Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (2 page)

Was
she here now? Had she found him? Was she making her presence known?

He
quickened his step towards the tumbledown saloon, telling himself it was for
one
reason,
knowing deep down it was another.

The
sensuous, melancholy sound of the piano filled his ears as he pushed aside the
threadbare sheet of cheesecloth that served as a door and went into the saloon.

It
took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the light after the brightness of
the desert sun, which was magnified by the glare of the salted ground. The
place was nearly empty, most of the would-be patrons being in the tent watching
the demonstration.

The
bar was composed of stacks of shipping crates and had no stools or chairs to
speak of. Some overturned crates served as seats around a pair of large wood
cable spool tables, their centers encrusted with pools of cold candle wax like
petrified moonmilk. One wall was entirely papered with water-stained shipping
invoices and faded pages torn from a
Sears
wishbook
that rattled and swelled when the occasional gust of dry breeze sifted
unopposed through the inferior carpentry. It still amazed the Rider that a
place so entirely culled together from practical elements could boast a working
piano, but as he turned his head he saw it, a battered, dusty maple upright
with yellowed keys pushed into a corner near the bar.

As
he took off his mystic blue glass spectacles and rubbed his eyes to quicken
their acclimation, he saw that it wasn’t Nehema on the stool (the only piece of
actual furniture in the place) in front of the piano.

And
the player wasn’t the only one in the bar.

Two
men leaned with one elbow propped on either side of the piano, smoking and
listening. The player himself was not seated. He was a dwarf, and he was
necessarily standing on the stool as he played.

The
Rider stood still for a moment, wrestling down his disappointment. He was about
to turn away when the player began to sing;

“From
the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown
;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.”

At
the sound of the high, falsetto voice, angelic and child-like in its purity,
The Rider stiffened. He had heard that singer before.

“Hark!
You shadows that in darkness dwell
,
Learn to condemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world’s despite.”

The
dwarf turned and peered at The Rider over his shoulder as he sang the last, and
his dark face split into a bright, neat smile. The Rider experienced the same
feeling of disorientation he had first felt when last he’d seen this dwarf and
heard the dichotomy of his voice.

He
had been at Lilith’s bordello, plucking a lute like some cherubic attendant at
a Roman orgy.

The
dwarf struck the last note with exaggerated aplomb, turned, and sat down on the
stool, his legs dangling, his arms folded before him.

“Found
you, Manasseh,” he said, in a pleased, almost sing-song tone. His voice was
cultured, the accent British English. But The Rider knew his parentage without
having to look through his glasses. If he had survived the bordello fire, if he
had tracked him here, he was no ordinary human. No doubt he was a shed, one of
the half-demon sons physically ‘born’ to a succubus from a human coupling. His
grip tightened on the rosette token, but he dropped it into his coat pocket. It
would do no good against these. Their powers were rooted entirely in the
physical realm.

The
dwarf was impeccably dressed and groomed, his stubby limbs covered in
pinstripes and supple silk sleeves, his feet in custom boots and his fat chest
encircled in a brocaded vest of red Oriental filigree. He sported a string tie
with a silver rosette slide. A pair of .36 caliber pocket pistols hung underneath
each of his arms, secured there by a richly tooled leather harness.

The Rider glanced at the other two men
flanking the piano. One was young, maybe twenty in appearance, though that
meant nothing when dealing with shedim. The other had an Oriental cast, but was
big and broad as a steer.

Their
dress paled in comparison to the stylish dwarf. Their clothes were merely
functional. They could have been drovers in their half coats and leather
chigaderos, though both did sport similar rosette badges on their costumes, one
on his hat band, the other on his belt buckle. It was some sign then, marking
them as Lilith’s. Both were tied-down gunmen, and they flicked their cigarettes
away and straightened as they noticed him.

The
Rider noticed too that each bore a marked physical deformity. The younger of
the two had an ugly harelip that split his mouth and showed his tobacco stained
two front teeth and brown gums. The big Oriental bore a huge goiter on his
eyebrow that almost closed his right eye.

“I’ve
seen you before,” the Rider said to the dwarf.

“We
saw each other,” the dwarf agreed. “Mazzamauriello’s my name.”

“And
these?” the Rider said.

“My brothers.
Johnny Shada and Ormzud.”

“Where
are you going Johnny Shada?” The Rider said sharply.

The
younger one had begun to nonchalantly stroll over to the box bar. The Rider’s
tone didn’t make him pause.

“Gettin’
a drink,” he snarled, and went behind the stack of crates.

The
Rider heard glasses clink.

“I
don’t drink,” he said.

“I
wasn’t offerin’.”

“The
thing is, we’re not here for cordialities, Mr. Maizel,” Mazzamauriello said.
“You killed a brother of ours, and you maimed our matriarch, all under a flag
of truce.”

“It
was a misunderstanding. Lilith knows that,” the Rider said. “I didn’t intend for
things to go the way they did. We were about to make an arrangement when that
fool rushed in with a shotgun. He started the fire. I only killed your brother
when he tried to kill me.”

Mazzamauriello
held up his hand for silence and rubbed his eyes.

“Whatever
arrangement you may have made, it died with my brother. This is vendetta, Mr.
Maizel.”

“But
it was a mistake!” The Rider insisted.

“Your
mistake, I’d say,” Johnny Shada said from the bar, sniffing at a plain jug of
whiskey and wrinkling his nose.

“What about the Hour of Incursion?” the Rider
pressed. “Lilith said Adon was a part of it. She wanted me to find him. She
said a war was coming.”

“’Fraid
you’re going to miss it,” Mazzamauriello said.

There
was a violent hiss of cloth being drawn aside and sunlight spilled briefly into
the room. It nearly made every gun in the place jump from their holsters.

A
leather-skinned, wispy haired old man stood squinting in the doorway in his
long underwear and boots.

“What
th’ feck is this?” the man hissed, his thick brogue the only thing in his mouth
beside his gums.

“Get
out of here,” warned the Rider.

“‘Get
out of here?’ That’ll be the day.
This is my feckin’ place.”

“Look
mister,” Mazzamauriello began.

“Just
shut yer gob, yeh wee black bowler. I told yeh fellers I didn’t care a wit if
yeh beat on that old piano while I went to the jakes, but I didn’t say word one
about feckin’ around behind the bar.”

“Get
the hell outta here, old man,” Johnny Shada hissed.

The
old man stalked across the saloon to the bar, pulling a skinning knife from his
belt.

“Póg
mo thóin!” he spat. “It’s some can of piss ye are, bucko. Yeh get yer little
arse out from behind there, or it’s a prunin’ I’ll fetch ye!”

“No
wait!” The Rider shouted, making a grab for the skinny old man as he passed.

Too
late, the owner reached the bar and lunged across at Johnny Shada, grabbing him
by the kerchief tied around his neck and brandishing the knife.

Shada
in turn backhanded the owner contemptuously, but with such supernal force that
the old man’s head was knocked from his bony shoulders with a crackling and
shearing sound. It tore free in a spray of blood and went bouncing off the
ceiling, trailing half its ropy spine like a wild kite twisting crazily in a
high wind.

The
golden Volcanic loaded with anointed salt-core bullets slid from the Rider’s
holster. His gun snapped once and struck Johnny Shada in the middle of his
throat, sending him crashing against the rickety back wall. The Rider turned to
face Ormzud and Mazzamauriello, but against the speed of the shedim he was an
arthritic grandmother.

Ormzud’s
pistol was already out and the palm of his off hand slammed rapidly down on the
hammer. Four shots, so close together they were almost one, streaked across the
saloon and sent the Rider flailing back. One punched wetly through his left
shoulder, another skimmed the rib beneath, and a third nicked the top of his
left thigh as he fell. He went down on his back, wondering where the fourth
bullet went until the blood ran into his eye and he glimpsed the smoking hole
in the crown of his hat lying nearby.

There
was no time to be stunned however, and he fired wildly back from the floor,
chipping away bits of wood from the spool tables and crates in between.

Mazzamauriello
sprung nimbly backwards and landed on the top of the piano as the stool beneath
him exploded, his two guns snapping away even as he did.

The
floor around the Rider burped and clots of earth popped into the air. He rolled
quickly behind another table and fired twice. The first shot missed and the
second struck the Oriental shed in the shin. Immediately the viscous yellow and
black slime of which he was composed gushed out of the wound. He screamed and
fell heavily against the piano.

The
Rider fired twice more at Mazzamauriello, but the dwarf was too fast, and went
scampering off the piano, actually running on the rickety wall, giggling as he
pumped his arms.

The
Rider wasted another shot trying to tag him, then aimed just ahead and blew a
sizable hole in the thin wall through which the dwarf promptly fell cursing.

But
it was the last of his bullets.

The
Oriental lurched away from the piano and limped slowly towards him, slinging
his pistol hand out again and again, flinging the bullets as if to speed their
course.

The
Rider crawled backwards, ducking behind the tables and crates, letting the
unsteady aim of the shed fail on the interposed objects.

The
shed’s revolver finally clicked empty and he threw it down and stalked forward,
slapping the heavy tables aside like they were made of papier-mâché. The big
spools went rolling off. One smashed the bar to pieces and another slammed
against the front wall. He drew a thick bladed knife from his belt.

“Gut
you!” he promised, too enraged to form a sentence.

The
Rider dropped his
Volcanic
pistol and wrenched the
iron Bowie knife from his own belt.

Several
men rushed into the saloon, drawn by the gunfire. With no real idea of what was
going on, they apparently decided to seize both combatants, and they rushed in
to grab hold of the Oriental and separate him from the man on the floor.

“No!”
The Rider yelled, but again it was to no effect.

Two
men tried to tackle the shed and found themselves flying end over end through
the air to crash in a heap with the fragments of the shattered bar.

A
third smaller man leapt on his back and the shed gripped the arm crossing his
chest until the man screamed and blood began to spread across his shirt sleeve.

The
fourth
who
strode in scooped up one of the crate
chairs and broke it over the shed’s skull. The blow actually staggered the
Oriental, and he let the man on his back fall whimpering, to scuttle away
across the floor, clutching his bloody arm.

The
Rider scrambled to get to his feet, but the shed was already lunging at the
offender with his blade, displaying once more his impossible celerity. It was a
gutting swipe, but the large man sprang back and caught the shed’s knife arm
and drew him in, barring the Oriental’s throat with his other arm in an attempt
to wrest the weapon away.

The
Rider saw it was the long-haired young strongman from the tent show, now
dressed in a plain jacket and his derby.

After
an instant of struggle, the expressions of both combatants registered surprise.

To
the Rider’s amazement, the knife fell from the shed’s hand and clattered to the
floor.

The
shed twisted sharply and managed to slide his head out from under the powerful
arm that had barred his throat. Now the two faced each other head on, trembling
in their exertion, the man gripping the shed’s wrists, trying to force his arms
down to his sides.

“What
are you?” the shed managed to gasp.

The
breed in the quilt coat held the other men at the door back. There was a
machete in his fist.