SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (17 page)

His voice wasn’t deep like Sawyer’s, but it was pleasant. Everything about him was pleasant. “What brings you to our humble quarters, pretty lady Ella?”

“I’m lost. Saw— Captain McCready has agreed to take me to the next town with you.”

Aiken’s smile widened. “The Captain’s a good man.” He looked around, then asked, “Where is he?”

Meaira stepped forward, laying a hand on Aiken’s arm. “He said he’d ride ahead and meet up with us tomorrow. He said we should start as soon as you got here. Did everything go okay in town?”

There was something in the intensity of her gaze that I couldn’t decipher. Aiken ignored her question as he moved to sit on the crate and eat. I realized that, though at first sight I’d thought him a small man, my impression had been erroneous. He gave the illusion of being slight, but in fact he was of solid build.

Meaira followed him like a dog expecting scraps. “Aiken?” she said, her voice edged with need. “Did . . . Do you . . .” She couldn’t seem to get it out. Aiken gave her a few more tortured seconds of trying before reaching in his pocket and pulling out a small bottle.

He held it out, but when she reached for it, he pulled it back. “You have to make it last,” he said.

She nodded. “I will. I promise. I will.”

Her eyes fixed intently on the bottle. He held it away for another moment before handing it over. Meaira’s smile lit her face. “Thank you, Aiken.”

Athena said, “Everything ready for us to go.” and gave Meaira a look I didn’t understand.

Aiken nodded. “We got a good twenty-five miles to go today. There’s a boomtown sprung up between here and Diablo Springs. I hear they ain’t seen a woman for months out there. We’ll be more’n welcome to settle in beside them all.” He nodded at Athena. “Get the wagon harnessed and let’s get a move on.”

I saw Meaira disappear into the wagon. After a few moments, she came out again. As I moved to help with the last of the crates, I watched her. She seemed strangely disoriented.

“Laudanum,” Honey said from beside me. “Aiken keeps her stocked.”

As if hearing us, Meaira hung her head and turned away.

We moved out within the half hour. Athena drove the team from the wagon. The rest of us walked alongside. Aiken rode up ahead, leading the way and keeping the pace.

When my family left home, I’d walked then, too. After the first week, my legs had become strong and my body had adjusted to the toil. We’d had to strap my grandma to the back in her chair because the terrain was too rough for her to wheel over. I’d trudged along beside her, describing the scenery for her as we moved forward. She would comment on my description after we passed. It became a game for us, me stretching my mind for new ways to say
green
or
wide-open
or
breathtaking
. Grandma trying to envision it from my narrative alone.

Thinking of it now brought a lump to my throat, and the grief that I’d yet to acknowledge swamped me. I didn’t cry tears, but I mourned with every step. I’d lost my entire family. I was alone in the strange world, heading into a future I couldn’t imagine.

It was early afternoon before Aiken allowed us a break. Athena started a fire and warmed last night’s beans, but there was no room for hunger in the blackness of my soul. I took water and moved away from the others. I felt Aiken watching me with his bright eyes, but he didn’t say anything. When we moved on again, I fell in step, but I was numb and silent. I’d escaped the Smith brothers, survived the wilderness on my own for days, faced off with a man to be reckoned with, but now that I was somewhat safe, I wanted to give up. I wanted to lie down and die.

Hours later, it was Honey who came up beside me and handed me a biscuit with a nonchalance that had me accepting before I realized it.

“I used to want to die,” she said softly.

I took a bite of the biscuit. It was old and hard, but my stomach rumbled gratefully as soon as I began to chew. “Do you still want to?” I asked. My voice was scratchy.

“Naw, not anymore.” She turned those chocolate eyes on me. “Surviving is all a person can control.”

There was a twisted logic in what she said, more in what she didn’t. If I gave up now, the Smith brothers would have succeeded in wiping out my family, and succeeded with my blessing.

“I miss my people,” I said.

“Me, too. But giving up won’t get them back.”

How she knew what I was feeling, I didn’t know, but I felt kindred to her and was grateful for her words.

“Captain says he’ll make sure you get to town safe. After that, you decide what happens to you. Give up and you let them Smiths own your soul. Your momma wouldn’t have wanted that.”

No, she wouldn’t have wanted that at all.

She left me then, to finish my biscuit and make up my mind. In the end, there really wasn’t a choice. I picked up my feet and joined the others.

Diablo Springs: Chapter Fourteen

May 1896

Colorado

The boomtown was more a grimy gathering of tents and lean-tos than anything like a township. They camped close to the shores of a river with the refuse of the makeshift settlement scattered all around them. In total, I guessed there were about thirty tents. The wagon’s wheels sunk in thick mud as we rolled in, and it caked our horses’ legs. We hopped onto the wagon in an effort to keep our shoes from being sucked off our feet. Filth had never known such luxury. I had never known such filth.

There were no buildings constructed, but a tent with one side open was clearly functioning as a saloon and another as a place to eat. A Chinese man stared out as we passed, watching us suspiciously. The saloon brimmed with dirty, drunken miners, hooting and laughing as they indulged themselves in liquor. One man stepped out and urinated in the middle of the street. When he saw us, he stood holding himself in one hand, a startled grin on his face as he waved with the other. He slipped in the mud as he hurried to tell the others what he’d seen.

The stench defied my powers of description. It was apparent that man and beast alike used whatever space was available to relieve themselves. The remains of meals past littered the widening path of mud that bisected the row of tents. Bones and skinned carcasses lay in between. A few dogs ran beside us, barking and snarling.

I looked at Honey, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Chick stared out with a blank expression. Meaira watched as if through a cocoon of her own making. What must they be thinking? What must they be feeling, knowing what the night had in store? How could they . . .

Aiken stopped his horse and spoke to a man who’d flagged him down. I heard the word
bath
and the man looked as if he’d been slapped. Aiken conversed with him for a few moments more before riding away.

“He told them,” Meaira said, staring at the squalor with a placid expression.

“Told them what?” I asked.

“He makes them bathe first,” she said. “They won’t be liking it, but if they want their pleasures, they’ll be doing it.”

I was overwhelmed with relief, though I wouldn’t be one that had to endure their foulness. I couldn’t bear thinking of sweet Chick, lovely Honey, or dazed Meaira, mauled by any of these disgusting barbarians.

“Is it always like this?” I asked.

Chick shook her head. “No. This bad.”

Aiken moved us to a clearing upwind that had not been contaminated by waste. In the growing darkness, we set up our camp. This time, though, we added a canopy, anchored by four corner poles with one in the middle that held the canvas up like a spire. Long sides flapped in the wind and brushed the ground.

No one had spoken since arriving, and the silence rode heavy on the air. The other women avoided looking at me, but I was acutely conscious of their thoughts. A part of me wanted to shout, to stop what we were doing. I wanted to herd the women back into the wagon and rein the horses into a gallop. But none of them seemed as concerned with what the night held in store as I was. According to Chick, they did this by choice, and though they’d told me Aiken was the devil, it didn’t seem to me that he’d threatened them in any way to get them to participate in the upcoming festivities. I assumed they would be paid for what they did, but what price would be enough?

A table with folding legs came from the wagon to be set up in the center of camp. Meaira and Honey opened chairs around it. Four thin, rough mattresses that I’d not seen before came from a trunk. Athena beat them with her broom and laid them out in the tent.

It was fully dark by the time Aiken declared himself satisfied with our work. We could hear the men in town brawling at the river as they took turns bathing in the muddied water. I didn’t know how clean they would be once they arrived at the camp. I hoped for the others’ sakes, the men used soap. Two who were very eager had been scrubbed and waiting for nearly thirty minutes while we finished setting up. They stood like schoolboys in their Sunday best, hair slicked back, faces clean. Clothes brushed, if not clean or fine.

A light breeze moaned through the night before dancing across our camp to catch at the billowing sides of the tent. Inside, hanging panels had been strung up to divide it into compartments, each with a pallet on the ground. Athena opened a chest and sheets came out to cover the sagging, stained mattresses. Then the girls turned attention to each other, fixing hair and making up. I sat numbly to the side, wondering what I would do once it all began.

Aiken whistled as he shuffled cards at his table and dealt a hand of solitaire. A cigar hung from his lips, the smoke drifting up on the night air to mingle with the other scents. I dreaded the rest of the night, but the waiting was painful in itself.

“Are you ready for us?” one of the scrubbed schoolboys asked.

Aiken flicked a glance over the camp and then nodded. “Yes, sir, we are ready.”

Aiken shook both their hands, ushering them forward. The two were young, younger than I even, and they were eager. Without ado, they asked how much for a tumble. Aiken looked surprised. He proceeded to talk the two young men into circles for a few minutes, denying that the girls would even consider selling their bodies for money. They were young, chaste girls who’d had their share of bad luck, but he, the good Samaritan, was taking them to San Diego where they would enter a life of servitude for the Holy Church. I watched Aiken with a sick fascination as he weaved his tale like a web around them. The men were obviously distressed to think of the beauties becoming servants of the Church, and they did their best to convince Aiken it was a mistake. One even offered to marry Honey and relieve Aiken of his burden.

Chick leaned close to me. “He do this every time,” she said.

“Why?”

“You see.”

After he’d worked them up, he found out what they were willing to pay and then offered to make an exception, allow the boys private time to converse with the girls for a price that was two dollars less than they’d offered.

“I’m a charitable man, and I can see how you are both fine young gentlemen who wouldn’t think of hurting my girls. I can see where you are pained by the rigors of life. Is that how it is?”

A penny wouldn’t rattle in either of their heads, but they nodded and tried to look as if they understood what he was saying.

“I will take your money, but only to put it to the good of feeding and clothing these fine, upstanding women. Now who is it you would like to . . . speak to alone?”

They both pointed at Honey, then, seeing each other, one switched and pointed to Chick.

“Now I can’t let those two beauties go for such a pittance. Why not Athena? She’s older and won’t miss the flower of her innocence.”

Of course this wouldn’t do. I watched numbly, filled with disbelief as the maestro of manipulation worked his magic. Beside me, Chick smirked.

After much conversation, during which Aiken dazzled them with his use of the English language while keeping them in a befuddled act of negotiation, they seemed to reach an impasse. Aiken drew it out even more until at last the two men “convinced” Aiken to take their money— nearly double what they’d originally offered—and Aiken called Honey and Chick over.

He introduced the girls and, in a fatherly manner, handed them off in kind to the young men.

Honey didn’t look at any of us as she led hers into the tent. Chick smiled shyly at her partner, who turned a dark shade of red. I heard him say it was his first time as she took his hand. She told him not to worry, she knew what to do.

Honey’s boy was nervous, and she had to work at his confidence. Her voice soothed and drifted out of the flapping walls of the tent. Chick’s partner was eager and quick. She’d returned to her seat before Honey’s had even begun. I wondered if Chick’s young man would feel cheated, but the look on his face spoke of rapture. I thought I might be sick. But others had already arrived and they crowded around, eager to be chosen. Athena and I sat off to the side, each silent until even she was called upon to perform inside the tent.

Our campfire became a beacon, and the men gravitated toward it. Not all came for the women. Some came for the cards that Aiken dealt, others were too drunk to be more than just curious. Some tried to beg and borrow enough to visit with one of the girls. Some tried to win the fee gambling.

While they waited for their turns, Aiken entertained them at the card table and proceeded to cheat at faro. From where I sat, I could see the extra cards he’d hidden beneath the table. He was quick and skilled, and I might not have recognized his game had I been on the other side of the deck. He let them win most of the time, and as the perfect host, he ordered Athena to bring his whiskey when she emerged from the tent. He charged heavily for the honor of sharing his bottle, but no one seemed to mind. Sounds of grunting and the musky scent of carnality carried on the hot breeze, which lifted the edges of the tent like skirts and afforded quick peeks into the goings-on inside. I could smell their arousal and sense the excitement buzzing through the men.

I’d been in the shadows, tucked as far away as I could get from everyone else, but when Athena began to serve drinks, someone noticed me.