She Returns From War (23 page)

When the shower stopped, the whole group looked toward the source. Victoria drew in a breath, and she heard crude exclamations of surprise from the bandits around her.

Above them, a man crouched in the ruined remains of a third-story window, looking for all the world like a human-shaped gargoyle brought to life by some dark magic. He was peering down at the street, his head lolling this way and that. The movements were unsettling, too exaggerated and jerky to be natural. His naked fingers curled around the jagged pieces of glass still lingering in the window. In the stunned silence, Victoria could hear air hissing between the man's teeth.

"What in the hell is that?" Wilson finally said.

The creature's gaze locked onto the bandit, and its nostrils flared. Before anyone could react, it leapt head-first from the window, fingers curled like claws. A grunt exploded from Wilson's lips as they collided. The impact knocked him from his horse, and the other men hollered in surprise. When Wilson's grunts became screams, they took aim at the creature. Had the struggle not already encouraged the street traffic to give them a wide berth, the chorus of gunshots would have done it.

Wilson's attacker jerked this way and that under the hail of gunfire, but it remained intent on its victim. Victoria couldn't imagine all of those shots hitting their mark without a few hitting Wilson, and the gunman's ebbing cries confirmed her speculation. One or two of Wilson's posse reached the same conclusion and pointed their guns skyward. Others fired their weapons empty and paused to reload.

By the time they took aim again, Wilson had stopped screaming.

Victoria could see gun barrels shaking in unsteady hands as the men watched the creature feed. In the absence of thundering gunshots, the air filled with a slurping sound. Blood seeped onto the street, mixing with the dust to create a thick red mud. Stealing a glance at Cora, Victoria wasn't surprised to see a look of smug satisfaction on the hunter's face. She felt a little of it herself, watching this brute and would-be rapist become food for a true creature of nightmare.

The monster raised its head. Red streaks ran down its chin and stained the collar of the suit it still wore. Its eyes darted between the onlookers, already searching for its next meal. Before it could settle on one of them, Cora shouted and raised her rosary. "Get out of here!" she yelled at the men. "Get before this thing settles on you for its next drink."

Wilson's posse needed no further urging. They fled in all directions, horses pounding up clouds of dust. The few onlookers not among their number also heeded her advice and took to their heels.

Soon, the area around Wilson's body was empty but for the creature and the two hunters. It eyed them with hatred and desire, but the rosary in Cora's outstretched fist held it at bay. Snarls bubbled through the blood on its lips. Staring into its feral face, Victoria almost found it more frightening than the monsters they had fought at the ranch. Those, at least, had lost their humanity enough to look like monsters. This one still clung to vestiges of his human appearance, making the inhuman fury in his eyes all the more unnatural.

"Back, you damned thing!" Cora's voice rang out dry and tough in the hot evening air. "Run your scrawny ass out of my town, or I'll do it for you!"

The creature hissed in reply, bearing bloodstained teeth that still looked too human. It backed away from the hunter like a wildcat, spine arched and limbs trembling. Cora urged her frightened mare forward. The horse tossed its head and whinnied. Turning her spurs inward, the hunter punched her heels into the animal's ribs. It sprang forward, bearing down on the creature and its victim. Victoria heard Wilson's bones snap like dry branches beneath the mare's hooves. The vampire darted to one side and fled down the street.

"Wake up, girl!" Cora yelled at her. "We got us a spook on the run!"

Without thinking, Victoria spurred her own mare forward. The two women thundered down the street - now quite empty - in pursuit of their quarry. Even at a gallop, they had trouble keeping up with the vampire; its arms and legs were dark blurs beneath its body as it fled from them.

They quickly reached the outskirts of Albuquerque. Victoria knew the train station was somewhere off to their left, but the vampire was leading them eastward. Once again, the New Mexico desert opened up before her eyes, its thirsty plants nothing but silhouettes in the dwindling light. The vampire charged headlong into the wilderness, gravel flying from its heels. Even after the creature itself disappeared into the scrub, the cloud of dust it kicked up was all the trail they needed.

Cora took the lead, guiding her galloping mare around hidden obstacles with practiced ease. Riding just far enough behind her to avoid the hunter's dust cloud, Victoria bent low over her mare's neck. Around them, the desert had become a smear of dark blues and greens and browns. She did not have any idea what lay in this direction, but somewhere out there, far beyond the horizon, was the Atlantic Ocean. Each drumming stride of her mare's hooves brought her a little closer to home. The thought gave her a small measure of comfort. If Cora's plan worked, they would be heading this way again in the next day or two, relaxing in a rail carriage as they discussed a strategy for bringing justice to the black shucks.

Lost in thoughts of home, she nearly rode into Cora. Only the hunter's panicked hollering brought her back to the present. Victoria pulled on the reins as hard as she dared, her mare voicing its objections loudly. The animal stopped less than a foot from Cora's mount and champed on its bit in protest.

"Got us a problem," Cora said.

Looking beyond the hunter, Victoria's heart sank. The two of them stood at the edge of a small cliff. Below them, the desert stretched out like a great dark ocean. From the look on Cora's face, Victoria could guess what the problem was.

"It went down there?" she asked.

The hunter nodded. "All lickety-split. Ain't rightly sure if it climbed down, jumped off, or sprouted a damn pair of wings, but this is where the trail ends."

"Vampires can fly?"

"Some say so," Cora said. "Turn into bats or some such. Ain't never seen it myself."

"So what do we do now?"

"Ain't much we can do, way I see it. This here cliff don't taper off for a spell in either direction. By the time we got to the bottom, all we'd find is a bunch of scrub and a cold trail."

"What of the dust cloud?" Victoria asked. "Surely we could follow that."

The hunter shook her head. "We'd still take too long getting down there. Dust will have settled by then."

"You aren't suggesting we abandon the chase?"

"Afraid so," Cora said. "Can't say I like it myself. That blue-eyed bastard still owes me answers, and that squaw's got to answer for killing Our Lady. I don't want nothing more in the world than to settle them both, but we can't do that if we get ourselves lost in the desert. Best thing we can do now is head on back to town, settle in for some drinks, and lay plans for when that skin-walker of yours to make a move."

"Have you learned nothing of tracking bounties in all your years of hunting them?"

Cora's eyes gleamed with the last of the daylight. "I know more about it than your fancy fox hunters could shake a stick at, but ain't no good in the dark, see? Sun's gone down, and moon won't show herself for another few hours. Maybe you got some fancy cat eyes that let you track a body at night, but I don't."

"I refuse to accept that waiting for our enemies to come after us is the wisest course of action," Victoria said.

"Worked just fine back in town when them outlaws was fixing for trouble."

The incident hadn't left Victoria's memory. "A splendid plan, certainly. I can't believe you so easily bargained with them - using my honesty as your currency, no less - to spare yourself some unpleasantness. Will that be the order of the day when the skin-walker comes calling? Trade me to her so you can have yourself a comfortable time playing cards?"

"You really are thick sometimes, you know that?"

"What do you mean by that?"

The hunter's silhouette shook its head. "Ain't no point in explaining it if you ain't figured it out by now. Just like there ain't no point in riding around after a monster we can't find without some hounds."

Cora turned her mare back the way they had come and nudged her into a walk. Victoria remained where she was, staring helplessly at the endless desert below her. Somewhere in that gathering darkness, their only hope of finding the skin-walker and the blue-eyed vampire was fading into the distance. With it went their best chance of catching their enemies by surprise and ending the fight before the sun rose. Frustration boiled in her chest, threatening to overflow from her eyes.

Victoria slammed the heel of her hand into the saddle horn. "No."

Behind her, the sound of hooves stopped. "What's that, now?"

"I refuse to accept it," Victoria said. "We aren't going to give up now."

"Maybe you ain't," Cora replied, "but I am. Ain't too keen on wandering around in the desert again so quick after our last outing. Maybe in a week or so, but no way I'm doing it tonight."

"What if we weren't roaming aimlessly?"

The hunter's cackle rolled down the cliff. "Only way we'd manage that is if we was headed back to town, which is the way I'm pointing."

Victoria's heart raced. She didn't know if what she was thinking was even possible, much less if she should tell Cora about it. The Navajo singer's voice echoed in her memory, telling her that her dream was not a dream, that she had the power to separate her body and her spirit. It had seemed preposterous to her. It still did. Even now, her rational mind belittled her for even considering it as a possibility. With everything else that had happened to her, though, why should this come as a surprise? Skinwalkers were real; she had seen one with her own eyes. If such creatures existed, it wasn't so much of a stretch to believe other Navajo folk tales could have truth behind them.

"I can track them."

"Sure, and I'm the Queen of England," Cora said.

Victoria turned her mare to face the hunter. "I mean it."

"So you followed along after your daddy on his fox hunts, then?" Cora asked. "Or maybe you just got the eyes of a cougar and ain't never told nobody about it."

"Neither." Victoria's ire at the hunter's ridicule set her resolve. "I can walk in the spirit world."

A silence fell between them. Victoria watched Cora's silhouette with a strange mixture of anxiety and anger. Her mare snorted and lowered her head to graze. In the distance, an unseen animal raised its voice in a yipping cry.

"You can do what now?" Cora finally asked.

"Walk in the spirit world," Victoria said. When the words passed through her lips a second time, their absurdity nearly drove her to laughter. She took a deep breath to steady herself. "You recall what I told you of my conversation with the Indian singer?"

"About them skin-walkers and the ashes and all that, sure," Cora said. "Don't recollect you saying nothing about walking in no spirit world."

Victoria lifted her chin. "Because I didn't see any reason to mention it, and I did not wish to endure your mockery." The hunter made no reply, so she continued. "While I was keeping watch in the desert during our expedition, I dreamt I could fly over the desert like a bird. I flew to a nearby hill and saw both the skin-walker and your Fodor Glava impostor. They spoke of us."

"Ain't a week goes by but I get a dream of running down one monster or another, even after all this time. Don't mean I'm actually doing it in my sleep."

"That was my conclusion at first, too," Victoria said, "but the singer believed that my spirit left my body and traveled across the desert freely. I have given it a good deal of thought, and I'm not entirely sure I disbelieve him anymore."

"Why's that?"

"Because everything else he told me appears to be accurate."

Cora's hat moved up and down as she nodded. "Wise men is wise men, and I reckon they're the same anywhere you go. Don't matter if he calls himself a professor or a singer or a shaman. Thing is, all them wise folk got a funny way of mixing in what really is with what they think is, and the two don't always match up. Could be this singer of yours is spot-on about the skin-walker woman, but that don't mean every word he says is true."

"Yes, I realize that," Victoria said, "but what choice do we have?"

"We can ride on back to town and play a few hands, maybe win us some drinking money."

"You truly care only for gambling and tippling." Victoria shook her head and sighed. "Go on, then, if you wish. I shall track down this menace myself and kill it if I can. Should I come across your blue-eyed vampire, I will kill him as well, and you will be forever left to wonder who he really was."

"Suit yourself," Cora said.

With that, the hunter resumed her course back the way they had come. Victoria watched her form melt into the evening's shadows, her insides a knot of conflicting emotions. Anger at Cora's belittlement, fear at being left alone in the desert, determination to prove the hunter wrong, to see her boast through and come back alive. Each rose to the surface and slipped beneath it again like onions in a simmering stew. Part of her wanted nothing more than to prod the old mare beneath her into a canter and follow Cora back to town. An evening spent indoors, warm and comfortable, safe from the horrors roaming through the desert, was the loveliest thing she could imagine at that moment.