Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (39 page)

“Damnation. The only way around is to go back nearly half a day,” Gabriel said, rubbing wearily at the bristle on his chin. “And Graciendo said this was the safest trail.”

“So, we go through.” Izzy swallowed hard, not feeling anywhere near as brave as she’d tried to sound. “We’ve silver and a magician on our side; what could go wrong?”

“And to think we once worried about raiders and haints,” Gabriel said, and his laughter might have been mostly bravado, but it helped.

Still, none of them moved forward. That, strangely, also helped: she would rather they all be nervous. That made her fears seem less foolish, more wise.

Her hands shook nonetheless, and she rested them on her knees to hide it, the tug on the reins making Uvnee flick her ears backward as though to ask what the matter was. The horses didn’t seem fussed at all. She took some courage from that and the fact that Flatfoot was already poking its head around the rockfall and then looking back, as though to ask why they were all simply standing there instead of moving.

“You first,” Gabriel said, and she kneed Uvnee forward, only to have him grab at her reins. “Not you. Him.” He jerked his chin at the magician.

“But—”

“Your mentor does not believe in the goodness of my intentions,” Farron said, his strange, hard smile back in place, “and would happily sacrifice me to whatever malevolence may await us in the crossroads ahead.”

“That’s right,” Gabriel said without shame. “So go.”

Izzy wanted to protest: she was the one who was meant to discover what was wrong; it was her duty to do this. But by the time she gathered her thoughts enough, Farron had already gone around the bend again, whistling a jaunty, unfamiliar tune. She wrenched the reins free of Gabriel’s grasp, giving him a glare, and pushed Uvnee into a trot to follow him down the trail.

Setting aside pride, Gabriel was right, she admitted to herself. There might be things that could kill the magician and keep him dead, but the cards seemed to be stacked in his favor. She didn’t like it, though.

And then she was around the rockfall, her gaze searching ahead for whatever it was Farron had seen.

Izzy had always thought of crossroads as being flat, long roads stretched out for miles in four directions, the point of contact clearly laid out. But the trail here meandered downhill, the intersecting road cutting through rock on one side, then continuing the other side downhill, almost immediately disappearing from sight.

If you didn’t know, you might not recognize the crossroads until it was too late. Izzy wondered how many had been trapped by that over the years.

She reined in and waited for Gabriel to catch up with her, her right leg twitching in the stirrup as though she were repressing the urge to swing down and follow the magician as he continued toward the spot where the two roads crossed.

“He’s not taking out any silver,” she said, worried, and then almost laughed at herself. They already
knew
something was there, and likely all the bits and bobs of silver they had wouldn’t be enough to cleanse that ill intent.

“Do you see anything?” Gabriel asked. He looked nervous, his gaze darting, his body that same comfortable but too-still posture she had noted in him before. He was looking for threats from without, she realized, checking every rock, every shadow for a potential ambush.

“No,” she said. “I don’t see anything.” She might, if she went to that other place. If she slipped down into the bones. But the thought made her stomach churn. Before, she had thought that place was safe, protected. Now . . . She had spoken big words about facing whatever had ridden the storm into the Territory, about chasing it down and forcing it to show its face, but this—she didn’t even know if it was the same thing that had chased her out of Clear Rock—

it was—

—it was in the bones already, Farron said. Cracking the bones. But cracked bones could heal, couldn’t they?

No whisper answered her this time, and she worried at her lip, watching another stride toward what should have been her responsibility.

“He’s died before,” she said, trying to calm her nerves. “Nothing can really hurt him, right?”

“I don’t know.”

The palm of her hand ached intensely, and she lifted her other hand to rub at it, thumb pressing into the flesh. The markings there were darker now, still fine-lined but clearly visible, and Izzy wasn’t sure if that was a comfort or another thing to worry over.

Suddenly, the sense of urgency swarmed like bees in her skin, the single sting she’d gotten as a young girl intensified until her entire body seemed inflamed and fever-hot. “Farron Easterly!” she called, through a throat suddenly swollen and sore. “Stop!”

She was too late, or he simply could not hear her, his stride carrying him that last step into the crossroads even as the ground underneath burst open, something massive rising from the swirling dust.

“Hellfire,” Gabriel whispered in awe.

This was not a storm. It was not a hallucination or embodied spirit. It was a solid beast, rough-skinned and filled with teeth and claw, scrambling to attack anything that moved within its sphere.

The magician had not entered the crossroads unprepared. The first swipe of a gnarled, clawed hand the size of a horse’s head was deflected, although those long limbs of his did not move and there was no sign of any weapon, merely the magician standing, chin lifted, feet planted, like he had no plans to move again ever. Her breath caught, her body tightening as though braced for a blow herself, and beside her she heard Gabriel swearing, a low, steady stream in three different tongues.

Fear gave way to anger, boiling like soup under her skin. This was wrong. This was her responsibility, not his; his ego would get him killed. Again. And no matter his flippancy, she could not imagine that was pleasant even for one such as he.

Izzy looked at her left hand, saw that the silver of her ring, brightly polished a few days ago, had tarnished to a dullness, even outside the crossroads. If she’d had any doubt that the beast was natural, that dispelled it. This was some bile of magic, taken form.

The boss had no agreements with magicians. But Farron Easterly traveled with them, by her invitation.
Help me,
she thought fiercely.
Tell me what to do!

She looked up again, afraid that the heartbeat she’d looked away had somehow been fatal. The crossroads was barely large enough for the both of them; the creature reared over the magician’s head, snarling and growling but unable to lay a claw on him. Farron stared up at it, protected but unable to do damage. They were at a standoff.

Izzy took the time to study the creature more closely, although looking directly at it was difficult. It was thrice the height of the magician and whipcord thin, multiple limbs weaving as fast as the magician was still, claws glinting black under the sunlight, skin covered in dark blue scales that glistened as though covered in thick spit or snot. It was built to rend, to tear, to destroy; it had no other purpose.

“Boss,” she whispered out loud. “How do we stop this?”

The ache in her hand subsided, and Izzy felt herself drop her stirrups, slipping out of the saddle and landing on the ground with a jarring thud she felt all the way to her skull. The fever heat under her skin worsened, and Izzy wiped sweat out of her eyes, cursing her skirts as they dragged on the dirt. If she survived this, she would buy a pair of pants the same as Devorah and that traveling woman back in Patch Junction, and to blazes with anyone who raised an eyebrow at her. You could not fight in full-length skirts.

“Iz?”

She flicked her fingers backward at Gabriel, telling him to stay put, and moved slowly toward the crossroads. She’d let him call her a fool later, assuming they survived.

Her knife remained sheathed on her saddle, but what was useful against a common predator, two-legged or four, would do nothing there. Behind her, she heard the sounds of Gabriel loading his gun, the rip of cloth and slide of metal, but Izzy thought it would be as useless as her knives, that this was not a thing that could be vanquished with weapons.

And Farron’s own medicine could do nothing more than force a standoff.

She clenched her left hand, fingers digging into the sigil, and waited for some arcane understanding to appear, filling her with what to do.

Nothing happened.

She dug deeper, panic thrumming under her chest bone. The boss had to help her. Without his gift, she was useless, just a saloon girl. She knew how to fold laundry, shuffle a deck of cards, pour drinks, and listen to those who needed to talk, not how to kill a monster.

In the crossroads, Farron tilted his head, and this close, she could hear his voice, although she could not make out the individual words, a singsong pattern of nonsense. The creature lifted its own head and roared. The sound should have echoed against rock and sky,
should have filled her ears and rattled her bones, but somehow was muffled, hushed.

With every step closer, the air around her felt heavier, oppressive, the thick stillness of a summer storm unsure yet if it would break or swelter. The faintest twist of a breeze ran against the back of her neck, a touch both disturbing and reassuring, and was gone.

Izzy sank to her knees, her palms on the ground in front of her, her gaze held on the scene barely a foot away, close enough to feel the heat the creature was giving off, smell the acrid fear-sweat of both man and beast.

The moment her fingers dug into the dirt, she felt herself slip out of her own body, a sickening jolt and drop, her already fever-dizzy head swelling and then cooling abruptly, as though the fever had stayed behind.

The dizziness she felt now was familiar: colder and sharper, as though she’d been spun too often in a game of blindman’s bluff. She felt split wide open and pressed small all at once, a thousand things pressing on her, whispering at her, prying open her eyes and crawling into her ears.

“Oh.” Understanding filled her, a comprehension so intense that she couldn’t remember not having it a heartbeat before. That was why she had tried to stop Farron, why—

The creature didn’t care whatever revelation she was having. With another roar that couldn’t escape the crossroads, it reared up and swung its long neck down at the same time its clawed hands came together, closing in on either side of Farron’s head. He saw it coming the same instant Izzy did, stiffening his stance and calling something back, a string of liquid words that were gibberish but
sounded
right, sounded powerful. But the creature closed in on the magician, wrapping him in its taloned, scaled embrace, the power he’d summoned either too little or too late to save him.

The blast that threw her backward, singeing her skin and hair, took her utterly by surprise.

“
Isobel. Isobel. Iz!”

Gabriel called her name and then slapped her face lightly. Her eyes moved under closed lids, and she groaned something inaudible, one hand reaching up as though to brush a pest away. He caught that hand in his own, feeling the firm heartbeat under her skin with relief. When he’d seen her flying backward as though an invisible hand had thrown her, he’d wanted to rush to her side, but holding the horses steady had taken all his strength and focus. Even the mule had bolted, although it came creeping back, cautiously, once everything was still again.

The magician lay in the crossroads, facedown, but Gabriel wasn’t going anywhere near him, not until he knew that Isobel was safe, and perhaps not even then.

“Iz, come on, come on now, open your eyes, there’s a girl.” Her hand was too warm, and he uncurled it to look at the palm. The markings were thick black lines now that somehow seemed to fold into the lines of her skin, echoing the swirls of her flesh rather than being imprinted there.

She sniffled a little, and her eyes opened, staring past him up at the sky.

“Am I dead?”

“Not yet. But you’re going to be sore bruised in unpleasant places for a while, I suspect.” He helped her sit up, carefully, keeping a close watch on her eyes and the color of her skin. There was a bruise under her right eye, and she looked to be favoring her side; there didn’t seem to be any obvious further damage, no blood or protruding bones, and her breath was steady, if a little shaky, so she hadn’t injured anything inside.

“Stay here,” he told her, and when she nodded, got up and moved cautiously toward the crossroads.

Whatever had been there before was gone; even he could feel that.
But the air was still enough to leave him leery of disturbing it: when things went quiet, it meant something was about to break.

He reached into his pocket, finding a coin. He turned it between his fingers a few times, feeling the milled edges worn down over years of handling, the square tips now soft nubs, the etched markings nearly illegible. A quick flick of his arm in a practiced manner, and the coin flipped into the air, arcing over and landing in the dust just inside the crossroads. He waited until the dust settled, then studied the coin.

“It’s fine,” a voice said, scratchy as though it had been screaming for hours. “A little help, if you don’t mind?” And the magician rolled over onto his side, trying—and failing—to get up. “Truth, rider, some help needed here. I just fought some fire-spawned evil; the least you might do is offer me a hand.”