The Skinwalker Conspiracies - 02 (14 page)

The others who hadn’t been hurt by the filings skirted the area and came at us from both sides. I barely had time to get the other glove on my hand. There were maybe ten of them and only two of us. Oswald didn’t care. The energy still trapped in the filings didn’t bother him in the least. His wail of pain wasn’t an injury, but caused by ghosts three and four disappearing back to their anchors before he could destroy them.

“Destroy Oswald first and then we’ll finish his Skinwalker!”
The shout was full of authority and the mouth that uttered it belonged to William Travis. He looked a bit different than the drawings and portraits of him. I didn’t have too much time to dwell on it; my hands were a bit full.

“You meant to say, ‘Ferryman’ Travis!” I yelled, latching onto one of the first few that tried to pile on Oswald. The ghost screamed in Spanish at the burning touch of my gloves. I tossed him aside and hoped he would take the hint and flee.

If a ghost could look ashen, Travis did.
“Ross? You can’t be here! She said you weren’t real.”

Leaving Oswald to his fate, I locked horns with Travis. He tried some kind of directed burst of energy, like Oswald’s lightning strike, but the gloves blocked most of it and sent the rest behind me. There was a crack of wood where and several thuds as tree branches fell.

What did get through hurt like hell, but I’d endured worse. I bowled him over and grappled with him.

“I’m guessing Von Eckels lied to you as well. I want to know where she is – De Soto too. Tell me and I’ll spare you!”

He responded with a knee to my gut and a punch just above my nose that made me see stars for a second.

Fighting past the pain, I howled and slammed into him.

“Don’t you … ever … do … that … again!” Each pause was punctuated by my fists pounding into him. Travis’ arms were curled up and he was trying to protect against my onslaught. God only knows what this was looking like, but I couldn’t spare the time to see if people were watching.

I could feel Travis trying to disappear to his nearby anchor, but my presence prevented it. My knee was jammed into his side at the ribs as I rained blow after blow down on him. The heat was starting to build inside me.

He whimpered and was screaming something. Through the blind rage I was experiencing, I managed to make out,
“I’ll tell! Stop! I’ll tell!”

Standing up, I pulled on his arm and whipped it around behind his back. I panted, and tried to force the heat away from my chest and out into my arms.

“Talk! Now!”

“Eckels is in Amarillo. Last I heard of the Governor, he was either in Phoenix or down in Mexico.”

Releasing his arm, I stepped away in disgust and clutched at my chest, debating whether or not to go ahead and take the nitro pill. Oswald held a ghost by the neck in each hand and was kneeling on a third.

My questionable ally tossed the ghosts away and charged at Travis,
“Time to meet your maker, little man!”

Oswald was so fixated on Travis that I was able to take one step and put everything I had into a right cross. The haymaker sent the lunatic from Dallas crashing into the dirt. His aura looked substantially diminished and I knew that if it came down to it, I’d finish him once and for all.

“It’s over Oswald! We have what we came for.” I wasted no time, jumping on him, and getting him into a half-nelson.

“No! No! No! Let me go! I’ll kill you!”

Virginia was right; the ghosts out here were ruthless. I needed to be as well.

Hissing in his ear, I said, “You already know you can’t take De Soto without me, but I might be able to take him without you! You want it to end right here and now, Oswald? Do you?”

The heat I’d pushed aside roared back into the center of my being.

“Times up!” I shouted. “What’s it going to be?”

“You win, Ross,”
Oswald said.
“You win.”

I let go and stepped away, barely able to hear in my one good ear over the pounding of my heart. My fingers worked the case and I shoved the pill into my mouth.

“Go back to Dallas. I’ll pick you up there,” I ordered. He started to protest, but something in my expression must have told him I wasn’t kidding. Seconds later he was gone.

There was only me and Colonel William Travis left. The rest of his command was either destroyed or had fled. We both looked like we’d seen better days. My head throbbed and I was riding wave after wave of nausea. I rubbed my right eye and was somewhat shocked to realize that I was able to see Travis out of my left eye.
When had that happened? Up until now, I’d only been able to see ghosts with my right eye! Were my powers changing?

“You know he’ll turn on you at some point,”
Travis said, rising from his prone position.
“When he said, ‘You win’ it only meant this round.”

I nodded, still partially lost in this new revelation. Denying it would only make me sound delusional. Of course I was speaking to a ghost, so delusional was a relative term.

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, Travis,” I said. “All I wanted was the information.”

“I hope it’s worth it to you, you’ve desecrated this place! I’ve only got a handful of men left and as soon as someone finds out, they’ll come here and finish me off.”

“History repeats itself, Travis.”

“What?”
he asked before recognizing the truth.

“Don’t lose this time,” I said.

“You think it’s that easy, boy?”

I started to move away. My triumphant march was more like a limp, but I tried not to let it bother me. Pausing and glancing over my shoulder, I said, “Compared to my life Colonel, you’ve got a walk in the park.”

Out in front of the monument were two uniformed officers and a squad car waiting for me.

“You! Halt right there!”

I thought fast and pointed back behind me. “They went the other way when they saw you.”

“What?”

“The guys who were trying to mug me.” Technically, Travis was still there, but it was doubtful they’d be able to catch him.

Not sure what to believe, one stayed with me, while the other called for backup and walked further into the park shining his flashlight. I was ordered to sit down on a bench.

Usually, I don’t like being told what to do, but given my current aches and pains, I had no problem obeying Johnny Law. After a few minutes, I asked if I could go and get Silas and bring him back. If I was going to make a statement, I’d look like less of a hellion with a blind preacher at my side.

I hadn’t lied to Travis. I didn’t come out west just to kick over everyone’s hornets nests and stir up a world of trouble. It was fast becoming an unfortunate side effect. When I’d flattened Taney’s museum, it was with no regrets at all. The bastard had it coming. This was different and felt wrong. In the darkness, The Alamo looked even smaller than in the daylight.

Just like Santa Anna, I’d emerged victorious from this spot. What worried me was that I’d end up like him.

After the debacle at The Alamo, I was beaten both physically and emotionally. Ninety minutes with the police, just so I could lie about the people that attacked me and feed them some crap about being an amateur ghost investigator, had a way of doing that to me. To add minor insult to minor injuries, it added a few more dollars to the parking fees when we finally were able to leave.

On the way back, I brought Silas up to speed. “At this point, I’m not sure we should even go back to Dallas and get Oswald.”

“Let’s go back to the hotel and get some rest, Michael,” Silas said, offering some encouragement. “A good night’s rest makes everything a bit clearer.”

“At least you’re not saying it’ll be better in the morning,” I added.

“Cheer up, Michael. You didn’t flatten the place.”

“Yeah, that would have gone over well. They banned Ozzy from the state just for taking a whiz on it. I can’t imagine what they’d have done to me.”

The talking helped prevent me from going to sleep. It was a small miracle that I didn’t have an accident on the way back to the hotel. I’d never been so glad to see a simple hotel bed in my life. For some stupid reason I kept thinking of that bouncer movie Swayze starred in a long time ago. His sidekick or mentor buddy said that he’d get all the sleep he needed when he was dead. Of course, that guy died later on in the movie, so I didn’t want to go there.

Somehow, I doubted that would apply to me. After a hot shower that helped soothe some of my aches and pains, I climbed into bed. On the dresser was Paul Lawrence’s wedding band. Every time I’d had it with me, I felt refreshed the next morning. It was fast becoming my drug of choice, but hey, I could stop any time I wanted to. Before, I’d worn a pair of shorts to bed and kept it in my pocket. This time, I slid it onto my middle finger and it still was a bit loose.

One thing was certain; Paul had some big ass hands.

“You’re a real looker, Tabbycat. I could’ve sworn Lauren Bacall just walked into the room,” Paul said. Tabitha had done more than salvage her wet hair, she had this blue dress on that accentuated her figure. Paul was definitely happy. Heck, I wasn’t even there and I was happy.

Tabitha’s smile said that all was forgiven. “Do you want me to go back into the room and make another entrance?”

In Paul’s body, I stood up and walked over to her. “If you did what I really wanted you to do, we’d be late for dinner and dancing.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she replied patting Paul’s face with the tips of her fingers.

“Only the ones I marry.” I concentrated on Paul’s reply. Maybe if I wore this ring long enough, I’d pick up some decent pointers from Mr. Lawrence. I’m sure he wasn’t any good at fighting ghosts, but he had me by a country mile when it came to smooth talkin’ with the ladies.

Paul wasn’t really paying attention to anything but his new bride, I couldn’t blame him. I looked around the room. It was obviously the honeymoon suite and I got the sense that he had scrimped and saved to give Tabitha the best honeymoon he could afford.

To my “modern” eyes, the place had a dated look, but I guess that was to be expected. One thing I had noticed on my last journey into the phantom past was how helpful people were in the places Paul and Tabitha went. From the corner of Paul’s eye, I saw a gas station with an attendant checking the oil and tire pressure while a second one pumped the gas – all for a price that boggled my mind. The waitress at the local diner they’d had lunch at wrote their order down and put the slip on one of those circular things for the cook to see. There were no computers, no cell phones going off during the meal, and even some scratchy songs playing on a jukebox. People smoked unfiltered cigarettes at over half the tables and there was no such thing as a No Smoking Section.

At any minute, I half expected Gidget to come out of the restroom. It was
that
surreal and gave me a new appreciation for all those home movies, from Grandpa Warren’s eight millimeter camera, that he forced me to watch those times I went over to his house.

Catching up to the present, I finally saw what Paul Lawrence looked like. He was much taller than I was, but that didn’t say much. I guessed he was somewhere around six two. His shoulders were big and his tuxedo stretched across his large frame.

But could he fight a ghost? Yeah, that’s right. I don’t think so!
With that thought, I smugly reclaimed my manliness.