Dust of the Damned (9781101554005) (19 page)

She rapped her hand against the shutter and scolded, “Chico, you randy rascal. Get away! Go on! This is private business! Go find a hollow to curl up in, and I’ll see you in the morning!”

The eyes blazed, then dulled, as the head lowered and slowly
withdrew against the hulking body behind it. Charlie could hear the crunch of gravel and brush beneath the beast’s taloned feet, smell the hot, stony breath and the general, indescribable sweetness and musk of the creature’s ungainly body. Oddly, it sort of smelled like burnt squash.

There was a deep-throated groaning sound, and then the beast gained flight and rose up over the desert. The voices of the other three men could be heard in the near distance as they sat around a fire out there. They had finished long ago with the girl, though her screams had taken a long time dying and had added to Charlie’s efforts at staying attentive to the rapacious Ravenna.

“Right protective, ain’t he?”

“Shh!” Ravenna dropped her rump to his thighs and waggled around on him, sandwiching his face in her beringed hands, pressing her fingers hard against his temples. “Finish me!”

Charlie groaned and squeezed her breasts as she began pummeling him wildly once more.

After he’d brought her to the heights of passion, during which she mewled like a bobcat and fairly shredded his chest to ribbons with her fingernails, she kissed his nose and rolled onto her back beside him. “There is nothing like riding a wolf!” she said huskily, regaining her wind. “I love the savage in you, Charlie.”

“I was about to return the compliment, Ravenna.”

She chuckled and patted his thigh as she reached over to a crude wooden table beside the bed for two long, thin cigars, one of which she gave to Charlie. He rose up on his butt, adjusted the water-stained, corn-shuck pillow covered in blue-striped ticking, and stuck the cigar between his lips.

Ravenna fired a stove match to life on the table and slid the flame toward Charlie. It danced in her brown eyes. “You like
your new powers? To be able to change at will—even during the day? Someday, you will change even when there is no moon to be found!”

As Charlie puffed his cheroot to life, Ravenna lit her own cigar, which was sticking out from between her perfect white teeth.

“Yeah, well, you see, that’s what I been meaning to talk to you about, Ravenna.” He inspected the cigar’s glowing coal and blew smoke out his nostrils. “Ya see, a coupla the boys had a hard time changing a little earlier. Curly Joe made a complete fool o’ himself jumpin’ off the stage thinkin’ he’d be landin’ on four feet instead of two. The kid coulda hurt hisself.”

Ravenna laughed.

Raw fury boiled up in Charlie. His face darkened, and his eyelids drooped. His jaw hinges dimpled, and he reached over the side of the bed and brought up a big skinning knife he’d found in the station, the blade flashing umber in the light from the little sheet-iron stove burning piñon pine in the corner.

Tossing his stubbed-out cigar on the floor, he rolled toward Ravenna, grabbed a fistful of her hair with one hand, using it to pull her head back hard against her pillow, and slid the knife up tight against her throat.

“Listen, you crazy little
puta
bitch, you make a fool o’ Charlie Hondo and I’ll be the last wolf you ever ride into ecstasy. You got that?”

Her two brown eyes stared up at him fearlessly.

The fury burned brighter behind Charlie’s heart. He was accustomed to his threats evoking fear and trembling in women.

“Back in Dodge, you told me you knew where the Lord of Darkness is buried. You told me you’d not only get me there but
see that his powers become mine.” Charlie spat through gritted teeth. “Are you just bullshittin’ me, Ravenna? Is this all just fun and games to you ’cause you’re bored and lookin’ to tumble with a werewolf?”

His brows bunched suddenly. A sharp fear shone in Charlie’s eyes. He gulped and slowly relaxed his grip on the witch’s hair. His palm gripping the horn handle of the skinning knife turned soft and spongy.

Beneath the covers and way down past his belly, there was a sharp pressure against his balls. He couldn’t see what was causing such a minor but menacing pain, but he could picture the slender stiletto, no doubt as sharp as Charlie’s own knife, snugged up taut against his scrotum.

One twitch of the witch’s hand, and he’d be howling in the pitch of a she-bitch forever.

Chapter 18
    

THE POWER OF EURICO

Ravenna kept her placid eyes on him and applied just a little more pressure to his balls.

“You’ve made a mistake, Charlie.” She blinked, quirked her mouth corners menacingly. “Don’t let it be your last.”

Charlie’s heart skipped a beat. He, of course, had been bluffing. He’d just wanted to put some fear into the girl. She, of course, was not bluffing, and appeared to be yearning to stick that pig poker clear through his pelvis till it was showing through his asshole.

What they had here was akin to a Mexican standoff.

“Now, now,
chiquita
,” he cautioned, pulling the knife away and releasing her hair, “can’t you take a little funnin’?”

“Sometimes my sense of humor is sorely lacking, Charlie.” She grinned delightedly and kept the stiletto pressed tight against his balls for several more seconds, which felt to Charlie
like hours, before withdrawing it, throwing her covers back, and dropping her feet to the floor.

Naked, full breasts jostling, her skin resembling varnished oak in the fire’s umber light, she set the stiletto on the table and walked over to the stove. “I hope I haven’t made a mistake about you, Charlie.” She stooped to grab a piñon log off the floor beside the stove. “I chose you for this excursion as much as you chose me. In fact, I’ve been looking for you…or a beast like you…for years, ever since I learned about Eurico myself. I never wanted you for
you
, Charlie. You fool! I thought you were aware of that.” She glanced at him in disbelief. “I wanted you for the
wolf
in you!”

Gruffly, she tossed the wood into the stove, then swung around so that her dark, magnificent body, all its womanly curves silhouetted against the crackling fire behind her, faced him. Gold hoop rings similar to Charlie’s own dangled from her ears.

“If you knew the real secrets of Eurico, you would realize that. If you knew the kind of powers Eurico will unleash once we’ve found his last resting place and I use my powers given to me by Elyhann to awaken him, you would know I would not trifle with you, Charlie.”

Charlie studied her, incredulous. He’d known about Eurico since he’d first been turned into a werewolf, when he was six years old, hunting in the forest with his father and brothers, and was bitten by one who lived near their Romanian estate. Most who changed gradually grew aware of Eurico. He was like a soft whisper in your ear, a dream you could never get ahold of.

The desire to learn more could become almost as strong as erotic passion, consuming, filled with the promise that if you
could know Eurico—the Lord of Darkness, the
first
beast, the
ruler
of all beasts—the power of all the dark magic in the universe would be yours. That was all Charlie knew.

And now that he knew that the Lord of Darkness was real and could be found somewhere in the known world, he had to find him. This bewitching sorceress, whom he’d met in a smoky saloon in Dodge City during a drunken debauch just days before he’d been run aground by a passel of bounty hunters who recognized his face from wanted circulars, was going to take him to this formidable ruler of all.

He wasn’t sure what would happen, but he felt he knew that at least part of Eurico’s ancient, formidable power would be within his grasp, and he and his kith would no longer be at the mercy of mortals. Nor the cycle of the moon…

“Well, hell,” Charlie said, abashed. “Why’s our powers growing weaker?”

“Because
I’m
growing weaker.” Bewitchingly cupping one of her pointed, upthrust breasts in one hand, she extended a finger at the window near Charlie. “
Cristo!
I conjured Chico up from twelve eons. That takes a lot out of a girl! I am sorry if the powers I provided you and your compadres are weakening, but I am in human form now, and the powers I derive from Elyhann must ooze through my human vessel—splendid as it is.”

She walked toward the bed, rolling her hips, breasts and hair jostling as she moved, and sat on the edge of it, bringing one long, dusky leg up beneath her. She leaned toward Charlie, hair spilling over one breast, and smiled brightly in the dimness.

“But when we conjure Eurico, all the black magic in this world and many others will be yours, and you and your kind, Charlie, will not only shapeshift at will but will have the humans
cowering beneath their beds for all ages to come. Your kind ruled once and lived in great cities together, before Eurico was defeated by a spirit even darker and more powerful than himself. But that spirit is long dead on a dead world turned to dust so long ago that even the oldest witches no longer remember its spells and hexes. Your kind will rule again. And if all goes as I’ve planned, you will rule supreme!”

Charlie grinned slowly and placed the cigar between his teeth, leaning back against the wooden headboard. “I like the sound of that.” He frowned. “But…what do you hope to get from all this,
chiquita
?”

“A witch who can tap into the black magic of Eurico, Charlie, will be the most powerful witch in the world. Wolves and witches, Charlie, will rule the universe.” She reached out and placed her hand on his crotch. “Won’t we be stomping with our tails up then, amigo?”

Charlie started to reach for her but stopped when the rataplan of distant hooves sounded outside. Several horses, moving at a gallop, were hammering along the trail from the west.

Charlie sat up slowly, listening, hearing the voices of his own men grow as the hoof thuds continued getting louder. He looked out the window over the woodstove but could see only the glow of the other men’s fire in the front yard and the stars showing faintly in the desert sky beyond.

The hoof thuds stopped, and now unfamiliar voices sounded.

Charlie smiled wolfishly as he leaned back against the headboard once more, crooking an arm behind him. “I reckon the fellas at the next relay station must’ve gotten around to missin’ the stage. Not to worry. Curly Joe, One-Eye, and Lucky’ll take care of ’em.”

“
Sí
, but I hope they are not expecting to change. My powers are plumb sapped out, Charlie. The spell is weak and grows weaker. Even Chico might be heading back to where he came from soon.”

“Shit!”

Charlie sighed as he swung his legs to the floor, pulled on his long underwear suit, and wrapped his shell belt around his waist, quickly securing the holster thong to his thigh. Ravenna lay back on the bed, drawing the covers up and pensively puffing her cigar as Charlie stomped into his boots. Hearing the voices in the yard growing louder, he pushed through the little sleeping quarters’ curtained doorway and tramped into the main part of the cabin. He pulled the front door open and stepped out into the chill night air, stopping on the station house’s rickety front stoop.

About twenty feet straight out lay his partners’ fire, around which the boys’ gear was piled and eating utensils were strewn. A coffeepot smoked as it sat on a hot rock near the dancing flames.

To the right of the fire, Curly Joe, One-Eye, and Lucky stood facing the three burly men sitting their snorting, nickering horses and pulling back on the mounts’ reins to keep them in check. The butts of holstered pistols jutted from behind the newcomers’ jacket flaps. Rifles were snugged down in their saddle boots. None of Charlie’s own three men was wearing his pistol belt or even held so much as a pigsticker in his hand.

They were relying on their newfound and irresistible abilities to change at will.

The middle man in the group of newcomers was saying,
“… All I can tell you fellas is we been waitin’ on the stage, and
there she sits, and we’re just naturally wonderin’ why in thunder it’s still
here
.”

The man on the far right neck-reined his horse away from the group and galloped off across the trail and into the desert beyond, where coyotes were howling and snarling. He’d likely soon come across the dead station men and the girl.

“All right, all right, there, fellas,” Charlie said, stepping down off the stoop and making his spurs ring as he walked toward the newcomers. “I think I can straighten this all out, make it all real simple and clear.”

“Is that right?” said the chunky man who appeared to be the leader, whose unshaven face shone red-brown in the firelight. He wore no glove on his right hand, and that hand was splayed across his wool-clad right thigh, near the handle of the big Smith & Wesson jutting up from the holster nearly concealed by his buckskin coat. “And how is it you’re gonna be able to do that when these three can’t?”

“Hey, Burt.” The voice came from the desert, crisp and clear and sullen on the night air. “Think I found ’em.”

Charlie looked at the man called Burt and grinned. Burt’s eyes widened and shone like gold coins in the firelight as his right hand jerked toward the walnut butt of the big Smithy.