by Sam Witt
Joe pulled on his link to the Long Man, holding his boss in place. As the Haunter mauled the Long Man, Joe used the opportunity to siphon even more power away from the two of them. Weakened and unable to fend off two attackers at once, the Long Man was forced to abandon his assault. He used his remaining strength to fend off the Haunter’s surprise attack, pushing the wounded god away and restoring the uneasy balance of power Joe had been holding for the past few months. Both of the powers he’d trapped inside his skull had returned to their corners, ready to pounce on one another if they showed any signs of resuming their attack and exposing their defenses.
“That’s enough.” The sheriff’s voice was shaking, but the threat in her tone was real.
Joe cracked his eyes, grateful the rays of the setting sun were mostly blocked by the western edge of the Saint Francois Mountains. His skull ached from the effort of fending off the Long Man, and his eyes felt swollen and dry in their sockets. It’d been months since he’d last tried drowning his troubles in an ocean of Gentleman Jack, but he remembered this hungover feeling all too well. “Sorry about that,” Joe said and struggled back up onto his knees. “That was our boss trying to peel my brain from the inside.”
Laralaine lifted her pistol’s barrel until it pointed in the general direction of Joe’s chest. “That’s why this has to end. You’re too dangerous, Hark. You keep trying to tip over the status quo, keep trying to grab a little more than you’ve got coming. You’re fucking up everything.”
Joe started to rise to his feet but stopped when the sheriff thumbed the pistol’s hammer back. “You don’t want to do this, Laralaine. You don’t know what’s really going on, and putting a bullet in me just clears the way for a whole world of hurt to drop right on your head.”
“You really want those to be your last words?” The sheriff raised the pistol’s barrel, and Joe stared straight down its black throat. “I’m going to give you one more—”
A flash of blue-black light seared Joe’s eyes, and the sheriff cried out. There was a sharp crack, and Joe, still blinded by the flash, wondered if he’d been shot. It wasn’t until he heard Zeke’s laughter that Joe realized he’d escaped with his life.
His vision finally cleared, and Joe could see the old man leaning against the pickup, his arms hooked under the Laralaine’s armpits to keep her from falling to the gravel. “This un’s pretty heavy for no bigger than she looks. Wanna give me a hand getting her into the back?”
Joe picked his hat up out of the dirt and plopped it back on top of his head. “Nice work. We’ll have the whole sheriff’s department chasing us now.”
Joe reached for Laralaine, and Zeke leaned her forward. With a grunt, the Night Marshal hoisted the unconscious sheriff onto his shoulder and hauled her around to pickup’s bed. He dropped the tailgate and eased the sheriff down then rolled her onto her belly. Joe liberated Laralaine’s handcuffs from her belt and secured her wrists. “How long’s she going to be out?”
Zeke joined him, and the two of them managed to ease her up in the bed of the pickup without banging her head around. The old man squinted and looked the sheriff up and down. “I dunno. An hour? Maybe two? I’m not as precise with that shit as I used to be.”
Joe collected the sheriff’s pistol from where it had fallen and engaged its safety. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally shoot himself with Laralaine’s gun. He stared down at her as he raised the tailgate. They were too much alike; that was the problem. A few years ago, they’d have been on the same side. But now…
Now, Joe knew too much. He’d been hoping to work things out with the Long Man. He’d wanted the three of them to put things back in order and get Pitchfork on the right track.
It had all been a stupid dream. The Long Man was playing for keeps, and Joe was no longer on his team. The next time they met, one of them would die. Joe was as sure of that as he was of the sun’s rising in the east.
If the Long Man wanted to play dirty, that was fine with Joe. He’d been trying to decide how this had to go down for a few weeks now, and the Long Man’s dirty tricks had just made that decision a lot easier to make.
“All right, motherfucker,” Joe snarled, “let’s find out which one of us is meaner.”
22
Zeke’s estimate was off, and Joe was paying the price. He’d hoped to have Laralaine in the house before she came around because it would make it a whole lot easier to keep her subdued that way. Instead, he found himself on the receiving end of a foul-mouth tirade and a barrage of kicks aimed at his face. The sheriff had scrambled up against the pickup’s cab, hands still cuffed behind her back. She lashed out at Joe with her boots whenever he reached for her and spent the rest of the time cursing him.
Joe didn’t want to hurt the sheriff, but she was making it difficult to avoid that option. “Goddammit, Laralaine. Knock that shit off.”
The sheriff wasn’t having any of it. She glared at Joe like a cornered possum and kept one boot raised and ready to kick. “I don’t know what you did to me, but as soon as I get these cuffs off, I’m going to finish what I started.”
Joe faked a grab at her raised boot then jerked his hand away when she kicked. The instant her boot heel hit the bed of his truck, his other hand lashed out and hooked around her ankle. Before she could draw back for another kick, Joe had both hands on her boot and levered her over onto her belly. A quick yank had her almost out of the pickup’s bed and brought her belt into reach. Joe grabbed hold of the leather strap and hoisted Laralaine into the air. He held her off to his side like a piece of luggage, careful to keep clear of her kicking legs and biting teeth. “If you don’t settle down I’m going to bang your head off that tree over there couple times until you get some sense knocked into you. I just want to have a little chat and see if we can get to some kind of agreement before we kill each other.”
Because despite the fact that Laralaine had intended to put a bullet through his skull little more than an hour past, Joe didn’t want to kill her. He decided that the Long Man had to go, but that didn’t mean he was going to throw the sheriff out with the rancid bathwater.
Laralaine, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have changed her mind about killing Joe. “You’re just delaying the inevitable. I’m going to get out of here, one way or another, and then I’m going to take that pistol back and empty it into the hollow gourd you call a skull.”
Without a word, Joe crossed his front yard to the big oak tree, reared back the arm holding Laralaine, and swung her at the tree. She yelped as her face rushed at the trunk.
At the last second, Joe pivoted on his left heel, and the sheriff’s head missed the thick trunk by a few inches. He let the arc of her swing carry Laralaine up past horizontal then yanked her back by her belt and dropped her onto her ass. The sheriff grunted as the wind rushed from her lungs, and Joe let her tip onto her side. “I’m a pretty understanding guy, but you’re not going to threaten me while you got both hands tied behind your back and your gun is on the front seat of my truck. I’m trying to give you a second chance here, but you’re going to have to meet me halfway.”
The sheriff managed to roll back up into a sitting position. She took a deep breath and glared at Joe. “You’re going to lose, Hark. I’ve seen how this plays out, and you don’t have a chance. You may have sidelined me, but I’m not the only one in the game. And if you think the Long Man is going to sit still while you kill me, then you really don’t know what’s going on these days.”
Joe squatted so he and the sheriff were staring at each other eye to eye. “People have been trying to kill me for a long time. Nobody’s managed to make it stick. Whatever your boss is telling you, he doesn’t have the whole picture. I’m giving you a chance to be on the winning side here. Don’t be a moron.”
“You’re so blind. You think he hasn’t been planning for this day, that he doesn’t know what you’re going to do before you even do it?” The sheriff shook her head. “You’re not half as smart as you think, and you’re all out of
time to get any smarter.”
Joe stood back up, wincing as his knees popped. “You’ve seen how he’s treating me. You’re going to do his dirty work, put a bullet through my head? What happens in a few years when you stop listening, when you don’t feel like eating any more shit, and he finds some new dumb young thing to come scrape you off the plate?”
The sheriff pushed herself back with her feet until she reached the tree. She wriggled and squirmed until she had enough leverage to push back up on her heels. “That assumes I’m as stupid as you. I don’t have any delusions of grandeur, Hark. I’m going to help the boss put things straight, then I’m out of here. None of this is going to be my problem anymore.”
“That’s real sweet of you. If you think he’s going to let you walk out of here, you’re dumber than you look.” Joe watched the last rays of the setting sun slide out of sight. “Last chance, Sheriff. Get on the side of the angels here, before it’s too late.”
The sheriff opened her mouth as if to respond then snapped her jaw shut. She blinked hard and fast, and Joe detected a slight tremor running through her body. She was struggling, fighting against something, and Joe suddenly realized that there might be something going on here other than the sheriff’s usual orneriness.
He closed his eyes and let his vision shift into the supernatural spectrum. When he opened them, he felt pieces of the puzzle falling into place.
There was a faint fuzz of spectral light sizzling on Laralaine’s forehead. Joe squinted, trying to get a clearer view of it. The world shuddered around him as his natural vision distorted and his supernatural senses sharpened. The gauzy glow snapped into sudden focus, and Joe found it hard to tear his eyes away from its twisting lines.
A thread of twisted light flowed away from the symbol and raced over the hills to the west. High overhead, Joe could see the thread leaving the sheriff running parallel to another thread of light. One tied to him.
Joe reached out for the light leaving the sheriff, stretching his mind out to hook around it, and felt the familiar presence of the Long Man. He plucked at the thread and felt its vibration thrumming inside his skull. Without the training or natural strength to defend her mind from supernatural assault, Laralaine was powerless to resist the Long Man’s influence. If Joe wanted to talk to her, he needed to free her mind.
Joe funneled a trickle of power into his badge and removed it from his duster. Before the sheriff could react, he pressed his symbol against the light on her forehead. Silver light flared around the badge accompanied by the stink of ozone and an electric pop. For the moment, the line that connected the sheriff to the Long Man was bound to Joe’s badge.
Laralaine’s eyes rolled in their sockets before they focused on Joe. “What did you do?”
Joe wasn’t sure what he’d done, not exactly, but he knew he didn’t have long before the Long Man responded. The sheriff’s thread jerked and twitched in Joe’s grasp. The Long Man would overpower him and reassert control over the sheriff very soon. Joe ground his teeth as he struggled to keep the sheriff’s mind free. “Listen to me. He was in your head, twisting you up. This is your chance; you have to help me push him out . I can’t do it alone, but you’re strong-willed enough to lever him out with my help.”
A spear of pain shot through Joe’s head, rattling his concentration. It took all of his willpower to hang on to the sheriff’s thread. He needed her help. If she didn’t want to be free, the Long Man was going to be back in her head in a matter of moments.
And the Long Man knew it. He bore down on Joe, using the bond between them to squeeze the Night Marshal’s soul in a spiritual vise.
Laralaine shook her head. “You’re going to lose this one, Hark. You’re out of your league. You think I didn’t know the Long Man was in there? He’s helping me, and I’m not going to turn my back on that.”
Disappointment shook Joe’s faith in the sheriff. The thread he’d been holding away from her snapped loose from his grip and plugged into the symbol blazing on Laralaine’s forehead.
Rage flared in Joe’s heart. It wasn’t enough that the Long Man had wound his tentacles through Joe and the rest of Pitchfork. It wasn’t enough that the old bastard had tried to have Joe killed. Now, the monster was trying to spread its disease even further, infecting everyone it could reach and turning them toward the Left-Hand Path.
And that had been the Long Man’s mistake. Joe could see what he needed to do now, even if he wasn’t entirely sure how to do it.
Laralaine smirked at him. “That’s why you’re going to lose,” she said. “He can swat you down without even blinking. He gets stronger every day.”
Joe didn’t doubt she was right. A head-on assault on the Long Man could only end one way: with Joe busted in half. But he didn’t need to go straight at the old monster. He could see how things were connected now, and had the start of a plan. The pieces were falling into place, and he was beginning to understand what was happening in Pitchfork County.
He returned the sheriff’s smirk. “Let’s hope he’s as strong as the two of you think. Because if I’m right, he’s going to need all the strength he can get for what’s coming.”
23
Joe steered the sheriff into the house by her handcuffs, doing his best not to hurt her despite the stream of verbal abuse pouring out of her. “Someone’s going to come looking for me, Hark,” she snarled as he led her through the living room. “And when they do, they’re going to make sure you get what you got coming.”
Without a word, Joe guided the sheriff up the stairs and into Al’s room. His son wasn’t home and hadn’t been for the past few weeks, which meant the room was in surprising order. He scanned the room for any potential weapons and lowered Laralaine to the bed when he didn’t see any. She struggled against his manhandling, but Joe was too strong for her. Whatever boost the Long Man had given her, it was no match for the Night Marshal’s strength.
Joe unlocked the Laralaine’s left wrist and looped the handcuffs through the railing at the head of Al’s bed. Before she could get away, he had the handcuffs secured around her wrists. “I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble here. But if you break my kid’s bed or kick down the door, things are going to get ugly around here. Stay put.”
The sheriff opened her mouth to argue with Joe, but he raised a finger and pressed it to his lips. The sheriff glowered at him but kept her mouth shut. Joe knew he couldn’t hold her here for long, but he also knew he didn’t need to. He just needed Laralaine out of the way so he could finish his plan without the whole of the local law fucking up everything. The fact that she wouldn’t be able to keep the Long Man apprised of his plans didn’t hurt Joe’s feelings, either.
He tromped back down the stairs to find Stevie, Zeke, and the Woodhawk family scattered around the living room. Elsa and Al were leaning against the far wall by the front door, staring uneasily at the gathering in their home. Everyone except for Zeke was splattered with blood and green grue, but they didn’t appear to be at death’s door. Joe felt a surge of relief at that, but by his count they were missing one person.
All eyes turned toward Joe as he reached the bottom of the stairs, and he raised both hands to forestall the barrage of questions he could see in their eyes. “I need a few minutes with my wife,” he said, “and then we can talk about what’s going on.”
He headed to the kitchen, ignoring the open mouths and expectant looks from his guests. He had neither time nor energy to explain everything to them, and he needed to get Stevie caught up so she could back his play. She wasn’t going to like it, but he didn’t see that he had any other real options. Things were getting nasty out there, and if he didn’t do something, they were going to get a lot nastier still.
Stevie joined Joe in the kitchen, and they flopped down with Joe at the head of the table and Stevie at his right hand. She arched an eyebrow in his direction and tilted her head toward the ceiling. “Zeke tells me you took the sheriff hostage?”
Joe sighed and rolled his eyes. “That
old man certainly has a way with words. We don’t have time to go into the whole mess, but she’s here for her own safety as much as to keep her out of our way. The Long Man’s hooks are into her deep, and I don’t need her causing us any more problems. Besides, she started it.”
Stevie shrugged. “Whatever you think’s best. Do I need to worry about a SWAT team rolling up in our front yard looking for her?”
Joe chuckled at the thought. “No one’s going to come looking for her for a few more hours. I hope. But we need to get rolling on the rest of the founding families. Were you able to catch up to Mildred?”
“Not really. The spiders beat us to her.” Stevie looked away from Joe for a moment, brushing tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “We just started getting things back together. Now it’s all blown to hell.”
“At least Al was able to get the Woodhawks back here.” Joe scratched the stubble on his chin. “I guess that just leaves one family.”
Stevie ticked off the list of founders and her eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
It wasn’t that Joe wanted to save the last family. In fact, with all the trouble they’d caused over the past year or so, he was more than willing to let the last of the Blackbriar clan go straight to hell. But letting their adversary get her hands on Frank Blackbriar meant giving up what little edge Joe had remaining. “I can’t let the monster kill Frank. It’ll give it too much of an edge.”
Dark shadows gathered around Stevie’s eyes, a sure sign that her temper was up. “After all he’s done, you’re going to save him? Wouldn’t it be easier just to put a bullet in him and focus on keeping the rest of them safe?”
Joe liked the way his wife thought, but killing Frank wasn’t an option. “It’s trickier than that. If I kill Frank, there’s a good chance that would have the same effect as the spider asshole killing him. This is all about reclaiming its power, and I don’t want to take a chance on letting it get back more if I can avoid it. Besides, I’m going to need Frank.”