Dust of the Damned (9781101554005) (24 page)

Zane sipped his coffee and whiskey, set the cup down, licked the edge of the wheat paper, and rolled it closed. He stuck the cylinder in his mouth, sealing it with his tongue.

“After this job, Uriah,” she said in the same even tone as before, “I reckon we’ll be forking trails for good.”

She turned away from him and drew her blankets up across her shoulders.

“If that’s what you want, Red.”

Zane stared at the newly built quirley. Finally, he tossed it into the fire. The flames licked at it, causing white smoke to curl up from the cylinder. The fire consumed it, leaving only a line of gray ash beside the coffeepot.

Zane leaned back against his saddle once more and took another sip of his coffee. It tasted sour. He flipped the cup back over his shoulder, sending the coffee and whiskey splashing into the brush.

He lay back against his saddle and drew his hat down over his eyes.

Wet and naked, the bewitching Ravenna Gonzalez-Vara sat Indian-style on a flat stone slab above a steaming hot springs pool. She sat with her chin up, shoulders back, black hair behind her shoulders, eyes closed. Her invitingly fleshy, copper-colored belly moved in and out as she breathed.

A gold amulet in the shape of a hexagon and the size of a saucer hung from a rawhide cord around her neck. It lay with one edge tipped into her cleavage. Her full, dark breasts angled out slightly from each other, one a little larger than the other. The larger one had a faint brown birthmark along its bottom curve.

Charlie Hondo’s loins sputtered and tingled as he watched from a niche in the rocks of this hidden canyon. He grinned, brushed a hand across his nose.

Steam bathed the Mexican witch, lifting all around her and causing her skin to glisten. There was a thin, warm trickle of water tumbling above her and onto the ancient stone trough behind her. The water slid darkly, steaming down to caress her buttocks and split and flow in two separate streams around her bent legs before continuing into the warm pool below the slab of rock she was perched on.

The water rattled like delicate wind chimes. It smelled of sulfur and moss.

Charlie thought he could smell the wild musk of the woman as well. His heart heaved. Warm fingers tickled his groin.

Moving stealthily on the balls of his boots, he stepped back into the niche and walked along the corridor of sandstone by which he’d stolen in here from the camp that he and the boys and Ravenna had set up late last night in this remote, unnamed sierra in north-central Arizona Territory. He came to a cut in the rock to his left and followed its circuitous route until it opened again just up the waterfall’s bed from the meditating witch.

Warm, salty-smelling water tumbled onto the black volcanic rock to Charlie’s left. He stepped out around it and into the
trough of the falls, the water feeling hot as it closed over his boots. Ravenna sat about ten feet ahead of him, her back to him, her wet hair tumbling down her shoulders to nearly cover her plump, glistening buttocks.

Charlie stretched his lips back in devious delight as he stepped softly toward the woman, biting his lip with the effort of silence, lifting one foot at a time in the four-inch-deep black water. Humor rippled through him, and he had to pause a moment to choke it back down into his chest.

He continued forward. Ravenna was within four feet of him. He could see the pores in her skin, the droplets beading on her hair ends, tracing jagged routes across her shoulders and the backs of her arms.

Charlie held his arms out to both sides, crouching, cupping his hands, getting in position to grab the young, ravishing sorceress from behind, to grab her big breasts, scaring the holy hell out of her, and steal a wild kiss.

Ravenna was smiling, only Charlie couldn’t see her face. She glanced behind her to see the javelina she’d conjured blinking up at her through Charlie Hondo’s bright, horrified eyes.

It was a typical desert javelina, brown and gray, with a ridiculous-looking face that resembled that of a bear cub but with a long nose and flaring pink nostrils. The nostrils were really flaring now, the sides of the javelina that was now Charlie heaving as he breathed frantically, snorting his dismay at the sudden transformation.

Ravenna poked a finger to a corner of her mouth and tittered delightfully. “That’ll teach you to sneak up on a girl saying her prayers to Elyhann!”

Charlie lowered his head and shook it wildly, as though to
rid himself of this ugly pig’s body. His sides heaving faster and faster, he ran off squealing down the stone trough around the steaming pool, his little black, cloven hooves slipping and sliding on the slick rock.

He bulled forward into some manzanita grass and willows growing just beyond the spring and along the cut the runoff made through the middle of this canyon that slanted gradually down to the Salt River and then out of the mountains to the open Arizona desert beyond. He came back through the brush, splashed across the runoff creek, squealing and oinking madly, his eyes still the brown eyes of Charlie Hondo but now owning a horror that Ravenna doubted they’d ever shown before. Gold javelins of stark-raving terror shot from them as Charlie dashed up the ravine and into more brush on the stream’s opposite side.

Ravenna threw her head back and laughed huskily with unabashed mirth, cupping her big breasts in her hands, as she watched the brush thrash and jostle, catching occasional glimpses of Charlie’s pig head and curled tail above the weeds, willows, and black volcanic rocks.

Charlie arced away from Ravenna, then dashed back into the narrow ravine, splashed across the stream, and mounted the left-side bank, heading back in Ravenna’s direction. When he reached the misty pool below her perch on the slab of rock, she touched the amulet with both her hands, muttered a phrase or two, and watched as the pig’s front legs buckled. The javelina was suddenly Charlie again, lying belly down in the mud and moss and manzanita grass beside the pool.

Charlie’s back rose and fell as he breathed. He pressed his cheek against the ground, grinding one of his hoop earrings into the mud, and blinked his wild eyes as though trying to reassure
himself that he’d regained his human form. The cross tattoo on his right cheek shone spruce green against his terror-bleached skin.

Ravenna cradled her knees in her arms and loosed another volley of wicked, elated laughter.

“I’ll put good money on the barrelhead that you’ll never try that again!”

Charlie winced, pressed his hands to the ground on either side of him, and pushed himself up. He looked at Ravenna, his eyes hard with fury, teeth gritted, pale cheeks mottled red. Ravenna pointed at him and laughed all the harder, rocking back and forth on her naked bottom.

“You fuckin’ bitch,” Charlie bit out angrily, though instinctively knowing he had to restrain himself. If she could turn him into a javelina, she could turn him into a spider that she could crush under the heel of her hand.

And he had a feeling that if he pushed her at all, she’d be thrilled to do just that.

He got his knees beneath him and, drawing deep breaths of calming air, sat back on his heels. He ran a sleeve across his sweat-slick forehead. “Whew! You really had me going there.”

“Sí,”
Ravenna said, her laughter slowly dying. “I had you running everywhere, Charlie.” Suddenly, the laughter died and she looked at him coolly, narrowing one chocolate-brown eye. “I can do it again. Anytime.”

“I thought you was tapped out.”

“Too tapped out to conjure dragons, maybe. Too fatigued to let you boys turn into wolves just any old time. But any witch worth her salt can cast a spell like that in her sleep.”

“Thanks for the warnin’.”

Charlie heaved himself to his feet, grabbed his hat off a willow branch, pulled it down tight on his head, and strode off sulkily toward a wide crack in the canyon wall.

“Oh, come on, don’t go sour on me, Charlie. I was only fooling around, just as you were,
mi amor
!”

“I didn’t turn you into no pig,” Charlie snapped, wheeling at the entrance of the defile that led back to the camp. “Hell, Ravenna, don’t you know that during full moons, I
eat
pigs!”

“I apologize,
mi amor
.” Ravenna raised her eyebrows beseechingly. “Forgive me?” She drew her arms away from her breasts, lifted her chin, and threw her shoulders back. Alluringly, she said, “If you forgive me, you can have me….”

Charlie would have none of it. He’d been scared shitless, and he wasn’t used to the feeling. Didn’t like it a bit. “Where we goin’, anyways? You say we’re getting close. Don’t you think it’s time you let me an’ the boys know?”

“You’ll know by the next full moon, Charlie.”

“Goddamnit, Ravenna. Why’s it such a big secret?”

“It is the biggest secret in all the world, Charlie. And not to be taken lightly. No offense, but if I tell you, you might blab it to the others. I know how you boys like to drink and carry on. We’ll be laying in supplies in Tucson, and I don’t want anyone there having any inkling about where we’re headed.”

“Me an’ the boys don’t like bein’ kept in the dark by no…” Charlie let his voice trail off, frowning in frustration, averting his eyes.

“By whom?” Ravenna arched a severe brow. “By a girl? By a Mexican witch…?”

She wagged an admonishing finger and clucked her tongue. “Never forget what I’m capable of, Charlie.”

“Ah, hell.” Charlie snorted, miffed, and stomped off down the rocky defile.

Ravenna laughed, funneled her hands around her mouth, and called, “I’ll make it up to you soon,
mi amor
!”

Chapter 23
    

CUTTING THE TRAIL DUST IN TUCSON

Two weeks later, the dust-laden wooden sign leaning along one side of the stage and freight road and in the shadow of a tall, one-armed saguaro warned:

BY ORDER OF THE TUCSON
CITY COUNCIL ALL GOOLS
WILL BE SHOT ON SITE!

Someone had scrawled in faded green paint below the main admonishment:
“Specially hobgobs!”

“Now, that ain’t no way to treat us ghouls that got jingle in our pockets,” said Curly Joe Panabaker, riding directly behind Charlie and Ravenna, who headed up their small pack.

“Yeah,” said Lucky Snodgrass indignantly. “Here we was,
aimin’ on payin’ for our trail supplies. Maybe we ought not be so damn nice, if’n they’re gonna treat us like third-rate citizens!”

Ravenna chuckled. “I don’t think they’d call us any kind of citizens, amigo.”

“What I’d like to know is how they think they can pick a werewolf out of a townful of humans. They know and we know they can’t, less’n there’s a full moon, o’ course.”

Ravenna said, “Don’t get cocky, Charlie. Word is probably out about your break from the pen, no? Telegrams have probably been flying all over the frontier—with your descriptions on them.”

“Hell, you know there ain’t no telegraph wire up longer than two days anywhere in the West without a ghoul of some sort rippin’ it down.” Charlie looked around with interest as he and the others rounded the trail and entered the outskirts of Tucson with its smelly stock pens and ancient adobe hovels from which the smell of spicy Mexican meat rose from brick chimneys. “Word of our escape from hell won’t get out here for another month yet.”

“ Ah… Tucson.” One-Eye sat up straight in the saddle, his lone dull brown eye sparkling beneath the brim of his shabby brown bowler hat. “Been a while since we been to a town, amigos. I say it’s time to do a little stompin’.” He glanced at a narrow, three-story building with FOUR ACES painted in arcing red letters over the high false façade. “And ruttin’,” he added with a wolfish growl.

“Three days here at the most, boys.” Ravenna looked around uneasily at the heavily armed men in skins and furs walking the boardwalks or slouching out front of quiet, dark Mexican cantinas or the more rollicking saloons. Bounty hunters, most likely.
“And we keep our heads down and stay out of trouble. A few drinks, a few girls, a little harmless fun.”

She narrowed her eyes as she swept her admonishing gaze around the group. “But no trouble. Not even if it comes stalking. We avoid it at all costs. We are choir boys—remember that. We are the humble and meek and we give trouble of every color a wide berth. We have, as the gringos love to say, bigger fish to shoot.”

“I think that’s ‘fry,’
chiquita
,” Charlie corrected her, giving a snort as he ran his glance across a long, low-slung building on the south side of the pueblo’s main street, which a board over the shake-shingled roof identified as a U.S. Bounty Office.

“Whatever,” Ravenna said, as Charlie led them toward the Rincon Mountain Dance Hall and Beer Parlor on the street’s right side, across a side street from a whitewashed Catholic church with a half-ruined wall around it. Several Mexicans in striped serapes and straw wagon-wheel sombreros lay atop the wall, hats tipped over their eyes. One had his arm hanging down the side of the wall, his brown hand still wrapped around the neck of a half-full tequila bottle. Another Mex lay slumped at his side against the wall’s base, a brown cur sniffing around the pockets of his white cotton slacks.