Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (41 page)

The
shed
gurgled something like a laugh through his snaggle teeth and
brought his meaty arm down, snapping off the blade like it was made of ice.

In answer, the Rider kicked out with
both feet, hearing the Indian’s knee pop. The
shed
went down on one leg and the Rider leaned forward and whipped
the sharp edge of the engraved Bowie under his bulky chin. The cold iron or the
sigils did their trick. A mess of putrescent sewage-like blood gushed from the
wound as the flesh parted, splattering the floor and the Rider. The
shed
blinked and fell to the other knee,
then tipped forward lifelessly.

The Rider caught him under the
armpits and heaved his bulk, dragging the ungainly corpse back to keep between
himself and the
shedim
in the
doorway.

“Get down,” Haddox called from
behind him.

The Rider glanced back, struggling
with the dead body.

Haddox had the shotgun and was
pointing it down the hall, waiting for the Rider to drop. He knew it wouldn’t
do any good, but he did anyway, letting the heavy corpse fall on top of him,
spilling more of its foul life fluid.

Haddox let go with the double
barrels, and the hall flashed white. The three
shedim
in the doorway reared back screaming, their faces smoking
and oozing.

The Rider scrambled out from
underneath the dead
shed
, slipping in
the ichors that poured from his neck, and tumbled into the kitchen.

Haddox helped him to his feet and
watched confused as the
shedim
writhed on the back porch, clawing at their faces.

The Rider lurched to his feet and
mopped the blood from his eye again. He too stared at the three on the porch.
They were in agony, smoking and bubbling.

“It’s just rock salt,” Harry Haddox
mumbled, glancing down at the smoking barrels of his shotgun.

“Any more around?” the Rider asked
hopefully.

But there would be no time for that.
Haddox and Emory had shoved the kitchen table against the front door,
barricading it, and the windows were the old fashioned kind that shuttered and
locked from the inside in case of Indian attack, but the front door began to
buck on its hinges. The Rider knew it wouldn’t hold long.

He wheeled about, looking for
anything, patting his pockets. The amulets clinked there. He tore open his
pocket and flung them to the floor, got down on his knees, hastily sifting
through them. Which would be any good here? The tenth? The fourteenth? He found
them, while Haddox and Emory leaned against the wall, terrified, staring at
him.

“What’re you doing?” Haddox
stammered.

Before he could answer, the Rider
looked up and saw another figure rush into the kitchen from the back hall. One
of the
shedim
from the back porch,
who had taken a glancing blast from the rock salt. He was a Mexican with a
Winchester in his hands. Half his face had been eaten away by the salt, and the
flesh dripped and ran like melted wax over his exposed skull, the bones of
which were black, the eye rolling white like an egg in the socket.

The Rider stared down the barrel of
the rifle as the
shed
brought it up
to kill him.

Haddox still had the double barreled
shotgun, and standing against the wall beside the doorway, the intruder had
failed to see him. He brought it up and smashed him in the face with the
barrel.

The Mexican fell back and put a
bullet in the ceiling.

The Rider sprung, the tenth
Solomonic seal for resisting enemies in the palm of his left hand, the
fourteenth for the protection of the Divine against all evil in his right.

He tackled the
shed
to the floor and straddling him, thrust the coin-sized
talismans against his eyes, and called out the sixth verse of Psalm 109,
forward and backwards in Hebrew:

“Set
thou a wicked man over him; and let Satan stand at his right hand!”

It wasn’t
Shamblaparn
, and there was no prerequisite prayer quorum. It was a
prayer normally prescribed for exorcising
dybbukim,
but with the amulets it did the trick. Though they were cool to the Rider’s
touch, the
shed’s
eyes immediately
began to pour smoke and sizzle, and he screamed and convulsed, dropping his
rifle and trying to pull the Rider off. The Rider kept on though, and leaned
forward, locking even his knees around the Mexican
shed’s
torso. Soon his fingers and hands sunk into the man’s eye
sockets, the flesh seeming not only to melt but to physically retreat from the
two seals, until the wards touched the floor on the other side of the
shed’s
head and his skull crumbled away
and fell into a murky pool.

The Rider extricated his dripping
hands from the mess and flung the fragments away.

That was fine, but he couldn’t
wrestle them all.

Then he saw the stick of dynamite
the other
shed
had dropped. It had
rolled into the back hallway.

“Come on,” he shouted at Haddox and
Emory as the hinges flew off the front door and the kitchen table groaned
across the floor.

Haddox turned awkwardly to pull
Emory, hopping on his one leg, but the Rider intervened and scooped her up into
his arm.

He rushed down the hall, pausing
only to snatch up his pistol and jam it into his pants.

Haddox was hopping as fast as he
could behind.

“Come on! Come on!” the Rider urged.

There was a smash in the kitchen as
the
shedim
broke the table barring
the door to pieces.

The Rider ran to the back door and
picked up the stick of dynamite. He looked around madly. He had no light.

Haddox got to the doorway and took
Emory from his arms, saw the dynamite and without a word stumbled off the back
porch with her.

The Rider dropped to his haunches
and pried one of the
shedim’s
pistols
from their dead hand.

The first to enter the hallway was
Mazzamauriello. He saw the pistol in the Rider’s hand and ducked back around
the edge of the kitchen doorframe as the gun went off, thinking he was being
shot at.

The muzzle of the pistol hadn’t been
pointed down the hallway. The Rider had held it against the end of the fuse,
and the flame from the barrel flicked out and sparked it to life.

Mazzamauriello peered around the
edge of the doorway, one of his nickel plated .36 revolvers in hand. His eyes
widened, and he held the pistol up in his open hand, placatingly.

“Rider,” he called. “Wait.”

The Rider’s only answer was to fling
the dynamite stick down the hallway and run.

The dynamite went end over end over
Mazzamauriello’s head, and he ran too, pumping his small arms and legs as hard
as he could, propelling himself down the hallway, racing up the walls in his
haste and fright.

Behind him, the stick landed in the
kitchen and rolled to the toe of a
shed
called Puzzolente’s boot. The man was extremely tall and thin, and he blinked
at the sparking thing as his brothers and sisters around him retreated, trying
to shove their way three at a time through the front door or unbolt the
shutters and wriggle through the windows.

Puzzolente picked up his size twenty
foot and stomped down on the fuse as hard as he could. The little light died,
and he permitted himself a grin.

“It’s alright,” he said to the
others.

Then the spark reemerged from the
other side of his boot and slipped into the stick of dynamite like a rabbit
retreating into its hole.

Puzzolente’s smile fell.

The front of the Haddox home blew
open with a tremendous clamor, sending the roof and bits of wood and metal and
limbs and organs streaking into the sky, to come crashing down on the flaming
woodpile that surrounded it. The whole place was a burning mass of dead wood
now.

Lilith’s nostrils flared and her
scarred cheeks grew wet as she detected another familiar scent curling through
the rest, a sweet odor that took her back to the fire at the Bird Nest in Tip
Top which had cost her her favorite son, her beauty, and her hair.

“Goddamn you, Rider,” she hissed,
and moved to the driver’s seat of the buggy. She took up the coach whip as over
her shoulder, she heard the sounds of men’s voices and galloping horses coming
down the road from Yuma.

“Goddamn
you!”

She lashed the rumps of the horses
savagely, letting the buggy sweep her off into the cool dark night, away from
the climbing flames that stung her burnt flesh with the pain of bitter memory.

Haddox and Emory had been knocked
flat by the explosion of their home, and the little girl was unconscious.

When the Rider came over, Haddox was
hefting her onto his shoulder.

“Let me help you,” he said.

“Don’t need, it don’t want it. You
wanna help me, help me find Robert and Nemmy.”

The Rider swallowed. “Robert…is
dead.”

Haddox froze.

“What?”

“I found him in the woodpile down
near the river,” the Rider said quietly. “Over there.”

He pointed, and Haddox went lurching
off, heedless of his burns, or the weight of the limp little girl, or his
missing leg.

The Rider moved to accompany him
when he heard a groan from behind.

He followed it to a small dark lump
on the ground, bristling with slivers of wood and shuddering in the tattered
remains of a pinstriped coat and red filigreed silk vest.

The Rider went through his own
pockets, then slowly took off his coat.

“Maz-za-mauri-ello,” he said slowly,
accentuating the syllables in an almost sing-song voice. He spread his coat on
the ground beside the burned, stunned dwarf. He must have been blown entirely
clear.

The dwarf rolled on his back and
opened one eye. The other was bruised or burned shut.

The Rider took hold of the dwarf’s
ankle and dragged him onto the coat, then began to gather the ends and sleeves
in a makeshift sack.

“What do you intend to do, Rider?”
the dwarf stammered hoarsely, struggling to sit up.

The Rider said nothing, but as he
drew the sack closed, he held his fist over the opening, seeing the small black
face glaring up at him from its depths in the flickering light from the fires.

He opened his fist, and the
talismans fell, their golden facets twinkling like coins.

Mazzamauriello held up his small
hands and the Rider drew the crude sack shut and hoisted it over his shoulder.

He walked towards the river,
ignoring the dwarf’s muffled protests.

As he walked, he began to recite the
sixth verse of Psalm 109, backwards and forwards, over and over again.

By the time he reached the
riverbank, the little
shed’s
screaming
had stopped, and the smoking coat sack was wet against the small of his back.
He gave it a swing and deposited the whole mess as far out in the middle of the
river as he could.

He watched the black remains of his
coat turn as it was caught up in the current, and move swiftly down the river
into the dark. It took his talismans too. He would have to make more. Kabede
could help him.

He could be of use after all. He
could help Kabede. It had been selfish and delusional for him to come here.
Lilith would be more wrathful than ever before. They knew of Kabede by now.
DeKorte had surely told them. They would be looking for him, and the Rider
would be there. He would fight alongside Kabede for as long as he could.

When he turned, Nehema was standing
there, the light of the fire shining through her cotton shift. She looked like
what she was: an angel of hell, beautiful and terrible amid the rising cinders
and the snap and pop of blazing rubble. She had her wig on again, and the night
breeze that made the flames swirl in turgid designs so too stirred her
artificial locks, likely cut from the head of some witless madwoman and woven
to complete her illusion.

“I never cared for Mazzamauriello,”
she said. “He was Agrat’s brat. Always scheming. He had a pretty voice though…did
you have to kill the rest?”

The Rider stared at her, drinking
her in.

“Did you have to kill the boy?” he
asked quietly.

She was the only one in the
woodyard. It wasn’t possible that the
shedim
had gotten to Robert first. Now, her careless expression confirmed it. How had
he convinced himself that he loved this thing before him? He had burned himself
so badly in adoration of her twisted heart.

“You killed him, Rider,” she said. “When
you refused to help me escape. That’s what you came here for, remember?”

“What do you think Harry will do
when he find out?”

She shrugged.

“It will break his poor, loving
heart. He will kill me. This body’s wearing a bit thin anyhow. I could do with
a trip to the home fires.”