"Then what the hell is this, Emmett?" She screamed the words and threw the coin across the room at him. It bounced off of his chest and clattered harmlessly against the floor.
Emmett knelt down and picked up the coin, running his thumb across the inscriptions, which instinctively made more sense after his time in the witch's bed.
"It's silver. Some old coin from Europe, I reckon. Traded it for one of Pa's custom pistols."
"Do you think I'm a stupid woman, Emmett?" His mother shook her head in grief, anger, and disbelief.
"I'm a shaman's daughter. You think I don't recognize those symbols? You think my father, before he went mad, didn't warn me of the evil, hungry spirits who claw at the door to our world?"
Emmett turned his gaze down and stared at the symbol on the coin, the one he knew in his heart to be the crest of Thurs himself. It was no use lying. He had hurt his mother enough and he was too tired, both in mind and body, to continue the charade.
"Pa's not here," Emmett whispered, still looking down at the piece of silver in his hand.
"What?" Emmett's mother asked, completely thrown off by her son's statement.
"Pa's not here." This time Emmett raised his head and looked his mother in the eyes. "If he was, he'd have found way to save you. He'd have found a cure, or found a better doctor, or marched across the frozen wastes of Hell and shot Death herself in the face."
Emmett gulped and felt the urge to cry, but no tears came.
"Pa wasn't here, so I had to be the man. But I ain't as smart as him and I ain't able to will the world to my liking the way he can."
"Emmett ..." her voice had now softened and the anger was fleeing.
"I'm not him. I can't eyeball a rock's worth and smelt it into steel, then work the damn steel into a pistol. I can't see a machine in my mind, then will it into life with my hands and some tools. I can't see every angle of an impossible problem, and work out a miraculous solution."
Emmett's mother stared at him, dumbstruck with sorrow and pity. She was unable to speak.
"I'm not Pa and I couldn't beat that reaper. So I went to the only other man who I thought might have a chance."
"No, baby. Tell me you didn't do this for me!"
"Why? It worked!" Emmett was screaming now. "I took that magic, magic even your father feared, and I walked into Hell, and I saved your life!"
“But at what cost, baby? Nothing’s free in this world, nor any other.”
Emmett nodded and blinked.
"The cost? A life for a life. Blood for blood. And I'd pay it again in a heartbeat, Ma." His voice had gone from sad and insecure to righteous.
"That's why I'm better? You killed someone—killed some innocent person to save my life?"
She strode across the room and stopped before her son. Emmett was nearly a foot taller than his mother, and she looked up at him with a sad and angry glare.
"What gave you that right?" she asked, tears streaming down her face.
Emmett didn't answer. After a moment of silence between them, her brown eyes locked with his blue, and Emmett's mother smacked him across the face with all the strength she could muster.
"You're not God! You don't get to choose who lives and dies, Emmett!"
Emmett turned his gaze back to his mother, recovering from the open-hand strike to his cheek. There was no anger in his face, but rather an inkling of pride and amusement, of which Emmett himself wasn't fully aware.
"No, I'm not God, Ma. Not yet."
With that he walked around his mother and toward the stove.
As he walked away his mother spoke again. "You go pack your things. We're leaving town."
Without turning around, Emmett grabbed a bowl from the cupboard. The same bowl with Paiute symbols that had inspired his first steps down the dark path he’d taken. He found it interesting that the symbols looked nothing like the angular runes he had found in The Cavern of the First Breath.
"Don't be ridiculous, Ma. This is our home. Pa will make it back soon. Why would we leave?"
"Sheriff Silver knows, Emmett. He found blood in the shop, between the floorboards. He found that coin, and he might not know the symbols, but he knows they ain't right."
Emmett ladled vegetable soup into his bowl while he spoke back. "A little blood and an antique coin don't hold much weight. Could be animal blood. A stray coon got in the shop."
"What about Mackum’s body. I didn’t want to believe him, but he says someone choked him to death. Someone with hands bigger than he'd ever seen, except on you and your pa."
Emmett had pulled a spoon from the drawer as his mother spoke and was now slurping up the broth and some small peas that floated within it. It tasted delicious and his body greedily sucked up the nutrients. After taking three spoonfuls of the soup he finally spoke.
"Still no real proof. Just suspicion."
He took another spoonful of the rich broth.
"You think this is New York or Philadelphia, Emmett? This is Affirmation, California! There ain't no proper courts here. There's the law and one man to enforce it. He's gonna shoot you down or string you up if we don't leave town tonight!"
"And why would he warn my mother?"
"Out of respect for your pa. He said if I could get you to leave he'd forget about you, but if you stayed in his town, there'd be a funeral."
Emmett gave up on the spoon and drank down the rest of the soup straight from the bowl. Once he had downed the entire bowl he pulled out the handkerchief that hung from his back pocket and wiped his mouth.
"If he starts thinking you’re more than a killer, if he starts thinking you’re a witch, then things are gonna turn worse than a noose or a bullet."
"He'll find out," Emmett replied calmly and turned to face his mother. "And things will be much worse than a noose or a bullet."
With that being said, Emmett walked off to his bedroom and closed the door, leaving his mother crying in the kitchen. He fell into his bed and kicked off his boots. It felt good to take them off and even better to lie down. As peaceful sleep overtook him, Emmett could hear his mother crying in the other room. This saddened him, but he took comfort in the fact that he needn't lure a sacrifice to him to serve as a key this time. A sacrifice would come to him—a silver key to unlock infinity. All he had to do was sleep and wait.
***
Patrick Silver sat at his kitchen table and prayed for the first time in years. He spoke Hebrew words, words he could barely remember the meaning of, and hoped God might listen after such a long silence on his part. There was always a chance. Silver had never lost faith exactly, but he'd been preoccupied in the practical and material.
Another reason he hadn't been observant over the last few years was one he was more ashamed to admit. Silver was a Jew in a town with no others. Enough folks had issue with him over that as it was. No need to draw attention to it. If he could forget it, maybe they would too.
Of course they hadn't, at least not all of them. Pricks like Mackum liked to blame any crime that happened within twenty miles on the fact that a cowardly Jew was sheriff. Others would make comments and jokes on Sundays when he didn't go to church. But for the most part, people respected Patrick Silver and some even counted him amongst their friends.
Tonight Silver could care less if every last person in this damn town heard him pray in the language of his forebears. The truth was he needed God because he was more than a little afraid of Emmett Wongraven. The boy was a mountain of a man, just like his father. He was also a killer, that much Silver was sure of. But there was something worse. Emmett was into something dark, something that Silver couldn't fathom, despite all the "Jew secrets" that some folks thought he knew.
Silver put on his hat, a brown derby with a dark gray trim, and headed out his front door. Outside, the night seemed off. The moon was new and its light was absent from the sky. The only illumination came from far away stars, which seemed to spread their radiance in irregular, shifting patterns. Silver had never been much of a stargazer, but looking
up into the infinite heavens on that night, he thought things looked mighty odd. He wasn't positive what stars should be where exactly, but he was pretty sure they were all in the wrong place.
The night was hot. Only a degree or two Fahrenheit had retreated beyond the horizon with the sun at dusk. Silver's heels clicked loudly on the parched earthen street, echoing through the still night like a giant's beating heart.
No one else roamed the streets on this late night. Partly because Monday morning, with all the demands it brought, was fast approaching. Silver was pleased with this small concession. If things went awry, there wouldn't be a bunch of mouth-breathing gawkers standing around to catch a stray slug.
The Wongraven house, a home where he'd had dinner on more than one occasion, was a fifteen-minute walk away from his own home. In the past he'd made the walk with a sense of cheerfulness. There hadn't been so much a sense of belonging amongst the gunsmith, his native wife, and their mixed-breed son. Rather, Silver had a comforting sense that he wasn't the only outsider living in Affirmation.
Like everyone else who spent any time around the gunsmith and his wife, Silver had grown to respect them greatly. The woman was as kind-hearted and beautiful as a man could ever have hoped to meet. Not a negative word nor a dribble of gossip ever escaped her lips. She was the best damn cook in town and a fairly talented seamstress.
What’s more, she must have been diligent and skilled in her womanly duties, as the gunsmith, who strode through this ugly town like a Roman statue come to life, never seemed to return the flirtatious glances that more than few women would cast his way.
Emmett's father was a plain-spoken man who judged everyone and everything by their merit, rather than by their last name or their skin tone. He was a proper, gentile white man, who chose to take an Injun as his wife and befriend a Jew sheriff, and made no apologies. Silver admired that about Wongraven, but it also had a way of making him feel small. Here was a man who was admired, despite telling societal convention to fuck all. Meanwhile, Silver tried to underplay his heritage and still struggled for respect.
Maybe that right there was the difference. The gunsmith had gained respect because he acted in manner that demanded it. Respect for Silver mostly stopped at his badge, and maybe because he acted in way that was disrespectful to himself.
Or maybe everyone was just too scared to say shit to Wongraven, or even behind his back, seeing as the man was six foot six and could shoot a pimple off a fly's ass.
It was because of that respect that Patrick Silver was willing to give their son one chance to get the hell out of town. He'd known Emmett since he was a boy, but never had any strong feelings about him one way or another. He did worry about Emmett, though. He'd seen him struggle and get harassed by other kids over his black hair and olive skin—kids who didn't fear his father the way their parents did.
He'd also seen Emmett become aware of the size and strength he'd inherited from his old man. He recalled on time the boy pummeled three little shits who thought that together they might "break the savage."
Silver knew that the young man had reasons to be angry. The sheriff himself knew how hard anger could be to check. Ever since his dad went running off to fight for the Confederacy and his mom took ill, that anger in Emmett seemed to be burning like a wildfire. Maybe if he'd stepped in earlier and tried to talk with the boy, he could have helped him check that rage. Now it was too late. The boy had not just crossed the line, he had galloped over it like a stampeding horse.
Silver had hoped that the twelve weeks the boy had disappeared for would have turned into a thing of permanence. Word was that Emmett rode back into to town this morning though, looking like he'd crawled his way across the Mojave. Responsibility lay with the sheriff to eject this dangerous element, by persuasion, intimidation, or violence, if it came to it. Silver feared it would.
Twenty minutes after he'd left his front door, Silver found himself by the fence outside of the Wongraven home. From inside Silver heard the sound of deep, almost guttural moans. The terrible wailing was like that of a bear with its leg caught inside a trap.
Silver walked down the dirt path toward the front door, consciously softening his footfalls and placing his right hand on his iron. As he got within arm's reach of the door, he could hear a soft, choking sound beneath the monstrous wails. Part of him wanted to run. Part of him wanted to set fire to the place from the outside, and just burn away whatever horrors might lie inside. Missus Wongraven would surely be in there too though, and Patrick Silver just couldn't carry the weight of her death on his conscience.
He placed his left hand on the brass doorknob in front of him and fear caught in his throat, as if he'd swallowed an apple whole. The sheriff did not want to lay eyes upon source of the wretched, tormented sounds inside, whatever it was.
He muttered one final prayer, this one informal and spoken in English. He tightened his hold on the walnut grip of his pistol. With all the courage he could summon, the lawman turned the knob and pressed against it.
The door was unlocked and swung open easily. The moans and choked gurgling were louder now, pouring forth through the open doorway. Across the threshold, darkness reigned and Silver could not make out the sources of the sorrowful cacophony. The Sheriff cursed himself for not bringing matches. With his heart pounding in his chest, he stepped across the threshold and into the darkened home.
"Kylie?" Silver called out in a voice that he hoped sounded sure and strong.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As luck would have it, there was an all-night saloon near the train depot in Omaha, a big, well-kept place that also served as a hotel. The old man had spent the past several hours nursing watered-down whiskeys. His thoughts were muddled, not from the cheap booze, but from lack of sleep and long suppressed emotions forcing their way to the forefront of his stubborn brain.
Through a nearby window he could see that the sun was well above the horizon. A massive steam engine sat against the clear blue horizon—a symbol of mankind's bright future. Part of his mind, a part that was as selfish as it was wise, screamed for him to forget the past and all the pain it held. The voice pleaded for him to bid farewell to his son, his wife, his war, and every other damn thing that urged him toward certain doom.
Start a new life, it begged. Go get the boy and find a plot of land and live the rest of your life.
But this voice was not his own, the old man concluded. This was the voice of Cowardice, another one of the Devourers. It was a voice born from the poison in his blood. He looked down at the bloated, black leech on his arm. The creature looked a mite more monstrous than any other leech he'd ever seen before.
It was time.
The old man settled his tab with the bartender and headed outside. He breathed in a deep lungful of air and found it only slightly tainted with the poisonous touch of burnt coal. The sun was warm against his skin. Folks were walking down the street, smiling as they went about the mundane business of their day. Birds, hidden within the boughs of trees, were singing love songs.
It was a good day to die.
There was a little less than an hour before the train heading west toward Winter's End would leave the station. This left the old man plenty of time to retrieve his pistol from the local gunsmith, who was not too far from the depot.
A bittersweet feeling had overcome the old man as he walked through the door to the gun shop. His journey was almost over, and with any luck his boy would soon be saved. He found himself sad at leaving Hank behind. What was to come at Winter's End was nothing that kid needed to see, though. At least here, in Omaha, he'd have a chance at some kind of life.
The smith was standing behind the counter, polishing the old man's prized pistol. The damaged barrel had been cut back just a hair, and was finished to look just like new.
"That's some fine work," the old man commented as he walked up to the counter.
The gunsmith didn't respond. In fact he seemed to not even notice the old man. His sole focus was the gun named Donne
r. In his eyes was a deep admiration—no, a burning obsession with the piece.
"Hello?" The old man called for the smith's attention. This time he turned around. He looked at the old man with a confused expression.
"You did my gun up right. What do I owe ya?" the old man asked.
Recognition came across the shop keep’s face. He suddenly remembered the old man and realized why he was here.
"Your gun? I don't remember you dropping off no gun, you slaving bastard."
There was a deep hatred in the gunsmith's voice, and a madness in his eyes. Somehow Thurs had gotten to him. This wasn’t some fool trying to steal from him. No, this was a desperate attempt to rob the old man of the weapon that would end the dark titan's contemptible existence.
"You ain't thinking right, son. Just hand me my gun and I'll hand you your pay. Everybody wins."
The old man knew from experience that he was as likely to talk down this man who had been touched by the Devourers as a deer was likely to persuade a mountain lion not to eat him. Despite this knowledge, the old man still had a dislike of killing, regardless of how much he'd done it. Now his hesitation would cost him.
The gunsmith took two swift steps back. The old man was unable to make up the distance quickly enough with the counter between them. The few seconds impediment that the counter imposed was just enough for the smith to raise Donner and fire off a round.
The lead slug tore through the old man's right shoulder, sending shockwaves of pain throughout his upper body. The force of the gunshot knocked him off of his feet.
The world spun around him. Phantom fireworks exploded in his field of vision. Spikes of fiery pain had their way with his nerves. Once his mind recovered enough to produce a conscious thought, all it could say was not yet.
A moment later the gunsmith appeared above the old man and trained the .44 straight down into his right eye.
"You walk around in that shitbag, gray jacket like your kind ain't got they asses whooped,” the crazy eyed gunsmith growled. “Think you can start a war, maim and kill folks, and then we're all peaches and cream after you slink away in shame?"
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