The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (43 page)

“You see a light?” Boz said, low.

“Where?”

“Bit to your right.”

The floodplain of the river had opened up to a wide place, flanked by bluffs ten or twelve feet high, bottomed with gravel that slid treacherously under the horses’ feet. And after a second he saw the light—not the flicker of flame he’d been looking for, just a glow, and no smoke at all.

But it
was
a campfire, built back in a semi-sheltered curve of rock wall. Half smothered by the cooking pot that had been dropped into it, blackened remains of dinner slopped over the side. Nearby were lumpy shadows of a bedroll, rucksack, saddles.

Their horses didn’t like that place. They shuffled and shied away from the fire, backing down the gravel to the ribbon of water.

Boz dismounted and approached the fire, kicked the pan out, and set a long branch of dried brush onto the embers. It quickly began to snap and pop, little licks of flame flaring up along the dead tinder. In the swelling light Boz inspected the tack alongside the bedrolls. “This is Hanky’s saddle.” He traced the ground with his eyes, turned in a circle and paced a few yards away, where he abruptly stopped and crouched. “Aw, hell…”

Trace dismounted, moved to Boz’s side.

It was Hanky, dropped like a pile of old rags on the gravel. One arm was pinned under him, the other flung up and out. His gun was still in his hand. His guts were all over the creek bed.

“Holy Mother.” Trace crossed himself, touched his fist to his lips for a moment, then reached out and pressed Hanky’s eyes closed.

The jolt he got was a kick to the chest—like plunging out of a steam tent into a cold river. Darkness closed around him like a vise, the darkness of someone else’s memories; the vision was coming at him like a freight train and it was going to hurt—

close, confined space, like a storm cellar or an old well—damp walls, aching back and stinging skin from the bite of the strap, indignity of his own stink and a hateful rage boiling in his blood, loosing hot tears of impotence and self-loathing, and then the quality of the darkness changed, became intimate, caressing—a voice whispering assurance, invitation, such a voice as God was supposed to have, but this was not the God of his father, demanding bowing-down and submission, this was a God of retribution, of blood-lust and hunger, it spoke to the rage inside him, stroked it and made it sweeten, and he opened himself to the darkness, welcomed it in, and it filled him up and made him strong, made him matter, and O those unbelievers were blind and puny in their ignorance, especially that one who had the gall to call himself Preacher, and now it was time to make restitution—

Trace was dimly aware of Boz’s voice barking at him, Boz’s hands gripping his shoulders and pushing him away from Hanky’s body, rough gravel at his back, Boz’s arms holding him down as he fought the sickening carnality of the Kid’s soul, not wanting to feel the gloating anticipation in him nor see what was coming—

Hanky was a small shadow bent over a small fire, surrounded by the comfortable forms of horses, looking up startled as they snorted and shied, one hand going to the unfamiliar gun on his hip, feeling suddenly his smallness, his aloneness beneath the uncaring sky

hot surge of triumph at the fear on his face, the quick clumsy shot squeezed off, the single cry of shock before his jaws were on the unbeliever’s throat, the ecstatic spurt of hot blood in his mouth, better than sugar, better than his father’s false tongue when he had bitten it off, because he was doing the will of the Master, and finally he had the strength and the authority to wreak all the havoc he wanted—

Trace rolled on all fours and retched. Bile drowned out the tang of blood and the wracking spasms broke him free of the trance. He put a mental shoulder against that door in his mind and shoved it closed, pushed the power down so hard he felt his brain cramp with the sudden collapse into silence.

He sat back on his heels, panting and wiping a sleeve across his mouth. Boz kept a hand on his shoulder, not saying anything, just waiting for the verdict.

Trace turned his head and spat into the gravel.

“Kid?” Boz said.

“Yeah.”

“Same as the horses?”

“Yeah.”

Boz turned in his crouch, surveying the desolate place and the ruin of a young man barely out of boyhood. “This’s worse than the bloodsuckers. Those things were hungry, but this … don’t make no sense.”

“It makes sense,” Trace said. “This is what happens when you take a child with a power he doesn’t understand, and tell him every day he’s bad and evil for bein what he is. He becomes the thing you tell him he is, cause he doesn’t know any better. And if somebody like Mereck gets ahold of a powder-keg like that, this is what you get.”

“Yeah, but how much of this is Mereck’s play and how much is just mad-dog crazy?”

Does it matter?
Trace was about to say, when one of the horses snorted, loud.

They both froze, hands to guns, listening. Boz turned slowly around, back to the fire, squinting into the darkness. Trace got his feet under him, scanned the upper edge of the nearer riverbank, over Boz’s head. The rock face of the bluff reflected some firelight, but above that all was blackness. The wind moaned over the mouth of the washout with a sound like blowing across a bottle. Everything else was quiet enough to make his skin crawl.

Trace slitted his eyes against the cold he knew was waiting and stepped into the gray space. Starlight and fire-glow splintered in the edges of his vision. Boz’s form leapt out of the darkness, so bright he looked like a man-shaped moon against the dark rock face of the creek bed. The gray swirled around him, whistled with the wind around the horses and the scrub brush growing along the top of the bank—

And the dark shape hunkered there.

“Boz,” Trace murmured, “get behind the fire.”

Boz shot him one wary glance and then turned to follow his sightline. He backed down the gravel bed, skirting the campfire, easing his guns clear of the holsters. The dark figure slunk along the top of the bank along with him, and Trace recognized the shadowy aura that clung to the inhuman shape.

“All right,” he said into the darkness. “Come on down where we can see you, so Boz here don’t have to start shootin.”

There was a soft snort from the cliff above. “Dunno, Prêtre, he look kinda spooky to me.”

Trace glanced at Boz, who had both guns trained on the ridge. “Then I suggest you move slow and keep your hands where he can see ’em.”

A rustle of the brush above the cliff, and then a rush of motion. A lanky form dropped like an oversized spider onto the sand, grunting as it landed. It hunkered there for a moment, giving the look of something bestial, demonic. But then it stood up, taller than the Kid, tall as Trace himself, buck naked and hairier than any man ought to be, but human.

Mostly.

Remy’s eyes reflected the low flames between them. His neck and shoulders were thickened, his back unnaturally arched. His teeth and jaw were distorted enough that his speech came out more garbled than usual. “Guess you know dat Kid been here.”

“I did work that out for myself, yes.”

Remy jerked his chin to the north. “He bout two hour gone, head on to ranch. Mebbe catch ‘im if we don’t wait.”

“What made you change your mind?” Boz said.

The loup-garou’s shoulders hunched—
Sheepish,
Trace thought, and then wondered if he was finally losing his mind. “He one of my kind,” Remy said, and looked at Boz. “You know bout dat, eh, Compair Lapin?”

Boz glanced at Trace and holstered his pistols. “Can you track him?”

“Better than you, Mitchie Boz. Specially in the dark.”

Boz jerked his chin. “You lead.”

The loup-garou’s eyes glinted in amusement. “You try an’ keep up.”

Trace turned away and walked around the fire to where Blackjack was rolling his eyes and stamping his feet. He didn’t like the proximity of the blood and the wolf-smell. And his ears laid back at the sound of something stretching and groaning and a long, yawning whine that ended in a yelp. Blackjack tossed his head and whinnied in alarm. Trace steadied him with a hand and a murmur, and turned at the sound of feet padding across the creek bed.

A black wolf the size of a small pony dance-stepped down the gravel toward them. The horses snorted and shied back. The wolf locked eyes with Trace, dipped his head regally, and then trotted away up the draw.

“Handy,” Boz said sourly, and boosted into the saddle.

*   *   *

T
HE RIDE THROUGH
the dark was slow and nerve-wracking. The horses didn’t like following the wolf, and because the wolf could see better than the horses, he kept running ahead of them and circling back. Several times in the first hour Trace thought they had lost him, but then he would appear again at Blackjack’s stirrup and cause the quarterhorse to shy and snort.

After a while Trace decided if he was riding into a trap he’d rather see it coming, and opened up the veil a crack, casting his spirit-sight ahead of them. He could keep track of the Remy-wolf that way, follow the faint dark trail of its essence—whatever it was that was not human soul, that nevertheless clung to the flesh and bone.

After a longer interval Boz rode up close to his stirrup. “Why are there no lights?”

Trace pulled himself a little closer to reality, looked around at the landscape, and did not quite recognize it. “Are we that close?”

“We’re not two miles out.”

Trace squinted into the darkness. All he could see was a long stretch of black horizon, with aeons of stars stretching away overhead.

“Stop,” Boz said. “Just stop.”

Trace reined back. Blackjack stopped gratefully, blowing out his sides. Boz’s paint pressed in close, as did their two reserve horses. They were nervous, sniffing the air and twitching. The wind blew in their faces, too strongly for Trace to hear much else.

“What is it?” Boz whispered. “What do you see?”

He couldn’t see anything, that was the problem. Even through his spirit-sight, the prairie was a disturbing blank—the little critters had bolted for holes and crannies. There were horses out far away around the edges of the pasture, but none of the familiar man-spirits he should have recognized. And the loup-garou had vanished. “I think Remy gave us the slip.”

Suddenly there was the thud of rushing footfalls—no more than three, at close range, and a large, growling body landed on the back of the sorrel gelding at Trace’s flank. The horse screamed and staggered, knocking into Blackjack. The snarling beast on its back tore at the sorrel with claws and feet, head bent over the horse’s neck, trying to bite. Trace yanked at the slip knot binding the sorrel’s lead to his saddle horn, and Boz reached around Trace’s back, fired his pistol at the beast at nearly point-blank range.

The monster fell from the horse’s back with a yowl and thudded to the ground. Trace tried to untangle his stirrup from Boz’s while Boz fought to separate his reserve horse’s lead from his saddle. Everything seemed to come free at once, and Blackjack took off like a shot, racing like the devil was at his heels.

Trace didn’t try to fight him. He bent low over the quarterhorse’s neck, gave him his head but applied firm pressure with hands and knees, trying to reassure the animal and slow his panic. They raced over the hard-packed ground, Trace praying that Blackjack wouldn’t put his leg in a hole or run them both into a fence.

The thought had scarcely passed through his mind before Blackjack sailed up and over, landed with a grunt on the enclosed side of the south pasture, and then slowed to a trot, his sides heaving and his mouth fighting the bit. “Easy, easy,” Trace muttered to him, and the big horse huffed his annoyance. He was
home
now, he might have said, and what was Trace thinking, taking him out in the dark amid monsters like that?

“Sorry, fella, sorry.” Trace patted the horse’s neck and wheeled him around to see what had become of Boz. He could hear hoofbeats coming fast, though not at the breakneck pace he had just ridden. There was a flash of white underbelly as Boz’s paint cleared the fence and trotted daintily up to Trace’s side.

“You all right?” Boz demanded. “What was that? That wasn’t the Kid?”

“I don’t think so. Let’s don’t sit here.” Blackjack was still moving agitatedly in a circle—he knew the paddock was close and wanted to go there, now.

They let the horses set the pace, and they pushed to an agitated trot, as if being pursued. Trace kept looking behind them, but saw nothing, not with his eyes nor his spirit-sense. He hadn’t felt this blind in months, and he didn’t like it. Boz rode with a pistol in his right hand, head up and scanning the darkness.

“Shit,” he said abruptly.

They were almost upon the ranch’s yard, and it was dark. At this time of night, every bunk-house should have been aglow with lamp-light. On a clear mild night like this, the boys should have still been loitering around the fire-pit, but it was dark and deserted.

The only light Trace could see came from Miller’s house. There was lamp-glow coming through the front door, because that door stood wide open. He could see no movement within.

Far off in the distance they heard yips and yelps, and the sound of gunfire.

“This ain’t right,” Boz said, in a tight, nervous voice. “Where is everybody?”

They rounded the corner of the dairy barn and came upon the remuda corral. The wind hit them fresh in the faces, and the smell of blood was like a slap.

At least a dozen horses had been torn to pieces within the corral. Blood had pooled in the ring like black tar. One of the young colts had jumped, or been dragged, over the top rail and gutted there so it hung from its back legs in an awkward jackknife.

“The Kid didn’t do all this himself.” Trace’s chest was tight with horror and a sense of doom. “It’s started to spread already. We need to get out of here.”

“And go where?” Boz lifted the reins from his paint’s drooping neck. “These horses are finished.”

“You think anybody else is here alive?”

“You’d know better than me.”

Trace brushed the veil aside and scanned the dark, still yard. He went deeper, felt further, into the bunks, the barns, the big house—