The Gunslinger's Man

by Helena Maeve

  His silence was no obstacle to Nyle’s customary needling. “Rough night? Halloran did say you was too worn out for the rest of us.” Nyle let his gaze roam. “Pity… Well, eat up. Show up looking like that and the mayor may change his mind about putting you out of your misery.”

  Asher blinked. “Show up?”

  “Halloran didn’t tell you? You’re heading into town. Big to-do, courtesy of Ambrose himself.” Nyle smirked. “Hope you’ll be feelin’ better by then. Halloran can turn us down all he likes, but Ambrose is in a whole other league.”

  Whether Nyle meant that Ambrose was simply older and therefore more powerful, or that his position gave him rights over other vampires’ property which their peers couldn’t claim, Asher was unable to parse. He wanted to ask if anyone else would be there, if Romero had been summoned, too, but with the gauntlet thrown, Nyle made himself scarce in short order.

  A better question than all the rest, Asher mused as he helped himself to the coffee, was what sort of entertainment a big to-do at the mayor’s house entailed.

  He had all the time in the world to conjure one horrifying scenario after the next. Neither Nyle nor any of the other Riders came to bother him the rest of the day. Now and again, Asher made out the sound of horse hooves pounding the dirt outside his window, but when he peered out—from a distance, still bound to the bed—he could only see dust eddies blown this way and that by a listless wind.

  Even the most grotesque possibilities fabricated by his overactive imagination couldn’t avail him of boredom. Grief alone would not sustain him. Shame had a way of settling in his bones like sediment, whirling to life whenever Asher turned his head.

  Halloran’s bite made its presence felt with stunning frequency.

  Asher was almost relieved when, at dusk, two of Halloran’s Riders came to prepare him. They started with a close shave, which caused Asher to grip the arms of his chair so tightly he thought they might break, and continued with dressing him. One of them was naturally Blackjack, a familiar sight since that day in the saloon. The other, her hair plaited neatly and features hard in the half-light, surprised Asher by proving to be a vampiress.

  “Why isn’t Halloran doing this?” Asher asked, gritting his teeth through the indignity of having someone else pull his pants up.

  Neither Rider answered.

  “You two been invited to Ambrose’s shindig?”

  No reply passed their lips, nor did any reaction crease their impassive features. He might as well have been talking to the walls.

  “Your boss is a son of a bitch and I hope to God he burns,” Asher ventured.

  Blackjack slapped him upside the head so hard Asher could’ve sworn he felt his brain rattle around in his skull.

  “Watch it.” There was a growl in the vampiress’s voice.

  Blackjack blew out a sharp, indignant breath, but obediently went back to the task of trussing Asher up into a waistcoat. A simple canvas affair, its brass buttons were in bad need of a polish and the seams pulled sharply if Asher tried to breathe into his belly. It, like rest of his outfit, was what Uncle Howard would have called work-wear.

  Asher buried a soft pang at the thought and tried to take comfort in the fact that at least both waistcoat and pants were black. The shirt cuff nearly but not quite concealed his bruised right wrist. The collar scratched at the barely scabbed bite on his neck, doing far more to remind Asher that it was there than help take his mind off it.

  “Boy, you clean up good.” Nyle chuckled, once his taciturn guards delivered Asher downstairs.

  Nyle’s fellow Riders peered up from card games and tables spread out with whole arsenals of pistols and shotguns, their faces a mixture of curiosity and amusement.

  It was almost enough to make Asher yearn for the safety of his cell, a thought he beat into submission as soon as it surfaced. Free was good. Free meant a slightly better chance of getting away from Halloran and his minions, of escaping Sargasso once and for all.

  “Ready?” Halloran asked, from the porch.

  With no one to lead or stop him, Asher tentatively walked out to join him. A cloud of cigar smoke greeted him. Only once he’d blinked through the haze did he notice Halloran hadn’t changed out of his brown trousers and leather vest. His duster swept through the grime on the porch as he rose out of the rocking chair.

  Asher clenched his jaw. “As I’m ever gonna be.” He felt like a peacock standing beside Halloran in his new getup.

  The sense of humiliation only deepened as Halloran hoisted himself into the saddle and put out a hand to help Asher up behind him.

  “I don’t get my own horse?”

  “Don’t got time to be chasin’ you all over the state,” Halloran said sharply and clicked his fingers. “You can climb up or you can ride like a sack of potatoes. Your choice.”

  Never had a word carried less meaning.

  Asher reached for Halloran’s hand. He let himself be yanked up, the insides of his thighs skimming Halloran’s. The false intimacy ought to have been a foregone conclusion after last night, but Asher still cringed, reaching behind him for the edge of the saddle to hook his hands around rather than anchor himself on to Halloran’s solid form.

  If he glanced to the left or right, he could almost pretend he was riding behind a complete stranger. He could also catalog his surroundings, which he hadn’t been able to while stuck in his boudoir cell at the ranch. Every knoll and crevasse was a landmark worth marking. Every clump of vegetation that might conceal a waterhole merited a cross on his mental map.

  With some dismay, Asher soon discovered that Sargasso wasn’t as far from Willowbranch as he recalled. They seemed to arrive in less than an hour, the town distinguishing itself from the barren landscape around it as a handful of lit windows, at first, then the darkened Main Street coming into view with its dozens of homes and shuttered shops on either side.

  Town hall alone stood bright and decked out for a party.

  Several horses were already tied to the hitching post out front. They glanced up placidly as Halloran drew up alongside. Armed men kept watch over the animals, but they paid Halloran and Asher little mind. Their silence might as well have said you’re expected.

  At a gentle nudge between his shoulder blades, Asher snapped his gaze away from the darkened town and stepped through the open door. Here was the source of all his woes. Here was the forbidding playground of vampires like Octavian and Malachi, as familiar to Asher as fairy tales and about as real until this moment.

  He and Halloran were ushered into the vast, cavernous foyer by a maid whose dark, punched-in eyes matched the black of her uniform.

  “May I take your coat, sir?” she asked, no inflection in her voice.

  Halloran stripped off his duster and passed it along, then turned to Asher, who shook his head.

  “I’m good, thanks,” said Asher, aware that it was little more than wishful thinking to suppose added layers might keep him safe from a vampire’s piercing bite.

  Halloran didn’t press the point. He waved off the maid, who trotted off with herky-jerky movements and an odd, faintly metallic whirring.

  Every fiber of his being prickling with uneasiness, Asher trailed Halloran deeper into the house. Past the grand staircase, through a set of beautifully ornate double doors, they found the mayor’s guests and intimates already mingling to the tune of a tinny pianoforte. Elegant evening gowns shimmered in the gas light. Brass buttons and ivory-topped canes burnished.

  A whiff of copper hung in the closed-in air, wafting beneath the sickly sweet aroma of colognes and imported eau de toilette.

  Malachi spotted them first. “Ah, Halloran! So glad you made it.” Disentangling himself from the company of three vampiresses sporting exquisitely pinned hairdos and ruched trains, he clamped a hand on Halloran’s shoulder. “The man of the hour! Come, let me introduce you to some people. Father won’t be long.”

  He made no mention of Asher, much less rewarded him with a glance. Halloran, caught in Malachi’s spel
l, followed his example. Together they ventured farther into the lavish sitting room.

  ‘People’ turned out to be every single vampire in attendance.

  As Asher looked on, cast adrift in shark-infested waters, Malachi led Halloran from one fancy suit to the next. Men and women dressed to the nines smiled and traded repartee too soft for Asher’s ears to pick up. They must have been doing it at Malachi’s instruction. Asher fervently doubted that brooding, unpolished Halloran could possibly draw their interest on his own merits. He certainly wasn’t dressed for the occasion—something that Asher wouldn’t have cared about if he wasn’t so concerned with steering his thoughts to the trivial and the harmless, where they would spare him from hysteria.

  Spotting a maid with a tray of crystal glasses, he made his way to her without straying far from the edges of the room.

  No one stopped him. No one slammed him into the floor for daring to move without Halloran’s explicit say-so.

  “Good evening.”

  The girl’s eyes met his but didn’t focus. She was breathing, at least, which made Asher feel more compassionate toward her than anyone else in this house.

  Perhaps she had been ordered not to speak. Perhaps Ambrose had cut out her tongue. That’d be just the sort of Old Testament justice he’d dispense.

  Asher helped himself to a glass of wine and raised it to his lips. He would have to be mindful of drinking too much tonight. At best, it might make him a target. At worst, he risked making a fool of himself and Halloran, and incurring his wrath.

  One sip shattered any fear that he might imbibe enough for tipsiness. He gagged almost instantly, blood sweetened with spirits scorching the back of his throat.

  A few heads swiveled at his violent reaction, then away again in short order.

  Face burning with humiliation and disgust, Asher wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Of course, Ambrose had provided refreshments solely for his vampire guests.

  Let the humans fend for themselves. Who cares about them?

  Another glance around the room disabused him of that belief. None of the sumptuously attired men and women in the room appeared to breathing. They moved as steadily as the mechanisms at the heart of a particularly well-calibrated pocket watch. Only Asher and Ambrose’s maids seemed prone to those small, defective twitches of movement that so defined life.

  Feeling the weight of eyes on him, Asher glanced up. Halloran was making small talk with a woman in a velvet suit trimmed with lace as red as her hair, utterly captivated. That left Malachi to meet Asher’s gaze, his smile catlike.

  He hadn’t forgotten Asher at all.

  A seasick flutter in the pit of his stomach, Asher lowered his gaze to the carpet. Halloran could potentially keep him away from the Riders, but could he manage it with Ambrose’s cohort?

  The thought of relying on one vampire to protect him from others was every bit as repulsive as the blood in Asher’s cup, but it, at least, was easy to dispose of.

  He turned to place the cup back on the tray only to startle when the maid inhaled sharply. Asher met her gaze. Had he broken protocol somehow?

  A deep, booming voice behind him put paid to the notion.

  “Welcome, friends! Thank you all for coming,” said Ambrose, entering the room.

  Chapter Six

  Attired in a patterned silk waistcoat with a big, gold pocket watch dangling from one buttonhole, Ambrose was almost dashing. He was a far cry from the black-clad judge, jury and executioner who had altered Asher’s life with a single word, and ended so many others.

  Merely two feet from him, Asher dug his nails into the meat of his palms and struggled to resist the impulse to make a lunge for the mayor.

  It would be suicide, even with Halloran there. Asher couldn’t hope to move faster than Octavian, standing just a pace behind by Ambrose’s shoulder, nor the pretty young woman leaning on Ambrose’s arm.

  So deep in his vengeful fantasies, it took Asher a moment longer than it should have to realize the girl wasn’t a bloodsucker. Her bosom moved with quickened breaths, as though she were anxious, but her smile seemed genuine.

  “Like my little songbird, do you?” Ambrose had caught him looking.

  Asher didn’t know what to say. All at once, his mind emptied of thought. His clenched fists relaxed of their own accord. And, when he opened his mouth to speak, the only sound that came out was a primitive grunt.

  A titter swept over Ambrose’s guests, the ladies deploying fans as though to conceal their fangs. Octavian snickered openly.

  Asher’s face warmed.

  “Much better when he can’t speak, isn’t he?” Ambrose reached up and patted Asher’s cheek the way he might have done with a simple-minded pet. “Maybe I’ll leave him like that for you, eh, Halloran? Let you enjoy him without that troublesome mouth of his getting in your way? He’d certainly spare you the trouble of having to chase him through the valley…”

  Asher itched to jerk out of the mayor’s reach, to bat away that soft, icy touch, but found he couldn’t move. It was as if someone had reached into his brain and switched off the parts of him that answered to free will.

  The more he struggled against the invisible cage that held him, the more agitated he became. Sweat stuck his cotton shirt to his back. Blood pounded at his temples.

  He could see Halloran hovering at the edge of his peripheral vision, a tan shadow whose only answer was a noncommittal shrug.

  A shrug. Asher wouldn’t have expected any vampire to come to his rescue but he would’ve thought one who owned him might at least express an interest in whether or not he was rendered mute.

  “Oh, what would be the fun in that?” Malachi scoffed.

  Asher hadn’t seen him move but he was suddenly standing right beside him, his unnatural stillness compensated by the haphazard drag of fingertips up and down Asher’s spine.

  “Isn’t that right, Angelita?”

  Ambrose’s pretty companion blushed and ducked her head. Asher wondered if she was mute like the maids—like him now—or merely simple.

  All at once, the fetters that held Asher in thrall unraveled.

  The mayor gave no outward sign of having played a part in that ghostly delivery, his attention reverting to Malachi and their guests. Angelita trailed him, a porcelain doll anchored to his arm. Octavian brought up the rear, as self-satisfied as Asher had ever seen him.

  Mercifully, he passed Asher without another look.

  Breath singed his lungs. His legs threatened to give way. He’d always known vampires were dangerous—and being among them was as good as suicide—but this was one weapon he hadn’t known they possessed. Compulsion was, for the most part, a myth. Those who mastered it were either very old or very skillful, and they used it sparingly.

  The human mind adjusted much too quickly to be ruled.

  “You’re staring,” Halloran observed. He had one of those foul concoctions in hand, the crystal glass dwarfed by his broad fist.

  Asher glanced at him, willing every last ounce of hatred he felt for the bloodsucker scourge into a single look. “My apologies,” he gritted out and said nothing further for the rest of the evening.

  His silence was made easier by the lack of notice anyone seemed to take of him.

  Supper consisted of five foul-smelling courses served in silver dishes, which were all removed with a distinctly crimson tinge. Dancing and conversation followed, as with any elegant gathering.

  Angelita, much like the other humans in attendance, didn’t touch the food. But she did join in the waltz when Ambrose took her hand. She moved gracefully across the small section of the parlor cleared for the swirling pairs and she gazed at Ambrose with obvious affection.

  Asher turned away in disgust.

  He was glad when Halloran finally jerked his head toward the foyer. At last, they could leave.

  The maid who’d welcomed them in took one glance at Asher and disappeared into the cloakroom. She emerged a few seconds later with Halloran’s duster, which s
he handed to Asher.

  “That’s not mine,” he said, frowning.

  “For your master.”

  Bile soured on the back of his tongue. He was expected to wait on Halloran hand and foot. “Right. Hey, tell me something…”

  The maid turned, her expression wary.

  “That Angelita creature—”

  “Miss Angelita,” corrected the maid, something brassy in her voice. “She is Miss Angelita.”

  “Yeah, I heard. What’s her story? She and Ambrose seem awful cozy.”

  Songbird, Ambrose had called her, though Angelita barely spoke—and even then, only to him and no higher than a whisper—and she didn’t look half as cowed as the other humans Asher had seen hanging about.

  The maid’s foggy grey eyes seemed to peer through Asher rather than at his face. “She is Miss Angelita.”

  “You’re a real help, aren’t you?” Asher drawled.

  Frustration didn’t quite manage to quell his curiosity, though, and before he could think better of it, he waved his hand before the maid’s face.

  Her expression didn’t shift one iota. She didn’t so much as blink.

  “Asher.”

  Halloran had materialized in the foyer. Asher spun to face him, feeling oddly like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He couldn’t account for the sentiment. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He just wanted to understand.

  Judging by his furrowed brow, Halloran didn’t see it that way.

  “I got your coat,” Asher said, preempting chastisement by holding up the duster in evidence. See? I’m not totally useless. There was no need for Halloran to change his mind and tell Ambrose to strip Asher of his tongue.

  Halloran flexed his jaw and stalked out.

  It wasn’t much of a triumph, but Asher would take it.

  Duster folded over one arm, he spurred his feet to follow. He could have sworn he felt the maid’s eyes boring into his back, but when he cast a glance from the safety of Halloran’s saddle, the foyer was empty.

  The two armed guardsmen keeping watch seemed more invested in patrolling the wraparound porch than glaring at someone as insignificant as Asher.