The box saw ripped through the last tendrils of flesh joining the vampire’s head and his body. For good measure, Cody gripped Penders’s hair, peeled his head off the spike with an unwholesome squelching noise, and tossed it aside. He could just imagine Penders’s head rejoining his body were Cody to leave them both where they’d been.
“Help us!” Marguerite screamed.
With a start, Cody crossed toward the ladder, but before he reached it, he glimpsed two figures grappling at the edge of the hayloft.
His father and Mrs. Black.
A second later Marguerite was climbing down the ladder with the scythe, shouting for Cody to run for the house. He met her at the base of the ladder, shouldered past her and began to climb.
“You can’t!” she yelled.
He heard a grunt from above and looked up just in time to see his dad windmilling his arms.
“Dad!”
But Jack Wilson fell just the same. Cody experienced a soul-destroying sureness that his father would land next to Penders on the spiked harrow, but his dad landed wide of the bed of spikes by a good three or four feet. The sound of crunching bone, however, was unmistakable, as was the way his dad bellowed and grabbed his ankle. Cody rushed over to him, saw the way his dad’s foot flopped at the end of his leg like a flower with a wind-bent stalk.
“It’s the boy,” Marguerite said and joined Cody in getting an arm under Jack Wilson’s thrashing body. “He’s stronger than the rest of them.”
They began to drag Jack Wilson backward out the barn door, the older man’s face a mask of pain and obstinacy. You stubborn old fool, Cody thought admiringly. You’d still stay and fight, wouldn’t you? With one good leg and no rounds left for the Schofield, you’d still stay and take them both on.
A dark shape flew from the hayloft and landed on its feet before them.
Willet Black.
The boy was bleeding from numerous gunshot wounds, but he seemed to be returning to his human state. His mother thumped down on the barn floor behind him, though not nearly so nimbly. She looked worse off than her boy, a nasty scythe slash bisecting her torso, her face more vampire than human.
Cody and Marguerite continued to backpedal, their burden no longer so eager to do battle. Jack Wilson said, “Watch him, Cody. You won’t believe the things he can do.”
Cody doubted that was true.
They had about thirty yards to go before they reached the front door of the house. Willet kept the distance between them at about ten yards, his mother moving apace.
“You don’t want to kill us,” Cody said to Willet, and as he said it, he realized he believed it. Though the boy did look frightening—no one with glowing orange eyes and blood slathered over the front of his body looked particularly friendly—there was enough of the former Willet to give Cody hope. “I know you don’t like doing this to people, Willet. You’re not that kind.”
Willet slowed, his forehead furrowing.
Mrs. Black brushed past him, her face a rictus of loathing. “He’s my child. I know better than you what he likes.”
Marguerite said, “You feel guilty. You know what you’re doing to your son, and it makes you want to kill yourself.”
Martha Black’s eyes flared. “You stinking Mexican whore.”
Twenty yards now, the house tantalizingly near.
“Marguerite’s right,” Cody said. “You wouldn’t be so angry if you weren’t conflicted.”
Martha Black turned her dreadful gaze on him. “Is that so, Mr. Wilson? Suppose my Willet knew the truth about you?”
Something in Cody’s belly did a sick, nauseating roll, but he kept moving.
Mrs. Black turned to her boy, who stood just outside in the yard, the bewilderment etched on his face. “Mr. Wilson never told you he was there the night they came to our ranch, did he?”
Hell, Cody thought. He threw a look over his shoulder, realized he and Marguerite had misjudged and were heading too far to the left. He corrected their course, his father gasping as Cody jarred his shattered ankle.
“What’s she talkin’ about, Cody?” Willet asked. His voice was nearly returned to its normal high drawl. It made Cody’s heart ache, but the fear of what would happen soon rode roughshod over the sadness.
“He didn’t tell you before, so why would he admit it now?” Martha Black said. A vicious sneer had spread on her revolting face. “He saw the whole thing, Willet. Mr. Wilson hid among the pines on the eastern ridge while they dragged your sisters screaming from the house. He watched them butcher Ellen and Clara like a pair of hogs. He didn’t lift a finger when they raped Clara.” She turned to Cody. “Nor when they broke your brother’s neck.”
Willet’s face had begun to pinch, his bottom lip trembling. “This true, Cody? Were you really there?”
Though it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, Cody met Willet’s gaze, hoping against hope he could put off the change by begging the child’s forgiveness.
But as comprehension seeped into Willet’s face, Cody realized there would be no forgiveness.
Fifteen yards to go.
“Of course he was there, darling,” Mrs. Black cooed in her buzzing vampire voice. “He saw them slay your poor grandfather. Watched them dismember your father while he screamed and screamed for someone to come to his rescue.”
Willet took a step toward them. “Is it true?” he demanded. His voice had dropped an octave, his jaw elongating.
“I won’t deny anything,” Cody said. “I hid the same way you did, up in your hayloft. I thought they’d killed Angela, but I’d never seen them…never seen them in action. It shocked me. I was afraid, Willet, and for that I’ll be forever sorry.”
Ten yards.
“I should’ve intervened,” Cody continued, “though we both know how little good it would have done.”
Willet’s fists were balled at his sides, his steps quickening.
“Cody…” Marguerite said.
“Run,” Cody whispered.
Their arms still around Cody’s father, Cody and Marguerite began an awkward shuffle toward the covered porch, Jack Wilson hopping as briskly as he could to keep pace.
Willet moved with impossible swiftness. One moment Cody was sure they would reach the sanctuary of the house in plenty of time; the next a small, snarling body was leaping at him, the sprouting fingernails already ripping and tearing, shredding his bicep into strips of bloody bacon. The force of Willet’s body knocked him over, drove him sideways into the wood of the covered porch. It knocked the air out of him, the pain in his ribs sending starbursts twirling through his vision. Willet skidded on the porch, bumped the house under a windowsill, then pounced again. Distantly, Cody realized his father had disappeared—dragged away by Mrs. Black?—but Marguerite was still beside him. Marguerite met Willet just before the boy fell on Cody. With a savage cry she reared back and delivered a mighty kick to Willet’s underjaw. The boy’s lower jaw was driven upward, the serrated, stalagmite teeth perforating the soft flesh at the roof of his mouth. Squalling, Willet slapped at his gored mouth, flopped over on his belly, his wounds drizzling brackish blood all over the porch. A shadow loomed over Cody, and just as he glanced up and saw Martha Black, her orange eyes aflame with maternal outrage, Marguerite aimed a fist at the woman’s face.
The blow had little effect. Martha’s head merely moved imperceptibly before the glowing eyes came to rest on Marguerite. Cody grabbed the hem of Martha Black’s powder-blue dress, hoping he could divert her attention long enough to spare Marguerite the mother’s wrath.
But Martha Black was not to be deterred. Rather than swinging at the younger woman, Mrs. Black spun Marguerite around, and before Marguerite could react or mount any sort of defense, Mrs. Black caught the back of Marguerite’s head and slammed her face-first into the unforgiving adobe façade. There was a dull crunching sound—Cody prayed it wasn’t Marguerite’s skull. Then Marguerite slumped sideways.
And landed at the feet of Jack Wilson, who’d appeared in the o
pen doorway.
Mrs. Black went for him, but before she got halfway across the porch, he opened up with his Schofield, which he’d apparently gone inside to reload.
Tough old bastard, Cody thought.
Martha Black’s forehead dissolved into red pulp, her body folding over and slouching in a motionless mound on the edge of the porch. Still dizzy, Cody grabbed at the scythe, which lay discarded next to him. Rising, he took a step toward Mrs. Black, but his dad hissed something unintelligible at him.
Cody blinked at him uncomprehendingly. Jack Wilson, broken ankle and all, had hopped over to Marguerite, whose lovely body lay twisted at a horrible angle near the door. “Help me get her inside,” his father commanded.
“But,” Cody started and nodded at Mrs. Black.
“We don’t have time, boy. That thing’s gonna come back and we’re in no condition to hold him off.”
The thing to which his dad was referring, Cody saw, was Willet Black, who cut a grotesque picture in the yard just north of the house. Willet was stumbling about, uttering garbled curses. His long, taloned fingers were worming their way between his bloodied lips, which were nailed together by the swordlike teeth that Marguerite had driven into the roof of his mouth.
Finally prying his jaws apart, Willet rounded on them and began to approach.
Cody moved up beside his father and told him to get inside. For once, Jack Wilson took his advice, keeping the Schofield trained on Willet Black as Cody carried Marguerite through the doorway and over to the couch. Cody glanced up and saw his dad fetch the scythe, which he tossed through the doorway to land clattering on the floor.
Cody situated Marguerite on the dark brown sofa, the same one his father had furnished the place with a decade ago. He heard the door slam shut, the bolt shot. His dad hopped over to the windows and shuttered them fast. Cody glanced about, took in the window on the north side of the main room, the window beyond the dining area adjacent to the kitchen. Behind the kitchen, he knew there was another door leading to the backyard. And behind Cody there were two bedrooms, both of them with windows. Thinking of all those windows and doors, his throat dried up. He had little hope they could defend all of them, especially with Marguerite either unconscious or dying and his father with one good leg.
Jack Wilson cinched tight the shutters, then fastened the other window lock in the main room. He hobbled up beside Cody and peered down at Marguerite.
“She gonna live?” his father asked.
“How the hell should I know? You’re the medic.”
“Medic’s assistant,” his dad corrected. “And that was only when I wasn’t carrying a musket.” He shook his head. “I saw some things in the war, but I never saw anything like tonight.”
Cody grabbed a white cotton arm cover from a nearby chair and held it to the gash in Marguerite’s forehead.
“That’s not sanitized,” his dad said.
“I think an infection’s the least of her worries.”
Jack Wilson sighed. “You may be right.”
Cody fought to smother his terror. “What do we do, Dad?”
His dad stood up, hopped around the couch toward the dining area. Making his way toward the window there, his dad said, “We prepare for an attack. They might try a siege, but I doubt it. That woman won’t stay on the porch long, and that boy sure as hell doesn’t look very patient.”
Cody said, “You stay with Marguerite. I’ll get the back door.”
On his way through the kitchen, he heard his father ask, “What happened to your ear?”
Cody fingered the moist place where his earlobe had been. “Horton.”
“Your shoulder?”
“Penders.”
“It’s a good thing you got here when you did,” his dad said. “There wouldn’t have been anything left of you.”
“I’ll need bullets for my Colt.”
His father nodded. “In the cupboard.”
Cody went to lock the back door.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jack Wilson stood by the window, the side of the Schofield’s barrel pressed to his cheek. “Marguerite was right about the boy being stronger than the others. I never saw such a thing.”
“He was a good boy,” Cody said. “It’s my fault they got him.”
“Don’t look back,” his dad said without taking his eyes off the window. “You ever gonna take that advice? I’ve been giving it to you since you were little.”
Cody wrung out the washcloth over the bowl and gently mopped the fresh blood from Marguerite’s forehead. “Forgetting isn’t my specialty.”
“Never was mine either.”
Wincing, Jack Wilson hopped over to where Marguerite lay on the sofa. His father’s kind eyes surveyed her face. “She’s a beauty, ain’t she?”
“What I want to know,” Cody said, “is how she convinced you the vampires were real.”
But his dad was gazing down at Marguerite, a curiously avid expression on his face.
“Dad?”
Jack Wilson blinked up at him like he had no idea where he was.
Cody grasped his father’s arm around the elbow, just above where the gore of Price’s bite wound glistened like two dozen diamonds. “Do I need to keep you away from her?”
His father stared back at him a long time before finally looking away. Jack Wilson made his way over to the kitchen table, his disheveled, silvering hair and the worry lines on his forehead making him look like an infirm old man.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t apologize,” his father interrupted. “I do feel different. In time, we might have to worry.” He glanced up at Cody. “But for now I’m all right. I’m with you until the end. I’d put a gun in my mouth before I ever laid a hand on you or this girl.”
“Dad, I want to say something—”
“You don’t have to say a word, boy. I already know.”
“You deserved a better son.”
His dad eyed him for a long moment. Then he pushed away from the table and put his hands on Cody’s shoulders. Cody had always thought of his father as being a good deal taller than him, but now Cody realized he had his dad by an inch at least. The revelation stunned him.
His dad said, “You came home, Cody. That’s what matters. I probably tried too hard to be both of your parents. Then, when I married Gladys…” Jack Wilson’s voice faltered. He cleared his throat. “I held it against you for not taking a shine to Gladys right away, and that wasn’t fair either. I thought you were mad at me for dishonoring the memory of your mother, but what you were really worried about…” His father averted his eyes.
“Dad, you don’t have to say it.”
His father inhaled a shuddering breath. “What you were really afraid of was losing me.”
Cody beheld his father’s moist eyes and understood for the first time that what he’d said was right. Cody had been jealous of Gladys, plain and simple. So he broke from his father before his father could break from him. Marrying Angela had made that abandonment permanent, or at least semipermanent.
He opened his mouth to say all this, but when his dad gazed up at him with that heartbroken smile, Cody realized he didn’t have to. His father knew it already.
Cody said, “I never knew a finer man than you.”
His dad’s lips trembled, but instead of turning away, he drew Cody’s cheek to his lips and gave him long kiss. Then, he rested his forehead against Cody’s for a long moment. Cody realized he was weeping too and felt a trifle foolish, but more powerful than this emotion was an aching desire for the embrace to never end.
Jack Wilson tensed and suddenly reached for his Schofield.
Cody whirled, but there was no one in the window. “Are you sure—”
“It was her,” Jack Wilson said, the Schofield drawn and covering the window. “It was the kid’s mother.”
Cody carried Marguerite to the bedroom and fastened the shutters and window locks tight. Jack Wilson limped to the window and double-checke
d it. Then, gesturing toward the big armoire Gladys had used for her clothes, he said, “Help me get this in front of the window.”
The armoire weighed a ton. Cody did most of the work, his dad cursing under his breath about not being able to help more. Panting, Cody crossed to where Marguerite lay, drew up the covers far enough to cover her torn dress.
When Cody straightened, he found his father’s old Civil War Colt musket with its bayonet attachment displayed on the wall. “That thing still fire?”
“I suppose it would,” his dad said. “If I still had musket balls and powder for it.”
Cody arched an eyebrow at him. “If you don’t use it, why’s it—”
His dad fluttered an impatient hand. “Gladys insisted on keeping it there. Said it reminded her that I’d fought for a noble cause. That men weren’t supposed to own other men. I guess she was proud of me for helping put a stop to all that.”
Cody imagined his father fighting for Ferrero’s first division at Blue Springs, the Union soldiers overrunning the Confederates. “I don’t blame her for displaying it,” he said.
His dad hobbled to the door. “You take the other bedroom. I’ll guard the rest.”
Cody followed his dad into the hall. “That doesn’t make any sense. You can’t watch all those directions at once. Besides, if they sneak up on you, how are you gonna get away on one leg?”
“That’s the point,” his dad said. “You can cover more ground. I’m gonna sit in the central part of the house, where it’ll take longer to get to me.”
“But that won’t work.”
“I’ve got a voice, don’t I? I hear anything, I’ll call for you, and we’ll face them together.”
“I still don’t know why we have to split up. They’re the ones who’re sensitive to the light. They’re the ones who need to feed. Let’s hole up here with Marguerite and make them come to us. We’ve got the advantage.”
Dust Devils Page 22