The Damnation Affair (25 page)

I
ain’t giving you a horse.” Joe glowered, the bandage around his head glare-white in the livery’s lamplight. “You rode Bessie near into her grave, dammit, and that schoolmarm—”

“It warn’t her fault.” Gabe’s eyes burned, and he was sure his temper was none too steady. “And I ain’t
asking
, Joe. I need a horse, Hathorn’s missing, and after the night we’ve had, you’d do well not to question me.”

“Give him a goddamn horse.” Russ coughed rackingly, leaning against a stall door. “He’s got business.”

Gabe pulled his hand away from the gun-butt. “How long you been standin’ there?”

“Long enough.” The chartermage fixed him with a piercing glare. Russ looked about ready to fall down and sleep right there against the stall door, but his gaze was clear and his hands were loose, leftover mancy popping and sparking about him. “She might not have been in her house, Gabe. And that thing in the claim…”

“It can’t have her.” The words had to work their way around a wet rock lodged in his throat. “By God, if I have to, I will put her in a quiet grave. But
it won’t have her
.”
And if it killed her, I will return the favor. I have grace enough for that.

I have to.

Russ nodded, wearily. His hair, free of the wax and grimed with mud, stood up anyhow. He’d lost his bowler hat somewhere, and the guck smeared all over him was thick enough to turn aside a curse. “You want some help?”

As if you could give me any.
“I ain’t askin’.”

“But I am.”

Joe set about saddling a big white cob-headed beast of a horse, mutiny evident in his every line. He cast both Russ and Gabe reproachful little glances, but neither of them paid attention.

“Damnation needs you more.” Gabe considered the chartermage for a long moment. “I’ll take the ammunition you’re carrying, though.”

For a moment there was silence, as Russ unbuckled the belt full of cartridges and leather boxes of stacked bullets. He handed it over, and Gabe weighed it. Almost full; Russ’s battle had not involved gunplay.

“I was of the Templis.” The words surprised him, and the fact that he could say it so calmly surprised him as well. “I was a Knight, full-made and Baptized. I left them to marry Annie, but it follows a man, don’t it.”

“Fate tends to do that.” Russ leaned back against the stall door. The exhaustion had turned him gray, even in the warm lamplight. “I didn’t think the
Ordo Templis
still existed.”

Oh, they do.
“My…my wife. She…died.” Why had he not told the man before?
I had my reasons.

But were they good ones? Was it too late to offer an explanation, or even ask for…what? Forgiveness?

My way is to cleanse, not to forgive.

“So I gathered.” Russ coughed again. “I ain’t gonna see you again, am I.”

“Maybe not.” But Gabe paused, taking the reins from Joe as the big pale animal snorted and eyed him nervously. “You’re a good friend, Russ Overton. I wish to God I’d told you what I was.”

“Shitfire, Gabe, you think I didn’t
guess
?” The laugh was worn and threadbare, but it still made the chartermage look years younger. “Go on now. Do what you got to.”

That’s all I ever do. What I got to. Some days I wish it weren’t.
His foot found the stirrup, and he heaved himself up with a grunt, his entire body protesting. “This ain’t, by any chance, that man-eating bastard of a horse your dad was swearing to put down, was it?”

Joe’s gaptooth smile was pure malice. “
Hyah!
” he yelled, and slapped the pale beast’s flank.

The horse lunged for the livery doors, and Gabe cursed.

I
t was cold.

She could not
breathe
, there was a weight atop her, and she clawed at wet dirt.
Out, get out—

The intent to rise ran through her bones like dark wine, and she found herself exploding from the ground in a shower of wet dirt and small pebbles. Coughing, retching, she fell and lay full-length on cold soaked ground, and the sky was so
bright
, dear God, it burned along every inch of her, smoking through rips and rents in the riding habit, driving needles in.

Something landed atop her. It was a blanket, followed by a warm living weight. A thundering filled her ears, and she went still.

There was a voice, too. Familiar, and piercing the thundering thudding beat like a golden needle, a queer atonal screeching. There was another thump-thump, a very small one, some distance away.

What on earth…I am not dead. I am…oh, no. No. But yes. Robbie, where is he?

“Quiet,” Li Ang said, finally. “You quiet.”

Another set of racking coughs. Her throat was dry paper, and she suspected that very soon, she would be very thirsty. “Yes.” She blinked and recognized the blanket—it was the quilt from her very own bed, and it stopped the terrible burning all over her. She could
sense
the heat and light just outside, waiting to score her sensitive skin, scrape at her eyes. “Li Ang?” Wonderingly.

“Good.” The warm weight of the Chinoise girl’s body rolled away. “They think us dead. We go now.”

I
was
dead. Perhaps that’s beside the point.
She took stock of herself—her arms worked, and her legs. Her hair was a filthy mess, and the ruins of her riding habit were scarcely better. The pain in her chest was a metronome ticking, and she realized the thudding was Li Ang’s pulse. The smaller one had to be baby Jonathan’s.

Catherine. I am Catherine Elizabeth Barrowe-Browne. I am…alive. No, undead. Something. Robbie shot me.

She groaned, the inside of her skull unhappy with the memory, refusing to contain it. “It’s…dawn?”

“Sun soon. There is wagon. Heavy boxes. Yours?” The girl’s hands were strong and slim as the rest of her, and she dragged Cat to her feet, wrapping another blanket around her. “Horses, too. My horses better.”

Boxes of gold bars. Robbie took them from the claim. Not cursed now, he said.
“The boxes…yes. There’s…they are important. Li Ang…”

“You save Li Ang and Jin. Li Ang save you. We go now.”

“How did you find—”

“Li Ang
quiet
. Not
stupid
.” The Chinoise girl trailed off in a spitting, atonal song of curses. Cat stumbled, her broken bootheel throwing her off-balance, and she was evidently much heavier than she had been, for the wagon groaned most unsettlingly when she heaved herself up into the back and collapsed next to the corded trunks. There were scraping sounds, and more cloth settled over her body, merciful dimness easing the pain of inimical daylight.

I shall quite miss the sun. But at least I am alive, and Robbie…

Where had he gone? He was free of the thing in the claim, or so he said. And the gold, its curse lifted, would buy them all breathing room in San Frances.

“Li Ang?” Cat swallowed. The thirst was dreadfully bad, pulling against her veins. “I fear I may not be…quite safe.”

“
Jiang shi
.” Li Ang spat as she heaved herself into the wagon’s high seat. “You no hurt Jin or Li Ang.”

I certainly do not wish to.
“No. I would never.” But the burning all through her, different than the heavy horrible weight of day, made her not so sure. She was
thirsty
, and the heartbeats were so distracting. Her broken stays grated against her skin, and every inch of her crawled under the weight of drying dirt. At least it did not seem overly warm this morning. The afternoon would likely be a welter of sweat and unpleasantness.

“Good.” The Chinoise girl chirruped to the horses and flicked the whip, and baby Jonathan burbled. The wagon jolted, and Cat, wrapped in quilts, found herself tossed about most hideously.

“Li Ang?” There was no answer, just the steady grind of wagon wheels, and Cat closed her eyes under the smother of quilts. It promised to be a
very
long day. And she still had no idea where they were bound. “Li Ang, my dear, where are we
going
?”

“Train,” the girl called cheerfully. “You buy ticket. We go Xiao Van-Xi.”

It took her a moment to decipher what the Chinoise girl meant. Cat let out a half-sobbing sigh of relief. “Yes. San Frances, indeed.” For Robbie would find her there if they were somehow separated; they had agreed upon as much last night.

Was it last night? It must have been. And now I am…

Cat’s fingers crept to her throat. The wounds in her neck were gone, and her charing-charm lay cool and unbroken against her skin. And…Robbie’s locket, its metal familiar and still tingling with mancy.

Why did he leave me the locket?
“Oh, Robbie,” she whispered, and hugged herself under the blankets. The wagon jolted, baby Jonathan burped and burbled his way to sleep, and after a short while Li Ang began to sing. It was then Cat Barrowe discovered she could not shed a tear.

Whatever clay her body was made of now, it refused to weep.

T
he moon’s cheese-rotten grimace rose through spilled clouds; its sullen light turned the flats into a treacherous chiaroscuro. The plainsong had burned its way through Jack’s throat, and he coughed and spat once, breaking the monotony of its rise and fall.

When he did, the shadows pressed close, and he hurriedly took up the thread again, despite the scraping to his voice and the vicious nips of pain all over his body as weary flesh told him just how thoroughly he had abused it. His head tipped forward, and when he glanced up he saw with no real surprise gleams of paired eyes in the ink-black shiftings, oddly colored like beasts’ eyes.

He was not merely being watched, for when the massive, ill-tempered white horse pranced restively, some of the shadows would dart in, nipping at the gelding and making him difficult to control. Only the song kept them back, and he heard the sliding sound of mud-beasts rising from the wet earth. By tomorrow, the flats would be a carpet of wildflowers, seeds that had lain dormant springing into brief, gloriously colored life.

His course had veered, but by the time the jessum trees shook their long tresses in the moonlight, he had an idea of what was waiting for him.

The darkness was more than physical, but when the horse stepped over the invisible boundary of consecration it lifted, and the white gelding discovered his usual ill-temper again. He had to work to convince the damn horse that Jack was the one in charge, and the disdainful laugh from the shadow-figure crouched atop the charterstone at the head of the grave nearly drove the beast out of its mind with fear.

Through it all, Gabe kept the song’s measured cadence. When, sweating and shaking, the horse stood with its ugly head hanging and lather dripping from its sides, he let the song die gratefully in his burning throat.

Silence. A faint brush of wind over the new life sprouting amid the ruin and mud.

“You’ve got a choice,” Robbie Browne said, finally.

Jack Gabriel dropped from the saddle with a purely internal sigh of relief.
I just want to get some goddamn rest, kid.
“So do you, Browne. Or is it Barrowe?”

“Both, actually.” The boy—or the thing wearing the boy’s likeness—shook his head, tossing the forelock with a curiously familiar motion. “Barrowe-Browne. Old names, sir. Not like yours.”

My name’s old enough.
“Where is she?”

“My sister? Far beyond your reach, Sheriff. Which brings us to the choice.”

“You ain’t Robbie Browne. You’re
it
. The thing in the claim.”

“A lamentable misunderstanding. The
thing
in the claim lives in me, Jack Gabriel. A marriage of minds, you could call it. Except I’m not willing to give up my bachelor status.”

Gabe dressed the horse’s reins. If the animal bolted, good riddance. Plus, Joe would likely welcome its return without him. “So who am I talkin’ to?”

“Right now, on this ground, it’s Robert Browne. The consecration you so thoughtfully performed made
its
hold on me…uncertain.” A sigh, as Jack Gabriel’s gun cocked with a slight, definite
click
. “If you shoot at me, sir, you shall never see my sister again.”

The fear was claws in numb flesh. “I likely never will anyway.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. She’s been bitten, and buried in ground you so thoughtfully made sacred. For better or worse, dear Cat’s just like me now. Little sister, always tagging along behind.” Another pause, and the scarecrow-figure shivered atop the charterstone, a quick, liquid, terribly
wrong
movement. “She shouldn’t have come.”

“Nope.” In that, at least, they were in complete agreement. Jack took a single step forward, wet pebbles and sand grinding underfoot. Another. “She ain’t fit for this.”

“Let me be frank, sir.”

“I wish you would be.” Another step.

“That’s close enough.” The light, laughing tone was a warning, and the white horse made a low unhappy sound, shivering. “Hivering.ere is the bargain, Mr. Gabriel. I shall make you eternal, you shall leave me for daylight and the crows to feast on.” Robbie’s face was a white dish in the moonlight.

“Now why would you offer me a good deal like that, Browne? You ain’t the charitable type.”

“I am not. At least, I never was.” The boy hopped down from the charterstone, stepping over the freshly turned earth below. “Did you ever have a sister, sir?”

Something’s buried there. Buried nice and deep so sunlight won’t touch it.
“Orphan.”

“Ah. Well. Then you don’t know.” A pause. “Sir, I wish…Catherine is all I have left. I wish for her to be proud of me. I would prefer her not to know I…am as you see me.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“I didn’t know she would
follow
me. I had to alter my plans rather quickly once she appeared. As usual, you know, she always was rather a disturbance. Now, are you going to be reasonable?”

“There are good people in town dead because of you, Robbie Browne.”

“Would you like to add my sister to the list?” The boy’s laughter faded, and he reappeared to Jack’s left. Quick little bastard, slipping through pools of moonlight and shadow. And he was so damnably tired. “You’re Templis, aren’t you? The Order of the Redeemer. You know more about what she is than she ever will.”

Well, and there it was. His worst fears, confirmed. “The undead at the schoolhouse. They weren’t meant for her.”

“I knew there was something about you. The thing in the claim recognized you, but it’s…distracting, to have that much knowledge. It’s like a lumber room; thing wanted often buried—”

Jack
moved
. He hit the boy squarely, the knife sinking into the thin chest, and Robbie Browne laughed. Rolling, wet dirt flying and his exhausted body betraying him, the knife slapped out of his hand and the boy’s limbs closing around him like a vise. He struggled, and the prickles of grace burned unholy flesh. Robbie Browne hissed, his breath a sudden foulness…but even though Gabe’s spirit was willing, the flesh enclosing it had endured quite enough. Grace ebbed, and the struggle ended with a greenstick crack as bone in Jack Gabriel’s right arm gave way. He screamed, but the thing had its teeth in the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Tearing and ripping, a gout of hot blood down his shoulder, and his left hand was full of the gun he had loaded with charter-blessed ammunition.

Rolling again, the barrel jammed into the boy’s ribs. The thing inside Robbie’s flesh gapped and leered, and when the gun spoke, the white horse screamed to match Gabe’s cries and fled, trumpeting its fear as it tore through shadows and undead mud-substance alike. Another shot, and Gabe’s prayer rose like a charter-bell’s tolling, grace washing through him in a last hot flood of
in extremis
.

Catherine
, he thought, deliriously, and Robbie Browne’s body sagged aside.

Jack curled himself into a ball, whisper-screaming as edges of broken humerus grated together. His lower arm had snapped in two places, too, and the pain ate him alive. Everything he had ever thought of eating rose in his throat, escaped in a series of retches.

Robbie’s body twitched. It hissed, a viper temporarily dazed. It wouldn’t be down for long.

I wish for her to be proud of me
.

Me too
, Gabe might have said, only he was busy trying to breathe. On his knees, left hand dropping the useless gun, and his fingers scrabbling through dirt for the knifehilt.

He found it, and the thing with Robbie Browne’s face glared up at him, its mouth working, black with Jack’s blood. “Do…it…” it hissed, and Jack didn’t hesitate. Tt hesitahe broad blade bit deep, a tide of blackness gouting, and he hacked grimly at the thing’s neck until the head fell free, spurts of unholy ichor steaming in the chill night. The jessum trees rattled as they shook their fingers, just like slim graceful women letting their hair down, and the sound of the undead and the mud-creatures outside the consecrated ground falling to bits as the will that had impelled them decayed into dissolution was a whisper fit to haunt nightmares.

There was a brief starry period of blackness, and when Gabe regained consciousness he found himself lying under a cloudless sky, the stars a river and a graying of dawn in the east.

There was a wooden shape to one side, and two slumped corpses that were probably horses, drained to feed Robbie Barrowe’s unholy thirst. Jack didn’t care. He lay for a little while, until, blinking away dirt and crusted blood and nastier decaying fluid, he found the last gift Robert Barrowe-Browne would ever leave.

It was a second grave, dug just to the side of the freshly turned earth with the charterstone at its head. All Jack had to do was crawl, and pull some of the dirt over himself.

It should be enough. He prayed it would be enough.

His right arm hung useless, and the gun was left behind. He clutched the knife, its blade running with bubble-smoking black ichor, in his left fist as he crawled, scratching along the pan of the flats under Heaven’s uncaring vault. In the predawn hush, the scrape and rattle of his boots digging against damp earth were loud as trumpets. When he tumbled into the hole, the sides gave loosely, scattering over him.

It ain’t so hard
, he told himself.
All you have to do is put the knife in the right place.

He set the fine-honed edge against his own throat, and arranged his feet. His right arm throbbed and screamed, but he disregarded it. All it would take was a single lunge, jamming the hilt against the side of the grave, and he would bleed out.

But he had to do it before the sun rose.

Jack shut his eyes.

“Cath—” he whispered, and his legs spasmed, pushing him forward.