The Shotgun Arcana (32 page)

“Science,” Gerta interrupted. “Yes, one of the reasons I long for hands is to be able to cover my ears occasionally. Clay is a fine man, and he loves me very deeply. I know that love blinds him. His religion is science and that blinds him too.

“I’ll be honest, Gillian, the prospect sounds too good to be true, but I so want it to be true. I want to live, who wouldn’t? I want to have more time, more life. I want to be free. If Clay’s formula doesn’t give me that freedom, if there are strings attached to it, then I will end this false life, myself, on my own terms. If for some reason I can’t, if I … change, I want you to promise me now you will kill me. Please, my darling friend. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I am asking it of you. Don’t let Clay or anyone else stop you, especially me. If you think I have been corrupted in some way, please end that and give me peace. I don’t want to live a slave or a monster. Please promise me now.”

“Of course,” Gillian said. “I promise.”

“Danke,”
Gerta said.

“I’ve missed you,” Gillian said. “I have to be honest, I’m glad to be getting my friend back.”

“Me too,” Gerta said. “Now, tell me all about the wedding.…”

*   *   *

The door to the tank room opened and Gillian emerged. Both Clay and Auggie stopped pacing and turned to her. The barn doors were opened and the sky was gray, edging toward dark blue. Dawn was close.

Gillian walked out of the barn toward Clay’s wagon.

“Do not botch this, Clayton” was all she said on the way home.

*   *   *

“Everything went fine, Gillian,” Clay said, wiping the gravy off his mouth with his sleeve. “She’s perfectly lucid and even the scars from the stiches will be completely gone soon. She wanted to come today, but her skin is still a little too sensitive to daylight. It should toughen up pretty soon though, a few more treatments with the formula. She told me to give you her love and her best wishes for the day. She said it meant a lot to her you wanted her there.”

“I always did,” Gillian said. “I suppose we should get over there, shouldn’t we, Clay?”

“Yeah,” Clay said as he pulled the wild flowers out of the vase on the table and handed the bouquet to Gillian. “The big old side of German schnitzel has had enough time to get sweaty and nervous now. Let’s skedaddle.”

Clay dropped a small bag of coins onto the table. The waiter picked up the bag as if it were full of venomous bugs. He opened it and gold coins spilled into his hands. He called out to Clay as he was opening the door for Gillian.

“Mr. Turlough! Sir! This is way too much for your meal! It’s a small fortune!”

“Oh, is it?” Clay said, and looked to Gillian. She nodded and mouthed the word yes. “Oh, okay, well you can just call it a tip. Sound square?”

“Yes … yes, sir!” The waiter smiled. “Come back any time.”

“I get hungry about three in the morning,” Clay said. “I just might.”

*   *   *

Walking down Dry Well Road, toward Prosperity, Gillian slid her arm into Clay’s. The inventor seemed puzzled by the contact but accepted it.

“Promise me please, Clayton,” Gillian said. “No more skulking around graveyards, no more body snatching, no more worms, please.”

Clay nodded. “Fair enough. Bored with all that anyway. I’m thinking about building a balloon ship to fly across the Atlantic.”

“Of course you are,” she said, patting his arm. “Of course you are. To think I actually suspected you were murdering those girls, Clayton. I’m sorry.”

“No need for apology,” Clay said. “An obvious enough deductive fallacy to make. It’s taking even me a spell to figure out who’s doing it.” They continued walking, turning onto Prosperity, headed for Main. “But I intend to. Just been a little busy bringing the dead back to life and all and helping my best friends get their ducks in a row.”

“Best friends?” Gillian said, and hugged Clay’s arm a little tighter.

Clay straightened his wild hair. “I’m real honored you and Auggie wanted me to be there today, Gillian. Why are you not waiting and doing it when you planned?”

“We don’t want to wait,” Gillian said as they neared the white tower of town hall. “Something Gerta said. We get trapped so many ways in life, so easy to let things slip away. Auggie just walked up to me this morning and said he wanted to do it today, if I did. I love him and I don’t want to spend another night without him beside me.”

Clay smiled. It was genuine and Gillian realized it was childlike and sweet. His eyes actually twinkled for a moment and it made Gillian smile inside and out.

“C’mon then, “Clay said. “Let’s get you hitched.”

*   *   *

In the mayor’s office, Harry Pratt stood, looking very happy. Before him was Auggie Shultz, in his finest suit, kneading his derby in his huge, sweaty hands. Off to the bride’s side stood Maude and Constance Stapleton.

Clay walked Gillian in front of Harry.

“Who gives this woman into matrimony?” Harry asked.

“I do,” Clay said, “proudly.”

Clay stepped back to Auggie’s side and checked to make sure the ring was still in his coat. Auggie stepped up beside Gillian, who was holding her purloined bouquet. The two looked into each other’s eyes. Their hands found each other’s and clung tightly together.

“Miss the dress, and the crowd? The priest?” she whispered to him.

“Nein,”
he said. “All that is important is here.”

A tall figure slid into the room. She wore a dark green dress, bonnet and a gray veil that hid her face. She moved to the groom’s side and touched Clay’s arm gently with her glove. The gesture made her sleeve ride up for a second and caught the shadow of a scar running all the way around her wrist. The veiled lady stood silently next to Clay, the best man, as Harry started to read.

“Dearly beloved…,” Harry began.

The Three of Swords

The third one was in the possession of Thug Batra, who sat hidden in a murder garden of mummified victims among sacred assassins in the bowels of Bombay. Thug Batra was not his real name, it was the name the British colonial soldiers muttered under their breaths as they tried to find him, kill him and end his reign of slaughter. “Thug” was not even correct. It was a bastardization of Thuggee, the name of his religion, his holy cause. His given name was Jangir Batra and he was born in a village outside of Bhopal. Some nights he had holy dreams of returning to the city of his birth as a cloud of evil smoke and strangling the life out of all the city’s inhabitants for the glory of the Black Mother.

He was secreted away from his birth parents by the Thuggee to thwart the British attempt to crush the religion, to become part of a new generation of assassins dedicated to the worship of Kali through the practice of ritual murder. After his decades of study and training, after he was empowered to use his mind and body to kill as easily as breathing, to move as silently as a poisonous thought, after his hundredth murder before even reaching adulthood, it had fallen into his possession, a final gift from his master—proof that he was ready to fulfill his destiny as the greatest murderer of his age, to dedicate each strangulation to the cause of forestalling the Kali Yuga, the iron age of crushing, the end of the world. In effect, each killing he and his brethren committed helped keep the world going.

He murdered his master and took it. In the years to follow he was personally responsible for 241 murders. The truth he knew in his own heart—he killed for the joy of hearing the life hiss from his victim’s lips, for the thrill of feeling them shake and convulse against him and then grow still. He did not kill to hold back the end of the world; he killed for the dark light joy of ending another’s personal world. In the fall of 1870 he dreamed of a small town in the wasteland of the American frontier. A golden god of death from the West called to him, called to it. So Thug Batra came, traveling on a ship across the seas, to America, thirsty to slay.

The Lovers (Reversed)

Mutt arrived at the laundry, where the
Closed
placard hung on the door. He rapped on the glass. The door opened and Mutt felt the air spill from his lungs. Maude was in a bustle dress of blue-green taffeta with brown frocked velvet patterns, her underskirt was brown taffeta, as was the bodice’s front, and the bodice was adorned with gold buttons. Her hair was up in a chignon and she wore a small capote hat that matched the dress’s colors.

For once Mutt had no words. He opened his mouth and then closed it, trying to not look like a fish out of water.

Maude had an equal surprise. Mutt was in a sack coat, white collared shirt, trousers and vest of brown tweed. He was wearing a pair of brown polished oxford shoes with laces. He wore no tie and his top shirt button was undone. Mutt’s hair was washed, combed and pulled back into a ponytail with a cord of rawhide. The claw marks on his face from a few days ago were completely healed. He had a bouquet of purple and yellow wildflowers in his big, scarred hand.

“You,” Mutt said. “You look like a queen. I’ve never seen anyone so pretty in all my days.”

Maude tilted her head. “You look very handsome and dapper,” she said. “You did this for me?”

“Yeah.” He offered her the flowers. “Jonathan helped me out some. I just wanted you to not feel bad walking next to me.”

“Oh, Mutt,” she said, taking the wild blooms and smelling them. “Never felt bad with you by me, just the opposite. Never have, never will.”

“No one ever dressed up for me before,” he said. “You look like a piece of art. You should be in some museum, not out in all this mess.”

“Never figured you for a poet, Deputy” she said. “You, sir, are too kind, and I am starved. Let’s go eat!”

He took her hand, escorted her across the threshold. Maude locked the door. Mutt hooked his arm and offered it to her and Maude slid her arm through. They walked across the street to Gillian Proctor’s boardinghouse, where Mutt had his room.

“I’m trying to figure out where you hid the weapons,” Maude said.

Mutt grinned. “Ain’t packing any.”

“Not even your knife?” she asked.

Mutt shook his head and she whistled. “You are taking this seriously, aren’t you?”

“Not even my star,” he said. “No monsters, no ghosts, no spirits, no madmen out to destroy the world, no goat-vampires, no desperados. No nothin’, not tonight. I’m officially off duty. How about you?”

“Well, almost nothing,” Maude said, looking down. “A few envenomed hat pins, my derringer, of course, and a few knives, oh and my fancy strangle cord. Virtually naked.”

Mutt cleared his throat and pulled at his loose collar. Maude laughed and squeezed his arm tighter. He pulled out a pocket watch attached to his vest by a chain, flipped it open and looked at the time. “We still have a spell before vittles are on, care to take a stroll?”

“Of course,” Maude said. “You heard about Gillian and Auggie getting married today, didn’t you?” Mutt nodded. “Was glad to hear it. They are good people and both of them have had a hell of a year. Bick’s done his damnedest to put Auggie out of business.”

“If Gillian is on her honeymoon, then who is making dinner at the boardinghouse?” Maude said, stopping.

Mutt’s only reply was to glance at the pocket watch again.

Maude looked at the watch. “When did you ever carry a timepiece?” she asked.

“Jonathan loaned it to me,” Mutt said. “Came with the vest. I don’t use the damned things. Crazy white people thinking some numbers on a dial gives them control over time; more the other way around.”

They walked down Dry Well Road, past the jail. They both noticed the looks they were getting and they both worked very hard to ignore them.

“So Jon Highfather is the author of your change in wardrobe?” she asked.

“Partially,” Mutt said. “I asked him for help. I’ve never been out with a lady before and I wanted to do this all right. Jonathan’s my friend. He helped me, not that he’s exactly a Fancy Dan himself.”

Maude laughed. “No, I’d hazard in your work, clothes are pretty low on the list of concerns. How is the sheriff? Else Thaler led me to believe that he had been in some kind of altercation up on Argent?”

Mutt nodded. “He’s okay. Got tagged, but not too bad. That quack Doc Tumblety patched him up, which is more dangerous than the shoot-out, if you ask me. Jon pushes that luck of his too damn far.”

“Do you think that’s all it is, luck?” Maude asked. “I mean, you’re his best friend, and you and I have seen our share of … trouble in our time. It just seems that all these … miraculous escapes of his simply defy luck.”

“Is Jon a walking dead man? No,” Mutt said. “How does he stay alive? Beats the hell out of me. But something happened to Jon in the war, something that haunts him and changed him. Doing the job here helps him with whatever it was, but I swear it’s going to get him killed eventually.”

Maude squeezed his arm again. “You really do care about him.”

“Yeah,” Mutt said. “We talk about our feelings and such in between fightin’ off critters like those living cactus things from a few months back and we swap fashion tips. I’m plum sweet on him.”

Maude smacked his arm. He winced, then laughed. They walked closer to the end of the road as the falling sun painted the sky in crimsons and oranges.

“What exactly happened with those cactus things anyway?” Maude asked.

“Well,” Mutt began, “you remember how I was walking kinda funny there for a spell…?”

*   *   *

They ended up by the old well that gave the road its name. There were a few worn stone benches around the old, crumbling stone well, and a stand of hardy desert willow trees covered in purple blooms grew here, offering the comfort of shade in the day.

The supper crowd from Delmonico’s drifted in and out of the restaurant. Most of the patrons were scions of Rose Hill. Several pointed or glanced at Maude and Mutt on the bench together. Maude didn’t need to increase her hearing’s power and Mutt didn’t need his razor-sharp senses to know what they were whispering about.

“Well, at least we’ve given them some stimulatin’ conversation to break bread over,” Mutt said.