by Devon Monk
Wil strapped on his gun and gun belt before shrugging into his coat, tugging it straight, and then latching it closed.
Making a point not to meet Cedar’s gaze, Wil said, “Last I knew there were no laws against a man hunting more than one thing at once.”
“I suppose,” Cedar said.
Wil hooked laces up his boots and pulled them tight. “So you’re still not going to talk to her tonight?”
“There are children to save, Wil. Everything else can wait.” Cedar gave his brother a smile. “But the night’s young. I’m of a positive considerance you’re not going to stop talking about it until dawn.”
Wil grinned as he adjusted his hat. “Reckon you know me pretty well.”
They left the room and found Mae waiting in the kitchen. She had on her long coat, a pair of breeches tucked into her boots, and a hat pulled tight to her chin. She was also carrying a shotgun.
“Are you ready then, gentlemen?”
“I’d be wasting my time asking you to stay, wouldn’t I?” Cedar said.
“Yes.” She opened the door. “I’ve hitched the mules to the wagon and filled it with blankets. If we find the children, we’ll need some way to bring them back. I promise I won’t get in your way.”
“I’ve never once worried about that,” Cedar said. Then, “Are you sure you shouldn’t stay with Father Kyne? To see that he’s tended?”
Wil tugged on a thick pair of gloves and worked on settling a length of wool around his throat to cover the grin he was giving Cedar. Ask her, he mouthed.
Mae had, thankfully, turned her attention to the weather through the door’s window.
“Thank you, Mr. Hunt,” she said as she drew her scarf around the bottom half of her face, “for thinking of him. But he will be fine. Now. Let’s hunt for the children so you can hunt for the Holder.”
“Have I mentioned how I always enjoy your company, Mae?” Wil asked. “And my brother, he just can’t stop talking about how much he likes having you around.” Wil stepped outside and gave Cedar a big wink before offering his arm to help steady Mae across the icy ground to the wagon.
Cedar sighed and followed them, closing the door behind him.
For a moment, the world slipped and his vision split in two. He was outside the door to the church and he was inside, lying in a bed, staring at the ceiling, the beast calling his name.
He shook his head and the double vision faded. But for that second, he had seen through his own eyes and through Father Kyne’s. He glanced at Wil, who hadn’t missed a step. He must not be experiencing the same thing.
He considered saying something, but decided this was too rare an opportunity to turn away from. They’d hunt for as long as they were able.
Mae had seen to it there were two horses saddled along with the wagon.
After making sure Mae was settled in the driver’s seat of the wagon, Wil swung up on one of the horses. “I’ve missed this,” he said as Cedar, already in his saddle, sent his mount across the snow. “Would you like me to take the lead?”
“No,” Cedar said. “We can’t strike out into the night on a gut feeling. Not in this weather. Mae?” He took his horse to the side of the wagon. “Is there any kind of spell that might locate the children? I’ve done some hunting and found no real signs of them today other than frozen footprints by the river.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I tried scrying for them when you were in town.” She shook her head. “Father Kyne gave me this.”
She handed him a pink ribbon. “He said it belonged to Florence, the Peters’ daughter. He didn’t know if it would be useful. Perhaps for a scent?”
Cedar took the ribbon fluttering in her fingers and held it in his palm. The song of the Strange rose soft from that thin strip of silk. The Strange had touched this ribbon. Maybe they had touched the girl who it once belonged to.
He offered the ribbon to Wil. As soon as Wil grasped it, his eyebrows hitched up. “Strange,” he said. “Think you can follow that?”
Cedar nodded. “You can’t?”
“Usually I’d say yes, but this”—he pointed at his chest—“change makes me a little uncertain about the whole thing.”
“Just tell me if you see something I don’t.” Cedar took the ribbon back and placed it in his pocket next to the small piece of copper.
He turned his horse down the lane following the hint of Strange song caught and muffled in the cold wind.
Wil’s senses might feel unreliable, but Cedar’s were very foggy. He could hear the Strange, he could smell them, but he didn’t see a single creature.
When they reached the end of the lane, Wil spoke. “Do you see that?”
Cedar scanned the darkness. “No.”
“There are ribbons of light, like trails tracing along the street.”
“I don’t see anything.”
Wil dismounted.
“What are you doing?” Cedar asked.
“I’m going to find out what they are.” Wil stepped into the center of the street, spreading his bare hands as if trying to catch the nature of the wind upon his fingertips.
“What do you see?” Cedar asked.
“A thin pink string of light runs down the street. There’s other lights, like ribbons in all sorts of colors, coming from all the roads to this one. And none of them are higher than my waist.”
“Do you think it’s the Strange passing through?”
Wil shook his head. “I hear singing, Cedar. Children singing. Laughing. Some are crying. When I stand in these ribbons, I hear their voices. They walked this way, drawn away in the night. Lost.”
“Are you sure?” Cedar asked. “Finding them shouldn’t be this simple.”
“I know.” Wil walked back over to his horse, shaking his hands out as if shedding water. “You really can’t see that?”
“No.”
“So?” Wil asked. “What do you reckon?”
“It’s a trail. A trail the children walked. One ribbon for each child, pouring out of the heart of this city.”
“That’s…convenient,” Wil said. “So you think the Strange made these trails? To lure us?”
“Possibly,” Cedar said.
“We’re going to follow them, aren’t we?”
“We shouldn’t.”
Wil’s eyes crinkled up to make room for his grin. “It is the only trail. If it’s a trap, let’s spring it and move on to the next.” Wil clicked his tongue and urged his horse down the road following the lines of light.
Mae brought the wagon up beside Cedar. “He’s always so full of fire,” she said, not unkindly.
“That he is,” Cedar agreed. “And it has often burned him. He says there’s a clear trail that the children, many, many children followed this way. We’re going to follow it.”
“You sound concerned.”
“I can’t see it, and he can. I know Wil and I perceive the Strange differently, but”—he peered at the road, and at the city ahead of them—“I see nothing of the Strange. At all. Even though it is the full moon.”
“Maybe it’s the spell we cast?” Mae offered.
Cedar shrugged. “And to find a trail lit up bright as a torch and nearly on our doorstep? It’s too easy.”
“You think it’s a trap?”
“It seems likely to be.”
“And Wil?”
“Like you said, he’s filled with fire.”
“So are you,” Mae said. “You just keep a closer mind on the draft.”
Cedar smiled, then set his horse after his brother.
They followed the road in relative silence, the only sounds coming from the city itself and the occasional high drone of airships landing in the field north of town. They passed no more than a handful of souls, a worker coming in on foot from the coal mines, a cart leaving town to farms and fields more distant.
Other than that, it was as if the town were intent on making itself deserted, hidden from what it knew roamed the night.
Wil kept a running
report on the trail. It took a sharp turn, looped into a muddled knot, and strung in ragged tatters down a single street into town.
“I’m beginning to think there might be a wild goose at the end of this chase,” Wil said with a grin.
“You’re the one who wanted to spring the trap,” Cedar reminded him. “You know the Strange. They’ll lead a man down a twisted road, then right off the edge of a mountain, if they can catch his eye with a shining light.”
“This doesn’t look like no will-o’-the-wisp,” Wil noted.
“I know,” Cedar said. “That’s why we’re still following it.”
The street widened and grew toothy with cobblestones. One thing the city did well was keep the roads mostly free of ice and snow. But it was full dark now; there would be no need to have workers clearing the roads if there wasn’t going to be anyone using them.
They reached an intersection and Cedar pulled his horse to a stop.
A sound was rising, far off and high, but not in the sky and not carried by the wind. It was growing louder and louder from the earth beneath his feet. Loud enough his and Wil’s horses both whickered and fidgeted, unsettled.
Cedar dismounted, pressed his hand against his horse’s neck to calm him, then knelt, spreading his fingers out across the street.
The sound wasn’t anything he’d heard before. It rumbled, but also hissed and crackled like lightning snapping the sky. And behind it all was a single chord of notes, the trumpet of some great beast.
Something—something big—was beneath the city.
And it was moving, growling, waking up.
“Tell me you hear that,” Cedar said.
“I do,” Wil said.
“Mae, do you hear anything unusual?” Cedar asked.
“No.” She paused, then said, “Yes, like a horn of some kind?”
“Yes,” Cedar said. “If you can hear it, then it’s not a Strange song.”
“Which I couldn’t be happier about,” Wil said. “Their songs lead to dances that last for the rest of your days. Hate to wear out these boots. I’ve barely worn them in.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Cedar said. “They wouldn’t dance you to death. The Strange only like pretty men.”
Wil let out a loud laugh and Cedar couldn’t help but join him. He’d missed his brother. Missed his laugh. Even though this was not the best of their times, it was still time together. Valuable. And the longer they spent hunting Strange or, hell, the Holder across these states, the more of a chance they’d have to pay on their promises, break the curse for good, and make their days their own again.
He was looking forward to many long years together with his brother. And with Mae.
“It sounds like gears to me,” Cedar said. “It might be the generator we saw in the copper mine.”
“But why would it make this sound? What could it be powering?” Wil asked.
“I don’t know,” Cedar said.
“Huh,” Wil said. “Maybe they know.”
Cedar glanced up at his brother. He was looking west, down the road that jagged between brick and wooden buildings, and beyond that, the fields, forests, and river.
“Who?”
Wil glanced at him, worried. “The Strange. You don’t see them? There’s”—Wil paused—“dozens. Ghostly, but real. Well, real as they get without bodies to possess. Tall as chimney stacks and thin as thread, short and squat like toads.”
“I hear them howling, screaming,” Cedar said. “But I can’t see them.”
“That’s…” Wil lost his voice for a moment, swallowed the words back into place and tried again. “Not right. Something’s wrong with them. Something’s very wrong with the Strange.”
“Talk to me, Wil.”
“They’re coming this way fast. Real fast.”
“Mae, keep tight hold of the mules,” Cedar said. His own horse was dancing and snorting, trying to bolt. Cedar tightened his grip on the reins, but didn’t even try to swing up into the saddle.
The curse that Father Kyne was holding fell around him like an icy cloak. His vision split again. He saw the room where Father Kyne was standing. And watched as he strode through the church and into the night air. He felt the push of the beast, urging Father Kyne out into the night. Needing to kill the Strange. Needing to hunt and run.
“Get out of the way, you damn fool!” a man’s voice yelled.
Cedar blinked and it seemed that the entire world came burning back around him with singular heat and color and light. The vision of Father Kyne was gone.
“Something wrong with your ears?” the man yelled again.
Cedar peered down the other end of the street behind him. Seven men stood in the street, wearing dark-lensed goggles, heavy leather coats and boots, and overlarge gloves more suited to smelting metal. They held wide-muzzled shotguns equipped with copper tubes that connected to a box, which was slung over their shoulders like bulky canteens.
A soft green fire licked around the edges of those copper tubes. Glim. Those guns were powered by glim.
“Mr. Hunt?” a familiar voice asked. “Is that you?”
Cedar recognized the figure driving the steam carriage at the back of the line of men. It was Sheriff Burchell. He also wore goggles, a heavy coat, and a thick scarf around his neck. He carried a slightly different version of the copper-box gun, this one slender with a bayonet fixed at the end.
“I’d move aside, Mr. Hunt. There’s trouble in the air tonight, and you don’t want to be on the wrong end of our guns.”
He said it affably enough, but he was dead serious.
Cedar managed to lead his horse over to Mae’s wagon, which she had tucked up tight against a feedstore.
Wil followed, silent in the darkness. He somehow kept his horse in hand, and stopped next to Cedar.
“Who’s that?” Wil said quietly.
“The sheriff,” Cedar replied.
“Don’t like him.”
“Neither do I,” Cedar said. Then, “Is there something I can help you with, Sheriff?”
“Have an entire posse of men to help me, Mr. Hunt,” Burchell called out over the huffing boiler of his cart. “And you’re about to see just what my forces can do.”
The rumbling beneath their feet grew louder, and brought with it the eerie trumpet call that stroked higher and higher until it was a piercing whine.
The Strange screamed and sobbed. They were crying. Whether from pain or fear or loss, Cedar did not know. But the lawmen spread their feet as if bracing for a wave, and toggled the triggers on their guns.
“Steady,” the sheriff said, his voice loud and strong. “And…fire!”
Seven guns shot out lace-fine netting that crackled with pure bolts of glim.
Seven nets caught seven Strange. And since the Strange were little more than spirits, once the copper and glim struck them, they lit up with an eerie green glow and even Cedar could see them.
Mae gasped, seeing, Cedar knew, for just that moment, the Strange as he and Wil always saw them. He supposed the men with guns saw them too.
“Draw!” the sheriff shouted. “Ready for the rush.”
The men reeled in the nets, fast as starving fishermen, dragging the Strange down the street toward them. Once the nets were in reach, they triggered another lever on the gun and the bellows on the side pumped, sucking the Strange into the copper box.
With a flick of levers, the nets were ratcheted back into the firing chambers and the copper wires snapped with glim again.
“They’ll never be fast enough for the rest,” Wil said.
“The rest?” Cedar asked.
Wil pointed. “The Strange. That mob of them. You don’t see them?”
Cedar shook his head slowly. “No.”
Wil gave him a sideways glance. “That’s not like you.”
“Maybe it’s the magic,” Cedar said. “How many Strange do you see?”
“Dozens. They aren’t crying anymore. They’re attacking.”
Cedar did not move. N
either did Wil. It was disconcerting, almost surreal, to just stand aside while other men fought the Strange, Strange who only became visible to Cedar when the nets struck true.
Those goggles the men wore gave them some kind of sight that picked Strange off the bones of shadows. And those guns fired again, nets snapping, glim crackling, and men reeling in their eerie catch.
But there were twice as many Strange as there were men.
The sheriff stood behind the wheel of the buggy. He’d put his gun down and was tapping on a telegraph key mounted near the buggy’s steering wheel. His fingers flew through code, slinging messages.
Just before the wave of Strange should be upon him, just when Wil told Cedar they had surged past the men he hid behind, suddenly the Strange were gone.
“Blown out like a light,” Wil said.
At that same instant, the moment when the sheriff’s fingers stiffened to a halt, the underground call went silent.
Only the ticking metal of the net guns’ gears rolling the remaining nets into position broke the quiet. Then, from some far off corner in the city, a piano picked out a rambling tune.
The sheriff laughed. “Well done, gentlemen! Well done, indeed. I’d say the citizens of Des Moines are safe for the night. We’ll patrol the streets until dawn, but I’d wager we won’t see more of those nightmares.”
“Is that what those things were?” Cedar asked. “Nightmares?”
Sheriff Burchell tugged at his goggles, and let them fall down into the scarf he wore around his neck. Across the darkened intersection of roads, Cedar could see his smile, friendly as a coyote.
“What you just saw was some of the troubles a civilized town falls upon in this modern age. That was the Strange, Mr. Hunt. I’d think you’d have run across them in your travels.”
“That was more than I’ve ever seen in once place,” Cedar said. “What brings them on like that? Coal? Or is it want for those fancy copper-and-glim guns you have there?”
The sheriff paused, still smiling, but there was something different about how he held himself, as if steel had staked his spine in place.
“Maybe it’s nothing but the moon, Mr. Hunt,” he said, his voice barely glossing over the anger he held in check there. “You know what an odd master it can be. Brings out all sorts of unnatural things at night. Unnatural things in men too.”