Currency of Souls (29 page)

He nods that great big hunk of glass, his eyes glimmering jewels in a dark mask. "Sheriff."

"Thanks for coming, Blue. You too Red."

There is nothing about Red Cloud to suggest he's a living thing. He 's standing there to the right of the door just as he always stands by Blue's door, motionless, face raised to the sky, painted eyes staring upward, mouth set in a grim line. He's a cigar store Indian, nothing more, but I know he's listening, and his quiver is full.

Something slams against the door.

Blue looks down at the witch. She's on her knees now, head lowered, lank hair hanging almost to the floor. "She goin' to make it?"

"Don't know. Would be better if she didn't."

He sighs and steps closer to me. Seen through him, the flame from the hurricane lamp on the bar is fragmented, the light dulled and trapped in feeble shards inside his chest. "What do you want us to do?"

"She's not going to let this slide," I tell him quietly. "Chances are she's going to make me very sorry I crossed her. If that happens, I want to be sure I've done at least one thing right. I wanted to give you and Red Cloud what you want. I want to set you both free."

Blue glances from Red Cloud to me. "I didn't come because of that."

"I know you didn't."

"And after all this time, I'm not sure I want it."

"Maybe not, but it's no way to live, Blue. You deserve better."

A sigh that sounds like someone blowing air over the top of an empty bottle and he shakes his head slowly. "Sheriff, we've been friends for a long time, but that don't mean you know all there is to know about me. Now I've had plenty of time to think it over and it seems like everyone comes to this town for one reason only, and that's to pay for the bad things they've done. I don't know why it has to be Milestone, or whether or not there are a thousand places like this all over the world, if there even is a world outside this town anymore. All I know is we're here because we brought ourselves here, and I figure if I'm meant to pay for my sins by living out the rest of my days like this, then that's what I'll do."

"What about Red?"

"Hell, Red doesn't know how to do anything else now but use that bow and arrow of his. Truth be told, he was never much of a talker even back when he was flesh and bone, but his company was always good, and company enough for me."

"I'd go crazy stuck in that damn house, Blue."

"You're stuck in a house of your own now, Sheriff, and I don't figure that's much of a way to live either."

A bang and a crack as antlers splinter the door.

As if it's her cue, Lian Su raises her face, looks from Red Cloud to Blue Moon, before settling her gaze on me. Her eyes are gone, the remains of them already hardening on her cheeks. The teeth she bares are bloodstained. "You tricked me," she says, with what might be delight. "You hid the mark, that's all. A simple thing. What a fool I am."

I take a step back. Blue Moon doesn't move.

Thunder slams against the door.

"You don't belong here, Lian, and you've done enough damage."

"I've done enough damage?" She stands without moving, as if invisible hands have jerked her up from the floor. "I haven't even begun to do damage."

The light from the hurricane lamp goes out. Automatically, I move away from the queer gray light that seems to cling to Lian like a second skin. Again she looks around, as if counting her adversaries, and then, grinning, starts moving in my direction.

"Don't," I command. It isn't directed at Lian but Blue Moon, who, though the darkness has made him all but invisible, is moving toward her. I can tell by the sound. I can tell...just because I can.

He ignores me, and suddenly the gray light around the witch begins to swim. Fuzzy misshapen shadows clamber up the walls. He's standing before her. She looks up at him, a tall obsidian man, utterly fearless and with nothing to lose, and admiration flickers across her chalk-white face. "If I broke your heart," she asks, almost sweetly. "Would it break the rest of you?" She doesn't wait for an answer, and he doesn't wait for her to hurt him. In an instant, his hands are around her throat, lifting her off the floor, and from the gloom comes the telltale sound of Red Cloud loading his bow.

"My, but you're a strong one," Lian says and brings her arms up between his, her hands grabbing his wrists. As three of Red Cloud's arrows pierce the flesh at the side of her neck, one after the other,
thwick-thwick-thwick
, with barely a second separating them, she screeches. Her hands convulse, shattering Blue Moon's wrists. Glass rains to the floor. He staggers back, stunned, and raises arms that no longer have hands at the end of them.

Thwick-thwick-thwick
. Another trio of arrows fly forth from Red Cloud's bow, this time hitting home in the side of Lian's face. She whirls, ducks low, and ends up in a crouch, one leg splayed out, the other folded beneath her, hands like claws on the floor. It could be ballet; it could be martial arts, but either way it means trouble for the wooden Indian.

"Stop..."

She doesn't acknowledge my request, doesn't look over her shoulder at me. Blue Moon, forgetting his newly acquired handicap rushes her. By the door, which continues to deteriorate under the weight of the deer, Red Cloud calmly draws back the string on his bow, his face forever expressionless.

Lian Su raises her hand in the air, palm faced in my direction, as if she's calling a halt to proceedings. But then something swishes by my ear, catches the hazy light and smacks into her palm. It's the bottle we drank from at the bar, still half-full, and before I can begin to guess what she's going to do with it, she brings it to her lips, empties it into her mouth, then almost immediately spits it back out. In Red Cloud's direction.

Before it hits him, it ignites, and abruptly Red Cloud is engulfed in violet fire.

Blue Moon collides with Lian Su, driving her into the door. She laughs and chops her hand against the side of his neck. Dark fragments fly, but he raises his arms and brings them down on her skull. She grunts, but does not fall, and delivers a second chop to Blue's neck. Then another. This time there's a sound like spare change falling to the floor and Blue Moon falls. He does not shatter, but enough of him breaks and scatters across the floor that I know he's not getting up again.

Red Cloud makes not a sound. The fire seeps into the cracks in his hide, vanishing inside him, burning him from the inside out. Smoke seeps from every fissure. The wood begins to blacken. His eyes have become red-hot coals.

He reaches for another arrow.

I've got to get her outside again. I've got to get her over that threshold, weaken her. With this resolution comes self-chastisement for not dealing her a killing blow when the opportunity was there, an error that cost Blue Moon and Red Cloud their lives. But of course, there's a very good reason for that lapse in judgment: I can hurt Lian as much as I like, but I'm not entirely sure I can kill her, or anyone for that matter. I can set it up so they kill themselves, offer them bargains that put them in the line of fire, but pulling the trigger is not something I believe I'm allowed to do.

But I'll do all I can.

As if she senses this, Lian turns to look at me, a smile growing as she gleefully steps on one of Blue Moon's legs, crushing it and scattering glass everywhere. Behind her the door is weakening, barely hanging on its hinges, and I wonder how much of that is her doing, because the weight of those animals out there combined with their infuriated battering, should have brought it down long before now.

"I have to tell you," she says, kicking aside a rough chunk of obsidian. "Although I ache in parts of me I wasn't aware I had, this is turning out to be quite a lot of fun."

There's a whoosh of air, a sickening crack I've mistakenly thought has come from the door, and she stops with a sudden intake of breath, shudders, and looks down at the point of an arrow which is sticking out of her cheek, black blood dripping from the tip.

Red Cloud, still burning, reloads. But his movements have slowed and fresh flame has begun to erupt from those cracks in his body. He's wreathed in smoke and wavering.

There isn't much time.

* * *

The scream does not come again.

Too much time has passed.

Whatever thrall has held him here ebbs away at last, and Kyle runs. His initial awe and fear at seeing them forgotten, he steps off the path and right into the middle of the herd. They don't so much move to accommodate him, as grudgingly let him infiltrate their number. Flies buzz his face. Warm bodies try to crush him between them. Antlers scratch his cheek, stab his flesh, but he continues on, aware that he still has the gun if one of the deer should decide to take him on. He fights his way through until he is almost there and almost out of breath. His throat aches. Anticipating a struggle with the animals that are busy ramming the door like maddened things, he is surprised when they stop their assault, look back at him, and slowly lope away. The wind seems to whisper, as Kyle moves quickly into the gap they've left for him, cocks back the hammer on the gun, and throws the door open.

* * *

I watch Lian Su's expression change from hate, to rage, to pleading, as she spins around to greet the boy in the doorway. To greet my son.

* * *

"They hurt me," his mother tells him, and Kyle feels every ounce of his resolve turn to dust.

"Mom?"

She nods slowly, a creature of ethereal beauty, her hair lustrous, skin pale. She is naked, but he does not register this for now. All he can see are her eyes, which look bloated and black. She reaches out to him in a gesture of pleading. She is asking him to save her. But from what?

He tears his fascinated and heartbroken gaze away from her to the burning Indian in the corner, watches as it topples and falls to the floor. The flames are mirrored a thousand times in the shards of black glass scattered around the floor like frozen puddles of oil. Blue Moon and Red Cloud. Dead. He feels a pang of sadness, but it is no more resonant than a gunshot on a battlefield. There is too much else to see, to understand.

Then he does.

Standing a short distance behind his mother is a gaunt old man dressed in a dark raincoat, one eye milky white in the light from the flames, the other staring at him.

Cadaver. The puppeteer.

Kyle steps into the bar, the gun held out before him, aimed at the old man. "You son of a bitch."

His mother drifts aside, her face filled with pride and pain.

Kyle glances at her. "He brought you back?"

"It's not her," Cadaver tells him.

"You shut the fuck up, all right? I'm talking to her."

"Yes," his mother tells him, "but it was a trick. He tricked me. Tricked your father too."

Kyle stops dead. "Where is he?"

"He killed him."

He returns his gaze to the old man, who suddenly looks scared and helpless, and that encourages him. "I asked you a question."

* * *

There are no words to make him understand, no way to make him believe me, because all the things I could say about his life, the things only a father would know, are a mystery to me. He stands there, Lian Su watching with malevolent glee, and the fire in his eyes does not come from the blaze that has consumed Red Cloud and is rapidly spreading, licking at the walls. This fire is his and I recognize it immediately. When I brought him back from the dead, it might have been forgotten, replaced by the shock of his resurrection, but it never left him. That same fire has marked the worst times of his life, and I've been there for them all, been the genesis of most of them.

But there is nothing I can say. Instead, I change the focus from me to the grinning witch to my left. "She's not your mother."

"That so?"

"Yes it is so. Her name is Lian Su. She tricked all of us into believing she was Gracie for years, but she isn't. She murdered our friends and now she's trying to destroy everything else. Don't let her fool you."

"Fool me?" He grins crookedly, comes closer, the gun held steady in his grip, the muzzle aimed at my face. "You're the only one who did that. Was it you who brought me back from the dead after I refused your deal?"

"No. Your father did."

"And in return...?"

"It doesn't matter."

"The hell it doesn't." Agony makes a melting mask of his face. In an instant, he has closed the distance between us and the muzzle of the gun is a hard cold circle pressed between my eyes. "Start talking."

"There's nothing to say. If you believe that woman is your mother, then you'll die."

"And what do you suggest I do?"

"Start believing the truth."

There are faces at the door, animal faces, but they're not interested in this little showdown. All their eyes are cast down, toward the remains of Red Cloud and Blue Moon. I guess for them, the hunt is over. Kyle's is too; he just doesn't know it yet.