The Shotgun Arcana (20 page)

The night had settled and the wind howled across Argent Mountain. Snow flurries swirled and danced in the moonlight.

“Sheriff, why don’t you come on out and we talk about this?” Mitchell’s voice echoed above the crackle of the burning wagon.

“’Cause I’m of a mind not to get shot, Half-Guts,” Highfather shouted out of the doorway. “You and your boys care to head on home, I’m sure we can just call this square. What do you say?”

There was a scream and a gurgle from the grass to the right of the shack and Mitchell’s last man staggered out, a bloody ragged hole in his chest where his heart should be. He staggered into the crossroads, tried to talk, fell facefirst and was still.

“What in damnation was that?” Mitchell shouted. He came out of the grass to the left of the shack, a Colt Navy revolver in his hands, swinging it between the doorway of the shack and the tall grass his dead soldier had staggered out of. “That your fucking half-breed deputy, Sheriff?”

“No, I’m afraid it was me, yes?” Vellas said, stepping from the grass into the fire light of the wagon. The gypsy was smiling and covered in fresh blood; steam from the heat of it rose off him like smoke. The dead gunman’s heart was clenched in one of his large, hairy fists.

Vellas turned to regard Highfather, who was now leaning against the shack’s doorway, looking at the blood-splattered man.

“You, Sheriff, live up to your indestructible reputation. Very impressive; you took out three seasoned killers who were on guard, by yourself, and you are still standing. Very good, yes? I shall enjoy eating your heart.”

Highfather leveled the rifle at Vellas. Mitchell was pointing his revolver at him as well.

“You crazy, sick son of a bitch,” Mitchell said to Vellas.

Vellas laughed and took the heart and tore a bite from the sturdy muscle as if he were biting into an apple. He chewed it with gusto and walked toward Mitchell. Mitchell fired into Vellas’s chest, again, again and again. Highfather saw the .44 bullets rip through the bloody man and blast out his back, taking chunks of flesh and sprays of blood with them.

Vellas remained standing and raised the heart above his head. He leaned his head back and opened his mouth, squeezing the torn heart like a sponge and pouring the lifeblood from it into his mouth and across his face. Mitchell fired again and again, until the pistol was empty. Vellas staggered but did not fall from the lethal wounds.

“Your blood is thin,” Vellas said, the heart blood gurgling out of his mouth as he spoke, spilling down his chin. He spit the blood at Mitchell, who, to his credit, Highfather noted, stood his ground and did not look as terrified as he surely was. Vellas tossed the savaged heart away. “My father’s blood sustains me and he is strong.”

He closed toward Mitchell. The old soldier narrowed his eyes.

“I’ll see you in hell, boy,” he muttered to Vellas.

Gunfire tore the air like a knife. Bullet after bullet ripped into Vellas and spun him as if he were being hit by a rain of sledgehammers. Jon Highfather advanced with a rifle in each hand, even his injured left arm steady as stone. He moved and fired both of the Winchesters, flipped them both back by the levers, one-handed, and then forward until they snapped the levers back into position, chambering a new round, spitting out the smoking empty cartridge. He fired again, repeating the action as he moved closer and closer to the staggering Vellas with each blast.

“You get on home, Half-Guts,” Highfather said, slurring his words slightly. “We’ll settle up another day. This kind of thing is my jurisdiction. Run.”

“Don’t cotton to leaving a man alone with a hell-spawn like this, even a goddamned lawman,” Mitchell said, stepping back and trying to reload his gun.

Highfather continued herding Vellas back toward the burning wagon, bullet by bullet. The bloody man was no longer smiling; each round made him wince and stagger back more and more. “Just go, damn you, or I’ll shoot you next!” Highfather shouted. “Tell Mutt what went down if I fall. Now go on!”

Mitchell ran toward one of the horses that had shied away when the shooting and the fire started. It was standing nervously in the field by the crossroads. Mitchell climbed in the saddle and rode off toward the mining camp without a glance back.

Highfather kept shooting even as the world seemed to dip and falter at the edges of his vision. Vellas was almost into the roaring fire of the wagon, a few steps more …

One rifle, then the other, clicked. Empty.

Vellas grinned through a mask of blood and wounds. “Thank you, father,” he said as he reached down and grabbed a red-hot wagon wheel with both of his hands. He hissed in pain at the heat and his hands smoked as the flesh charred. He looked at Highfather as he grunted and ripped the massive iron wheel off the wagon. The wagon slumped with a crash. Vellas hurled the steaming, massive wheel at Highfather, who scrambled and staggered to avoid it, dropping both empty guns in the process. The wheel clipped Highfather’s shoulders and upper back as he ran, knocking him off his feet and carrying him with it as it careened into the shack. The decrepit, bullet-riddled cabin groaned and collapsed on top of Highfather with a crash.

The sheriff lay in the ruins of the shack. His back throbbed and for a second he feared the wheel had broken it and paralyzed him. He groaned and forced himself to move, pushing the broken boards, rusted nails and tar paper off him. He heard the bloody man’s laughter as he rose from the wreckage.

“Good, you don’t break easy,” Vellas said. “‘The sheriff who cannot die’ … It’s been a long time since I had one that wasn’t easy to kill.”

Highfather staggered out of the debris; his clothes were torn and he had cuts, bruises and scratches all over his body. His upper back was red and raw from the burns he suffered from the burning wheel.

“Wish I could say the same,” Highfather said, and stepped forward, trying to stay awake and pushing away the blissful, painless darkness. “What are you exactly? Most fellas like you come around here, they got some evil scheme or master plan or such. A few like to rave about it, makes things a mite easier. You got any raving in you, Vellas?”

“I am my father’s son,” Vellas said, the fires of the wagon roaring behind him. “A scout, a harbinger of what is to come.”

Highfather took another step. “I hate it when they get all cryptic,” he said. “You’re under arrest, Vellas. Stand down, or I’m going to have to get rough with you.”

There was the whinny of a horse and the thud of hooves at full gallop. For a second, Highfather thought Mitchell may have come back, but it wasn’t him. The rider appeared on a gray Appaloosa, thundering down the high road from the miners’ camp. She had brown hair falling to her shoulders, fluttering in the biting wind. She wore a black bolero hat and coat that looked a bit too big for her slender frame and snapped in the wind like wings. A black corset—worn under the coat—revealed smooth, pale skin. She wore men’s trousers and a gun belt with twin holsters, one strapped to each thigh. The guns were in her hands and she drove the charging horse with her legs only, moving between Vellas and Highfather. Without a word, the woman opened fire on Vellas, both revolvers barking as she emptied them into the bloody man. Vellas staggered back, again toward the blaze. More holes exploded through his tattered flesh. Vellas roared and drove his fist into the horse’s flank as it rushed by at full speed. There was a horrible, hollow crunching sound. The horse screamed and flew through the air, bloody foam spewing from its nose and mouth. It fell and was still, ten feet from where it had stood. The woman was pinned under the dying animal’s shuddering bulk.

“Nikos Vellas!” the woman shouted as she struggled to free herself. “By the authority of the federal government of the United States of America, I order you to surrender and be bound for your crimes.”

“I already did that,” Highfather mumbled. “I’m arresting him.” The sheriff fell face forward and didn’t move.

Vellas dropped to his knees, the bullet holes in him smoking. A piece of the dark sky tore itself loose and lighted before the bloody man. The crow croaked at him and cocked its head. Vellas removed the packet of papers that Mitchell had given him from his jacket. It was pierced with bullet holes and stained with blood. The crow took it in its black beak.

“For my father,” he said. The crow flew away, toward the moon.

Vellas climbed to his feet and staggered toward the trapped woman. He loomed over her on the opposite side of the dead horse. “You’re that bitch that hunted me in Saint Louis and Raleigh, aren’t you? This is revenge for what I did to your friend, yes?” He laughed and coughed up some blood. The woman struggled to reach one of the guns that had fallen from her hand. Fumbled for bullets in her coat pocket. Vellas leaned forward, his hand resting on the horse. He swatted the pistol out of her hand and it thudded a few feet away. His wet, torn face looked down on her as she struggled. The woman spat in his face.

“I will kill you with my bare hands, you bastard,” she said, still fighting to get free. “With my last breath in me, I will find a way to kill you.”

“Unlikely, yes?” Vellas said. “I think I shall spend some time on you and then drink the sweet terror out of your heart. It will heal me. Your heart, and then the good sheriff’s.” He glanced around. “Now where did he get to? Did you pass out somewhere, Sheriff?”

Highfather charged the bloody man from the darkness behind the woman. It wasn’t pretty, but it was the very last ounce of energy left in him. He used the dead horse’s body as a vault and launched himself toward the still grinning Vellas. As he flew through the air, Highfather unloaded both barrels of the shotgun into Vellas at point-blank range. The bloody man gasped in pain and staggered backward. Highfather latched onto Vellas like a stubborn dog biting. He tossed the shotgun and drew his .44. Vellas, his titanic strength beginning to fade, pounded on Highfather’s back and sides as the sheriff coughed blood and groaned. Jon jammed the Colt into Vellas’s face and emptied it. Both men, locked in a death dance, fell into the roaring fire of the burning wagon. The crossroads grew silent.

The woman the locals called Kitty Warren struggled to free her legs from the dead weight of her horse. With a final growl of effort she did. Pain ran up her leg and she nearly passed out from it, but she didn’t dare. She recovered one of her pistols, frantically loaded it and limped toward the fire.

Jon Highfather, his face black with soot and smoke streaming off his burnt clothing, crawled out of the blaze. He struggled to his feet and Kitty helped him as best she could. They took a few torturous steps away from the fire and Jon whistled as best he could. In the distance there was a whinny. Jon looked at the woman holding him up and whom he was helping to hold up in turn.

“Are you hurt? Are you okay?” Jon mumbled. It was hard to keep his eyes open. The woman broke into a smile. She had small, even teeth and her smile was charming because Jon was pretty sure she didn’t do it often.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Hurt my leg when my horse fell, but … I’m good. How did you … with the wagon and the fire?”

They staggered back toward the ruins of the cabin. There was the sound of a horse approaching.

“Knocked him onto the back of the wagon, I went low, under it. Less fire down there, less smoke, more air. Got a little singed crawling out, but I’ve had worse.”

“I’ll just bet you have,” Kitty said.

“Not my time,” Highfather said.

“What?” she asked.

“‘Not my time.’ It’s … it’s something I say a lot, kind of like my saying, if you will,” Highfather said. “It’s nothing. Thank you for riding in and saving me. You look familiar, who are you?”

“I’ve been going by Kitty Warren,” she said. “Been here a few months, but my name is Kate, Kate Warne. I work for the Pinkerton Agency and the United States government.”

Highfather laughed. It cost him. He winced in pain and Kate steadied him. “Well, you are the prettiest Pinkerton man I ever did see.”

“We need to get you to a sawbones,” she said. “You’re obviously delirious. And then we need to talk. Your town is in danger, Sheriff.”

“If you save my life, you get to call me Jon,” he said. Behind them the cart shifted with a crash as it burned itself out. Both Warne and Highfather spun, ignoring their injuries and leveled pistols at the blaze, guns cocked. Nothing emerged from the fire. Vellas’s corpse vomited black smoke into the night as the fire consumed it.

“Town in danger, huh?” Highfather said. “We’re just about due for one of those.”

The Three of Swords

Professor Elias Zenith was used to dealing with the ignorant and the shortsighted. His work in expanding on the research of Luigi Galvani into fluidic transmission of electricity via the nerves throughout the body of an animal—so-called animal electricity—was seen with scorn and ridicule by the simpletons at the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, where he had acquired a teaching position after his troubles in Boston. “Just teach the classes on metallurgic analysis that we hired you to, Professor Zenith,” the rock-headed dean had rumbled. “You can work at your hobbies and scattershot theories outside the classroom, thank you very much.” The fool! The ant-brained imbecile! The “subtle fluid” was the key to mankind’s future, to making one as mighty Zeus of old.

Zenith had to leave Boston when they discovered his Alessandro Volta–inspired battery experiments on the street urchins. It was unfair! He was so close to the realization of his dream. In his electrical utopia, Professor Zenith saw a world where those versed in the ways of science were immune to the dreary and dogmatic rules needed to govern the filthy mongrel mobs of chattel that would make up the brute servitor and experimental subject classes.

After months of covert work in his filthy laboratory in the catacombs of the Boston sewers, Zenith had learned exactly the proper methods of application and the correct dosages of electrical energy to apply to the human body to break bones, disrupt the brain, stop hearts, make skin burn and cook internal organs. This addendum to the sum of human knowledge was purchased cheaply, by Zenith’s reasoning, with the lives of eighteen children, orphans living on the streets of Boston.