The Walking (19 page)

Most witches did not realize how alone their live were, and the existence of Wolf Canyon captured the interest of all of them, offering a sense of true community, isabella was no different. She continued asking about Wolf Canyon, and he delighted in telling her stories of the people and the places, introducing her to individuals she had yet to meet. By the time they finished the long trek to Arizona Territory, she would probably know the town as well as anyone who lived there.

The day passed quickly. Isabella was a wonderful traveling companion, and the more time he spent with her, the more impressed he was with her wit, her intelligence, and her remarkable beauty.

She gave herself to him that night, on the ground, under the stars.

There was a dark strangeness to her desires, and a willingness to assert herself, that made him embarrassed and uncomfortable but with which he willingly went along. She touched him in places he had never been touched before, both literally and figuratively, and by the time it was he over knew and they that he were loved lying her. in dirt that had since become mud,

Jeb was not so easily won over. Neither were most of the other people in town. They were nice to Isabella, friendly up to a point, but she seemed to elicit suspicion and misgivings of a type that none of their previous settlers had. William put it down to jealousy for the most part. He was, after all, the town's leader and founder, and it was only natural that his older friends would feel left out because of the amount of time he spent with her.

But that didn't explain all of -it, and the uneasiness that the others seemed to feel around Isabella was, he had to admit, not entirely absent from his own thoughts.

A baby girl.

Still, she was one of them, and it was easy for him to overlook in her what in someone else might be serious cause for concern.

Besides... he loved her.

She moved directly into his house, and though he made a pretense of offering her a room of her own, Isabella informed him bluntly that they would be sleeping together.

There was no period of adjustment for her. If she noticed the reservations other people seemed to have, she gave no indication. She behaved as though she had been born here, immediately insuring herself into the life of the community, planting spontaneously germinating flowers along the streets in town, bringing her considerable powers to bear on the struggling apple orchard, transforming William's house from the spartan living quarters of a bachelor to a beautiful happy home.

She was more assertive than the other women in town, more like a man, and that seemed to unnerve a lot of the residents. She had a regal ness to her beating, a selfconfidence that bordered on arrogance and set her apart no matter how much she tried to fit in. So when she started taking extra duties upon herself, it seemed perfectly natural.

The truth was, William was happy to have someone with

whom he could share the pressures of his position. Jeb was his right-hand man, and the two of them talked over everything, but the final decision was always his to make. He was grateful for Isabella, grateful to have someone more intimate than a friend or an adviser who could understand and share his feelings and often help him come to a decision.

She'd been in Wolf Canyon for nearly half a year when she first made the choice to act independently. Their settlement was far off the beaten track and they rarely had outside visitors, but it had happened once or twice before, and this time a trio of men heading to Yuma were passing through and stopped.

As always, the residents were on their best behavior. They had discussed this among themselves in numerous town meetings, and they'd unanimously decided to hide all evidence of magic from outsiders, not wanting word to spread. Their rights were legally protected by the United States government, but the territories were far from Washington, and out here legal protection and real protection were often two different things.

So the people on the street smiled at the three men as they rode in and waved at them, pretending as though there was nothing out of the ordinary here and they were just typical settlers.

William was standing with Jeb outside the livery stables when they heard the excited commotion and turned to see the strangers passing through a growing crowd of townspeople. They were obviously headed for the saloon, looking to wet their whistles, and William felt more than a little proud that there was a place where travelers could get some whiskey.

He looked at Jeb, and the two of them started down the street.

"Don't say anything," Jeb told him.

"I never do."

The men had tethered their horses and were about to walk into the saloon when Isabella appeared, as if from nowhere, and barred their way. The man in the lead, a burly bearded fellow wearing about three days' worth of dust on his leather hat and clothes, stopped short, confused. He nodded at her, tipped his hat, tried to smile. "Pardon me, ma'am." Isabella remained in place.

"I'm sorry, but we need to get into the saloon here."

"No, you don't." She looked at him. "Why don't you just turn around the way you came?"

Her words carried clearly in the still air, and the rustle of the crowd settled into silence.

For the first time since coming to Wolf Canyon, William was at a loss.

He didn't know whether to intercede, to stop Isabella and apologize to the men, or whether to let the situation take its own course. His first impulse was to slink away and pretend he had never seen any of it--and that disturbed him. He was not a coward and he had never before shied away from confrontation, but his gut instinct told him to stay away from this.

The bearded man looked at his friends, then looked back toward Isabella. "Excuse me?"

"Get out. This is no place for your kind."

It was said with supreme disgust, in the way she had no doubt heard similar words addressed to her for her entire life, but there was still something off-putting about it. William had experienced prejudice, too they all had--but he felt no sense of satisfaction hearing the words spoken by one of his own kind. He could tell from looking around that most of the others in town felt the same way.

He should have stepped in at that point. Everything afterward could have been avoided.

But he did not. "

All three of the men started laughing, deep rough angry laughs, and there was nothing at all humorous in the sound.

"Out of the way," the bearded man said, attempting to push Isabella aside.

He was thrown into the street, landing flat on his back.

The other two men followed, pushed by an unseen force, and Isabella advanced down the saloon's single step toward them.

William was aware once again of her fundamental strangeness. He had gotten used to her in the time they'd lived together, but once more he saw her as she'd appeared to him that first time: an untamed beauty with unknown potential power and a clear capacity for chaos.

The smallest and dirtiest of the three looked up at her. "What the hell's going on here?"

"We're witches," she said, smiling slyly. "You're in our town now."

The man drew his gun and tried to shoot her, but with a flick of her wild mane, the weapon flew from his grasp, twirled in the air, and fell impotently to the ground.

All three of the men were trying to scuttle backward and scramble to their feet, all the while keeping an eye on her. The bearded man looked wildly around at the assembled crowd. "Is that true?" he demanded. "You're all witches?"

"Now you know," Isabella said. that is why you have to die."

Before anyone could stop her, she was chanting and moving her hands in the aft. The bearded man, on his feet now and drawing his gun, suddenly exploded outward. His guts burst through his stomach and flew like a bloody pink lasso, unraveling until it reached the end, and then falling lifelessly into the dirt. The man's mouth opened and closed, greenish bile running out and down his beard, but no sound issued forth, and he fell face forward onto the dirt.

The small man was frozen in place, shaking with tremors. His eyes widened as his arms were jerked above his head. He started to stretch, started to grow, but it was not a gradual process. It was as if his feet were affixed to the ground and some invisible giant was yanking on his arms, trying to pull him up quickly. He was still shaking, only now he was screaming, and his body actually did lengthen before it finally gave way and popped open, the bones breaking loudly, the skin ripping apart. The screams stopped abruptly, and the man's legs slumped to the ground as his torso continued upward for several seconds before being dropped back down onto the pile of blogdy entrails that had fallen out and onto the dirt. " ............. The third man had his pistol drawn and was running straight toward Isabella, shooting, but with each attempted shot, his hand would jerk up or away, the t'wed bullets soaring harmlessly over the buildings or into the wood of the structures: She continued to walk toward him, and when they reached each other, he attempted to hit her with the pistol, but she caught his hand in hers, and the pistol melted, hot metal dripping over his fingers, searing the flesh, eating through to the bone. He screamed in agony. Smiling, she touched his forehead, and it was as if her hand itself was hot metal. His skin started smoking. She caressed his cheek, put a finger to his lips, trailed her hand over his throat.

Wherever she touched him, the skin started to burn, and before she had even gotten below his neck, he had fallen to the dirt, thrashing around on the street, his head dissolving, until he was finally still.

All of this took place quickly, and it was over almost as soon as it started.

William stood there, stunned.

The bodies lay in the center of the street, blood seeping into the dusty gravel and hard-packed dirt. The world lay enveloped in a huge conspicuous silence. Most eyes were still on Isabella, but quite a few were focused on him as well, and even those who weren't specifically looking his way were directing their thoughts at him. He knew what

they expected. He was the leader of the town, and she was his woman.

It was up to him to put a stop to this. But he did not know how, and truth be told, he was afraid to do so. This was not the Isabella he loved. He did not know the woman who had murdered these men. He was not even sure he could do anything to her. Clearly she was possessed of a power he could not hope to match.

What frightened him, though, was not the strength of her powers. It was not her magical abilities that made his blood run cold.

It was the delight she seemed to take in torturing the men, the relish she exhibited in killing them.

A baby girl.

He looked at her, and she was still smiling, a strange crazed glee lighting up her features.

Then she met his eyes and the expression vanished. She immediately burst into tears. Crying, she ran between the saloon and the general store, back toward the house. He stood there, looking around at the townspeople. His gaze met Jeb's, held it for a moment. Then he turned away and, with his head down, hurried off after Isabella.

He found her in their bedroom, on the bed, sobbing. He didn't know what to do. He did not want to put his arms around her, but she was clearly in pain. Despite his revulsion and horror at what she had done, he sat on the bed next to her and touched her hair.

"Isabella?"

"It got out of hand," she said. "I didn't mean to..." The words trailed off into tears and sobs and sniffles.

He didn't believe that. She'd done exactly what she meant to do, and even if she really was feeling remorseful now, at the time she had intended to kill those travelers.

And she'd enjoyed it.

He said nothing, not knowing what to say. He continued to stroke her hair as he waited for her sobs to quiet down.

Isabella rolled over, wiped her eyes and nose. She faced

him squarely. "I knew those men," she said. "hey didn't recognize me, but I knew them from Kansas City." "Kansas City?"

"It's where I was born and grew up. Or where my parents abandoned me after they found out what I was. The owner of a brothel took me in and raised me, and eventually I started working for her." She took a deep breath. "That's where I met those men. They... hurt me. They made me do things I didn't want to do. And when I ran out of the room, crying, the woman who'd raised me, the woman I considered my mother, took their side, and made me go back, where they beat me and cut me and almost killed me. "I ran away after that.

"And today, when I was walking to the garden to pick vegetables, I looked up and there they were. The men who had almost killed me. I...

I couldn't help myself. I couldn't resist."

He didn't believe it.

William looked away. He didn't doubt that it could have happened--and there was no way he could know for sure because he couldn't read her--but it seemed to him implausible. He had a hard time imagining Isabella ever submitting to the will of another, and there was no way he could picture her being hurt and abused without using her powers to strike back.

He wasn't sure he even believed that her parents had abandoned her. Or that she'd ever been in Kansas City.

"I'm sorry," she said, starting to cry again. "I'm sorry." He held her and patted her back and told her it was all right, but it was not all right. Although he loved her and would always love her--he could not help that he was still appalled by what she'd done. He tried to think of a way to smooth it over for the town, to somehow bring her back into the fold and make everything the way it was before.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed.

He would accept her story, he decided, and he would tell it to everyone else, let everyone know. That would make her actions more understandable, more forgivable.

At least to the other people in town.

That night, in bed, she was energized, creative beyond even her usual standards, and as she screamed, as she climaxed, he looked down at her face, and the expression he saw there was the same one that had been on her features when she'd killed the last man with her burning touch. He recognized the same fervid, intense excitement he'd seen in her on the street, and he closed his eyes and quickly finished without looking again at her. face.