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  ISBN 978-1-62007-569-2 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-573-9 (paperback)

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  For Dad, who gave me my first western to read.

  Wyoming Territory, 1876

  t’s the smell that hits me first. That sickly-sweet smell of greasy meat and burning hair puts a hook in my gut and drags me awake. There’s a fire warming the front of my body, though my back is cold with high hills’ night air. My wrists are bound with some scratchy jute, but whoever tied it did a piss-poor job. Given enough time, I’ll have a hand free, or at least enough elbow to throw into whatever sumbitch put me in this awkward posture.

  “Why ain’t we killed him yet?” a dust-dried voice crackles from around my feet.

  I open one eye just enough to see a fat, slovenly piece of business brooding over my legs, licking his lips with a queasy kind of look.

  A polished voice answers from beside the fire. “Magner wants to see him first.”

  As the orange firelight flickers against tall pine trunks, I spot some kind of parson, decked out in his black coat and white collar. His face is gaunt, fiercely so, like that old camp prisoner we picked up from Andersonville before he shit hisself to death. Inside the fire is a length of meat on a spit. I try to keep my breath even when I recognize it’s a man’s foot.

  The fat one grumbles, “Magner don’t realize who this man is. He ain’t normal. He’s dangerous.”

  “Oh, he knows,” the Parson says, reaching out for the cooked leg. “There’s two of them, though. And until we figure which one we have, Magner wants him unmolested.”

  The fat one swears and kicks my foot.

  So they don’t have Gil. Good. Gil and I split up west of Fort Caspar, and somewhere between there and Gold Vein, I found myself in the hands of these ghoulish hoof-cutters.

  The Parson takes a bite off the leg, slurping back a steaming strip of flesh. His face sours in distaste, and he tosses the foot over the flames to his partner. “Here. It’s cooked enough for you.”

  The fat one sets his teeth into the meat with a desperate kind of rage. He acts like a man starving, though his girth looks well tended. He tries to say something between swallows, gagging and groaning around the fistfuls of flesh, but it makes no sense to my ears.

  The Parson grins, leaning back against a log. “You’ll stop bothering with cooking it soon enough.” The Parson’s glance wanders through the flames to me. I try to snap my eyes shut, but his ghost-lit sneer tells me I’m too slow.

  “He’s awake.”

  I go ahead and open my eyes. No sense playing anymore.

  The fat one pauses over his meal just long enough to bare his teeth at me. They aren’t long or sharp. Just natural human teeth. These aren’t any particular kind of strigger Gil and I ever ran into before. Striggers only drink blood. We put down a good dozen of them last year outside of Laramie, but I ain’t never seen one of them cook a foot before.

  The Parson pulls hisself up from his log. His body’s as thin as his face, bony and freakish. A burlap sack at his feet shifts as he steps over it. Something in that bag is alive, and probably pissed as hell. He steps up to my face and crouches down, grinning thin lips over yellow teeth.

  “We’ve been waiting on you,” he declares.

  I hustle my weight back onto my ass and tuck my legs up, squaring myself to the Parson.

  He reaches out and grips my chin, twisting my head to the side.

  “You’ve kept us waiting quite a while, my lost little lamb.”

  I clear my throat and grunt, steadying out my voice. “I don’t reckon an apology would bed you down?”

  The Parson’s smirk melts back into a sneer.

  The fat one drops his foot bones and crouches down into my face. His breath reeks, and I nearly gag.

  “Well?” he sputters. “Which one is it?”

  I give the Parson a long glance. He’s unsettled. Good. I work best against these kinds of creatures when they’re off their balance.

  “Say your name,” the Parson growls.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, gents, but you bagged yourselves the student. Not the teacher.”

  They look at each other like I’m speaking gibberish. All right. I might survive this.

  The fat one shoves my face, sending me back against a sharpish rock sticking out through the pine needles. I give him a shove of my boot, just enough to inch myself up to the rock and get to working it on the jute around my wrists.

  The Parson reaches down and grips the rude sumbitch by his collar, flipping him up and over the campfire, feet and shoulders off the ground. No question, these are monsters. The Parson looms over my head as his ward lands across the camp, and I still my hands.

  “Now I’ll repeat myself, and how I do despise repeating myself. Your name.”

  “Name’s Odell. Linthicum Odell.”

  His face pulls stiff. I figure they were gunning for Gil, but I can’t quite divine whether this is good for my prospects or not.

  The Parson shakes his head and grins. “You are a tribulation, my prodigal pest.” He turns back to the fat one, and I start working on the rope again.

  “What do we tell Magner?” the fat one blubbers from across the fire.

  “We tell him nothing. The other will show up eventually.”

  “But he’s new. I mean, we ain’t heard of this one before. What’s it mean?”

  “It means,” the Parson snarls, lunging at his companion, “there’s more of these crack-skulled fools than we had thought. It changes nothing. We wait.”

  The fat one crawls around the fire to fish the half-chewed foot out of the pine needles as the Parson stands on a stump, surveying the woods surrounding us. I get a good edge of the rock up underneath the rope. With enough time, I’ll manage my hands loose. I just need the time.

  The slithering burlap sack shifts near my feet.

  The Parson looks over his shoulder and glares at me.

  “Friends of yours?” I grumble.

  “They are tools of faith,” he replies, hopping down from his stump. He reaches down and grips the cinch of the sack. An all-too-familiar rattle escapes from the burlap. “Misunderstood. Feared. And it is the fear that drives the lost into the hands of the Devil.”

  “They’re snakes,” the fat one spits as he rolls the foot in his hands.

  “I’d actually worked that out,” I mutter, “but much obliged.”

  He cracks off half a foot bone and chucks it at my head. “Don’t get smart with me, boy! I’ll gut you quick enough!”

  “Better get a rein on your rude friend, Parson.”

  He lifts his hand at me. “He’s young. He’ll be lucky to survive the first week.”

  “First week of what?”

  He grins. “The Hunger.”

  I still my hands again, as the Parson levels his eyes on me, digging in and around my person.

  “Hunger, huh? You boys ain’t Strigoi, I figured that much.”

  The Parson lifts an eyebrow. “You’re referring to the blood-drinkers?�
� He waves a limp hand. “They are a nuisance, aren’t they? If you and your better portions put your mind to it, you could have driven them out of the prairies by now. But a house divided against itself will not stand, according to the Gospel of Matthew.”

  This ghoul knows more about Gil and his cadre of Godpistols than I do, though I ain’t never heard Gil’s boys mention a man-eating Parson before. I’d been riding with the Godpistols a couple years, now. Gil had picked me up long after Missionary Ridge. After the battle, when I found myself on the lam. The Strigoi, or the blood-drinkers as this hell-twisted Parson calls them, are a scourge on the plains. They linger in caves and cellars in the daylight, as the sunlight puts them to flame. But at night? Well, there’s a reason the Godpistols put them in the dirt for good. These two, though? They ain’t striggers.

  “Can’t put a name to what you are,” I declare, shifting myself against the rock to gain more discreet access. “Some kind of ghoul, I reckon?”

  He grins and leans back, fire lighting the bottom of his gaunt jaw. “What value do names have out here? We’re all answering to one master or another.”

  “You seemed hungry enough for my name.”

  The fat one tosses the clean-scraped foot bones back into the fire and belches. “Christ, I’m gonna starve.”

  The Parson sneers. “You can’t have him. Not until Magner says.”

  I feel a few strands of jute snap free of my wrist. Not much more to go.

  “This Magner. He’s the leader of your little outfit?”

  The Parson snaps his face forward, jerking his narrow frame erect. “You vex me to no end, you realize that?”

  “Well,” I huff, holding my hands still, “you’re the one got me tied up. There’s a bit of vex goin’ both ways, here.”

  A loud snap above us captures all our attentions.

  Something high, probably in the pine trees. A critter, maybe. A large one, if it’s any kind of animal.

  The two ghouls jump to their feet, circling with their heads up. The noise has them spooked. This is my chance to work that jute clean in half, and I put my wrists to the work.

  “Get the stakes,” the Parson mutters.

  The fat one stumbles over the log he had been sitting over, landing hands-first into a rucksack. Wood clatters under his hands until he emerges with two fine lengths of timber, sharpened to vicious points. I figure it’s hemlock. It’s one of the few holy woods a soul might find in this corner of Creation.

  A shadow drops just outside of the campfire light. It falls from tree to ground, then disappears into the surrounding shadows. Then another. A familiar hiss leaks from the trees all around us. I know this sound. We’re circled by striggers, and my chances of limping out of this encounter have just dried straight up.

  My hands slice down onto the rock, snapping the last of the jute and shearing off a fair chunk of my skin with it. I bite my lip and pull my arms up close to my sides. The Parson has his eyes on the darkness all around us, but the fat one sees me.

  “You sumbitch!” he blubbers as he cocks his arm up over his head.

  Before he can bring his stake down, a figure flies into the light of the camp. It’s the size and shape of a man, but thin and as light as a sheet. Its face is lean and fierce, a mouthful of needle-teeth glistening in the campfire light. Skin as dark as charred wood pulled over high cheeks.

  The Strigoi plows into the fat one’s body with a moist crack. Its arms pull tight around him like a lasso ‘round an animal bent for Hell. The two land in the fire, embers exploding all around.

  I pull myself to my feet, dusting off a few sparks from my britches, and look for something I can use as a weapon. The Fat One’s rucksack ain’t far, and I manage it before the two tumbling in the campfire roll out of sight. I fish out a stake for myself, figuring it’d suit a strigger as well as whatever these man-eating bastards call themselves, and pocket a couple more for happenstance.

  The Parson gets his bearing enough to spot the strigger tussling with his portly comrade, and reaches down to grip the blood-sucker by its scruff. He hoists it high over the fire with the same godless strength he hucked the fat one, holding the strigger up to the pine boughs above us.

  “You want him, you heathen shits?” the Parson bellows. “Then you’re coming through us!”

  The strigger squirms at the end of the Parson’s grasp, its sharp, charcoal face alive with ferocious anger, glimmering fangs snapping at the air. I had seen these things in full Hellish countenance before. It’s either pissed or scared, for it to bring all its ugly to bear like that.

  With a quick stab, the Parson thrusts his stake through its chest. Not into it. Through it. The undead fiend falls to the ground, motionless.

  I have to get clear of this campsite, or I won’t see another sunrise. I tuck the stake close to my chest and step over the log toward the forest. Several pairs of eyes meet me as I manage only three steps out. Striggers. These things brought numbers to this fight, to be sure. By the sound of howls and snapping bones behind me, I figure they haven’t brought enough. The striggers don’t set upon me, though the closest gives me a good shove. I tumble tits-over-ass back into the campsite, my boot catching the bag of snakes. I kick it away. Unfortunately, the angle of my boot opens the wide mouth of the sack enough for the Parson’s agitated rattler to lick fresh air.

  The fat ghoul jumps on top of me, feet on both sides of my head, his arm slashing at the air. No fewer than three sets of fangs plunge into his arms. He releases a wheezing grunt before smacking the strigger on his right arm with a sick crack. It breaks the fiend’s neck, from the sound of it, though that alone won’t stop a Strigoi. The other two pull at his arm, jumping into the air. They lift his body enough for me to shuffle out from underneath.

  A strigger head lands in front of my face, its jaw still snapping in reflex. I look down to find the Parson tossing the rest of its body onto the campfire. He turns to me briefly, his eyes at once angry and satisfied.

  White-hot pain lances into the thick of my leg. I bring down the stake onto something thin, jerking it out of my leg. The Parson’s pet rattler. My leg aches with searing hot pain. There’s venom inside me. I feel it burning up my flesh.

  I’m not going to make it.

  A gunshot pounds out into the night air. I cover my face and peer up at the fat ghoul, who’s pulled a gun from inside his pants. I recognize the weapon.

  That’s my Remington. Bastard has my gun.

  Of course, he wouldn’t know what ammunition I was packing. The odds were about to favor these cannibals in short order.

  With that one shot, a strigger falls dead. Silver’s a quick death for Strigoi, same as the hemlock.

  As fortunate as the fat shit was to unload with my piece, he’s slower than the Parson. A blood-sucker gets a hand onto his left arm, knocking the gun free. I roll toward it and manage to secure the gun before another piece of strigger corpse lands on top of my back.

  I spin and aim my piece at the fat one. He sees me, but he’s too late.

  I open fire, sending a slug of silver into his chest. His eyes roll up, and his mouth releases a stream of blood and gore as his bloated stomach releases his meal. With a twitch, he falls back into the fire.

  Whatever this new kind of monster is, it seems to possess the same weakness to silver as the striggers.

  That was two shots from this gun. Four bullets left, and four devil-creatures left standing. Just my luck.

  As the Parson clears two more thin striggers from my view, I take aim at his chest.

  Before I can squeeze off a shot, something larger lands between the two of us. Gossamer lace gathers along spindly wings, pulling back into a swath around its shoulders. It’s taller than the other Strigoi, its countenance far more steady.

  And fierce.

  This must be their Master. The Parson’s face betrays its first modicum of fear as this Strigoi lurches toward him. They disappear beyond the campfire in a scuffle of snarls and salty profanities from the Parson. Time t
o look for a retreat. I pause over the fat one’s belongings and thumb them over. I spot my saddlebag. I’ll need that. I hoist it over my shoulder and hoof it for the forest.

  I don’t get far.

  Pain seizes my leg, sending me down to the pine needles. Sweat pours from my forehead, streaming down into my eyes. The rattler venom is taking hold quicker than I’d figured.

  I pull myself along as best I can, clambering over brush and branches as the terrain falls gently away from the campsite. The venom in my thigh is working a patch of hot Hell into my flesh, and I’m losing breath. This is a fool’s retreat. I’ll drop dead in the better part of a few minutes, I know. I’ve stared death direct in the face before, but for whatever reason the Good Lord divines, I hadn’t succumbed yet. This could be my moment, but I work to better the Good Lord’s odds with every reach and armful of ground.

  The commotion at the campsite swells behind me. The Parson is a demon of powerful strength. But this new creature, this Master… Damned if I know what it’s capable of. If the Parson prevails, I’m certainly doomed. I’m forced to place my hope in this Master Strigoi. For whatever reason, the striggers seem to give me wide berth.

  My lungs burn and my heart twinges a little. The venom is in my chest. It won’t be long.

  At last, my arms fail me. I fall face-first into pine needles. There’s no point trying to gain more distance. This will turn into a game of inches, and I’ll be stone dead, barring some miracle.

  I wait for my miracle.

  The night air licks at my skin where it ain’t burning from snakebite. I can’t keep my eyes straight. I see two of everything, moving together and apart. My stomach lurches, and I spit out what little bile I manage to bring up. My whole insides cook and twist. This won’t be as fast a death as I had hoped.

  Thank God, that miracle finally comes, and my face falls back into the pine straw.

  rms reaching around my chest. Something else grips my hips tight, and I jerk with a hot, nauseous jolt into air.

  The wind races across my face, my ears filled with the rushing of mighty wings.

  Is that sunlight? Either I’ve ended up in the Good Place, or I ain’t dead yet. My leg aches something fierce, and I breathe in a snort of dust good enough to make me cough. No, I’m still alive.