The Gunslinger's Man (16 page)

Silence settled, too tense to be natural.

A honeyed voice picked up the slack, creeping through the soup of darkness. “What Halloran is trying to say is…”

“
Save him
.”

* * * *

Light pricked Asher’s vision. He tried to turn his head away from it only to find the motion arrested by an unyielding metal wedge pressed to his neck. He swallowed against it, uneasy. The light was still bothering him.

“I think he’s waking up,” Romero said, too loud to be a whisper.

Asher groaned.
Oh, good.
Halloran must have called her to give Asher another lecture about keeping his head down and playing nice with bloodsuckers. What was it he’d done this time? Spoken out of turn? Rolled his eyes at Octavian’s pomposity?

Fire. Blood on his hands, blood on Wesley’s pistol. Redemption reduced to rubble and smoke.

Recollection slammed into him like ballast. And with it, panic.

Asher jackknifed on the bed—or would have done so but for the implacable straps holding him in place. Leather belts cut across his body from chest to ankle, sparking fresh terror in his breast.

“It’s all right,” Romero told him, her lined face swimming above him. “Kid, it’s all right!”

Two broad hands clasped Asher’s cheeks, stilling his flailing. Halloran resolved out of the hazy candle glow. “Stop.”

“Where,” Asher choked. He was hoarse, though it must have been a while since he’d last opened his mouth to scream. “Where… Willow…”

Halloran shook his head. “Safe. For now.”

“I’ll get the doctor,” Romero said. Her chair scraped the floor as she rose, the sound loud enough to make Asher wince in pain.

Rather than take her seat, Halloran settled on the edge of the mattress. The bindings securing Asher to the bed pulled tighter, briefly curtailing his breaths.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Halloran asked.

“Moreau.”
Betraying him. Being attacked by him.

Killing him.

Had it actually happened or had Asher made the whole thing up?

Halloran flattened his lips into a thin line. “Couldn’t find him. We know a few of his lackeys got away, though…”

Asher considered adjusting that version of events but he didn’t trust his voice any more than he trusted his memory. “Why the…” Beneath the coverlet and the belts, he could feel all his fingers and toes, which struck him as a good sign but didn’t explain the need to truss him like he was possessed.

Unexpectedly cautious, Halloran took a moment to pick his words. “You were badly hurt. When we found you, you’d lost a lot of blood.”

That would be Moreau’s parting gift, one last swipe at Asher’s much-bitten neck, digging clawed fingers into flesh he’d already bruised.

Asher blinked away the memory. “You, uh. You had to…”

Halloran shook his head. “You were too far gone for my blood to help.”

Like Uncle Howard.
Lucretia had dragged him back from the brink of death, but her life force was no match for the amount of damage Howard’s body had taken.

Had his uncle and his friends been found? The question rose to the tip of Asher’s tongue. He choked it back down, his mind emptying of thought when Halloran combed gentle fingers through his hair. “We lost you for a few minutes. You don’t remember?”

A near-death experience wasn’t enough to stop Asher’s tongue. “You never had…me,” he got out, each word husky with effort.

Halloran snorted, curling his lips into a half-smile. “You ain’t well enough to flirt yet.”

He straightened as the door creaked open. However odd it was to be petted, Asher felt oddly bereft once Halloran pulled away.

“This is Doctor Matheson,” Halloran said. “He brought you back.”

The quack was a tall, blond scarecrow of a man with a pinched mouth—no one Asher recognized. He took Halloran’s spot on the bed and proceeded to peer at Asher’s neck while ignoring the rest of him.

Asher tried not to shudder as something was moved and adjusted, aware of a bandage being stripped off his skin, yet nervous because he couldn’t see what it was supposed to be holding together.

The number of restraints holding him prisoner did not bode well.

“What’s wrong with me?” he gritted out, when he could suffer in silence no longer.

For the first time, Doc met his eyes. “You suffered a tear in your carotid artery. We were able to repair that, but thanks to Mr. Halloran here, half the tissue in your neck had become necrotic. I can only assume your body’s defenses were compromised by a combination of two incompatible strains of vampire blood—”

“Moreau must’ve…” Asher couldn’t recall being made to take Moreau’s blood, but he’d spent enough time in his bed that it could have happened.

Doc acquiesced with a nod. “That would do it.”

“Why the…why the ropes? What did I do?” Asher would’ve blamed his most recent captivity on actually putting a bloodsucker down with his own hand, but Halloran seemed ignorant of that accomplishment. And if
he
didn’t know, then chances were high that no one else did, either.

“It’s more a matter of what you
might
do,” Doc corrected. “As I said, your flesh became necrotic. I had to debride significant portions—”

“Amputate?”

Asher was no stranger to the concept. He’d been born a generation after the war, late enough not to have seen the horror of the battlefields but not so late that he didn’t grow up around its veterans.

“You’ve retained your limbs, Mr. Franklin,” said the doctor, a touch exasperated. “What you lost is mostly muscle and connective tissue. Fortunately, thanks to your uncle’s work, you should be able to go on just as before… Perhaps a take a little more care when it rains, but otherwise…” Doc flung his hands up in a gesture that exemplified his interest in the topic.

“Get this shit off me,” Asher panted.

Halloran took a step toward the bed. “Asher—”

“Get them
off!
” He’d been too scared to move before, but with a clean bill of health and a doctor talking crazy at him, Asher’s dread couldn’t compete with his horror. What good works? What had Uncle Howard done for Ambrose?

Two of the belts stretched tautly across his chest snapped loose, freeing his arms from the elbow down. It was all the wiggle room Asher needed to tear free of the rest.

Doc stood away from the bed as if pricked with a needle. Even Romero took a step back. Maybe later, Asher would regret frightening them both. In that moment all he cared about was stripping the covers from his body.

Halloran made to grab his arm and still the attempt, but Asher kicked and the blanket slipped off, revealing—metal plates shifting and rearranging themselves like scales welded into the gaps between his ribs, jutting out of his shoulder and wrapping around his body like living armor. Four of the fingers on his left hand were made of that same alloy. When Asher tightened them into a fist, he glimpsed the faint inner workings of gears beneath the plate.

“How…”
How is any of this possible?

“Your uncle has an incredible mind,” Doc said with undisguised admiration. Then he paused, as if appearing only then to notice what he’d said. “Had.” The doctor cleared his throat. “I
am
sorry for your loss.” Having pronounced Asher fixed—or at the very least in no immediate danger—he made his escape, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

No one spoke for a protracted moment. Asher’s questions bottlenecked in his throat. He almost missed his room at Willowbranch. The mirror above the bed would have come in handy right about now.

Romero shifted her weight. “You hungry, boy?”

Asher shook his head.

“I’ll bring you supper,” she ruled all the same, and swiftly let herself out.

Left alone with Halloran, Asher made an effort to keep his voice from quaking. “Are you going to bring me something, too?”

“Like what?”

Asher shrugged. A pretext wasn’t much of one if it made sense. He swallowed hard, tried again. “Does…is it just my chest and arm or—”

The waistband of his khaki pants blocked the view over his lower body. He felt no different when he ran his hands over his thighs, but then his hands didn’t
feel
altered when they so obviously
were
, so perhaps tactile sensation wasn’t the best indicator that he’d been altered.

“Should be able to father little Asher Franklins someday,” Halloran said. He remained unsmiling, though he must have found Asher’s concern preposterous. “Do you remember anything?”

“About this?” Asher flexed a half-human, half-metal hand.

“About any of it—Redemption, Moreau. Your dreams.”

Ah.
“You tried to warn us.” Asher dropped his gaze to the bed. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. I was too late.” Emotion wasn’t rare in Halloran, but whenever he’d had reason to show any, it was usually because something Asher had done provoked him to anger.

The floorboards creaked beneath Halloran’s heavy tread. He seemed to want to pace the length of the room, but in the end he wound up stopping by the window, his back to Asher.

“We could’ve broken through the barricade much faster than we did. Ambrose was gun-shy about chancing any of us with the flames.” Halloran snorted. “As if we need to be protected…”

“Did you lose anyone?”

He nodded, the outline of his profile limned in the hazy sodium light spilling through the glass. “Enoch and Gregson weren’t fast enough through gate. Got sloppy.”

“I thought they were your friends…”

Halloran swiveled around. “They were murderers, robbers and fornicators. Just like me. We don’t have friends.”

“But they
followed
you. They thought you had their back. You’re telling me it doesn’t make a dent that they’re gone?” Asher pushed up from the bed. His legs kept him vertical, though there was a faint clicking noise from his kneecaps. “You got me out of Redemption alive when all I am is human and you just left them to
burn
?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.” Having turned the corner on self-preservation the minute he raised a gun to a vampire’s face, Asher took a step forward. Then another. He got close enough for Halloran to backhand him straight into the wall if he pleased. That tiny part of Asher that thrived on getting pushed around almost looked forward to it. “You
warned
me. Why would you do that if all you are is rotten?”

Eyes frosty with contempt, Halloran tipped his head to one shoulder. “You don’t survive out there if you ain’t.”

“No, not since you people fucked up the world.”

There had been a time before vampire fiefdoms pocked the lawless stretches between one coast and the other. If Washington hadn’t bought their neutrality in the war with promises of land and power, they might all have been bandits and cattle rustlers.

Asher’s fantasies of a world without bloodsuckers seemed about as feasible now as walking on the moon.

“You gonna tell me I’m forgetting who I’m talkin’ to?” He sniggered, his voice drained of mirth. “Threaten to whip me? Go on, then. Take your best shot!” Arms spread open in invitation, Asher rooted his feet firmly to the floor.
So this is what it’s like to live like one of you.

No fear. No fetters holding him in line.

Nothing to stop him grabbing a gun and putting a bullet through Halloran’s skull.

He thought he was ready for anything. He didn’t see Halloran’s kiss coming.

Chapter Nineteen

Asher slammed his palms into Halloran’s chest. “Get—
fuck—
get this
off
.” His fingers wouldn’t cooperate, suddenly too big, too clumsy around the fine buttons fastening Halloran’s shirt. He’d barely managed to tug it out of his pants and wrench off his waistcoat. His holster was gone, too, leaving Asher with no doubt that the bulge he felt against his hip was Halloran’s cock.

Much to his surprise, Halloran gave up trying to undress him to tackle his own shirt. His big hands proved deft in doing so. Skin Asher had only glimpsed through the unbuttoned collar of a shirt was revealed in an ever lengthening chevron. Then the shirt was off, discarded to the floor, and Halloran surged back in to claim his mouth.

He didn’t kiss like he did in dreams. He seemed to lack the patience. Greedy for the taste of him, Asher eagerly parted his lips and let Halloran plunder him as he damn well pleased. His back ached from the sharp edge of the dresser digging into it. His erection strained in the confines of his trousers, untouched. Everywhere Halloran touched him hurt in the most delicious ways.

It was almost enough to detract from the wrongness of his suddenly alien body.

Asher pushed the thought away as he hooked both fists in Halloran’s pants and pushed them down his hips. He couldn’t fail to notice that Halloran was colder to the touch than the average human man, but when Asher thought of heat now, he recalled the inferno that had consumed Redemption. The memory was etched onto his retinas.

When he opened his eyes, Halloran was watching him hungrily. “On the bed,” was all he said, but the fact that he said it at all distracted Asher from the horrific reel playing inside his skull.

He tipped his head back with a sneer. “Make me.”

Halloran growled low and brushed his mouth to Asher’s throat, grazing his skin with flat, human teeth. “You don’t want to play games with me, boy.”

Maybe he didn’t. Maybe Halloran was right.

Asher made himself insensible to the maddening scrape of Halloran’s scruff against his collarbone and knotted a hand in his short, ginger hair. Halloran must not have expected that. He raised his head at the slightest tug.

He flinched when Asher’s palm connected with his cheek.

“I said
make me.
”

The metal plate in the center of Asher’s palm left a red imprint on Halloran’s skin. It faded much too quickly to be satisfying.

Mercifully, wounded pride wasn’t as easily mended.

Halloran yanked him by the shoulders and slammed him into the bed before Asher could as much as gasp. His breaths were arrested a beat later, Halloran’s mouth hard and vicious upon his. Now, his fangs came out.
Now
he understood what Asher needed.