The Shotgun Arcana (39 page)

The soldiers laughed again. Anderton started to protest, but Pony Bob put a calming hand on his shoulder.

“Will do, sir,” Bob said to the commander. “I’ll telegraph the Wells Fargo offices when we get to the next station with a wire and have them pass the word along as well.”

“You do that,” the commander said.

Anderton turned to Pony Bob. “If these men are federal soldiers then I’m John Brown’s body,” Anderton said. Pony Bob nodded in agreement. “What the devil is going on here?”

“Beats me, but once we get back, I’ll make sure to contact the home office and give them the real deal,” Bob said. “Something is queer here, but we ain’t got the firepower to make a fist about it, Mr. Anderton. I’m sorry, sir.”

Anderton nodded to Pony Bob. “It’s all right. You’re right, of course. I just … That’s my little girl in there, alone, most likely terrified. I just…”

“I understand, sir. Let’s get the horses watered and get while the getting is good. I’ll pray for your girls, Mr. Anderton.”

Bob headed off, shouting to the other passengers to make haste to get fresh water and see to their toilet. Anderton swore under his breath and turned back toward the coach. He hated the barbarism of this land. He was eager to get the girls home to civilization, if they survived the plague of Golgotha.

In short order the stage rumbled away back from where it came. Col. Bradley Whitmore, the commander of industrialist Charles Cook’s private, fanatical, mercenary cadre, the Praetorians, watched the coach ride off and longed to ride after it and slaughter every person on board. However, Mr. Cook had ordered them to hold, and hold he did.

He rode up to his employer and regarded Mr. Cook as the huge bald captain of industry continued to suck the flesh off the boiled hand of the thirteen-year-old Irish girl who had been in the wagon leaving Golgotha yesterday evening. Cook’s lips glistened with the child’s fat. He looked up at his loyal commander and smiled.

“I know, I know, Whitmore. You wanted them. I understand. When we take the town, you and the men can wander the streets as bloody gods, slaying as you wish. But for now, a missing Wells Fargo stage would attract too much attention, too quickly. That’s why we let the last one pass unmolested out of the town, unlike everyone else.”

Since Ray Zeal’s declaration to return, Whitmore and his men had been posted on all the roads into or out of Golgotha, posing as U.S. soldiers. Anyone leaving the town, save the stagecoaches, had been detained, tortured for any and all information about Golgotha and her inhabitants, and then murdered. A few men and women had been raped before or after death and a few, like Cook’s Irish delicacy, had been eaten.

“That South Carolinian jackass will be trouble,” Whitmore said. “He will get the real military involved.”

“Snake-Man’s renegades are already striking at a few settlements far enough away to keep the real army busy while we secure the town,” Cook said. “I also have planted the scarlet fever story in enough of my newspapers around California, Utah and Nevada and sent the appropriate telegrams to ensure no one will be in great hurry to come to poor, isolated Golgotha’s aid.”

Cook struggled out of his custom chair. His manservant, sweating in full butler regalia in the noonday sun, helped him up. The black man, named Lazare, was not allowed to touch Mr. Cook except with gloved hands. Lazare hated Cook and wished him dead, but Cook had taken the servant’s entire family hostage years ago to ensure his loyalty. So Lazare performed his odious tasks to keep his wife and sons alive.

“I’ll report to Mr. Zeal,” Cook said to Whitmore, as he handed the half-eaten child’s hand to him. Whitmore eagerly began to lick the grease and strip the tatters of skin from the bones. “You see if you can get any more information from tonight’s main course before we close the books on him.”

Inside the main tent, Cook found Ray Zeal studying a large map of the town of Golgotha spread out on a campaign table, weighted down by books, a pistol and a decanter of rum. The map, while burned at the edges and stained with blood and marred with bullet holes, had notes scribbled on different buildings, details of who resided where, the number of people in each home, the names and locations of businesses, the schoolhouse, the churches.

Assembled around the table were some of Zeal’s worshipers, like Cook himself. Professor Zenith tinkered absently with some type of coil, only half-listening and dreaming. Thug Batra, the Hindi, with his shaved head, necklace of human knuckle joints and wicked curved knives, stood silently watching everything, but seldom speaking.

Delilah LaTour, beautiful and cruel, was here to make sure she was fully prepared for her and Elijah Barrows’s role to play in taking the town. Barrows, handsome, with a boyish child-like quality to him, stood beside the still-as-death LaTour and absently fondled himself, rocking back and forth on his heels. When she glared at him, he stopped touching himself and looked at the floor. It was the only time LaTour smiled.

The giant mountain man named Douglass, and his partner, the equally violent and unstable Victory Ferrell, nodded like children as their god, Ray Zeal—Raziel, the God of Murder and Divine Secrets—explained exactly what he needed them to do.

“So it’s important that you two are in place, Victory, at the same time that Madame LaTour and Mr. Barrows are,” Zeal said. “You need to be fully secured by the appointed time. All of our infiltrators inside Golgotha already will undertake their appointed tasks precisely at the times we discussed, so no variation is allowable, do you understand?”

“Yes, Lord,” Farrell said. “Thy will be done.”

“Well, I like the sound of that,” Zeal said with a chuckle. He turned to address Cook. “Hi ya, Charlie, how goes the roadblock?”

“Just turned back the stagecoach,” Cook said. “Still no word from Snake-Man though, sir.”

Zeal frowned and looked on the map at the location of Argent Mountain. A large black X marked the spot the renegade Paiute medicine man had told Zeal was the hiding place of the skull.

“Snake-Man is essentially a Nephilim, more or less, like my poor boy, my Nicky,” Zeal said. “If he isn’t back by midnight, he most likely suffered the same fate as my son at the hands of this annoying piss-trough of a town’s guardians. They shall all suffer our divine wrath.”

The air around Zeal darkened and the tent grew very cold. Batra’s eyes rolled back in his head as if he were in the throes of ecstasy. Barrows hummed and stroked himself faster, and was surprised to discover LaTour’s icy hand joining his own. The tent thrummed with foul energy, churned like blood-filled water crowded with sharks.

Batra shouted.

“Hallelujah!” Ferrell shouted. “Praise be to the Lord of the Slaughterhouse!”

“Je suis la servante du dieu de la douleur et de plaisir!”
LaTour whispered as she clutched Barrow’s manhood tighter.

The blond death god shook off the darkness and slapped his palm on the table, breaking the spell. A broad smile returned to his face and his disciples composed themselves.

“No worry, Bick will give up the skull,” Zeal said. “Sooner or later, especially after we close the trap. If he won’t do it willingly, the sheep he values so much will make him.

“Then, once we have the skull and have dealt with Bick and the sheriff and the other guardians of Golgotha, we will reopen the town for business, like a trap-door spider, welcoming new followers and feeding on the sweet meat the desert sends us. There is power in that town, primordial, endless, hungry, and it will get along with me a damn sight better than it ever did with poor old Malachi.”

“As you have pointed out, sir, they are very resourceful,” Cook said. “Surely they will be making contingencies as well.”

“Yes,” Zeal said. “I’m sure they will, the mercurial Malachi Bick and the legendary Jon Highfather. Oh, I’m sure they have quite a few surprises in store for us, Charlie, but in the end, we will triumph. Do you know why?”

“No, sir,” Cook said.

“Because they think like honorable men. They think of containment and just punishment, minimal casualties and valiant combat.” Zeal leaned forward and whispered in the industrialist’s ear. “And we, Charlie, we think like monsters.

“Now then,” Raziel said, clapping his hands. “The plan, from the beginning, everyone’s part in detail. Once more from the top, children!”

The Knight of Pentacles

Mutt rode back to Golgotha alone. His horse, a dark, dabbled paint named Muha, galloped across the bright desert, and Mutt urged him on. Mutt’s hand dropped to his large sheathed knife at his hip as he crouched low in the saddle and neared the hidden cave on the western face of Argent Mountain, the secret resting place of the Manitou skull.

The skull sounded like a shotgun to Mutt, loaded with uncontrollable rage and hatred, ready to rip the world apart. Shotguns were effective at killing, but the blast caught everyone in its path. Shotguns didn’t give a damn who they killed.

Wodziwob had warned him about the Snake-Man as he prepared to depart.

“He is very hard to harm, just as you are, Mutt,” Wodziwob said, handing him a canteen of water. “He can be hurt, but killing him is difficult without overwhelming force or something of the spirit world.”

“I think I have that covered,” Mutt had said.

After the beating he had taken last year at the hands of an exceedingly resilient acolyte of the Uktena, Mutt had gone to Golgotha’s resident master blacksmith and farrier, Wayland Smith, to undertake a special project for him. Old Wayland had had his hamstring cut sometime before he ever made it to Golgotha, and he had constructed a special steel brace to allow him to get about and to stand at the forge and the anvil for the hours he needed to do his job. Despite his affliction, Wayland was considered the finest blacksmith in three states. Mutt commissioned a knife from the nearly lame blacksmith, made from the finest steel. It was to be like Mutt’s favored blade, a thirteen-inch Bowie knife, with only one significant difference—Mutt added his own blood into the molten steel as the blade was forged and hammered, and the steel was quenched and cooled in Mutt’s blood. “Finest blade I’ve made in a long spell,” Wayland said, handing the blood knife to Mutt. “Odd request, but not the oddest I’ve had since arriving here. May it cut true and deep for you, Deputy.” Mutt rested his hand again on the hilt of the blood knife as Muha galloped faster and faster toward home. He was as ready for this as he’d ever be.

*   *   *

The cave was just where Wodziwob had said it would be, on the northwestern slope of Argent Mountain. It was late afternoon, only a few hours of daylight left. The entrance was little more than a small hole obscured by a thick stand of sagebrush. Mutt noted that someone had already disturbed the brush but had moved through it with great subtlety. There were chalk markings, petroglyphs, circling the cave’s mouth. Mutt felt a strange ache in the pit of his stomach when his hand crossed the circle of symbols and broke the seal of the cave as he cleared the brush to make his way through. He tried to ignore the nausea as best he could and drew his blade.

The mouth of the cave was so low that Mutt had to squat down to pass through it. After duck-walking about ten feet he had enough clearance to stand, but the cave was narrow and the walls ran at sharp, tight angle. Mutt’s face was only inches from the cave wall as he sidestepped farther under the earth. The walls were covered in more symbols and glyphs, which he could see thanks to the feeble sunlight falling through from the distant cave mouth. The feeling, the sick stomachache, like getting kicked hard in the balls, became stronger. The place smelled of warm stones and mummified snakeskin.

Another twenty feet and another sharp twist and he was in absolute darkness. His arms were forced down to his side by the narrow passage. He felt the invisible strands of a spider web cross his face as he tore through it, moving downward. It felt as if small scuttling things were crawling across his face, his scalp and his neck, but his arms were trapped low, so he had to ignore the desire to frantically rub his face, hair and neck. The dusty, oppressive, oven-like feeling of the upper part of the cave gave way to dry coolness and he carefully slid his boots along the floor, seeking each step with slow, steady caution. His instincts screamed at him—this was the worst possible terrain for him to be in, no room to maneuver, to jump and take advantage of his speed and agility. He was pinned by the mountain and at the mercy of any faceless enemy ahead of him. His instincts screamed to him:
Run, head back to the entrance and jump him when he exits with the skull. At least shake off this clumsy two-legged skin and have more room to maneuver in here! This is death!
The man told his instincts to shut the hell up and he kept sliding forward, one dragging, searching boot at a time. Mutt paused. There was something directly ahead of him in the infinite darkness. He could feel it, but he could see nothing. He crouched as best he could, his back against one of the narrow sloping walls. He felt heat and pain where he pressed against the symbols on the walls, smelled smoke, like meat burning, and realized it was his flesh. He gritted himself against the pain and low-walked ahead. Another five feet, he estimated, and he saw light, defused and flickering, swimming in shadow—a torch, off to his right. A few more steps and the entrance to the chamber allowed him to raise his arms. He wiped the cobwebs away as he stared across the chamber. The torch was on the floor of the dry vault. It was a low room, Mutt still couldn’t stand. The chamber was about four and a half feet high and roughly twenty feet wide. There was a ledge about a foot in front of Mutt. You dropped down a few feet from the narrow passage to actually enter the circular chamber. The walls were again covered in powerful medicine symbols and glyphs. Mutt’s stomach ached and his back still throbbed from proximity and contact with the marks. The skull sat unceremoniously in a narrow, crumbling rock alcove on the far wall. There was nothing particularly unusual about it. It was an old, yellowed human skull, with a fine network of thin cracks radiating out above the left brow. The pattern reminded Mutt of fractured glass. There was a deep, jagged gash in the back of the skull and the teeth were all gone, but the bare jawbone rested at the base of the skull.