The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (44 page)

“Miller,” he said.

A single glimmer of life, in the boss’s house. They rode across the yard to the front porch, where Trace vaulted down and threw the reins to Boz.

Boss Miller lay in the front hall, splayed on his back, as if something had forced the door open and tore into him before he could retreat. His shotgun was still in his hand, both barrels spent. His eyes were closed and there was so much blood Trace couldn’t even evaluate the damage.

“He alive?” Boz called.

“Barely.” Trace wouldn’t have guessed it, except he could feel the faint spark in him. He grabbed the carpet on which Miller lay and dragged the rancher’s body down the hall, around the corner into the parlor. Mrs. Miller was strewn across the sofa in that room. Her corsets and heavy skirts had protected her body from scrabbling claws, but her face and shoulders were slashed to bone. Trace covered her with a shawl from the back of the sofa.

He went back to the front door and took Blackjack’s reins from Boz. “Come on. Bring ’em inside.”

Boz dismounted without a word. Trace led Blackjack through the front door and down the short hallway to the dining room. The big quarterhorse’s sides scraped the walls, knocking down pictures and toppling knicknacks. He could barely squeeze the turn between the dining table and the sideboard, but once alongside the table he huffed in relief and began nibbling the daisies in the centerpiece.

Boz led the paint in along the other side of the dining table, and then had to step up on the table and walk across it, to get out of the room. He hopped to the floor and started toward the front. “I’m gonna block up the door.”

Trace followed him, intending to check the house’s second story, but as soon as they stepped into the front hall they heard yips and howls and footfalls, out in the yard and closing fast. Trace recognized the spirit racing toward them, as well as the snarling dark menace closing in behind. He shouldered Boz out of the way and slammed the door just behind the sleek black missile that hurtled across the threshold and skated, scrabbling on the polished floor, a good length down the hall before rolling head-over-tail.

Something heavy hit the door against Trace’s shoulder, almost forcing it open. Trace kicked back, his boots slick on the boards, and thrust the latch closed. Boz was right behind him with the cross-bar, which they dropped into brackets on either side of the door. Miller was no fool—he’d made money in the horse business, and he’d built his house to be a fortress. Which begged the question, why had he opened the door in the first place? Had he heard the horses being slaughtered, and gone to investigate? Or had someone banged on the door, hollering for help?

Trace backed away from the door, aware of a scratching and snuffling along the threshold outside. More footsteps landed on the porch, some thumping like boots, others clicking like toenails. Something yipped out in the yard, to be answered by a sharp growl from the porch.

“What are they?” Boz whispered. “Jesus Christ, Trace—”

“Eez wolves,” Remy’s voice said.

They turned to see him, naked and bloody and panting, slumped against the parlor door, one hand clutching his bleeding neck. “But none like I never see.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Remy healed with astonishing speed. By the time Trace and Boz had pushed all the furniture up against the parlor windows, and tipped the dining room table up against the windows in that room—which required a complicated and infuriating game of backing the horses out into the hall, then stacking chairs in the butler’s pantry—Remy had licked all of his wounds he could reach and bathed the one on his neck with brandy and one of Mrs. Miller’s doilies.

He also talked, in between lapping and gnawing at his hide. “I never see no’ting like dis. Remy track dat Kid to the yard, true nuff. But then I find dead horse, smell of Kid, smell of man-blood. Now smell of
two
wolves. Kid and new wolf-smell go to bunks. More man-blood, much hullabaloo, suddenly more wolves. New wolves spread out, track all over yard—every bunk, every corral. But they not wolves.”

“They’re werewolves,” Boz grunted, holding up the table while Trace drove nails through into the walls. “Like you.”

“Non.” Remy sucked at the bite mark on his bicep and spat onto the carpet. “
Remy
eez loup-garou, true nuff. Dat Kid one, too. These new ones something else. Change like dis take years, sometime. Not same night, and not like—” He paused, mouth skewed as he groped for the words. “Remy change little by little—sharper teeth, better ears, better nose. Get stronger. Heal quicker. First full moon change full wolf.
That
some scary experience, be damn sure.
Years
later, learn to half-change—use d’ears, d’eyes, d’nose, but still walk upright.”

He shook his head, swabbing with the doily at the half-healed gash on his thigh. “Dees things outside, they like patch-up quilt—some ears, some tails, some paws, some walk like man. An’ dey all change
immediatement
after bite. That not normal. Most folks take many bites, long time to get infection.”

“Hey,” Boz said, alarmed. “Miller was bit.”

“He dead?” Remy asked.

“He wasn’t,” Trace said, and they all trooped into the parlor. Remy appeared to feel no shame at striding around naked, and indeed his loins were so hairy he hardly seemed more unclothed than a dog or a bronc stallion.

The loup-garou dropped to a crouch alongside Miller’s body, drew in a long sniff, and peered at the wounds. “Eez not bites. Dis all claws. Somebody want him dead, don’t want him changed, maybe.” Remy leaned his ear closer to Miller’s lips. “Don’t matter, he dead anyway.”

“Trace?” Boz said, his voice high and tight. “Where’s
Mrs.
Miller?”

Trace switched toward the sofa. The shawl lay on the floor; the body was nowhere in sight.

Suddenly there was a chorus of yips and howls from the front yard, right beneath the parlor windows, echoing under the porch’s roof.

“Oh, no,” Trace said, and they all lunged for the hallway.

Mrs. Miller was on her knees before the front door, her shredded dress hanging off her shoulders, her furred paws just lifting the cross-bar clear of its brackets.

Trace hollered and rushed forward, but she turned on him with a snarl, teeth and bone flashing in the ruin of her face, one eye gleaming gold and feral. The cross-bar crashed to the floor as Trace leapt away from the slash of her claws. She gathered herself to spring at him, but was caught by Boz’s bullet through her mangled jaw. She crumpled against the wall, but before Trace could collect himself to say thank you, a heavy body hit the front door and the latch gave way.

A phalanx of horrors surged into the hall—a riot of claws and teeth and fur. Boz got off three or four shots before they overwhelmed him. Trace managed to get his gun clear but the first shot went wild as teeth closed around his wrist. He punched at a yellow eye—Pancho’s olive skin and mustaches above those teeth, he saw in a kind of nightmare—and heard Boz’s shouts rise to a shriek of pain. Trace fought like a madman after that—shooting wildly, punching and kicking at ribs, throats, hindquarters, but they laughed like coyotes and pulled him down in a mass. Claws sank into him; boots and bare, hairy toes pinned him down. The creature on his chest had Red’s face, carroty thatch spread over his brow and cheeks like rust, breath of whiskey and blood in Trace’s nostrils. Its eyes were quite, quite mad.

Trace strained and gasped and in desperation, slipped out of himself, hovered above the carnage in the hall, heard Boz’s screaming as if at a distance, felt the kicks and scratches and thumps to his own body as faint echoes, saw Remy’s lean fierce shape slash and twist free of the snapping jaws and grasping claws, and bolt for the door, ears back, running for his life. Trace felt a weak relief as the loup-garou cleared the porch and vanished into the night, pursued by two or three of the others.

It was short-lived. Somebody seized his balls and squeezed. He came back to himself with a choked scream, and the devils all around him howled in amusement. Their laughter mutated into yips of excitement as a new figure, slight and tow-headed, appeared in the doorway.

Head hung low, face rough with more beard than he’d ever grown in his life, the Kid swaggered through the pack and snarled at Red to get off Trace’s chest. Red slunk away with a submissive yip and the Kid dropped both knees into Trace’s ribs.

There was blood on his lips, and a cold, cold smile. “Guess God didn’t tell you about me, huh, Preacher?”

*   *   *

T
HE MOON HAD
risen, and a cold light spilled over the yard as Trace and Boz were dragged out into it. The wolves who still had fingers tied Boz’s arms to an old ox yoke, and hung it from the porch of the foreman’s house, just high enough that Boz’s bare toes dragged in the dust. It was plenty low enough that the pack could still torment him.

“I always heard crucifixion was an awful way to go,” the Kid remarked. “My father used to say that Jesus and the thieves could’ve hung there three, four days if the soldiers hadn’t pierced their sides. I don’t reckon Boz’ll last that long, do you?”

Trace had a bit wedged in his teeth and a number of check-reins looped around his arms and legs. He was trussed up like a country ham, propped across the cold fire pit from the cook-shack. He couldn’t see how bad Boz was hurt, at this distance in the dark, but at least he was still healthy enough to jerk and grunt when they prodded him. The pack had worn out their blood-lust for the moment and were confining themselves to teasing.

“Listen, Kid,” Trace said, speaking carefully around the metal bar across his tongue, “I dunno what Mereck told you, but this ain’t gonna win you any favor with him—”

The boy gave a low laugh. Ironically, he was more human in shape than any of the others, but he had retained the hair on his jaw, the savage teeth, the slightly elongated ears. With his broad, flat face he looked fey and wild. “You’re a fool, Preacher. A liar and a false prophet, like the rest of them. All your blather about men being equal, when you know perfectly well they aren’t.” He rolled his razor-clawed fingers before his face and grinned. “Some of us are special.”

“Kid—the man you been talkin to—he ain’t
God
—”

“Oh, how would
you
know?” the Kid sneered. “It was all I could do not to laugh when you told me that sob story about your old man. I couldn’t
wait
to kill mine. The sonofabitch tried to exorcise me four times. The fourth time, Mr. Mereck found me. Let me out.” The boy tapped his temple. “It was all in here, the whole time. He just showed me how to let it out.”

Across the yard, Boz let out a scream. Trace jerked, his teeth clashing against the iron bit, and the Kid glanced over his shoulder with faint gratification. “Mr. Mereck says you’re more than you seem. I guess you must be, if you’re protected against His curse. But all I ever saw in you was weakness,
Preacher.
Always licking up to Miller, your second daddy. Hauling that nigger around like a cross on your back, to keep yourself down.”

“Hell with you, Kid. You ain’t half as smart as you think.”

The Kid laughed and pounced, landed straddle-legged across Trace’s knees, catching Trace’s chin in his clawed hand, five needlepoints digging into his cheeks and the bit making his jaws cramp. “I caught
you,
didn’t I? Led you right back here, just like one of those stupid traps the wolf-hunter left laying around. Couldn’t wait to come save me from myself. Put me right back into the cage
you
can’t get out of.” He let go Trace’s face with a spiteful wrench. “You’re
weak,
Preacher, and the Master only picks the very best for His service.”

Trace heard the fawning note in the Kid’s voice, and it disgusted him as much as it was frightening. “Listen, Kid. I’ve seen what Mereck does to his followers. He uses ’em up like hack nags. There was a man named Kieler—”

“Oh, I know all about
him
. Master told me all about his traitors, the ones who failed him. I already did better than that fool Ferris.” His face turned sly. “Yeah, I know about the Fire-Master. Lost his nerve, stupid prat. I imagine he’s having a worse time than your boy, right now.”

Across the yard, Boz made a low, guttural moan that built into a scream and Trace jerked in his bonds. “Goddammit, Kid!” His teeth clashed against the bit. “He didn’t do nothin to you! Mereck ain’t gonna want him so you may as well turn him loose!”

“Oh, no. The Master was real specific—find his weak point, he said. And that’s your pet nigger. So I figure I soften you both up for him, before he gets here.”

“And when’s that supposed to be?”

A beatific smile crossed the Kid’s face. “Soon.”

“How’s he gettin here? Where’s he comin from?” Behind his back, Trace fought with the knots of his bindings. They were not tight, but the leather straps were stiff and difficult to move. Even if he got them loose he had no guns and no way to flee. The horses were still trapped in the house—at least the wolves had been too busy with their captives to indulge in further slaughter—and since he’d removed his coat while they were barricading the windows, he didn’t even have the apothecary bottles on his person.

“It doesn’t matter,” the Kid said. “The Master has many ways of watching His faithful. He can listen on the wind. Not a sparrow falls without His notice. That’s how he found
me
—my blood cried out to Him. He sees into a person’s
soul,
and He only takes the pure at heart…”

Trace tuned him out. While the Kid went on eulogizing, Trace slipped out of his skull and into the gray, hoping to get a look at the wolves’ spirit-selves—maybe count their numbers, look for holes in their defenses—and to see whether Mereck was as close as the Kid seemed to think.

He saw immediately how the Kid’s aura had changed. He had shed whatever restraints of morality or self-control had held back the beast; the power had settled over him like a coat, merged with his skin and bones, embraced him. And with that interference removed, Trace easily recognized that other hovering echo: Mereck’s cold, hungry presence, whispering to the boy, stroking him, holding him in thrall.