The Shotgun Arcana Read online

  Highfather leveled the rifle at Vellas. Mitchell was pointing his revolver at him as well.

  “You crazy, sick son of a bitch,” Mitchell said to Vellas.

  Vellas laughed and took the heart and tore a bite from the sturdy muscle as if he were biting into an apple. He chewed it with gusto and walked toward Mitchell. Mitchell fired into Vellas’s chest, again, again and again. Highfather saw the .44 bullets rip through the bloody man and blast out his back, taking chunks of flesh and sprays of blood with them.

  Vellas remained standing and raised the heart above his head. He leaned his head back and opened his mouth, squeezing the torn heart like a sponge and pouring the lifeblood from it into his mouth and across his face. Mitchell fired again and again, until the pistol was empty. Vellas staggered but did not fall from the lethal wounds.

  “Your blood is thin,” Vellas said, the heart blood gurgling out of his mouth as he spoke, spilling down his chin. He spit the blood at Mitchell, who, to his credit, Highfather noted, stood his ground and did not look as terrified as he surely was. Vellas tossed the savaged heart away. “My father’s blood sustains me and he is strong.”

  He closed toward Mitchell. The old soldier narrowed his eyes.

  “I’ll see you in hell, boy,” he muttered to Vellas.

  Gunfire tore the air like a knife. Bullet after bullet ripped into Vellas and spun him as if he were being hit by a rain of sledgehammers. Jon Highfather advanced with a rifle in each hand, even his injured left arm steady as stone. He moved and fired both of the Winchesters, flipped them both back by the levers, one-handed, and then forward until they snapped the levers back into position, chambering a new round, spitting out the smoking empty cartridge. He fired again, repeating the action as he moved closer and closer to the staggering Vellas with each blast.

  “You get on home, Half-Guts,” Highfather said, slurring his words slightly. “We’ll settle up another day. This kind of thing is my jurisdiction. Run.”

  “Don’t cotton to leaving a man alone with a hell-spawn like this, even a goddamned lawman,” Mitchell said, stepping back and trying to reload his gun.

  Highfather continued herding Vellas back toward the burning wagon, bullet by bullet. The bloody man was no longer smiling; each round made him wince and stagger back more and more. “Just go, damn you, or I’ll shoot you next!” Highfather shouted. “Tell Mutt what went down if I fall. Now go on!”

  Mitchell ran toward one of the horses that had shied away when the shooting and the fire started. It was standing nervously in the field by the crossroads. Mitchell climbed in the saddle and rode off toward the mining camp without a glance back.

  Highfather kept shooting even as the world seemed to dip and falter at the edges of his vision. Vellas was almost into the roaring fire of the wagon, a few steps more …

  One rifle, then the other, clicked. Empty.

  Vellas grinned through a mask of blood and wounds. “Thank you, father,” he said as he reached down and grabbed a red-hot wagon wheel with both of his hands. He hissed in pain at the heat and his hands smoked as the flesh charred. He looked at Highfather as he grunted and ripped the massive iron wheel off the wagon. The wagon slumped with a crash. Vellas hurled the steaming, massive wheel at Highfather, who scrambled and staggered to avoid it, dropping both empty guns in the process. The wheel clipped Highfather’s shoulders and upper back as he ran, knocking him off his feet and carrying him with it as it careened into the shack. The decrepit, bullet-riddled cabin groaned and collapsed on top of Highfather with a crash.

  The sheriff lay in the ruins of the shack. His back throbbed and for a second he feared the wheel had broken it and paralyzed him. He groaned and forced himself to move, pushing the broken boards, rusted nails and tar paper off him. He heard the bloody man’s laughter as he rose from the wreckage.

  “Good, you don’t break easy,” Vellas said. “‘The sheriff who cannot die’ … It’s been a long time since I had one that wasn’t easy to kill.”

  Highfather staggered out of the debris; his clothes were torn and he had cuts, bruises and scratches all over his body. His upper back was red and raw from the burns he suffered from the burning wheel.

  “Wish I could say the same,” Highfather said, and stepped forward, trying to stay awake and pushing away the blissful, painless darkness. “What are you exactly? Most fellas like you come around here, they got some evil scheme or master plan or such. A few like to rave about it, makes things a mite easier. You got any raving in you, Vellas?”

  “I am my father’s son,” Vellas said, the fires of the wagon roaring behind him. “A scout, a harbinger of what is to come.”

  Highfather took another step. “I hate it when they get all cryptic,” he said. “You’re under arrest, Vellas. Stand down, or I’m going to have to get rough with you.”

  There was the whinny of a horse and the thud of hooves at full gallop. For a second, Highfather thought Mitchell may have come back, but it wasn’t him. The rider appeared on a gray Appaloosa, thundering down the high road from the miners’ camp. She had brown hair falling to her shoulders, fluttering in the biting wind. She wore a black bolero hat and coat that looked a bit too big for her slender frame and snapped in the wind like wings. A black corset—worn under the coat—revealed smooth, pale skin. She wore men’s trousers and a gun belt with twin holsters, one strapped to each thigh. The guns were in her hands and she drove the charging horse with her legs only, moving between Vellas and Highfather. Without a word, the woman opened fire on Vellas, both revolvers barking as she emptied them into the bloody man. Vellas staggered back, again toward the blaze. More holes exploded through his tattered flesh. Vellas roared and drove his fist into the horse’s flank as it rushed by at full speed. There was a horrible, hollow crunching sound. The horse screamed and flew through the air, bloody foam spewing from its nose and mouth. It fell and was still, ten feet from where it had stood. The woman was pinned under the dying animal’s shuddering bulk.

  “Nikos Vellas!” the woman shouted as she struggled to free herself. “By the authority of the federal government of the United States of America, I order you to surrender and be bound for your crimes.”

  “I already did that,” Highfather mumbled. “I’m arresting him.” The sheriff fell face forward and didn’t move.

  Vellas dropped to his knees, the bullet holes in him smoking. A piece of the dark sky tore itself loose and lighted before the bloody man. The crow croaked at him and cocked its head. Vellas removed the packet of papers that Mitchell had given him from his jacket. It was pierced with bullet holes and stained with blood. The crow took it in its black beak.

  “For my father,” he said. The crow flew away, toward the moon.

  Vellas climbed to his feet and staggered toward the trapped woman. He loomed over her on the opposite side of the dead horse. “You’re that bitch that hunted me in Saint Louis and Raleigh, aren’t you? This is revenge for what I did to your friend, yes?” He laughed and coughed up some blood. The woman struggled to reach one of the guns that had fallen from her hand. Fumbled for bullets in her coat pocket. Vellas leaned forward, his hand resting on the horse. He swatted the pistol out of her hand and it thudded a few feet away. His wet, torn face looked down on her as she struggled. The woman spat in his face.

  “I will kill you with my bare hands, you bastard,” she said, still fighting to get free. “With my last breath in me, I will find a way to kill you.”

  “Unlikely, yes?” Vellas said. “I think I shall spend some time on you and then drink the sweet terror out of your heart. It will heal me. Your heart, and then the good sheriff’s.” He glanced around. “Now where did he get to? Did you pass out somewhere, Sheriff?”

  Highfather charged the bloody man from the darkness behind the woman. It wasn’t pretty, but it was the very last ounce of energy left in him. He used the dead horse’s body as a vault and launched himself toward the still grinning Vellas. As he flew through the air, Highfather unloaded both barrels of the shotgun
into Vellas at point-blank range. The bloody man gasped in pain and staggered backward. Highfather latched onto Vellas like a stubborn dog biting. He tossed the shotgun and drew his .44. Vellas, his titanic strength beginning to fade, pounded on Highfather’s back and sides as the sheriff coughed blood and groaned. Jon jammed the Colt into Vellas’s face and emptied it. Both men, locked in a death dance, fell into the roaring fire of the burning wagon. The crossroads grew silent.

  The woman the locals called Kitty Warren struggled to free her legs from the dead weight of her horse. With a final growl of effort she did. Pain ran up her leg and she nearly passed out from it, but she didn’t dare. She recovered one of her pistols, frantically loaded it and limped toward the fire.

  Jon Highfather, his face black with soot and smoke streaming off his burnt clothing, crawled out of the blaze. He struggled to his feet and Kitty helped him as best she could. They took a few torturous steps away from the fire and Jon whistled as best he could. In the distance there was a whinny. Jon looked at the woman holding him up and whom he was helping to hold up in turn.

  “Are you hurt? Are you okay?” Jon mumbled. It was hard to keep his eyes open. The woman broke into a smile. She had small, even teeth and her smile was charming because Jon was pretty sure she didn’t do it often.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Hurt my leg when my horse fell, but … I’m good. How did you … with the wagon and the fire?”

  They staggered back toward the ruins of the cabin. There was the sound of a horse approaching.

  “Knocked him onto the back of the wagon, I went low, under it. Less fire down there, less smoke, more air. Got a little singed crawling out, but I’ve had worse.”

  “I’ll just bet you have,” Kitty said.

  “Not my time,” Highfather said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “‘Not my time.’ It’s … it’s something I say a lot, kind of like my saying, if you will,” Highfather said. “It’s nothing. Thank you for riding in and saving me. You look familiar, who are you?”

  “I’ve been going by Kitty Warren,” she said. “Been here a few months, but my name is Kate, Kate Warne. I work for the Pinkerton Agency and the United States government.”

  Highfather laughed. It cost him. He winced in pain and Kate steadied him. “Well, you are the prettiest Pinkerton man I ever did see.”

  “We need to get you to a sawbones,” she said. “You’re obviously delirious. And then we need to talk. Your town is in danger, Sheriff.”

  “If you save my life, you get to call me Jon,” he said. Behind them the cart shifted with a crash as it burned itself out. Both Warne and Highfather spun, ignoring their injuries and leveled pistols at the blaze, guns cocked. Nothing emerged from the fire. Vellas’s corpse vomited black smoke into the night as the fire consumed it.

  “Town in danger, huh?” Highfather said. “We’re just about due for one of those.”

  The Three of Swords

  Professor Elias Zenith was used to dealing with the ignorant and the shortsighted. His work in expanding on the research of Luigi Galvani into fluidic transmission of electricity via the nerves throughout the body of an animal—so-called animal electricity—was seen with scorn and ridicule by the simpletons at the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, where he had acquired a teaching position after his troubles in Boston. “Just teach the classes on metallurgic analysis that we hired you to, Professor Zenith,” the rock-headed dean had rumbled. “You can work at your hobbies and scattershot theories outside the classroom, thank you very much.” The fool! The ant-brained imbecile! The “subtle fluid” was the key to mankind’s future, to making one as mighty Zeus of old.

  Zenith had to leave Boston when they discovered his Alessandro Volta–inspired battery experiments on the street urchins. It was unfair! He was so close to the realization of his dream. In his electrical utopia, Professor Zenith saw a world where those versed in the ways of science were immune to the dreary and dogmatic rules needed to govern the filthy mongrel mobs of chattel that would make up the brute servitor and experimental subject classes.

  After months of covert work in his filthy laboratory in the catacombs of the Boston sewers, Zenith had learned exactly the proper methods of application and the correct dosages of electrical energy to apply to the human body to break bones, disrupt the brain, stop hearts, make skin burn and cook internal organs. This addendum to the sum of human knowledge was purchased cheaply, by Zenith’s reasoning, with the lives of eighteen children, orphans living on the streets of Boston.

  An additional twenty-eight “subjects” died as he developed and refined his method to pump and maintain saline water in the subjects’ bodies and then add the proper chemical mixtures, along with copper wire implants to the brain, spine and heart, via catheters. The end result was an organic voltic pile—a living battery capable of storing and releasing electrical current. Granted the batteries tended to scream endlessly in agony until they caught fire and exploded from within, but in later models he would simply remove their vocal cords to eliminate that distracting byproduct. It was all a manner of fine-tuning the process to keep the batteries alive indefinitely. He was so close to achieving his life’s work, and it was so infuriating to have to pretend to hide his genius because the world was run by moral cowards without a shred of will to do what science demanded.

  So, when the letter arrived from California, written on sturdy, cured human skin, and told him that his longtime patron had taken an interest in seeing his work come to fruition and wanted to know if he would enjoy working with a bigger laboratory with many more test subjects, the professor agreed eagerly. He set out with a wagon full of his finest inventions, a human nervous system floating in a jar that he was tinkering with, and, of course, the token of his patron’s devotion and, dare he say it, love. Professor Zenith possessed the ninth one.

  The Nine of Cups

  Gillian Proctor felt very self-conscious as she waited in the darkness in the small stand of bushes behind Shultz’s General Store. A year ago she, Auggie and Clay had hidden here as they’d tried to avoid the hideous stained creatures their fellow townsfolk had been transformed into. Now she waited here to find out the truth about her future husband and the reason for his own transformation into a sullen stranger.

  Maude Stapleton had given her the idea the other day when the two were having coffee and discussing Gillian’s obvious upset.

  “I can’t spy on him. I love him, Maude,” Gillian had said. Maude Stapleton had a sadness and a wisdom in her eyes, and in the year since Maude’s husband, Arthur, had died, the two had become good friends. Gillian remembered how terrifying it had been to lose her own husband, Will, years ago and how difficult it could be to be a woman alone at the ragged edges of the world. Gillian knew Maude held secrets and didn’t press about them, but she also knew Maude was a good person and a good friend, and that was really all Gillian needed to know.

  “You love him, right?” Maude had asked as they sat on the porch of Gillian’s home, which she had turned into a boardinghouse to make ends meet after Will had died. The two had developed a ritual of having coffee and talking before they began their busy days.

  “With all my heart,” Gillian said. “He’s a decent, loving, caring man, the best man I ever met.”

  Maude nodded and sipped her coffee. “Auggie has been nothing but decent and as open as a book as long as I’ve known him,” she said. “So if he’s behaving this way, shutting you out, he’s in some kind of trouble and you and I both know very well that men think they can handle any trouble that comes their way and that they love to protect us ‘shrinking violets’ from it.”

  Gillian sighed and nodded.

  “You are probably right, but I can’t just meddle in his private business.”

  “When people you love are in trouble, you do what you have to do,” Maude said. “Often you discover what you are capable of when push comes to shove. It can surprise you.”

  “I wouldn’t even know how to,” G
illian said.

  Maude smiled. “Well, I might be able to give you a few suggestions.…”

  It was dark, except for the few sparse streetlights that had been lit about an hour ago, and Gillian was dressed in a very unfamiliar way for her. A dark shirt and dark trousers that had belonged to Will. She had a belt tied tight about her waist to hold the loose clothes on. Her hair was tied in a tight bun to stay out of her face. She felt like a skulking thief, but there was a thrill to this, she had to admit.

  There was a clatter of wagon wheels down Dry Well Road, behind her, then the sound of the wagon leaving the road to turn just past the Salvation Square flophouse that a former preacher, Christopher Marlowe, ran. There were worn ruts where so many delivery wagons and horses had taken the shortcut to gain access to the back doors. Folks joked that in a few more years, it would be its own unofficial little road running between Main and Dry Well.

  A wagon came into view and stopped behind Auggie’s store. The lone occupant was Clay Turlough. Clay climbed down from the seat and knocked on the back door to Auggie’s. After a moment Auggie appeared, grim faced and looking exhausted.

  “Clayton,” he said. “I … we need to talk. I am done with this madness. It is wrong, what you are doing is sick. Those girls…”

  Clay regarded Auggie, then shrugged. Gillian couldn’t see Clay’s face, but from Auggie’s pained expression, the odd inventor to whom emotion was a greater mystery than any science had let a tiny drop of hurt and disappointment slip from his visage for a second.

  “Suit yourself, Auggie.” Clay turned and headed back to the wagon. “I started this on my own and I can finish it on my own.”

  Auggie stepped out of the doorway. “Clay! You can’t do this, your health is poor, man, and since the fire … you can’t handle them alone. You need to…”

  Struggling, Clay managed to climb back into the wagon with great effort. “Tonight is the last one I need, by the dawn my work will be complete. I’ll manage, Auggie, don’t you fret. I know it’s a lot to ask of someone. I appreciate the help.”