The Shotgun Arcana (52 page)

“Admit it, Biqa,” Zeal said, still cutting. “This grand experiment of His has not gone as planned. He has created something that can imagine an end to even Him, and then gave them the power to make it happen. He wanted this. The human race is His suicide note. And I am His executioner.”

Bick suddenly realized through the fog of pain that Zeal was carving the symbol of the Tetragrammaton—the name of God—into his flesh.

Zeal drove the knife deeper into Bick’s abdomen and ripped upward. Bick gasped at the pain and felt his hold on awareness slipping. He shifted more of his presence away from his physical shell and discovered it was much harder now to divorce himself from his physicality than it had once been, long ago. The pain pulled him back to the flesh, unable to fully escape it.

“You are going to die tomorrow, Malachi,” Zeal said. “At the hands of the creatures you put so much faith into. And I am going to enjoy every second of it.”

Bick said nothing, enduring the pain of Zeal’s attentions silently. Instead of praying to the Almighty, he found his succor from the agony in memories of his noble, loyal son, Caleb, and the few brief, precious treasures his daughter Emily had given him.

*   *   *

The Praetorians standing guard at the eastern road into Golgotha, near Rose Hill, watched as a lone rider approached in the pouring, cold rain. It was nearly dark and the sky was dead and gray, no sign of the setting sun, no hope of stars. The soldiers advanced on the odd figure: a thin man in a tattered dark suit, vest, white gloves, who wore a partly shattered oblong wooden mask. He was alone, riding a brown mustang.

“Hold!” one of the two Praetorians said. The soldier recognized the man as one of Ray Zeal’s followers—the man known only as the Annihilator. “What brings you in, sir? Mr. Zeal ordered you to stay with the blockade out on the southern road.”

“We had problems,” the masked man said, his voice muffled by his wooden face. “The troops out on the southern blockade are dead. I was badly injured. It was two children from here in Golgotha—one of them was a sheriff’s deputy. I need to speak to Mr. Zeal right away.”

“What happened to the two children?” one of the Praetorians asked.

“What do you think?” the Annihilator said. “They’re dead.”

“Well, Mr. Zeal is over at Bick’s saloon, with Mr. Cook and the others,” the other Praetorian said. “They get a hot Thanksgiving meal and all the whores they can handle. We get this,” he said, gesturing to the downpour.

“You sure do,” the masked man said. Behind them, something flew, moved, in between the raindrops. Constance Stapleton jammed her fingers onto the sides of both of the horsemen’s necks, just as her mother had taught her. One Praetorian slumped and fell from the saddle, unconscious. Constance’s injured shoulder throbbed and she couldn’t maintain sufficient pressure on the other one’s neck to knock him out. As the mercenary began to raise his rifle, the masked man drew a pistol from beneath his coat and aimed it inches from the Praetorian’s face.

“You move, you make a sound, you do anything except drop that gun and I’m going to blow your fool head off,” Jim Negrey said from behind the wooden Dogon mask.

The Praetorian released his rifle and Constance took it, leveling it at the back of the man’s head. Jim pulled off the mask with his free hand and stared flintily into the mercenary’s frightened eyes.

“Now,” Jim said. “You’re going to tell us everything that’s been happening here, or I swear on my pa’s grave I will start shooting parts of you clean off.”

*   *   *

Becky wondered for the thousandth time about handsome young deputy Jim. Most likely he was dead, like they were saying Sheriff Highfather was. She was so scared, but then she thought about the nice people who were looking after her, risking their own hide for her and the other girls, and she tried to push the dark thoughts away. You lived and worked at a place like the Dove’s Roost long enough, it got hard to think of anything but dark stuff.

“Becky, dear, you haven’t touched your supper,” Mrs. Benoit said, smiling at her. The Benoits were a nice family. They had a nice home up on Rose Hill. Mr. Benoit was the finest chandler Golgotha had ever had and he made a tidy penny making candles and produced many custom candles for clients as far away as Virginia City. They had two very sweet children: Amy, who was with them at the dinner table, and Tom, who was now a hostage at the school.

“I’m sorry, I’m just scared,” she said.

“We all are, dear,” Mr. Benoit said. “But I’ve seen Sheriff Highfather do remarkable things. He’s a fine man and he’s never let this town down, and I don’t think he will this time. We must have faith, my dear, faith that good overcomes evil.”

Becky smiled and nodded. Mr. Benoit reminded Becky of the few dim memories she had of her own father, and she did feel the fear release its grip on her somewhat. When Black Rowan had told them that she and the sheriff had arranged to have all the public girls from the Roost hidden away as the children of some of the most prominent families on Rose Hill, until Zeal and his crew were gone, she had been amazed that these fine, fancy folk would take someone like her in, but they had and treated her better than she had ever been treated before.

“I am powerful thankful to you all,” Becky said, tasting a small bite of dressing.

“In this world,” Mrs. Benoit said, “all we have is each other to lean on when the days turn cold and the storms come, Becky. In the end, we’re all in this together, come what may.”

“Let us be thankful,” Mr. Benoit said. “For all our bounty.” Becky was. If there were people like the Benoits in the world, maybe the Ray Zeals didn’t always have to win. Becky was also thankful that Mr. Benoit had never been a customer of the Roost. Some of the girls were now pretending to be the daughters to some of the well-to-do men of Rose Hill who also happened to be regular clients.

*   *   *

The silence of Ch’eng Huang’s sanctum at the Celestial Palace was shattered by the .41 caliber bullet that ripped through Chi Mo Duan’s back and exited his chest in a bloody spray. The rogue hatchet man staggered forward, vomiting black blood from his lips, and turned to face the shooter.

James Ringo leveled the derringer at Duan and fired the second barrel. It ripped through the tapestry on the far wall, missing Duan. The assassin suddenly had a slender, razor-sharp hatchet in his hand, cocking his arm back to throw as more blood drooled out of his grimacing red mouth.

“Aww, shit,” Ringo muttered.

Ch’eng Huang raked the bloody, jagged hunk of red jade he had pulled from this back across Duan’s throat.

“I believe this belongs to you,” Huang said, coughing.

The assassin shuddered as his lifeblood gushed out of his open neck. The hatchet fell from his hand.

“He will devour this town,” Duan gurgled, choking on his own blood. “He will devour you all.” He made a final horrible choking sound and was silent.

“I … I just came by to get my pay,” Ringo said. “Everyone downstairs is dead.”

“Yes,” Huang said, slumping forward into the arms of the Celestial Palace’s piano player. “You have earned your pay, Mr. Ringo, and my eternal gratitude. Some assistance please. I must rest.”

*   *   *

Southeast of Golgotha and sitting in the southern shadow of Rose Hill was a rise known as Methuselah Hill. Some of the oldest and finest homes in town were situated there, having been the precursor to Rose Hill, prior to the Mormon emigration. One such home belonged to old, blind Miles Press.

As the rain wept from the sky, Miles sat in the special room of his home. It had once been a grand ballroom, used by the original owners of the house back during the first silver-boom years. Now it served as the game board for his nightly duel with Golgotha. Each building, each street and home, even the camp on Argent Mountain, was reproduced with wood and chicken wire, plaster and paint. The walls of the room were covered with strange glyphs and symbols, many of Miles’s own design and others that came to him in visions and dreams. He had these dreams and these gifts since he had been a young boy. His father had always believed him when he told him of the dreams.

“You got the sight, Miles,” his daddy had said. “It will let you see the dead and the future, see into someone’s past, even let you listen to the world’s voice, its whispers and secrets. It’s a great gift, Miles, but it’s also a terrible responsibility. It comes with our blood, with our family, and you should always try to use it to help people.”

The small wooden carvings Miles made of the people of Golgotha, all the players in the game, were arrayed where Miles saw them. Though his eyes didn’t see anymore, and hadn’t for many decades, he could see this room in his mind, clear as day. He moved the figures to where they needed to be. He moved the new figurine of Emily Bright out of the model of the Imperial Hotel and toward the rise of Argent, where other of his pieces were arrayed. He paused, as if listening. Then he shook his head.

“No,” he muttered. “No, that ain’t fair at all. Damn you, why?”

He took one of the older figures off the floor-to-ceiling shelf that composed one wall of the room. Blew the dust off the large figure and placed it where the vision showed him it should be.

“Damn you,” he said to Golgotha, and then he paused and listened silently for a few moments. “Yes,” he finally said, somewhat calmer. “I understand, and of course that’s fair. It’s just so damn sad.”

Miles missed his father, Caleb—son of Malachi Bick. Missed his strong, gentle voice, his warm, loving embrace and his kind wisdom, especially at moments like these.

Outside, the wind and rain screamed off the desert and Miles understood it. He sighed as he saw the threads of causality and inevitability draw tight and he wished there were some other way for the game to play itself out. A notion crossed his mind and he made his own countermove and hoped it was the right thing to do. Sometimes pieces had to be sacrificed to save other pieces.

“Very well, let’s see how you like this little surprise, hmm?”

Miles hunkered down to see his game with Golgotha through till the final turn, till the closing gambit.

Judgment (Reversed)

She was in darkness. Her body was far away and it hurt to try to be in it too much. She was pretty sure she was dead or dying. She recalled sliding across cold, damp stone, sliding through wide, iron bars, some kind of grate. Cool dampness and the smell of blood was all there was now, and the darkness. She was cold. Some part of her mind that refused to shut down reasoned that if she felt cold, smelled her blood, then she wasn’t dead yet.

No,
Maude thought.
No. Not yet.

“No,” a voice echoed. “Not yet, Maude.”

She tried to look into the darkness, to see where the man’s voice had come from.

“I am here,” the voice said. “You felt me faintly at my temple in the wastes, where you fought the cougar. That blood I can sense, burning in your veins, even now sustaining your frail, broken body comes from my onetime wife, Echidna, Mother of All Monsters, who you know as Lilith. We are kin, Maude, you and I, of a sort. It must have been a glorious battle, to mark you so.”

“Who are you?” Maude muttered. “Where are you?”

There was a dry chuckle; it seemed to make the floor rumble slightly. “I am the Father of Terror and Monsters, last son of the Mother and Hell itself. I have been locked away under the earth here for a very long time, ever since your predecessor and the daemon that guards these lands conspired with the Light Bringer to imprison me in this cavernous temple to alien gods. And I would show you my form, Maude Stapleton, but I am long out of practice in wrapping myself in a pleasing shape. To look upon me now would drive you mad, I’m afraid.”

“I look a fright when I first get out of bed too,” Maude managed to mutter, and then coughed violently. The voice laughed. The chamber shook and dust rained down on Maude.

“Even at the very precipice of death, you make a jest. You mortals are a hardy, remarkable lot. I want to give you a gift for the wonderful favor you have given me, Maude.”

“What … what favor?” she mumbled, fighting to keep the cold from creeping into her thoughts, where this being seemed to be residing.

“When you dragged yourself across the threshold, through the grate in the sacrificial well, you destroyed part of the
pharmakis
marks that held me here for eons. You have set me free, Maude. And now I will help you to heal, to live, if you want that?”

“Yes,” Maude. “I want it very much.”

“Why?” the voice asked. “Tell me, Maude Stapleton, Daughter of Lilith, and do not lie, for I will know—tell me, why do you want to cling to this brief fire called life? It burns you and in the end it falters and is extinguished and you find yourself alone in dust and darkness. Why do you want this life back, Maude?”

“The truth,” Maude said. “The truth is … selfish. The truth is I don’t want to go out losing, failing. When I die I want it to have meaning, purpose, for myself, if for no one else. I have lived so much of my life in meaningless shadow, playacting for the sake of others. I want my death, at least, to be on my terms.”

“Hmm,” the voice said. “And what of true love lost or protecting your child?”

“That’s all there as well,” Maude admitted. “To have more time with the ones I love, to protect them, yes, but at the core of it, of me, to be honest, is the ache to triumph, to win. Not for anyone else but for me. For me. To know in my heart, I struggled and won.”

The voice laughed again. “Spoken like a true warrior-born Daughter of Lilith. Very well, you have spoken your heart’s dying truth and for that you shall be rewarded. One final warning though.…”

“Isn’t there always,” Maude said, coughing again, harder this time. Darkness fell over awareness for a moment, then she swam back up out of the cold dark water again.

“Those of your order have worked to oppose me and imprison me in the past,” the voice said. “It has to do with a long-standing feud with my former wife and does not concern you. Enjoy the gift I grant you, Daughter of Lilith. We part as friends, do not seek to hunt me, or interfere with my work. Enjoy your existence, Maude Stapleton, as I enjoy my freedom. May you defeat your foes and know the warrior’s peace. But you may find they are not one and the same.”