The Shotgun Arcana

by R. S. Belcher

  “Here’s a right handsome adventuress,” an old prospector reeking of cheap phlegm-cutter said as he grabbed Maude with strong, dirty hands. “Come ’ere, my randy Dutch Girl. What do you say to a little fuck, eh?”

  “Hello, little fuck,” Maude muttered in his ear as she pressed gently on the vagus nerve on the side of his neck. It looked like a caress to the untrained eye but the old coot’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, unconscious. His drinking buddies came to his aid and Maude made a few squeaks of feigned distress and quickly slipped away.

  She took a cleansing breath and moved the blood about in her body to enhance her hearing. It was a horrible ruckus for a moment before she began to filter and sort as she had been taught to do as a child. She moved along past tent barkers, hustlers and leering faces, a dingy carnival of sweat-soaked nightmares. Tanner Row was the dark heart of the mining camp and Maude ached at the thought of being a woman here, forced to seek out the worst of the lot, helpless compared to her. She suddenly wanted to hurt Niall Devlin very badly.

  There was a scream, muffled and cut short—a woman. Maude sprinted ahead, closing on the source. A hand flashed out quickly, grabbed her by the back of her shirt and another by the hair; before she could react, she was flying through the air and crashing into one of the dark alleys between the rows of tents. Maude tumbled and came up, derringer in her hand ready to fire. Black Rowan stood between her and the row. “Who are you?” Rowan said. “You’re not one of the Doves and you’re disguising yourself like you’re one of us.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?” Maude said.

  “The Sirens of the Pirate Goddess,” Rowan said. “The worshipers of the Rada, the Loa Mami Wata, mother of the waves and the mysteries of the deep … Anne Bonny.”

  “What?” Maude said. “Look, I don’t have time for this now, a woman is dying.” She fired the derringer with intent to graze Rowan’s temple, giving her a mild concussion. The pistol thundered, but Rowan was no longer there; she was twisting Maude’s arm upward in a classic disarming maneuver, exactly like Gran Bonny had taught her.

  “How did you learn to do that?” Maude said.

  Maude was shocked, but only for a second. She drove the heel of her palm into Rowan’s diaphragm and the pirate queen shifted to minimize the blow, but it still doubled her over and put her off-balance. Maude didn’t let up. She snap-kicked Rowan squarely in the chin, knocking her backward.

  Rowan tried to recover from the blow by staying close to the ground, on her back, twisting and trying to tangle Maude’s legs; it was a style of island fighting Gran had taught her. Rowan flipped back onto her feet when she realized Maude would not fall for the entangling tricks and began to launch a series of powerful strikes. Maude countered and blocked every one and managed to counterstrike Rowan a number of times in the process. It had taken a few moments of sparring, but Maude soon realized that although Rowan knew a wide array of tricks, she hadn’t had nearly the extensive training Maude had.

  “Look,” Maude said, blocking another punch and tumbling back away from Rowan. “This is pointless. I heard you talking to Devlin.…”

  “I know, I heard you outside the tent,” Rowan said. “I followed you, as best I could. How did you jump like that? I’ve never…”

  “One of the girls out here is dying right now,” Maude said, “and I’m going to help her. Try to keep up.”

  Maude took a step back into the darkness and was gone, racing between the shadows, toward the fading scream.

  It took less than a minute, but it was already too late. Maude stepped into the filthy side alley off the row. The woman’s body was torn and bleeding, the dark pool of her life spreading outward, soaking into the thirsty ground. Ten feet away she could hear drunken laughter and arguments. No one had done a damn thing to help her, even as she was screaming, pleading for her life.

  Maude knelt next to her body, which had been shoved up against one of the canvas tent walls. Maude knelt and examined the wounds. They had been done with a short, sharp knife—a scalpel perhaps. There were shoe prints, not boots. Gentleman’s shoes.

  Something stung her arm through the canvas of the tent: a hypodermic. Maude felt herself become flushed, dizzy and hot. It was very hard to focus, to think, like gauze had been draped over her thoughts and her vision. She pulled her arm back instinctively and rubbed where the needle had stabbed her. The men’s laughter out on the row was distorted and hard to hear over the thudding of the blood in her ears. She staggered back, but lost her balance and fell onto her bottom. It was hard to remember what to do or how to move.

  An opiate alkaloid, some distant corridor of her mind said. Possibly whole opium … Laudanum perhaps … The words tumbled into each other and crashed; it was so hot and so hard to focus.

  There was a ripping sound and the canvas wall next to the girl’s body split as the small, very sharp knife made its incision. A man stepped through. His face was hidden in shadow by a black scarf, and distorted by the drugs affecting her eyes. The curved scalpel gleamed in the camp’s torches and lanterns; it seemed too bright to Maude’s eyes, like a thing made of blood-spattered light. He wore a short top hat and a fine cape; she saw spats above his gentleman’s shoes.

  Gentleman’s shoes …

  “Well, aren’t I a saucy lucky lad this fine evening?” the stranger said, his voice booming and fading, accompanied to the symphony of Maude’s blood. “You, my curious quim, you, shall be my lucky fifth. I always give my utmost attention to the last in the sacred sequence.”

  Maude wanted to slide into warm, numb oblivion, but a cold, strong voice—Gran’s voice—barked at her, “Focus, girl, this man is death, he will torture you and kill you and eat you and you will never see Constance again, never see Gillian or Mutt again. Focus! You know what you have to do, focus, damn you!”

  “I love my work.” The killer’s voice warbled and distorted as he began to drag Maude by the hair back into the torn tent. “And I want to start up again. We’ll have a spot of privacy in here, my girl.”

  She took a deep breath and it cleared her foggy mind a tiny bit. She remembered Gran teaching her beside the ocean, part of her poison training—the first, most important part.

  “If you deal in toxins, sooner or later you will get poisoned yourself,” Anne Bonny had said matter-of-factly. “Then you got two choices, get the shit out of your blood and body or die a stupid git. Now, first you need to imagine the foreign substance as a different color from your blood and body and then, just as I taught you how to control your heartbeat and your breathing, you slowly, slowly begin to gather all that bad color into your stomach. Slow, lass. Keep your heartbeat down; it’s the drum that summons the reaper. Calm, focus … you know how to keep calm, Maudie. Some poisons you may need to sweat out of you, and I’ll show you that, too, but for today, it’s your tummy, girl.”

  Maude focused on her breathing, kept her heart rate low. It was easy—the drug was making her long for stupor and sleep. The drug was darkness, swirling inside her, and she slowly drew it to her belly, more and more with each deep breath. Away from her brain, from her limbs.…

  There was a stinging slap to her face and her eyes popped open. The killer was above her, his knife close to her.

  “No sleeping, my little strumpet,” the killer said. “I want you awake to enjoy this. Maybe I’ll send your ears to old Boss Highfather.… Maybe I’ll send him his new pet whore’s kidney instead. I love to play with the insides so! So many filthy ladies here, so much work. This town was made just for yours truly.…”

  “Then … here’s a little welcoming gift for you,” Maude muttered and vomited most of the poison, and a good deal of bile, into the killer’s face. The man screamed and fell backward, dropping his knife. Maude caught the blade in one hand and drove a powerful finger strike into his solar plexus with the other hand. The Dove killer fell back on the ground, gasping for air and writhing in pain. Maude groaned and climbed slowly to her feet, the blade in her hand. She walked over to the k
iller and slowly dragged him out of the dark tent and back into the alleyway with his last victim. Maude shoved his bile-covered face into the face of the girl, her expression froze in fear. Maude placed the curved scalpel against his neck. The man’s heaving and gasping stilled.

  “You look at her, you pathetic little man,” Maude said. She still felt the flush of the drugs in her, but she had most of her facilities back. Her voice, however, sounded like it belonged to someone other than her. The blade pressed tighter against his jowly throat. “What a mighty predator you are, you stub-dicked lick-spittle. What? No boasts now? Maybe I should give the sheriff your ears? You are nothing, you hear me, nothing!”

  The killer slowly, carefully, wiped away some of the bile and vomit from his face with the black scarf and Maude realized it was Dr. Francis Tumblety she was holding at knifepoint. Tumblety looked up at her, his eyes wide with fear and hatred, glazed with madness. Maude experienced a dip of nausea, this creature, this … thing had been alone at her sick daughter’s bedside, had touched her with these bloodstained hands. The knife began to split the skin at his throat and Tumblety laughed. It was the sound of reason dying, the sound that made cats scream in the night.

  “Your inferior, little brain can’t begin to comprehend my works,” Tumblety hissed. “I operate within the realms of cause and effect. I am a servant of the sacred geometry, the ancient rites. Five holds power—five points on the ancient seal, the murdering star! No stupid slag can understand the clockwork of eternity.”

  “Let me speed you on the way to eternity, then, Doctor,” Maude said. “You are an aberration, a sickness. Ending you would be a gift, a mercy, to the universe.”

  A pair of heavy iron cuffs thudded in the dirt by Tumblety’s knees.

  “Please don’t do that,” a woman’s voice said. Maude looked up to see a slender woman dressed like a man in trousers, a bolero jacket and hat. Her long brown hair was up under the hat and to an untrained eye she would seem a man. She had a slender, delicate face and held a short-barreled revolver in her hand as she slowly advanced into the alley. “You are right, miss. He is all you said and more and he deserves to live in a cage like an animal and then dance on the end of a rope for all he’s done. Don’t let him drag you into his cesspool. Please cuff him and put that knife away.”

  “Who are you?” Maude asked.

  “The law,” the woman said. “My name is Kate Warne and I’m working with the sheriff. I’m sorry I wasn’t in time to save your friend here, but I swear to you, he’ll never hurt another girl. Please, let me do my job.”

  “Let her do hers,” Rowan said to Kate, as she stepped out of the shadows behind Maude and Tumblety. “She’s a woman, like you, like me. There’s no justice for us. We’re fucking property. You think any judge, any man, will see justice done for a bunch of slaughtered whores? This ‘fine gentleman,’ this right bastard will walk and keep on killing more girls.”

  Rowan moved to where she could see Maude’s face. Tumblety struggled a bit and Maude pressed the knife deeper into his skin, slid it closer to the fat, pulsing artery that would end his existence with the slightest slip. The madman stilled.

  “The only justice for us is what you hold in your hand,” Rowan said. “Kill him. It’s a damn sight more merciful than he’d give you, or what he gave them.”

  Maude looked down at the face of the squirming thing she held that aped at being human. The eyes gave it away, though. Caught here in its obscene act, its mask had fallen in the filth. Debating killing the mountain lion had been difficult; there was no difficulty here. Tumblety was far worse than any supernatural creature she had ever encountered—without a doubt, he was the worst monster she had ever seen. Monsters deserved to be slain.

  “Everything your friend here just said is true,” Kate said. “I’ve been exactly where you are, miss, and I can tell you the decision I made still haunts me to this day.

  “All I can offer to convince you not to do it is that he’s not human, and you are. The women he’s slain deserve an accounting in front of the law. This is his justice, not ours. A knife in a dark alleyway changes nothing, but dragging him into the light, making him account for his deeds, that just might. The law isn’t always fair and it’s not fair at all to us, but if we ever intend to change that, we have to show we can be … better than him. You are better than him.”

  Maude looked at Tumblety. She slid the knife away from his throat and relief flooded the killer’s face. It was short lived. The curved knife dropped to between his legs and there was sharp ripping sound from Tumblety’s trousers. The killer screamed in pain.

  “I am the Mother’s justice,” Maude whispered in the whimpering doctor’s ear. “You will never spread the poison of your seed and you will know pain in your lust for all your remaining days, may they be mercifully short. This is my judgment, Doctor.”

  She released Tumblety and he fell over into the filth crying in agony. Dark stains soaked the front of his torn trousers. Maude picked up the cuffs and clamped them on him.

  “He’s all yours,” Maude said to Kate. “Pray the law sees fit to do justice here, or I assure you I will. And you,” she said, turning to Rowan, “you and I will be talking again soon, and you are going to tell me everything.”

  Kate reached down and dragged Tumblety by the manacles toward the edge of the alley, into the light. “I’d like to get your names as material witnesses,” she said. Kate looked up and Maude and Rowan were gone. She sighed and drove a sharp kick into the whimpering Tumblety’s side. “Just you and me, you charmer,” she said. “Story of my life.”

  The Queen of Wands

  The late morning sun fell across Auggie’s eyes. He groaned and opened them, blinking. Gillian, his wife, rested in the crook of his arm, her head on his hairy chest.

  His wife.

  Auggie smiled and regarded her while she still slept. Her narrow, perfect features, the long lashes of her closed eyes and the natural blush of her full lips. Auggie held the moment—the weight of her naked body against him, her deep, even breathing. He wanted to hold this moment forever, save every nuance of it in his mind and heart, so that it would sustain him, remind him when life was hard, or fleeting, that it had all been worth it, had been more joy than it ever was pain, more beauty than horror. This moment, this memory he could wrap himself in warm and deep, and let it carry him into the darkness, happy, content.

  Gillian’s eyes fluttered open and she looked at him and smiled. “Good morning,” she said. “What are you staring at? I must look a fright.”

  “You are the most beautiful sight I have ever seen,” Auggie said. “And I think the morning has almost left us. We have slept the day away, like rich lords and ladies, ja?”

  They laughed, and Gillian pulled herself closer to Auggie’s chest, nuzzling into his neck.

  “I never want to get out of this bed,” she said. “But Auggie, we were supposed to get back to work today. We took yesterday off. The store, my boarders and customers … I have to find out from Maude how her date with Mutt went.”

  “It will keep, meine Liebe,” Auggie said with a growl. He turned his head and kissed her softly at first, then she joined him and the kiss became more passionate, deeper.

  She moaned against his lips. “Oh, I do love you so, Augustus.”

  “Whatever has been going on, will still be going on,” Auggie said. “If the whole town gets sucked down into a pot of molasses, or the devil comes looking to arm-wrestle the sheriff, it will keep and it’s not our problem, Gillian. I love you too.”

  “It will keep,” she mumbled against his lips.

  Husband and wife pulled themselves deeper and deeper into their kiss, their embrace. The world outside died to them. Nothing existed past the border of their love.

  * * *

  Gerta Shultz leaned against the wooden fence rail and watched with wonder as the sun climbed in the east, painting the desert in brilliant, breathtaking light. Every sunrise, every sunset was a miracle to her now, since she had bee
n returned from the halls of the dead. It seemed her senses were much more acute than she recalled. Every detail shouted to her now. The colors seemed more vivid, everything did.

  Gerta was technically in her early fifties, if you counted her life before this one, but she now looked and felt like she was in her twenties. Her pale skin had been oversensitive to the sun, but Clay’s treatments with his biorestorative formula had eased her discomfort and now the morning sunlight felt like a lover’s warm, familiar caress on her bare skin. Gerta raised her arms and her head skyward, almost shuddering in orgasm at the dawn’s touch.

  “Uh … Gertie? You know you’re naked, darlin’?” Clay said as he approached her. “Somebody’s going to see you, even out here.”

  Clay had given his men a few days off in preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday, which was only a few days away. Mr. Williams and most of Clay’s men had kin outside of Golgotha, so Clay paid them full for the week and sent them on their way home. The livery was empty except for him and Gertie. Clay had let her have his bedroom in the main house and he had been sleeping on his cot out in the barn.

  Gertie blinked and turned to regard Clay as if she were coming out of a trance. Her body was alabaster and firm, her hair was black as pitch and fell below her shoulder blades. There were faint shadows of the stitches on her pale skin, but they were fading faster every day.

  The old inventor looked away. He offered her a blanket and Gertie wrapped it about herself, shuddering at the coarse sensation of the fabric against her skin.

  “I’m sorry, Clay,” she said. Her voice held a bit of her German accent, but less than in her old life. “It was just so … beautiful. I wanted to be part of it. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” Clay said. “You’re getting used to your senses again and I’d hazard it’s a big difference between old eyes and young ones.”

  “Almost intoxicating,” she said, huddling up close to him. “Everything is so much … more than I remember.”