Collateral Damage (Demon Squad Book 8) (21 page)

Then it was my turn. I grunted and threw the grapple with all my might, aiming it as best I could for the top of the closest rail car as my partners-in-crime had. It caught with a clunk, the sound bringing a smile to my face.

Unfortunately, momentum hated my happiness.

A sharp snap nearly ripped my shoulder from its socket, rope searing my wrist. I was airborne an instant later, my horse disappearing to be replaced by the furious whip of the ground flying by. I spied Mika as I swung toward the cars. If his scrunched expression was anything to go by, things were about to get worse.

And they did.

Unable to get my feet to the right angle, it was my back that collided with the side of the rail car. The impact shuddered through me. Every bone in my body turned to rubber, and I bounced away, eyes spinning in their sockets and my brain sloshing around inside my ringing skull. Reality crept in just as I hit the end my rope. My eyes shuttered into focus as my momentum was redirected, sending me flying back toward the train. Only that time it wasn’t just the train waiting.

One of the car’s windows had been levered open, curtains ripped aside by the wind. The dark barrels of a shotgun took aim, following my trajectory. A man with a grim smile sat behind the trigger. I could have sworn I heard the hammers
clack
back. Panic grabbed hold.

I twisted against the rope, sending myself into a spin. There was the muffled bark of gunfire, and I felt the heat of the shotgun pellets that flew past my cheek like a swarm of angry hornets. I ducked away, and then found myself facing down the other barrel, which hovered just feet away. There was nowhere to go.

The gunman pulled the second trigger just as I hit into the open window. Both of us screamed at the same time. I’d come in so quickly that he hadn’t been able to fire until my side slammed into the shotgun. He unleashed hell into my ribs, but the pressure backfired down the barrel. It erupted in a fury of shot and sparks. My head cracked against the window frame, adding to the joy of being shot, as momentum flung me into the rail car, shards of glass flying. I landed heavily on the gunman, knocking what little wind he had left out of him. He grunted as we bounced across a wooden seat and hit the floor. My arm hung twisted at my back, the rope still attached. Blood ran down my wrist, and the charred scent of toasted flesh filled my nose.

I reached back to loosen the rope just as the door flew open at the back of the car. Pistols burst through the door first, followed by the guys holding them. Men of few words, they communicated in bullets. I ducked away but a sharp tug on my leash pulled me through the shattered window. A girly shriek pried its way past my lips, and I was in the in the air again, a battered marionette with only one string. The men inside the car raced to the window and fired.

I didn’t so much as hear the reports as my rope was tugged once again, a gust of air swinging me up over the top of the rail car where the slack played out, and I found myself up close and personal with the steel roof of the rail car. Bells rang somewhere in the distance of my cloudy brain. I resisted the urge to vomit.

When I looked up, Unktowa stood there holding the other side of my rope. He shook his head and muttered something.

“He say you make drunken, three-legged buffalo with Hoof in Mouth look nimble.”

I slipped the rope from around my wrist with a hiss, layers of skin going with it. May Lin crouched nearby, her robes fluttering out behind her. There was no compassion in her narrow eyes.

“Well, boy, there ain’t no question they know we’re here now,” Clay said. He checked the load in his rifle.

“Think so?” My head hurt so bad my asshole puckered, and my side felt as if I’d gotten romantic with a leprous porcupine. All I wanted to do was lie there and whimper for a few minutes, but that was clearly too much to ask. A bullet ripped through the roof about three feet from where we gathered.

Cletus pointed to the smoking hole. “Yeah, I’m thinking you’re right, Clay.”

May Lin dropped off the front edge of the train before Cletus even got the words all the way out.

“We best get to movin’,” Clay shouted after seeing her disappear, not waiting to see if anyone was paying attention. Cletus and Unktowa darted off, leaping across the space between the rail cars to land on the other side. The wind whipped the Indian’s hair out behind him as though he were wearing a cape.

There was a metallic
clunk
from between the cars, and Mika and I had the same thought at the same time. He shot off first, all ashy elbows and brown asshole.

“Shit!” I shouted as I chased after him. The car beneath me rocked, and I spied the distance between the two inching wider. My heart hit my throat as I jumped. I almost thanked God—
almost
—when my feet landed flush on the roof where the others stood, my palms slapping down on the steel and scrabbling for a handhold. I looked back with a slow exhalation.

The car I’d just been standing on eased away from the other, the line of them behind it going as well, unshackled from the engine by May Lin. She popped back up alongside us just as the train rumbled into Tombstone. Wide eyes stared as we clacked past the station, heads snapping to follow our hurtling passage. I pulled my gaze from the rapidly disappearing pedestrians and cast them forward. A short line of three cars splayed out before us, not counting the coal car and engine. Billows of blackened ash spewed from the stack, dark, acrid clouds tearing by us.

“Which one is it in?” I asked.

Clay shrugged. “Could be any of them.”

“That’s helpful,” I muttered under my breath. These yokels were gnawing on my nerves.

“I think we oughta—” was all Cletus got out before our choices got taken out of our hands.

Red-skinned natives climbed over the sides onto the roof, but they were no ordinary Indians.

Naked, with all their bits and pieces swaying loose and all over, they crawled like spiders spilling from a nest. They carried no weapons but their bodies gleamed with jagged shards of glass, which had been embedded into every spare piece of skin. Sharp pieces were buried in each of their fingertips, glistening claws that gleamed in the fading sunlight. Blues eyes glowed in their sockets as the Indians advanced in ominous silence.

“Manitou!” Unktowa shouted. There was no mistaking the fear that etched his expression. Had to give him credit, though. He stood his ground.

Clay blasted the first of the things off the train, putting a bullet right between its shiny eyes. “What the hell are these critters?”

Mika sidestepped one and sent it plummeting over the edge. “Spirits trapped in flesh by powerful shaman,” he answered while pulling his pistol free of its holster. “Bad, bad stuff.”

It didn’t get much more obvious than that.

I blasted one in the chest, but it kept coming, grinning a mirthless smile. It swung a claw at me, and I ducked under it, shooting it in the nuts and then the face. The Manitou stumbled back and was whipped away by the wind.

May Lin danced along the roof of the car, her sword a silver sheen that was barely visible. Severed limbs fell in her wake.

“They feel no pain so long as Manitou possesses the body.” Mika shot another of the spirits made flesh, blowing its knee away so that it toppled.

Unktowa grabbed two by their necks and smashed their skulls together, flinging them aside as though they were broken toys. They just kept coming, though. For every one we cast to the cruel whims of gravity, another took its place, the host bodies pouring out of the windows of the car beneath us. We were being pushed back toward the center of the roof. Even May Lin had ceded ground against the wave of creeping spirits.

“We ain’t gonna get nowheres like this,” Cletus shouted even though he didn’t need to, his voice ringing in my ears.

I unloaded my first pistol in the face of a Manitou that slipped past the others. It stared at me without emotion while it stumbled backward into the rest of the horde, the spirit host pushed aside by the others as they continued their relentless march forward.

“Unktowa!” Clay shouted. I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and realized the cowboy was pointing at me.

“Wait. What are you—?”

The huge Indian grabbed me from behind and lifted me bodily into the air over his head, answering my unfinished question with terror. Before I could do anything to stop the giant, he tossed me. Too surprised to scream, I stared helplessly as I flew over the heads of the Manitou, their blue eyes locked straight ahead, and landed with a dull
thump
on the roof of the neighboring car.

“Get that sonsabitch Mares,” Clay shouted at me. “We’ll hold these things off.” He shot another of the spirits as I watched before turning back to me. “Go on, now, boy. Get!”

I lingered for another couple of seconds but what Clay wanted me to do made sense. If Mares was the
shaman
controlling the Manitou, then stopping him would probably release the spirits. That thought in my head, I glanced over the edge to confirm there weren’t any more bogeys waiting down there, and then dropped between the cars. My feet hit the platform with a loud, metallic clang, but luck was with me. The Manitou swarmed just the other side of the windowed door but none came storming out.

Time against me, I pulled open the door to the next car and ducked low, slipping inside with my gun leading the way. The cold steel of a gun barrel was pressed against my skull just as I cleared the door.

“”We meet again, heathen. Drop the gun.” There was no mistaking the Reverend’s gritty voice or the righteous fury in it.

I straightened slowly after setting the pistol on the floor. “You don’t actually believe your daughter was a virgin before I came across her, do you?”

The trigger creaked under Ansell’s finger. Maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to say right then. I glanced over at him to see his forehead and nose swollen and red, both eyes yellowed with the hint of bruising. His cheeks were flushed with anger.

“You will not cast aspersions on my daughter’s innocence ever again.” He pressed the barrel harder against my skull, and I could hear his teeth grinding. “I’ll be certain to thank Mr. Mares for the opportunity to mete out justice.”

The good old Reverend hadn’t learned his lesson the last time. I twisted my head just as he squeezed the trigger. The gun roared beside my ear, deafening me, but that was better than having my brains splattered across the windows.

A sweep of my hand knocked the Reverend’s pistol clear, and I drew my second gun, slamming the barrel into his throat. He
urked
and dropped to a knee. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and lifted him to his feet, placing my gun against the base of his skull.

“Relax, Reverend, and you’ll live to go home to your family.”

Ansell grunted something noncommittal, probably because he was still choking on the insides of his throat, but I didn’t give him time to find his pride. I thumbed the hammer back, and he stiffened.

Last thing I wanted to do was kill the man. He might well be a gullible father twisted around the finger of his little girl, but that wasn’t anything to die over. He’d been fooled but it hadn’t been by me. If he’d be reasonable for just a couple minutes, we’d both walk away with all our pieces.

I nudged him forward, still clutching to his neck. “Let’s go talk to Mares and get this bucket of bolts slowed down so I can let you off to go about your business. How’s that sound?”

It wasn’t the Reverend that answered.

“That’s not going to happen, demon spawn.”

I looked past the preacher’s shoulder to see an older man slip through the far door. Dressed in all black, a flowing duster was draped over his shoulders. His eyes glinted with a subtle blue. The casual waft of magic that tingled against my senses confirmed what I’d already guessed. This was Mares. His hand hovered near his waist, his pistol pointed my direction.

“Easy with the name calling, wizard,” I answered. “I’m a might sensitive. Wouldn’t want me to have to shoot someone because you hurt my feelings, now would you? That would weigh on your conscience something fierce, I imagine.”

Mares chuckled, the sound setting his Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat. His gray eyebrows narrowed as he stared at me, his age-lined but clean shaven face contorted into a look of disdain and amusement all at the same time. It was impressive, I had to admit.

He grinned. “Not hardly.” A shot burst from his revolver.

The Reverend’s solid frame in front , I just ducked a little lower figuring Mares wouldn’t blast his own flunky just to get little old me. And I was right—

—sort of.

The bullet that flew from his gun glowed with a cerulean brilliance. Before I could figure out what he’d done, the bullet dodged around the Reverend and hit me in the gut. The blow knocked me back. I slammed into the door, glass shattering, just as the pain of the shot registered. Ansell stumbled forward, my restraining grip gone. My eyes darted to my stomach to see blood and black ooze gush from the wound. I could taste copper, fog crowding the inside of my skull.

A blur of motion in front of me drew my gaze back to Mares and the Reverend. Ansell grinned, having collected the pistol I’d laid on the floor. The ugly black O of the revolver spit fire. Two shots slammed into my chest. The wall creaked behind me as my full weight was knocked into it, but its support kept me standing. Agony seared through my veins, but it was nothing compared to the rage that followed.