Revenge and the Wild (8 page)

All three of them stared down at the wisp of fabric in Westie’s trembling hand.

“This was my momma’s.”

“Are you sure?” Bena said. “We found many clothes in this cabin.”

Bena and some of the Wintu scouts had gone back to the cabin to hunt for the cannibals after Westie was found. The family had fled by then but left the evidence of their carnage behind. The scouts had taken the bones and clothing of the dead and buried them after the ground thawed in a private ceremony nearby, knowing if they took them to the church for a Christian burial, the natives might’ve been blamed for their deaths.

They’d tried to burn the cabin after, but the wood was too wet and the fire had fizzled out. Instead they left woven dolls hanging
from trees and painted symbols on the door warning travelers of the haunted cabin. Judging by the trash scattered across the floor, not many had heeded that warning.

Westie nodded. She was sure. The cannibals had used the scarf to tie her mother’s hands together.

“She was wearing it that night. She always wore this scarf. It was a gift from my pa on their anniversary.”

Westie ran her fingers across the intricate pattern. She imagined she could still smell her mother: lilac and honey. The only thing she really remembered was the smell of blood and the faces of those who killed her family.

Tears glittered in the corners of her eyes when she remembered waking up to her mother’s screams. She’d blinked several times, eyes blurry with sleep, and found her mother and father sitting on the floor beside her, their hands and feet bound with items of clothing. She looked around for Tripp but didn’t see him.

“Run!” her mother had cried.

Westie had imagined an attack: vampires, the Undying, werewolves, or ghouls, but saw nothing.

“What? Why?” She looked around. The nice family she’d shared her meal with earlier stood in the room watching her.

“Go!” her mother shouted again.

The other family surged toward her like a machine, different parts of a single structure working together for a single purpose, to tie her up too. She was drunk on fear and confusion. She did what her mother demanded of her and ran. The boy, much bigger than her,
moved in front of the door leading to the woods, so she turned and ran toward the only bedroom. The woman moved to block her way. Westie turned again, slipped on a grimy rug, and nearly went down before recovering and rushing toward the kitchen. She heard the heavy boots of the bearded man as he chased after her.

When Westie reached the small kitchenette, she saw bare cupboards, a stove, a pump for water, and a butcher block in the middle of the room, with a bloody stump of a human leg on it. The skin on the leg was smooth and soft, and the foot was small. A child’s leg.

Tripp . . .

Beside the leg was a fresh pot of stew.

A scream stuck to the sides of her throat and burned like medicine. She felt herself start to retch when the fetid smell of decay reached her nose. Despite the cold winter month, flies buzzed around a lake of congealed blood pooled on the floor below the block. Westie bent at the waist, and when she did, she saw a pile of clothes and bones behind the butcher block. She recognized the clothes. They belonged to members of the caravan.

Her family had been warned of cannibals on the wagon trail before they left Kansas. Stories were told of folks who had been ill-prepared for the mountainous terrain and would turn on one another for nourishment when the food ran out. It wasn’t prairie sickness, the illness that turned one into the Undying, but to eat one’s own kind seemed far worse. Westie’s father had said it was a bunch of lies shopkeepers told to prevent money from leaving town. He was wrong.

When Westie heard the floor creak behind her, she spun around
to face the bearded man. In his hand was a knife that winked in the candlelight. As he swung down on her, she raised an arm to ward off the blow. The knife sliced clean through her bone at her elbow, leaving her arm attached by skin and tendon.

There was hardly any pain, only pressure and a dull ache. It took her a moment to get her breath. When the man lifted his knife once more, she slipped past him. The wife and son of the bearded man seemed confused when they saw Westie come into the room, as if they hadn’t expected her to make it out alive. She was able to get past them too.

Westie’s mother was screaming. Her father struggled with his ties. “Leave her be,” he growled in a voice that frightened her. “Run,” he said to her. “Run and don’t look back.”

So Westie did. She ran out into the dark woods, through the snow without coat or shoes. She could hear the man’s heavy footfalls behind her. Her breath was a death shroud around her face. Petals of blood floated behind her as if she were a flower girl at a wedding until her body became so cold it stanched the flow. The man’s footsteps had been close at first. She ran and ran without looking back, until the steps slowed and finally stopped. Even then she ran. Soon her battered arm was in so much pain that she could no longer move. She slumped to her knees in the snow. The pain was razor sharp, but she dared not scream. There were moments she wanted to look at the damage but was too afraid of what she might find.

Several times she leaned over and retched, because of the pain, and because she knew she had eaten the flesh of travel companions
whose children she had played with. And because she had left her entire family to be slaughtered.

Something moved in the snow. Her breath halted as she listened. She prayed the cold would take her before a hungry mouth.

Her vision had begun to gray.
Good
, she thought,
I’m dying
. She thought the same thing again when she saw the rider atop his painted pony in front of her. It was a beautiful horse, red with white shapes on its hide. Upon its rump were blue handprints, and in its mane feathers and beads. Westie wished she had a pony like that to ride. Its gallop would be so fast they could outrun the pain.

The rider dismounted. The person was too small to be the bearded man, or his wife—the boy, maybe. As the figure got closer and the face became clear, Westie saw the skin was too brown and the hair too long and dark to be anyone from the cannibal family. An Indian, she realized, a woman. Westie tried to speak, but then her gray vision turned black.

Westie dropped the scarf, not wanting to touch it any longer. It was hardly proof. She was the only one who knew it had belonged to her mother.

They left the cabin after Westie had turned the floors to kindling and pulled down entire walls in search of evidence. But if there were ever pictures or papers bearing the Fairfield name, they were long gone.

When they were outside the cabin, Bena said, “We need to hurry.”

But it was too late, for a train of outlaws appeared from behind the trees.

The first to show himself was a man. The only thing she was certain of was the malice she saw in the way he watched her troupe.

The next to show himself was not a man but a leprechaun. Fear
kneaded at Westie’s stomach when she saw it was the old buzzard she’d played cards with in the saloon. He had a tobacco-pregnant lower lip and boasted cuts and bruises from a previous quarrel. Each outlaw who showed himself afterward had a unique look about him, except his intentions. Those were all the same.

There were six of them all together. Westie’s head was no place for a lady when the last outlaw was in view, for all that came to mind were curse words. It was the young leprechaun from the saloon. He wore a sling on his arm and a harder look upon his face than when she had seen him last.

She pulled the parasol from its leather holster across her back and pointed it toward the gang. Alistair stood at her side with his hands resting on the revolvers at his hips.

The young leprechaun slid off his horse and the others followed. He wore an amused look on his face and raised his hands in a parody of surrender.

“You plan to beat me to death with your parasol, tart?”

Westie assessed each outlaw, taking inventory of their weapons. Each had a revolver on his hip and a rifle on his saddle. “I reckon I might have me a try,” she said, happy to be sober.

When the young leprechaun moved, there was a shimmer beneath his vest.

“Ace in the hole,” she whispered to Alistair, knowing he would be counting guns as well. He nodded without taking his eyes off the gang.

Westie had one bullet secured in the chamber of her hidden gun.
All she had to do was pull the trigger and hope the young lep caught a case of slow. Once she did, it was up to Alistair and Bena to finish the others before they fired their weapons. She prayed it wouldn’t come to that. Last thing she wanted was to find herself in a hailstorm of gunfire. If she could just get off one shot and frighten the outlaws’ horses, they could make a getaway, though she doubted the horses of outlaws would be gun-shy.

She had to make a choice. It was a corpse-and-carriage event no matter which way she looked at it. She just hoped she and her friends weren’t the ones taking the long ride home in boxes.

She took a deep breath and aimed between the young leprechaun’s eyes. She pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened, not even a click. Her heart sputtered. She tried again and again. The gun was jammed.

The outlaws were restless, and the young leprechaun was no longer amused by her display of bravery. Their stallions, each one as dark and fearsome as the riders, had also grown impatient. They pawed at the earth and nipped at one another.

Alistair fidgeted with the pistols at his hips. The young leprechaun turned to Alley.

“You half vampire under there?” the young leprechaun said with hooded eyes and a dry smile. “Take off your mask, boy. Let’s see your pretty face.”

Alistair showed no hint of fear.

“You don’t want to see what’s under this mask,” he said.

The outlaws’ horses were startled by Alistair’s metal voice.
They whinnied and stepped back.

“You’re a metal freak just like she is,” the young leprechaun cried in a high keen.

The leprechaun fumbled with the six-shooter beneath his vest but dropped it on the ground. He turned to the holster keeping his rifle strapped to his saddle.

Before he could reach it, Alistair put a window in his skull, and two more bullets in the men on either side of him.

Gunpowder filled Westie’s nose and stung her eyes, the screams of the old leprechaun pulsed in her ears. Alistair put a bullet in his chest, shutting him up for good.

One of the outlaws turned his gun on Bena. She darted around to confuse his aim, then reached for her pony’s mane and swung onto his saddleless back to get above the man. She leaped from her horse with a battle cry, her knife in her grip, two graceful ladies dancing through the air. A violent pink mist dappled her skin as she hacked through the man’s neck before he could get his shot off.

Another of the outlaws took aim at Alistair and fired.

The bullet hit Alistair in the face and threw him back against a tree, where he crumpled to the ground like a discarded jacket.

“Alley!” Westie cried as she unsheathed the blade in her parasol.

She lunged at the outlaw who’d shot Alistair, her sword high over her head, gripped in both her hands. She brought it down upon his head where he was bent on one knee, reloading. He didn’t look up until she was right in front of him. The blade cut through the air with the full force of her machine and sliced the man clean through from
skull to groin. His twin halves fell apart with a sticky sound.

Westie’s breath was erratic as she looked around at the six dead bandits lying in pools of blood and loosed bowels. She turned her desperate gaze to Alistair.

Bena was by his side. Westie was afraid to go to him, afraid of what she would see. Bena dabbled in gore and could stomach such things, but Westie wasn’t sure if she had it in her.

“Is he . . . ,” Westie started to say, but her voice shut off before she could get the words out.

“No,” Bena said.

“No?” Westie went to him then. She thought there would be blood or worse, but all she saw was Alistair’s dented mask. His eyes were closed, chest moving with each breath. It simply looked as though he were sleeping.

“It was his head hitting the tree that knocked him out, not the gunshot,” Bena said. She poked at his skull with the tips of her fingers, then reached behind his head to unsnap his mask.

“Wait,” Westie said, and turned her back to Bena. “Alistair wouldn’t want me to see his face.”

She waited, wanting so badly to see what Bena was doing, but she knew how angry Alistair would be if she watched.

“You can look now,” Bena said. When Westie turned around, Alistair’s mask was back on. “A shot like that should have knocked all his teeth out and crushed the bones in his face. There is no damage from what I can see, just a bump on the head.”

Westie wiped a tear from her cheek. “Nigel makes durable
machines,” she said in a strangled voice.

“Help me get him on his horse,” Bena said. “We need to get him back to town to make sure there is no other damage.”

When Alistair was draped over his saddle and Bena was back on her paint, Westie took a moment to secure his body with rope and make sure he didn’t fall off. She touched his hair and the skin on his neck. He looked so peaceful. She kissed each of his closed eyes and quietly thanked the maker for saving his life.

Alistair had stirred along the way but had yet to wake by the time they stopped to camp. He still hadn’t woken the next day when they got back to Rogue City. Bena and Westie took him straight to Doc Flannigan’s.

Westie held her head in her hands as they sat in the doctor’s office, waiting. “Thank you for coming with me. I couldn’t have gone through that without you,” she said.

Bena’s copper-colored eyes looked straight forward, but she reached over and put a hand on Westie’s back. The gentleness of Bena’s touch made Westie want to weep, but she knew how uncomfortable her friend was with tears, so she held them in.

When the doc confirmed Alistair would be fine, Westie let out a sound of relief and left for the mansion to change her clothes.

Nigel waited for her on the stoop with a crushed piece of metal
in his hand that had once been a telegraph bird. Westie looked at the broken bird. She should never have believed Doc Flannigan when he said he would wait an hour to tell Nigel about Alistair.

Westie dismounted and climbed the steps. Jezebel pushed her bucket head into Westie’s hand, forcing her affection. She scratched the beast dutifully in the spot behind the ear where she liked. Nigel watched her expectantly.

“Would you like to tell me why you weren’t in Sacramento with Isabelle as your note said, and how Alistair was shot in the face?” He asked the question as if he were asking about the weather, but Westie could see the emotion of that news lingering in the tremble of his lips.

It was an honest question, so she gave him an honest answer. “No.”

His eyes examined the dried blood covering her riding clothes. “Very well.”

She opened her mouth to counter his objections, but tilted her head when there was no resistance and closed her mouth again, happy not to disappoint him further.

He said, “I was hoping we could talk a bit.”

Talk. Nigel always wanted to talk. He knew a lot of words and he liked to use them: big ones, fancy ones, and some she was sure he made up.

“Later,” she said. When she saw the dubious look on his face, she added, “Promise.”

He nodded with a resigned smile and led her into the house, where she pulled the parasol from its leather scabbard and placed it in
the stand by the door that held the other umbrellas.

Westie hesitated, eyes scanning the foyer, when she noticed that a black suede coat lined in purple silk, smaller and more expensive than Nigel would ever buy himself, hung on the rack next to the umbrella holder.

“Who’s here?” she asked.

Nigel’s jaw tensed. He tried to smile through it, though it looked more like the grimace of a man constipated with secrets. “James stopped by for a visit today. He wanted to look at some of my inventions.”

Westie wondered if James had been eavesdropping, for he walked into the room as soon as he heard his name.

“So good to see you again, Westie,” he said. Westie said nothing in return, only fussed with Jezebel, who had been particularly invasive in seeking her attention, nearly knocking her over. She tried to shoo the beast but failed. “How was your trip to the city?”

She thought about the wide, unseeing eyes of the dead leprechauns and the outlaw whose body she’d sliced in two like an anatomy lesson. Her body gave an involuntary shudder.

“Fine,” she said. “Where’s your family?”

Nigel gave her a stealthy shake of the head. She ignored him.

James shrugged. “Off spending money, I’m sure. I don’t really know and I don’t really care.” The piqued tone he used to speak of his family intrigued her, but not enough to ask why.

Jezebel’s behavior had gotten to where it could no longer be ignored. The chupacabra had nearly lifted Westie off the floor with
her enormous head. When Jezebel started to tear the fabric of her shirt, Westie had had enough and pushed the beast away.

James leaned in as if he were going to whisper into her ear, then stepped away with a frown. “Is that blood on your clothes?”

“What?”

The entire hem of Westie’s shirt was crusted brown with old blood and swatches of dried skin.

“I reckon it is.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to hide some of the bigger patches of blood with her hands. “We, um, went hunting, caught us some rabbits . . . could you excuse me? I need to get some air.”

Once outside, she sat on the stoop, head tucked between her legs until the sickly feeling passed. When she lifted her head, James was sitting beside her. She held back the sigh waiting in her lungs.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

“Fine. It’s a little stuffy in there, is all.”

“Maybe this will help.” He pulled a silver flask from his trouser pocket, offering it to her. “Scotch, single malt. Not that it matters. Still tastes like hot piss, but it gets the job done.”

Westie hesitated. Before drinking at the saloon, she’d gone two years without even a sip, and she’d managed without alcohol on the trip to the cabin. But that was before she’d killed a person, before Alistair was shot. Her resolve couldn’t take much more.

Just one drink to take the edge off,
she told herself when she reached out and took the flask. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she tipped her head back, shivering as she felt the familiar burn.

James picked up a dried leaf on the porch. “I think I’m going to like it here in Rogue City,” he said.

“Why?” she asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve.

He discarded the leaf in exchange for a passing ladybug. It crawled across his fingers. “The company, of course,” he said with a wink. Westie rolled her eyes, dismissing his comment as flattery. “There are other reasons too, though. In the city I’m always on guard. Here I don’t have to worry about creature attacks or the Undying wandering in.”

“The Undying?” An image of the Undying snapped in her mind, blood weeping from their eyes, noses in the air as they sniffed out their prey. She took another long drink and handed the flask back to him. “As far as I know, there were never any in California to begin with, and from what I hear, there’s no such thing anymore. President Pierce wiped them out and gave that land to the creatures as part of the treaty to end the war.”

James smiled. “I suppose my sheltered city upbringing is really shining through. I didn’t know anything about that.” The ladybug spread its wings. With a gentle flick of James’s hand, it flew away. “Still, it’s a strange and wonderful place.”

“I’ve grown up here and even I find it strange sometimes,” Westie admitted, looking up at the dome. Again she thought she saw it flicker, but couldn’t tell for sure. It might’ve been the alcohol playing tricks on her eyes. “You don’t see all the different species of creatures much on the road, but here in Rogue City, where there’s some semblance of law, you’ll find every creature you once thought
was legend sipping on a tumbler of whiskey at some point or another.”

James’s smile revealed the little white scar on his lip. “I shared a pint with a vampire last night, and he even offered to pay. It’s almost like they’re human at times—but don’t let Lavina know I said that. She’d probably disown me.”

With the mention of Lavina, the scotch in Westie’s stomach went sour. Her nausea returned, and so did the tears pushing at the backs of her eyes. The entire trip to the cabin was a waste, and Alistair had nearly been killed because of it. She was no closer to finding any evidence against Lavina and her family. Maybe a ball wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps she could learn something about the Fairfields in a social setting.

“It’s been a long ride,” Westie said. “I’m bushed.”

James bowed his head to her. “It was good to see you again,” he said.

She nodded and went inside, bounding for the stairs.