Dead Man’s Hand (41 page)

Obviously Will was a fire demon, like Stewart. They’d been euchred.

“William!” a voice called from the cabin. “Bring her in.”

The boy grabbed Lily by the hair and dragged her to the cabin door. He pulled it open
and shoved her through, his gun at her neck.

Nate and Stewart faced off inside. Nate glanced at Lily. Then he looked away.

“Seems we have your girl,” Stewart said.

Nate grunted.

“William here tells me you’re fond of her,” Stewart continued. “That you would, I
presume, not wish to see any harm befall her.”

Another grunt.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Now, as I’m sure you know, there’s many a man who’d pay
handsomely to mount Nathaniel Cooper’s head on his wall. But I have a buyer who’d
prefer you alive. He’s quite interested in your special skills. There aren’t nearly
enough of your kind out here. So here’s what I’ll do. You come with me and we’ll take
the girl, too. None of my men will harm her. And, yes, I have men. Or half-men, half-demons,
rather.” Stewart raised his voice. “Bob? Jesse?”

Two answering shouts came from outside. Nate took advantage of the pause to glance
at Lily again. She held his gaze before he turned away.

Stewart continued, “As you see, there is little sense in running, although I’m quite
certain you won’t attempt it, so long as we have your pretty mate—”

Nate spun and fired… right at Lily’s chest. She managed only a strangled gasp of shock
before slumping to the floor.

* * *

Theodore Stewart stared down at the girl’s body, her shirt bloody, limbs akimbo, sightless
eyes staring up.

In the world of supernaturals, it was generally accepted that Nathaniel Cooper was
a bastard. That was true of most of his breed—violent, unsociable loners. But even
among them, Cooper was renowned as a heartless son of a whore. Still, William had
said he was fond of the girl.
Very
fond of her.

Apparently, William had been mistaken.

Stewart crouched to close the girl’s eyes. He ought to have foreseen this. William
was but a boy and didn’t understand the ways of men. And yet Stewart had still been
caught unaware by Cooper’s move, which was exactly what the bastard intended. He’d
killed the girl and then fired off a second round at Stewart as he bolted out the
door.

As Stewart rose, the door banged open and William strode in.

“You get him?” Stewart asked.

“Not yet. Jesse and Bob are tracking him. I reckoned I ought to make sure he didn’t
circle back and try to collect on his bounty.” William walked to the girl. “Damnation.
She was a pretty painted cat. I was really hoping to get a poke.” He nudged the girl’s
arm with his boot. Then he bent and touched it. “She’s still warm.” His gaze traveled
over the body. “You think it’d be all right if I—”

“No. Get outside and scout.”

Stewart waited until William left. Then he looked down at the girl. The boy was right.
She was finer than anything he’d seen in a while.

He fingered the bottom of her shirt. He wouldn’t do
that
, of course. That was disgusting. But there was nothing wrong with taking a look.

Stewart unfastened her bottom button and then the next one, slowly peeling back her
shirt. Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught a movement, but before he could lift
his head, a hand grabbed him by the throat and threw him across the room.

* * *

Lily reflected that this was perhaps not the most opportune moment to end her performance.
Yet she wasn’t about to play dead while he disrobed her.

Her side blazed as she sprang to her feet. Bullets hurt, no matter how good a shot
Nate was and how careful he’d been to shoot her where there was little risk of serious
injury. Her eyes stung, too, from staring at the ceiling until Stewart had done the
Christian thing and closed her eyelids. She supposed she ought to have shut them herself,
but she knew that open eyes would be the most damning proof of her death, and she
was a fine enough actress to manage it.

Stewart was still lying on the floor, dazed, trying to figure out how he’d arrived
there, clear across the room. When he saw Lily coming at him, he only gaped.

Lily yanked Stewart’s gun from his holster and tossed it aside. Only then did Stewart
snap out of it. He caught her by the arm, his fingers flaring red-hot, fresh pain
scorching through her already-burned arm. She ignored it and grabbed him by the neck.
His eyes bulged as she squeezed. They bulged even more as her hand began to change,
palm roughening, nails turning into thick claws.

“You didn’t expect this?” she said as she lifted him from the floor. “You
did
call me his mate.”

“No. You can’t be—”

“Do you smell that?” Lily turned her face, nose lifting. “I do believe we’re about
to have company.”

The door flew open and Will stumbled in.

“Cooper,” he said, panting. “It’s Cooper. He’s…”

He saw them, her hand around Stewart’s throat. His mouth worked. He had one hand still
on the door. Then it crashed open, sending Will scrambling out of the way as a massive
wolf charged in. The beast’s nostrils flared. Its gaze swung to Lily. Then, with a
grunt, the beast tore after Will as he dashed for Stewart’s gun, his own obviously
lost.

Will made it halfway across the room before the wolf leaped on him. He hit the floor
and rolled onto his back. His hands shot up, fingers blazing. The wolf’s jaws swung
down and ripped out his throat.

“
No
,” Stewart whispered as Will’s life’s blood spurted onto the floorboards. His gaze
shifted to Lily. “I have money.”

“And so will we, when we collect the bounty on you.”

“Whatever they said I did, it isn’t true. I have enemies. Lying sons of whores—”

“A Kansas wagon train two years back,” she said. “A train full of settlers massacred
and left for the buzzards, after your gang had some sport with the womenfolk.”

“I… Wagon train? No. That wasn’t…” He trailed off. “I have money. More than any bounty—”

“I’ll take the bounty,” she said and snapped his neck.

* * *

“Stop grumbling,” Lily said as Nate daubed her bullet wound with a wet cloth. “I told
you to shoot me.”

Which she had, mouthing it when he’d glanced at her during the standoff. That did
not, she understood, make him feel any better about the situation.

“It passed clean through,” she said. “We heal quickly. I won’t want to shift for a
few days, but I’ll be fine otherwise.”

He still grumbled. She leaned forward and brushed her lips across his forehead.

“I need to be more careful,” he said.

“We both will be.”

“That boy…” A growl as he glanced at Will’s body. “I ought not to have been duped.”

“We both were. We’ll have a talk with Wilcox about this. He was the one who asked
us to take the boy. And he was the one who set us on Stewart.”

Another growl.

“We’ll have satisfaction,” Lily murmured. “In the meantime, presuming those half-demons
were from Stewart’s old gang, we ought to be able to collect bounties on them, too.”

Nate grunted. The prospect, she knew, did not cheer him immediately, but it would,
after she’d recovered and he’d finished chastising himself for letting them be bamboozled.

“You did well,” he said as he dressed her wound.

“I’ve not forgotten how to act,” she said with a smile. “And you gave me all the other
skills I required.”

It had taken work to convince him to share his curse with her. Eventually, he’d come
to realize that the only way a werewolf’s mate could be safe was if she was truly
his mate. The process, as he’d warned, had not been easy. The life, too, was not easy.
But she would never regret it. Lily knew what she wanted—the man, the life, the person
she wanted to be. And she had it. All of it.

“We ought to hurry,” she said. “The boys will be waiting back at the inn by now.”
She paused. “Do you think they heard anything before they left?”

Nate snorted.

Lily laughed. “Yes, they’re not the cleverest of lads. Which is the way we like them.”
She got to her feet. “Let me find a clean shirt.”

She looked at him, still naked after shifting back from wolf form. “And we’d best
find your clothing. Although…” Her gaze traveled down his body. “The boys
are
very patient. I suppose they wouldn’t mind waiting a mite longer.”

Willie Kennard rode into the town of Duffy dangerously late, looking back over his
shoulder at the height of the sun and squinting. He dropped down from the old mare
he’d borrowed off Wilson Hayes and hitched her to a post.

Every step shifted two days’ dust and grit off his long coat, and his thighs ached
so bad it felt like he’d been punched in the groin.

“You’re a fool to walk into Duffy,” the old Pawnee man Willie had hired as tracker
muttered when they’d split up outside of town on the bluff. “Once night comes, you
won’t need to be worrying about your quarry. It’s the town that’ll get you. They’ll
string you up. Whether or not you’re wearing a silver badge.”

Judging by the stares the white folk sitting outside the hotel gave him, Willie knew
it was truth.

“Help you?” an older man with a long beard asked in a hard voice.

“Looking for the sheriff,” Willie said. “I need his help finding a man that might
be hiding somewhere around these parts.”

“What kind of man?” the old timer asked. It was a pointed question.

“The murdering kind,” Willie said.

“Sheriff’s at the Longfellow Ranch,” said a dapper man crossing the wooden slatted
walkway. He looked to be a store owner of some kind, in his carefully pressed suit.

“Now why’d you go tell him that?” spat the old man.

“Cuz he’s a Marshal, Pat. You see his star?” the shopkeeper said. “And cuz it’s getting
late.”

They glared at each other, and then the old man pointed a wizened, crooked finger
down the other side of town. “Ranch is down that way.”

Willie looked down the dusty road, sunk deep with wheel tracks and horse shit. Then
he looked back over his shoulder at the sun, moving toward the horizon.

Best to get on with it. He sighed.

He tapped a finger to his hat at the younger gentleman and made his way back to the
horse.

As he rode past, he asked, “What’s the sheriff doing at the ranch?”

“Indians mutilated the cattle,” spat the old man. “Damned heathens.”

Willie spurred the horse into an awkward gallop, the best it could manage, leaving
a plume of dust in the air that set the old man coughing.

* * *

Willie rode up onto the ranch hard. The damned horse was heaving and bitching about
the work, but he didn’t pay it much mind. Dropped out of the saddle while the mare
still trotted down to a slower pace, left it with a muzzle flecked with foam and turning
circles in the dirt.

His boots scuffed up dust as he ran for the door, glancing around.

“Hello Longfellow Ranch!” he shouted, right hand dropped low to brush aside his coat.
He put a palm to the Colt’s grip.

The faded gray wood of the door creaked as it opened slightly. “Who’s that?”

“I’m looking for the Sheriff of Duffy,” Willie said. “I’m Marshal Willie Kennard.”

“Marshal?” A ruddy face frowned from the gap in the door, looking out at Willie. “Never
seen a negro Marshal before.”

“Don’t imagine there’re many of us,” Willie said. He tapped the silver star. “But
here I am, nonetheless.”

The dark green eyes flicked down, noted his draw stance through the crack in the doorway.
“You seem agitated, Marshal Kennard. Mind if I ask why?”

“Been tracking a murderer through the scrub a couple days,” Willie said. “Tracked
him to Duffy. Hoping I could rely on your help.”

With a horrible creaking sound, the door opened the rest of the way. “I’m Sheriff
Bostick Keen. Come on in, I’m talking to Dr. Longfellow here about what happened to
his cattle recently.”

Willie’d seen them on the way in. The cattle ripped open, ribs exposed and drying
in the sun, tongues lolling.

“Dr. Longfellow is getting us a drink of water,” the sheriff said.

Sheriff Keen had a puffy, round face but was a stick of a man, really. Wind-swept
lean. Meant he didn’t hide in his office, but walked out in the windy grit. Did his
job.

Willie respected that.

Dr. Longfellow came back into the room with a tray of glasses and a pitcher filled
with water fresh from the well. Beads of sweat rolled down the rounded belly of the
pitcher.

The ranch owner bent forward to pick up a glass and fill it.

Willie stared at the man’s neck.

Before the sheriff could move, Willie drew. As Dr. Longfellow straightened, he looked
at the barrel of the Colt, as if for a second fascinated by it.

The gunshot filled the room with its violent crack, and Dr. Longfellow’s brains splattered
out across the wall behind him. Only, the brain tissue was all wrong. Black goo, filled
with insect-like fragments that dripped down toward the ground. No blood. What looked
like a wasp’s stinger the size of a thumb was stuck fast in the plaster.

Sheriff Keen screamed like a child, raising his hands in front of him, then recovering
and reaching for his gun. “What the hell…” he started to say, then stopped and looked
at the oversized stinger. It twitched and wriggled slowly. Not a slow man, he realized
something wasn’t right. “What was that in his head? What was that?”

Willie pulled his left piece out and aimed it at him. “Turn around,” he ordered.

The sheriff took a deep breath, his eyes wild and wide. “No.”

Willie cocked his head. “No?”

“If you gonna kill me, do it right to my face.”

“Most likely, I won’t kill you,” Willie said. “But I do want to see the back of your
neck. If you don’t show it to me, chances are you do end up dying. I gotta make sure
you’re not like him. You understand?”