Dust Devils

by Janz, Jonathan

  Cody gained the top of the staircase and damn near pitched over the catwalk rail. And wouldn’t that have been something? To evade these monstrous creatures only to fall screaming to a clownish death? Or worse, smack the wooden stage just hard enough to incapacitate him but not quite severely enough to kill him? A tidal wave of goose bumps whispered down Cody’s arms at thought of the remaining devils swarming over him and sucking him dry. They’d do it slowly, torturously. Maximizing his agony while his useless limbs bled white.

  They’re coming!

  Cody jolted back to himself with a start, threw a terrified glance at the stairs. No one there, not yet. But he could hear them closing in, taking their time about it. He had a chamber full of bullets, but what good were they now? He might get lucky, put one right between Horton’s eyes, or maybe in Penders’s throat. They bled a lot, he recalled. They bled especially after feeding, and boy, would they be full of blood after the carnage below, like a trio of ticks.

  No, he thought, check that. Not a trio, a quartet. Angela was one of them now. Vicious, treacherous Angela. Cody backed along the catwalk, one hand gripping the tubular wooden rail, another clutching the .38. The moment Price or Penders or Horton or that slut Angela showed his or her face, he’d blast a hole in it. The .38 was a good gun. It felt solid in his hand, like whoever had owned it had loved it. He took another backward stride, frowning into the dark so he could spot—

  “They say you saved my boy,” a voice behind him croaked.

  With a cry Cody spun around and realized he’d nearly reached the end of the catwalk. There were perhaps four more strides before he would have encountered the squared end of the walkway and the single wooden chair nestled there.

  And the woman with the darning needles.

  She acted as though it were the most natural thing in the world, meeting like this on a catwalk thirty feet above the stage. Her with a pair of darning needles toiling away at whatever sat in her lap, Cody with a .38 cocked and pointed at her face. There was hardly any illumination up here now that the limelight had been extinguished. And though he hadn’t thought about who Price had gotten to control the lighting up here, the only thing that mattered was the fact that this woman had allied herself to the devils. Why else would she have killed the lights and given the devils a tactical advantage?

  You know why, he told himself.

  But he refused to believe it. He could not believe that this kindly, handsome woman in her late thirties would willingly become a confederate of these monsters. Why would anyone—

  Cody’s thoughts broke off as the meaning of her words finally sank in.

  They say you saved my boy, she had said.

  Cody’s eyes were drawn to the faint pearlescent glimmer on her upper lip, the one just above the right corner of her closed mouth. The pale scar tissue resembled a corkscrew.

  She’s got a pig tail on her lip, Willet had said.

  They say you saved my boy.

  “Mrs. Black?” Cody ventured.

  Someone was climbing the stairs and had almost reached the top, but Cody hardly noticed the heavy thuds of boots on wood.

  The woman’s mouth broke into a grin, and at that moment all handsomeness disintegrated. He could see why her mouth had been shut before. Her teeth were hanging white pickets, the jaws unhinging twice as far as human jaws should.

  And that’s because she’s no longer human, you fucking ignoramus, he told himself. Why else would she be helping the devils and how else could she have survived back at Las Cruces?

  The footsteps clumped louder now, the figure having reached the top of the staircase. Cody could feel the catwalk vibrate with each step, whichever devil it was taking his time now because Cody was covered from the front and back, and though he knew he should be shooting, his eyes lowered first to the thing Willet’s mother was darning. He was scarcely surprised when he distinguished the inverted head of the girl Eliza, the one who’d volunteered to be an actress in Price’s show and had ended up being defiled and murdered in front of half the town.

  Willet’s mother—or the monstrous thing that had once been Mrs. Black—took in Cody’s appalled stare and nodded conspiratorially. “When Stevie popped that little slut’s head off, I knew she was the one. She deserved what she got, by the way. Adam offered her fifty dollars to have sex with Penders on stage, and she was dumb enough to believe she’d get paid. I stole down there during the brawl. No one seemed to notice.”

  The footsteps behind Cody grew closer, closer.

  Mrs. Black nodded, darning needles stitching together the ragged flaps of skin so that the remains of Eliza’s gullet resembled the crumpled top of a paper sack. “Those boys don’t know when to stop eating, and I’ll not go hungry on the journey.”

  “What journey?” Cody whispered.

  “The wagon ride to Escondido,” Adam Price said from behind him.

  Cody whirled, saw the beast had again become man, though Price’s face and clothing were begrimed with blood and viscera. Price was eight feet away.

  Cody raised the .38, fixed it on Price’s forehead. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Cody said and squeezed the trigger.

  But the moment before he did, a fireblast of pain scorched the meat of his right thigh, the darning needle burying itself to the bone. The .38 blast went wide, grazing Price’s head above the ear, but the man hardly reacted. Howling with pain, Cody seized the embedded needle, yanked it out and thrust the barrel of the .38 into Mrs. Black’s face, which was no longer handsome in any way, which was now a snarling oval of fangs and lurid orange eyes. Cody pulled the trigger again, saw one eye dissolve in a pulpy black cloud. Mrs. Black was driven back against the edge of the rail but did not tumble over.

  A hand grabbed Cody’s shoulder, squeezed, the fingers so powerful they ripped bloody trenches through his flesh. Gasping, Cody whirled and thrust the darning needle into Adam Price’s throat. The slender steel spear punched through the man’s neck and out the other side, but Price’s grip did not lessen, and the man was not a man any longer, the terrible change accelerating before Cody’s bleary eyes. Cody jammed the .38 into Price’s belly and squeezed the trigger. The vampire jolted, bent toward him. Cody evaded Price, raced down the catwalk, but Horton appeared, barring his way. Cody did the only thing he could think to do, launched himself sideways, his upper leg smacking the catwalk rail, his body tilting perpendicular to the curtain, which he groped madly for now, the plush velvet taunting his seeking fingers, dancing away from his grasp, and then he was plummeting down the curtain. Horton made a desperate grab for his boots, and Cody let go of the .38, dimly aware that the gun no longer mattered. If he struck the stage at full speed, he’d be dead or paralyzed, his nightmarish vision from moments before become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cody’s fingers clenched the curtain, his feet swinging violently down. When his legs slapped the curtain, he lost his grip, his upper body twisting away from his only salvation. He had no idea how far he’d fallen or if he’d even helped his cause by grasping the curtain, and desperately he reached out again, groped for the curtain, his body now parallel to the stage, which was flying toward him. His fingers burned down the velvet surface, caught, and he swung into the curtain, the unresisting plushness enveloping him. He lost his grip once more, spinning in the velvety embrace, then it disgorged him, and he landed facedown on the stage.

  He lay there a good while, stunned by the impact. Then, slowly, the feeling in his body returned. Amazed, Cody pushed up to his elbows and made to stand, but at that moment something slammed him in the ribs, sent him skidding sideways several feet. On his belly, Cody cast a glance back and saw it was Penders who’d booted him. Cody tried to scramble to his feet, but collided with a pair of hard shins. He didn’t need to look up to know it was Billy Horton who’d blocked him. One of Horton’s bare feet cocked back, and before Cody could defend himself with a forearm, it caught him in the underjaw, lifted him off his feet in a backward somersault. He crashed down against Penders’s legs. Stunned, Cody
attempted to rise again, to perhaps locate the .38 wherever it had fallen. But Penders grabbed him with his viselike paws, lifted him above his head and hurled him into the curtain. Cody’s flying body tented the curtain inward as far as it would go, then smashed into the unforgiving wall beyond. Cody hit face-first, his nose rupturing against the wall. Insensate, he sprawled on his back, the curtain half-covering his prone form. Moments later, something got hold of his pant leg and dragged him back onto the stage.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cody blinked up at the staring faces. Angela was there, along with Mrs. Black. Penders and Horton stood a little ways off.

  Adam Price knelt over Cody. He’d begun to change back again, but somehow the half-vampire appearance of his features was worse than the fully transformed version. He resembled Satan from a drawing Cody had once seen back in Sunday school.

  “You’ve taken more from me than any man ever has,” Adam Price said, his silky voice buzzing around the edges. “You’ll die for that. But before you do, I’m going to take more from you than you took from me.”

  Cody’s mouth was full of blood and ache, but still he mumbled, “Took my wife.”

  “That’s right,” Price said. “We took your wife; we took Willet.”

  Cody felt something in him squeeze tight. He tried to say no, but no sound escaped.

  “You will ride with Willet in our coach. By morning you will have the pleasure of watching us gut and devour your father and anyone else we find on his ranch.”

  “My dad…” Cody said weakly. “My dad isn’t in Escondido anymore. He’s moved on—”

  “Willet told us everything about you, Cody. You shouldn’t have confided in such a young person.”

  And though he knew he should have only been thinking of Willet at that moment, Cody’s thoughts veered in another direction, to Marguerite, to the owner of this place that had become the site of a blood orgy black enough to make Lucifer himself blanch. Where had Marguerite gone? If she had been killed, why hadn’t Price taunted him with the fact?

  Price nodded, face still caught in that half-vampire state of monstrousness. “Yes,” he said, his orange eyes flickering. “The Mexican tramp. I’d ask you if you cheated on your wife”—Price flicked a nod up at Angela, who was leering at him with her hideously altered grin—“but I know from what she’s told us that you wouldn’t be man enough to seduce such a comely woman.”

  “What have you done with Marguerite?”

  A momentary expression of disdain rippled through Price’s features. “We didn’t touch her. We couldn’t.” The disdainful look twisted into a searing hatred. “Judging from what you did to Dragomir, I suspect you know why.”

  Cody’s eyes widened. “The flowers.”

  Price appraised Cody a long moment, and in that moment a maelstrom of thoughts tumbled through Cody’s mind. Price would kill him now. Still seething over the loss of the Seneslav twins, the king vampire would finally take his vengeance. Or Price would take him to where he held Marguerite hostage. Or one of the vampires had found a way to overcome Marguerite and had transformed her into one of the beasts. Nothing would surprise Cody at this point.

  At length, Price said, “She is beneath us.”

  “She’s better than you could ever—”

  “I mean literally, Mr. Wilson.”

  Cody frowned up at him. “You buried her under the stage?”

  Price seemed faintly amused. “We didn’t touch her. She was down in the root cellar when we arrived earlier. Apparently she was selecting a bottle of wine to share with you. When we found her there, we asked her if we could book her saloon for a performance. She declined. She produced a crossbow. Penders wasn’t deterred by the weapon. He attempted to persuade her, but he discovered the flowers in her hair just in time. The touch of them is toxic to our flesh.” His lips closed, became a thin white line. He said, “And fatal if ingested.”

  Cody amazed himself by saying, “Guess your buddy over there forgot.”

  “Dragomir often lost control when gripped by the thrall.” Price’s face regained its predatory gleam. “But we have plans for a replacement.”

  “You better not touch Willet.”

  “You’ll see him soon enough. But first we must make certain your dusky maiden is taken care of.”

  Someone grabbed hold of Cody’s shoulders, heaved him up to standing. Cody wobbled a few seconds, nearly fell. Through the leaden fog surrounding him, he said, “You can’t go near her. Not with the flowers—”

  “We won’t need to go near her,” Price interrupted, already descending the stage steps. Penders gripped the back of Cody’s neck and half-pushed, half-carried him down the steps and through the strewn bodies and entrails that sloshed and squelched underfoot. Cody could hear voices outside, men and women talking in raised voices, several calling out to see if anyone inside Marguerite’s would answer.

  Go away, Cody thought. Go away before you die, too.

  Horton ripped the door off its hinges and cast it aside. Price went through, with Penders bearing Cody along in front of him. Behind them Cody could hear Angela, Mrs. Black and Horton, but what drew his attention most of all were three sights: the black coach with its sextet of ebony quarter horses hitched and waiting; another coach, this one a shiny red Concord hitched with four horses, two strong sorrels and a pair of Appaloosas; and a collection of perhaps thirty townspeople watching them with unbelieving gazes.

  As the vampires and their hostage ambled out of the saloon, most of the onlookers simply gaped as if uncertain of what they were seeing. A few gasped or muttered incoherent prayers. At least two—a wispy adolescent girl and a man of perhaps forty—turned heels and dashed away into the night. The rest simply stood immobile, or perhaps inched closer to one another for support. Cody couldn’t blame them. The procession spilling out of the ravaged façade of Marguerite’s saloon must’ve resembled the refugees from a macabre costume ball. As far as he could tell in the semidarkness of the moonlit street, Horton and Penders had changed most of the way back to their normal selves. Angela and Mrs. Black were still more vampire than woman. Adam Price looked normal, but even when human, Price possessed an undeniably mesmeric quality that made it difficult to look away. As for himself, Cody figured he looked the way he felt—like complete and utter shit.

  “Lovely for all of you to join us,” Price announced to the crowd.

  One man with a bushy brown mustache and a short, plump woman at his side opened his mouth as if to speak, but Price stilled him with an outstretched palm.

  “I know this might seem unorthodox to you, but there was a disagreement here this evening, and unfortunately blood was spilled.”

  The short, plump woman tilted her head suspiciously. “Whose blood?” Cody saw her husband avert his eyes and understood at once how it was in their relationship: the plump woman commanded and Bushy Mustache obeyed. It was disturbingly similar to the dynamic he’d fallen into with Angela, and at thought of his former wife, Cody half turned to see if she’d changed into a person again.

  What he saw made his body go limp.

  Not only had she not returned to her human form, the transformation had reversed itself, the woman looking like nothing that should draw breath on this earth.

  A couple of the gathered townspeople had noticed.

  “What’s happening to that lady?” one of them, an elderly woman in a white bonnet, asked.

  “Our dear Angela has endured many trials of late,” Price answered. “She needs a good rest.”

  Angela drew even with Cody, only six or seven feet away. Her monstrous face was limned by the deep-blue night sky, her orange eyes lambent and hungry.

  “That don’t look like all she needs,” an onlooker remarked.

  Price seemed to consider. He’d lost none of his aplomb, but he now regarded the massed citizens of Mesquite with what Cody feared was renewed interest.

  A big man with a neat black beard broke through the crowd. Unlike Sheriff Bittner and Boom Catterson, this m
an was bulky where it mattered, his chest and shoulders stretching the fabric of his pale undershirt like they’d been painted onto him. The big man stepped right up to Adam Price and fixed him with a level stare. “I want to know what happened in there. My brother went to the show tonight.”

  Price smiled softly. “I think I remember him. Tall fellow, a great bristling mane of black hair?”

  Grizzly, Cody thought, thinking of the way the man had died. Run, was Cody’s next thought. He did his best to push the thought psychically into the big man’s mind. Run now so you don’t end up like your brother.

  The big man’s eyes narrowed. “That’s Teddy all right.” The big man’s gaze riveted on the front of Marguerite’s saloon. “He still inside?”

  “Yes,” Price said slowly, as if thinking it over. “His corporeal self is still there.”

  “His what?”

  “Take a look for yourself,” Price said, his grin becoming sharkish. Had his jaw begun to elongate, or was Cody’s overarching fear of the man only making it appear that way?

  Invisible fingers of dread caressed Cody’s spine. He might be imagining the stretching jaw, but there was no questioning the orange embers that had begun to spark in Price’s eyes. Oh hell, Cody thought pleadingly at Grizzly’s brother. Please get out of here. Please get yourself and the rest of these poor souls indoors until this black storm blows out of town and leaves you to your mourning.

  But the big man had no intention of leaving. He shouldered past Price, who let him pass with sardonic good cheer.

  “I wanna see too,” White Bonnet declared. “My Festus came down here tonight to play billiards.”

  Horton interposed his mostly naked frame—he and Penders had each dragged on pairs of tattered black trousers—between White Bonnet and Grizzly’s brother, who’d mounted the front porch and was about to enter a building that hours before had been the town’s social epicenter instead of a gore-streaked mausoleum.

  Horton said, “While that Eliza got herself pounded in front of God and everybody, your dear old Festus had his hand in his pocket, stroking himself like a teenage boy.”