She Returns From War (16 page)

Victoria was on the verge of speaking up when the hunter finally swallowed. She didn't speak right away, but her eyes finally left Victoria's face. The fire snapped, sending a flurry of sparks toward the stars.

"Ain't easy for me to admit," she began, "but I ain't no closer to puzzling out who that feller was. All I know for sure is who he ain't, and that's Fodor Glava."

"You're sure?" Victoria asked. "Couldn't he have come back from the dead if he was a vampire like you say?"

Cora shook her head. "No vampire could stitch his own head back on his shoulders, no matter how strong he was. I know I sent that bastard on down to hell where he belongs, and that feller last night done confirmed my thinking in that regard. No matter what he says, he ain't Glava.

"But," she continued, "he ain't just nobody, neither. He's got himself the same tricks and traps that old Glava had, what with the vryko-whatevers and all."

"The what?"

"Nasty ones," Cora said. "Them ones as couldn't speak and was all fangs and such. George had a fancy name for them, too, but it's gone right out of my head. Before I met him and Glava, I done figured them badgery ones was the only kind of vampires out there. Never knew they came in a speaking variety, and it ended up that I paid a price for not knowing."

"What price?"

"I'm getting to it," Cora said, rubbing her brow as if soothing an aching head. "Point is, not knowing what you're fighting is usually a one-way ticket to an early grave, and that's if you get lucky. Some folk ain't so lucky and get themselves turned into some nasty piece of work like them fools back at the ranch."

"I remember James Townsend saying something similar," Victoria said. "About knowing your enemy as best you can."

"King George has him a head for facts, I'll give him that. Thought he was just a big bag of wind when we first met him, but he ended up being useful. All of his book learning about vampires and such is what helped me put an end to that Glava bastard. Just came a bit too late is all."

Victoria's brow wrinkled. "Too late? What do you mean?"

The hunter paused. Her hand snaked into her satchel as if it had a mind of its own, emerging with a small flask. Cora unscrewed the stopper and took a swig. Her eyes never left the fire as she swallowed the first mouthful, then the second.

"Well, if I'd have met old George sooner rather than later, I might have spared myself some powerful unpleasant business."

Victoria could hear the liquid in the flask sloshing as Cora took another drink. A large piece of kindling collapsed in the fire, creating a shower of sparks. The hunter bent over and tossed a stick into the flames. "Part of it was my own yellowness. Ain't nobody in this wide world likes admitting they're yellow, but there it is. If I wasn't such a coward, maybe it wouldn't have happened."

Cora seemed to be speaking more to herself than to her companion now. Victoria looked down at her toes, her brow furrowing. The silence between them was almost tangible, a weight on her chest that grew heavier with each breath. She wanted to say something, anything to break it, but nothing sounded right.

"Anyhow," Cora finally said, "take two cuts of coward and stew it with a big mix of ignorance, and you got yourself a right fine recipe for making your own tragedy."

"What tragedy?" Victoria asked, relieved to have found her voice.

Cora inhaled sharply, as if she had just then remembered to breathe. She held the breath for several seconds, her jaw working in silence.

"Fact of it is," she said, "that Fodor Glava bastard killed my Ben."

It was Victoria's turn to inhale. Her eyes went wide as her fingers covered her mouth, but Cora paid her no mind. "Killed him and turned him into one of those things. There he was, coming at me like a rabid dog. There wasn't nothing left of him inside that body no more, but it still looked just like him. The monster wearing his skin would have done in for poor old Father Baez, but I..." she swallowed. "I done it in first. I pointed my gun right at my Ben's face and pulled the trigger."

Cora threw her head back and drained the contents of the flask in one long draught. When she finished, she tossed the empty flask aside and stared into the fire. Victoria watched her, unable to speak. The tough-as-nails hunter had been replaced by an old woman, shrunken and twisted by the weight of unfathomable sorrow. A breeze drifted through the flames, making the shadows around them sway. In that moment, Victoria felt as though they were surrounded by demons on all sides, dancing and laughing in unheard glee at all the agony and suffering they brought into the world. A hollow pit opened in her stomach, black and deep. Cora's pain, carved in deep lines across her face, brought Victoria's own loss back in a suffocating rush, and she fought to contain her tears.

She might have sat there until the fire had burned itself out, overwhelmed by her own helplessness, but the scraping of the hunter's boots across the ground cut through her stupor. Looking up, Victoria found Cora's eyes glistening as they looked at her. "There I was, a widow of her own making, and after Ben and I swore to each other that we'd always watch the other's back."

"You took a vow?"

The firelight outlined the scars running along Cora's cheek as she shook her head. "Never was nothing formal, mind you, but it was there. We was married, after all, and part of having and holding was keeping each other alive, or so I figured. Then I went and broke that promise, and I never been able to make it right in my mind since.

"Anyhow, after I realized what I'd done, I rode down that son of a bitch Glava and made him pay. Shot him and stabbed him and cut his head off, so I know he's dead. George and a whole mess of others seen me do it, too, so I got witnesses. Whoever that feller was back there, he ain't Glava, and that's how I know."

Cora crossed her arms and leaned back against a rock, her eyes studying the younger woman's face. Tension flowed from those dark eyes, and Victoria shifted uneasily. She wasn't sure what the hunter expected her to do or say.

The enormity of what Cora had just told her defied understanding, yet her mind still wrestled with it, trying to make some sense of it. As terrible as the death of her own parents had been, she had at least been left with the cold comfort of knowing she couldn't have prevented it. She had also had time to mourn them, to make her vows of vengeance and travel to see them fulfilled. Cora had none of those comforts when her husband was killed, and she had to endure the horror of shooting him herself. Victoria couldn't fathom what that would do to a person. That the hunter could have carried on at all spoke volumes about her strength and determination.

Victoria's blue eyes finally lifted to meet the hunter's gaze. "I'm so sorry."

Cora snorted. "I don't need your sorry, missie. Didn't tell you my story for it, neither. I told you so you got a better sense of things when they come up again, as I expect they will. That blue-eyed feller and that woman both know a good deal more than they should, and that don't sit well with me."

"Why not?"

"Could be they know even more than they're letting on, for one," Cora said. "Good Lord only knows what else they learned about me, or even about you. Maybe they know what brought you out here to begin with, and they're planning on using that somehow."

Victoria dropped her gaze. "They already do know that, I'm afraid."

"How's that?"

"I told them why I journeyed here from England when they first captured me," Victoria said.

"What?" Cora asked, leaning forward. "What put it in your head to go and do a fool thing like that?"

"I'm not sure anymore," Victoria replied. "I was terribly frightened, and I don't doubt that that had a great deal to do with my confession. Even still, there were parts of that evening that felt particularly uncanny." She laughed at herself. "I mean, it was all uncanny, but some parts more than others, if you follow me."

The hunter nodded. "Things usually is in this line of work."

"It's almost like I lost myself for a while when they were speaking to me," Victoria said. The memory of it made a shiver run over her limbs. "I felt weak and sleepy, even in the face of that danger. I nearly fell asleep on my feet once, and even though I managed to keep myself awake, my head was foggy afterward. The things that woman said seemed sensible, and answering her questions seemed just as sensible."

"She ain't no ordinary squaw, that you can bet on," Cora said. "She got her some strange ways and means. Like how my gun wouldn't shoot at her last night."

"I thought it did," Victoria said. "You shot at her twice."

"With my Winchester, sure, but I was meaning my Colt." Cora pointed to the gun, still holstered around Victoria's hips. "That little shooter ain't never let me down once since I first picked her up. I keep her clean, give her lots of love and oil, and she kills what I need killed by way of repayment. Until last night, that is. I just about fell over from shock when I heard that click."

"Why do you suppose it didn't work?"

Cora shook her head. "Ain't got a clue, but I'd bet the 
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 on it being part of some scheme or bad medicine on her part."

"Bad medicine?" Victoria asked, cocking her head.

"Bad magic," Cora said. "You know, like witches and them do."

That sparked a memory in Victoria's mind, and her eyes lit up. "You know, now that you mention it, the Indian woman did ask me whether or not I was a witch. The issue seemed to concern her."

"You, a witch?" Cora's laugh rolled off into the shadows. "That's a yarn if I ever heard one. No witch I ever heard of would let herself get roughed up by a vampire. Shucks, even getting yourself kidnapped by them in the first place ought to have tipped them off that you ain't no witch."

Victoria's ears burned. "I hardly think my staying indoors last night was all that foolhardy."

"Think what you like," Cora said, waving a hand dismissively. "You was saying something about our squaw?"

"Yes," Victoria said, eager to steer the conversation away from her mistakes. "She inquired several times whether or not I had knowledge of witchcraft, and even though I repeatedly denied her accusations, she seemed unconvinced."

Cora wrinkled her brow. "That don't make much sense, now do it? If she's a witch - and I do think we're on the right track there - what would she be afraid of another witch for? Maybe she was hoping you would help her out with whatever she's plotting. You know, like a witch sisterhood thing."

"Perhaps," Victoria said, unconvinced. "Still, if she is a witch, how do we fight her? Do we have to burn her at the stake?"

"That's generally how a body settles a witch, if I remember right," Cora said.

"What do you mean? Have you never fought one yourself?"

"Not that I can recollect, and sure not one that can use Indian magic. Most of the monsters I've whipped in my day have been ordinary monsters, vampires and werewolves and hellhounds and the like. Ain't but once I even met another Indian monster, and that was that wendigo critter up in Leadville, what Jules turned into. Wasn't no witch, but it did take a special kind of bullet to kill."

"Your silver bullets didn't work?"

Cora shook her head. "They needed some special Indian blessing to whip it proper. Wouldn't do with my regular old Catholic blessing. Maybe we need something like that for this here new one, too."

"Where would we get something like that?"

"Well, from what I gather, it all depends on which tribe your spook is part of," Cora said. "Like that wendigo thing wasn't content with just any Indian blessing, see? It had to be from the proper sort of Indian priest. I'd reckon our squaw will take something like that." Before Victoria could ask her next question, Cora went on to answer it. "Seems like the Navajos in these parts would be a good place to start. I got me one or two come in regular to the 
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. Maybe I can get some tales out of them for a few drinks."

With that, the hunter rose to her feet. "All this jawing is making my old bones cranky. Go on and stretch out for a spell. I'll take the first watch." Pulling her rifle from its sheath, she stepped off into the gathering darkness.

Victoria lowered herself onto the thin strip of cloth that Cora had called a bedroll. Associating the comfort of a proper bed with such a thing seemed absurd, but Victoria was starting to accept that people out here took liberties with their language. Rocks and twigs poked up through the bedroll, jabbing her in more places than she could count. She shifted from side to side, trying to find a spot where there weren't as many, but soon gave up and stretched out on her back.

Above her, thousands of stars filled the sky from horizon to horizon. Laying there, it seemed as though the sky would suck her upward at any moment. Or maybe she would fall into it and be trapped, forever drifting above the earth like a cloud, unable to return. The thought made her smile.

TEN

A gunshot. Victoria's eyes snapped open. She remained where she was, holding her breath, waiting to see if the danger had passed. As the rolling thunder of the Winchester faded into the desert, the sound of Cora's voice became distinguishable somewhere behind her.

Another shot shook the night air. Pulling herself into a sitting position, Victoria looked toward the sound. The hunter stood some distance off, a shadow in the dim moonlight, her rifle trained on something

Victoria couldn't see. She could still hear Cora speaking to someone. Was it her? She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. If Cora wasn't speaking to her, calling out might distract the hunter. Victoria's gun belt lay next to her bedroll. Pulling the revolver from its holster, she cradled it in both hands and watched.

Cora's form moved through the scrub. Even in the faint light, Victoria could make out the half-crouch of a predator stalking its prey. The old woman was clearly after something, but whether it was one of their unholy opponents from the night before or just another rabbit to add to the pot, she wasn't sure.

Next to her, the fire had burned low. A few flames still licked the charred wood, but they produced little heat and even less light. Victoria looked around for the pile of wood she and Cora had collected, thinking to build the fire back up so she could see better. The chill of the desert night was sharper than she had expected; her arm shook with it as she reached for a branch.

Something was watching her.

It wasn't human, but that didn't mean it wasn't a threat. The American frontier was as full of deadly animals as it was of ungoverned men. Her fingers tightened around the revolver's grip.

After a few minutes of staring one another down, Victoria's hand completed its trip to the woodpile. She grabbed the first piece of kindling her fingers touched and tossed it onto the fire. Two more sticks, and the fire began burning eagerly. Victoria kept her eyes on the animal, ready to raise her gun and pull the trigger if it so much as inched toward her, but it remained where it was. In the light from the growing fire, she could make out a head with small, triangular ears attached to a long body. She took it for a cat at first, but it seemed too large.

A report from Cora's rifle made her jump. The shadow flinched as well, its head turning toward the sound. Victoria stole a glance in the same direction, but her ears already told her that the sound was farther away. The hunter's quarry was taking her farther out into the darkness. The thought made her nervous, but she shrugged it away. Whatever was out there, animal or monster, Cora knew what she was doing.

The sound of fur hissing through the brush broke into her thoughts. She inhaled sharply as she brought the gun up. Step by step, the animal was making its way toward her. It kept its head low, a predatory stance, and Victoria took that as her cue to center the revolver's barrel on its head.

The creature halted its advance. A furry ear twitched. It stood no more than ten feet away, yet she still couldn't see its face. This close to the fire, she expected to at least see the gleam of the flames in its eyes, but she could only make out the vague shape of a long, slender muzzle. The gun trembled in her grip. She forced her hands to steady it. It was only a fox, a creature her father and his colleagues hunted for sport. It had far more to fear from her than she had from it.

"What you got there?"

Victoria spun in place, bringing the gun around. Cora ducked to one side, raising her free hand. "Mary mother of God, girl. I ain't no spook."

The air left Victoria's lungs in a rush, and her gun arm fell to her side. "Don't do that."

"Ain't got to be so damn jittery," Cora said. "What's got you so wound up, anyhow?"

Victoria looked back to where the fox had been, but the animal had vanished. "There was a fox over there. I thought it might attack me."

Cora howled a laugh at the night sky. "So you was planning on blowing his little fox brains all over the desert with my gun?" she asked. "Wouldn't have done you no good if you had. Ain't no meat on a fox that's fit for eating unless you got nothing else."

"I wasn't going to shoot it for food," Victoria said, rising to her feet. "I just didn't enjoy the thought of a wild animal tearing me to bits is all."

"Let me tell you something, Vicky."

"My name is-"

"If you got yourself ate up by a fox, you'd deserve it," Cora said. Stepping over to the fire, she hunkered down. It snapped in reply. "Ain't never seen nobody get ate by a fox while they was alive, you follow? You was scared for nothing."

"Yes, well, forgive me if my knowledge of the wilderness is somewhat incomplete," Victoria said. "I haven't exactly spent the best of my years traipsing around the back country."

"Ain't nobody perfect," Cora said. She pulled her rifle back out of its scabbard and laid it beside her bedroll. "Now, why don't you go have yourself a turn at keeping watch? I aim to get at least a wink or two before that old sun comes rolling on back up."

"What were you chasing?" Victoria asked.

The hunter looked up at her. "Thought I saw that blueeyed bastard skulking around out there, but I think my eyes was just playing tricks on me."

Victoria's gaze grew hard. "What? You're expecting me to keep watch by myself when he's out there somewhere?"

"Keeping watch is easy," Cora replied. "All you got to do is yell if he jumps you." Before Victoria could protest, Cora rolled away from her and promptly began snoring.

Victoria sighed and shook her head. Tossing another piece of wood onto the fire, she started searching for a tolerable place to hold her vigil. The desert landscape offered precious few choices, but she finally found one atop a flat stone not too far from the camp. Brushing it off as best she could, she sat down and set her gaze outward into the desert.

Soon, she began to wish her vantage point was closer to the fire. The night air greedily sucked warmth from her arms and legs, and the slightest breeze was enough to make her shiver despite her coat. She stomped her boots on the ground. She opened and closed her fists. She twisted her back around, first one way, then the other. Finally, she stood and stretched her arms. Nothing worked.

To pass the time, she imagined she was a fox herself, running through the endless desert, searching for field mice and other things to eat. Her thick grey coat would keep her warm as she bounded beneath the stars, smelling the sweet breath of the slumbering wilderness.

Above her head, the stars grew dim for a moment.

The ground passed beneath her in a blur. She could hear the rushing of the wind, but the air was not cold on her face. Pausing to look about herself, she saw the light from the fire in the distance, an orange pinprick of light among the sea of blue shadows. It seemed so far away.

A presence flickered through her mind. Somewhere out there, she could sense her fox, but something was wrong. It felt different, unclean, not the pure simple instinct and cunning she felt from the other animals around her. She turned toward the unclean feeling, and suddenly she was moving again, flying over the desert floor like a swallow skimming a lake's surface before a storm. The fire disappeared behind a hill as she moved, but she found she could see perfectly well without it. Light from the waning moon outlined the shape of every rock and plant she passed.

Voices.

She stopped, her feet hovering above the ground as if she were floating in water. Yes, there were people speaking somewhere out in the darkness, and they were nearby. Feeling no fear, she moved toward the sound, following it to the base of a cliff. The voices drifted down from above her. Grasping the stone wall before her, she found she could easily pull herself up along it. Higher and higher she climbed, her body as light as a cotton sheet.

Pulling herself over the edge, she held still for a moment. The voices were much nearer now. There were two, a man's and a woman's, and she recognized both. For the first time, a vague sensation of fear passed through her. The presence of the fox, dark and unnatural, loomed large in her mind. Alighting on the sandy rock beneath her, she willed herself forward, step by step, toward the voices and the presence both.

As she drew near to the far edge of the mesa, she could see two figures standing upright in the moonlight. Moving as close to them as she dared, she stopped to listen.

"You really ain't all that bright, is you?"

"My intention was not to harm her."

"Then why did you have me distract the old woman? Just so you could go have a peek?"

"The young one is as dangerous as the old, but she does not know her power. I had to be sure she has not yet awakened to that knowledge."

"That sprout ain't no threat. I would have had her body and soul both if the other bitch hadn't showed up. She talks big, sure, but she's just a kitten behind them guns and such."

"You speak in ignorance, demon."

"Ain't the first time."

"Victoria Dawes is-" The woman fell silent. Her eyes gleamed. "She is here."

The Indian's red gaze shifted from her companion, sweeping the barren rock for signs of the intruder. When her eyes swept over her, Victoria shuddered.

The woman took a step toward her.

Victoria backed up.

The woman advanced again, her eyes passing over Victoria but not seeing her. She sniffed the air. "She is very close."

"You're out of your gourd, woman. Ain't nobody here but us."

"Be silent." She took another step. "She is here and not here. Her power has stirred inside her."

The woman cast off the blanket covering her body. As before, she was naked save for a fur mantle wrapped around her throat. She crouched and bowed her head, fingers splayed out on the rock. The edges of her figure blurred in the moonlight. Her black hair faded to the grey of old ashes. Her body grew smaller. Ears sprouted from her skull. Her nose stretched forward and her eyes sank backward.

In the space of a heartbeat, the Indian witch had vanished, and a grey fox stood in her place.

Wonder filled Victoria, but it turned to terror as the fox's eyes settled on her. The creature broke into a run. Before she could react, it leaped at her, teeth bared.

Victoria jumped to her feet. Her cold limbs ached at the movement, but she could barely feel them. Her head swung this way and that, searching for the fox-that-wasnot-a-fox, but it was nowhere to be seen.

Behind her, something snapped. Spinning around, gun in hand, she took aim at the sound. The campfire burned cheerfully back at her. Beyond it, Cora still lay wrapped in her blanket. Seconds ticked by, marked by the frantic rush of her breathing, but nothing stirred. The dark presence of the witch was gone from her mind.

Slowly, Victoria allowed herself to relax. The revolver's barrel drifted downward as she sat back down onto her perch. Her head spun. She massaged her temples with her free hand, trying to sort reality from what surely must have been a dream. A fever dream brought on by the long day she had spent walking through the desert, back bent beneath the sun's wrath. Her brain had roasted like a honeyed ham in the heat, and now it was playing tricks on her.

She couldn't shrug off how real it had felt, though. The sensation of flying over the hard-packed desert soil, the coolness of the rocks beneath her fingers as she climbed up the mesa, the voices of their two adversaries as they held their council; if dream it was, it was the most vivid one of her life. Even the dreams she suffered as a child did not possess the same level of clarity this one did, even if they had frightened her more.

Victoria rubbed her arms. Until her parents died, she hadn't given those dreams a second thought since childhood. Even now, they still held some power over her, but such was the case with all childhood fears. No amount of rationalization could rid one of that deep-seated, primal terror of the unknown, the stranger, the dark. Facing them as a child was better, in a way. When she woke from her dreams, frightened and crying, her mother was always there with whispered comfort and a cool cloth for her forehead. Sitting there in the desert, alone but for the sleeping form of a half-mad gunfighter, she was swept up by a sudden longing for her mother's face and soft white fingers.

A chorus of screams rose up in the night, giving her a shock. Eyes wide, she brought the Colt up, ready to fire if the fox so much as poked an ear out of hiding. The cries echoed off the nearby cliffs and rolled through the brush, eerie in their near-human voices. Despite herself, Victoria imagined a legion of fork-tailed imps creeping in the shadows around her, laughing and calling to each other as they encircled the camp. Once planted, the fear grew inside her with alarming speed, threading its black tendrils through her ribs. Panic clutched at her throat. The cries drew nearer. She drew her revolver, pointing it this way and that at echoes and shadows. They were all around her.

She saw a shadow move and fired. The Colt's voice roared into the night, cutting off the eerie cries. Victoria blinked, blinded by the muzzle's flash. When the gunshot stopped ringing in her ears, the desert was silent.

"What is it?" Cora's voice, thick with sleep, broke the silence.

"Nothing," Victoria replied. Holstering her revolver, she turned back toward the campfire. "Just thought I saw something."