The Gunslinger's Man (6 page)

Mercifully, he passed Asher without another look.

Breath singed his lungs. His legs threatened to give way. He’d always known vampires were dangerous—and being among them was as good as suicide—but this was one weapon he hadn’t known they possessed. Compulsion was, for the most part, a myth. Those who mastered it were either very old or very skillful, and they used it sparingly.

The human mind adjusted much too quickly to be ruled.

“You’re staring,” Halloran observed. He had one of those foul concoctions in hand, the crystal glass dwarfed by his broad fist.

Asher glanced at him, willing every last ounce of hatred he felt for the bloodsucker scourge into a single look. “My apologies,” he gritted out and said nothing further for the rest of the evening.

His silence was made easier by the lack of notice anyone seemed to take of him.

Supper consisted of five foul-smelling courses served in silver dishes, which were all removed with a distinctly crimson tinge. Dancing and conversation followed, as with any elegant gathering.

Angelita, much like the other humans in attendance, didn’t touch the food. But she did join in the waltz when Ambrose took her hand. She moved gracefully across the small section of the parlor cleared for the swirling pairs and she gazed at Ambrose with obvious affection.

Asher turned away in disgust.

He was glad when Halloran finally jerked his head toward the foyer. At last, they could leave.

The maid who’d welcomed them in took one glance at Asher and disappeared into the cloakroom. She emerged a few seconds later with Halloran’s duster, which she handed to Asher.

“That’s not mine,” he said, frowning.

“For your master.”

Bile soured on the back of his tongue. He was expected to wait on Halloran hand and foot. “Right. Hey, tell me something…”

The maid turned, her expression wary.

“That Angelita creature—”

“Miss
Angelita,” corrected the maid, something brassy in her voice. “She is Miss Angelita.”

“Yeah, I heard. What’s her story? She and Ambrose seem awful cozy.”

Songbird,
Ambrose had called her, though Angelita barely spoke—and even then, only to him and no higher than a whisper—and she didn’t look half as cowed as the other humans Asher had seen hanging about.

The maid’s foggy grey eyes seemed to peer through Asher rather than at his face. “She is Miss Angelita.”

“You’re a real help, aren’t you?” Asher drawled.

Frustration didn’t quite manage to quell his curiosity, though, and before he could think better of it, he waved his hand before the maid’s face.

Her expression didn’t shift one iota. She didn’t so much as blink.

“Asher.”

Halloran had materialized in the foyer. Asher spun to face him, feeling oddly like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He couldn’t account for the sentiment. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He just wanted to understand.

Judging by his furrowed brow, Halloran didn’t see it that way.

“I got your coat,” Asher said, preempting chastisement by holding up the duster in evidence.
See? I’m not totally useless.
There was no need for Halloran to change his mind and tell Ambrose to strip Asher of his tongue.

Halloran flexed his jaw and stalked out.

It wasn’t much of a triumph, but Asher would take it.

Duster folded over one arm, he spurred his feet to follow. He could have sworn he felt the maid’s eyes boring into his back, but when he cast a glance from the safety of Halloran’s saddle, the foyer was empty.

The two armed guardsmen keeping watch seemed more invested in patrolling the wraparound porch than glaring at someone as insignificant as Asher.

“Take it you didn’t know about the broad,” Halloran said once they’d left Sargasso safely behind them.

He’d been quiet so long that Asher startled at the sound of his voice. He resented knowing that Halloran must have felt it more than his initial fright. “Barring a select few head cases, I didn’t know anyone,” he answered obliquely.

“They all know of you.”

Asher snorted. “Nyle mentioned.”
You’re all anyone’s talking about for three towns.
“Lucky me.”

With his back to Asher, Halloran’s terse tone was all the indication Asher got that his flippancy had missed the mark. “I could’ve let you die that night. It would’ve been slow and painful, and you would’ve begged for Ambrose’s mercy before it was over.”

Asher glared at the back of Halloran’s head, where his hat didn’t quite cover the short auburn hair beneath. That was where Asher would have driven the stake, if he’d had one.

“I didn’t ask you to save me.”

“No? And what was the five hundred for? A courtesy call?”

Halloran wanted to hash this out now? Asher gritted his teeth, sense warring with the banked coals of his rage. He’d spent the evening biting his tongue, afraid. He didn’t have the wherewithal to keep doing it for Halloran’s sake.

“The five hundred dollars were a last resort. I knew the risks—”

“You didn’t know shit. Think getting pushed around a little is reason enough to kill a man?”

“A vampire,” Asher corrected, seething. One who had somehow stripped Asher of his agency tonight, who’d reduced him to a ventriloquist’s dummy in the space of a single heartbeat. Recalling the shock of being divorced from his own body filled Asher with terror.

“And that makes it right, does it?”

“It makes it us or them.” Asher smirked, aware that Halloran couldn’t see it. “Or you.”

“Better watch my back, then.”

“Better do.”

They rode the rest of the way in tense silence, Asher toying with the prospect of making another run for it—far-fetched, pointless—and Halloran steering them along the uneven ground with expert care. Asher could tell that he was a born rider. He knew when to give their mount the freedom it needed to negotiate the rocky terrain and when to nudge it with his heels.

Willowbranch appeared out of the evening gloom like a ghost house. None of its windows were lit and only two horses waited by the hitching post out front. They directed indifferent glances at Halloran and Asher before returning to the bale of hay beside the trough.

“Where’re the others?” Halloran asked, shoving the farmhouse door open.

Blackjack raised his head slowly. Blood marred his chin and lips, and the neck of a cowherd Asher had glimpsed around Sargasso but whose name he couldn’t recall.

“Did you check the Pony Inn?” Blackjack asked, unruffled by the interruption.

Sitting on the edge of the couch between his splayed legs, the cowherd gave a faintly inebriated giggle.

Asher looked away.

“Didn’t I say no whores?” Halloran grumbled.

“You said, they listened…and, I reckon, disagreed.” Blackjack shrugged indifferently. “Can I go back to my dinner now?”

Halloran’s sullenness seemed to satisfy. His gaze studiously averted, Asher registered the wet, sucking noises of what could only be Blackjack feeding from his chosen victim.

Was that what it sounded like when Halloran bit him? Asher couldn’t recall, that whole evening was wrapped up in sensory overload and shelved away to spare Asher the humiliation of dwelling on it.

He startled when Halloran took his elbow, jerking free before he could marshal the show of defiance.

Halloran scowled.

“S-sorry,” Asher stammered, feeling his face heat. “I know. I’ll go up.” And to prove it, he steered his leaden feet in the direction of the stairs.

He tried not to think that he was becoming a good little prisoner, locking himself away at a mere glance from Halloran. His cell, which he’d despised for days since Halloran stole him from his old life, offered sanctuary.

Relief shot through him when he closed the door, muffling the cowherd’s encouraging moans and Blackjack’s obvious delight in feeding from him.

Asher’s stomach roiled. He was suddenly glad he had been spared supper.

A flash of movement caught his eye—his own reflection in the mirror opposite the bed. What little light penetrated the sash windows painted him in hues of blue and white, shadows pooling in the hollows of his eye sockets. He looked like a demon in evening dress. A marionette for Ambrose to play with.

He grasped the plackets of his jacket and tore it off. He couldn’t wait to undo the buttons on his waistcoat, prying it off by force, his shirt along with it, heedless of the fragile seams. He had no other clothes save for the nightshirt he’d been wearing when he’d been taken from his bed, but he didn’t care.

Urgency lanced him like a scalpel. He’d suffocate if he spent another minute done up like a vampire plaything.

He wrestled his trousers off, only to catch his right foot in the wool and miss the bed on the way down. The frayed rug muffled the impact, but the indignity of his fall nestled as deeply as the flare of pain that shot up his knee. It wasn’t enough to keep Asher from crawling into bed and pulling the covers up to his quaking shoulders.

His eyes stung.

An hour or a minute later, he thought he heard the door handle twist.

A pang of dread sank into his bones, but he was too tired to come awake all at once. His confused dreams faded slowly. When he finally blinked awake, it was to discover the room empty and his wrists still free.

It might have been his imagination. The floorboards creaked all the time as the old ranch settled, lacking the predatory elegance of its newest residents.

Asher rolled over and willed himself back to sleep.

The last thing he saw before his eyelids drooped shut was the pile of clothes on the armchair by the window—the same clothes he’d stripped off in a rush, now folded more or less neatly.

Chapter Seven

Until he found himself free to walk around his cell without restraints, Asher didn’t quite realize how dull captivity could be. His morning ablutions accomplished and his clothes fastened as best as he could, given last night’s reckless treatment, he soon tired of pacing the length and breadth of the room and parked himself on the divan.

Peering wistfully out the window didn’t help. The valley surrounding Willowbranch was painfully lacking in variation. After a while, even the circling vultures couldn’t sustain his interest. And still Nyle didn’t saunter in with his breakfast. Still, no one came to harass him with empty threats.

His stomach growling, Asher pushed up from the divan and went to try the door.

To his surprise, it opened easily.

Daylight illuminated the landing, spilling from hopper windows set high in the wooden walls. The soft warble of voices rose from below, indistinct but not unfamiliar.

In another life, Asher had crept out of bed many a morning to find his uncle poring over some new device he’d decided to construct on a whim. Howard was often prone to lavishing praise on his mechanical creations, whether or not they amounted to anything before he tired of tinkering.

The memory sank its fangs deep into Asher as he negotiated the creaking steps, wincing with each burst of sound.

His heart hammered at his ribs with the fear of repercussions, yet no one leaped out from behind closed doors to reprimand him for daring to leave his room. In a house full of vampires, no one appeared to have noticed the lone human breaking the unwritten rules of his own imprisonment.

The potential for trouble followed Asher into the kitchen, where the hum of voices seemed to be coming from.

He pushed the door open with more than a little trepidation.

“Took your sweet time,” Blackjack volleyed from his sprawl at the kitchen table. He balanced on the rear legs of his chair, his feet up on the windowsill, his pistol in one hand and an oil-streaked rag in the other. “Halloran said you’ve been up since dawn.”

How would he know?
Asher decided he didn’t care to find out. “Where is he?”

“Left a while ago.” Blackjack’s cowherd flashed a smile. With no one else in the kitchen, his had to be the other voice Asher had heard.

Despite the ugly bruise on his neck and his blood-stained collar, the boy looked no worse for wear. His black eyes were clear and alert. The smattering of stubble on his cheeks and chin made him seem older than he had last night.

“Flapjack?” he offered as though in answer to Asher’s intense gaze.

“Uh, yeah.” At the mention of food, Asher’s stomach gave another guilty growl. “Thanks.”

“They ain’t as good as my mama makes ’em, but a man’s gotta eat, right?”

Asher mustered a tepid smile. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Charlie Wheeler.” The cowherd exchanged the frying pan from right hand to left, wiped his palm on his trousers and thrust it out in greeting. “Asher, right?”

“How did you know?”

Blackjack snorted. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“Nah, it’s not that.” Charlie pumped Asher’s fist one last time and let go. “I used to work with the Foleys. You knew Wesley, right?”

‘Knew’
.
Past tense. Asher nodded and filled his mouth with pancake.

“I’ll get you some coffee to wash it down.”

“You don’t—”
Have to
, Asher started to say, but talking around the flapjack was a choking hazard and Charlie had already brewed a pot of Arbuckle’s.

He seemed to have made himself quite at home at Willowbranch.

“Sure am,” Charlie acquiesced, which was how Asher realized he’d spoken aloud. “We drive the cattle through here in the spring, when there’s still prairie for ’em to graze. There’s a whole patch north of the ranch that’s perfect till mid-May or so. Then it gets all scorched and the cattle won’t touch it.”

Asher nodded. He’d gone by New Morning Farm once or twice, always with Wesley, when he was working. The one time he’d witnessed Wesley driving the cattle out of their pens, it had been a befuddling, chaotic experience and Asher, who didn’t think he had much of a future in watchmaking, had promptly returned to Uncle Howard’s shop with renewed interest in the family business.

“I still remember when the Willowbranch folks used to breed horses,” Charlie went on, at the stove. “Beautiful, big mustangs they bought in Santa Fe and brought back to train right here. Boy, I sure wanted to work in their stables when I was old enough…”