Weeks ago, the skies to the east and behind him had burned. Enemy airships and friendly Sky Trains had blazed brighter than the sun as they crashed toward the vast soya fields of the Great Plains. Men had fought and died.
As an Upland Ranger in the U.S. Army, he’d seen it all. He’d smelled the gunpowder and felt the recoil of his Gatling rifle as he fought to turn the Hapsburgs away from American soil. A couple of searing hot bullets had found their way into his flesh, but he’d healed fast enough to get back onto his ether-borne Sky Charger and fly into war.
Tom leaned forward, patting the cool zinc metal neck of the charger. Strange modern times he was living in. When he’d left this territory three years before, it had been on a real horse.
Adjusting the levers at his stirrups, he took the charger higher into the air. Tall pines whisked beneath him, then thinned as the rocky peaks took over. White patches of snow clung to the shaded angles of the mountains like forgotten sun-bleached bones.
Just at the top of the range, Tom stopped his charger and turned to look behind him. The battlefields and scarred skies were hundreds of miles away. The fighting wasn’t over. The war waited.
He stared into the distance, remembering all the Hapsburg soldiers alive and dead who’d aimed their guns at him.
Keep your pants on, he thought. You’ll have plenty of chances to put me in a grave later. Until then, I’m heading home.
Kicking the charger’s levers, he powered the one-man ether airship over the mountain ridge, leaving the flat expanse of the east at his back. The mountains spread out into hills that bunched and gathered like an unmade bed. The winter’s green still lasted, revealing the fertile farms and orchards that took advantage of any flat land.
Tom squinted behind his goggles and pulled the brim of his black cavalry hat low. The far horizon was a bright silver knife’s edge. The Pacific Ocean. He could already smell the salt, even this far inland. A few more miles and he’d hear the gulping squawk of the seagulls that rode the high wind currents. It felt like home.
The hairs at the back of his neck stood up, same as if he and other Upland Rangers were flying out for a dawn raid on a Hapsburg artillery camp. There were plenty of dangers at the front lines of the war. And battles to be fought at the home front.
The Sky Charger picked up speed. Tom felt himself pulled into the inevitable.
He reined back on the mechanical steed and wound over the hills. Twisted oaks dotted the land. Through the lenses of his goggles, they almost looked like their branches were outstretched arms, warning him. But there was no turning back.
The war had stopped to take a breath. Tom and the other front line soldiers were allowed some time of their own. Without a fight in front of him, his compass spun. There was no answer other than west. Home to Thornville.
And Rosa.
A needling voice in his head sounded a lot like his younger self, mean with an edge of whiskey on its breath. Surely seeing her again will go as smooth as silk, it mocked him.
He tugged at the knot of the black bandana around his neck. The charger dipped closer to the ground, heading toward a shady notch running between the hills. The mechanical flying horse didn’t shiver or twitch its muscles in response to coming closer to home.
Tom took a long breath and spoke in a whisper quickly lost to the breeze. “Nothing was ever easy with Rosa.”
Don’t lie. Looking at Rosa had been easy. Before he’d left town three years ago, he could sit and stare at her until all the candles burned down in his one-room shack. There seemed to be no end to the depths of her large, dark brown eyes. Black hair framed her face, high cheekbones, and full mouth. Tom had memorized every detail. He didn’t need to carry a small lumiscopic picture of his sweetheart like other soldiers did.
But she wasn’t his sweetheart anymore. A stolen horse and a moonless ride out of town had made sure of that.
Maybe a raid on a Hapsburg camp would be easier than going home after all.
The sound of the charger’s tetrol engine was quickly drowned out by the loud roar of a rushing river. It tumbled along a winding path, and Tom followed it, trading the steady sun for shade. Where the river widened and calmed, he took the charger even lower, toward the water.
If the mechanical horse had had legs, it would’ve been standing chest deep in the water. Tom tipped his hat back, letting it rest against his shoulders by the stampede strap. He pulled off his goggles and clipped them to the leather lanyard slung over his shoulder. The other end of this lanyard was looped through the butt of the pistol on his hip. He didn’t need to look to know it was still there after the long flight over the planes. The weight of the Rattler was a steady presence.
Leaning low over the side of the charger, Tom dipped his bandana into the cool river water. The silk danced in the flow, tugged by the current, pulled toward Thornville and Rosa. He drew the bandana from the river and used the cool cloth to wipe the dust from his face. After tying it around his neck, he went back to the water, filling his canteen, taking a long drink, and filling the canteen again. Mountain water tasted of cool stone, pure and fresh. A relief after the muddy streams of the Great Plains.
He unbuckled the auxiliary reservoir from one of the saddlebags. The Sky Charger wasn’t a real horse, but he still had to water it. He filled the tin tank with water and then screwed on the top.
Everything was squared away. Tom could keep moving. But he stayed, hovering over the running water.
That voice kept stabbing at him. Rosa’s down at the river. Doing the wash, or collecting water. Probably gathering blackberries. Safe and secure, like her parents wanted for her. Not like anything you could’ve given her. No land, no family. Just a wildcat breaking horses for hourly pay.
Tom tried to swat the voice away as if it were a night mosquito, but it went on. Bet she took Parker’s offer and married him. That guy was a great carpenter. The dull brass of the wedding band around Tom’s finger seemed almost black in the shadows over the river.
He kicked the Sky Charger’s ascend lever and climbed higher into the sky. Parker built nice things. Cabinets and tables and a stable life. His tools had been handed down from his father and his father’s father. All Tom had of his family was a dead-end last name and the saddle he sat on.
The voice in his head was silent but present, mocking him. Tom responded to himself: I’m gonna play it as cool as snowmelt when I see her.
Horseshit. His younger self spat and took a drink from a cloudy bottle.
Tom countered, I can be a gentleman and tip my hat and congratulate her on her marriage.
But when he saw her parents, that would be another story. Tom shifted his weight in the saddle, feeling the Rattler on his hip, the Gatling rifle in the scabbard at his knee and the knife in his boot. Might need every bit of hardware to get out of a “conversation” with Rosa’s mother and father.
After the din of the front lines and the skies raining fire around him, all he should have wanted was a little peace and quiet. But if that were true, he’d have found another mountain range or another town, where no one knew his name. He had to go to Thornville. Even if there was no one waiting for him, no yellow ribbons, no family. He’d just drunk his fill of river water, but thinking about Rosa made him thirsty all over again.
“Peace and quiet.” He said it out loud as if that could make it real. “How hard can that be to find?”
The river bent and dove into a jumble of rocks. Tom pulled on his hat and flew higher, breaking from the trees and nearly running straight into the side of a five-story mobile mining machine.
He yanked hard on the reins, wheeling in the air to avoid the wooden slats that made up the outer structure. A blast of invisible heat washed over him as he passed an exhaust stack from one of the tetrol engines that powered the lumbering beast. All of the cool calm he’d pulled from the river burned away.
“What in holy hellfire . . . ?”
Turning the charger again, he dove toward one of the men who walked next to the gi
ant machine. Tom had to shout over the sound of the giant conveyor treads that propelled the beast forward.
“You boys got a lot of nerve breaking up the scenery out here.”
The man tensed slightly, revealing a black rotary shotgun slung over his shoulder and an ether pistol in a holster. A lot of hardware for a dude in a pinstripe suit. Tom’s Rattler was ready at his hip if he needed it.
But, hopefully, words would be enough and he could leave the shooting to the war. “What claim you headed to?”
No response from the man. He only turned and looked at Tom. It was almost like a piece of the mining machine had broken off and started walking like a human being. The man wore a leather and brass mask that encased him from his bowler hat to his jaw. A shiny brass capsule covered the man’s mouth, and a flexible metal tube ran from the mask to a cup attached to his ear.
“Goddamn.” Tom had seen this technology before on guards stationed around a bank in Chicago. “Whisperers.”
The din of the rolling mining machine swallowed the man’s low words, but Tom could tell he was saying something by the way he moved. The communication was broadcast out to the others around the device, and they all turned to look at Tom. Sunlight glared off the glass goggles built into the masks. There were at least twenty Whisperers, all armed and coordinated by their masks.
Even though everyone knew there was over a million dollars’ worth of gold locked in that Chicago bank, no one dared take on the Whisperers to try and nab it. It was like facing a single man who had forty eyes looking in every direction and guns at the ready.
“I get that you won’t tell me your claim, but there’s got to be a gang boss around here who can talk.”
The men just kept watching him as the machine rolled forward. It was still folded up for travel, but when it reached its destination its teeth would be deployed to eat through anything in its way. Giant saws, grinding wheels, and conveyer belts would stick out of the front, tearing apart a mountainside and drawing it inside the device. Then automated sifting trays would shake the debris, searching for gold or silver or whatever the mining company had decided was valuable that day.
“We all got a job to do.” Tom’s patience was shrinking, crushed under the treads of the mining machine. “But you’re dealing with a sergeant in the U.S. Army Upland Rangers. I’m asking you a question, and you’re obliged to answer me.”
The man moved and Tom nearly drew his Rattler. The first bullet would hit the Whisperer in the chest, if things came to that. But Tom’s reflexes were good enough to hold off on shooting the man. The pinstriped man wasn’t going for his gun; he was merely pointing at a spot on the mining machine.
A brass plaque riveted to the side of the rolling monster read: MODEL IV. CRANDALL MINING COMPANY. SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA.
“All right then, it’s someone else’s problem.” He kicked a lever on his charger, rising higher in the air. “Just wish your machine was as quiet as you dudes.”
The technological din was left behind. Tom was back in the quiet and calm of the sky. That’s right, he told himself. Let everyone else deal with the world’s problems. He’d been fighting fiercely for months, and it felt like the United States had been holding its breath while trying to resist the Hapsburg advance. Now was the time for a sigh of relief. Some brave sons of bitches had snuck deep into the enemy’s homeland and blown up a key munitions plant.
Those shock waves carried all the way to the Great Plains. One minute Tom was running belt after belt of ammo through his shoulder Gatling rifle, trying to pick off flying skiffs full of Hapsburg shock troops; the next minute the bad guys were circling their airships way behind their lines and trying to figure out what to do next.
“I know what I’m doing next.” He licked his lips as the landscape rolled far below him. Saying it out loud might make it real. “Chicken. Berry pie. A shade tree . . .” That was how he and Rosa would spend long summer days at a hidden spot at the bank of the river. Her kisses were always sweeter than any berry they found in the brambles.
Goddamn, it might have been the worst idea to come back. He didn’t want to see her. A new life, married and happy and safe and secure with someone else. He had to see her, even if she hated him. There was only one bit of pleasure he’d known in this world, and it was Rosa. The rest was hardship. His thirst returned. But being close to Rosa again without having her might be like drinking fire.
Tom had never seen this country from these heights. This was the territory he’d grown up in, but the land seemed so different. He experienced it like a dream, knowing it was right but feeling something was wrong. He was lost but knew where he was headed.
Keeping the distant shining ocean to his left, Tom rode north. The river flickered below him, a snake hidden in shadows. He crested a hill, then another. Homesteads appeared in the flats. And in a far clearing at the base of a tall mountain he saw Thornville.
Three years had pushed the town farther into where the trees had stood. What had been one wide road was now two, a cross of buildings with boardwalks and even a clock tower. Houses were scattered around the town. There was more to this area than just farming and canning blackberries now. Maybe one of those houses was Rosa’s.
His mouth went dry. She was close. There were people out on the street, but he couldn’t identify them or know what they were up to from this distance. Could she see him high in the air?
Tom had left Thornville by riding away on the dusty trails. He returned in the air, a different man. But would Rosa know that?
He’d snuck out of town on a stolen horse. Coming back straight down the main street wouldn’t be right. Tom curled a wide arc around the approaching town, putting the silver sea to his back. The pines and scrub oaks were still thick enough on the other side of the river to give him a nice private place to land.
He brought the charger down, leaves brushing against his thighs, and took the metal head right next to a thick tree. While the hovering craft was still four feet off the ground, he dismounted. The ground under his feet didn’t feel stable after all that time in the saddle. He took a few steps to loosen up, then pulled on the side lever of the charger, bringing it to the ground.
“Rest easy, girl. You deserve it.” He locked the Gatling rifle in its scabbard, then lifted the metal covering at the charger’s flank, exposing some of the inner workings. One flip of a switch and the tetrol engine stopped chugging. Tom reached deeper inside the body, to where the ether tanks glowed green through their glass ends. “Wish I could give you an apple.” Instead he yanked on the pins next to the ether tanks’ valves and slipped them into his shirt pocket.
The tanks stopped catalyzing ether, and the charger rested completely on the dirt. Tom gave it one last pat on the side. Dry oak leaves crunched under his boots as he walked toward town. The smell of their dust took him back to being a boy, running through this land, trying to find tarantulas or deer bones. Not long after that, he’d been sneaking around these parts, searching for Rosa.
Tom pulled a plump blackberry from a thicket next to the river. It was sweet and reminded him only of her. The plant’s thorns barely scratched his toughened skin. Could he avoid Rosa’s thorns?
The old bridge—with some new wood—still spanned the narrow part of the river near town. Here it was, the last place he’d seen her. The running water tumbling over the rocks sounded like the echoes of him and Parker yelling at each other. Couldn’t have been the way Parker wanted his marriage proposal to Rosa to play out. The carpenter might’ve been expecting some tears of joy, certainly not her storming off while Tom and Parker bloodied their knuckles on each other. But Tom had been freshly burned by her parents and didn’t take kindly to another man moving in so fast and asking for his girl’s hand. And taking on Parker was a fight he knew he could win.
Tom shook off the memories and stepped closer to the river. As he crossed the bridge and got closer to town, he realized that the echoes weren’t the lingering ghosts of his final clash with Parker and Rosa. The y
elling was real. There was trouble in Thornville.
He picked up his pace, following the sounds of the conflict. Someone was getting punched and going down in a lot of pain. Others shouted encouragement. Tom certainly didn’t want in on a brawl, but even if everyone in town had forgotten his name, Thornville was still his home.
Ducking between a candy shop and a women’s dress store, Tom got his first look at the main street. Six or seven men stood in a wide ring around two fighters. One of them staggered on wobbly legs, trying to make fists. The other stood his ground, ready. Something flashed on his chest, making Tom blink away the bright streak across his vision. A tin star.
“Aw, hell,” Tom muttered. “Just the sheriff running some drunks out of town.”
The badge flashed again, and Tom refocused his eyes on the sheriff.
It was Rosa.
An Excerpt from
STORM BOUND
A CABIN FEVER NOVELLA
by Alice Gaines
In the latest installment in Alice Gaines’s steamy Cabin Fever series, one woman throws caution to the hurricane winds and explores her deepest sexual fantasies when a storm leaves her stranded on a tropical island with two hot studs.
AN AVON RED NOVELLA
CHAPTER ONE
When the time came, Christie had to use every ounce of willpower to make her feet take her to the dock. As she descended the steps that led to the ocean, she passed the plantings the gardeners had so carefully arranged to look haphazard, wondering how roughly Fred would treat them. Most weren’t native to the island but had been chosen for their ability to thrive in ocean breezes, and sunlight filtered through the palms overhead. The tiny pink orchid flowers had just begun to open. Would they be here when she came back?
Nine Lives of an Urban Panther Page 32