Jasper Mountain (26 page)

She pressed closer to the simple wood jail and again observed the hand. She shivered. These
gaujos,
they called her people barbarians. Yet in the window of the jail sat the sheriff’s most grisly trophy. She wondered what the owner of the appendage did to earn such a fate. As if to answer her, a spirit came around the corner of the jail and looked longingly at the jar. His left wrist dripped blood that didn’t pool on the ground but faded away into nothing.

She turned away from the sorrow on his face. These spirits—
devi
—spoke everything through their eyes. They no longer possessed the words of this world to convey the price Jasper exacted from them.

Flexing her fingers, she imagined her own hand in a jar. She shook the vision away. A severed hand would not be her price to pay. She’d killed a man. A
gaujo
man.

Do not fool yourself,
a voice wisped through her mind.
Not just a man, but a king.

Thank heaven she didn’t run into Victor’s apparition, although she expected him at every turn. Yet knowing the man, she suspected he stood in Hell at this very moment, challenging Satan himself. If Milena were to bet on which king operated with more ruthlessness and evil, she would advise Satan to find another home.

Hopelessness rose, and instead of allowing fear to join, she focused on her purpose. Jasper Mountain.

The giant rose up behind the town, darker than the night. No matter what the hour, the mountain’s presence overshadowed all else, the town of Jasper cradled in its arms like a wailing, troubled babe. At any moment the mountain might tire of its charge, let go, and cause the town to slide down into oblivion.

Take the next step, she reminded herself. Night offered its cloak, and she must be gone before daybreak. She must continue. Hard as she tried to concentrate on the task at hand, the handless man followed her. His stump dripped, a nagging reminder of the barbarian souls hiding beneath cloaks of civilization these men of the West wore around their shoulders.

Piano music and voices leaked around the buildings from the saloon on Main Street, but not so loud as before. The town had quieted finally. The men still speaking slurred their words loudly, sentences stumbling and making no sense. A few lamps on Main Street glowed, casting sickly light.

Looking both ways, she darted across the alley to the back of the General Mercantile. Hoping to stay hidden, she stayed back in the shadows of the night.

Milena was not alone. A woman spirit stood tucked between the two buildings. She lit a cigarette, her eyes not blank at all, but filled with barely contained and deadly hate. Familiarity tingled, and Milena looked closer at the specter. The spirit sucked on her cigarette, her cheeks sinking in. Her angular face revealed, among other hardships in life, this woman had faced starvation. Her blue eyes were the only color piercing through silvery hair hung in ropey tangles to her waist.

Her beauty had not faded, though. She drew in another drag from her cigarette and smoke billowed out from her chest. Milena’s eyes drew down to the hole. Bullet? Most likely. The wound gaped, torn and uneven. Someone had shot this woman at very close range.

Recognition gripped Milena and she gasped. The waif she’d just seen with Luke a few hours before. Angelina nodded as another web of smoke leaked from her chest.

Milena staggered back, wanting nothing more than to flee this town. Evil pervaded. Brutality always won in Jasper. She swallowed back nausea and tried not to look Angelina’s way. If Milena had the time and wasn’t afraid of discovery, she’d help the woman move on. For the second time this night, circumstances forced Milena to put her own needs before any others.

The specter continued to watch her.

Milena spoke in a whisper, “You face an eternity here. Of this existence. Let go and travel forward. Move on.”

The spirit continued to suck the cigarette, her blue eyes burning with hate.

Noise and shouts interrupted from Main Street. A fight broke out. The shouting rose to a crescendo, and taking advantage of the ruckus, Milena smacked her velvet bag into the mercantile back window. She reached in and opened the door with a click. She paused, listening. Angelina and the handless man watched her. Did anyone else?

No sound came from inside or above.

In the tradition of her people, she planned to gather only what she needed to live. She entered the back of store. Angelina followed. The handless man stayed back, and Milena did her best to ignore the specter following her.

Through the large window at the front, the saloon spewed men out the door like a great creature with indigestion. Watching the saloon while she moved about the dark store, Milena took only things she might need. A canvas bag first. Candles, a blanket, some food—bread, dried meat, cheese. A knife. The sack grew heavy with the tools of survival. The fight across the street died down, and men entered and left the saloon, some standing in groups on the wood sidewalk. Angelina drifted to the window and watched the men pour out, a webbed cloak of smoke hovering around her. Milena smelled a faint whiff of tobacco. This woman’s sorrow permeated, potent indeed.

Milena recognized Digger when he came out. Angelina watched the young miner and a tear streaked down her face, but her expression of anger and defiance did not change. Her eyes blazed although tears fell. Milena felt very exposed with Digger close.

Hide. Now.

Someone else was here.
Danger. Close.

The sheriff appeared, moving into view right outside the store window, his attention on the group across the street. Milena gasped and backed behind a counter. Slowly, he turned and cupped his hands around his face, pressing against the glass to peer inside.

She dropped to the floor, motionless. Her heart thundered so loudly, she was afraid he might hear it. She wondered if, before he hung her, the sheriff would cut off her hand.

After a few moments, his footsteps reverberated away on the wood walk outside. Angelina continued to watch the street and smoke.

Milena recalled a Boarding House dinner conversation regarding the recent hanging of a man. The sheriff described the occasion and laughed, telling how the dying man’s heels kicked in the air. Many times since, Milena watched the dance of death play over and over in her mind. The sheriff bragged of placing the dead man in a coffin and propping him up for several days of display as a warning to others. A warning, indeed, Milena thought, of the cruel nature of the West. She swallowed. Her throat burned.

She remained hunkered down for a bit to be sure he was gone. Finally, she rose to her knees, looking at the window. Nothing. She and Angelina were alone.

She must move. When daylight came she would lose her cover. She must get to Jasper Mountain before morning. Retreating to the back door, she tiptoed over glass and looked outside. The street stood empty. She hoped. The hand continued to float in the window, across the street. For a moment, she thought it waved to her to join it.

Had the sheriff gone back to the jail? Did he watch out his window?

“Are you planning to stay until daylight?” she whispered to herself. Searching for enough strength, she tried not to let the consequences of getting caught stop her, and she slipped out the door and around the building. After another minute or two, she then sprinted across the street, running away from the main road and veering to the north through scrub and rocks. Once on the outskirts of town, she slowed, surveying the landscape around her. No one followed. Not even Angelina. She clutched the canvas bag of survival in one hand and her velvet bag of magic in the other.

She wanted to give up. Turn herself over to the
gaujos.
Justice would never hear the words of a woman alone, but what of that? The serene cradle of the Otherworld waited to catch her, and she grew tired of this world, exhausted from struggling. Tears pressed behind her eyes and spilled over for the second time that night.

No time for such self-indulging. This was a time to—

Survive.

She wiped her tears away.
“Shuv’hani?”
She did not know where the voice came from, the Otherworld or inside herself. It did not matter. Only one thing did.

“I will survive,
Shuv’hani.
I will,” she promised out loud, more to herself than to her grandmother. She had nothing left within, yet she would not give up. She was Romani, she reminded herself. Romani could endure anything. She must not forget the strength of her ancestresses running through her, the Old Magic guiding her, the
Shuv’hani
walking beside her. As long as she took another step, there was no such thing as hopelessness, or surrender. Not for her. No matter what horrors came after her from the town. She turned, and Jasper wavered before her in spots of lantern light. Distant, dark voices spattered through air.

She left them behind, where they belonged.

“Are you sure she was there? Beth?” Isabella St. Claire was nothing if not brilliant at detecting deception. Luke stood before her, his bright blue eyes glinting with fortitude and probably a bit of whiskey.

“Yep. I followed her, ma’am. I seen her myself, ridin’ them miners like the whore in heat she is.” Luke laughed.

Isabella kept her expression stone. She did not find herself amused by him. At all.

Luke’s face betrayed the realization of his error. “I mean, beg pardon, ma’am. I ain’t got nothin’ ‘gainst no whores. My favorite type of woman. Whores, that is.” Luke grinned.

He’d come before dawn, pounding on her door despite the indecent hour, and insisted on meeting her before she properly dressed. Isabella decided it was high time she sacked him. She was tired of coming upon him, sleeping at his post. All he was good for was sleeping, and like all men, rutting. Luke smelled sour and dusty, like the cribs and those cheap whores he constantly visited. Isabella’s stomach turned. Just what she deserved, really, for trying to help a miner out of his lowly position. Those filthy dirt-hounds were all the same. Fit only to wallow through the underground.

But not to get distracted. First, Beth. At the cribs. The girl’s condition and actions of the previous day supported Luke’s story, the main reason she’d listened to him at all. Isabella recognized truth, especially when it slapped her in the face.

“When she rises, at the usual time, will you request for her to come down to my office?” No need to wake the girl at such an hour. She’d let her sleep a bit more, secure and safe for the last time in her life. Besides, Isabella needed some time to ponder over this most distasteful news and to properly dress and groom herself. She needed to be a picture of cold perfection. She knew her little Beth would crumple, and she needed all the strength she possessed to stay the course.

“When you return with her, please leave immediately. Go back to your post by the front door.”

“Ma’am.” Still grinning like the town idiot, he nodded and winked at her, backing out of her office. He shut the door.

She sat at her desk and dropped her head into her hands.

Really, this day was becoming most disagreeable. And so early. She wondered how Victor fared at the clinic. She thought she’d have heard if he’d died.

She raised her head from her hands and smiled despite the stormy waters she found herself navigating. It was actually lovely to see Victor underestimate someone for a change. Especially a woman. All the times Isabella fantasized about killing him, and the Gypsy struck the blow.

Of course, Milena’s life was forfeit. One did not merely wound a lion. No, the only way to insure survival was to kill the beast completely, guarantee its destruction. Especially one with wounded pride, a beast with a taste for twisted torture, and sick revenge. No, she didn’t envy Milena’s future at all.

Victor Creely must be alive. And if Isabella knew him at all, very much in a mood.

Milena watched the sky. Night began to fall away. She barely made out shapes and rocks in the landscape. A few black wisps swelled continuously, churning into a thick blanket of cloud, heavy and oppressive in the dark. Strange. A storm must be about to pass through. Despite the spinning cloud, the air felt cold and still. Once the wind whipped up, the way would be treacherous. She needed to find shelter, and quickly.