Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (27 page)

Another test, she thought to herself. Just pretend it’s another test.

“I want to turn tail and ride home,” she admitted. Go home to Flood and lay this all out at the boss’s feet. Have him ride out, handle it. “But . . .” The words she’d spoken earlier, the words the boss had said, came back to her. “I am the strength of the Territory. I need to know what’s happening.” She was the cold eye and the quick knife, and the final word. Her, not the boss. No matter how woefully unready she felt.

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” Here, or to her. “But I think I know what to do.”

His confidence in her had limits.

“I don’t want you going back in there.” Gabriel had his arms crossed in front of his chest, staring down at her, and Izzy spared the thought that he wasn’t as good at that look as Marie or William. “Listen to me, Isobel. When a situation’s gone that bad, you don’t plant yourself in the middle of it while you poke.”

She crossed her own arms and glared back. “Then how’m I supposed to poke it?”

Izzy was certain that whatever had happened to the people of Clear Rock, the only way she’d be able to find out—assuming she could find anything at all—was to be there when she looked. Gabriel, though, he was dead certain that she could do it just fine from out there, same way she’d seen whatever it was that came down in the first place. And he had all the logic on his side, like the boss would say, but it didn’t feel right.

And all she had to go on just then, much as she hated it, was how things
felt
.

It was the first time she’d ever truly challenged him, terse-voiced and tight-gestured, and he was answering back the same. “Isobel. Listen to me. My job is to keep you safe. And I know you need to do this; I’m not arguing with you, am I? But whatever you saw come down—”

“It’s gone now!”

He let out an almost-not-quite-growl and lifted his hands in exasperation, like he wanted to punch something but couldn’t. “Is it? Are you certain? Could you raise your hand in oath and swear whatever did this is gone?”

The words caught in her gullet. No. No, she couldn’t. In fact, she knew—the way she knew all the things she could not possibly know—that it lingered.

She set her jaw, not willing to admit that he had a point. “I have to know what it was.”

“You can poke at it from here. Outside.”

Beyond the post-marker. Beyond the town’s boundaries. “Whatever words they had, it didn’t save them from this. It won’t keep it contained, either.” The road-post would not slow down the storm she had seen.

“Isobel.” His mouth was a flat line again, eyes narrowed, the charm replaced by a low-burning anger. “This isn’t up for debate.”

She tried to hold on to that feeling, that certainty that she needed to get closer, but it slipped away under his insistence and her own fear. “All right.”

Battle won, Gabriel stepped back, his arms hanging by his side as though unsure what to do. Izzy almost laughed despite the fear, because it wasn’t as though she had any idea either.

“If this is you, boss,” she whispered under her breath, into the air, “you might’ve warned me.” Some folk might be fine being thrown into the creek; she preferred to know how swift the current was first. And now, this was a river, not a creek, and the water was well over her head.

Gabriel wouldn’t let her drown. Not if he could stop it, anyway.

Following her first instinct, she made herself comfortable in the middle of the road, the post-marker directly in front of her. The ground was sun-warmed but hard, and the dust clung to her skirt. She rested her hands on the ground, the grains of salt still clinging to her palms pressing into the dirt, then she lifted her left hand and made the devil’s gesture again, circling out and in toward her rib cage.

“Show me,” she whispered.
“Maleh mishpat.”
She felt the words echo inside her ears, drumming like rain on the roof, washing through her body, and though she still didn’t recognize the language, she understood what the words meant.
Fulfill justice. Be
filled
with justice.

That time, she was half-prepared for the sensation of being spun, the ground under her backside cradling her even as it swallowed her,
standing in the middle of the night, thick black clogging hunger need
need hunger seeking taking swallowing consuming searching eyes eyes
turning looking at her looking
seeing
her how hungry coming at her coming too fast too—

The ground spat her back up, and something hit her hard, swooping her up and tossing her into the air, into a saddle. The reins were shoved into her hands, her fingers closing around them instinctively even as she struggled to open her eyes, and then she was moving, her body leaning forward, legs closing around Uvnee’s ribs, elbows tucking against her own body as the mare surged forward.

Behind her, she could feel it, despite her pounding head and skitterstop heart, the overwhelming sense of
hungersearchingtaking
reaching for them even as the horses galloped back down the road, instinct sending them fleeing from whatever had been woken in Clear Rock.

The horses ran until they ran themselves out, gallop slowing to a trot, and then falling into a slow walk. Izzy could feel Uvnee’s chest blowing, her ribs rising and falling with a bitter rasp, and leaned her cheek against the mare’s neck, tears wetting the sweat-damped hide. “I’m
sorry,” she whispered, her voice cracking, not sure what she was apologizing to or why. She had only a hazy memory of what had happened: the last thing she clearly remembered was Gabriel stalking away while she made herself ready to . . . to what?

Her fingers were numb from clutching the reins and Uvnee’s mane, but she forced herself to ease upright, unclenching and stretching her fingers, and only then did she realize that Steady was stopped a few paces ahead of them, his proud head dropped, his rider leaning against his side, stroking his neck and making sure that all the straps and packs remained secured on his saddle.

“You okay?” His voice was raspy too, and he didn’t turn to look at her.

“I think so.” She risked looking behind them, although she knew that Gabriel would not have stopped if it wasn’t safe. The road behind them was clear, only puffs of dirt still swirling in the air. How far had they run? “It didn’t follow us.”

“I’m pretty sure we didn’t outpace it,” Gabriel said, still petting Steady’s neck. “I don’t think it wanted to leave the town.”

She thought of what she’d felt when she called up the storm, and shuddered. She should have tried to contain it, not call it out. Now it was there, awake, alert, and coiled inside the town, and she still had no idea what it was, or where it had come from—or why.

As they watched, a small brown smudge came into view down the road, a familiar, irritated set to its ears. Despite herself, Izzy smiled, surprised at the relief she felt that had little to do with the return of most of their supplies.

“We need to name the mule.”

“What?”

It seemed impossibly important now. “We almost left it behind, and it kept up. It deserves a name.”

Gabriel turned his head just enough to look at the mule trotting toward them, then at Izzy, as though certain he’d told her this before. “His name’s Flatfoot.”

“Flatfoot?” She shook her head, finding some refuge in teasing him, as though they hadn’t just barely outrun something terrible. “From the man who named his horse Steady, I should have guessed.”

From the shaky grin he gave her as Flatfoot finally reached them, Izzy thought maybe Gabriel was taking the same comfort in their exchange.

“Do you think . . . it’s okay to just leave it there like that?” She was surprised at how ordinary the question felt, as though they were discussing if they should make camp there or ride farther on.

“First rule of the road, Isobel.” And just like that, his voice was serious again. “Don’t pick up more than you can carry. You tried, and you failed.”

She winced, but he went on, relentless.

“You almost got us killed. Or . . . whatever it did to everyone else in that town. And going back there to cut it off from the road, whatever you did back at Widder Creek, isn’t an option. It’s still there, it’s gotten a taste of you, and we are not getting within reach of it again. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” The mule had reached them now and rested its head against Izzy’s leg, pushing gently. She reached down to scratch its ear. “Sorry, boy,” she said to it. “I’m glad you didn’t get eaten.”

“It’s just us out here, Isobel; we need to think of ourselves first. Supplies, some rest, get to our next destination. You can send a message back to Flood from there if it will ease your mind. And maybe they’ll know more there. Maybe word’s gotten out about what happened.”

Izzy gave the mule’s ears one last scritch, then settled herself back into the saddle and gathered the reins again, letting Uvnee know it was time to walk forward. “I suppose.” The mule let out a groan but stayed at Uvnee’s heels.

Gabriel was right. And yet the memory of that storm driving through the mountains itched at her, not letting her thoughts rest. Why had it come to Clear Rock? And how long would it be content to stay there? What
was
it?

“How did I know how to do that?” was what came out of her mouth instead. “I mean, I, that was—”

“You took the devil’s Bargain; you expect nothing to change?” His voice, though gentle, carried a hint of both scorn and amusement. “You see things when you take the road. Things you can’t explain, things you don’t understand. Things nobody understands. Just the way the Territory is.”

“It’s not like that outside?” Beyond the devil’s hold, she meant. Across the River in the States; over the Knife in the Spanish lands.

Gabriel snorted, unamused. “If so, I never saw it. You cross the river, and things are . . . different. The Territory has its own way of doing things. The dime store novels have that much right, at least. Though they paint your boss a little different.”

“Oh?” Anything, anything to keep her mind off what they’d left behind.

“They dress him up like a greenhorn dandy, all lace and flash.”

Izzy tried to imagine the boss fancified like that and shook her head.

Gabriel kept talking. “We call him the devil because they did first. The tempter, the deceiver. The bargain-maker. They don’t understand. Not him, not the Territory. Folk who come here, they’re mostly desperate. But when you’re born here . . .” He stumbled over his words, something he wasn’t saying, or didn’t want to say, she thought. “It’s hard to be anywhere else. Even the air feels wrong.”

She had thought about leaving, hadn’t been able to fathom it. April—even unhappy, she’d seemed shocked at the idea of leaving. But her parents had left. Had they been born here? She’d never wondered before. “Why?”

He shrugged, a casual motion that she could tell wasn’t casual at all. “You’d be best off asking your boss that, not me.”

“But you—” She was about to ask about his time back East when Gabriel’s head went up, his gaze on something on the road ahead of them. Izzy tensed until she saw what had caught his attention. A man walking along the side of the road.

They’d gone days without seeing anyone down in the grasslands. Finding someone here in the hills? She understood why Gabriel tensed, but all she could wonder was if this man had come from Clear Rock, and if he could tell them what had happened there.

“Stay behind me,” he said.

“One man alone isn’t a threat.”

“Bandits put out lures sometimes,” he said sharply, and she subsided, letting Uvnee drop back a pace. She remembered the four men they’d met the first day out, and how easily they could have been trouble if there hadn’t been a haint-bounty they’d wanted more.

They kept walking, the horses moving faster than a man on foot, until they were near abreast with the stranger. He was tall and lean, dressed in drab-colored trousers and a long coat of the same hue, his head bare, sandy hair tousled and long. All in all, she thought, he was as unremarkable as the rocks on either side of them, and colored much the same. Then he turned to face them, and Izzy took back all her previous thoughts. His skin was rough like a man who’d spent his life in the wind and sun, his nose a sharp beak, his forehead a high dome, and the eyes that studied them were as dark and deep as the earth itself.