Ice and Blood

by Oliver Altair

  Wilson chuckled and raised his glass. “Funny. But I told you I’m not in the mood. And quit yelling, for God’s sake.”

  Tiberius drew his gun. “You knew about what they’d done, Albers, O’Leary, and Rowland. You came here ready to spook them with some ghost story so they were ripe for blackmail. What happened? They found you out before you could get your hands on the cash? I guess torching your own ride might’ve been a step too far.” He cocked it.

  Ray leaped off his stool, toppling it. “What… Who… What?”

  “The way you killed them…” Tiberius clicked his tongue. “Jesus. You’re not only a criminal but a sick, sick man.”

  “You gotta be kidding, Tiberius. You know me.”

  “If the past fall taught me something, it’s that nobody knows anybody. What did you do with their hearts?”

  Ray seemed on the verge of collapse. “Their hearts? Nothing! That’s… I’d never—”

  “Save it!” Tiberius thundered, grabbing the panicked man by his suspenders. “How dare you come here pretending to be our friend? You goddamned rattlesnake! I’ll make sure you never see another spring.”

  He poked him hard on the chest with the barrel of his Colt Dragoon. “Move before I desecrate the Valentines’ floor with your filthy blood.”

  Ray took two shaky steps back. Tiberius snatched his arm violently, directing him toward the exit. “I wonder what Rowland will say when he finds out you gutted his friends. I might take you directly to his bakery so he can do with you as he pleases. His kid will see him handing out some old-fashioned justice today. An important lesson to learn.”

  “Tiberius, please.”

  Tiberius punched him in the stomach. “Shut up. Just. Shut. Up.”

  He pushed him through the double doors without looking back.

  23

  Tiberius rushed Ray down the steps of the saloon’s porch. He guided him down the road, throwing side glances left and right, peeking behind his back without turning his head. A few feet away from the Silver Moon, he pushed him into a narrow alleyway between two empty houses and holstered his gun. “Sorry about the punch. All good?”

  Ray backed off, eyes glinting with suspicion. “No. You roughed me up and accused me of murder, you lunatic.”

  “I had to rattle the cage and see what breaks loose.”

  “You could’ve warned me, dammit. I almost peed my pants.”

  Tiberius shrugged. “I improvised. I need you to go to Doc Tucker’s. Use the alleys, stay away from the main streets. Tell the doc to keep the Rowlands hidden until I come fetch you.”

  Ray breathed out in nervous wheezes, like a boiling teapot. “Why?”

  “No time for the whole recital. Be a good boy and beat it, Wilson. I have a killer to catch.”

  “All right. But I still think you’re out of your mind. So we’re clear.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Unbelievable,” Wilson muttered as he exited the alley through its opposite end.

  Tiberius waited in the shadows, watching the Silver Moon’s porch. The blizzard relented but showed no signs of clearing soon. Or ever again. Soon he heard the saloon’s double doors opening. Miss Leona Gray stepped outside. She walked to the middle of the road, face up to the sky, palms extended to catch the snowflakes. The smile on her face beamed a sinister joyfulness that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

  Miss Gray drew a row of symbols on the snow with the tip of her cane. She tapped it. Once. Twice. Three times. Then brushed the symbols off with her foot, wrapped herself in her long shawl, and walked away, up Main Street and into the snowstorm. When he could no longer hear her slow, crunching steps, Tiberius left his cover. He darted back to the Silver Moon. He crossed the saloon in a whirlwind under the drinkers’ questioning gazes, heading directly to the bedrooms on the first floor and Miss Gray’s door.

  She’d left her room unlocked. It looked quaint and orderly. Her bed had been made, the vanity by the window, cleaned. The furniture dusted, and the floor swept. But a faint trace of opium floated still throughout the room. Her handbag lay at the foot of the bed. Tiberius spilled its contents on the fluffy quilt: a half-finished scarf, a pair of thick wooden needles, and colored yarn. Her pipe hid within the rolled wool, but Tiberius couldn’t find her tobacco mix. Either she’d got rid of it, smoked it all, or worse, sold it in town.

  He looked under the bed, behind the pillows, inside the small drawer of the nightstand, unbothered about making a mess. He found nothing. Yet he could scent a hidden odor within the sweet pungency of the opium, as mysterious as it was familiar. It tingled inside his nostrils. It made his skin crawl.

  Tiberius closed his eyes. He listened to the muffled sounds surrounding him—the wind outside, the chatter of the few men at the bar, his own breath—until they came to him like a distant murmur. He circled his shoulders and his neck, placed his hands in front of him, and walked blindly around the room, letting his nose be his guide, like a hound following the trail of a fox. Memories of the fall assaulted him, of his awakening after escaping the silver mine. He traveled back to the cave behind the waterfall, the place where he’d held on to the thread that was his life, no thinner than a human hair. He remembered the aroma of Iris’ potions enveloping his body as he dove in and out of consciousness. He remembered the aftertaste of the Silver Death, for him life, on his tongue.

  The occult scent sharpened. Tiberius imagined it as a colored trail. He could even see it sparkling in the air, cutting the blackness. He advanced toward its source, tracing it with his fingers, until the shrill creak of a loose floorboard pulled him out of his reverie. He crouched and felt the rickety plank. He pressed one of its edges until it popped out of place.

  His blood ran as cold as a mountain creek. Just a quick glance revealed three glass jars. Two of them held a pair of human hearts, floating in a thick, amber-colored substance. The third was empty. An array of bottles and vials circled the bloodstained containers, filled with colorful liquids that seemed to swirl inside the glass as if alive.

  Alchemy.

  Tiberius nabbed as many of the potions as he could fit in his grip. He walked to the window and opened it wide. A cutting gust of wind attacked his face, blurred his sight. He raised the clinking bottles in his fist, ready to hear them crash against the frozen ground below.

  “I would think twice, Sheriff.” A voice behind his back said, sweet but full of command.

  Tiberius turned. Miss Gray grinned at him from the doorway. She pointed to the potions with her cane. “Unless you’d like to leave a smoking hole in the street, that is.”

  He stared at the sparkling vials. He could feel their arcane force seeping through the tinted glass. “I wish your people would leave my town alone.”

  Miss Gray raised a delicate eyebrow. “My people?”

  “Goddamned alchemists.”

  “I see you’re aware of our community.”

  “Not by choice.” He jiggled the potions. “Which one of these torched Ray Wilson’s stage?”

  She came in without losing her calmness and maternal smile. She clicked her tongue to the disorder and the scattered objects on the bedspread and placed them back into her bag one by one. “It’s never about using the one thing or the other, but a balanced combination of several. Alchemy is as intricate and precise as any other art-form.”

  “I bet.” Tiberius dropped the gleaming bottles into his pocket. “I’m keeping these.”

  “Good. I’d hate for such prime materials to go to waste.”

  Tiberius drew his gun and pointed.

  She laughed. Her laughter was jovial, honest. “That’s unnecessary.”

  “We’ll see. Do you want to tell me your story or should I take a guess?”

  Miss Gray sat sideways on the mattress. She placed both hands on her lap like a schoolgirl, all innocence. “Pray tell.”

  He closed in. “I’ll keep it brief. Henry Albers. He received a letter that got him scared. Next day, he was dead, gutted, and put on di
splay. Reverend Conn. Same story, but after taking a nap in the wrong bed. Owen O’Leary, gruesomely murdered in his camp. Before my very eyes.” He motioned his head to the cavity on the floor where she hid her bloody stash. “The killer ripped their hearts out of their chests. All three. Silas Rowland was next.”

  Miss Gray watched him with amusement and cheerful interest. “Please, do go on.”

  “I found the photograph pieces inside the bodies. That told me there was a story behind the murders. It took me longer to find a connection. The preacher’s death threw me off until I realized he’d been a mistake. You slipped and killed the wrong man but otherwise had a plan oiled as smooth as clockwork. First, transform Souls Well into a mousetrap. Not that hard to achieve in the wintertime. Only a stagecoach passes by and only two roads lead in and out. No stage, no travel. No open roads, and we’re all here to stay until the columbines bloom.”

  “And second?”

  “Kill. Scratch faces off an old photograph: Albers, O’Leary, Rowland. That should be the end of the blood trail. But one thing happened that you hadn’t accounted for: Silas Rowland has a son. You had a son too, didn’t you, Miss Gray?”

  “I did.”

  Tiberius took a deep breath. “What better way to ensure your revenge than taking away what was taken from you?”

  She kept smiling, but he noticed her knuckles whitening as she clenched her fists tight.

  He moved closer still. “Donner Pass, 1865. Albers, O’Leary, and Rowland met working for the railroad, blowing up tunnels. There was a fourth member in their team, a half-white, half-Chinese young man called Wang Lei. He died in an accident. They covered it up and moved on with their lives. How did you find out?”

  “There was something amiss about his vanishing. Wang Lei would have never gone away without telling me. Never. After weeks without hearing from him, I traveled to Donner Pass myself. At first, none of the workers wanted to talk. But as soon as money changed hands, their tongues loosened. Some believed he had packed and left. I knew that to be untrue. Some other believed the sudden leave of the three members of his team had something to do with it.”

  “By then all three had skedaddled.”

  She nodded. “It made no difference. By then, I knew my son was dead. A mother always knows.”

  “Why now? After all these years.”

  Miss Gray sighed. Her eyes sparkled with tears. With anger. “Make no mistake, Sheriff. There was no accident. They murdered my son. His father couldn’t handle the truth. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t told him. For years, he slowly drank himself to death, and I suffered seeing him wither. Now I’m old and alone. I have nothing else to lose.”

  The frost pouring into the bedroom from the open window turned so crisp Tiberius could almost hear the air crackling. A soft swish crossed the windowsill, like the sound of a slithering snake. Then the floorboards thudded and trembled. Tiberius turned on his heels to welcome the freezing fist of the ice creature. It grasped his neck, elevating him a few inches off the ground. It pulled him closer to its face: the face of Wang Lei, the face of a lost son sculpted in eternal sorrow.

  Tiberius let his gun go. He used both hands to pry open the deadly fingers around his throat, but they tightened and burned his skin. Miss Gray approached them. She knocked the gun under the bed with her cane. “You can put him down now, dear. But stay close.”

  The creature dropped Tiberius onto a chair. It stood behind him like a silent guard, one icy palm on the side of his neck, the other pushing down on his shoulder. Miss Gray sat back on the bed, placing her cane across her lap. “My children always protect me.”

  “You lost your family, so you built yourself a new one.”

  She repeated the word “family” in a whisper. “The funny thing is, for many people I never had a family to begin with. No matter how much I loved Lei and his father. Have you ever been in love, Sheriff?”

  He nodded, grazing his neck against the dripping hand of the ice creature. “It didn’t end well.”

  “My love was perfect. Or at least, I used to think so. I was such a little fool when I was younger, so full of hope. Life found me teaching English to a group of foreign workers in a small camp around the goldfields. I met him there. We fell in love so fast, no matter where we came from or that sometimes we could hardly communicate. We moved to San Francisco. We never married but lived like husband and wife, though in complete secrecy. We were too afraid to become outcasts, both in his world and mine. It was hard, unbearable at times. But when our son was born, he brought us so much joy…” Her voice broke. “Lei inherited the best parts of us both but also shared our curse. He belonged nowhere. But he was also stronger, kinder, determined to find his place in the world. He would have. They stole his chance.”

  Tiberius had never experienced a silence so thick, so choking. It turned the room into a void with Miss Gray at its center, exuding her torment as a dying star would its cool light.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I believe you.”

  He opened his duster and unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his bare chest.

  “I’m ready.”

  24

  Miss Gray offered him the same patient smile a teacher would an obtuse student. “Please, Sheriff. I’ve no need to hurt you.”

  “Neither you did Reverend Conn.”

  Her clever and venomous grin curved her lips. “My children aren’t perfect. They exist to obey. Such is the way of the golem. But they cannot make a judgment call. I commanded them to bring me the heart of the man sleeping in the room next door. Whoever that man turned out to be, they did.”

  Tiberius glimpsed at the red shape drumming slowly inside the translucent chest of the ice golem. “Hearts. That’s how you make them move.”

  She laughed. “You’re mighty open to the occult, Sheriff.”

  “Again, not by choice.”

  Miss Gray jumped off the bed and moved closer. Her smell of daffodils, withering roses, and opium was dizzying. “My family treasured years of forgotten knowledge. Our arcana passed from generation to generation, all the way from the Old Continent to the American shores, always in the shadows. I became our first female scholar in transmogrification and life insufflation.”

  Tiberius stirred on his seat. “Ain’t horsing around with life and death forbidden by the alchemist’s code or something?”

  Every time her gaze interlocked with his, her eyes sparkled with a stronger curiosity. “Code you say? A set of unspoken rules, maybe. Unspoken is the word. I’d never dare to guess what other people do in the secrecy of their household, but I agree in letting death be death. I’m not interested in necromancy but in mere object animation.”

  She waved her wrist. The golem moved his hands up and down Tiberius’ neck, pressing but not choking. Yet. Tiberius’ teeth clattered like a handful of dry beans on an empty pan. He clenched his jaw.

  “A sparrow, a mouse, a horse. A man. All sharing the same miracle machine inside their chests. No chemical or trinket can ever replace the raw life force of a heart. I only figured that out after losing my lover to the bottle. I couldn’t let the heart of a good man go to waste. So I didn’t.”

  The frigid touch of the golem seeped through Tiberius’ skin. It made him feel naked under his duster, as if the layers of heavy clothing wrapping his body no longer existed. He tensed to stop the shivers rippling amok over his body. “Your puppets are nothing but mirrors of your loss. They won’t bring your family back.”

  Miss Gray placed the tip of her cane on his cheek. “Watch your words.” She marked his jaw with a fast gash. Blood dripped down the side of his face, collecting on the collar of his shirt. “This is what will happen next, Sheriff. You will bring me Bennett Rowland. In exchange I will let your dying town live.”

  “Let the kid be. He’s not guilty of his father’s sins.”

  “I agree. I mean him no harm. He’d be both a reward and a means to an end.”

  Her words sank in like a bag full of bricks. “You want to a
dopt him.”

  “I’m taking back what was mine. Silas Rowland had no right to be a father. I’ll let him live long enough to understand why that child belonged to me even before he was born.”

  Tiberius scoffed. “I’m not helping you turn an innocent kid into a living snowman, lady.”

  The ice golem dug its frozen fingers deeper into the tender flesh of his neck. Painful chills bit his muscles like a row of nibbling termites.

  Miss Gray tightened her crinkled lips. “Make no mistake. I’m giving you a choice out of respect. Either you do as I say, or my children will claim Souls Well as their playground. They can wall the streets in ice overnight. They can replicate their bodies in a matter of hours. With enough fresh hearts, I can rebuild my whole family tree in less than a day. At this point, living with an army of silent mirrors would be better than dying alone.”

  Tiberius said nothing. The golem placed his palm over his nose and mouth, blocking his breath until he nodded in understanding. Miss Gray caressed his bleeding cheek. “You’re a smart, caring man, Sheriff Tibbetts. I trust you will choose the greater good. Bring Bennett to the graveyard at sunrise. Come alone. No guns.”

  A fist hit the back of his head, hard and cold as a metal rod left out during a winter’s night.

  Miss Gray’s cunning smile brightened as blackness enveloped everything.

  Tiberius sat by a frozen lake. Its surface shone gray. A naked woman emerged from the ice. Her black hair cascaded down her back. She never turned.

  “You never warned me,” he shouted.

  “There’s no warning. The world has changed. Is changing. Embrace it or don’t, but you cannot stop it.” The woman’s voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, like the echo of a distant, howling wind.

  Tiberius trembled as he walked to shore, sinking his bare feet in piles of silvery snow. He’d never been so cold in his life, yet his naked body gleamed with sweat.