The Gunslinger's Man (3 page)

Asher had the stray, absurd notion that he could pick out every wrinkle on the mayor’s face from this angle. What he should’ve done for a good view of their tyrant was kneel a bit more often.

“Seems like,” Octavian answered jauntily. “Caught their mastermind myself.”

Whatever praise he’d been hoping for was denied. Ambrose puffed his cigar. “Sorry bunch.”

“What do you want us to do with them, Father?”

“No suggestions of your own, Little Brother?” Astride his own horse at Ambrose’s right, Malachi grinned down at his nest-mate. He was older than Octavian in vampire years but his junior in years lived as a human. He seemed about Asher’s age, maybe twenty-five at most, and his silky black hair almost suggested a family link with the mayor. Almond-shaped eyes dominated his features, constantly narrowed with delight.

He was striking. Even dangling above the precipice of his own mortality, Asher could admit that. He supposed it was the reason why he didn’t notice the Red Horn Riders among Ambrose’s suite until their leader spoke up.

“If it’s suggestions you want, I got one for you.”

Asher’s blood turned to ice in his veins. The Riders were here, standing beside Ambrose as allies.

Wesley had it all wrong. None of the men and women who’d believed in a future free of vampires had spilled their guts to the enemy.

They’d trusted the wrong people.

Asher had doomed them all.

“I’m all ears,” Ambrose said around the end of his cigar.

“I’ll take the boy off your hands. Make sure he don’t get no more bright ideas.”

Ambrose frowned at the ringleader. “Which boy?”

As if he’d been thrust back into his impossible dream, Asher watched the ringleader point a finger straight at him.

“Isn’t he the one who paid your way?” Malachi asked sweetly.

“He is.”

Asher did his best not to flinch. He wouldn’t beg for mercy. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Let Sargasso know what he’d been willing to do for them. Let them watch him go to his death for a purpose.

“Hmm. Interesting.” Malachi glanced back and forth between them, his feline smile growing wider.

“Interesting? He’s a goddamn quisling!” Octavian contended, spittle flying from his mouth. “You gotta make an example of him, Father!”

Ambrose’s gaze hardened, an almost imperceptible tightening around the eyes that instantly deepened the wrinkles he worked so hard to hide. “When you run this town, boy,
then
you can tell
me
what to do
.
We clear?”

Silence fell over the street.

Under Ambrose’s heavy stare, Asher fought to corral a bone-deep shudder.

Don’t look away. Don’t cower.

“Have him if you want, Halloran.” Another indifferent puff on the cigar. “But don’t come cryin’ to me when he tries to stake you in your sleep.”

A smattering of laughter rolled over the gathering of vampires without quite settling into full-blown glee. They would be short for their dinner.

“No,” Asher bit out, when Octavian gripped his arm. “No, let me go!” It hurt to breathe, to speak, but all his aches were inconsequential if they meant he had to watch his friends die. “He-he’s right! I’m the one who orchestrated all of this—I’m the one you should—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Ambrose spat. “Shut him up already!”

A broad fist cuffed him over the ear once, twice. The world swayed madly in Asher’s blurring vision. Pale and drawn in the torchlight, Connie and Wesley’s faces materialized briefly from the fog. Asher caught sight of his uncle slumping heavily in the doorway of the shop.

Octavian’s raised fist was the last thing he saw before oblivion encroached and everything went blissfully dark.

Chapter Three

Asher blinked in and out of consciousness. The first time, he found himself upside down, brown fur against his cheek and the smell of hay and manure in his nostrils. The second, he saw a poorly papered wall and the trim of brass filigree twinkling in the sunlight. He woke up once just to lean over and be sick all over a frayed rug.

Someone swore when he did that, but it didn’t seem to matter.

A day or a week later, he became aware of his mouth being forced open and something slick and coppery being poured down his throat. He gagged, though less for the taste than the realization that Halloran had his wrist jammed right against his teeth. Between panic and revulsion, Asher’s lungs ceased working. He choked on the blood in his mouth, Halloran’s face floating above him. Curses echoed in his ears.

It didn’t feel much better with Halloran pinching his nose shut, but at least the blood went down. He was allowed to cough. His air-starved lungs filled with air.

Halloran grasped his chin in a meaty hand.

Not again.
Asher braced to fight him off, foolish idea that it was, only to discover his hands bound behind him. The best he managed was an awkward wriggle, a pitiful moan.

“Stop that, you little bastard.”

Romero?

The sound of her voice distracted Asher long enough for Halloran to squeeze another trickle of blood down his throat. The flavor triggered another convulsion.

“It’s an acquired taste,” someone snorted in the background.

Asher had already stopped listening. His every muscle was on fire. His ribs seemed to be snapping apart in his chest. Asher cried out in agony, his vision whiting out.

This was why Halloran had claimed him. The son of a bitch wanted to finish what Octavian had started.

* * * *

Darkness receded slowly. Asher blinked in the faint spill of moonlight through the windows, his vision gradually adjusting to the low, white gleam. He didn’t recognize the room around him, but he could tell the metal bedframe had seen better days. The scored wooden floorboards had weathered many footsteps. Ornate fabrics upholstered a trio of armchairs arranged near the window, all unoccupied. The way to the door was similarly open.

Asher pushed himself upright, surprised when his arms could hold his weight. His hands were free, no rope burn around his wrists. He was certain he’d been in fetters before, but just how far back was
before
?

The ornate oval mirror opposite the bed revealed his drawn features and sunken eyes. His blond hair seemed gray in this light.
Good
. It was bad enough that he was still alive. He had no business looking hale and hearty.

He’d failed. Worse, he had condemned his friends even as he somehow cheated fate.

No. Not somehow.

Halloran was to blame for this.

Asher didn’t need to puzzle over his intentions to know they were wicked. What vampire wasn’t? He winced as the floorboards creaked underfoot, but it was only ten paces from bed to window. He covered them with his heart in his throat.

The landscape outside was a vast blue-black plain, blessedly familiar. Here and there the valley offered up a toothy cliff, the red rock drained of all color. Vegetation was scarce out here. No human settlement pocked the wilderness for miles and miles.

Seventy years ago, Sargasso had sprung out of the dirt as a collection of rickety shacks meant to form a watering hole at equal distance from the three vampire-owned ranches in the valley. Asher was most familiar with New Morning Farm, where his friend Wesley worked. He discounted Crossroad Grange on account of it being overpopulated with work hands already.

That left Willowbranch—the oldest and least profitable of the lot, nominally under Malachi’s purview but practically run by one of his human servants. Malachi himself never strayed far from Sargasso or the mayor’s side. He wouldn’t have dispatched men there just for Asher’s sake.

Paint stuck the ancient frame shut.

Asher gripped the upper edge of the sash window and put his back into it. Nerves made his hands quake. He had to get out. He needed to escape. The bitter tang of vampire blood in the back of his throat lent urgency to that burning desire.

The wood gave a protesting squeak and slid up an inch. Then a little more. Every bit of progress was hard won and accompanied by far too much noise. There was no way Halloran wouldn’t have heard, but the longer he took to burst into the room, the more confident Asher felt that he could do this.

He was only one floor up. The dirt below seemed soft enough.

Shivering, he squeezed under the windowpane and sucked in a breath.
Don’t think, just jump.
He swung his legs out as he pushed away from the sill.

His knees trembled with the force of impact, but he was still on his feet when he landed. Still in one piece.

Still, he noted with some dismay, in his goddamn bloodstained nightshirt.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said a grave voice in the darkness.

Asher spun around.

Halloran was watching him, immobile in a rocking chair that appeared too small and rickety for a man of his stature. Two of his coterie flanked him—Blackjack, a colossus with a shaved head, and a shorter man with curly black hair and toad-like eyes.

Three vampires against one human. Not the best odds.

“You’re not,” Asher gritted out, “me.”

Vampire stillness had never struck him as eerie before. At most, he’d always thought of bloodsuckers as lizards warming themselves in the sun. Halloran was different. Even his companions displayed micro-expressions—the tightening of a jaw here, the twitch of a smile there—but with no breath to move his broad shoulders and no cigarette to occupy his mouth, Halloran was more like a grizzly in a circus cage.

And there was no grille between him and Asher.

“I’m a forgiving a man,” he proclaimed, “so I won’t make you climb back up the way you just got out. Door’s right here,” Halloran said, pointing to his left. “Do yourself a favor and go up of your own accord.”

Asher clenched his fists. “No.”

“I ain’t asking.”

Stupid, to think he could escape a vampire’s preternatural senses, to think he had a chance. But it wasn’t the first stupid thing Asher had ever done. It wasn’t the last.

Asher rounded on his heel and bolted.

He was barely five feet from the house, not even certain that he was headed in the right direction, when a powerful shove sent him to his belly in the dirt.

The fall knocked the breath right out of him. Pebbled, dry soil scratched his cheek. Humiliation hurt worse.

Asher flattened his palms and pushed himself up again. This time, he made it half the distance he’d covered on his first attempt before he was tripped.

In his peripheral vision, he noticed that the other two Riders hadn’t moved from the porch, the glowing ends of their cigarettes giving them away.

Halloran was nowhere to be seen.

“Bastard,” Asher choked out in provocation.

Halloran’s snort was as good as a lit beacon. He could have torn Asher’s spine out if he wanted and put an end to his ambitions in a more permanent fashion. Instead, he preferred to toy with him, a particularly large tomcat entertaining itself with a feeble mouse.

Nettles and weeds stinging his hands, Asher fumbled for purchase in the dust. What he found was far better. The ground was littered with the remnants of desiccated trees. He seized a branch not much thinner than his forearm, grasping it tightly as he staggered upright.

Halloran lunged, striking him between the shoulders with a broad fist. As he fell, Asher whirled and swung out with his makeshift club.

For such a big man, Halloran proved surprisingly agile. He tipped back just as Asher made to bury the makeshift stake in his throat. The jagged end merely scraped his skin, opening a trio of lacerations that closed in an eye-blink. Only the red-black blood beading on freshly-healed skin revealed the hurt.

Asher’s triumph was just as short-lived.

Halloran grabbed his wrist and wrenched hard. Pain exploded behind Asher’s eye. The rest of his body turned with the pull, joints resisting the violent twist. His slapdash weapon tumbled to the ground a second before Asher landed there on his knees.

He shouldn’t have done that.

He shouldn’t have fought.

“Are you done?” Halloran growled.

“Let me go,” Asher spat. “Fucking let me go!”

Another bolt of pain shot up his arm as Halloran applied pressure. The pain was far less of a challenge than feeling Halloran bend over him, breath hot on his ear when he spoke.

“Best get it through that thick skull of yours, boy. You’re mine. You don’t move a goddamn muscle without my say-so. You live ’cause I allowed it… Now, are you
done
?”

Asher knew what he was expected to say. He had a pretty clear picture of what would become of him if he didn’t toe the line, especially before an audience.

He turned to Halloran and spat in his face.

* * * *

“I can’t tell if you’re touched in the head or just half-witted.” Romero sighed as she lowered herself to the edge of the mattress. “Goddammit, boy. You were on the mend last I saw you…”

“So you
were
here.” Asher rolled his head on the pillow. “Thought I dreamed you up.”

“Some dream.”

No matter how gentle, Romero’s hand on his shoulder sent a sharp twinge of pain into the abused joint. Asher heard himself whimper before he could marshal the noise.

It didn’t feel any better when Romero let him be.

“There ain’t much I can do for you. Don’t look like he broke any bones, at least.”

“He will.”

“If you keep twistin’ his arm, sure.”

Asher glared at her through his one unswollen eye. “Why did he let
you
see me?” Why not Uncle Howard? Unless— “Are they all dead?” he blurted out, aches receding before that very real possibility.

Romero pursed her thin lips. For a beat, she appeared set to deliver the news, bad or good, but then she settled on another chastisement. “You’ll never find out if you don’t wise up, kid. You brought Halloran here…though what you was thinkin’, doin’ that in the first place is beyond me—”

“Is it?” Asher winced, trying to get comfortable on the too-hard mattress. He had only so much room to maneuver with one arm cuffed to the headboard. “Suppose you like being property of Ambrose Solomon.”