by Devon Monk
Hard to tell. Made no never mind. One at a time, by and by, he’d break them down, drink their glim, and leave nothing but metal bones and cold ash to show for it.
Spring feet clattered, like a chain somewhere inside it was pulling gears, winding tighter, tighter.
Jeb shifted his grip on the ticker arm he kept tight by his side, the length of which tucked between his arm and rib. He’d lost the other matic’s arm he had also used as a weapon. But he still had the hanging rope, and held it by the end, letting the weighted noose dangle from his fingertips.
He tipped his chin to his chest, set his feet wide, and waited for the matic to attack.
The chain rattled louder, then paused, as if the ticker in front of him was holding a breath. The matic leaped.
Jeb swung the rope. The matic was up so high, it was as if it had wings.
The rope missed. But the matic did not. It landed against Jeb, long arms wrapped around him, pincers snapping for his neck.
Jeb roared as the heat from the matic burned through his clothes. His arms were strapped down tight. And the ticker squeezed tighter.
Jeb worked to think this through. Drawing a thought up through the fog in his head was hard as pulling roots out of parched soil. He had to break the matic’s hold. Had to break it before it burned him up and cut his head off.
Jeb took a deep breath, then exhaled all a sudden and dropped the weapon out from between his arm and ribs. It was a sliver of room, the smallest space. But the matic’s arms were ratcheted as tight as the workings inside it would allow. Jeb had a thought the matic hadn’t been built for holding a man. It was just built for killing a man.
That small stretch of space was enough for him to pull his arm down. He twisted. Pulled one arm free as the ticker huffed and mandibles sharp as saw blades snicked and snacked at his face.
Jeb got cut, more than once, but he didn’t care how much he bled so long as there was freedom at the end of it. With his free hand he grabbed hold of the matic’s arm and wrenched it out of the socket.
The matic squealed. Steam and heat burst out of the hole in its side. A hole that revealed pipes and gears. The matic rolled its hand, trying to catch at Jeb’s clothes, his flesh, and draw him in close.
Jeb beat the thing with its own arm, clanking away like a man pounding down a railroad spike. It squealed and squalled, bit and tore.
Jeb kept beating. Nothing but anger driving his arm that fell again and again like a pile driver. Nothing but anger driving him to keep going, keep killing, keep living so he could find his Mae. So he could kill LeFel.
Didn’t matter how much the matic tore into him. Didn’t matter the burns, didn’t matter the chunk of ear lying on the ground, the three fingers he was now missing. Anger mattered. And anger got the job done.
It took a while, maybe a full five or ten minutes, before Jeb realized the matic had stopped moving. By and by he came to realize he’d been pounding away on the ticker, pulverizing it into a shredded pile of metal and wood. Water dribbled out over the mess of it, water dark with ash and oil.
All of it going cold.
Jeb raised the arm one last time, but the ticker was undone, unstrung. He straightened and felt the ground beneath his feet sway. He was tired. Sore tired. But there were more tickers in the shadows waiting to crush his bones.
He looked up, through the water and blood and bits of flesh that hung wrong-ways on his face. He looked up to see how many enemies he had left to kill.
The shadows were quiet. Silent. The wind was quiet. He didn’t see any smoke rising. He didn’t see any white plumes in the night, no glow of eye, no glitter of iron.
But he did not drop his weapons. Did not drop the rope that he still clutched in one hand.
The dragonfly wings in his chest beat hard, scraping against the silver bars of its cage.
And then the shadows were pierced by two red eyes, each as big around as Jeb’s head. Jeb held very still, waiting for this new death.
The eyes disappeared, opened again, closer this time, disappeared again.
Dying made it hard on his reasoning faculties. But Jeb finally caught on to it. They weren’t eyes of one beast coming to get him. Moonlight scuffed over the iron hulls of two huge round balls, each the size of a horse, but twice as wide. They dragged thick links of chains behind them.
And just as Jeb got his arms up to hit them, fight them, destroy them, the chains whipped out and chomped shackles down round his wrists, metal cuffs with teeth that bit straight through his bones. The matic balls whipped past him, yanking to one side of the boulder at his back, near enough to try to rip his arms clean out of their sockets. Jeb dug in his heels and yelled, leaning forward with all his weight, with all his anger, on one bad leg and a broken ankle. The matics rolled to a stop behind him, knocking together like uncoupled railcars hitting head-on.
Jeb held fast, stretched so far forward he was near flat above the ground, as he strained to keep his arms in his sockets.
The matics whirred, clanked. Two heavy hisses of steam dampened the air. They weren’t pulling nearly as hard, and Jeb pushed his feet until he was standing straight again. He refused to step back toward them, but he did look over his shoulder.
The tickers had opened up at the bottom, and pushed out sets of wheels that were wrapped in a continuous track linked together and looped around like a belt.
Jeb pulled on the shackles, trying to break the chain between him and the matics. He was uncommonly strong. But the chains held fast.
A clank and puff of steam, and the tracks were rolling. Backward.
Jeb’s feet dug in tight, then slipped. He leaned against the pull, but the tickers rolled slowly, inexorably around the boulder he had kept at his back, and backward still. Dragging him, inch by inch, to his death.
There was a cliff just a short ways back. And that was where the tickers were aiming.
Jeb pushed harder, the dragonfly wings in his chest buzzing at the strain. He lifted one foot, paused to keep his balance as ground gave way beneath his other foot, then took a single step forward. His left arm slipped its socket and he yelled again.
The matics strained against him, like to take his arm off. But Jeb lifted his other foot, and took another step. The matics didn’t stop. They dragged him backward, tracks pulling harder, faster than he could outwalk them. Then a sharp tug yanked on his arms and he couldn’t hear the tickers grinding dirt no more.
For good reason. Jeb Lindson felt the ground give way as he was pulled by the tickers over the cliff’s edge, and down to his death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cedar Hunt paused on the leeward side of the ridge. The wind stirred, an unnatural gust in the otherwise still night. He crouched low, offering no silhouette against the darkness, his ears flat against his skull. He had lost control of the beast and left at least one cow dead before he had regained his hold over his need to kill. Now he followed the scent of the Strange and the boy. It had led him beyond town to this forest in a gully near the witch’s house.
Something Strange pushed the wind, pulled the wind. Something unnatural rode the night.
He sorted the scents. Oil, death. Something more. Blood, flesh gone to rot, and the hot, burning stink of green wood scorched by fire.
And the boy. Somewhere in those scents was the boy. The boy’s blood.
Cedar’s heart beat faster. That was what he had gone out into the night for. He tightened his hold on the beast, even as the blood hunger rose up his throat.
He had found the boy. And now he would save him.
Cedar ran, taking the quiet ways, the hidden ways, the ways of predator and prey. It didn’t take long for the wild rising wind to bring him more scents. Mr. Shunt, the rail man’s creature, was out in this night.
And Wil.
Cedar stopped, pulling his head back and up. The hunger surged, blinding his senses with the painful need for blood—Strange blood.
No. He pushed against the beast, pushed against the hunger, and inha
led the scents again. Could he believe, could he trust, what his nose told him was true? He sniffed the wind, catching the telltale scent of his brother, the texture of the living Wil.
Wil, who had always been laughing.
Wil, who had always been trusting.
Wil, who had died at the beast’s fang and claw, his fang and claw.
Cedar stuck his nose as high in the air as he could. Too many scents in that wind. Too many glints and hints of creatures, both living and dead. Wil. The bit of the world, the scent, that was uniquely Wil was there; he was certain of it. And it was not an old trail.
Wil was near the scent of the boy’s blood. They might be somewhere near each other. Not that it would have mattered. Cedar ran. Not for the boy he had promised to save. Not for the Holder he had promised to hunt. Not for the Strange the gods had cursed him to kill.
Cedar ran to find the brother who had been dead all these long years.
He was wild with that thought, that fear, that hope. Wil. Alive. Wil. Here. Wil. In this land, on this soil. Wil.
Instinct whispered trap and caution and death, but Cedar was getting better at silencing the voice, smothering it. He would find Wil, find this scent of him and follow it into the fires of hell if need be. He would find his brother.
Brush rushed past, limbs whipped and lashed, the sharp fear of prey, large and small, lifted on the wind, carried by pounding heart, hoof, and paw, as Cedar ran through field, hill, and valley, even his great speed too slow for his racing thoughts.
And then the wind shifted, bringing with it the heavy stink of the Strange. Of old blood and dark metals. Of broken things strung with pain.
Of Mae Lindson. The witch. The beautiful golden-haired widow who stirred his heart in ways he could not admit even to himself. Her scents, her terror, and, more than that, her pain thick on the air, stronger than the boy’s scent, stronger than the scent of his brother.
Cedar slowed, instinct finally winning over desperation. He’d go carefully into this place of death, tread softly, and kill swiftly.
Kill, the beast echoed.
The widow Lindson’s house was near enough he could smell the fire from her hearth and the sweet spice from her herb garden. He peered through the night. Should he cross the field to her house?
No, the scent of Mae, of the boy, of his brother, came from the stand of trees.
Cedar slipped beneath the sheltering boughs, immersing in the deeper darkness.
Ahead, he heard a mule bray and a woman scream. Ahead, he heard the growl of a wolf. A male—his brother.
Wil.
Cedar ran to the edge of a small clearing in the trees, and saw with his own eyes a vision out of hell.
The widow clung to her mule as the animal bucked and reared. Something the size of a child crawled at odd angles over the beast, clinging like a spider to a wall, biting Mae, scratching, pulling, slapping.
And near a tall tree, not much more than a shadow himself, stood that Strange, Mr. Shunt. Too tall, too cold, fingers made of needles and blades and hooks, fingers tapping impatiently over the leather leash held in one hand.
At the end of that leash hunkered a wolf, ears flattened in fear, in hunger, eyes the brown of old copper. His brother, Wil.
It felt as if the whole world spun itself into the wind that battered at the treetops. Too many images, too many memories, warred through his mind. Wil’s blood spread across stone and grass. Wil’s mangled corpse. The taste of blood and flesh in his mouth. He had thought it was Wil, had known it had to be Wil. He had seen Wil change, twist beneath the curse just as he had changed. But then the blood hunger, the dark beast’s need, had cast its thrall.
And he had lost all control.
Cedar was a learned man. He had not considered it before, too wild in his grief, but there was a chance, narrow, slight, that he had been so crazy from pain, from the change, from the cursed blood hunger, that he had not recognized his own brother. There was a chance that the wolf he had killed that first night he’d become the beast was simply that—a wolf.
He’d not stayed to bury it. Caught in the clutches of a high fever, he’d wandered incoherent for days.
A heartbeat, a breath, was all it took for those thoughts to rush through Cedar’s mind.
And then the hot urge to kill the Strange gripped him again.
For the first time, Cedar agreed.
Mae Lindson fell from the mule, a yell of anger and pain filling the night. She scrabbled for a weapon—the gun turned by the Madders’ ingenious hands—but the creature, the boy that was not a boy, caught it up first.
Mr. Shunt let loose the leash on the wolf. “Punish her, or I shall punish you,” he hissed.
The wolf growled again, baring his teeth, his eyes shifting from Mae and the boy to where Cedar crouched, hidden in shadow.
“Now.” Mr. Shunt flicked his fingers, and the wolf snarled as if fire had sparked beneath his skin.
Cedar could smell the pain. Every nerve in Cedar’s body told him to stay away from the Strange. Stay away from the collar snapped around his brother’s neck. Stay away from the boy who was not a boy, who held the shotgun high and humming at Mae’s chest. The boy who laughed while she bled.
But Cedar was not about to run.
Kill.
He rushed out of the sheltering brush, launched himself at the boy who was not a boy.
He caught the Strange boy and chomped down on his head, jaws pumping to crack it open.
The Strange boy screamed, yowled, beat at him with hands that were stronger than any grown man’s. Cedar bit harder.
There was no crack of bone. No burst of blood. Nothing soft and savory beneath the Strange boy’s hard exterior. The boy tasted of old flesh and copper coil and burned wood. Cedar growled. He shook the Strange by the head, and snapped its neck.
It was still laughing, plucking at Cedar’s eyes, fingers sharp and stabbing.
What did it take to kill a thing like this?
Something struck Cedar from behind, throwing him to the ground in a tangle of fangs and claw. Wil.
Cedar pushed away and stared straight into his brother’s eyes, at the madness of pain caught there.
He had a second, a breath, to rejoice. Wil was alive!
Then Wil launched at his throat, jaws catching his fur as Cedar twisted away.
Kill.
No. This was his brother. He would not harm him. Cedar snarled, hackles raised, head low in warning.
Wil lowered his ears, teeth bared in challenge.
There was no reason of a man in those eyes. There was only hunger, kill, and pain.
Blood hunger pushed at Cedar, but he would not attack his brother. Cedar growled in warning. Mr. Shunt snapped his fingers, the sound of flint against steel. Wil yelped, the stink of pain heavy on him.
Mr. Shunt had more than a leash keeping Wil kowtowed. He was using the collar to cause him pain.
Wil worked a slow circle to Cedar’s left. Cedar glanced at the boy that was not a boy. Most of its face was gone, stripped away as if bark from a tree, leaving a fish belly–smooth surface where eyes and nose should be. A crack ran straight through the head, behind which peeked glints and spikes and spokes of gears and cogs. A rotted-flesh stink radiated out of the crack in its head, and the slash where its mouth should be was now an open maw where small black bugs skittered and oil seeped.
The witch, bloody and bruised, her hair free as spun gold in the moonlight, picked up the shotgun and snapped it to life.
At the sight of that gun, Cedar knew it meant his death. Knew it meant his brother’s death.
Run, Cedar thought, run, run, run.
Wil rushed him, biting deep into his flesh.
Cedar howled in pain and fought his brother, no longer thinking of the collar, of the gun, of anything but being free of this attacker.
Kill.
He fought back, tearing at the wolf, as the wolf tore at him. Fangs, claws, jaws. Blood over muzzles, clogging nostrils. There would be an end to thi
s fight, and that end would be death.
An orb of pure gold light shattered the night and stole Cedar’s sight.
He scrambled away from the fight, dodging back to the safety of cover, his ears, his eyes, slowly sinking back to correct levels.
“Come out of the shadows, Strange,” the witch said, her voice rough with anger. “And fight me on your own.” She held the shotgun toward the shadows where Mr. Shunt had stood, but the gun was not yet recharged, the hum too low, the light too faint.
The boy that was not a boy was nothing but a pile of splinters now, smoking from the impact of the shotgun, metal springs and bits of bone sticking up like gristle in a stew.
Wil had backed away into cover just as Cedar had.
And for a moment, Wil’s eyes were clear, sane. He looked at Mae, at the broken boy, and over at the shadows where Mr. Shunt had been. And then he looked at Cedar. There was a spark of recognition between them. Wil knew it was Cedar in wolf form just as Cedar knew it was Wil.
Cedar could see his laughing brother, his trusting brother, in the wolf’s eyes. They held gazes for a moment; then Wil threw himself across the clearing, fangs bared. Launching himself at Cedar.
Cedar heard the snap of a twig behind him and spun.
Mr. Shunt was behind him, a long, hooked prod in his hand. His teeth glinted bloody red as he jammed the stick into Cedar’s side.
Cedar twisted, but not fast enough. The stick punched through his skin and scraped bone. An explosion of pain shuddered through him, like lightning from the sky had just fused him to the ground. He howled and snarled, but no voice was big enough to contain the heartstopping pain.
The world was agony. Agony that burned him alive, agony that ate away his bones and flesh and mind.
He could not move. Not even his eyes.
He felt the weight of his brother hitting Mr. Shunt in the chest. And that impact broke the stick off in his wound.
Cedar heard Mae cock another gun—a revolver—but she did not fire, likely could not get a clean shot at Wil or Mr. Shunt with Cedar in the way. He wondered where the Madders’ shotgun was, but knew, by the low humming, that it had not charged enough for the next shot.