by Hondo Jinx
Unsurprisingly, the hired killers had carried no identification. What they had carried was now spread atop the kitchen counter. Their primary weapons had been Desert Tech MDRs.
Brawley was unfamiliar with bullpup rifles and took a moment to study their curious design. They were short, probably just a hair over two feet long, and weighed less than ten pounds.
In his experience, short meant unreliable at range, but he reckoned the MDR’s barrel was longer than it looked because the magazine, bolt, and barrel met behind the trigger rather than in front of it.
These weapons would take some getting used to. Especially swapping out mags. But they looked pretty sturdy, would be effective in tight quarters, and were likely top of the line, given these high-speed mercs had been carrying them. Besides, they were chambered in .308, and that was a round Brawley had come to trust and one he was all set up to reload.
The mercs had also been carrying Glock 19s with flared magazine wells and extended G17 mags. Each man also carried a first aid kit and a Gerber tactical knife along with body armor, extra mags, and two grenades: one frag and one flashbang.
Why hadn’t they used the grenades?
Brawley reckoned it came down to shock and time. They had chased five naked people into a ravine. The next thing they’d known, a super bison was charging straight at them. And before they could even wrap their heads around that fact, he was on them, smashing and slashing.
The attack did not sit well.
To this point, Brawley had thought of the FPI as a fringe governmental bureau like a bush-league version of the FBI.
But the FPI had hired assassins to kill them. And that rattled Brawley’s notions of government bureaus to the core.
The FPI wanted him dead. And they weren’t concerned with playing by the rules. How many assassins had they hired?
And why would the FPI, an organization tasked with investigating, imprisoning, and studying psi mages, employ the services of a Seeker?
Well, the why was clear enough, he supposed. They had employed Beecham to help the others find and kill Brawley. But for the FPI to use a psi mage seemed a serious conflict of interest and ethically fucked up to say the least.
Whatever the case, this was a game-changer. Brawley’s attitude toward the FPI cycled like a revolver, ratcheting from one position—avoid and try not to kill—to its polar opposite: kill or be killed.
Another popular topic of conversation during the long ride had been Brawley’s beast.
It made sense, Brawley reckoned, after spending so many years pitting his wits and will against bulls, but it was strange to know there was a prehistoric mega-bull inside him.
At one point as they were driving, Remi had wondered aloud how he would stack up against a tiger. The implications were obvious. You didn’t have to be a Seeker to know that sooner or later, Brawley would throw down with the Tiger Mage.
“I don’t even want to know,” Nina groaned.
Callie remained silent, but the cat girl’s amber eyes grew huge, and Brawley reckoned she didn’t give him much of a chance against such a formidable feline.
“Actually,” Sage said, “the ancient Roman beast masters pitted fighting bulls against tigers, and the fighting bulls dominated. But that was in an open arena, which favored the bull. In close quarters with cover, the advantages would likely be minimized and possibly even reversed.”
“Besides, I doubt those tigers in ancient Rome could spit lightning,” Nina said gloomily.
“Well, darlin, I don’t reckon the bulls could use telekinetic blasts, either.”
“Or heal instantly,” Remi added.
“Instant healing didn’t seem to do those Miami Carnals too much good,” Callie said with a shiver.
“What the fuck?” Remi snapped. “Whose side are you on, Psycho Kitty?”
Callie looked shocked. Then her mood swung from shock to anger with the remarkable speed that is the superpower of even teenaged girls—even fuggles. “I’m on Brawley’s side!”
“Enough,” Brawley said. He would never forget the utter devastation sewn by the Tiger Mage. “Callie’s right. We’re not ready yet. So we’ll keep our heads down, train hard, and do what we can to get ready before he finds us.”
The girls nodded.
“And for the record,” he said, “always share your doubts and concerns and ideas with me, especially when lives are on the line. Y’all might see something I don’t or come up with a better way, and I’m man enough to sort the wheat from the chaff. I don’t want cheerleaders. I want truth.”
“Spoken like a Seeker, husband,” Sage had said.
And now, after the weird detour at Widow Callahan’s ranch, they were home, standing at last in his kitchen.
Brawley reached over and took Frankie’s hand and helped her down from the counter. Even that momentary contact set his desire aflame. She was a beautiful woman, bright and busty and crackling with vitality.
Without asking, she went to the drawer where he kept batteries and set to work bringing the clock back to life. It would be good having her around.
“Nice pad, handsome,” Remi said. “Where will the other girls sleep? I’m guessing you and me will be in that big bed in the back.”
“Um, correction,” Nina said, “as first wife—”
“Shut it, sugar tits,” Remi said. “You might be first wife, but I’m best wife.”
“Bullshit,” Nina said. “You keep talking like that, you’ll be sleeping in the barn.”
Remi threw back her head and filled Brawley’s home with rich laughter. It sounded good.
“All right, ladies,” he said, throwing an arm around the two women. “We’ll work something out. Frankie can have my bed. The rest of us will all sleep together. I’ll just have to get some more mattresses is all.”
He leaned into the middle bedroom, running some calculations. “We clean this room out and put down a couple of king-sized mattresses. Buddy of mine works over at the furniture place. He’ll give us a good deal.”
“Holy hell, handsome, what is all this?” Remi asked, looking past him into the room piled with the bric-a-brac memorabilia assembled over his years on the circuit.
Brawley had won all sorts of shit riding bulls. Trophies and buckles, plaques and medals, even a damn saddle. On the walls hung various posters and fliers and things his mother had framed for him.
There was a yellowed newspaper clipping of his first ride. King of the Mutton Busters, the caption read. And there was Brawley, four years old, riding a sheep. Framed along with the clipping was the money he’d won that day. Three dollars and twenty-six cents.
That money had been a point of contention between Mama and him. He’d wanted to spend it on Dr. Pepper and Hot Wheels. Mama had told him to hang onto it and he’d be happy someday that he had. Now, after all these years, he reckoned Mama had been right.
Also hanging on the walls were posters of him, event posters, ads he’d done for Monster and Wrangler and Ford, the U.S. Border Patrol hat they’d given him for riding along one day, and the oversized check for a million bucks the PBR had handed him when he’d covered Whiskey Dreams for 94 points and the world championship.
The girls crowded in, oohing and aahing.
Brawley felt a damn fool. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s finish unloading the RV. Where’s Callie at, anyway?”
“I’m here,” Callie chimed, entering the room. She crouched down to pet the pair of cats swiveling between her ankles.
Then the old gray tomcat came plodding in.
“Mind that one,” Brawley said, nodding toward the battle-scarred Tom. “He’s meaner than hell. Half feral boar, half fire ant.”
But Callie just laughed and rubbed the big cat’s head. “Where are your ears, sweetie?” she cooed, rubbing the ragged tips of the old battler’s misshapen ears. “What’s his name?”
“Hell if I know,” Brawley said. He liked cats all right and always had a mess of them. But they weren’t like dogs.
Dogs were p
ack animals. You were their alpha. They followed you around, wanted to make you happy. Even working dogs wanted to be your buddy. If a dog had boots and a wallet, he’d hit the bar with you and buy the first round.
Cats, on the other hand, came and went and stuck to their own business like a bunch of hard-ass cowboys. He made sure they had water, and they kept the mice at bay. It was a simple arrangement, and names didn’t come into it.
“Wait,” Nina said, “you don’t name your cats?”
Brawley shook his head. “They don’t seem to mind.”
Remi roared with laughter again. “Oh, I do love you, handsome.”
“How many cats do you have?” Callie asked.
Brawley shrugged. “Cats come and go. Some of them get stepped on by cows or horses. Some get snake-bit. Some run afoul of coyotes or other predators. Cats lead violent lives and die violent deaths. But they keep having more kittens, and I never seem to run out.”
Sage squinched her glasses and reported, “There are currently twenty-seven cats living across the ranch. I am speaking of barn cats, not bobcats and mountain lions.”
Nina’s eyes bulged. “Mountain lions?”
“Darlin,” Brawley said, giving her shoulder a squeeze, “don’t you go worrying about mountain lions. They’re skittish most of the time. Besides, if one of them did attack, you could blast him all the way to Mexico.”
More cats flooded the trailer, clustering around Callie. These were barn cats, not house cats. Most of them had never even set foot in his trailer before. This was going to take some getting used to.
“Somebody close the damn door before we’re overrun,” he said.
The old Tom surprised Brawley by plodding over to rub across his pant leg, a thing the old scrapper had never done before.
Then Brawley surprised himself by crouching down to scratch the cat’s scarred head. A curious emotion had risen up in him: affection.
Was spending time with these women turning him soft?
No. It was opening his Bestial strand. There was a new connection between the cat and him, and they both felt it.
Suddenly, he had eight or ten cats rubbing up against him and meowing for his attention.
Remi bumped Nina with her hip. “Our husband the pussy magnet.”
“Come on,” Brawley said, heading for the door. “Let’s finish unloading.”
The cats followed them as they went back and forth between the RV and the house. Then Brawley said, “Get with you. Go catch mice.”
Without so much as a sideways glance, the cats trotted off toward the barn. And as anyone who’s ever owned cats would attest, that was crazier than regenerating wounds or lifting a car with telekinetic power.
“Is it always so hot here?” Nina asked. Her pretty face was rosy and beaded with perspiration, and her thin t-shit clung wetly to her perfect breasts.
“We got a saying here in West Texas,” Brawley said. “You don’t like the weather, just wait twenty minutes, and it’ll change.”
And sure enough, by the time they had finished cleaning out the Winnebago, the wind had picked up, and dark clouds were swirling over the jagged mountain range to the south.
“This place suits you, husband,” Sage said. “It is in sync with your personality.”
Brawley thought on that for a second, then nodded. “I reckon so, darlin.”
This was a hard land, a dry and dusty country that would kill you a hundred different ways. Flash floods and prairie fires, blizzards and tornados, heat stroke and hypothermia.
Accordingly, few people chose to live here. And that suited Brawley just fine. In fact, that lack of people was part of the land, part of him.
If you respected this country, it would sustain you. If not, it would destroy you.
His family raised longhorns. Pa had been operating just this side of going bust since before Brawley could remember.
But Brawley loved this ranch and this land. And now, he was fixing to build his base. Yes, it would be expensive. He didn’t have enough money yet. But he could get started.
Red Haven had taught him a bitter lesson. All along, he had been going about business and protecting his own, which is what a man does.
But he hadn’t considered the wider consequences, hadn’t known about the tragedies piling up in his wake.
Maypole, Maypole’s wife, that gun shop owner. Those people hadn’t deserved what Uno had done to them. Their only crime had been knowing Brawley, even fleetingly. And now they were dead.
Of course, the same could be said of all those people who had died at the hands of the Tiger Mage back in Miami. Brawley would shed no tears. Most of those folks had wanted him dead.
But the point stood. All those Carnals and FPI agents had nothing to do with the Tiger Mage. He had killed them simply because Brawley had walked among them.
From here on out, Brawley had to watch his back trail and keep tabs on his people. And not just his women.
Eventually, someone would come here looking for him. The Order, the FPI, the Tiger Mage, someone.
The notion had troubled him over the course of the long ride. There was only one logical response: prepare for war. He needed to train hard, track down the mysterious woman from Red Haven, locate the third gift left to him by his parents, decipher The Tome of Seven Strands, build a base here on the ranch, stockpile ammo, set up perimeter surveillance, and warn his parents.
But he could wait on warning his folks. Right now, he had more pressing news for them.
“Come on, girls,” he said, starting for the RV. “Time to go meet my folks.”
6
“Um… all of us?” Nina asked.
“All of you,” he said.
“Won’t they freak out?”
“They might probably could,” Brawley said, “but my folks and me don’t tend many secrets, and I’ve never been much for half measures.”
“So,” Nina said, “you don’t want to beat around the mesquite? Is that how we say it in Texas?”
Brawley laughed. “That’ll do just fine, darlin.”
Remi groaned. “Don’t encourage her.”
They piled into the RV and drove a quarter mile down the lane to the old family farmhouse. Two flags flapped in the breeze, both of them beautiful: an American flag and the Texas state flag.
Half a dozen black-and-white border collies came tearing out from under the porch, wagging their tails and barking joyfully.
The dogs mobbed Brawley, crashing into him and wriggling and whacking him with their wagging tails.
“Don’t mind these dogs,” Brawley said, reaching down to shake the excited canines by the scruff of their necks, “they’re worthless, but they don’t bite.”
“I detect humorous irony,” Sage said. “These are cattle dogs and hence rather valuable.”
“Don’t kill the joke, Dr. Spock,” Remi said.
Out back, Pa’s other dogs were barking up a storm. They were hunting hounds, so you couldn’t let them run until it was go time.
Brawley hitched his pants and crossed the porch. It was a low flagstone porch deep enough that the rockers had shade all day beneath the old tin roof. Mama had flower baskets and a couple of hummingbird feeders hanging up.
He popped the door open and called, “Mama, I’m home.”
“Brawley?” Mama’s voice came from down the hall. As always, it was music to his ears. “I figured that was you, hun. How was Florida?”
“Good,” he said, leading the girls toward the kitchen.
“I’m so glad,” Mama’s voice said. “I’ve been worried sick. Heard on the news they was having some kind of drug war down there in Key West.”
“Yeah,” Brawley said, “I heard that, too.” He would set her straight on the details later. For now, though, he’d stick to one shock at a time.
“Oh… hello,” his mother said, as Brawley and the girls entered the kitchen. “Brawley, you should’ve told me you was bringing company. I look a mess.”
Mama frowned at her fra
yed yellow apron. It had belonged to Grandma Hayes for many years and to Mama ever since. Unlike Mama, the apron had not aged well. Both the woman and her garment were dusted in flour.
“Bull,” Brawley said, wrapping his mother in an embrace. “You’re pretty as a picture.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Where are your manners, Brawley Peckinpah Hayes? Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” Like most Texan women, Mama was hardworking, humble, and hospitable.
“Mama,” he said, “this is Nina. This is Sage. This is Remi. This here is Callie, and that girl standing half in and half out of the doorway is Frankie.”
The girls smiled and waved and told Mama it was nice to meet her.
Mama surveyed the women, offering a warm smile. But Brawley knew his mother was deeply puzzled by his numerous female companions.
“Well,” Mama said, “it’s always a pleasure to meet Brawley’s friends, and I have to say that y’all are much prettier than Tanner and Sean.”
Brawley grinned. “Don’t tell Sean that, or he’ll set to weeping again.”
Mama laughed. “Boy does tear up easy.”
Mama was a handsome woman whose face nonetheless reflected her fifty-five years, thanks to all her hard work and so much time spent in the sun and wind and grit. And of course, Mama wouldn’t have had it any other way. She would no sooner fight wrinkles than she would wash out the gray streaking her light brown hair.
“Can I get y’all something to drink?” Mama asked.
The girls declined politely, but Mama insisted. “Ladies, you’re not from around here, I can tell. This is desert country. It’s drink or die in these parts. Now what’ll it be? Tea? Water? Beer?”
The girls relented, thanking Mama and accepting her offer. Nina, Sage, and Callie asked for tea. Remi and Frankie opted for beer.
“I got it, Mama,” Brawley said, moving toward the fridge.
“No,” Mama said, shooing him back. “I insist.” She opened the fridge and pulled out a pitcher of tea and three Shiners and set the beverages on the counter. “You go ahead and sit down with your friends.”