by D. J. Butler
Michael’s hands were sweating. On the way back to the truck, he had to joke. “Mon enfant? I thought you’d refer to me as mon ami.”
She laughed and grabbed his hand. “You have a good heart, Michael, if one that’s a bit naïve. We can be friends.” She hugged him.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’m glad you have money so I can help you, Michael. I do honestly enjoy you. You have a good mind, and that is as rare in this world as kindness.” She stepped away and continued to the passenger seat. “I know I’ll take the wheel eventually, but I’ll let you drive this next part.”
He gave the engine gas. The truck tipped up on the ramp, the rocks shifted but didn’t spill, and they bounced and jounced and wrestled their way up onto the slickrock. The stone plane was smooth as far as they could see, though they’d have to avoid water traps and sand pits as well as thickets of grasses growing where the desert had collected enough dirt.
Finally, he stopped. He got out, raced around the back, just as she went around the front. In the cab, she released the handbrake and started forward, driving fast. Faster than Michael had.
“You really want to save him,” Michael said.
“Of course, I do. I like to earn my pay.” She gave him a sizzling smile.
They drove past a blazing stand of trees. The night was too dark for Michael to the see the arch, but he knew they must be close. This was the wash where he and his pap had communicated with the ghost of Jimmy Udall.
Michael gave Diana her orders. “This is it. That fire means pap has to be close. Honk the horn. Flash the lights. Pap will hear the horn, see the lights, and come right to us. I’ll go out to guide him in and give him some cover. And if any of the hunters try for you, I’ll shoot them. Once Pap comes, we’ll jump into the back, and you’ll drive off. Deal?”
“Deal.”
He climbed out of the truck with a flashlight in one hand and the shotgun in the other. He tried hard not to think about the fact that, at best, firearms seemed to be able to knock the wolf-men down, without injuring them. He carried the bolt-action rifle over his back with the strap across his chest, and he stepped into one of the darkest nights of his life.
Why did they call it a new moon when there wasn’t a moon at all?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I will concede this much to your weakness, and to your god of mercy.” Gudmund Gudmundson stepped into view. He had been standing outside the arch, on the steep rock slope, and now stood directly beneath it, squarely facing Hiram. Faintly visible in the starlight, his face and expression seemed wolfish to Hiram. He was naked, except for a belt from which hung an empty knife sheath. “I will give you a moment to compose your soul.”
In his hand, Gudmundson held his silver dagger.
Behind him, in rings of jagged shadows, came the other wolf-men, shaggy and monstrous.
They were visible because the clouds had all dissipated and the stars shone down on the Monument. In particular—could it possibly be an illusion, or a trick of Hiram’s imagination?—Jupiter flooded the Bloomers with its light. Scorpio faded to invisibility in the cool, white, pulsating light of the planet Jupiter, cast horizontally like a web across the red rock.
Hiram shuddered.
A breeze cooled Hiram’s head, and he realized that his hat was gone. Somewhere in the chase he had led across the Monument, it must have blown off.
Hiram dropped the useless bit of charcoal that had once been his torch. “Not worried I’ll cast a spell, or pull a secret holdout pistol and shoot you?”
Gudmundson shook his head. “That’s not your kind of magic, Woolley. And I’ll believe you carry a holdout gun when I see it.”
A cold wind blew across the Monument. In the wash below, Hiram saw the trace of a red glow—the remains of his fire. Farther away, beyond the Monument, a yellow halo on the horizon hinted at the location of Moab.
The only escape route he saw involved jumping down off the promontory of rock that the Bloomers stood on. But even if the wolves didn’t catch him, that was a route that would no doubt end in broken legs, which would then mean being torn to death by Gudmundson and his men.
Unless maybe the chi-rho medallion would save his legs from breaking.
But Hiram didn’t want to test it, not even with the sense he had been freed from his lust. The fire charms had worked well. He didn’t want to press his luck.
“I’ve seen bullets bounce off the hides of Erasmus Green and his fellows,” he said. “I guess I figured that meant you had to be in animal form to get the special bulletproof hide. But then I dulled my blade on your neck, too.”
“Our hides are not always bulletproof.” Gudmundson stood with the planet Jupiter shining directly behind his ear. It gave him a cold halo. The breeze that blew over Hiram’s face seemed to blow directly out of Gudmundson, and the bishop’s eyes were bottomless wells. “The stars strengthen us. God-Jupiter sustains God-Gudmundson.”
“And he was supposed to sustain Lloyd Preece.” Hiram nodded. “But you killed him with his own knife because it was the best way to be sure he wasn’t holding it himself. But he still should have had an impervious hide, because his knife in your hands was an ordinary weapon. Or no…you killed him with your knife, but you took his from him first, because if he wasn’t holding it, Jupiter would do him no good.”
Gudmundson shrugged.
“What did you do?” Hiram asked. “You must have surprised him. Did he think that you and he had a truce, because of the Hoof and Fang, or did he simply believe you were a friend? Did you violate your own cult laws as well as the laws of human hospitality when you disarmed and attacked him?”
“He was leaving,” Gudmundson said. “The breaking of laws was not on my conscience.”
“And who is your lawgiver, then?” Hiram asked. “What repulsive monster do you worship as a god, who gives you power in exchange for killing? Does it have a real name, this demon you love? Or do you only know him by his Jovial mask?”
“As much fun as I think it would be to debate theology with you,” Bishop Gudmundson said, “it’s not what I’m here for.”
“Did you sneak up on Lloyd? Was he relaxed, maybe drinking, an old fellow living alone, and so you sneaked up on a defenseless man and slit his throat in his own home?”
“He was never defenseless,” Gudmundson said, “and he was a traitor.”
“Because he wanted a better life for his grandchildren?”
“There is no better life.” Gudmundson’s voice was fierce. “There is only the Hoof and the Fang, the pack and the herd, there is only this life. Children of the Hoof die, when they are eaten by the pack or when their herd cannot bring them enough to eat. Children of the Fang must also feed. This is true when the wolves run on all four feet, and it is equally true when they stand on their hind legs and wear neckties.”
“So now what?” Hiram asked. “Will one of the other members of the Hoof get himself forged a Jupiter dagger? Will they lock horns over who has the right? Will the demon of the Hoof tell them all who gets to be the new boss? Do you get a say?”
“The herd will choose its leader,” Gudmundson said. “And once it does, I will hunt that man, and all his herd-mates with him.”
“Green knows you killed Preece,” Hiram pointed out. “By now, I’d think the whole herd knows it. You don’t think that’s a problem for you?”
None of the wolf men made a sound. They looked at their leader with bright eyes, waiting.
As for Hiram, he was asking questions, buying time, but what for? The dawn? The cavalry? But there was no cavalry coming.
The bishop’s lips curled into a smirk. “I told Green that I had killed the First of Hoof. That fact only tells them something that they should have known from the beginning, which is that no one leaves the herd, just as no one leaves the pack. That knowledge will only make them fear me more.”
Fear…was that the ultimate weapon or power that the wolves gained? Maybe both sides gained a kind of power. The deer-
men gained the power of wealth, which could ward off hunger and climate and want, and buy influence. The werewolves gained the power to make their enemies fear them.
He would never join such a cult, but Hiram realized that he had a preference. If given a choice between the Hoof and the Fang, he would choose the Hoof.
In the short term, the Fang could win.
In the long term, it must always be the Hoof. For starters, because if the Hoof disappeared entirely, the Fang went with it, while the reverse was not true.
Or did Hiram feel that way merely because herding was reasonably close to farming, and because he kept a little livestock himself?
“If you want to become more powerful, you might try killing someone more impressive than me,” Hiram said. “Frankly, Erasmus Green is a more noteworthy man than I am by almost any account. If you take on the power of the people you sacrifice, killing me is only going to make you a beet farmer.”
“I saw you dowse, Hiram Woolley.” Gudmundson circled slowly about him, like a rattler looking for an opening. The eyes of the other werewolves glimmered. “You were talented and precise, and also moderate and wise in how you interpreted the information. And you fought off Green and his men hand to hand, which makes you brave. And you stuck around town to try to resolve problems that weren’t any of your business, for Adelaide Preece and for the Udalls—that shows that you have a compassionate heart. I admire all those traits of yours.”
“You admire me,” Hiram said, “and therefore you’re going to kill me.”
“And eat you.” Gudmundson grinned.
Behind him, the members of the Fang howled.
The bishop attacked. He darted forward like a rattlesnake, silver knife flashing gray in the gloom. Hiram threw himself right, and Gudmundson pounced sideways, like a spider that could leap in any direction that it wanted. With his left fist, he punched Hiram in the midriff, sending him staggering backward and crashing into the base of the stone arch.
Gudmundson was younger than Hiram by a decade or so, and he was muscular from his work. Still, he was moving way too fast.
Gudmundson punched again, hitting Hiram in the shoulder this time. Hiram hit the rock behind him hard and bounced—as much by force of will as by any native elasticity of his flesh—then ducked, managing to get beneath Gudmundson’s next swing and plant his shoulder in the bishop’s solar plexus.
The air rushed out of Gudmundson’s lungs. In any normal brawl, that blow should have ended the fight, leaving Gudmundson panting in a heap on the floor. But instead of collapsing helpless, Gudmundson gripped Hiram by the back of his overalls, slashed the Jupiter knife at Hiram’s throat, and then threw Hiram over his shoulder.
The slashing attack could easily have killed Hiram, but by a good piece of luck, he got his arms both up in front of his face at just the right moment. The knife slashed through Hiram’s sleeves and cut across his left forearm. The wound burned. Hiram tumbled across the stone.
Only it wasn’t luck that had saved him, but his chi-rho amulet that had put his arm into the right place at the right time to parry the blow.
The chi-rho was working again, and yet Hiram was losing the fight.
He landed on his back, and immediately one of the werewolves pounced upon him. The beast snapped and snarled on all fours almost like a real wolf, teeth cracking together inches from Hiram’s nose. Hiram felt his chi-rho amulet bounce hard into his Adam’s apple—or was it the widow’s bogus Uranus cross, that he had never removed?—and he thrust his wounded left forearm forward, into the beast’s maw.
Foam-flecked slobber spattered into Hiram’s face and the monster sank its teeth into his flesh. He heard screaming far away, and the pounding of feet. Gudmundson was swooping in for the kill.
No, not screaming far away. Hiram himself was screaming.
He ground his teeth against the pain. Two enemies were attacking him at once, which meant he was moments from death if he didn’t act immediately. Reaching up with his free hand, Hiram curled his fingers tightly into the fur on the wolf’s belly—
then heaved.
He meant to pull the beast-man forward and throw it, but he underestimated the size and weight of the monster, which didn’t budge. Still, the force of his muscles contracting dragged Hiram himself beneath the wolf-man, and made him collide with the legs on the monster’s left side. The wolf-man slipped, snarling in anger and surprise, and then howled in pain.
Hot blood spattered Hiram’s hands and neck and the beast collapsed. Hiram tried to haul himself from underneath the mound of fur and destroyed flesh, but it was too heavy—
until suddenly it wasn’t.
Abruptly, Hiram lay beneath the twitching, stark naked body of the ranch hand Clem, spraying blood from his head. Gudmund Gudmundson leaned over the corpse, his hand on the hilt of the dagger sunk into the dead man’s skull.
“You deserve this, Clem,” Gudmundson said.
Hiram rolled from underneath the corpse and dragged himself to his feet. His left arm was torn, but the bleeding wasn’t severe. His entire body, though, shook with pain and exhaustion. The night air of the Monument felt like ice cubes on his skin. He spat, tasting blood—his, or Clem’s?
“You knew he was mine to kill,” Gudmundson said to the body. “Your fool ambition betrayed you. What did you think to gain?”
Clem shuddered one last time and lay still. Gudmundson withdrew the knife. Hiram stared at the sliver of silver in the bishop’s hand—how could he get that weapon away from Gudmundson? It might not do any good for Hiram, but for Gudmundson it cut through the hide of a creature that was impervious to bullets.
“Hunt happily, my pack brother,” Gudmundson said. “You made a mistake, but it was the mistake of a brave man and a true wolf.”
The sound of an automobile horn blared in the wash below the arch. Electric lights flashed, shining on the slickrock slope, suggesting that someone was driving a car up the rock slope. Honk, honk!
How had Hiram missed the sound of an automobile engine approaching?
Whoever it was, they couldn’t possibly be worse than the Fang. Hiram threw himself past Gudmundson and raced down the stone.
Honk!
And then Hiram recognized the horn; it belonged to his own Double-A.
The cavalry had arrived, after all.
Wolves snarled behind Hiram and a howl arose from somewhere on the ridge. Hiram ran straight for the truck, but he heard wolf-men coming up fast behind him.
Boom! Boom!
The sound was louder than Hiram’s revolver—the hunting rifle? A wolf-man sprang past Hiram on his right, bounding toward the truck—Boom! The beast was knocked to the ground, yelping in surprise and annoyance. It wasn’t dead or even wounded, though—like the deer-men the night before, it had been knocked down and maybe stunned at most.
Still, the barking seemed to recede into the distance behind Hiram. He stumbled and fell, rolled and skidded down the rock, and then regained his feet with a helping hand.
The hand was Michael’s, and Michael was pressing the shotgun into Hiram’s grip.
“I couldn’t find your pistol, Pap,” he said. “We might have to go back and look for it. Maybe dowse for it. Can you dowse for a pistol?”
“You can sure try,” Hiram told his son. “Who’s driving the truck?”
“Don’t lose your grip on me if I tell you,” Michael said.
“Mahonri?”
“Diana.”
Hiram could hardly believe it.
The headlights pulled back and turned as the driver backed the truck sideways, preparing to drive away. Before he lost the light, Hiram raised the shotgun to take aim at one of the oncoming wolves. Boom! Knocked backward two steps, the monster darted sideways and out of Hiram’s view.
“I didn’t hear it coming.”
Michael fired at a wolf and then worked the rifle’s action to eject the casing and slide in a new shell. “Maybe you were distracted.”
“How did you know how to find me?”
They both backed toward the truck, watching for wolf-men. Hiram saw the silhouettes of the deer-men, man-shaped, but with racks of antlers sprouting from their elongated skulls. They watched from the heights of the rock ridge to his left. He wanted the deer to rebel and attack the wolves, but that would never happen. That wasn’t the nature of the herd.
Hiram felt a little kinship for the Hoof, but that herd felt nothing for him in return.
Michael snorted. “Because I’m a genius, that’s why. Where else would the Blót be? And, this was where Jimmy Udall was killed by the hunt.”
The truck engine roared.
“Are you in gear?” Michael called, stepping back toward the truck, but Diana was definitely in gear—the Double-A shot away from Hiram and Michael, bounding over humps of sand and through thickets to rattle away down the canyon.
“Hey!” Hiram almost fired at his own truck, to take out one of the wheels, but held back—with a flat tire, the Double-A wouldn’t carry anybody out of the Monument. Instead, he watched as the glow of the headlights whipped down the wash, past the dying embers of Hiram’s barrier fire and then on into deeper canyons.
“Shit!” Michael yelled and slapped at the inside pocket of his jacket. “Dammit!”
“Michael,” Hiram said, “you can still run away. They’re after me.”
Michael shook his head and dropped his voice to a whisper. “No, Pap, listen. You have to get your hands on Gudmundson’s knife. Whatever it does for him, it will do for you.”
Hiram was tired and battered, and didn’t entirely follow. “No, those knives are made for specific people. It will only work for the owner.”
Michael shook his head again. “No, it will work for anyone born while Jupiter was in the same sign as it was when Gudmundson was born.”
“But he’s a younger man…” Hiram trailed off as he started to understand.
“Yeah. About twelve years younger, right? I looked at his chart. Listen, do you know where his knife is?”