Strange Dominion

by Lyons, Amanda M.

  I came by most of my training through my grandfather, his hard face stern as he made it clear that I was to watch and listen, observing the world closely so that it did not devour me in its shadow, but remaining enough a part of it that I was also a piece of its light. He said it was especially important for those born to the crow path, the crow possessing the powers of spirit, magic, and mystery and being very fond of mischief. He said that it meant I was wise, observant, intuitive, but that it also meant I was capable of manipulation and too readily connected to the dead. The crow is as much an omen as a boon, as foolishly proud as he was fearless.

  Being observant will do the most good in this profession, a little agility and quick reflexes will just make it that much more effective. I’m not afraid to play the odds either, but I guess you mighta known that.

  Anyway, I’d been working at the bounty game for a good number of years, it was something I was good at, and I had a solid reputation among the sorta men that hired others to do the dirty work. So I got called in by Mr. Volkov- well, his associate, a man named Dr. Dillers I’d dealt with before, who liked the work though he wasn’t terribly fond of my origins- to handle Agnieszka. He didn’t have a lot to tell, though I didn’t need much to see he was scared of her, whatever she was to him. His eyes darted, wet and fearful in his face as he spoke, kept his voice low too, as if she might hear him. That struck me as unusual, if there was one thing men of his sort seemed to think universally, it was that women were weak and prone to needing taken care of more than they needed minding. I knew better, but then I’d been raised to. My mother was strong, like many of the women of my village, and she saw a great deal more than many, just like Grandfather. You pay attention, you learn a lot about things, especially people. Men who were afraid of women had reason to be. So what was his reason?

  “Mr. Volkov, what are you sendin’ me into with this woman of yours? What am I facin’?”

  His eyes darted some more as he though, clearly he was uncertain, afraid and reliving whatever it was that had him scared. He spoke soon enough though, his accent strong, but his words clear, he’d learned to be clear; you had to be out here with the impatient and those prone to violence.

  “She came from outside my village, she lived alone there and we minded our business when it came to her. Her whole family was dead, every single one of them, and they died bad. We didn’t talk to her and she didn’t talk to us, not unless she needed something.” He was keeping it simple, not telling me everything.

  “She came to town the day we gathered the men going to get on the ship. You know how it is, the men go first, make the money and get things going for their families, then send for them when all is ready. She didn’t have nobody, just her and her trunk. The women looked at each other not liking her going with a bunch of men, but not wanting to say anything about it either. We left her alone out there. The men though, they didn’t want her on board, said it was bad luck. After a lot of arguing I spoke up and said they should let her go. It would mean new life for her, one less worry in the village. So she went.

  “On the ship it was hard, the men we paid were not good to us, fed us spoiled food and did not care we got sick from it. We were traveling with the cold and only whatever we wore and a few meager blankets to keep us warm. We were miserable and homesick. Filthy and unable to wash. There was little we could find comfort in, some of the men blamed her, said it was her bad fortune working its magic on us. Bad as it was, the belief spread. The other men, they wanted to make her pay for what she had done to us. I did not agree, so I did not know until they were already acting out their vengeance.

  “She was screaming, that’s how I knew. I came up on deck, the sea shifting and moving the ship so that it swayed here and there. Some of the other men, not all, not all because some of us were honorable- they had her spread out on the deck, her clothes torn away and her body exposed to the elements. She struggled and wailed, the men had been taking turns with her, beating her and fucking her there. It was clear the crew didn’t care, thought it was an amusement and let it happen. Me and the other men, we told them what beasts they were, what monsters for doing that to her when she had trusted us. They must’ve been done with it by then; they did not question us for our words, just laughed and walked away. I went to her then and I helped her up, I gave her my coat and she looked at me, she’d never done that before, I’d never really looked at her in the village, never seen how dark her eyes were, glittering and deep. There was nothing there, an absence but for the hate she bore the men.

  “The bad came later that night, the sea swirling and roaring all around us. Laugh at us as they might, the crew needed us to keep the ship from capsizing and drowning us all. She sat watching us, her eyes almost glowing in the dark, and did not move from where she sat though everything on the deck was rocking and moving all around us. Looking at her I almost began to believe their claims that she was bewitched. Swells came and went, it was a hard battle and it did not get better, we lost three of the village men as we fought to keep the ship from tossing us all. Their ropes had snapped the ones we had been using to tie us to the mast for grounding. You cannot know how it was to have to let them wash away, their plea for rescue cut short by the sea sucking them down into it. To watch her mouth turn up with pleasure as she sat watching it all.

  “I had fought for her, I had asked for her to be there and she did not care. I could only see the cold in her now, as dark and consuming as Siberian winter. Over the remaining days of our journey we lost others, the storms rarely relented and so it was a miracle that any of us arrived in England at all. We had begun our journey with 30 men and her, I’m not sure how many members were in the crew but I know they lost men as well. They were glad to be rid of us in the end, they’d begun laughing at us, starving and making us sick, and now they had paid for it, though we helped them to survive as well. By then they thought she was bewitched too.

  “There were 16 men left now, us and her. I was the only one that would stay with her in our rooms, walk with her in the streets, none of the others dared and I had begun to be afraid. Only duty and my honor kept me to my task and even then she would disappear from my sight. Many times her disappearances coincided with the sudden disappearance of one of the men- even some who were not a party to her attack. I began to ask myself if it was worth it to keep to my honor, if I should let her stay behind in London when at last the next ship would come for this final journey to America. I told myself that would not be right or honorable, that I could not blame her for her hate if it was indeed she who took them and not an extraordinary stroke of bad luck. I decided to keep her in the end; I could not know what would befall either of us who were left.

  “Weeks passed on that journey, even longer than the one to England, and we had not fully recovered from the poor diet and strain of that previous journey. At first I attributed their paleness and weak constitution to that, but…when we found them, one at a time and spread out over the course of the journey… they were as husks. No blood, no fluids left in them at all. Mummies, dead things which seemed never to have been alive, you have no idea how it was for us. To know a man and speak to him one day and then another to find him as if he had been dead long before he had ever been born. The first were not like this at all, but as the journey carried on there were more and more of them and it was always while she was there. On the ship, perhaps in London where we did not find them, and then later, when I arrived in America with her at my side alone. We two were all that were left from our village.

  “It did not stop there. No, in the city where I worked and provided for us though she was not my wife, it was the same, so that when I learned of the life to be found here in the west I hired a series of coaches, then wagons to get us here. Every group lost someone, always some man or woman would disappear, and then I knew without a single doubt that I could no longer act as her guardian. I must be away from her once we had arrived somewhere that would be suitable for her. Sick and exhausted, I made my way here, to Thornvill
e, and I made my place, the little shop where I now live with my wife and young children. I gave her money to go her own way, to make her little home in the desert speaking words of encouragement and well wishes for a good life, but in my heart I knew it was wrong to let her go.

  “The disappearances have not stopped, still I hear of wagon trains run afoul of something in the desert, of men and women lost to whatever it is…and I feel the weight of it, of knowing that it was always my failure to bring her to justice, to end this nightmare. I am weak, you see, I am weak and I am a coward, and now I must act because it has cost me my eldest son. I spoke of it to him when we had been at work one night, putting away the stock for the store when it was quiet. I had been drinking and spoke of it, shaking like a weak old woman as I spoke. He was ashamed of me for that, the fear, for not acting, but he also knew that my honor was what had saved my life so that he could be here at all. I loved my son, I loved him with every shred of my being and now he is gone, gone for weeks with no sign. He left that night, he left to do what I could not do and now I have lost him.

  “I am a coward, I am weak, but Dr. Dillard says you are not, that you are known for your skill in such things. I saved my money, I stored it away, and I had him send for you. If you will do this thing for me I will pay you and you will always have my appreciation for doing what I could not.” He quivered even now, his eyes wet with unshed tears for his boy, and he looked at me with pleading eyes, all of his words having spilled out at once. Bounty hunters aren’t known for their sympathy, or even a shred of empathy, but I could understand his need all the same. A man puts his hope and his future into his sons, losing them is like losing himself. Suddenly life has a lot less purpose and a man without purpose has no idea what to do with whatever time he has left.

  “I’ll do it as long as you’ll pay me in the end. I don’t know about your story, I’m sure you know how farfetched it is, but I’m in this job for the pay and the challenge not to play hero. Point me in the right direction and I’ll be on my way.”

  He told me she was out west of the town, she’d taken up residence in the rocky parts up that way without ever telling anybody where she actually lived, figured that was for the best until he’d heard the stories and then lost his son to them. It wasn’t much of a lead but I was good at my job and I figured his story was mostly story outside of if the boy got to be a pain and she’d taken him out to keep him out of her way. I’d heard of beings who could do magic, I was the grandson of a Shaman, after all, but that also meant that I knew men could be fearful beasts and easily manipulated to think of the supernatural when it gave sense and reason to a circumstance with little of either.

  Night was falling by the time I got out far enough for much tracking and I was smart enough to know that it was better to make camp than try and track by the moon and stars no matter how bright. I made camp within the confines of some rocks, ones that left me only one side to guard if I needed it. I wasn’t going to be able to hide a fire completely, but I could be well prepared if I chose camp wisely. I ate, emptied out, and had a good walk around the area to be sure of my surroundings before I settled in, both my gun and my knife close at hand. I awoke to find myself eye to eye with the woman herself, the weight of her pressing down into me as she looked into my eyes with her own.

  I was not surprised in many ways, not after his story, farfetched as it was. He was right, her eyes were dark, like a night sky trapped inside of her skull, blue black like crow’s wings, her hair just as dark as it fell all around us, her hands like sharp claws digging into my shoulders as she pinned me there and her heavy breasts just out of reach of my chin, heaving as she breathed her anger into my face.

  “He sent you, didn’t he?” She had the same accent as Volkov, though deeper somehow, resonant. “He sent you to look for his boy or to do what he never did. I knew it would come, the day he would betray me in his honor’s name. None of them ever cared what happened to me, it was sweet to pretend that he did for a while, though I could taste his fear coming off of him no matter how I made it clear I would not take him as I did the others.”

  I didn’t speak, it wasn’t my job to reassure or confirm her suspicions, it was my job to kill what I was sent toward. I looked back into those dark eyes and I looked for some gap in her resolve with my body, everyone has some small part of their body that offers a weakness, a way to get in and take control. Her weight was centered on my upper body. It wasn’t a bad idea to think that would do, most of the time it’s the part men use to gain the upper hand, we reach for weapons, punch, slam, and shove that way, but I also kicked like a mule. It wasn’t hard to shove with my upper body, enough to distract her, and then shift around just enough to bring my right knee straight up into her crotch and drop her off me as she fought off the pain. The pelvis is a sensitive area for all, not just men.

  She lashed out as she fell, and got a good swipe across my cheeks, but I managed to roll aside and out of her personal space just the same. I was on my feet a moment later as she laid on the ground, angry and glaring up at me. I could feel the tickle of blood coming down my cheek, she had claws, Aggy, good strong ones, and that was the least of her weapons. I’d gotten a good taste of those, but she hadn’t shown me the rest of it, not yet. She knew she still had the upper hand though; my weapons lay within inches of her, tucked up near the pack I’d been sleeping against while I stood with no weapons but those afforded me by nature a few feet away, close to the heat of the fire. Stinging from my attack, and angry, she stood just the same.

  “Volkov doesn’t know the half of my story, doesn’t know what it is he’s sent you to slay. I let him live because he was good to me despite himself, offered me safety and a future though he knew I must be the one who took the others, murdered them for my own needs. I had to honor that. If you understood even a shred of it, if you were more than just one more murdering man who wanted to leave me dead for standing on my own two feet, for living my own life outside of their rules I would bother, but you’re not. So I won’t waste any more words. If you want to slay me, you’ll have to work at it and you won’t have these to do it with.”

  With that, she had shot out into the night, her long legs carrying her away so impossibly fast that I did not know what she meant until I saw she had gone with my pack. This did not give me pause, however, I was a real bounty hunter, a man who knew how to make a weapon of my mind and body as much as my tools, so I went out after her. Following her trail without my horse so I could see her tracks, tracks which grew stranger as I followed them. While at first there had been the usual tracks of running feet, hers larger than most women, these soon grew smaller, more like sharpened blades had been driven into the ground at several places than the sharp jab of a running human foot. They were too in line with her trail to ignore all the same, and I was not about to let her keep my weapons or best me out of a job.

  I also loved a challenge. I hadn’t had one in a long time, most of the men I tracked down were easy prey, the sort of assholes that don’t bother to hide and get themselves killed by being reckless and stupid with their cruelty. I could have followed their trails as a small child, and I usually took them out as they slept or got caught up in whatever revelry the usual criminal sort get mixed up in when they’d gotten what they wanted for now. Out in the desert was best, where it was quiet and I could creep, but there had been plenty of whorehouse bounties too, and saloons. This was the first challenging track I had had in a long while, one that changed and shifted, found new paths and places to go that I could barely climb, though I did eventually.

  All of this just made it clear that I was tackling a bounty with plenty of mystery. Aggy had secrets, and she had reasons, ones that were a lot more valid than the ones these others had. We all have reasons for our actions, most are just too foolish to warrant much thought. Agnieszka was more than even Volkov knew though, and I was getting the sense of that as I followed her. I wasn’t buying his story, not yet, not in terms of the supernatural parts. She’d as good as said
she’d killed those men, so I could trust in that.

  It took hours to follow, not the whole night, but a good five hours of it at least, and I was good and curious by the time I’d tracked her to her place. She’d tried to ditch me in several ways. Dragging me through a forest of precarious rock formations like trees that fought good and hard to leave me lost among them, over tall rocks the size of houses that shifted and ran with brittle shale that attempted to dump me to my death, down into deep valleys and over a ravine or two I’d had to jump to cross, and then down into a great cave that dripped and ran with water slick enough to drop me on my ass quite a few times. It was my experiences that saved me, that and my Grandfather’s thorough teachings. Most things came down to observation, caution, and the sense to use both to get you where you were going.

  As I said, she lived in a cave. Strange enough, I suppose. Certainly more so when I saw that she had built a house inside of it. If the cave was an enormous place big enough to house a large town, the house itself seemed to be the exact opposite of that, a tidy little thing with no more than a few rooms, just like any other where the rest of us usually lived, probably little different than the one where she’d lived outside of the village where she’d grown up. I didn’t see her anywhere near the place, but I knew she must be here, the tracks didn’t lie and there was a certain something that made the place stand out even here. It had a foreign look, a taste of her home country bred into her as surely as whatever it was that made her a pariah there.

  I was about to find that out.

  As I observed the place I heard a strange sound, something that made the cave rattle and ring with it. Whatever it was came from the back, beyond the walls of the little house, where it was dark. I carefully crept closer to make it out further, but it didn’t take me long to sort out what it was. Thick white fibers ran over the walls of the cave here, thick and strong. At first I didn’t understand, but then I knew as I looked at them and stopped trying to make them fit something beyond the everyday. I was looking at an enormous spider’s web, one that was different than any I had seen in some ways, but still familiar enough.