Authors: Elizabeth Einspanier
“Out with it, man!” he barked. “There’s strange things afoot in Salvation, ya know that as well as I do.”
I took a deep breath and told him of the black dog I’d seen the previous night. He settled back on his heels a bit, giving me a searching look.
“Which way was it headed?” he asked.
I feverishly
racked my brains, trying to remember.
“East, I think,” I said finally.
“Headed from the Lucky Lady?” he probed.
“I don’t know. Perhaps. I didn’t see where it emerged onto the street, but it came from that direction.”
“Anything else ya saw?” he probed.
I closed my eyes, struggling to recall. “Crows,” I said finally. “A great lot of them, perched on the rooftops.”
Wolf swore. “Carrion crows, I wager,” he said. “They’re his. He can call all sorts of nasty critters to his side—rats, cockroaches, bats, and crows that I’ve seen.”
“And… the dog?” I asked.
“Most likely him,” Wolf said. “He can turn into all sorts of animals, or a bunch of crows or bats if he wants to.”
“Can… they all do that?” I ventured.
He shrugged. “Some can. Some can’t. The older ones can do more, I’ve noticed.” He rolled his right shoulder experimentally, a
nd I saw that he seemed to be moving without any pain at all.
“That reminds me,” I said. “I should change those bandages of yours.”
He glanced down, rubbing his injured side. “I’m fine. I can take care of that myself.”
“Wolf,” I chided him. “I’m supposed to be taking care of that stab wound, remember?”
He gave me a long look, and then shrugged. “Come on, then. Ya might be surprised what ya find, though.”
We went back downstairs to the clinic, and I saw that he now moved smoothly, without any sign of pain or stiffness from his injury. I fetched some fresh bandages while he stripped off his shirt. I carefully undid the bandages, unwinding them from around his torso and noticing as I did so that the redness was entirely gone. When I peeled away the pad of gauze that marked the surgical site I saw that the wound had also entirely vanished, its place marked only by the sutures that remained embedded in his skin. From near-fatal sepsis to flawless healing, the process had taken maybe thirty-six hours.
“What?” I exclaimed. “But that’s—”
“Impossible?” Wolf finished my thought. “For most anyone else around here, I’d say ya’re right.” His amber eyes gleamed. “But ya don’t believe in monsters, do ya?”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “There must be a valid explanation for this.”
“I’m going to stop ya right there, Doc. Ya were digging around in my side as sure as the sun comes up, and ya’re the doctor with all the book-learning, so ya know damn well how serious the wound really was. Once ya got the bit of knife out of it, I healed up. That’s all there is to say about that.”
“But... in two days?”
“That’s right,” he confirmed flatly. “Now, ya seem like a good man, so I know ya’re not going to go spreading this around. Russeau’s driver thinks he winged me but good—and he did—but thanks to ya it’s all closed up now, instead of me bleeding to death under someone’s front porch.”
I didn’t think my powers of healing were quite that potent, and said so.
Wolf sighed. “Look—I know this is a lot to take in right now, but ya’re dealing with forces that it’s clear ya’ve never had to. I can show ya what Russeau is, if ya want to come with me to the Lucky Lady.”
“I think I have a fair idea what Russeau is,” I returned.
Wolf shook his head. “No. Ya’ve just about got yarself convinced that ya didn’t see what ya saw. I’m going to show ya that ya saw him just fine. That cold feeling ya got down yar spine when ya looked at him? Don’t—ya—ignore—that.” He shrugged into his shirt. “Now, we’d best get some breakfast in us. This is going to be a long day.”
I swallowed my further objections—and I had many— and prepared breakfast for the two of us. As I cooked, I turned over the events in the last two days in my mind, trying to make sense of them. I
knew
that seeing Russeau and his companions wasn’t a nightmare, and I don’t consider myself to be particularly jumpy, even out here.
At the same time, it seemed to me that Wolf was talking nonsense. I’d heard tales of vampires, of course, but I still felt myself reasonable enough to separate fact from fancy.
After breakfast, the two of us went to the Lucky Lady. Wolf moved at a lazy amble that put me in mind of the lope of a coyote and somehow still managed to convey a high degree of alertness, as though he were instantly aware of everything around him. People stared, of course, as the presence of an Indian was not a commonplace occurrence in Salvation, but he seemed to pay no special attention to the oglers and looky-loos.
The crows I’d seen last night were still roosting on the rooftops, a sparse gathering of glossy black wings and beady eyes that seemed to watch us as we passed.
I met the gaze of one of them, and I was immediately struck by the level of malevolent intelligence I saw there.
A couple of horses snorted and shied away as we passed by, to the consternation of their owners, who muttered curses as they tried to regain control. By contrast, however, a guard dog that I knew to be downright ornery to any and all strangers—even me, sometimes—instantly stopped barking when Wolf turned to look at him. Wolf started towards him.
“Wolf, I wouldn’t—” I said, but that was all I had time to say. Wolf had crouched in front of the beast to scratch its ears, and the dog was whimpering appreciatively and wagging his tail.
After a few moments, he glanced over his shoulder at me. “Sumthin’ wrong?”
I opened my mouth, shook my head in disbelief, and shut my mouth again. Finally I said, “That makes
two
people in Salvation that dog likes.”
He grinned as the guard dog licked his face. “I got a way with animals.”
I thought of the spooked horses. “Come on, Wolf.”
He took his leave of the dog with one last friendly pat.
We were in sight of the Lucky Lady when Wolf suddenly put his arm out to stop me.
“What—?” I started to ask, but he waved me into silence, raising his head and sniffing the air like a hound. After a few seconds of this his upper lip drew back from his teeth.
“Yeah,” he said. “He’s here. Watch yarself.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“I know his smell. Come on.”
“What are we looking for?”
“He’s going to want to keep a few things near and dear while he’s travelling. I’ve never seen him go anywhere new without ‘em.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“His manservant DuPont, for one. That feller’s barking mad but loyal to Russeau. It was him what stuck me in the side, and I wager he’ll have hung onto the rest of that knife.”
I frowned. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to get rid of a potential murder weapon? He
did
intend to kill you, didn’t he?”
“Acourse he did—but silver’s expensive in these parts.”
That did raise a good question. “Why silver?”
“Well, ya saw what it did to me. Stick me with steel or iron, and I’m fine in less than an hour. Silver, though... nasty stuff for people like me.”
“What do you mean, people like you?” I was quite certain he didn’t mean Indians or half-breeds.
“Later. The second thing he takes with him everywhere is a few pine boxes lined with dirt.”
“Why would he lug dirt around with him?” I asked. “You can find that anywhere.”
“This here dirt is from his homeland. He needs it to sleep on—don’t ask why, I’ll tell ya later. Anyway, he has DuPont put them in out-of-the-way places—lairs, like—so he has a few hidey-holes in a town.”
I opened my mouth to ask further questions, but he waved me into silence.
“Later. Now hush up, so DuPont don’t hear us.”
I hushed up, and we made our way forward. He angled us towards the stable where people put up their horses during an overnight stay and, on edge, I kept my eyes and ears open for the haunted-looking man I now knew to be named DuPont. All I knew of his combat ability was that he knew how to stick a man in the ribs, and that was frankly enough for me.
“I don’t see the carriage anywhere,” I said in a low voice.
“It’s probably around back. Judging by the racket in the stable, though, Russeau’s horses are put in there with the others.”
I listened; there was a bit of a racket going on in there that reminded me of a night during my journey to Salvation when a coyote had gotten in among the horses. The smell of a predator by itself was enough to get the animals riled up, which alerted the men who were on watch. Other horses typically didn’t engender that sort of a reaction, especially in trained horses who were used to mixed company.
“Come on,” Wolf said. “I’ll show ya. Then we’re going looking for that carriage of his.”
When we got into the stable enclosure, the first thing I noticed was a foul, sulfurous odor that I could not entirely attribute to the presence of horse dung. There were a few horses in the near end of the enclosure, and by their snorting and stamping they sounded quite upset about something. One of them let out a low whinny and shied away as Wolf passed close by on his way to the back. I followed him, making sure not to get too close to any of the riled horses lest one break free and trample me.
Towards the rear of the stable, the foul smell grew stronger, and the bit of agate around my neck—which I had almost forgotten was still there—started to grow cold, just as it had done when Russeau’s gaze had fallen on me before.
There, at the back, were four massive black horses, bigger than draft horses, their noses in the feed trough. The closest one raised its head to regard us, and its eyes suddenly flashed brilliant red, as if lit from within by unholy fire. I froze in shock.
“Wolf—?” I choked out.
“I see ‘em,” he said. “The only type of horses that’d be willing to cart his undead carcass around ain’t what ya’d call normal. Ya see DuPont anywhere?”
I tore my eyes away from the hellish horses and glanced around, my thoughts spinning. I didn’t see DuPont nearby, and relaxed marginally.
“Not in the stable,” I said. “What do you mean by ‘undead’?”
“That’s sumthin’ that’s hard to explain to a medical man like ya. It’s someone who’s dead but still moving around, animated by an evil spirit.”
“But that’s impossib—”
“Oh, hush up!” he snapped. “There’s a lot of impossible things around here, so ya damn well better get used to it. Now come on.”
He turned and headed out of the stable. I backed away from Russeau’s horses until I tripped on an unseen object and staggered, but I found my balance again and turned to follow Wolf properly as he left the stable. I saw another of the horses shy away from him as he passed close to its stall, but I chalked this up to their agitation at the red-eyed horses.
We rounded to the back of the stable, where we found Russeau’s carriage had been parked. DuPont was still not in immediate evidence, but my nerves were drawn tighter than fiddle-strings by now—not only because going through another man’s belongings seemed wrong, whatever the reason, but also because the chill of the agate had reminded me of that first sight of Russeau the previous night.
“Now I need ya to keep an eye out,” Wolf said. “If DuPont comes back, let out a bird call—whatever kind ya know.”
“And if anyone else approaches?” I asked.
“Make sure they don’t get too curious. He already has his hooks into the mayor’s wife—who knows who else he’s snagged?”