The Devil's Revolver

by V. S. McGrath

  She swallowed drily. “Better make sure it’s all worth it then.”

  “Come on!” Uncle shouted behind her.

  Hettie quickly backed away from Barney’s Rock, stepping off the platform. She felt a slight suck-pull as she breached the threshold. Her cheeks burned with cold as she emerged on the New Orleans side of the tunnel. Muggy heat enveloped her, closing around her skin and dampening her clothes. The tunnel flickered, the swirling pattern of dark and light shrinking in diameter like water spiraling down a drain, disappearing against the stone wall in the Zoom tunnel station hundreds of miles away from the one they’d just left.

  All her muscles turned to jelly. She let out a long breath, and turned…

  To face two dozen rifles pointed at her.

  Drop your weapons and release your hostages or we’ll shoot.” The man with the short, neat ginger beard leveled a pair of pistols at her, amber eyes hard.

  Hettie licked her lips. She didn’t think Diablo could fire in all directions at once, though the quadrupling of its weight told her it was willing to try.

  No, she told it firmly. She couldn’t risk the others. Not today, not with these men.

  The weight eased. She slowly lowered the revolver. “All right,” she called. “Don’t shoot. Walker, Ling.”

  The men dropped their knives and let go of the women. The moment Sophie and Jemma were out of the line of fire, the ring of soldiers cocked their weapons.

  “Hey! We did as you asked!” Hettie said. Diablo was in her hand once more, the barrel pointed at Ginger Beard. He growled.

  “I said put the gun down.”

  “I can’t,” she said between clenched teeth. “Not while everyone is trying to kill me.”

  Ginger Beard squinted, then made a noise. “Bloody hell.” He held out his pistols in a motion of surrender. “Look at me, girl. I’m putting my guns away, all right? So don’t go blowing my head off with your bleedin’ mage gun.”

  Hettie watched as he slowly bent and placed the weapons on the ground. “You have me at a disadvantage now, miss. For your friends’ sakes, I suggest you lower your gun.”

  “Are you going to shoot us the minute I do?”

  “My employer has asked me not to, so I won’t.”

  “Doesn’t mean you don’t want to, English,” Uncle muttered, his hands raised.

  Hettie’s heart beat hard. She didn’t have much choice. She tossed Diablo to the ground and put her hands up.

  The soldiers closed in around them, shackling their wrists behind their backs and divesting them of their belongings. Ling gave a shout, and someone punched him in the ribs, silencing him. Ginger Beard scooped Diablo off the ground. He hastily dropped it in a sack, muttering a spell as he tied a dried vine around it. Then someone put a hood over Hettie’s head.

  Prodded on by her captors, Hettie and her companions stumbled across the uneven gravel-strewn ground. The hood stank of fish and blocked out all light. Uncle grumbled as his steps shuffled along. Ling’s colorful barrage of insults in both English and Cantonese overlapped the cry of a gull, the rumble of a far-off cart, and a clanging too high-pitched to be a church bell. Cymon snarled as the men wrestled with him, and Ginger Beard shouted orders to subdue the dog.

  “Cymon, heel,” Hettie said. He whined obediently. She didn’t want him getting hurt.

  They were pushed into an enclosed wagon and driven for some time across a bumpy road. Hettie tried conjuring Diablo, but it wouldn’t come. A sense of foreboding filled her.

  “Who are these people?” Ling asked, his voice muffled.

  “They’re not Pinkerton agents, I can tell you that much,” Uncle said.

  “They aren’t local law, either. The uniform suggests a militia of some kind, but who can afford a private army?”

  “More people than you think,” Jeremiah muttered. “Hettie?”

  She knew what he was asking. “I can’t conjure Diablo.”

  “I can’t do anything, either,” Ling said.

  “None of us can. It’s the manacles. They’re made of iron.” Walker banged them against the wall of the wagon with a loud clang. “Big metal box, too.”

  “Where are they taking us?”

  “Guess we’re about to find out.” The wagon slowed and came to a sudden standstill. They were wrestled to their feet and marched into a building. Their boots echoed loudly across hard tiled floor.

  Hettie sensed a door opening before her. The smell of decaying flowers tickled her nostrils, sweet and cloying, but sour too. Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and thrust her forward. Then her backside hit a plush seat. The bag was yanked off her head, and she let her eyes adjust to the dim light. Ginger Beard loomed above her, glaring.

  “If you try anything,” he warned, “I’ll be forced to do unpleasant things.”

  As he exited, he pulled the door shut behind him. She was alone. She gazed around the empty parlor. Silks, velvet, and lace covered every surface, leaving no hard edges or empty spaces anywhere. Bowls and vases overflowed with roses of every color in various stages of decay. One vase had only a few skeletal stems with desiccated buds hanging limply from them. The water in some of the bowls had gone fetid, thick with multicolored sludge, or dried up into dusty white rings flecked with mold. A kind of vivid despondency pressed in all around her. It had soaked into the lavish wallpaper and thick pile rugs like a bad smell.

  “I keep it that way because it reminds me that once something has spoiled, it cannot be unspoiled.”

  The throaty rasp made her jump. A figure draped in a rose-patterned shawl sat hunched in a plush armchair, camouflaged against her surroundings. Fine lines radiated from a benign smile on a round face. Soft white curls streaked with gray flowed down her back from a loose chignon. “Welcome.” Her dark, rheumy, violet-rimmed eyes made Hettie uneasy. The woman seemed to be looking straight into her, and it made the back of her neck prickle. She reached out for Diablo again, but it didn’t come. The knot in her stomach tightened.

  “You’re looking for this?” The old woman produced the Devil’s Revolver from beneath her shawl. The hands that held the gun were as gnarled as the shriveled roses.

  Hettie struggled for composure. “Where are my friends?” she demanded with more bravado than she felt. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “There’s no need to work yourself up, Miss Alabama. All those answers will come in time. But first, you must eat.” She picked up a tiny silver bell and gave it a tinkle. A moment later, a servant came in bearing a covered silver platter. He set it in front of Hettie and lifted the lid, revealing a piping hot roast beef dinner dripping with gravy, the bright green peas rolling in a sea of butter and the mashed potatoes piled high like fluffy clouds. Despite having eaten earlier, Hettie’s stomach groaned.

  “Miss?” The servant nodded, his expression inscrutable. “If you’ll sit forward, I’ll unbind your hands.”

  She stared. What kind of prisoner was she? She let the man undo her manacles, and she rubbed her wrists as he exited, taking the cuffs with him.

  “Eat.” The old woman nodded. “Cook will be very upset if you let it get cold.”

  “Where are my friends?” She might have reached for the knife for her own protection, but the impulse was stifled, like a fire being smothered by a damp cloth. Powerful suppression spells were at work here.

  “I promise you, they’re all fine,” the woman reassured her. “You see, Sophie is my granddaughter.”

  Granddaughter? She blinked at the woman. “You’re Patrice Favreau. You’re the Soothsayer of the South.”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Please, eat. It distresses me to see such a thin girl.”

  Hettie balked. She reached out for Diablo again, but still it did not respond to her call.

  “I wouldn’t poison you or hurt you, if that’s your fear.” Patrice tilted her chin to one side. “There’s no
reason for you to be afraid of me.” She folded her hands over the gun, as if withholding a toy from a child until she cleaned her plate.

  Hettie wasn’t about to attack an old woman, especially considering Ginger Beard’s threat. She picked up the fork and knife and cut into the slab of meat. The first piece melted on her tongue, the juices bursting forth. Memories of her mother’s holiday roasts blossomed in her mind. She took another bite and thought of her father, whittling by the fire. A third bite brought Abby’s laughter to mind. Hettie ravenously devoured the rest of the dinner, not caring anymore that the woman had Diablo, not caring where her friends were or even where Abby was. Memories as sweet and succulent and real as the roast warmed her through and through, and as she swiped up the last of the potatoes and gravy, tears began streaming down her cheeks. She wiped them away hastily, holding back an inexplicable sob. The plate was so empty. There was nothing left…

  “It’s all right,” the soothsayer said. “It’s not a weakness to cry in front of an old woman like me. You can put up a brave face for the others, but here you’re safe to show your true feelings.”

  A hiccup burst from Hettie’s mouth, and suddenly she was bawling into the fine linen napkin laid across her lap. Wordless cries poured from her. She didn’t even know why she was crying, only that she was so tired, and letting go of this grief was such a relief. She hadn’t realized what a weight she’d been carrying.

  “There, there. It’s all right.” A hand brushed against her damp cheeks as the last of her sobs dissipated. Patrice flipped a small lever on her wheelchair armrest down, braking the device. The thing used Mechanik technology, apparently. “I’m sorry to admit I did have to slip you a little something to help ease your emotional block. But I could see you needed the release.”

  Hettie didn’t have the heart to be angry. She did feel better.

  She peeked at the revolver in the old woman’s lap, swallowing past a lump in her throat.

  “It’s yours, of course,” Patrice said, glancing down. “But I wonder whether you know how or why.”

  “I didn’t mean to bond with it. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” Hettie blew her nose. The fine napkin was utterly ruined. “I wasn’t supposed to open the box…”

  “But you did. You can’t change that.” She gathered the gun in her cupped palms and placed it in Hettie’s hands. “You belong to it as much as it belongs to you. You are each other’s keepers.”

  “I don’t understand. No one else I’ve met can hold Diablo, so why can you? And why didn’t it come back to me when I tried to conjure it?”

  “Perhaps it simply knows who to trust.”

  “You talk about it as if it were a person.”

  A secretive smile tipped her lips up. “In a way, it is. A mage gun like Diablo is more than simply an enchanted weapon, just as a horse is more than a means of conveyance.” Her eyes flickered. “Do you know how soothsaying works?”

  Hettie shook her head.

  Her eyes closed. “When a soothsayer scries, we delve into the threads of life, see the past, the present, the future, the tangles they make, the knots they tie, and all the loose ends dangling from the great web. Simple objects don’t have threads—they just are. But Diablo has a thread of its own. In your gun, I can see history, personality, and beyond that, a yearning for greatness.”

  Hettie glanced down at the gun, then back at the soothsayer. “You know something about mage guns?”

  “Marcus, my head of security, owns a pair.” Her eyes canted toward the door. She must’ve meant Ginger Beard. “I admit I wanted to see the legendary Devil’s Revolver for myself, but now that my curiosity has been sated, we can get down to business.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hettie was immediately on alert.

  “I called my granddaughter to come visit because I knew she would run into you and bring you here. It was one of the last visions I had before the darkness came. You see, I have a message to deliver.” Her dark eyes with their violet rings widened slightly. “Your sister, Abby, is alive.”

  Hettie shot to the edge of her chair. “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “I’m not always certain of the things I see, but this was not a customary circumstance. You see, she reached out to me.”

  Hettie pressed a tight fist against her lips as fresh tears stung her eyes. So it was true. Abby could speak to people across long distances. And she’d reached out to the most powerful soothsayer in the country.

  “I take it this is a good piece of news to you?” Patrice asked.

  Hettie nodded, eyes hot. The skeptical part of her wondered if she was being manipulated, but she couldn’t think of any reason why this woman would lie. “I thought I was crazy. She showed me where she was…”

  Patrice nodded slowly, a sad smile on her face. “I should mention,” she said, “that I do not usually give information away for free, Miss Alabama. This is my livelihood, after all. But I know you must have some questions. I will answer them if I can.”

  Hettie was too impatient to hear more about Abby to care what the price would be. “Where is she? I’ve seen her in a dungeon, and we’re sure she’s somewhere in Arizona—”

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried to find her, but…” Patrice shook her head. Hettie sagged in her chair. The old woman ventured, “You’ve had visions?”

  “I think so. I’m not gifted, but these were too real to be dreams.” She told her about Walker’s theory that Abby had been reaching out to her, and about what they’d discovered about her whereabouts through Ling. Then she remembered how she’d thought she first heard Abby’s voice calling to her when she’d gone back to the ranch with Uncle. Patrice listened intently as she told her everything. “I also spoke to the spirit of an Indian woman and met a dream walker while we were traveling through Wyoming. And then, back in Hawksville, I think I had a premonition of some kind. I knew what was going to happen before it happened, and I stopped it. Same thing happened just now, in Barney’s Rock.” She rubbed her temples. “I’m not going crazy, am I? The elders never found a trace of the gift on me.”

  Patrice contemplated the matter. “Diablo may be lending you some of its power. But you say you heard your sister talking to you before you bonded with the Devil’s Revolver?”

  “When I was back on my ranch. Uncle said I was grieving…” Her nails bit into the napkin. “I thought she was by the stream, so I went there. I heard her. I know I did.” She paused. “Abby said she could hear her friends better when she stood in the creek. Walker said some people can talk over great distances. Is it possible…?”

  “That she is one of those precious few? I would say most definitely. As for the creek, there are a great many mysteries we’ve yet to discover about the land and its magical gifts, but we’ve killed off so many of its custodians, lost its secrets to time and to arrogance…” She shook her head.

  “Maybe the Division has the answers,” Hettie said, unsure of herself. Patrice scowled.

  “The Division doesn’t have half the answers it thinks it does. Don’t trust them, Hettie. I had all my gifted children and grandchildren privately trained for a reason. The Academy has become nothing more than a mill for government sorcerers.”

  She tucked that warning away. “So … Abby could be something else?”

  “Possibly. Other cultures may have come across children like Abby and the dream walker you met, but I imagine we’ve lost more knowledge about magic than we’ve ever been able to learn. One way or another, your sister is obviously a unique potential.”

  Hettie bit her lip. “She said she’s talked to our brother, Paul. Our dead brother, I mean.”

  Patrice took this in and closed her eyes. “The simple fact that she managed to reach out to both of us tells me she is something no sorcerer in our time has ever encountered before. But it is you I am more interested in right now.”

  “Me?”r />
  The old soothsayer released the catch on her chair, and it moved on silent wheels, guided by some unseen force. Hettie heard a puff of air and a slight whirring noise as the chair turned to a desk on the opposite side of the salon. “You said you’ve never had visions before, never been sensitive or gifted. But Diablo has bonded with you in a way few bond with objects of power. I do have a theory about these visions of yours, Miss Alabama.”

  She raised her chin, lips pressed tight. “Don’t think me rude for asking, but … have you, by any chance, made a deal with the devil?”

  Hettie stared. “The devil? No. Why would I…? How could I possibly…?” She tripped over the words tumbling through her head, none of them landing on her tongue. Did she even believe in the devil? She supposed she believed in God, for all the times He’d ignored her prayers to help Ma and Abby get better. Or maybe she didn’t believe, and the devil was all there was…

  “I don’t mean to inspire a crisis of faith, Miss Alabama,” Patrice said softly. “In magical terms, the forces I speak of are likely more complicated than good and evil, God and Satan. For our purposes, though, I do mean ‘the devil’ as you see in the good book—horns, tail, and all.”

  Patrice rolled the chair to a desk where an old leather-bound tome lay. The act of even opening the cover looked laborious. “Before they called themselves the Kukulos, the old practitioners of blood magic used to cut out pieces of their souls so they could be filled with dark power.” The thick vellum pages crinkled as she turned them slowly. “Men and women would sometimes bring themselves to the brink of death to pay homage to the Dark One and trade pieces of themselves—or others—for power.” She held the book out to Hettie.

  A gruesome woodblock print depicted an enormous black gate, cracked open to reveal myriad tentacles grasping for the tiny human figures standing by the entryway, arms raised in supplication, their eyes pure black, like holes in the page. The shadow of some great beast loomed beyond the gate.

  Butch Crowe’s scarred, demonic face flashed across Hettie’s mind. The air was suddenly too close, too hot, and the blackness of the ink seemed to suck her into the pages as a roar filled her ears. A cold sweat broke over her brow, and she snapped the book shut.