The Gunslinger's Man (27 page)

On your feet, Asher. Get up.

With a sharp breath, he launched himself another five or so feet toward the fallen rider. The back of the man’s head was a mess of brain matter and blood. The front had once belonged to one of the ranch hands from New Morning. Asher wished he’d learned the boy’s name.

He ducked back as another horseman galloped out of the flurries of dust, aiming his rifle straight at Asher’s head. They locked eyes over the edge of a kerchief tied around the rider’s mouth and nose.

Asher thought he spotted a flash of recognition, but the dust haze swept the bandit up just as quickly as he’d emerged. Asher chalked it up to his overworked imagination.

He wouldn’t be so lucky the next time someone pointed a gun at his head.

Whispering a prayer for the ranch hand, Asher hastened to untangle the reins and draw the horse away from the stampede. The herd had begun to spill into the narrow side streets, seeking shelter, seeking a way free from the clamor that had frightened them in the first place. Asher climbed into saddle. If he didn’t go now, the way would be blocked.

A burst of gunfire rang up ahead.

Town hall. Ambrose.

Asher did his best to calm his panicked mount, wincing as a warm, furry body trapped his ankle between it and the horse’s flank. His heart throbbed with dread.

Halloran.

He would be fine. He was a vampire. He’d faced worse.

The bovine form pinning Asher in place tore itself free with a wail and ran on. Asher tried not to think about the bodies strewn on the ground, the ones he could see now and again peering through the throng of horned beasts. Pulped bone and crimson viscera spilled clean across the hard-packed dirt.

To head back toward the heart of town was to risk that same fate.

“God damn it,” Asher swore and nudged his heels into the horse’s heaving belly.

The animal sprang into motion as though whipped. Its speed came as little surprise. It, too, wanted out of this bedlam.

The herd’s forward momentum carried them a while, the dust blurring Asher’s vision. He couldn’t see any farther than the cob’s upraised ears. And the gunfire kept coming, closer now, pounding his eardrums.

Something—someone—emerged out of the yellow fog just before his horse’s front hooves. Archer squeezed the reins back, and by some miracle managed to hike his mount over the figures wrestling on the ground. He thought he spotted Blackjack’s shaved head and one of Ambrose’s men. He twisted in the saddle for a second look, but it was no use. The fog closed in around them.

A gunshot rang out. The cob reared again. This time, Asher wasn’t ready for it. He lost his footing in the stirrups. His center of gravity shifted over the horse’s back.

He landed badly, on the arm that was more metal than flesh, the impact rattling into his brain.

A deep breath stirred another puff of orange-gold dust into the air. The herd had begun to thin or else they’d have trampled him already.

Asher scrabbled for the pistol stuck in his belt, gratified to discover that it hadn’t rolled away in the fall.
Thank God for that.

“You again,” a voice growled above him.

The muzzle of a pistol met Asher’s skull when he made to turn his head.

“Shoulda known this was
your
doing—you and your traitorous friends! You ungrateful piece of shit!”

Lustrous congress gaiters resolved about half a foot from Asher’s nose. Only one man in Sargasso had dough to waste on keeping his shoes buffed to a sheen.

“Ambrose,” Asher breathed.

“Damn right, boy. The last name you’ll ever speak.”

The threat washed over Asher. He’d heard worse. He’d had worse done to him.

Warm metal singed his cheek. He had to squint to make much sense of Ambrose’s features. In this yellow mist, he was a photograph. He didn’t seem quite real.

“Do it.” Asher bared flat, human teeth. “What’re you waiting for?”

A cry rose out of the fog, raw and violent, as if torn from the earth.

Ambrose swung his gaze toward it—swift for a human, slow for what he was. Halloran slammed into him, bearing them both into the ground. A stray piebald cow wailed in fear as they cut off her trajectory.

Asher barely had time to cover his head with his arms as the animal careened toward him. A hoof jammed into his shoulder. Another stomping into his chest. Pain exploded behind his eyes, worse than any he’d endured at the hands of a vampire.

The notion forced out a dizzy, irrational guffaw through dry lips.

He zeroed in on the sounds of a scuffle with some difficulty. It seemed to take him ages to twist around. His blurry vision latched on to Halloran and Ambrose, now moving too fast, now locked in a hold neither of them was strong enough to break.

Halloran’s attempts to reach Ambrose’s pistol were thwarted at every turn. Worse, with the stampede no longer there to fuel it, the fog had begun to clear. Figures emerged from the gloom. Asher couldn’t tell if they were friend or foe. He couldn’t risk it.

With fumbling hands, he drew his ancient revolver from his belt. It was too heavy. He clamped his useless hybrid fingers around it but drawing back the hammer took an age and a half.

Ambrose grasped his own gun and brought the hilt crashing onto Halloran’s face. Blood doused the street. The fleshy echo turned Asher’s stomach.

Red filled his vision.

“Hey!” he rasped. “
Hey!”

Cuts already scarring over on his brow and nose, Ambrose swiveled a wrathful snarl in his direction. His features slackened when he saw the pistol.

“Shoulda killed me when you had the chance,” Asher slurred. He squeezed the trigger.

One last gunshot rang out over Sargasso.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Come on, Asher. You gotta help me out.”

Fingers in his hair, in his mouth. Someone lifting his head up.

Asher winced. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? He was so tired. His legs were already asleep. If they stopped shaking him a minute, he could maybe fall asleep. He needed the rest.

“Drink,” someone told him. “Come on, I know you can do it.”

He couldn’t. He didn’t want to.

He grimaced at the bitter, viscous liquid that poured into his mouth. The taste was going to make him retch.

“Pinch his nose,” the voice said.

A third hand pressed Asher’s nostrils shut. Panic arced through him. Between the gag in his mouth and the clamp around his nose, he was going to suffocate. He jerked, trying to get that point across, and found himself choking back the ichor filling his mouth.

It burned as it went down. It reminded him of whiskey, the first time he’d imbibed any. It reminded him of Halloran’s blood, decanted down his throat to repair the body Ambrose’s minions had broken.

Ambrose.

The stampede.

A single gunshot made to count.

Asher jackknifed upright, shaking off the hands that held him, and doubled over.

“It’s all right. You’re gonna be all right…”

Halloran’s voice seemed to come from very far away, a whole fanfare’s worth of drumming in Asher’s ears. He blinked back tears as he coughed, trying to dislodge the fire in his gullet.

They were still in the street. The dust had settled again, no sign of the cattle or gunmen anywhere. A jagged path of briny blackness puddled on the hard-packed ground between the fallen, proof that vampire casualties ranked among the humans.

“Asher, look at me,” Halloran demanded.

It seemed a strange thing, to want to obey him now that the strings holding them prisoner had been obliterated at last. Asher turned his head. He meant to do as he was told, but the man kneeling beside Halloran in the dirt caught Asher’s eye.

I must be losing my mind.
“Uncle Howard?”

For a hallucination, Asher’s uncle was rather dusty and worn down. A tear in his sleeve exposed a grimy white shirt underneath.

“Hello, nephew.”

“What…what are you…?”

Halloran darted to his feet, startling in his speed, and rounded to face the town hall.

At the top of the porch steps, on the raised dais, Malachi leaned on his father’s wolf’s head cane. “Twenty-five dead. Willowbranch Farm razed to the ground. All our cattle gone… And one of you three
murdered
our protector.”

“It was me,” Halloran said. “I did it.”

Twenty-five vampires might have been lost in the flurry of the stampede, though not trampled, but enough remained to encircle the wounded townspeople barely struggling to their feet. From the corner of his eye, Asher spotted Charlie fumbling his sleeve open to offer Blackjack his blood. Maud was wrestling her rifle from under the body of a fallen horse. She seemed all right, but with just her and Blackjack to back him, Halloran wouldn’t stand a chance.

“No,” Asher gritted out.

Malachi flicked those dangerous grey eyes of his in his direction. “Something to say?” He seemed more amused than dubious.

“It wasn’t—”

“You really gonna to take the word of a bloodbag over mine?” Halloran balled his hands at his sides. His fists bore the smear of Ambrose’s blood. He’d been close enough to come to blows with their mayor. That might count against him.

“You word meant more
before
I found you entertaining traitors,” said Malachi.

Uncle Howard thinned his lips but offered no defense.

“And since I trust neither of you, I’ll have it from someone who always speaks the truth.” Malachi turned and gestured into the house.

Matheson and Angelita were marched out at gunpoint. Enough of Ambrose’s human puppets had outlived him that Malachi still had lackeys to order around.

“Well, sister?” Malachi cocked his head. “Father always said you were full of insights.”

“I don’t…”

“Speak up!”

When Ambrose shouted, his voice boomed like a clamp of thunder. His townspeople were trained to fear that roar early in life, the better to try to avoid it in adulthood. When Malachi did it, glee slithered through. It made him sound not quite sane.

Angelita narrowed her eyes. “I don’t
know
.”

“Then you’re of no use to me, are you?” Malachi waved a hand.

The clangor of a gunshot jolted Asher back a step.

The button-down bodice of Angelita’s day suit darkened to a deep emerald, then to black. Her fingertips came away red when she pressed them to the stain.

Asher made to race for the dais as Angelita’s knees crumbled beneath her, but Halloran’s arm shot out, stopping him mid-motion.

At the top of the stairs, Malachi casually retrieved his foot from under his sister’s hand and wiped the bloodied toe against her sleeve. “Well, perhaps you
are
both guilty.”

“He’s not,” Halloran growled.

Asher would’ve liked to offer a protest of his own, but his throat had clamped shut. He couldn’t look away from Angelita slowly breathing her last.

“Save it for the trial. The crypt ought to do you just fine until then.” With a wave of the hand, Malachi gestured his men to remove them.

Halloran shook off the first hand that touched him. He broke the second. But he was just a vampire and he’d wasted quite a bit of his blood on Asher. It didn’t take long for Malachi’s acolytes to drive him to his knees.

Asher found himself dragged down, too, the violence unnecessary but indiscriminate. He didn’t have the strength to resist.

He glimpsed of Uncle Howard scrabbling to stand as the vampires closed in, but none had been ordered to attack
him.
Maud and Blackjack were on their feet, too, but neither said nor did anything to stop Malachi.

Cowards.

Asher spat in their direction. One of Malachi’s brethren whacked him over the ear with the back of a heavy fist. He must’ve thought the phlegm meant for him.

The blow dimmed Asher’s awareness enough that he put up no fight as they hauled him through the square.

A kaleidoscope of colors exploded behind his eyes once inside the church. The empty hall echoed with the scrape of boots. He lost his footing halfway down the stairs and landed in the crypt on hands and knees. Only Halloran’s timely grab stopped him from cracking his skull against the stone.

The door slammed shut behind them, draining what little light there was from the small, dark chamber.

Asher slumped against the bottom step. “They know you can break through that… right?”

Halloran gave a noncommittal grunt.

“Can’t you?”

“Maybe if I had a couple of bloodbags.”

The shadows seemed to muffle his voice. The sting of the retort leached out by the same token.

“You got me.”

“And you’re so clever you couldn’t teach a hen to cluck.”

“You need me clever to be your dinner? Here.” Asher pushed up his sleeve. He couldn’t feel Malachi’s bite anymore, courtesy of Halloran’s generosity, and though the phantom pain of cattle hooves lingered, he knew his broken bones had reset themselves back into alignment. “Have at it and get us out of here.”

“And then what?” Pitch-black darkness concealed Halloran’s approach. Only the jangle of his spurs gave him away. “We shoot our way outta here?”

“Maud and Blackjack—”

“Will be racin’ out of town as we speak, if they got any brains left.”

Although he knew Halloran couldn’t see it, Asher scowled. “I thought you trusted ’em to be loyal.”

“There’s loyal, and there’s plain dumb. Ain’t a bloodsucker in Sargasso who don’t want to rip us to shreds right now.”

“What’re you saying? That Malachi just saved our lives?”

Halloran’s silence could well have been a denial, but without the benefit of seeing his expression, all Asher had to go on was his own gut feeling.

“Why the hell would he do that? He shot his own sister—”

“Girl with her abilities…wouldn’t you?”

No,
’
cause I ain’t a psychopath.
Asher bit back his first retort. “You knew?”

“Doc’s been getting her medication on the sly. Romero noticed it a couple of weeks ago.”

“And, what, she tells you everything?”

The shadows were too compact to make out Halloran’s nod, but Asher felt it, just like he felt the scrape of a sleeve against his arm as Halloran settled beside him. Whatever he was hoping to accomplish by pacing the crypt, he appeared to have given up the search.