Dust of the Damned (9781101554005) (38 page)

The room shook before her, the floor bounding beneath her.

Charlie jumped up out of the chair, stood on his hind feet for a half second before diving forward, hackles raised, knifelike fangs bared, front paws with their terrible black claws swiping at the air. Something moved behind Angel, and then she felt a hot rush of air across the back of her neck as the thing leaped over her from behind and crashed headlong into Charlie Hondo.

Chapter 36
    

THE WRATH OF ELYHANN

The wolf that had leaped over Angel hammered Charlie Hondo backward onto the dais, knocking the vase onto the floor, where it did not break, and sunk its teeth in Hondo’s neck, the enraged growls and slathering snarls of the second beast joining with Hondo’s own screams to set up a shrill ringing in Angel’s ears.

The din as well as the appearance out of nowhere of the second beast sent her into further shock, and it wasn’t before the two wolves had rolled off the dais and had risen onto their back feet, snarling and digging at each other’s neck with their fangs, that she realized the second wolf was Uriah. Only the hazel eyes were his. The rest of the wolf was long and rangy and humpbacked and nearly the same black and charcoal color as Hondo.

But whereas Hondo fought with a savage defensiveness, Uriah fought with a dominant, mindless rage, his hazel eyes turning yellow red and throbbing with primal fury. Hondo had the
strength some awakened black god had given him, and it was enough to withstand Uriah’s ferocious, selfless attack.

The two fought entangled and leaping around the large, round room for a long time, without sign of either tiring, until at least a bucketful of blood had washed across the golden floor. Angel looked at her rifle, but it was too far away, and the two were fighting between her and the Winchester. Besides, even if she could reach the gun, there was a chance she’d hit Uriah with one of her silver bullets.

Frustrated sobs racked her, and she pressed her hands to her temples as if to clear the horrible vision of the two fighting beasts from her head, and the horrifying yips and snarls and tearing growls from her ears. Finally, after fifteen minutes of savage fighting, the wolves separated, facing each other, breathing hard, their hot breath frosting in the air above their heads. Their eyes pulsated.

The moon had moved away from the circle in the domed ceiling, and its liquid white light angled onto the two beasts as if to isolate them in an otherworldly incandescence.

Their dark bodies were massive, their fur standing on end across their humped necks. The moonlight limned the ends of their fur coats like bristles. Blood black as ink pooled beneath them on the gold-cobbled floor. Their bellies sagged, shoulders slumped.

Finally, the wolf with the pulsating hazel eyes glanced at Angel, then drew a deep breath, gave a terrific howl that seemed to nearly implode the tower, and leaped off its back legs. It dug its teeth into Hondo’s already bloody neck, drove the ghoul to the floor, and, with one last decisive slash of its razor-edged fangs, tore the rest of Hondo’s throat out.

It tore the entire neck out.

Whipping his head up, Uriah cast the ghoul’s large, hairy skull high and far across the room to land in the dim reaches and bounce, roll, and thump against an unseen wall. Blood geysered from the gaping hole between Charlie’s shoulders.

The wolf that was Uriah Zane stared into the darkness of the room. Finally, his head and shoulders sagged. He slumped to the floor with a ragged sigh and rolled onto his side. His blood-matted side rose and fell heavily.

Angel stood and walked over to him, dropped to her knees by his side. In the time it had taken her to make the short trek, he’d assumed his human form once more, his clothes torn, blood leaking from a dozen different deep wounds. His chest rose and fell shallowly, and his eyes were closed.

Angel placed a hand on his shoulder. “Uriah.”

He didn’t move.

“Uriah,” she said, clearing the phlegm from her throat and jerking his shoulder. “Heal yourself, Uriah. You have the power.”

Zane’s eyes opened. He stared blindly for a time, and then he turned his head to her and rolled onto his back. He swallowed, licked his lips. “Finish me.”

Angel shook her head. “No.”

“Go ahead.”

“You saved me. Now heal yourself, you bastard.”

Zane shook his head. “Leave me, then.”

Beneath Angel’s knees, the floor vibrated. The vibration grew into a rumbling quiver. She looked up. Dust sifted down from the domed ceiling. The rumbling grew gradually from all across the night-cloaked, moon-bathed city.

“Get out of here,” Zane told her.

“No.” Again, she shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. She grabbed the collar of his buckskin shirt in her fists and jerked his head up off the floor. “Not without you, goddamnit.”

Zane closed his eyes. His body lay absolutely still for a time, and Angel thought he was dead. She placed a hand on his chest, felt the insistent beat of his heart. She ran her eyes across his body.

His clothes were still torn, but the bleeding appeared to have stopped. After several more minutes, during which the vibrations grew louder and more violent, Zane opened his eyes and stared up at Angel. “Sure wish you’d make up your mind,” he rasped. “First you wanna drill me with a silver bullet; then you refuse.”

“Get your ass up,” she said. “I think we’ve made someone angry.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

She looked around, blinking dust from her lashes as it sifted down from the ceiling. Now chunks of gold were beginning to fall, as well, hitting the floor with loud crashes.

She grabbed his hand in both of hers and, rising, pulled. “Can you stand?”

“Think so.”

He let her help him to his feet and wrap his right arm around her neck. Together, Angel crouching beneath his considerable weight, feeling the weak trembling in his spent body, they made their way toward the stairs, Angel pausing only to grab her Winchester.

By the time they’d reached the bottom of the tower, Zane was strong enough to walk on his own. He saw the others—Jesse James, Al Hathaway, and Jericho Turnipseed—milling around
outside the tower, the wounded James and Hathaway leaning on their rifles. They all looked shocked and miserable, glancing around at the slowly crumbling city, the pillars cracking and crashing and golden objects tumbling from roofs.

“What the hell happened up there?” Jericho shouted above the din.

“All hell broke loose,” Angel said. “But I think we got the gates closed. For now.”

Tenderly, Zane limped forward and beckoned to the stunned crowd behind him. “Best pull our picket pins, fog it out of this place.”

“The gold!” Jericho shouted, turning slow, shambling circles, his eyes on the crumbling roofs.

Leaning on his rifle, Hathaway gave the prospector a shove toward Zane, who was limping back the way they’d come. “Come on, fool, or you’re gonna be buried with your precious gold!”

“It’s all Zane’s fault,” said Jesse James, looking around and shaking his head. “You can’t take that no‑account Carolinan nowhere he won’t cause trouble!”

“My gold!” the prospector continued to scream in disbelief, face tipped to the moonlit sky against which the city slowly shook loose and fell. “I waited so long!” He bawled like a baby as he stumbled after the others, hands raised as if to hold the domed city of gold in place. “Oh, merciful Jesus,
noooo
!”

They managed to retrieve their gear and horses and hightail it out of the cavern before the brunt of the earthquake struck.

They couldn’t see the effects as they galloped their rested
mounts back the way they’d come, back past the dead guardians and finally out onto the western flats. But they could hear the loud rumbling and crashing, like enormous, distant cannons, of the canyon walls caving in on the city.

By the time they were miles away, the light from the sagging moon shone only a pale, dusty streak in the sky where the mountain shaped like a wolf’s head had once been. The streak resembled stardust wafting from a damned, destroyed world. No one spoke for the rest of the night as they continued to ride northwest and away from the tantrum of Elyhann, who had been waiting for Charlie Hondo only to watch him die in the god’s temple, the demon’s hope for a master race of werewolves snuffed for the present.

At dawn, they made camp and slept at the base of a low escarpment near which a tiny spring trickled. At midmorning, they saddled their horses, filled their canteens, mounted up, and continued riding, swinging northward toward Tucson, where they’d seek medical help for their wounded. As they left the escarpment, Zane glanced back at the mountain. Dust continued to waft, forming a thin cloud over the vanished peak and lower ridges around it. Nearer, a line of dark riders threaded toward him through the chaparral on small, rangy ponies.

Zane told the others to go on ahead, and gigged General Lee up a hillock near the old Spanish trading trail the others were following. He positioned the wheeled coffin in a gap in the rocks crowning the hill. Quickly, he set up the Gatling gun on its tripod and squatted behind it in the open coffin.

When the dozen or so guardians rode into view around another outcropping and galloped to within fifty yards of Zane, the ghoul hunter triggered the Gatling gun, shattering the midmorning
silence with the machine’s staccato bellow. The slugs blew up a line of dust in the sand in front of the riders, who reined their ponies to sudden stops, jerking back on the rawhide reins and looking around wildly, dark eyes frightened.

The lead, tattooed rider turned his head toward Zane and the smoking Gatling gun. He yelled something in his guttural tongue, and he and the other riders swung their ponies around and galloped back in the direction from which they’d come. Their dust rose, sifting slowly. Gradually, their hoof thuds dwindled.

Nearby, a shod hoof rang off a stone, and Zane turned to see Angel riding up behind him, staring after the fading line of natives from beneath the crown of her dark brown Stetson.

“Can’t help feeling sorry for them,” she said. “A whole race born to protect a city. Now the city’s gone. No wonder they’re angry.”

Zane sighed and leaped out of the Gatling’s casket. He returned the gun to its bed among the silver and other ghoul-hunting paraphernalia, and closed the lid. He swung up onto General Lee’s back and booted the gold stallion down the hill, stopping beside Angel. She was looking at him obliquely.

“You all right?” she asked.

Zane lifted his hat, ran a hand back through his long, black, sweat-damp hair. He stared after Turnipseed, Hathaway, and Jesse James continuing to ride northward along the faint trail angling through the chaparral.

“Damn dangerous—don’t you think?” he asked.

“What?”

“Doin’ what you did. Or
not
doin’ it. Might only be makin’ more trouble for yourself later.” Zane tilted a glance at the bright, brassy sky. “Next full moon…”

Angel leaned toward him, wrapped an arm around his neck, and kissed him. “I reckon I’ll take my chances.” She kissed him again. “Come on. I’ll race you to Tucson and a long bath in a tubful of whiskey!”

She reined her paint around and booted the horse into a ground-eating gallop. Zane glanced once more behind him at the thinning dust cloud over the vanished mountain, then gigged General Lee into a lunging lope behind the marshal as she smiled back over her shoulder at him, through a wave of wine-red hair.