The Gunslinger's Man (23 page)

“Why did you do it?” he asked into the silence of the bedroom.

Halloran could deny him an answer. He’d done it often enough in the past, with no compunction.

Bed springs squeaked beneath him as Halloran sat up. “He challenged me.”

“He wouldn’t have done, if you’d kept up your end of the bargain.”

The bonds that vampires in general and the Riders in particular formed among themselves were too opaque for Asher to grasp. Even Ambrose and his brood looked beyond filiation to forge their nests.

“Didn’t realize you wanted to be passed around from bloodsucker to bloodsucker,” Halloran snapped. “My mistake.”

Asher squeezed his eyes shut. “If that’s the way you’ve always done it…”
Why stop now?
A sliver of self-preservation stopped him from voicing his thoughts.

“People change,” Halloran said vaguely.

“Not your kind of people.”

The twang of bed springs jostled Asher. Behind him, the heavy thump of Halloran’s bare feet gave way to jangling spurs. Vampires didn’t need sleep the way a human might, but Halloran had come up to the room last night and laid in bed with Asher until morning.

He hadn’t touched him. Hours ticked by with nothing but the sound of Asher’s breaths to fill the silence. Until now.

“Get dressed,” Halloran muttered. “We have work to do.”

“Cattle’s been fed.” Asher had done it single-handedly, because none of the vampires who should’ve helped him could tear themselves away from their card game and the couple of hands who’d survived the New Morning fire were used to conking out early.

He remembered being annoyed with them for saddling him with such a gargantuan task. He recalled the one-sided conversation he’d entertained with the cows on the matter.

But Halloran’s willingness to indulge him had reached its expiration date. As a parting gift, he hooked a hand around the covers and yanked them off the bed. The morning chill crept over Asher’s skin as swift as rabid hare and about as pleasant.

The door closed behind Halloran with a dull little click.

Asher shuddered. It was going to be a long day. Running his mouth wouldn’t help the hours pass any quicker.

* * * *

The weather stayed as miserable as predicted for the rest of the day, which at least spared the hands from having to nudge the cattle out of the barn for a stretch and a graze. The downside, equally predictable, was that shoveling shit in the musty old barn was about as easy as practicing surgery on an ant.

As the afternoon crawled slowly into evening, Asher stuck his shovel in the mud and capitulated. He breathed in deep, filling his aching lungs with damp, clean air. The valley was drenched, but to little purpose. Farmers and farm hands would have been gladder of it in the early summer. Now all they could do was watch weeds sprout where corn and barley ought to have grown. Vegetable patches might still be persuaded to sprout tubers before the nights turned truly glacial, if they hurried.

“You want any?” Charlie’s voice reached him from the depths of the barn.

Asher turned at the offer. The smell of dung and hay prickled his nose. Wesley had once accused him of being too fine to work with his hands. He wasn’t. There was satisfaction to be had from sweating out a day’s work in the tight press of animal bodies. If not for last night’s insanity, he would’ve slept like a baby.

Charlie tilted a battered steel flask in his direction.

Asher shook his head.

“Go on. You look like you need it,” Charlie insisted and pressed the flask into his palm. “What’s with the long face?”

“What do you think?”
Who
, Asher would’ve said if he trusted that none of the Riders could hear him over the patter of the rain. He brought the flask to his lips in a polite sip and promptly choked on the fiery contents. “Jesus! What’s in that thing?”

“You like it? Brewed it myself.” Charlie’s eyes lit up with pride. “Wesley and I had a little operation back at New Morning—nothing big, just, you know—”

“Bootleg?” Asher arched his brow. His throat was
still
burning.

“We never tried to do business in town or nothin’. Romero would’ve had our heads. But…” Charlie rolled his shoulders, unable to hold back his grin for very long. “Had to fill those nights at the farm somehow.”

Asher gave the bottle a sniff. “I’m guessing it ain’t whiskey.”

“Fermented turnips. Great for cleaning brass too.”

“I’ll bet.” And brass it could go on cleaning, because Asher handed the flask back with a headshake. No, he was all right. Really. What ailed him wasn’t going to be fixed by filling his belly with liquor.

“Blackjack was quiet this mornin’ too,” Charlie mused. “Y’all didn’t have another squabble, did you? I thought you weren’t makin’ waves no more…”

Of all the people to say that to him, Asher expected it least of Charlie. Was the kid playing pretend or had Wesley misunderstood?

Nothing about Charlie Wheeler suggested a great intellect, never mind the cunning to ingratiate himself with a vampire like Blackjack while working against his kind. His face was too earnest. His eyes too honest.

“You didn’t notice someone’s missing?” Asher tipped his head back. “That might have something to do with it.”

“Oh, yeah…” The penny seemed to drop at long last. “Did Malachi get Nyle to go back into town?”

That penny must have snagged on its way down.

“He sure is somethin’, that Malachi,” Charlie went on, shaking his head. “My daddy knew him before he was turned, did I ever tell you that?”

“You didn’t.” With Charlie’s wide, white grin and bovine expression, Asher had never thought to award him an overabundance of time. His allies in Sargasso had been people who could keep a secret—folks like Connie and Wesley.

Folks who were now gone.

Oblivious to the path Asher’s thoughts had taken, Charlie nodded to himself.

“Yes, sir, he did. Pa was ’bout my age, working in this here farm. Malachi just blew through town one day…like a goddamn whirlwind. Real charming fella, liked by everybody,
loved
by the ladies. From the old states,” Charlie added, with a knowing chuckle. “So you can imagine how sharp he must’ve seemed to the locals.”

“Let me guess. Ambrose took a liking to him?”

That seemed to be the way of things in Sargasso. Mayor saw something he liked, he had to have it. He grew his power through flattery and gifts as much as hostile takeovers. Better for Malachi to have gone quietly into the fold than put up a fight and wound up like the poor souls in Redemption.

Charlie shook his head. “Nah. Malachi wanted it.”

“The bite?”

“The house, the fancy china… There was a rumor he slit his wrists at dinner one night to force Ambrose’s hand. Pa wasn’t too sure that’s how it happened, though.” A long sigh escaped Charlie. “But that’s Malachi for you. Never can be sure of the guy.”

Asher flattened his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “No. No, you can’t.”

* * * *

The sting of fangs in the crook of his elbow triggered a gasp. Asher regretted it as soon as Halloran peered up. His fangs retracted with a
snick
.

“I’m fine,” Asher grumbled. “Keep going.” He made a point to turn his head and bite his lips. It wouldn’t help with dissimulating any future outbursts, but it was the best he could do.

Coaxing Halloran into feeding had been a strange and unpleasant experience. Asher had no desire to repeat it simply because his treacherous body was letting him down. He forced himself to think of tomorrow’s list of chores, of spending another day in the rain and the wind until his toes ached in his boots.

A mental tally of the reclaimed silver under the floorboards in his uncle’s shop kept him focused. Thirty grams of the stuff would yield a little less than twenty bullets—enough to take out twenty men, assuming it only took one shot to down each vampire.

That would leave Sargasso with another forty-two and no means to finish the job unless Asher got his hands on Halloran’s arsenal. Even now, that possibility dangled from a hook in the wall, the pistol still in its holster, bullets chambered like discrete possibilities for change.

Abruptly, Halloran sat back and pricked his thumb on the point of a fang. Blood welled over the tiny cut, astonishingly crimson. It darkened to a blackish smear when pressed to Asher’s inner arm. Torn flesh stitched itself back together in no time.

“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna take?” Asher barely felt dazed.

“You need your strength,” Halloran said, rising. “I’ll let you take care of the rest.”

Heat bloomed in Asher’s cheeks. Of all the ways Halloran could humiliate him, Asher would have thought indifferent silence was the worst. Apparently there was a level of mortification below that.

“Squeamish about fucking me now, are you?”

“I don’t need to fuck the unwilling.”

Need to? No. Halloran exuded power. He was easy enough on the eyes to find a tractable bed warmer if the mood struck him. His feelings about the town’s trollops aside, there were other options available to him besides Asher.

The reverse didn’t hold true. Two silver bullets in Nyle’s chest had proved as much.

“Funny how you neglected to mention that before you got what
you
wanted,” Asher snorted as he rolled down his sleeve. He didn’t know what galled him more—that Halloran had used him or that Asher had implored him to do it like the worst kind of harlot.

Unperturbed, Halloran fastened his holster at his hip and picked up his hat.

“I know you did it ’cause of Malachi.”

It was a stab in the dark, but it paid off. Halloran stopped in his tracks, one hand already on the doorknob.

Asher pressed his luck. “Nyle was workin’ for him, wasn’t he? That’s why you let him talk you into the duel.”
That’s why you killed him.

“Is that what you want to believe?” Halloran’s voice was soft, a jagged, rusty blade sheathed in silk.

Yes.
It would mean that Halloran wasn’t as rotten as he claimed. It would mean that somewhere under that arctic exterior the man who’d saved his life had done it for some other reason than pure, territorial greed.

Asher pushed up from the bed. “You could have left by now. You and your crew. You could be slayin’ and stealin’ as far as Yukon…instead you’re here, herding cows.” He smiled, though Halloran couldn’t see it. “And fasting.”

The moment seemed balanced on a knife’s point. Curling his hand around Halloran’s shoulder called for courage Asher didn’t know he possessed. Maybe without that flutter of want in his chest, he wouldn’t have done it.

To his surprise, Halloran didn’t shake him off. His gaze was wary as he turned.

“
I
don’t work for Malachi,” Asher told him.

“Never said you did.”

“And I don’t work for Ambrose.” Feeding the mayor’s cattle hardly qualified. Not so long ago, he’d been planning his assassination. “I’m my own man.” He couldn’t explain why it was so important for him that Halloran understood that.

Halloran arched an eyebrow as if to say,
I know that, too.
“This morning I was a murderer. Now you want…”

“You’re still a murderer.” And a vampire. But that didn’t stop Asher from tangling both hands in his lapels and tugging Halloran back to bed.

For reasons unknown, Halloran allowed it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Asher woke to darkness and silence. He woke to Halloran’s silhouette in the window, a cigarette smoldering between his thick fingers.

“Rain’s stopped.”

He must have heard Asher stir, but he only slid his gaze toward the bed at the sound of his voice. “Go back to sleep.”

It was sound advice and Asher’s eyelids were still heavy with grit, but he propped himself on an elbow and fumbled for his pocket watch. “Time is it?”

Halloran didn’t hold the answer. The pocket watch did—a little after two in the morning. Asher had managed a couple of hours of sleep after just one spent slowly losing his mind under Halloran. He was still a long way from rested. The twinge in his backside confirmed it, though it wasn’t enough to prevent him from sitting up against the headboard, Halloran’s instruction be damned.

“Can I have a smoke?”

Halloran exhaled long and exasperated, as if he’d expected Asher to do as he was told. He tapped the drooping cone of ash from the tip of the cigarette into its tray before handing it over.

Their fingers brushed in the exchange. Asher quashed the strange little quiver in the pit of his stomach. Past a certain, ill-determined point, pleasure flung parts of itself to the far corners his addled mind. A touch here, a scent there, and suddenly Asher was transported into carnal memories—all of which involved Halloran. It was a perversely effective form of self-flagellation.

“I thought Maud was keeping watch tonight,” he volleyed, rubbing his nose with a knuckle.

“I do.”

“Don’t trust her to spot any cattle rustlers before they surround us?”

Scowling, Halloran slid his hand around Asher’s and eased the cigarette free. It didn’t occur to Asher to resist.

“I trust my outfit just fine.”

You didn’t trust Nyle.
Asher was reluctant to speak his name. The bedroom he’d once thought of as his cell had become an odd sort of sanctuary. He wanted to preserve that illusion a while longer.

“And Blackjack?” he asked instead, surrounding his bent knees with his arms. “You trust him?”

“With my life,” Halloran answered, traces of his usual caustic tone in the retort.

Asher sucked his cheeks to conceal a smile. “And me?”

At that, Halloran swiveled his head around with a glower. “You ain’t one of ’em.”

It was a deflection, and not a particularly good one, but rather than return to his watch, Halloran dropped to the edge of the bed—a win, by some standards. Enough of one that Asher was willing to let the question go.

“Is it true what they say in the papers?” he asked instead, keeping his voice soft. “You robbed a coach full of Pinkertons with just two men?”

“I don’t read the papers.”