Batra muttered his prayers to Kali, begging her to accept his offering. His mind, however, drifted to his next victims, the half-breed deputy and the other woman. Once he had killed this masked man, he would move on to the next rooftop. The anticipation thrilled him and it also distracted him, so that when the masked man raised both arms straight up and spun to attempt to face him with great force, Batra flew across the flimsy roof, the hold broken by the simple leverage, speed and strength of the act.
Maude drew in air in ragged, greedy gasps. She had dropped the rifle, she didn’t want it now. She sprinted, silent as thought, toward the fallen man, who she now recognized was a Thuggee assassin trained in India.
Anne Bonny’s insistence on her reading about the various schools of killers and assassins had been one of Maude’s favorite parts of the training as a girl. Gran said she had met and studied the Thuggee at a safe distance. She also told Maude a tale of how the ritual assassins had almost summoned their goddess, Kali, back to the world to begin an age of horrors. Gran Bonny had, of course, been instrumental in stopping them and claimed she even crossed blades with the Dark Mother herself before sending her back to Hell and saving the world. Maude always loved Gran Bonny’s bedtime stories.
Maude drove a knife-hand blow down into Batra’s collarbone; he tumbled and was back on his feet, but Maude’s blow still cracked the bone—the full force of it would have shattered it. Batra’s face was expressionless as he let his uninjured arm drop to his belt and freed his curved kukri knife.
Maude moved in again, like lightning flashing. She knew better than to assume any superiority to this man; such pride would get her killed. He had been trained as she had, for most likely as long as she had, and the Mother he swore allegiance to was one of the dark, angry faces of the Mother Maude served. Batra’s blade made a soft zipping sound as it cut the air and nearly opened up Maude’s midsection. Maude bent like a branch in the wind and the blade passed her.
She drove two fingers to the nerve bundle in the pectoral region of Batra’s chest. The Thuggee leaned back and the blow that should have frozen his arm grazed him, doing nothing. He responded with a low, sharp kick to Maude’s shin, designed to break her leg and floor her. Maude did a standing jump and the kick whooshed by under her tucked legs. She took the opportunity to drive a snap-kick to Batra’s face, which connected with and shattered his nose as it drove him back, giving Maude some breathing room and the luxury of a few seconds to land, take in more air and then advance.
The only sound of the two combatants on the roof was an occasional creaking board; otherwise the battle for survival was noiseless. Batra began to dance, to spin like a top, wobbling. The fifteen-inch blade of the kukri seemed to be everywhere. Maude had been instructed in the fighting style of the dervish and this was similar, but not exactly the same. Batra’s dance intensified and he pressed forward, a wall of flashing death moving Maude closer to the edge of the roof, limiting her options to move, to counterattack, breaking her cover to the streets below.
She intently studied the pattern of the dance and, to her dismay, couldn’t find one. Batra was chanting now, low but audibly.
White-hot agony pushed through Maude’s upper chest, a nail of sharp heat driven into her by a sledgehammer of force and sound. A bullet, fired by one of Zeal’s men below, ripped through her back and out her chest. She gasped at the immediacy and scope of the pain and then her training took over and she pushed it away.
Even as the bullet was tunneling through her body, Maude shifted and spun. The exiting bullet was redirected to Batra’s path and the same distorted round, steaming with her blood, caught the Thuggee in his already injured arm, knocking him to the ground. Blood gushed from his shoulder. Maude moved quickly away from the roof’s edge, but not quickly enough to avoid a second bullet that bored into her upper back and departed in a spray of blood and some bone. She winced and addressed the pain. There was no time for it now. Parts of her body were numb and not responding to her demands.
She stood over the wounded Thuggee for the few seconds she could afford. The pain made her own voice, not that of a man, slip out. “We’re not finished with this,” she said.
Maude sprinted for the opposite side of the rooftop even as she heard the shouts of men and the thuds of boots approaching from the Main Street side. She jumped onto the roof of Gillian Proctor’s boardinghouse and landed in the middle of a storm of bullets. More pain, harder now to ignore and suppress. She was getting dizzy and feeling the cold creep inside her. It was the trauma of the injuries, she told herself. She took a breath as she leapt toward the flat roof of the jail. She thought behind her she heard Mutt shouting, cursing, and more gunfire, the screams of dying men, ripped apart by lead. She calmed her mind and began the work of redirecting the blood flow. Her body responded loyally, as it was trained to, but it was sluggish. Between the struggle with Tumblety the night before, the battle with the Thuggee and now this, she was exhausted and injured and it was taking a toll on her.
She glanced to the left, down Dry Well Road. Soldiers on horseback were keeping up with her and firing at her as she ran. She hit the edge of the jail, launched upward as another bullet hit her leg and landed on the next roof . She collapsed from the injured leg, rolled and came up, moving in, away from the withering fire, only to have more bullets zing about her from shooters behind her on other roofs. Another blossom of hot pain.
She lived in her mind now, not her body. She moved by will, not muscle or sinew. Constance was out there and needed her, maybe more than she ever had; move, move, keep moving. There was a gunshot off to her right, several rooftops away, and she heard a man’s cry of pain from behind her. She glanced over to see Kate Warne cocking her Winchester and taking bead on another of her attackers.
“Go!” Kate shouted to her. “Run!”
Maude took a moment to look down. She had run out of buildings. Below was the small circle of worn benches and the crumbling stone ring of the old dry well. She remembered sitting there with Mutt, how good and right it all felt and how much she wanted to get to do that again. The ache in her chest at the thought that she never would get to do that, to see him again, was worse than any wound, any pain could ever be.
The bullets exploded around her again. There were enemies everywhere. She breathed a good, clean breath, savored it like a wine.
“I love you,” she said softly.
Maude charged, sprinting to the edge of the roof and launching herself off the building, arcing downward like a diver knifing into water. She flew down the old stone well, angry lead buzzing about her, and then was lost underground into the darkness.
Zeal’s men rushed to the old well and pointed their guns down into it. They fired again, and again and again, their rounds echoing off the shadowed narrow walls. They fired until their guns were all empty, until gun smoke rose from the dark hole like a spirit seeking to escape skyward.
“Whoever that was,” one of the shooters said, “they’re gone.”
The Five of Cups
Thanksgiving Day came to Golgotha. It was twenty-four hours since Zeal and his cult had arrived and the town was strangely silent, even for a holiday. The streets were empty, the churches and the saloons all still. The weather had turned colder and an icy rain was falling. It had started shortly after Zeal’s arrival and the sky continued to weep throughout the holiday.
Word of Zeal’s arrival, the proclamation, the capture of Malachi Bick and Jon Highfather, and his holding of the children and town elders spread through the town in hushed, frightened whispers. Citizens were ordered to stay home and keep off the streets. Each house was given a bottle of whiskey courtesy of Mr. Zeal in celebration of the holiday. Bands of armed soldiers—Cook’s Praetorians—patrolled the streets. Those who violated Zeal’s new laws were beaten and ordered home, and those who resisted were shot dead, their bodies hung from the balcony at town hall as a warning to others. Anger simmered with the fear and it was anyone’s guess which would win out in the hearts of the townsfolk.
/> In the cold, wet predawn hours of Thanksgiving morning, some of Zeal’s followers, escorted by Praetorians, came to specific houses: seven homes, marked by Zeal himself with a blood-red handprint. They took the families’ youngest children. In almost every household visited, the parents resisted, struggled, fought for their babies. Gunfire and screams followed in the early morning darkness, then there was silence again.
Many of those who had cheered Ray Zeal’s arrival sobered up and saw exactly what was becoming of their town. However, few of them had the courage of their convictions, so they sat in their dark homes, drank their gifts from Mr. Zeal and brooded. It wasn’t so bad, after all, was it? They weren’t the ones hung up in town hall, right? They didn’t have children or family held hostage, right? No, things were bad, but not bad enough to risk your life and get yourself killed. That was someone else’s damn job, anyway.
* * *
Harry Pratt wished he had more tobacco while he sat in the hidden cavern below his family’s mansion and crushed out the last of his cigarettes. The cave was natural, part of a maze of small, dark chambers. The main cave was filled with the treasures of the Mormon faith, including the golden plates containing the wisdom of God and Heaven and given unto Joseph Smith for a time. There were the Urim and the Thummim, the seer stones, residing in the wire-rimmed spectacle frames Smith had placed them in as he used them to interpret the angelic script of the plates. This was the point of origin for the breastplate and the Sword of Laban Harry had taken to carrying as his own.
Every manner of treasure, heavenly or earthly in nature, resided in the cave and all of it was Harry’s responsibility. His father had been tasked to guard them by Joseph Smith himself before his death. It was the prophet’s last commission to seek out the treasures of the faith in the desolate Nevada desert. When the caravan led by Josiah Pratt found the tiny, nameless settlement past the 40-Mile Desert, they had known they had arrived where the Lord had wanted them. They founded Golgotha and the Pratts built a fine home above these caves. When Harry’s father had passed away, the task had fallen to him to guard the treasures with his life. Harry had never wanted to do this, ever, but it was his duty and for all his failings as a father, Josiah Pratt had managed to impart a sense of obligation to his son.
The lantern Harry had brought down the ladder with him guttered a bit and Harry checked his pocket watch again. It was late morning. Thanksgiving Day. He heard the thump of boots on the floorboards in the narrow corridor that led to the ladder and the secret trapdoor in the floor of his mansion. Zeal’s men were still looking for him. This was their third visit since yesterday. What they lacked in effectiveness they made up for in persistence. He heard something hit the floor and smash upstairs. He shook his head.
“Another banner holiday at the Pratt Estate,” he muttered.
His stomach rumbled and he wished he’d had a bit more time to prepare for his sequester down here. For the hundredth time, a thrill of terror slithered through his innards at the idea of James coming to check on him and confronting Zeal’s people. But he gave Ringo more credit than that. James was a survivor, having grown up among the worst elements of the Barbary Coast. Ringo was all right, wherever he was. That certainty calmed his nerves. Being alone in this damned cave, not knowing what was happening up there to his town, his people, gnawed at him.
“And you, you’re not good company at all,” Harry said. “Not one damned bit.”
The ancient yellowed skull that sat on a low rock did not reply, only staring with dark, empty sockets at the mayor. Harry tried to figure out why the hell he had agreed to guard the ugly thing. Harry looked at the Sword of Laban and wished he was up there fighting beside Highfather and Bick and Mutt—making some kind of damned difference. Tonight he’d sneak out and take the lay of the land. He wondered how Golgotha’s other guardians were faring.
* * *
The rain kept falling and it was getting colder, just a hair above freezing. In the darkness, the fog and the overcast of downpour, no one noticed a coyote hunched low under the steps and porch leading into the Paradise Falls Saloon. The coyote had snagged, crooked yellow teeth, but his incisors were straight and sharp. There was a great deal of pain in his eyes. The coyote slowly belly-crawled deeper under the foundation of the saloon. He began to hear the thuds of boots, laughter and very bad piano playing. He waited, closed his eyes and listened, drinking in every sound, every voice.
The coyote’s heart was heavy, sick with loss. The one he loved had fallen and he had been too far away to do anything, even to die with her, as she fell. Now all that was left to him was the desire to destroy, to wreck everyone who had taken her from him. He would save his friends, kill all his enemies, and then he would head out into the desert to moan and howl and weep for his lost love, his only love.
The ache in him bit deeper than the cold, and he did not care to walk on two legs anymore, to live among men and to carry a man’s heart in his chest. The pain was exquisite and the most terrible he had ever experienced. His father had been right; it was foolish to want to be a man. They never knew themselves until the soul-gutting agony of clarity showed them what really, truly mattered, and then it was too late. Only a fool, or madman, would want to live that way, loving and losing over and over and over.
The coyote was silent, lost in his pain, listening, learning all he could to help him hurt those who had stolen his heart, his life.
* * *
The force of Praetorians, led by Col. Bradley Whitmore, smashed down the doors to the Dove’s Roost Thanksgiving afternoon. The parlor was empty, the lamps all dark. The place still held the lingering scent of lilac and rose water.
“Where the hell are the whores?” Whitmore growled as he and his men entered the establishment. “We promised a mess of Mr. Zeal’s people that they’d have all the whores to do with as they pleased. Where are they?”
There was a thudding sound as two figures slowly descended the grand staircase in the foyer. Black Rowan, a curled horsewhip in her hand, and the Scholar, his ever-present cudgel tapping slowly against his leg, regarded the intruders.
“I’m afraid I gave the ladies some time off,” Rowan said, “after Mr. Bick, the sheriff and I had a lovely chat about your arrival. Deals were made, agreements kept and all. I’m sure we can accommodate you gentlemen, though, somehow.”
“Dammit, you stupid cow,” Whitmore said. “I’ve got men who came here to get fucked!”
“Well, then,” Rowan said, smiling and readying the whip in her hand, “prepare to get fucked.”
* * *
Inside the Paradise Falls Saloon, dozens of Cook’s Praetorians drank, laughed and gambled. One of the cult, a scar-faced man named Muldoon, played the piano to the best of his ability, doing a horrid version of “Looking Back,” while drunken soldiers tried to sing along.
Snake-Man sat sullenly at the bar, nursing a drink. He had wanted to go after Mutt, but Zeal had other plans.
“Tomorrow he’ll come to us, I promise you that,” Zeal had told Snake-Man. “Then you can do whatever you want with him, once he tells me where the skull is.”
Ray Zeal sat alone at one of the red-felt faro tables, the one Bick normally claimed as his, a bottle of Monongahela in his fist. He took a drag on the bottle of whiskey, smiled and continued to watch the show up on the main stage.
Bick and Highfather had been stripped to the waist, each lashed tightly, spread-eagle, to a pair of crossed boards by their wrists and ankles. The two men had been beaten ruthlessly, their faces swollen and bloody. The cultists had taken turns torturing them since yesterday. Zeal’s only stipulation was that they had to look good for the spectacle tomorrow, so no cutting things off.
One of the Teeth of Cain, a dead-eyed former slave named Ayot, was applying a red-hot branding iron to Highfather’s chest. The sheriff hissed through clenched teeth. Ayot dabbed the sheriff’s lips with a sponge of vinegar and blood in between applications of the iron. The cadaverous Haitian, who had wandered the French Quarter
murdering and torturing whites for years, caressed Highfather’s old and new scars with wanton familiarity, while whispering gibberish in Jon’s ear.
Professor Zenith, having finished applying steel-wool-covered clamp-cables to Malachi Bick’s nipples, was now sending waves of stinging, numbing, bone-aching electricity through the saloon owner’s body via one of the odd little wooden-box contraptions off his wagon of horrific miracles. Bick’s whole frame tensed on the cross but he made no sound. Smoke rose from his chest where the clamps had burned flesh.
Zeal stood, somewhat wobbly. He had allowed the alcohol to affect him, part of his Thanksgiving/Victory Day celebration. He carefully made his way up onto the stage, nearly stumbling on the stairs, and stood before his prisoners.
“Where’s your star, Sheriff?” Zeal said. “I want yours and you didn’t have it with you when you surrendered.”
“Gave it to a better man than me,” Highfather muttered, spitting out the bitter vinegar and blood that stung his torn lips. “And a damn sight better man than you.”
“I see,” Zeal said. “Well then, I’ll have to be sure to take it when I kill him. That was a very impressive job you did on the Brechts, by the way. You and your allies do not disappoint. Oh, that reminds me,” Zeal said, slipping his hand into his pocket, “I have something for you.” Zeal held one of the silver deputy stars he had taken from Jon’s desk at the jail. “A small down payment for what you did to my son.” Zeal extended the long, sharp pin on the back of the badge and rammed it fully into Highfather’s upper chest. Highfather let out an involuntary gasp. His eyes rolled back in his head. He slumped, passing out. Zeal regarded his handiwork and then turned to his followers on stage.
“Leave us,” Zeal said, and his worshipers departed, heading down into the saloon to drink and gamble with the mercenaries. Muldoon began to attempt to play “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.” Zeal stepped close to Bick.
“Alone at last,” Zeal slurred. “Enjoying the show? Why are you putting up with this, Biqa? You could shake these humans off like fleas, lay waste to them and turn every being in a hundred miles of Golgotha into salt, present company excluded, of course. Why put up with this indignity, this pain? Still waiting for the Almighty to come save you and all his innocent flock?”
The Shotgun Arcana Page 40