Meacham slowed his horse and glanced over at her. He didn’t seem particularly disconcerted by her sudden appearance, or even by the fact that she was a woman. He looked down at her gun belt, up at her face again. Then he nodded, not seeming to find her request either surprising or unacceptable. “Your choice, miss,” he said. He touched the brim of his hat politely, and rode on.
Ella fell in with the rest of the group, feeling a rare, wry smile touch her face. A man of God, she thought, but one who seemed to be a firm believer in free will . . .. The other townsfolk glanced sidelong at her. As she had suspected, they were all more taken aback by her presence, unexpected or otherwise. But with the preacher’s blessing, and a twelve-year-old boy already among the volunteers, none of them said a word. And she already knew the dog liked her.
Ella sighed, feeling some of the fatigue flow out of her weary body, along with a little of the stress. She took a sip from the canteen she had refilled in town, and let her thoughts flow out into the wide-open spaces around her.
To the people here, entering the desert was like riding off the edge of the world, she thought. She wasn’t surprised that most of them had remained in town, after last night. Their fear of the unknown, as well as hard experience, had taught them to stay put unless they had no other choice. Except for the main trails, journeying here was riding off the map, into uncharted land.
Here there be monsters, it said on old maps, wherever there was uncharted land. Humans saw monsters that didn’t exist everywhere. Perhaps imaginary monsters were everywhere in their world because they could never be certain what lay in the mind of another human. Every new person they met became a potential enemy. . . .
But this time, genuine monsters were exactly what they wanted to find. Almost everyone riding with her understood the very real dangers of the wilderness they were entering; or they thought they did. But they had no idea what they were up against when it came to the enemy they were tracking now . . . a danger their worst fears could barely measure up to.
She forced herself to stop dwelling on what was to come, and turned her thoughts outward again, trying to let her mind roam free while it still could.
Once humans had believed their world was as flat and simple as a flapjack. Looking toward the horizon, which seemed to lie on the edge of infinity, she couldn’t see a trace of the Earth’s curve . . . maybe that wasn’t so hard to understand.
But the term “desert” didn’t describe an empty void. The desert was a land as varied and beautiful as any she could imagine. The sky was like a faultless dome of deep turquoise blue; the sunlit air affected her like a drug, energizing her, heightening all her senses.
Gazing into the distance as they rode, she could see a dozen varied landforms, most of them supporting some kind of life. The mountains, lavender-gray in the distance, rose through forests of oak and juniper and piñon pine to snow-laden peaks where vast amounts of moisture were imprisoned in a desert too cold and inaccessible to support any life.
But closer in, mesas, rough hills, and rising plains caught enough moisture to show the subtle olive, gold, and evergreen of desert scrubland . . . creosote bush, sage, mesquite, yucca, and a multitude of other shrubs, grasses, and cacti. The land was home to birds, land animals, and insects of all kinds, though most of those hid from the sun by day.
Where the plains broke up into badlands, fantasies carved from stone by the hands of time and the extreme weather took her breath away. Somewhere out here, she was sure, there were even dunes of sand, an endless beach without an ocean.
The desert’s many kinds of beauty had only one thing in common: a completely unsentimental disregard for any form of life, human or otherwise, that couldn’t adapt to its implacable demands. Most humans took that far too personally: Here in this amazing, alien, terrible, and awe-inspiring place, death was like breathing . . . it simply was, like nature itself.
Everyone she’d met who had lived here long came to accept the land for what it was, each in his own fashion. They retuned their senses to its subtleties, and their lives to it demands. Some had been more successful than others.
She thought of Jake Lonergan, whose eyes were as deep and clear a blue as the heights of the desert sky . . . and just as remote: a man as spare and silent as the land—until he caught you by surprise, in an unguarded moment. Just like the desert. . . .
She refocused her attention on the other people around her. Every one of them was a complete contradiction in terms; yet in their souls they all longed for such similar things: such surprisingly simple, obvious things.
But solitude did strange things to anyone’s mind. No man was an island, someone had written . . . but human beings all lived in a desert of their own making. Whether they huddled together in a town like Absolution or in a big city a thousand miles away, they were always clinging to the edge of survival, afraid of life, afraid of death, and doubting themselves and one another.
Their constant inner conflicts had made them fierce fighters, for better or worse . . . definitely for the better, this time. It meant their enemy would underestimate them. But without Jake Lonergan—without what he knew, and the weapon bound to that knowledge as inescapably as it was bound to his wrist—she was afraid all the courage in the world wouldn’t be enough to defeat these demons.
Jake. . . . She frowned, and forced herself to stop thinking. Human beings thought entirely too much, usually about themselves—and that might be their worst weakness of all.
JAKE TOPPED ANOTHER ridge, slowing his horse as he looked ahead. He saw a line of green in the distance: not just the usual underbrush, but actual trees, marking a river that probably ran all year, fed by the runoff from mountain snows.
He had been riding most of the night and half the day, and the water in the canteen that had come with his horse was low. Whether his horse’s water sense or random chance had led him here, it was what they both needed, at least for now.
He started the horse down the long slope. It didn’t require any urging as it picked its way through the scrub, heading for the river.
But as he rode down the hill into the profusion of green along the river’s edge, Jake felt something shift inside his brain—as if he had ridden down this hill, into this exact spot, before . . . often. As if he knew this place . . .
As the horse reached the bottom of the incline, entering the grass dotted with wildflowers, Jake spotted the ruins of a small structure lying scattered over the ground—a section of roof, pieces of wood, stones from a chimney. . . .
His horse turned its nose toward the water. He forced its head back around, riding toward the part of the cabin that was still standing. As he approached, he saw that nearly half of the cabin’s roof and walls had been torn away, by something that had hit it with the force of a tornado.
And yet, he knew no twister had done this. He wasn’t sure how he knew . . . but now he was certain about one thing: He had been here before.
He dismounted and led the horse down to the riverside, tying it to a bush where it could reach the water and fresh grass. He drank the water that was left in his canteen and refilled it, obeying long habit . . . forcing himself to go through the routines of survival, as he tried to prepare himself for whatever part of his past he was about to rediscover.
Slowly he walked back toward the cabin, and stepped up onto the porch. Broken window glass crunched under his boots as he went in through the doorway, which no longer had a door.
Light streamed through gaps in the roof and walls as his eyes searched what remained of the room. Everything seemed to grow eerily silent and still, as if he had stepped through the doorway into another world, a dreamworld. And yet he was sure, somehow, that this was . . . had once been . . . the reality he was searching for. That once he had belonged here. . . .
Memory broke over him like a wave, dragging him under its surface. . . . Fresh flowers, held in a woman’s hand . . . the woman from his picture. Humming softly, she was arranging the flowers in a glass vase. The white paint on t
he cabinets in front of her was peeling; it looked like nobody had lived in this place for years before she’d come here, but that didn’t seem to bother her. Wearing a pale summer dress patterned with tiny forget-me-nots, her dark, shining hair falling across her shoulders, she looked like the most contented woman in the world.
She turned around, setting the vase of flowers on a table at the center of the room, as someone opened the door behind her. She looked up, a smile starting on her face.
And Jake stood waiting in the doorway . . . waiting to see her smile. As she saw him, her smile brightened the whole room—as if to her the sight of him was like water in the desert.
Jake felt himself start to smile in return, until he was grinning like a fool . . . a fool for love. . . . Alice.
“You’re back,” Alice said, with joy and relief in her eyes.
He crossed the room, took her into his arms and kissed her. And then he proudly slung the saddlebags he carried down on the table in front of her; letting the bags fall over, letting them fall over and open. Coins spilled out, a gleaming waterfall of gold.
But at the sight of them, Alice’s smile fell away, and her eyes darkened as if a cloud had crossed the sun. . . .
Jake stumbled against the doorframe, as the present broke the surface of memory, and jerked him back into his now-reality like a hooked fish. He put one hand up to support himself, shaking his head.
What was that? Was the woman in his picture really Alice Wills, had he really known her . . . had he killed her, like Taggart claimed? Why? He’d never hurt Alice, she’d . . . he’d. . . . What was it about seeing saddlebags full of gold that had made her lose her smile?
Something glinted on the far wall of the cabin, by the place where the chimney had once been. Jake crossed the room, to find a gold coin—a gold double eagle—embedded in the wood. He pulled it out, staring at it as impossible questions filled his head, where no answers existed anymore.
Sunlight glanced off the coin’s surface as he turned it between his fingers. He laid it flat in his palm, where it shimmered like light on water. . . .
And suddenly, his mind plunged through the surface of the day, back into memory’s dreamworld.
The cabin was vibrating like a tuning fork. The shaking floor made more coins spill from his saddlebags. The pile on the table began to slip and slide; they fell, ringing, onto the floor. The glass vase tumbled over and smashed.
“What’s happening?” Alice cried, her eyes filled with terror.
Jake caught hold of her, pulling her away from the table, his own mind gone white with fear. An earthquake—? He dragged her with him until his back hit the cabin wall. She pressed against it, against him. He stared at the gold coins on the table, on the floor, as they began to distort, stretching and curving into impossible shapes: Either he was seeing things, or they were . . . melting. . . .
A window exploded, and then another. With a grinding wrench half the roof tore away, and the chimney collapsed, leaving them staring up into a blue sky that was suddenly made of blinding blue light.
Alice screamed, as a dark rope spun down out of the blue, and the bola at its end opened like a hand and wrapped inhuman fingers around her. It jerked her up, beyond his reach, before he could even catch her outstretched hands. . . .
Alice—!
Jake burst through the surface into the present, her name echoing in his head as if he had shouted it, and not just in a dream. . . . He found himself sitting on the floor, as if his legs had given out. Slowly he got to his feet, shaking off dead leaves and bits of glass.
Now he knew who the woman in the picture was . . . maybe even what they’d been doing here. She must have meant something special to him, for him to always carry her picture. And he hadn’t killed her—
They’d taken her. The demons. . . . His hand covered the weapon on his wrist, as solid and cold as if it had never come to life last night, living only to destroy the metal monster, and whatever had controlled it.
Jake looked up through the hole in the roof at the perfectly normal blue sky. He didn’t know everything yet, but he knew enough to understand what he had to do—even if he never remembered why. He had a gun for demons; and now he had a real reason for using it. . . .
It was time to go hunting.
THE MISMATCHED BAND of riders from Absolution followed the demon’s tracks deeper into the desert, crossing the bed of a long-dry lake, where time had petrified the muddy bottom, turning it to stone that preserved every crack in its desiccated face, while more time had filled in each line with sand.
Beyond the ancient lake bed they entered another seemingly endless stretch of scrubland. There was no place to find shelter from the midday sun that bleached the land of color and sound; it drove the riders to silence as well, as they simply endured, like their horses, with no energy to spare. Time itself seemed to crawl; the horizon shimmered as if it was dissolving . . . as if even the laws of nature were unable to withstand the searing forge of light.
As the sun fell past its zenith at last they entered a rust- and bone-colored, crazy quilt of eroded sandstone. The demon’s winding trail through the canyons and arroyos of the badlands offered them some small relief from the heat as the shadows gradually lengthened.
The storm clouds they had spotted on the far horizon soon after they left town had been growing steadily closer throughout the day; by nightfall rain would probably be drenching them.
Even now Ella could feel the moisture in the air increasing, weighing them down almost physically, like the noonday sun had seemed to evaporate their thoughts.
She rode silently, as usual, making herself all but invisible as she observed the interactions of the others, which grew more frequent, and more random, as their tension and then their boredom finally eroded into discomfort and bad humor.
Jed Parker, one of Dolarhyde’s men, rode up alongside Doc with the look of a coyote hungry for a meal. Ella supposed wearily that any man who could stand to work for Woodrow Dolarhyde would have to be as unpleasant as he was.
“Don’t even know why we’re going,” Parker said to Doc. “You know they’re all dead.”
Doc kept his eyes straight ahead, knowing that he was being toyed with, and trying with all his resolve not to let it get to him. “If they wanted to kill em, they would’ve,” he said, repeating what Dolarhyde himself had told his men.
“Well, if the boss is right, and they was ropin’ ‘em . . . bet it’s to eat ‘em.” Parker’s grin turned nastier. “If it was me? I’d start with your wife.”
Doc glanced over at Parker, his face betrayed by a flush of anger as he put on the most mocking imitation of a smile he could manage. “You gonna be like this the whole trip?” he said. “’Cause if y’are, we aren’t gonna have a lotta long conversations. Why don’t you sing a song or something, make yourself useful. . . .”
Parker spat tobacco juice and turned his horse away, riding back to rejoin the knot of other Dolarhyde men, who were now at the reluctant tail of the group, not in the lead any more.
Preacher Meacham glanced at Doc, with a look that said he knew exactly how powerless and humiliated Doc was feeling, though he struck Ella as the kind of man who had rarely been in the same position himself. “Give you a little friendly advice?”
Doc looked over at him.
“Get yourself a gun and learn how to shoot.”
Doc opened his mouth as if he was going to reject the idea out of hand. But he closed it again, looking ahead toward the growing darkness. His expression turned thoughtful, and he didn’t say anything more.
Ella was surprised to realize that she’d never seen Doc with a weapon. She had assumed he at least kept a shotgun behind the bar, like most saloon owners . . . but she’d never seen him use one. She had supposed that fear of the Dolarhydes was the reason, since it seemed to be why everyone else in Absolution behaved the way they did. But no, there was something more—
She put her hand on her own gun, feeling the weight of it where it rested aga
inst her leg. She had grown used to wearing it, to the point where she had almost forgotten it was there.
Another of Dolarhyde’s men, Greavey, rode up alongside her, reminding her suddenly of why she had started wearing a gun, as well as a hat—for protection. Greavey smiled at her with a look that said he thought he was God’s gift to women. “So . . .” he began, “what’s a pretty lady like y—”
“I’m not here to breed,” Ella said flatly, dismissing him with a glance and looking ahead again.
He looked down at her hand, which still rested on her gun. “Well, oh-kay,” he muttered, and dropped back to rejoin his companions. She sighed, hoping they hadn’t decided to make a game of targeting the townsfolk, one by one, for the rest of the afternoon.
She barely suppressed a look of annoyance as Dolarhyde himself rode up to her. He didn’t ride with his men, or anyone else, now—he either stayed aloof from all of them, or rode ahead to consult with Nat, his chosen tracker.
But now he had decided to take Greavey’s place, as if he’d also been keeping an eye on the interactions among the others, all while he kept his distance from them. At least he wore his usual sour expression; romance was undoubtedly the furthest thing from his mind.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked. “Woman wandering alone through Apache country . . . nobody ’round seems to know who you are.”
She looked at him; her eyes locked onto his. “The men call you ‘Colonel’ behind your back, but they’re afraid to do it in front of you. Why?”
Dolarhyde’s face turned ashen, as she calmly crossed defensive boundaries that he had never let anyone violate, ever.
She knew why the men called him ‘Colonel,’ and why the word caused him so much pain that he’d actually killed men who said it to his face. He was a Civil War veteran, still tortured by the kind of memories that had stolen all the love, all the meaning, from too many lives; including her own. They had a different name for it, here: They called it “soldier’s heart.”
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