Hell's Marshal (3 page)

Frank saw his point. “Anything else?”

“Don’t eat. Your body will rebuild its exterior to match this pattern, but it won’t function right. Eating will hog-tie your insides. It’s your soul maintaining the re-animation, not normal body functions, so eating will only make a mess of things. You’ll breathe just to maintain appearances, but your heart will never beat again.”

“Can’t drink?”

“Not even water.”

“Damn, I was hoping for a whiskey.”

Buzzy darted to a cabinet, Frank following.

“You can’t bring back his soul without some help.”

He jerked open a door on one of the closer cabinets. Inside sat a box of Colt .45 caliber bullets, a rope, a set of shiny steel wrist irons, and a cheap-looking bottle of whiskey with a hooker on the label. Buzzy picked up the rope, tying it quickly into a lasso.

“All these items are made to help you send Jesse James’ soul back to the underworld, where the judges can deal with him.” He spun the lasso’s loop over his head, bringing it down around Frank’s neck. “If you can rope him with this lariat, it’ll pull the spirit from the host body, keeping it hostage until you get back here.”

“I’m no rancher. I can’t use one of those.”

Buzzy’s hands flew over the rope in blurs.

“You might be more familiar with this knot.”

Frank lifted the rope from his shoulders, frowning at the hangman’s noose the older man had tied.

“Won’t that kill the host?”

“They all kill the host. Only exorcism keeps them alive, though usually not much more than a potted plant.”

Frank turned to hide his grimace, but the other man had seen it.

“Oh, did you think you’d be saving the victim? Whoever they are, they’re already good as dead, Frank. A shell of who they used to be, nothing more than an empty husk holding his soul. Once you’re tainted with that kind of evil, nothing can save you.”

He pulled the whiskey bottle out and handed it to Frank.

“If you can get him to drink even a drop of this, it’ll capture his soul in the bottle until you bring him back. That might be tricky, though, since it’ll capture you, too, if you drink it. And he’ll be suspicious if you won’t drink with him.”

“What if I pour it on him? Break the bottle on his head or something?”

Buzzy shook his head. “It’ll hurt real bad for a minute—the whiskey has Holy Water in it—but then he’ll just be mad as a hornet. You gotta get it inside him.”

Frank nodded and made a mental note.

Next, Buzzy handed him the gleaming wrist irons. They didn’t come with a key.

“Let me guess,” he said, “slap these on the host and they drive the spirit out.”

Buzzy shook his head. “Opposite. Traps the spirit in the body so it can’t leave when you…uh…”

He made a finger gun and pointed it at Frank’s head.

“Until I kill the victim. Seems like I’m more of an executioner than a marshal.”

Buzzy looked Frank in the eye. “You do have a certain reputation. Your skill set suits this mission perfectly.”

“You needed a killer, not a lawman.”

“Not me, friend. The judges.”

Frank shrugged. “Then a killer is what they’ll get.”

Finally, Buzzy handed Frank the box of bullets. Frank opened it and found one bullet inside.

“That’s a last resort weapon,” Buzzy said. “Only use it if you have no other choice.”

Frank narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

The old man shifted on his feet. It was a subtle movement, one Frank might have missed had he blinked, but it happened.

“You see, this one bullet won’t contain a soul, or incapacitate it. Won’t knock it out or return it to the underworld. This bullet will destroy the soul, burn it out of existence and leave a gaping hole in the universe where it used to be. It’ll stop James’ reign of terror in the living world, but destroying a soul makes a lot of noise down here in the underworld, and in—”

He let the sentence hang there between them.

“And in Hell, too?”

Buzzy nodded.

“So the Boss-man will find out?” Frank pressed.

Another nod.

“So, when
should
I use this magic bullet?”

“Never.”

Frank gave him a flat stare.

“Then why the Sam-Hell are you giving it to me?”

Buzzy closed the now-empty cabinet and moved back to the examining table to look at Frank’s body there.

“Mr. James may try to bring others across to help him. Use that bullet then and only then.”

Frank was about to ask more when a door opened in the otherwise smooth, granite wall and an Indian walked in. He was only half Indian—the top half, to be precise—while the bottom half was that of a coyote, with scruffy brown-and-gray fur and a matted tail. His top half was naked but for beads around his upper arms and war paint on his angular face.

The Indian grinned, a wide, crooked smile that spoke of mischief and deception. He raised one hand in greeting, a gesture Frank did not return.

“Batcho,” Frank said, jaw tightening. “What the Hell are you doing here?”

The guide stopped a few feet from Frank, his smile fading from his dark face.

“Batcho is going with you, Frank,” said Buzzy. “He’s part of your little posse.”

“No.” Frank turned his back on them. “Not him.”

“What did I do?” Batcho asked. “I helped you through the underworld, Frank Butcher. I guided you, offered advice. I—”

Frank wheeled, putting his nose just an inch from the Indian’s.

“You lied to me every step of the way!” He jabbed his finger at the Indian’s chest as he spoke. “You tried to keep me from passing every test. If I’d listened to you, I’d be-”

“Exactly where you are anyway. In Hell.”

Frank tried to think of an argument, but the guide was right. He’d lived up to his reputation as a Coyote, playing tricks, but in the end, changing little.

“You have no choice, anyway,” Buzzy said. “Judges’ orders.”

Frank sighed and spit on the floor. “This time, Indian, no lying. Don’t send me on any wild goose chases.”

Batcho nodded, his broad grin returning. “I promise, if geese need chasing, I’ll do it.”

Frank raised an eyebrow at him and Batcho cleared his throat.

“Besides, Frank Butcher, we won’t be in the underworld, so I will be…different. It is hard to explain.”

Frank shrugged, then thought of something and turned to face the red man again.

“You best not be answering to Judge Webber this time.”

Batcho blushed and his tail went between his legs. “This time, I answer to all three judges. They ordered me to guide you well.”

Frank studied him a moment longer, saw no hint of deception in his deep, dark eyes, and nodded.

“I suppose we’d better get going, then.”

“You will have more help once you reach the world of the living,” said Buzzy, as he led them toward the door. “We sent the other two members of your little posse ahead to do some scouting. They’ll meet you there.”

Frank’s hackles rose. “Who else is involved in this little shindig?”

Buzzy looked away, while Batcho shrugged and shook his head. “They didn’t tell me.”

Buzzy returned his gaze to Frank, his face apologetic. “You will find out in due time, Mr. Butcher.” His eyes glittered in the wavering light from outside the door, and his mandibles clicked in anticipation. “Your stage is waiting. Please, there’s little time to waste. James has already started to kill. Before long, The Boss-man will find out.”

“Then there’ll be Hell to pay,” Batcho said. “Literally.”

Frank gave him a deadpan look and stepped out the door into the painted dusk of the underworld desert. An all-black stagecoach waited, its long-dead horses kicking and snorting, stirring up clouds of red and purple dust from the road. Their eyes glowed red as embers.

Frank shivered as he saw the driver, a shadowy figure in a long, black duster, a black bandana covering his face. Yellow eyes peered out from under his wide-brimmed hat, locked on Frank and Batcho.

The dead stare took Frank back to his first trip into the underworld, when the same driver had pushed him into the burning Colorado River. It had been just one of many painful, agonizing moments for Frank during his testing. The testing that had wrongly found him absolved of his sins. The testing he’d defied to end up in Hell.

He tipped his hat and even though the driver didn’t move, the sound of a whip split the air, telling him it was time to go.

“He going with us?” Frank asked Batcho.

The guide shook his head, black hair flying. “He cannot remain in the living world. He must guide others on their underworld journeys.”

Frank glanced at the driver one last time, then mounted the coach.

“We’d best get a move on.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The stage stopped so suddenly, it tossed Frank out of his seat and onto his knees. Beside him, Batcho seemed unfazed, simply rolling his chin down a bit, then turning a mischievous smile on Frank. He leaned his head out the window and spoke to the driver in a muffled voice.

When he pulled his head back inside, concern wrinkled the brown expanse of his forehead.

“The driver wanted me to warn you,” he said. “This part can be a bit…difficult. We will be traveling from the underworld to the realm of the living. A kind of wall divides the two, and crossing it is not easy, especially going this direction. Coming back, all you have to do is die, but this way, you must live. And living is always harder than dying.”

Frank shifted in his seat. “What’s it like?”

The Indian shrugged and closed the blinds on both windows. “It’s my first time returning to life, too. No matter what you hear, don’t look out the window.”

Frank groaned, but had time for little more, as the coach pitched ahead, throwing him back into his seat. As they gathered speed, ethereal sounds, like distant singing, reached in, nudging Frank to open the blinds and find their source. Batcho covered his ears as howling arose, chanting in his native tongue, as if his voice could block out the sounds.

The wind whistled by, and voices emerged, carried on it like leaves or dust. They grew into screams, wails of agony and terror so filled with grief, it almost brought him to tears.

Next came words, voices he knew, but could not name, pleading with him to open the window, to peek outside for just an instant. His heart longed to do so, even as the stage continued to accelerate, racing across the desert like a train. All he could think about was opening the shade and looking outside. He knew these voices, after all. Trusted them more than the dark and foreboding stage driver.

Finally, it just became too much. Frank’s willpower caved and he threw open the shade. Purple light splashed into the coach, mingled with red, yellow, and orange, casting strange, oblong shadows on Batcho’s face.

Frank marveled at the sights outside, at the shifting colors of the sky, the jagged mountains to their right, rising like dragons in the distance. Faces appeared in thin air, people whose names he’d forgotten, their mouths all open in horrified screams as they rushed along beside the coach.

One—a blond woman with red-painted lips and bug-like lashes—opened her eyes wide and pointed ahead of the coach. Frank followed her direction and regretted it.

The stage rushed across the desert, streaking over sagebrush and rocks without so much as a bump. The horses galloped full speed, hooves kicking up sparks from the ground. Ahead, the reddish desert floor fell away into nothingness.

Frank knew he should pull his head back in the stage, squeeze his eyes shut and not open them until they stopped again, but became entranced with the approaching cliff, unable to take his eyes off the looming precipice.

Fifty yards away, he found himself wishing for the horses to stop. At thirty, he begged them to turn. At ten, he knew what was going to happen, knew he was helpless to stop it, but he still kept his head out the window, his gaze glued on the point of his impending doom.

Sure enough, the steeds charged right over the edge, plummeting downward with the coach still attached. Frank’s stomach lurched, and he fought to not retch as hot desert air washed over his face. Below him, the canyon floor burned, flames leaping from dozens of buildings, all growing larger every second the stagecoach fell.

Frank screamed, and jerked his head back inside just before they hit. Then the world went black.

* * *

The sticky, sharp scent of pine mingled with a hint of perfume in Frank’s darkened world, teasing him to open his eyes. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay in the warm, dark place he’d found, keep smelling pine and perfume, and pretend he didn’t have to wake up. A dozen points of pain on his back told him he lay on the pebbly ground, and the warmth on his face told him he faced the sun. The muffled sound of voices reached him from his right—a man and a woman—and birds serenaded him from the trees that whispered in the wind. Somewhere nearby, a dog panted.

He opened one eye, then slammed it shut again as sunlight blinded him, driving spikes of pain into his temples. He threw a forearm across his eyes.

“He’s awake,” a woman cried, her voice deep and familiar.

They rushed to his side, shadows making the too-bright sunlight flicker and flash.