into the fast-shooter’s line-of-sight. He unleashed a volley of shots and the men fell down.

  ‘No way.’ Glenn said. ‘No way is that fucking possible. No one can shoot that fast.’

  Alex grabbed him by the shirt. ‘Forget it!’ he snapped. ‘Let’s just get out of here.’

  ‘But the horses–’

  ‘Fuck the horses! I’d rather take my chances with the desert than fight those bastards.’

  His brother agreed and they fled down the alley, winding their way from there towards the edge of town. They steered well clear of the fighting as much as possible, doubling-back when necessary and keeping out of sight.

  They were almost at the edge of town when a shot rang out. Alex felt as if he had been punched in the back. The pain was so intense that his overwhelmed senses simply went numb and he fell with a cry. His brother turned back to help him but Glenn pulled him into the shelter of a nearby alley. ‘Sharpshooter,’ he hissed.

  There was no sign of their assailant. He was on a rooftop more than three-hundred yards away, watching through a Vollmer sight as Alex rolled about on the ground, moaning and clutching at his stomach.

  Glenn’s hand tightened on Jim’s shoulder. ‘You can’t help him,’ he said.

  Jim shook him off. He was not going to leave his little brother behind. He ran out to get him and the side of his head erupted in a gush of blood. Moments later, the sound of the rifle shot echoed over the rooftops.

  Jim sank down to the ground, deaf to his brother’s anguished cries. Alex knew that the sharpshooter had used him as bait to draw Jim out into the open. He understood that he was partly to blame for his brother’s death. He cursed with impotent rage. Clawing through the dirt, he reached out his hand imploringly towards Glenn, but Glenn was not going to risk his life for a man he barely knew. He turned and ran.

  He did not look back and so never saw the silhouette that rose up from a distant rooftop, standing tall and taking aim, his finger brushing the trigger with the gentlest amount of pressure. Glenn was shot through the back of the spine, just an inch above his shoulders. He did not even feel the shot that killed him.

  On the distant rooftop, the sharpshooter adjusted his aim and finished off Alex with a well-placed shot to the head, then melted back into the shadows.

  Shane and Madison ran out the back of the store and into a wide open yard. Behind them, the blazing of gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Madison looked at Shane inquisitively, but he shook his head. He could not imagine that the Cordite had been killed. It was more likely that Whisperer had escaped by some arcane means and that the Cordite had moved on in pursuit of him.

  Better him than us, he thought. The Cordites’ interest in Whisperer might just be the break he needed in which to make good his escape.

  Glancing about, he took stock of his surroundings. They were close to the edge of town. A few run-down buildings teetering on rotten foundations were all that now stood between them and the open desert. Safety was but a short distance away.

  Madison set out hurriedly but Shane held back near the edge of the yard and studied the way ahead with suspicious eyes.

  He did not trust it. Covenant was like a spider’s web, its leaning ruins sensitive and almost alive. There was nothing within its boundaries that the Cordites could not sense and there was absolutely no way that they did not know how close he was to escaping from them.

  He felt a curious prickling sensation over his skin and decided that, somewhere, somebody was watching him down the barrel of a gun.

  He caught up with Madison and drew her into cover against the leaning wall of a clapboard house.

  ‘We need to split up,’ he said.

  She looked at him sharply. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Listen. You heard what Whisperer said. Chastity and I are too valuable to the Cordites. They’re not going to let us just walk out of here.’

  ‘Then why’d we come this far together? What was the point?’

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye so that she would listen closely to him. ‘You reme
mber in the alley outside my cell, the way Chastity looked at me? I said she could recognise her own kind. The Cordites can sense us both in the same way, especially when we’re together like this. If we both try to leave at the same time they’ll come and stop us. I’m going to go back and get the horses. You take Chastity and go on without me. I’ll catch up with you.’

  She pouted sulkily. ‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘But don’t be too long.’

  She did not say anything about Nathaniel’s money. Shane guessed that either she had forgotten about it or, like him, she had decided that it was not worth dying for. ‘I left my bag in the stables,’ she added. ‘There’s food and water in it.’

  ‘I’ll bring it.’ Shane promised. They would need it if they were to survive the journey across the desert.

  Madison nodded glumly and set off, leading Madison by the hand. Shane stood and watched her go for a moment, quietly reckoning the distance she had to travel. He had lied to her. He was going back to the stables to fetch the horses, but first he was going hunting.

  And he was going to use Madison as bait.

  So far as he knew, nobody had ever killed a Cordite before. They killed each other often enough, but as the saying went: he who lives by the Gun, cannot die by the Gun. No Cordite could be slain by a gun fired by anyone other than another Cordite.

  But that didn’t mean that they couldn’t be killed. Shane had told Vendetta it was possible and his theory was sound. It had just never been done before.

  He broke into one of the crooked buildings nearby and found his way upstairs to a window that gave him a view out towards the edge of town. He spotted Madison picking her way through an old stockyard. She was making slow progress. Chastity was too tired to move quickly and Madison was not strong enough to carry her. They moved clumsily and even though Madison did her best to stay behind cover, Shane knew that they would be an easy target for whichever Cordite was hunting for them.