The Gunslinger's Man

by Helena Maeve

  He was still in Redemption. Moreau had simply allowed him to sleep. At long last.

  A sharp ache in his wrist tripped another circuit in his memory. Asher glanced down. The sleeve of his white shirt was dappled with red.

  Halloran noticed it too. “Someone’s had your blood.”

  “Someone else,” Asher corrected grimly. Halloran wasn’t the first. He wouldn’t be the last.

  He didn’t flinch when Halloran seized his arm, the grip firm yet unexpectedly gentle for a vampire, and fumbled the cuff open. Two telltale punctures pocked the skin where Asher had been gouged.

  “I’ve sometimes wondered if silver bullets would do the same to one of you,” Asher mumbled, sagging against the porch rail.

  Halloran cocked an eyebrow. “Never tried shooting at us?”

  “I’m alive, aren’t I?” One attempt on a vampire’s life and he wouldn’t be.

  “My mistake,” Halloran sneered. “Wasn’t aware you value your life so highly you’d never think to move against my kind.”

  Manhandling Asher could take, but his nerves were too raw to admit taunting. He wrenched free, fighting the stubborn quaver in the pit of his stomach, the adrenaline that coursed through him at having Halloran close enough to touch. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t actually present.

  Halloran snorted. “None too keen to acknowledge your achievements, hmm? Pity. And just when things were starting to get interesting…”

  “My achievements are cold in the church grounds,” Asher snapped. “As for interesting, I’m about to be shackled to another one of you—”

  Halloran growled. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, that’s goddamn—”

  “But you don’t want that.” Halloran braced his hands on the rail, one to either side of Asher, boxing him in. “So what’ll you do about it?”

  Between the sharp jolt of anxiety that stole through Asher at their closeness and the learned instinct to make himself small as soon as he’d attracted a vampire’s interest, Asher froze. His breaths shortened, heart throbbing somewhere in the region of his larynx.

  “Ain’t nothing I can do,” he forced out. “I got no guns, no ammo. And the outfit that was supposed to help me buckled a couple of months back.”

  He took perverse pleasure in seeing Halloran’s expression shutter, although it was short-lived.

  Halloran recovered with a crooked smile that didn’t get anywhere near crinkling his brown eyes. “What if I said there’s a war coming your way and all you need is to be ready when it hits?”

  “I’d say you’ve got a great sense of humor.”

  Halloran had snarled and called him obstinate so many times that, after a while, his aggravation lost all sense of threat. Asher settled more comfortably against the rail, his discarded letter rustling in his fist.

  “Are you going to kiss me again?”

  Predictably, Halloran dropped his gaze to Asher’s mouth as if he were considering the question.

  “I’ve only ever kissed you to shut you up.”

  Not true. But it didn’t matter. “You’ve only ever done it when you wanted. Ain’t so tempting, is it, if I’m offering?” Asher told himself it was mere curiosity that bid him ask. What else was there to talk about? Escape was Halloran’s fantasy. Revenge had lost its appeal the last time Asher was dragged, bleeding, through the streets.

  Halloran straightened, his gaze hard. “You still don’t know a goddamn thing, boy. Better hope Moreau don’t figure out just how tempting you can be.”

  The cruel sting of his words pricked Asher where he was vulnerable.

  Breath fled his lungs in a rush, taking with it any thought of cringing back, of making himself small and insignificant for a vampire’s sake. He saw red before him. “Fuck you. Fuck,” he growled, planting his palms against Halloran’s chest and shoving, “you!”

  To his surprise, Halloran went when pushed. It didn’t seem as if he could help it.

  “You did that to me! Your filthy, viperous kind—taking whatever you want, no fucking concern for anyone! Don’t even see us as people, do you? We’re just things to you. We’re just—there to be used, to be meddled with! You ain’t got the right!”

  Halloran struck the closed door with his back. End of the line. Asher was on a roll, ire pouring out of him in a torrent of words and rage until he nearly wasn’t sure what he was saying but was certain that it needed to be let out before he exploded. And he needed Halloran to listen, whether he had to fist both hands into his lapels and hold him still, or corner him against the rickety front door. He was going to make Halloran hear him. It wasn’t like anyone else cared.

  “Your friends do,” Halloran said, which was how Asher realized he’d spoken aloud. Halloran’s voice was infuriatingly low and even, as if Asher’s crumbling mind didn’t even catch his notice.

  “My friends are prisoners ’cause of me,” Asher gritted out. He couldn’t say when he’d begun leaning into Halloran’s broad chest. He discovered it with some astonishment, when his knees began to melt under him.

  He didn’t flinch as Halloran settled a cool palm at the small of his back. As far as Sargasso’s laws were concerned, he was still Halloran’s property.

  Halloran slid a knuckle under his chin. “So get them out.”

  “I can’t,” Asher rasped, his throat scraped raw. “I can’t.”

  He was in bed with a viper far more dangerous than Halloran ever could be, in a town built like a fortress. Brushing Halloran’s fingertips with his lips in the depths of a dream was about as rebellious as he dared to be anymore.

  “Wesley’s pistols,” said Halloran.

  “What about them?”

  Moreau had confiscated all their gear, down to the clothes on their backs and the horses they’d ridden in on. Darlene and his other wives whispered that it was hard to know who to trust anymore, human or vampire. They clammed up when they noticed Asher listening, but they seemed to know that it was vampires, and not humans, who were harassing Redemption.

  Halloran gave his chin an abrupt nudge, jostling Asher from his thoughts. “Listen to me. You need to get those guns and get out of town. Tonight.”

  Asher snorted. Of course, that was going to happen. Why had he ever believed Halloran could help him? Vampires didn’t have a sense of the impossible. Cheating death would do that to a man. “Why the rush?” Tonight, tomorrow, what difference could a day make when any attempt was doomed to failure?

  But Halloran palmed his cheek, hand rough and businesslike on Asher’s face. “Listen to me. Ambrose’s men are coming for what was stolen… Do you understand? They’re coming sooner than you think.”

  A wave of panic swept over Asher, the blood in his veins freezing in the space of a heartbeat.

  Halloran seemed to mistake his shock for acquiescence. “That’s right. Come morning, there won’t be a prison in Redemption to hold any of you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  To the best of Asher’s knowledge, vampires didn’t sleep. They had no need for rest the way a living, breathing human might. Yet lacking any other term for Moreau lying supine beside him on the bed, Asher couldn’t help worry about rousing him as he tried to muster up the courage to move.

  Halloran’s words echoed in his ears, as real as if he’d spoken them in the waking world.

  Perhaps it was a wishful fantasy. Perhaps my mind’s finally going.

  Asher dug his teeth into his lower lip. No, that would be too easy.

  In the moonlight, Moreau’s profile was like sculpted marble—beautiful and cold, and quite obviously inhuman. Only the blood flecking the corner of his mouth gave any sign as to his more mortal proclivities.

  Tomorrow would herald another feeding, which would leave Asher even more drained and humiliated, and trap his friends in similar circumstances. His best bet, if he lasted long enough, was to become another Abraham someday, bits of him preserved in salt somewhere in Sibyl’s pantry.

  It wasn’t much of a future.

  Wesley’s p
istols it is, then.

  He peeled off the covers cautiously, his heart slamming into his ribs again and again as he swung his feet to the floor. Hyperaware of every creak and rustle he made, he kept expecting Moreau to open his eyes and catch him in flagrante. His confidence in his ability to lie to a vampire had been shattered by his short stay at Willowbranch. Halloran had wormed his way into the very fabric of his thoughts, as insidious as gangrene—if slightly more helpful.

  The statue on the bed remained mercifully still. A fine spill of moonlight creeping through the window offered enough illumination for Asher to pick his way across the room and slide into his borrowed pants, his newly gifted boots. He hadn’t worn his own clothes in so long that he hardly noticed having to suck his belly in to cinch the belt.

  Moreau didn’t trust his friends any more than he trusted his enemies. He and Ambrose had that in common. It followed, then, that he would have kept Wesley’s arsenal close at hand. After all, a pistol shooting silver bullets could be wielded by a vampire or a human hand to an equivalent end.

  The bedroom door closed behind Asher with the softest of clicks, though the sound seemed to ring like a gunshot in his ears. He stood on the landing for a long moment, waiting for someone to stop him. All through the day, Darlene and her fellow wives had drifted in and out of sight like specters, constantly reminding Asher that he was being watched.

  He hadn’t forgotten their sly glances after supper, either, when Moreau waved everyone away save for Asher. He’d known then what he knew now—he was a temporary diversion, a stop-gap measure for Moreau’s thirst—but that hadn’t endeared him to anyone in the house.

  It was imperative he find his way out, preferably armed, before anyone discovered him.

  He padded downstairs in the dark, picking his way around the unfamiliar floor plan with trepidation. The front room in which Moreau had received Connie and the others held few places to hide treasure. Asher tried the sideboard slotted against the far wall but found only china and silverware within. No crystal tumblers tinged with crimson.

  Asher eased the cupboard doors shut and turned his eye to the dining room, which he’d seen cleaned but not used once since he’d arrived at the house. The cupboards were full of gleaming candleholders that may well have been gold, and baubles as varied as they appeared expensive. He wondered if Moreau had purchased them off travelers who’d passed through Redemption or if he’d traveled far and wide himself. Had he always been here, or had he played explorer before finally settling into his role as mayor and barman of a town so insignificant that Union Pacific hadn’t even cared to appropriate its grazing lands for the railroad?

  In the kitchen, Asher was even more stumped. He opened and closed drawers with increasing urgency, still trying to keep noise to a minimum but worried that he wouldn’t find what he was seeking at all, that the risks he’d taken would be for nothing.

  He went as far as to peer into the mudroom—which yielded nothing—before turning back into the kitchen, his heart sinking like a stone.

  One door remained unopened. The pantry.

  Following Sibyl’s offhand remark about Abraham’s remains, Asher had steered well clear of the kitchen. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of what else Moreau’s women might have used to cook their meals.

  He couldn’t afford squeamishness anymore.

  The first thing Asher noticed upon venturing closer was the padlock binding the door handles with a metal chain. The second was how little effort it took to jam a knife between lock and chain, and give the handle a good whack with the flat of his palm.

  The weakest link broke off, taking the rest of the chain with it.

  Asher winced at the metallic jangle as the padlock hit the floor, but urgency forced his hand. He drew the doors open and hastily stepped inside.

  As storage rooms went, the pantry was long and narrow, crypt-like in its unnatural chill. Asher wished he’d though to light a candle before he braved the dark. Hopper windows set high in the walls did little to help illuminate the contents of the jars piled on the pantry shelves. Whether they harbored pickled vegetables or something more unsavory, Asher couldn’t say.

  Gleaming metal stored high on a wooden rack stripped all such thoughts from his mind. Wesley’s pistols. Moreau must have been confident in his wives’ devotion and the ineptness of his guest if he hadn’t even bothered to hide the firearms.

  “Hello?” A soft, melodious voice echoed through the perfect quietude of the kitchen. “Is someone there?”

  Sibyl.

  Asher’s heart lodged itself in his throat. Now that he was paying attention, he was certain that was the sound of her bare feet slapping the kitchen floor. The rustle of her nightgown as she drew nearer and nearer to the pantry door.

  He emerged from the depths of the storage room just as Sibyl came into view.

  “Oh, it’s you!” Sibyl pressed a hand to her chest. “I thought I heard something. What were you…?” As she spoke, her gaze drifted over the unvarnished door and Asher’s boots, indifferent to any and all detail until she noticed the shattered chain and broken padlock on the ground.

  Asher saw the bemusement in her eyes give way to understanding.

  He had the pistol slotted under her chin before Sibyl could let out a single word.

  “Don’t.”

  In his more violent fantasies, Asher had often imagined himself grabbing Octavian around the throat and squeezing until his head popped off. He’d never imagined putting his hand around a woman’s neck, though, let alone a human woman’s. The flutter of Sibyl’s pulse beneath his fingertips left little doubt as to that salient point.

  “I won’t hurt you if you keep quiet, but I swear to God, if you scream…”

  “You’ll what?” Moreau purred from the shadows of the hallway. “Kill her?”

  Asher spun Sibyl around and pulled her to him with an arm around her shoulders. His grip around the pistol shook but he had little choice save to press it to her temple.

  “Husband,” Sibyl got out, a sob catching in her throat. Her shudder rebounded through Asher’s fear-ridden body.

  As if to hush them, Moreau clucked his tongue and stepped into a pale shaft of moonlight dappling the kitchen floor. “Did you think I wouldn’t know? That you could run away and I wouldn’t notice? I’m insulted.”

  “I just want to leave,” Asher said, his voice quavering. “I don’t belong here, I’m not one of you—”

  A moue of surprise pinched Moreau’s lips into a pout. “But you begged for sanctuary. You were only too happy to accept my hospitality when I was all that stood between you and those brutes in Sargasso…” His honeyed tone was tinged with poison. “You spread yourself in my bed, Asher, like the most wanton slattern. Do you suppose I missed your attempts to seduce me?”

  Mortification settled like acid in Asher’s stomach. “I wasn’t—I didn’t.” I can’t help it was a poor excuse. Asher had never believed it.

  He forced embarrassment from his thoughts. What he’d done in Moreau’s bed hardly mattered.

  “You have to let us go.”

  “What, you and Sibyl?” Moreau chuckled. “If I’d known you were sweet on my wife, I would’ve arranged for her to join us. We could all be upstairs, enjoying a pleasant evening… But no.” His expression darkened, his smile replaced by a pitiless sneer. “You had to prove ungrateful.”

  Salt stung Asher’s eyes. He was afraid to blink for fear of Moreau choosing that fraction of a second of inattention to lunge for him.

  “Please… Please, don’t make me do this.”

  Moreau took another step toward them as Asher backed away.

  “Shoot her.”

  Sibyl’s syncopated breaths aborted with a disbelieving gasp.

  “Shoot her,” Moreau repeated. “I have other wives… Perhaps I’ll replace her with the delectable Miss Pinkham. Would you like that, Asher? I may even keep you around to see her flourish under my discipline. Legless,” he added meditatively, “of course, so you don’
t try this again.” His smile widened with delight. “Armless, naturally, so I can be sure you won’t hurt yourself. And are you very attached to your cock?” Moreau pressed his advantage with another step. “I may cut that too. It’s how I keep my bulls in line. I reckon that ought to work just as well for—”

  “Fire!”

  The cry echoed faintly through the flimsy windowpane.

  Moreau whipped his head in its direction. He was close enough that Asher could count his lashes. One more step and he’d be in reach of grabbing the pistol right out of Asher’s hand. There was little doubt that he’d break fingers in the process. Nothing about him suggested his threats were empty.

  A beat passed, neither Asher nor Sibyl daring to breathe.

  “Fire!” shrieked a male voice. “They’re burning the south wall!”

  Moreau dove for the window.

  Wood shattered beneath the force of his hands as the two panes slid open on creaky hinges. The pong of charred wood and cooked flesh rushed in with the shrieks of frightened horses and cattle.

  “No!” Moreau roared and leaped over the windowsill, Asher and Sibyl forgotten.

  He was gone in an eye-blink, moving faster than human vision could follow. The night absorbed him as red flames began to dance over the rooftops across the street.

  An orange glow reflected in the still juddering windows. The impressive south wall, which Asher had admired on his way into Redemption what felt like an eternity ago, was fashioned entirely out of timber. The patrols of men and vampires defending it couldn’t fend off the conflagration.

  Halloran was right. Everything he’d said in the dream-that-wasn’t, everything he’d told Asher about the war coming to Redemption—had come to pass.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chaos enveloped Redemption’s tidy streets. Wherever Asher turned, men and women shouted or sobbed, grabbing one another in fright as they fled the flames shooting high into the air. A few, armed with buckets, attempted to put out the fires that had begun to spread to the rooftops of their own dwellings.