The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (41 page)

The wolf-hunter wrinkled his nose and slipped out of sight. On instinct Trace plunged after him, straight through the dance floor, dodging skirts and knocking elbows with indignant cowboys. He leapt off the edge of the deck and found himself on a gravel stretch between the boarding-house and the outdoor kitchen. Smells of woodsmoke and charred flesh and sweat, shouting cooks and scurrying serving-girls. His head beginning to pound from the onslaught of foreign feelings and thoughts crowding his skull—

Fear kicked him hard in the guts—someone else’s fear—hard and bright as blood in his mouth. Slashes of pain across his belly and arms and face, sudden and shocking, and a disbelieving horror that clawed up his throat—

The girl’s shriek was choked and thin under the music, but Trace felt it in his bones, ragged as fingernails down a blackboard. Across the yard to the slope of the railroad embankment, and the pile of railroad ties there, where two shadows were fighting over the girl, her white dress glowing like a spectral shroud in the darkness. She went on screaming as she was buffeted back and forth between the men’s bodies; the larger male seemed to be grasping the smaller one’s wrists and holding the girl trapped within their arms. The Kid scratched and struck wildly at the man holding him, but the growls that emerged from his throat were enraged rather than frightened, and Remy let the girl drop and caught him by the collar. The girl sprawled in the dirt, crawling and crying out feebly. The Kid lashed with a hooked hand and Trace saw dark furrows open across Remy’s face, but the wolf-hunter barely recoiled before he socked the Kid in the jaw.

The boy’s knees buckled. Remy saw Trace coming and turned to meet him, his posture straightening and his hands moving out to the sides, whether in surrender or invitation Trace didn’t have time to decide. At that moment Boz appeared from behind the pile of railroad ties and swung a long plank at Remy’s head. Remy turned almost casually and flung up an arm so the board broke across his elbow instead of upside his skull. It knocked him staggering even so, and the Kid made a lunge as if to flee. Trace grabbed the boy by the back of his vest and the Kid turned right around inside his skin and sank his teeth into Trace’s hand.

The pain that lanced up his arm was incredible—icy needles piercing his flesh, the sickening ache of frostbite. Trace’s arm and shoulder went completely numb and he dropped the Kid, stared in shock at the boy. The Kid snarled at him, flashing teeth that had never belonged in a human mouth, contempt and triumph swelling his aura before fear flashed in his eyes and he ran.

A gunshot sounded, close, echoed by screams. Trace was dimly aware that the music had stopped. The frostbite was spreading with terrible swiftness down his legs and up his back, clawing its way along his veins, trying to eat through to the very core of him, where his power retreated and pulled him down into the well of his soul.

He sank down strengthless, his throat closing up so he couldn’t answer Boz’s urgent questions. His ears were roaring. He heard Remy’s rough patois over the din, glimpsed a man flashing a gun and a deputy’s badge. Skittering laughter touched Trace’s mind, the mad glee of demons, of lunatics. The Kid’s spirit fleeing in fright at his own audacity but looking back once and again to gloat over his little act of rebellion. The girl’s frightened mind clinging to life, clawing at it, fearing that Hell would be all her grandmother promised and no respite for her, she’d always thought she’d have more time, she’d thought she would be famous, that someone would remember her and she’d be better than her mother had—

Then the girl was gone, borne away like a leaf on a current, and a new presence oozed into Trace’s awareness, thick and cold as a constrictor snake, hungry and familiar and surprisingly cordial:
Why, hello again, Mr. Tracy! Herr Kieler was right. What a rough treasure you are …

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

He’d had the measles as a boy—one of the few times in his life, aside from the long recuperation after Antietam, when he had been really sick. He remembered the disorientation of fever, of feeling that his bed was at the bottom of some deep cosmic well, of looking up into a vast and whirling nothingness and fearing he would fall into it, until he cried out and his mother put her cool hand on his head and stopped the world from spinning.

The hands that pawed at him now were spectral, icy. They burrowed through his blood like termites, digging and gnawing at the edges of that well-cap in his mind. They threw themselves against the shield of his power, burned up in it, fell back dead to build a buttress for their fellows to swarm over.

Voices clashed over his head. Boz jabbered fast and angry at the other shadows and they droned back at him, unbearably slow and low. Other voices—a snide Cajun drawl and a quick nasal retort—
Reynolds,
he thought, furious, and started to come up after him, but the termites surged forward and he ducked into the well again.

Then, in the dark, Miss Fairweather’s hand slipped into his, cool and anchoring. Her voice was calm and practical:
You are as strong as he is, Mr. Tracy—you can fight this. Remember: my blood is panacea to you, protection against his poison—

He saw again the banquet table, the leeches drawing blood from all the guests and leading to the fountain. The Russian drinking from the fountain, and Reynolds offering the bottle of Miss Fairweather’s blood. Her drinking from the goblet marked poison—

You poisoned your own blood. Fed it through me, to fight him off.

In a manner of speaking. I told you, your power is a shield, but you must have realized it is a sword as well. A fiery sword—

You’re feedin me snake oil again.

She seemed amused.
So long as you find nourishment in it, Mr. Tracy.

And he did. After all, she hadn’t been wrong yet. He pushed open the well-cover in his mind and the termites swarmed in but the bright flame of his power drove them back, burnt them to ash. In the light and the burning he saw them for what they were—malicious imps, nasty little shades of demons or something similar, mindless but somehow willful, that sought to burrow into his living flesh and corrupt it. They tried to hide in his bones, in his heart, in the dark recesses of his self-doubt, but he’d had enough of letting other forces tell him what he should be.

He chased them all out and made himself clean again. And then he was glad to feel her cool lips on his brow, and hear her approval:
Well done, Mr. Tracy. I knew you had it in you …

*   *   *

T
RACE OPENED HIS
eyes. Saw rough walls and flat steel bars. Smell of coffee and putrid smoke, like damp logs burning.

He remembered the Kid turning on him, the sudden snarl of defiance and fear, and sat up quickly. Found himself on the edge of a narrow cot, at the back wall of a jail cell. Brick wall outside the bars, with a heavy oak door. Daylight through the single barred window.

“Thought you was a goner, Prêtre,” said a languid voice.

Trace turned his head and met Remy’s yellow gaze, through the smoke of his cheroot and the bars between them.

“Good thing Remy not take dat bet,” the wolf-hunter added. “Mitchie Boz be takin some money from me bout now.”

“Where is he?”

“Back where he come from, je présume. Dat doctor wan’ fill you full o’ morphine, but Mitchie Boz throw such a fit they shoo him out. Dey listen better to Remy when he say it a bad idea.”

Trace inspected the angry-looking bite mark in his palm, the radiating lines of infection trailing up his forearm, to the injection bruise near his elbow. “What’d they give me, then?”

“Aconite.” Remy exhaled. “Is better for wolf-fever.”

“Does it stop people turnin into wolves?”

Remy paused with his cheroot halfway to his lips, gazing low-lidded through the haze of smoke. “
Non
 … just slow it down some. But Remy think you don’t worry bout dat, hunh? Maybe you do got un ange watch over you.”

Trace remembered those cool hands and lips caressing his brow. “Somethin like that … What about you? Are you watchin over that Kid, or huntin him?”

“Remy hunt wolves,” he said blandly. “Miller say he have a wolf problem.”

“That don’t explain what you’re doin here in town. Or why you were tailin the Kid last night.”

“Eh, oui? Why
you
tail dat Kid?”

“Because I knew somethin bad was gonna happen. And I was right, wasn’t I?
You
knew somethin was up or you wouldn’ta been there. So what do you know about that boy that I don’t?”

Remy took his time about answering, picking his long teeth with a grimy thumbnail while he thought about it. At last he said, “He kill five people down in Salt Lake fore he make track up here, en Avril. Make a big damn mess, make us all in danger.”

“Others like you,” Trace said. “
Les
loups-garous
.”

“Oui,” Remy said, in an offhand, what’s-it-to-you? tone. He took a fresh cheroot from his pocket and lit it off the old one, asking through his teeth, “So what
you
be?”

“A medium,” Trace said, after a hesitation. “A psychic.”

A grunt from the wolf-hunter. “Remy think you more than dat.”

“Yeah, so do a lot of people.” Trace got up, stiff and a little shaky from hunger—he was
starving
—but otherwise fine. His shirt was damp and greasy with old sweat. His vest and coat hung outside the bars of the cell. “So what is it about the Kid, that ain’t what you expected?”

“He don’ smell right. He don’ act right. Down in Salt Lake, he kill couple sheep round d’full moon—dat normal for the young ones, dey got no control. But then bout same time Remy catch his scent, dat boy have some big fit—kill his mama and papa, two sisters, some neighbor who come help pray the devil outta him. Is like he
do
got some devil in him. He—”

“What is it, then? If it’s not a devil in you?”

“Who knows? Dese doctors prob’ly say is madness, or sickness. Some people get it from wolf bites, comme la hydrophobie. Some get it from dey eat wolf meat, or drink water with dey piss in it. But some men
invite
the wolf in, comprenez-vous?”

Trace nodded.

The wolf-hunter pursed his lips. “But Remy never see nobody have un réaction like you. You fight, tremor, turn hot like you burn up. Mitchie Boz, he scared but he tell the doctor, leave you ’lone, leave you ’lone, and you come out of it. So the deputy say, lock him up, jus’ in case, and you spend the whole night talking bout demons and burning swords.” Remy eyed him thoughtfully. “You not gonna change, je présume?”

“No.” It wasn’t even a fear in his mind.

“You know he kill dat girl, oui?”

“Yeah.”

“Try to pin it on me, lil bastard.”

“Maybe.” But Trace had gotten a whiff of the dark lusts driving the Kid. He suspected killing the girl had been purely for fun; Remy had just chanced to interfere.

“So what
you
know bout dat Kid that Remy don’t?”

Trace weighed his words for a moment. “There’s a man named Mereck … calls himself the Russian Mesmerist—”

“Le Russe.” Remy’s brows drew together. “Avec le cirque?”

“You know him?”

For the first time, worry marked the wolf-hunter’s brow. “Last two-three year Remy hear story of people in cages, les experiments, les vivisections. Hear say le Russe like strange animals, strange people. Two-three month back some monsters tear up a train by Eagle Rock—”

“I was at Eagle Rock. Me and Boz both. Those monsters cut down forty people in a half-hour.”

Remy’s brow furrowed deeper.

“I think the Kid’s one of the Russian’s experiments. I think the Russian polluted him somehow, turned him into Pestilence. There’s a … a doctor I know, she gave me a potion to fight off the fever. But anybody else that Kid bites is gonna turn into a monster—not a true loup-garou, but some abomination. You think Eagle Rock was bad, imagine what a score of
your
kind could do to this town, if they were crazed and hungry.”

“Sacre bleu.” Remy’s neglected cherroot had burned down to his fingers and he dropped it abruptly. “So what you think to do?”

“Save him if I can.” Trace’s first thought was to wonder whether Miss Fairweather knew a cure. His second was, if the Kid was one of Mereck’s creations, he didn’t want the boy anywhere near Miss Fairweather. “Put a bullet in his head, if I can’t. I could use your help—you got to him first last night—”

Remy shook his head in flat refusal. “If dat boy what you say, he already lost. He got no control, he make trouble, he bring le Russe on us. You want him, Prêtre, you welcome.”

“Wolves mate for life. They’ll fight to the death for their cubs.”

Remy gave a bark of laughter. “If le Russe make dat boy, he no blood of mine. Wolves is good hunters, Prêtre, but when men with guns come, wolves
hide
.”

Trace would have argued further, but at that moment there were voices in the front of the sheriff’s office.

Remy cocked his head toward the door of the lockup, listening. “Dat the sheriff … and Mitchie Boz.”

He was right. Two minutes later the deputy came into the lockup, rattling his keys and apologizing as he opened Trace’s cell door. “Sorry about the accommodations, Mr. Tracy. So you’re feeling better? None of us knew what to make of that fit you had. Sorry it took us a while to figure out who you were and wire your boss…”

“That’s quite all right.” Trace could guess what boss that was, though it was anyone’s guess what she’d told them. He lost no time in exiting the cell and retrieving his vest and coat, catching the wolf-hunter’s eye as he dressed. “I can get you out of here.”

Remy shook his head again. “Merci boucoup, Prêtre, but Remy think he look after himself.”

Trace nodded, once, and went through the door the deputy held open, into the front office.

Boz was the first person he saw, but the worry on his partner’s face abated only somewhat at the sight of Trace upright and whole. His eyes slid warningly toward the sheriff and the man beside him—a short, carrot-topped fellow with a narrow, weasely face and unnaturally bright black eyes.