by Brenda, Lady
Dahlia’s eyes went wide. “The Zombie!” She and Esmeralda pulled out their pistols. The other passengers, two men and two women, either took out guns or held on for dear life.
A hail of bullets whizzed over the stage, across the backs of the galloping team and drilled into the coach. Lightfoot and his shotgun rider looped the reins over their arms, cocked and fired at their pursuers.
One of his bullets grazed the rump of Big Jim’s horse causing it to buck. Big Jim an indifferent rider at best was thrown over its head where he rolled into a ditch at the side of the road. The other riders scrambled to avoid crushing him under their horses’ hooves. Peabody wrenched his poor beast to a halt. He cursed foully. He pulled out his Sharps buffalo gun from the leather boot and steadied it over the pommel of his saddle. With his one good eye he squinted down the sight then fired.
The load from the buffalo gun blasted William Lightfoot from his perch like the kick of a mean mule. He fell sideways taking his shotgun rider with him. They bounced off the back of the right wheel horse and then into the road. The team panicked and bolted out of control. The stagecoach began to fishtail and crash from side to side. In a matter of seconds it hit a tree stump and went airborne. When it slammed back on the ground it teetered to one side then rolled over. The cross braces splintered and the frightened team broke free and ran on without it.
The passengers screamed. Esmeralda was thrown through the window, out of the coach and onto the road. Stunned, with the breath knocked out of her, she could hear the sound of the stagecoach crash as it rolled over and over.
Her vision went completely black. She slid off the cliff of consciousness. Then, as if coming out of a long tunnel, she heard the voice of Annie.
“Get up gal! Get up!
She struggled to fill her lungs with air. When she opened her eyes the dark figure of Lance Peabody loomed over her. She tried to move, to scramble away, but her limbs would not obey her. A heavy boot came down on her stomach pinning her to the rough ground.
“Ya ain’t going nowhere’s, Devil’s Whore.”
Esmeralda blinked, through blurred vision she saw Big Jim come up beside Peabody. He was covered with dirt and a large goose egg sized bump was forming on his forehead.
“Dev…Devlin will kill you,” she gasped.
He grinned. “Not so high and mighty now Miss Esmeralda Jones. Your nothing but a fancy piece of ass, bait for that friggin’ gambler Devlin Winter.”
Anger gave her strength and she squirmed out from under Peabody’s boot and scrambled to her feet. She pulled a knife from her garter and drove it into Peabody’s bloody eye patch.
He roared like a wounded bear but still managed to grab a fistful of her hair.
“Bitch!” He knocked her to the ground then loaded her limp body over the pommel of his saddle like a sack of grain and, he and Big Jim, headed back to Virginia City.
In the stagecoach, underneath the pile of broken and moaning bodies lay Dahlia. She pushed the dead weight of a man off of her. A well-dressed gentleman, whose neck had been snapped like a twig, she rolled him to the side so she could move. Her right shoulder was wet with blood where a giant wooden splinter pierced it. She grimaced with pain as she pulled the bloody splinter out. She needed strength and she needed to feed. Through the shattered door of the upside down coach she could see that evil sack of shit, Peabody loading Esmeralda onto his horse. A faint moan came from one of the women passengers. Dahlia did not need to think twice. She crawled over to woman, ripped open her high necked gown, then she bit into her neck and sucked furiously.
When Devlin, Walking Ghost and Jimmy reached the train station it proved to be a dead end. They discovered the two women had not boarded the train for Carson City. Furious, but at the same time baffled, Devlin was overwhelmed with a sense of urgency. He had no time to retrace his steps. At any moment Peabody and Big Jim could have their foul hands on his Angel. He had to think calmly. There were only two ways out of Virginia City, the north towards Reno and the south to Carson City, and then on to San Francisco. If they had not travelled by train they must have caught the stagecoach.
He swung himself back up on Mephistopheles’ back. “Mount up, if we hurry we can catch the stage at Silver City.”
Jimmy and Walking Ghost did not say a word. They both mounted up as well and the trio charged down the street towards Gold Hill and Silver City.
Minutes later, when they galloped down the hill past Silver City to the open road, they spied the overturned stagecoach. Devlin’s heart contracted as they got closer and closer to the broken and ruined heap. He pulled his stallion to a halt. Bodies lay strewn and bloodied. Some people lay partially in and others partially out of the collapsed Concorde coach.
He dismounted and kneeled down to examine the bodies. They were all dead. He could not see Esmeralda or Dahlia. He stood up and looked back down the road. A rustle in the nearby bush made him draw his gun.
“Come out! Come out or I’ll pepper you with lead!”
A pale face poked through the brush.
“Don’t shoot, it’s me Lord, it’s Dahlia”
“Damnation Dahlia! What happened here?”
As Dahlia squeezed through the brush he noticed her strange attire, the costume of a Chinese woman. He also noticed the large bloody stain over her right breast but ignored it.
Her gaze met his.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“She’s been taken by the Zombie and that peckerwood Big Jim.”
Devlin grasped her arm. Which way did they go?”
“They went to the mine. Ain’t no other way for them’s ta go.”
Devlin lifted Dahlia up and set her behind Jimmy on his sturdy mare. He could not leave her on the road and there was nothing that could be done for the other passengers of the stage. He would send help back later.
They pounded back to Virginia City.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Eater of Souls
Grandfather Woo had seen the face of the Dragon Demon, before his sons were born, in his native China.
When he had come of age he had taken the vows, secret vows of the Dragon Guardians, to protect the human race from such evil. He had prepared his sons and schooled them in the warrior arts however, with the exception of his deceased son Hop, they had never seen the Demon Dragon. He sensed they were about to have that experience now.
He needed a glimpse into the future.
He sat cross legged in front of the altar. It had been set up in the corner of his private quarters for the goddess Quan Yin. He lit several sticks of incense. As always in her silent intuitive way his wife Ming hovered in the background. She brought him a tiny porcelain cup filled with bitter tea. Tea made from the Mandrake root and a powerful hallucinogenic. Unlike the opium flower, which Grandfather Woo never touched, its properties brought visions without the curse of addiction.
“Are you sure my husband? I do not always trust this root, you may risk your health.”
“It is worth the risk to see what is in the Dragon’s mind.”
They had been together a long time so she voiced her inner thoughts. “Is it no use to argue with such a stubborn old man?” she asked.
“It is no use.”
She reluctantly handed him the cup. He downed it swiftly without hesitation.
The scalding bitter liquid burned his tongue.
He closed his eyes.
He saw himself floating down a long tunnel and into the earth where the Dragon slumbered. In a fisheye lens he saw the past and the future converge.
He saw the tendrils of mustard yellow mist as it squeezed through the crevasses and cracks the picks and drills of the miners had created. It crept into the shaft and roiled over the bloody scattered bodies. The mist sipped delicately at the fresh bloody gore to nourish the demonic beast that lay curled, waiting, in its dark tomb. Its strength grew and it took the form of a half demon, half human creature. It was winged and scaly with eyes of fire. As ancient and dreadful as when it firs
t passed through the gates of a Babylonian Ziggurat, five thousand years ago.
A day in which the first vampire was created, a dark, handsome prince with black eyes and hair, a sorcerer named Enshunu an unholy dabbler in the arcane mysteries of life and death, a fearsome despot, who ruled his kingdom through the practice of dark magic, sacrifice and the aid of demons.
In exchange for immortal life he had made his own bloody forfeit to the Babylonian demon Gallu and freed it from its dark prison where it was condemned to live in the depths of the earth. A pact of blood was sealed over the fertile body of Enshunu’s virgin bride. Enshunu gained eternal life but in return was cursed to drink the blood of humans to live. The demon was then able to walk freely on earth laying waste to all living things at will. Villages were wiped out, crops were burned and it soon became apparent that if not checked it would soon decimate the population of Babylon.
At midnight on the night of the blood moon during a lunar eclipse when the seven major planets were perfectly aligned. Enshunu climbed the steps of the Ziggaurat. A slave bearing a covered basket followed him. At the top of the stone structure at the very entrance of the portal he laid a fire in the brass brazier atop the altar. Clouds began to pass over the moon and he raised his head to the sky.
“Marduk, King of the Gods, I invoke thee,
Lend your fiery sword of vengeance to this,
My curse on the Demon Gallu, Eater of Souls,
To bind him, damn him and his minions to the putrid depths of the Abyss,
From this, night forth and for all eternity, for ever and ever.”
The flames of the brass brazier shot up turning it a bright blue. Thunder clapped and a jagged bolt of lightning struck the stone altar. Enshunu motioned to his slave to come forth. The slave bowed his head and held up the basket. Enshunu reached into the covered basket and lifted up a swaddled infant with snow white skin and red eyes. He showed no emotion as he tossed the infant into the fire of the brazier.
An unholy, ear splitting, screech filled the air.
The portal cracked open and it sucked the fire, and the writhing, burning infant, into it.
Then it slammed shut.
Miles away a huge crevasse opened up and a half human, half demon with the body of a bull and the head of a dragon were consumed into its dark sulfurous depths.
Down, deep down into a dank earthly prison that would forever chain the beast and its other demons to eternity. There they would spend an eternity in which they would bedevil and coerce mankind, and be able to prey upon their greed and evil to set them free.
This was the creature that crouched in the entrails of the Lily Ann. It was the nature of the vampire lord Devlin, like Enshunu before him, to be drawn into such a karmic maze; to create a cosmic chaos and a chain of events of such epic proportions that the beginning and the end were of two sides of the same coin.
The blood of the fallen gave the Dragon strength, in his meditation Grandfather Woo watched as it flexed its scaly limbs and claws. The red glowing eyes opened wide and allowed him to glimpse into terrifying scenarios. Images that made his body jerk painfully and wake from his vision in a cold sweat.
Unbeknownst to all, save Grandfather and Grandmother Woo, the same planetary alignments were to occur as soon as the sun went down this night over Virginia City. Mortal and immortal would bear witness to an event that was set to spell chaos and destruction.
From the other side, Annie with Virgil at her side, gazed into her cauldron. What she saw made her gasp and clutch the medicine bag around her neck. Silently she mouthed the words to send protection to Esmeralda, Devlin and all the people she loved. Her magic was not as strong as Enshunu’s but her belief in love was a fire in her breast and one that she projected with every beat of her heart. She placed a magic root in her mouth and chewed it.
“Great and eternal Mother, White buffalo Woman,” she pleaded. “Bless and protect them that would fight to save the lives of man, those who work on the side of the light. Block the evil, them that harms and confounds, the Hell born demon of the Earth. So that balance and justice shall return to its rightful place”
She had said her piece. Now it was up to Walking Ghost her spirit warrior and his companion Devlin. She knew he had the sand to carry out her wishes, and what he would be able to do, she only hoped for.
In another lifetime Walking Ghost and she had shared the same fate. A spiritual mission had been thrust reluctantly upon them; A dad-burned hornet’s nest of a situation. A battle had commenced between the immortal and the sacrificial lambs. She was not one to hold stock in the Bible however she agreed with some of its writings especially those that foretold the comings of Demons.
Her mammy had been a healer and her mammy’s mammy before her all the way back to the first pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. Some of them had even burned at the stake for nothin’ more than working roots ta heal folks.
She passed her gnarled hand over the cauldron. A mist formed over the water then cleared. She saw Devlin on his black stallion gallop up the mountain towards the mine. Other images flashed through the mist, snippets of the dead miners, Walking Ghost’s feathered lance and Esmeralda in the hands of those two no good varmints.
“Hang on little gal won’t be long now ‘til the reckoning,” she said.
“What of my Queen? Is she safe?” Virgil asked.
Annie chuckled.
“Just you never mind young sir, she done lay some of them to waste. Ain’t nothing fer us to do now but wait.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Descent
Esmeralda swam in and out of consciousness. The blood rushed to her head as she hung over the neck of Peabody’s horse. The pommel of the saddle bit into her side bruising her recently injured ribs. When they finally came to a halt and he pulled her down from the saddle her legs gave out and she sank helplessly to the ground. She gasped for breath.
Big Jim grabbed the collar of her tunic and pulled her up. “Get up whore, I’ve got something special planned for you.”
Esmeralda opened her eyes. She saw they stood at the entrance of a mine. The gaping dark hole in the earth beckoned like the foul mouth of a corpse.
She could not go down there!
She struggled with the rope around her wrists and dug in her heels only to be cuffed again by the beefy fist of Lance Peabody.
Big Jim chuckled. “A real spitfire. We’ll see how much pepper you have left after we’re through with you.”
Esmeralda vowed she would not give in to fear. She felt Annie’s presence at her side. She could see in her mind’s eye Devlin galloping towards her.
Her furious green eyes stared at Big Jim. She gave a hoarse laugh. “Everything you do will fail! Devlin will cut your heart out. He is not of this world so prepare to die a horrible death.”
The blood rose in Big Jim’s already florid face. At his side Peabody scowled. He shook Esmeralda like a rag doll.
“I ain’t seein’ no reason ta let her live, she won’t give us no trouble daid.”
“No! We need her alive. Just do as I say and take her down to the pit.”
Peabody shrugged. He twisted Esmeralda’s hair and pulled her head back. Then pulled a rag out of his coat and gagged her.
“That will stop her yappin’ til we silence her fer good.” He gestured to his crew to follow him. “C’mon, you heard the boss. Let’s go.”
After a few steps Lance came to an abrupt stop. Inside the entrance to the mine was a small bloody mound of decapitated heads!
“Son of a friggin’ bitch!” he yelled. “ I aim ta murder that bloodsucker Devlin! Slit his gullet fer good.” With the toe of his boot he kicked the mound and scattered the gruesome remains.
Esmeralda nearly fainted when she saw the horrific display. “Oh God! Devlin?”
Peabody chuckled. “Yeah, it was that bloodsucking pimp of yours that done it!”
Oblivious to it all Big Jim pushed past them into the tunnel. Peabody pushed Esmeralda ahead of him and fol
lowed on Big Jim’s heels. Big Jim babbled. His fat face sweating and skin pasty with fear.
“Someone’s been here. Hurry we must get down to the mine. The drilling must continue. They can’t stop!”
“Shut yer trap, Diamond, We still got us some men and this thing is just getting warmed up,” Peabody said. He jerked Esmeralda forward half dragging her into the mine.
Esmeralda was then crowded into the lift between the reeking bulk of Lance Peabody and the corpulent body of Big Jim. Her mouth felt sandpaper dry, stuffed and gagged with the dirty bandana. The deeper they descended the hotter it became. The dark silks she wore clung to her body like a second skin. The air was foul and sulfurous. She tried to shut her ears against the incessant hammering sound that came from within. She knew she must stay alert, be ready to run when Devlin came with his guns blazing.
Meanwhile from his hiding place in the bushes at the side of the road, under the noses of both Big Jim and Devlin, Grandfather Woo’s grandson Yang snuck quickly away. He unhitched his donkey and galloped the poor beast as fast as its short legs would fly up the hill to Virginia City and Chinatown. When he arrived at the Herbalist Shop Grandfather was sitting in a willow rocker on the tiny front porch. Yang hopped off his donkey and bowed to his grandfather. His throat closed on his words and he just stared at the ground
“Well, Yang, what is it? Speak up!”
Yang took a deep breath then his words came tumbling out.
“Grandfather I did as you requested, I delivered the white women to the stage safely, but the opium eater and his men attacked the stage. They took the one with the fire colored hair.”
For a moment Grandfather did not say anything, just puffed on his pipe. He put his hand on Yang’s shoulder. “You did well grandson, go inside, grandmother will give you some food.”
When his grandson had left Grandfather went to his son Kuong’s house next door. What he had hoped to avert was not possible now. Not when Big Jim had Devlin’s woman in his hands. He knocked on Kuong’s door.