Blood Riders (27 page)

Chapter Sixty-one

T
here were a few Archaics wounded but still alive lying outside the train. Chee volunteered to dispatch the remaining creatures. He took Dog and a Henry with wooden bullets and returned to the train about thirty minutes later, the same impassive expression still painted on his face.

Hollister felt nearly euphoric. It was a common condition among soldiers who experienced combat. He and those under his command had survived. Not only that, but they had inflicted heavy casualties on their enemy.

And with Monkey Pete’s new device and the Ass-Kicker, he had a plan. It would take a little more of Monkey Pete’s genius and it would require a lot of luck. But it just might turn the tide.

It was early morning, and none of them had slept. They sat in the main car at the table, with the littered remains of Monkey Pete’s pancakes and coffee. Hollister was busy making sketches on sheets of paper.

The train Pinkerton had outfitted was full of machines, machine parts, and tools and loaded down with weapons. Monkey Pete had attached Gatling guns and hoses that shot holy water, and he’d extended the range and power of the train through his modifications of the engine in ways Jonas would never understand. The train gave them a huge tactical advantage. The problem was, there was no way to get the train to the Clady mine. The grade was too steep. Not to mention the lack of tracks.

Hollister had thought about it for a while and decided that the best thing to do was to send part of the train to the mine.

“Shaniah, can Demeter pull a wagon?” Hollister asked.

“Yes, why?” she answered.

“Pete, you don’t happen to have a small wagon on board the train, do you?” Hollister was crossing his fingers here.

“No, sir, I don’t reckon . . .” he started to say, and Hollister’s heart sank. But then he noticed Pete was getting that dreamy look in his eyes.

Pete smacked the table with his hand. “I ain’t got ‘wheels’ like wagon wheels or anything like that, but I got two extra flywheels in my supply car. Carry ’em as spares in case somethin’ goes wrong with the engine. I could rig those into a cart pretty easy.”

Hollister wanted to kiss the little guy.

“What is your plan, sir?” Chee asked. He was always so quiet, even when Hollister could tell he had strong opinions about something. When this was over. If they survived, he was going to have to work on getting Chee to loosen up a little bit.

“When the Archaics attacked us last night, and when they stormed the train in Absolution, I think it showed this train is our best tactical asset. They cut down or pushed over a few trees and they’ve got us boxed in here, but we still fought them off. Almost two hundred of them,” he said.

He held up his sketch to show the others. Chee and Shaniah couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but Pete got it right away.

“So if we can’t get them to the train . . .” Hollister said.

“You’re going to take the train to them!” Pete said, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.

Chapter Sixty-two

M
alachi was stunned, though he showed no outward signs of it to his people. Only seven of his followers had staggered back into the camp. They were injured, mostly burned, but healing quickly. The rest had died. How was this possible? How had Shaniah managed to kill nearly two hundred Archaics?

Jonathan and Lucas were both dead, he was told. Before him stood an Archaic who had once been a Blackfoot Indian. He had been turned when Malachi and a few of the others had stumbled across their hunting camp the previous winter. His Blackfoot name had been Walking Cat. He looked as though he had been in a fight.

Most of his chest and face had been burned. Two small wooden stakes stuck out of his right shoulder. Malachi removed one of them to study it. It was made from a hardwood, likely oak, and sharpened to a deadly point. Walking Cat’s left arm hung loosely at his side, although it was already beginning to heal. The flesh on his burned face and chest was returning to normal, and a few seconds later the other wooden stake popped loose from his shoulder and fell to the ground.

“Tell me what happened,” Malachi said.

“We went for the train, as you instructed. It was stopped at the end of the spur, as you said it would be,” he said. Malachi’s followers had learned that he loved to be flattered by being told he was or had been right about things.

“We pushed trees onto to the track behind them, big trees, ones humans could not move or lift, so they could not escape. We were lining up, readying ourselves to attack when . . .”

The young Indian stopped. Though he had not been turned long, he should be fearless, Malachi thought. Archaics were afraid of nothing. Yet this man was afraid. As if he was reliving something horrible and could not bear to think of it.

“Go on, tell me,” Malachi prodded.

“They opened the doors of the train and . . . they . . .” Walking Cat stammered. Malachi was growing impatient. Wanting to snap the man’s neck if he didn’t start talking.

“They did what?” Malachi demanded, his voice taking on an angry tone and rising in pitch. The other Archaics were watching now, they were spellbound by Walking Cat’s story, but they also grew restless and nervous at the thought of Malachi’s anger.

“Fire came from inside the train. Before he died, Jonathan said two of the humans were the same ones from Absolution. They had weapons that shot flame, a great distance. I . . . we caught fire. Another human shot a gun,” he stopped and picked up the wooden bullet that lay in the dust at his feet. “The gun, I have seen them before, when I fought the bluecoats. It shoots many bullets, and between this gun and the fire, we . . . many of us died. We kept attacking, but we could not get inside the train for some reason. It was like the doors were blocked somehow. No matter how many times we tried, no matter which direction we attacked from, we could not enter the train.” Walking Cat bowed his head and his shoulders slumped when he finished his report.

“Where are the others? Those who came back with Walking Cat? Step forward,” Malachi said.

Six Archaics made their way toward him, reluctant looks on their faces. The crowd parted until the seven of them stood in line facing Malachi. Most of them bore similar injuries to Walking Cat, burns and cuts and broken bones, but they were also starting to heal. None of them faced Malachi, they were afraid and disappointed they had let him down, and stood there with their heads hanging low

“Tell me,” he said to them. “Is what Walking Cat has told us true?” He spoke loudly so all of the remaining Archaics could hear him.

All of them mumbled yes or nodded their heads, still unwilling to face their leader.

“As Archaics, you were ordered to attack Shaniah, to find her and kill her and you did not. You returned here like whipped dogs with tales of weapons and fire and human tricks, instead of stories of a great victory! Is this not true?”

The seven of them stood motionless. There was nothing to say, they had no defense. Their leader had given them a command and they had failed.

Malachi moved so quickly, the seven Archaics were dead almost before anyone could blink. From somewhere in the folds of his cloak he pulled a long gleaming knife and with the speed of an Olympian god he decapitated all of them in seconds. Where there had been standing, living beings, there were now only bodies and heads, and their screams died before their heads hit the ground, their faces still showing the death grimace of surprise.

The crowd was silent. Malachi looked at the remaining group.

“It will be sunup soon. We will wait until the darkness returns, then we will find Shaniah and the humans who assist her. And we will kill them.” He spun on his heel and entered the mine. Leaving the Archaics behind him, the sun just beginning to peek over the eastern horizon.

Chapter Sixty-three

M
onkey Pete had shooed everyone away, telling them he could construct the cart on his own, and that they would just be in his way. Hollister had suggested they get some sleep while taking turns standing watch in the gunner’s bubble above the armory car. Chee had volunteered to take the first watch. He sat in the seat, his hand on the handles of the Gatling, ready to shoot in an instant if the Archaics reappeared.

Chee was too wired to sleep, so keeping watch had been a good thing for him. But it didn’t sit right with him, knowing Shaniah and Hollister were not sleeping. Hollister had made a show of heading for his bunk and Shaniah did the same, leaving the main car and following Monkey Pete, giving every indication she was going to the guest quarters.

Chee was willing to bet one of the two was not in their bunk. She had made her way to Hollister’s quarters or he had gone to hers, but they were together somewhere on the train. They were lovers. Chee had seen it almost immediately when they returned from their ride the previous night. It should not bother him. The major was an adult, his own man, and not to mention Chee’s superior officer. He could sleep with whomever he wished. The sergeant just wished it was anyone but Shaniah.

He reached inside the folds of his shirt and fingered his medicine bag, and he could still feel the cord with the coin tied around his ankle. He muttered both a Shaolin prayer and a Creek war chant. Neither made him feel better. He wished his grandmother Annabel were here so he could ask her more questions. How could he protect all of them from this
Brujería
—this witch— in their midst?

Monkey Pete lowered the door on his “lab” car, slowly rolling the cart he’d built down the ramp onto the ground. One of the spare Gatlings was attached to it. Chee continued to marvel at the engineer’s ingenuity as he yawned and stretched.

It was almost time to fight again.

Chapter Sixty-four

S
haniah lay next to Hollister in his bunk, with her leg draped over his torso. Hollister questioned his judgment in making love to her again, right before the biggest fight of his life. It was a fight he knew he might not survive.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, her fingers tracing the scar on his shoulder from the bullet he’d taken at Five Forks, right before the end of the war.

“I was wondering if I was still alive,” he said.

She laughed. “Oh, you are alive, all right.”

“I might not be for much longer,” he said. “Is this . . . I mean . . . your people . . . do they always . . . is their lovemaking always this . . . intense?”

“Yes!” she teased him. Enjoying making him uncomfortable.

“You’re kidding. It’s always this . . . vigorous?”

“Yes, most of the time,” she said.

“Dear God,” he groaned.

“I’m pleasantly surprised,” she said.

“About what?”

“You shouldn’t worry, Jonas, your stamina and . . . skill is quite remarkable.”

He sighed. “At least there’s that.”

He had no idea what time it was, but he should probably get up and relieve Chee of the watch and allow him to get some sleep, although he had begun to wonder if Chee ever slept.

He sat up on the bed, feeling weak and dizzy after making love to Shaniah. Was that what it would always be like? The truth of it was, he couldn’t remember anyone like her. It was like the women he’d known had all been wiped from his mind and no other woman had existed for him before her.
Strange
, he thought.

“I’ve got to relieve Chee,” he said. “It is almost . . .”

“He knows, Jonas,” she said.

“Knows what?”

“About us.”

Hollister tried not to react.

“Chee knows a lot of things,” he said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he figured this out.”

“He ‘figures things out’ because he is a
Vrajitoarea
,” she said.

“A what?”

“It is what my people call . . . your word for it would be ‘witch.’ ”

“Chee’s a witch?” He looked at her, smiling.

“Yes.” And from the look on her face he could tell she wasn’t joking.

“Like a ‘bubble bubble, toil and trouble’ witch?”

She frowned, not understanding his reference.

“It’s from Shakespeare . . . a play . . . a story written . . . never mind. I’m pretty sure Chee is not a witch.”

“Do not take this lightly, Jonas. You have now come to realize the world is more than what you thought. I am an Archaic, there are many more . . . species outside the human world; Vrajitoareas, the wolf people, vampires, the undead . . .”

“Whoa!” he said, holding up his hand. “I’m having enough trouble dealing with your Archaic pals. I’ve read Van Helsing . . .”

“You are not listening to me! You have more to worry about than my ‘Archaic pals’!” She nearly spat the words at him.

“And you’ve got a lot to learn about Chee. He’s not a Vera . . . whatever . . .”

“Jonas. I am an Archaic. I have been alive for nearly fifteen hundred years. I was a widow, taken in a raid on my village by Archaics. Our society is not structured like yours. We live by rules of strength and guile. Your people, people like Chee, are the ones who found the ways to kill us. To drive us into the mountains and force us to live as we have the past few centuries. Why is that so hard for you to accept?”

“Whoa. Why are you so angry all of a sudden? All I’m sayin’ is Chee is just a man, like me . . .”

“No! He is not like you, Jonas,” she was angrier now, getting off the bed and putting on her clothes. “Yes, he is a human, but he has a connection to the world that you don’t. And if you are smart, if you live through this, you will be wise to remember that there are far more things in this world that can kill you, not just Archaics or humans . . . or grizzly bears!”

“Look,” he said, trying to calm her. “I’m trying to understand here . . .”

“No, you are not,” she declared, fastening the buttons on her blouse.

“Listen to me, I believe you . . .” He tried to placate her.

“You do not believe me, Jonas Hollister. You have seen plenty of my kind. You have killed them, watched what they can do, and yet you consider me crazy because I tell you of witches and wolf people and vampires and that your man Chee is a witch?”

“Whoa! I didn’t mean . . .” He stepped toward her and tried to take her in his arms. He didn’t want to fight with her. But she was too quick and dodged away from him. She glared at him and left his bunk, gone so fast it was almost like she’d never been there.