The Dark Remains (20 page)

“Where are you, Cy?” he murmured. “
What
are you?” But the words were lost on a gust of air.

He let his gaze wander. Across the river, a huge, skeletal shape forged of metal girders rose into the sky. Then the wind unfurled the banner that hung from the side of the construction:

So it was one of those gigantic new megachurches. Bigger is better, wasn’t that the philosophy today no matter what you were selling? If only the words on the banner were right, if only what he sought really was just around the corner. But whether he found Brother Cy or not, they still couldn’t go anywhere until Beltan woke up. And although Travis refused to give up hope, there was no telling when that would be.

Almost every night, usually after 2:00
A.M
. when at last things grew still and silent, he would put down his mop and make his way to Beltan’s room. Each time he was struck by how frail the knight looked beneath the tangle of tubes and wires. Beltan had always said he was Travis’s protector, but Travis knew it was the other way around now. Yet somehow it was a comforting feeling. He could stand this, being the strong one.

For a time each night—a few minutes, maybe longer—he would watch the blond man for any signs of motion, however small. He knew that Beltan loved him. That was what the knight had tried to tell him once in Perridon, although Travis had been unable to hear, for he had just
turned the rune of fire back on Master Eriaun, and his ears had roared with the sound of flames. It wasn’t until Beltan lay dying in Castle Spardis, when he kissed Travis with bloodied lips, that Travis finally understood.

What it meant was another question. Night after night Travis stood above Beltan, trying to imagine how someone could actually love him, and trying to imagine if he could love another, trying to feel if it was even possible. Then, finally, in what might have been an act of desperation, Travis had bent down and had pressed his lips against Beltan’s.

It had been so easy he had almost laughed. There was no lightning strike, no grand revelation, no resistance or sudden awakening. It was just flesh to flesh. Why had he expected anything else? In all his late-night reveries, he had been so busy wondering if he
could
love Beltan that he had forgotten to ask himself the simple question if he
did
. And as for the answer, well—

Like a dark bird, something fluttered on the edge of Travis’s vision. He looked up.

The woman stood no more than thirty feet away across the park, in the center of a bare expanse of concrete. She was tall and lithe, her body clad in tight-fitting black leather, her legs apart and high-heeled boots planted firmly. Short, dark hair was smoothed sleekly against her head, and she wore a solemn expression on the bronze oval of her face. She stood without the slightest motion, gazing at him with gold eyes.

Travis started to draw in a breath.
Who
are
you?
he wanted to say. However, before the sound left his lips, the air around the woman rippled and folded, and she was gone.

Mitchell Sheridan Burke-Favor sat up in bed aµnd stared into the stone-colored light between night and morning, waiting for the alarm beside the bed to go off.

It wouldn’t be long now. Life on the ranch started well before dawn, no matter the time of year. The hired hands would be showing up soon, clattering into the kitchen, wanting breakfast. Then there were horses to feed and saddle, cattle to be moved between pastures and watered, and miles of fence to mend. The earlier they started, the earlier they’d be done.

Not that Mitchell would have minded a few more minutes of sleep. God knew he was tired enough. While the years seemed to be getting shorter, somehow each workday seemed to be stretching out longer. But weary as he was, he was damned if he could sleep an entire night anymore. He was always thinking about the price of cattle, how many they’d have to sell to make it through the winter, and the cost of hay. But then, didn’t they say folk slept less the older they got?

We’re not young men anymore, Mitchell. There are no kids running around to remind you, so you can almost forget about it. But we’re not thirty, and we haven’t been in a whole herd of years
.

Motion in the bed beside him. Mitchell turned and let his eyes ride over the planes of Davis’s body stretched out beneath the sheet, as sharp and windswept as the high plains. Sleep had smoothed out the lines carved by years
of wind and sun, but Mitchell knew they would return the moment Davis woke up and smiled.

All the same, with his thick wheat-brown hair, Davis didn’t look all that different than when they had first met twenty-five years ago. Davis had been working the amateur rodeo circuit then, and Mitchell had been an announcer at the fairgrounds in Billings, Montana. Davis had lasted only four seconds on the bull. Even before he hit the ground, Mitchell had known their life together was going to last a whole lot longer.

While Davis was leaner than ever, Mitchell had gotten bulkier with time. A few years back his size 32 Wranglers had quietly given way to 34’s. Then, last month, after some serious complaining on the part of his waistline, he had broken down and bought his first pair of size 36’s down at McKay’s General Store. He was still strong, though—the ranch work saw to that—and his thick, black handlebar mustache did a good job of hiding the creases around his mouth. And as for his balding head—well, only God and Davis ever saw him with his hat off.

Besides, there were other ways of staying young. That was why he and Davis had taken up two-stepping a decade ago. They had gotten good enough to win a few prizes at the national competition in San Francisco a while back. When you were dancing, it was impossible to feel old.

Except now there was nowhere in town to dance anymore.

Mitchell sighed, and he knew it was not thoughts of horses, cattle, and fences that had kept him awake. Where the hell had Travis Wilder called from?

Mitchell hadn’t asked when the phone rang two nights ago. You never asked a man where he was from or where he was going; that was the cowboy code. If he told you of his own free will, you just nodded, and that was all. But Travis hadn’t said where he was, or where he had been.
All the same, the question had bucked and kicked in Mitchell, and it had been all he could do to rein it in.

No one knew who had dug the grave for Travis up in Castle Heights Cemetery. Some in town had said it must have been the new grave-digger who had come with the strange heat of summer and left just as suddenly. Mitchell couldn’t say, as he had never seen the man. The summer had left little time for anything outside the ranch; the heat had come close to taking a terrible toll on the animals, and had it gone on much longer it would have.

Yet while no one had known for sure who had dug Travis’s grave, everyone assumed that whatever was left of him was buried in it. The destruction of the Mine Shaft had been all but complete. A natural gas explosion, the Castle County fire marshal had determined. He had gone through all the old buildings along Elk Street and found a dozen other leaks in antique pipes and boilers. In a way it was a wonder it hadn’t happened sooner. But then why had it happened at the Mine Shaft? Everyone still remembered the fire at the Magician’s Attic a few years back, when Jack Graystone had died and Travis Wilder vanished for the first time. Now the Mine Shaft had burned, and Max Bayfield and several unidentified people had burned with it.

But not, as Mitchell learned two nights ago, Travis Wilder.

Through the window—open a crack for air despite the chill mountain night—drifted the sound of tires against gravel. Mitchell sat up in bed. Had some of the hired hands shown up already?

Outside, a vehicle door shut: solid, heavy, well oiled. Another followed, and a shiver rode across Mitchell’s chest. Neither of those had sounded like the doors of a rusted-out pickup truck, and he was pretty sure none of the hired hands had been in the market for a brand-new car. He sure as horseshit wasn’t paying them enough.

Mitchell stood up from the bed. Cold air slapped his bare backside. Swiftly, he pulled on the pair of jeans slung over a chair. He fumbled on the nightstand, then his hand came back with a pair of glasses rimmed with silver wire. Davis said they made him look handsome and smart. Mitchell knew they made him look old, but damn if he could shoot a target at ten paces without them.

The sound of footsteps crunched closer. Mitchell cocked his head, counting. Just two. Those weren’t bad odds. He moved to the window, parted the checkered curtain a fraction, and peered into the steely predawn. They were just visible around the front corner of the house: the sleek, black curves of two SUVs parked in the dirt driveway. Two men in dark suits paused, gazing at the horizon with eyes concealed by heavy sunglasses, as if even the pale glow of first light was too much for them. Then they turned and continued toward the house.

A rustling in the bed behind him, and a sleepy voice.

“What is it, Mitchell?”

Mitchell turned from the window and spoke through clenched teeth. “Get your gun, Davis.”

Two minutes later they stepped out the door of the ranch house onto the broad front porch. The last winds of night fled, as if fearing the coming of the sun. On the other side of the porch railing stood two men in black. The wind seemed to have no power over their stiff hair and heavy suits. Mitchell shivered, and one of the men—his hair coal-black, his features smooth and indeterminately Asian—smiled. It seemed a dead expression, his eyes hidden behind the thick sunglasses.

“We would have waited,” the man said, “for you gentlemen to attire yourselves.”

On his way to the door, Mitchell had stopped to slap his Stetson on his head, but other than the blue jeans that was it. Davis had pulled on a white tank top and a pair of battered khakis. Both of them were barefoot.

“No, no—they are cowboys,” the other man said with
a smile that was equally empty. He was tall and Nordic, his hair so blond it shone bone-white in the dawn. “I have seen this in the movies. They are only naked if they do not have their guns. Is that not right, boys?”

On reflex, Mitchell tightened his grip around his rifle, but Davis gave a laugh and twirled his revolver around his finger like a dime-store gunfighter. He always had been the showman.

“Why don’t you little dogies jus’ git along home?” Davis said in a grotesque Western drawl.

The air lightened a fraction, and the crescent moons painted on the doors of the vehicles glowed as if lit from within. The Asian man stepped closer.

“Of course. We are only too happy to … 
oblige
. Is that not the word you Western people use? But before we go, please oblige us by letting us ask a question or two.”

Davis tucked the revolver into the waist of his khakis and laughed, leaning on the railing. “It’s your nickel,” he said. “But I sure hope you’re not expecting a cup of coffee while we have our little chat.”

Davis could laugh at anything. Once, while camping, a hungry black bear had stuck its head into their tent, snuffling around for food. Davis had let out a guffaw, then slapped the bear on the nose. Stunned, the beast had wandered away. But Mitchell hadn’t laughed then, and he didn’t laugh now. There was something about these men—even without being able to see their eyes—that made them look hungry. But maybe it was just that he knew a wolf when he saw one.

Mitchell raised his rifle. “I told your kind once to pack up their tricks and never come back. I meant it.”

Despite the rifle leveled at his chest, the dark-haired man stepped closer. “You misunderstood our company representatives, Mr. Favor. Ranching is a hard business—harder than ever these days, as I know you are aware. Were you not recently forced to take out a second mortgage on your property because of low cattle prices?”

Mitchell stiffened. How the hell did they know that?

The man spread his hands. “You see, we only wished to help.”

Davis snorted, his grin gone. “You mean like you helped Onica McKay?”

When Mitchell had gone to McKay’s General Store to buy his jeans, Onica had seemed oddly quiet as she rang up the sale. It was only a few days later, talking to one of the ranch hands, that they learned she had been unable to keep up her contracted payments, and that Duratek had assumed ownership of the store. Onica was now a minimum-wage employee at the business her great-grandfather had started. That was the kind of help Duratek offered.

The man gave a heavy sigh. “No one is sadder than we are when one of our arrangements does not work out. But a contract is a contract. I am sure, as businessmen, you must understand.”

Mitchell had had enough of this. “I told you I would never sign one of your contracts. Now—”

The pale-haired man lifted a hand. “No, no, Mr. Favor. It is not a contract with you we seek. We have had a chance to check the numbers on your little operation here. Our earlier offer was made in error and has been withdrawn. It is another contract we are interested in.”

“Please tell us,” the Asian man said. “Do you know a Mr. Travis Wilder? He was, until recently, proprietor of the Mine Shaft Saloon in Castle City.”

“What do you want with Travis?” Mitchell said, then winced. A glance from Davis told him what he had already realized; he had just told these men that he indeed knew Travis.

“You see,” the dark man said, “like Ms. McKay, Mr. Wilder signed a contract with us. However, some months ago he grew delinquent in meeting his contractual obligations. Then, conveniently, the Mine Shaft burned, and Mr. Wilder disappeared.”

“Died, you mean,” Davis said. The revolver was back in his hand.

The Nordic man shrugged. “That is one explanation. I doubt it is the true one.”

“You see,” the other continued, “we have reason to believe Mr. Wilder is not dead, that he arranged the destruction of the Mine Shaft in order to evade his financial responsibilities to our corporation.”