The not-men obeyed immediately, releasing Tuck and Cale and backing away. Tuck noted with grim satisfaction that one still lay on the ground, its limbs scraping at the earth as if it were trying to honor its master’s wishes, even as whatever life it possessed slipped away.
Tuck wanted to say something to Montclair, but he didn’t know what. “You won’t get away with this” came to mind, but that was a lie, since to all appearances he already had. He wanted to remind Montclair that he was human, too, or had been. He wanted to tell Montclair that all the power in the world wasn’t worth the lives he’d taken, the misery he’d sown. But the words wouldn’t come, and in the end, he kept his mouth shut.
As did Montclair. The man didn’t bother with a speech or even a threat. He started to raise the skull. In the same moment, the eagle swept down from the sky and attacked Little Wing.
No, that was wrong. It landed on her, but it was tearing at the ropes that bound her, using beak and claws. In just an instant, she was free.
Quickly, Montclair raised the skull higher. Lightning flashed overhead and thunder rocked the earth. Sadie and one of the abominations grabbed at Little Wing, but she dodged them and made straight for Montclair. He was speaking his incantatory phrases, and above him, the sky was alive with electricity.
The eagle arrowed straight into his hands, and the skull tumbled from his grasp.
Chapter Fifty-six
Little Wing lunged for it.
Her feet left the ground and she soared for several feet, eluding the reach of another abomination. She caught the shaman’s skull in her outstretched left hand, and as she dropped back toward earth, she brought it to her, closing her right hand over it and tucking it against her chest. She landed shoulder first, rolled, then sprang to her feet, yards away from the astonished Montclair.
“Young lady,” he said, holding out his hand as if she would simply give it back. “You have no idea what you’ve got there.”
“I think I do,” Little Wing replied. “It is the skull of the shaman Thunder Moon, murdered by men from the Coronado expedition in 1540.”
“How…” Montclair began.
“You are not the only person who knows about arcane subjects, Mr. Montclair. Or who can pick up impressions from ancient artifacts.”
“Its power is enormous. Give it back before you hurt someone.”
“I know about its power,” Little Wing countered. “I can feel it.” She lifted the thing even with her face and held it there, eyeball to empty socket. “He really does not like you, Mr. Montclair.”
“Nonsense!” Montclair snapped. He closed the distance to her with a few rapid strides, but when he grabbed at the skull, Little Wing pirouetted effortlessly away from him. He snatched again, catching only air as she put several more feet between them.
Before he could make another try, she lifted the skull above her head, her arms rigid, elbows locked. At once, lightning blazed across the night sky and thunder crashed. The full moon—the Thunder Moon—shouldered out from behind a mass of dark clouds.
“No!” Montclair cried. “Don’t be a fool!”
Holding the skull aloft, Little Wing shouted a single word toward the heavens. In immediate response, a bolt of lightning linked skull and sky. The skull seemed to suck it in, as if inhaling it. It glowed in her hands, red hot, then white. Tuck feared for her life. If nothing else, she would lose both hands.
Little Wing held on to the thing, lowering it until it was once again at her eye level. When she halted its descent, blue fire crackled around its outer surface for a moment. Then lightning erupted from its eye sockets, nose, and mouth. Instead of turning that lightning on someone else, though, Little Wing directed it at herself. Blinding white fire connected her eyes, nose, and mouth to the skull’s. Overhead, thunder roared, and all around them lightning jabbed at the earth.
At first, Tuck was certain that what happened next was an illusion, caused perhaps by the blistering brightness before him. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, but he still saw the same thing. Little Wing not only accepted the lightning raging from Thunder Moon’s skull, she was, it appeared, thriving. While he watched, open-mouthed, she grew in size. Her proportions didn’t change, but she became taller and heavier, as if she were taking in energy from the skull and turning it into mass.
As if that realization had broken a spell that kept everybody rooted, Montclair and Sadie both rushed toward Little Wing. Tuck saw their objective—to wrest the skull from Little Wing before whatever strange ritual was taking place had finished. “Cale!” he shouted, nodding toward Sadie.
Cale tossed him a nod back, to show he understood, and charged into Sadie Cuttrell, blocking her before she could reach Little Wing. At the same instant, Tuck went for Montclair. He caught the man’s shoulders and tried to yank him backward, but Montclair just kept walking, dragging Tuck with him.
Tuck let go and tried a different tack, shoving his leg between Montclair’s. Instead of tripping, Montclair kicked it away. Tuck felt like a tree had fallen on it.
Still Montclair trudged toward Little Wing. Tuck grabbed his arm, used that to build momentum to swing around in front of him, and drove his fist into Montclair’s jaw.
Montclair flinched, but not much. Tuck punched him again, this time in the gut. Montclair swept his arm in a roundhouse circle that sent Tuck sprawling. Tuck scrambled to his feet again and rushed the man, head down. He plowed into Montclair’s back, threw his arms out, and tried to run right through him. Montclair was treating him with the disdain he would a bothersome gnat, and Tuck didn’t like it.
This assault staggered Montclair. Just a little, but it gave Tuck hope. He tried to swipe one of Montclair’s legs out from under him while punching him, hard, three times, in the solar plexus. Montclair bit his lip and hunched forward.
Tuck planted his feet and tried to hold Montclair back. The man was preternaturally strong and he tried to muscle through, but Tuck held his ground. He kicked at Montclair’s knee three times, four, and took pleasure in Montclair’s wince when the leg buckled. Tuck threw another couple of punches to the man’s jaw. His hand already ached, and he wouldn’t be surprised later to find that he had broken some bones in it.
Still, he had gotten to Montclair. The big man tried to shove him roughly from the path, but though Tuck’s boots scrabbled and slipped in the mud, he held on. His side, where he’d been slashed, was in agony, bleeding through his shirt. His hands felt like an entire cavalry regiment had galloped over them.
Where at first Montclair’s expression had been dismissive, his attention focused on Little Wing, now his face was a mask of rage. He was far stronger than Tuck, and he could have continued swatting at him like a fly, but Tuck had penetrated his resolve. Montclair lowered his shoulders and charged, his arms looping beneath Tuck’s and enveloping him in a crushing bear hug. Both men went down in the mud, Tuck on the bottom.
Montclair rose off him, but just for an instant. Then he straddled Tuck, holding him down with his left hand on Tuck’s right shoulder. With his right fist, he began pummeling Tuck’s face, breaking past the defensive arm Tuck tried to raise. The pain in his side didn’t make that any easier. Tuck felt teeth loosen, and worried that one more solid shot would smash his jaw. He had to do something.
Instead of blocking with his left, he threw it out flat and pawed at the earth, hoping to find a big rock or something else he could use as a weapon. His quest, though, seemed in vain. The soft ground offered up nothing hard enough to do real damage. He was trying to brace for the next punishing blow when his fingers touched on something solid. Drawing it into his hand, he grasped it tight—a broken mesquite branch, about as big around as both his thumbs together. Montclair was drawing his fist back, so Tuck, disregarding the half-inch thorns driving into his hand, swung his arm up and jammed the stick as hard as he could into Montclair’s right eye.
Montclair screamed in pain, but the blow that had already started to fall continued, and when it slammed into his forehead, Tuck lost co
nsciousness.
* * *
Cale was tired of trying to kill Sadie again.
She didn’t want to die. He emptied his rifle into her, then his revolver. She didn’t quite shrug off the bullets—he saw her jerk when they landed, so she could feel them—but they didn’t stop her, either. She didn’t bleed. She just kept walking toward Little Wing, who still drank in the energy flowing from that old skull.
So Cale changed his tack. If he couldn’t kill her, maybe he could cripple her, and that would be just as good. He gripped his rifle by the barrel and swung it as hard as he could at the backs of her knees. She staggered a little, so he shifted his position and slammed it into her kneecaps. That set her back a couple of steps. He did it again and again. Her pallid flesh tore, showing bloodless muscle beneath, and bone under that. He did it again and again, until finally her right knee separated altogether and that leg flopped uselessly when she tried to move it.
At that, she finally fell over.
He had thought that would be the end of it, but she persisted, trying to drag herself through the mud toward Little Wing.
Cale took his rifle, its stock now splintered, and started in on her arms.
* * *
Tuck came around in moments. Montclair’s weight was off his chest, but when his vision cleared he saw that the man had once more started toward Little Wing. Reluctantly, every inch of him protesting, Tuck hauled himself upright and caught up to Montclair. He drove his boot, hard, into the back of Montclair’s calf. Montclair spun around to face him, a look of the purest hatred Tuck had ever seen on his face. That right eye was white-gray jelly laced with blood, oozing from the socket.
“This is about you and me,” Tuck said. “We need to finish this. Leave the girl out of it.”
“I have no interest in the girl,” Montclair said.
“The skull, then?”
Montclair didn’t answer. Instead, he took two unsteady steps toward Tuck and swung a fist that drove into Tuck’s chest like a sledgehammer. Tuck staggered back, arms pinwheeling, then tripped over one of the small lean-tos and went back down in the mud.
When he rose again, Montclair was closer to Little Wing. Tuck charged, caught Montclair’s arm, dragged him back a half step. Montclair swatted him with the back of his hand, and Tuck was down once more.
He got back up. Every time he did, he caught up to Montclair and bought Little Wing another second or two. Every time, Montclair dealt him a punishing blow and sent him reeling. Every time, Tuck rose and tried again.
The last time, he could barely stand. One more shot like that, maybe two, he feared, would be his last. His head was so scrambled he could barely think, could only react. Montclair wanted Little Wing. Little Wing needed time—why, Tuck couldn’t say, but she did—so he needed to keep Montclair away from her.
Montclair was almost there, and Tuck’s legs wouldn’t obey him. He zigzagged this way and that, more unsteady even than the times he’d been too drunk to walk.
Those times, though, he hadn’t had a mission. His goal had never been any more profound than sobering up enough to earn a few coins to buy more liquor. Now it was. He floundered his way to Montclair and threw his arms over the man’s shoulders, trying to pull him back through sheer weight.
Montclair stopped, shrugged him off. He was hurt, too, Tuck noted with satisfaction. Not as bad, not so nearly fatally, but hurt just the same.
After a few seconds, he realized that Montclair hadn’t started forward again, and he wondered why. When he looked, he saw Little Wing standing before them. In her hands was the skull. But Tuck could tell the mystical force had been leached out of it. Before, even when it hadn’t been a conduit for lightning, there had been something about it, an invisible energy crackling from it. Now it was a hunk of old bone, nothing more.
And Montclair knew it.
“You are too late, Mr. Montclair,” Little Wing said. “What Thunder Moon had, he has given to me. I swallowed it in and drowned it, like a bucket of water does a match.”
“You … you couldn’t have…”
“I could,” she said. “I did.”
“But…”
Tuck had an idea that Montclair’s incredible strength had been connected, somehow, to that old skull. Even the man’s voice was sounding weaker by the second. Tuck twined his fists together and swung them like a club into Montclair’s temple. Montclair gave a sound that fell midway between a squeal and a whimper, and sank to the mud.
Coda
Montclair was dead. Tuck looked around with bleary eyes and spotted Cale, squatting beside the form of Sadie Cuttrell, ghostly pale in the moon glow. “Is she…?”
“She’s dead,” Cale reported. “Finally. She wouldn’t die until that skull stopped spitting fire at Little Wing.”
“What about the not-men?” Tuck asked, suddenly aware that they were no longer in view. “Why didn’t they fight us?”
Little Wing let the skull slip from her fingers. It hit a rock and cracked open, falling in crumbled chunks to the earth. She wore a strange smile, but when she spoke, her voice was weak. “He … commanded them to … leave you alone. He never gave … another order, so…”
“So they left us alone,” Tuck finished. “And now that he’s dead and the skull is dust, they’ve got no reason to stay. They’ll go back into the mountains, or maybe just disappear. Long as they leave me and mine alone, I don’t rightly care.”
“You…” Little Wing began. Without another word, she tumbled forward, landing on her face in the mud.
“Little Wing!” Cale cried. He dashed to her side and crouched beside her, scooping her into his arms. With his fingers, he scraped mud away from her nose and mouth, then tried to wipe it off her forehead and cheeks, smearing it in the process. “Little Wing, are you … what happened?”
“Too … too much,” she managed, her voice barely a whisper.
“Too much?”
“Too much power from that skull, I figure,” Tuck said. “Even she couldn’t hold up to all that.”
Tears streamed down Cale’s face, cutting tracks through the caked-on dirt. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t understand any of this. You’re getting lighter as I hold you. Who are you, Little Wing? What are you?”
“What am I?” she asked. “Hope.”
“That don’t make no sense, Little Wing.”
“Shh. Listen … I haven’t long. You asked the right question, so let me answer. Hope, and faith. Grace, and charity, and love. Dreams, and courage, and promises kept.” She raised a trembling hand to Cale’s chest. “I am you, Cale. And I am Tucker. I am everyone else on this Earth who does the right thing, or tries to, however hard it might be. That is what I am, Cale. That is all I am. And though I have to leave you now, whenever you do the right thing, or try to, you will know me again. You will feel my touch, the warmth of my breath on your neck. You will touch my cheek, and you will see me smile, and you will know that I am there with you. Beside you. Always.”
By that last, her voice had gotten so weak Tuck could barely hear it over the beating of his own heart. He heard noises in the distance, coming closer, and for a bad moment he was afraid it was the abominations. Then he realized there were voices, which meant more likely it was the troopers and the women.
When he looked back at Cale and Little Wing, what he saw astonished him, though by this point he had thought he was beyond astonishment. “Cale,” he said.
The boy was weeping, eyes shut and head down, holding the still form of Little Wing in his arms. At the sound of his name, he looked up.
“Look at her.”
Cale looked, and his jaw dropped open. In his arms, Little Wing’s form was dissolving into a floating conflagration of tiny, brilliant lights, like sparks from a campfire at the end of a hard day on the range, or flecks of gold drifting in dark water and catching the glow from a lantern. They drifted up, past Cale, past the tops of the trees, and up and up and up until they were lost in the night sky, mingling with the co
nstellations in the cloudless darkness overhead.
Then she was gone, really gone, the last of the sparks wafted away, and Tuck helped Cale to his feet and put his arms around the young man in an awkward embrace. “You did good,” he said. “None of us would have made it without you.”
“But … Little Wing…”
“I know,” Tuck said, releasing him. “You heard her, though. She’s always here.”
“I just don’t understand,” Cale said.
“Don’t need to. Understanding isn’t the only thing, Cale. Sometimes it’s not even the main thing. Just believe her. That’s what she’d want. Just believe.”
They stood that way for a few minutes more, and then the soldiers and the ladies filtered down through the trees, accompanied by the clanking, hissing contraption that was the battlewagon. Missy Haynes found Tuck and clasped his hands in both of hers, and kissed his sore, bloodied lips, and in spite of the pain, he kissed her back.
And like that, on foot, battered and weary and clutching Missy’s hand with every bit of strength he could manage, Tuck headed back toward the town that had given him purpose and something like a new life. He was surrounded by troopers who laughed and swore and spat, and by women who did much the same, some of it more fluently, and by a heartbroken young man who would nonetheless heal, and by memories that would never leave him so long as he lived. In the west, the Thunder Moon sank behind the mountains, but just before it went their moon shadows stretched out far across the desert, toward the east. Toward the direction that would bring tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that.
Always.
Tuck laughed, and Missy squeezed his hand and looked at him. But he couldn’t explain the impulse, or the unfamiliar sensation rising in him that he identified, after a few long moments, as peace.
He didn’t even try.
Instead, he put his right hand in his pocket, fingered the piece of glass there, and wondered how she felt about the color blue.
Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising Page 35