Dust of the Damned (9781101554005) Read online

  “Tell me about it. Gotta keep the damn swillers’ heads covered good till you haul ’em in for bounty, because Uncle Sam don’t pay for ashes.” Zane scowled and shook his head, and then grabbed the Gatling back from Junius.

  “Wasn’t that Mortimer Quinn?” asked Junius.

  Zane nodded as he rested the Gatling on one shoulder, slung a sack of arrows over the other one with his crossbow, and headed for the cave. “Caught him in Leadville some days ago, cavortin’ after dark with fallen women in back alleys. That old stage robber died nasty, but I got him.”

  He ducked into the cave, then dropped to one knee and lit a match. He glanced out the entrance at Junius, who stood there holding the two unlit torches in his arms, looking stricken. “Come on. You started this thing; now we gotta finish it. And if we dillydally much longer, we’ll have to wait till morning, and I don’t think you want to camp out here with the beasts in here huntin’ out there.”

  Junius gave an agonized groan and lurched into the cave. While Zane lit one of the torches, the prospector said, “I been wonderin’ why I been losin’ cattle of late. I bet it’s these swillers in here been takin’ ’em. Thievin’ bastards.”

  “Yeah, well, I reckon swillers livin’ this remote have a hard time keepin’ their larders filled. Usually live close to towns like that coven they found livin’ in that old whorehouse in Aurora near Denver.”

  “Uriah?”

  Zane had begun moving back into the cavern as Junius walked along beside him, holding up the flaming torch. Zane kept his voice down.

  “What is it?”

  “My Bonnie’s one of ’em.”

  Zane jerked a look at him. “You sure?”

  “She disappeared a couple months back. She done me that way before, but I think she musta got bit one night when she was out skinny-dippin’ in the creek by moonlight, and they took her. She was always fascinated by ’em, always talkin’ about how manly the males were.”

  “I’m sorry, Junius.” Zane wanted to say that Bonnie had been a good woman, but he knew Junius would see the lie. Bonnie was twenty years Junius’s junior and had taken up with the man when he’d been flush with gold and silver and bought a herd of cattle with which to start his own small ranch. But she was wild—anyone could have seen that. She’d have slept with a billy goat if he’d been flush with poker chips and had flexed his biceps at her.

  The prospector shook his head, smacked his thin lips, which were cracked and stained from tobacco chew, the wind and sun of the mountains, and camp smoke. “If we run into her, let me drill the arrow through that bottom-dealing bitch’s heart my ownself, all right, Uriah?”

  Zane continued on into the cavern, hiking a shoulder. “I reckon it’s the least I could do, partner.”

  Chapter 2

  BLESSED BULLETS

  “We’re gettin’ close,” said Junius, his voice echoing faintly off the stone walls.

  Zane could hear water dripping and a faint vibration in the ceiling, feel it in the stone floor beneath his boots. The cave smelled of pent‑up air, bat guano, and a bitter, coppery substance that Zane recognized as blood. Even after all these years chasing ghouls, his heart quickened, and the short hairs stirred faintly along the back of his neck.

  The floor dropped suddenly, and the vibration grew to a dull roar that then bounded into a louder cacophony until he could feel the moisture in the air against his face and smell the mineral aroma of underground water. Junius walked a little ahead of Zane, sort of sidestepping, holding the torch aloft and sliding the flickering illumination farther and farther into the corridor, pushing shadows back and away and to each side, angling his and Zane’s own silhouettes onto the wall to their right and behind them.

  “River ahead,” the prospector said. “With a bridge acrosst it. I figured some old prospector built it, so I ventured on across.”

  The floor continued to drop steeply until the torchlight showed the walls falling away to each side and a large, cold, dank area opening ahead. The roar here was almost deafening, and Zane could feel water droplets spitting at him.

  “Easy, now,” Junius said loudly enough to be heard above the tumult.

  He stopped and extended the torch out over a deep, narrow ravine, water coursing through it—white and wild and chugging over submerged boulders. The river’s trench was about twelve feet deep and twice again that wide. Straight out from Zane and Junius stretched a bridge constructed of rope and pine planks. The planks were well worn, varnished by countless crossings.

  “I crossed it once,” Junius said, his voice trembling in earnest now as he nearly shouted above the water’s roar. “It’s sound. We’d best get a move on, huh? Them swillers’ll be wakin’ up soon.”

  “They are in a ways, ain’t they?” Zane said, feeling Junius’s apprehension at the lateness of the day. Last he’d seen the sun, though, it had just been starting to dip down behind the western ridges. They likely had a good half hour before it fell beneath the horizon.

  Zane lowered his Gatling gun to the floor, wincing as the blood flowed back into his shoulder, reawakening numbed nerves, and nodded for Junius to continue. The prospector stepped onto the worn planks and, holding the torch high with one hand, held on to the other torch as well as one side of the rope bridge with the other. He took mincing steps until he was on the opposite bank, and Zane was right behind him.

  “Just beyond here,” Junius said, walking ahead more slowly now between the cave’s narrowing walls, his eyes fairly glittering with terror.

  They came to an opening in the left side wall. Junius stopped, holding the torch high. Zane stopped beside him and stared into what appeared to be a library or smoking parlor outfitted by folks of class and culture. There was a red plush fainting couch, heavy, deep chairs upholstered in wine-red and lime-green crinoline, a large scrolled liquor cabinet, and several heavy bookshelves stuffed with well-worn tomes. There were a number of small tables where drink glasses and ashtrays sat. A Tiffany lamp glowed on one, its wick turned low.

  By far the largest chunk of furniture in the room was a shiny black grand piano over which a Union flag was draped.

  “This job just got a whole lot easier,” Zane said.

  “Wonder how long they been holed up here,” Junius muttered.

  “What I wonder is how they got that piano in here.”

  “Not the way we came—that’s for sure. Must be another way in.” Junius nodded at a low door on the room’s far side, flanking the piano. “They’re back in there. You think we could pick up the pace a little, Uriah?” The prospector made a gulping sound as he breathed heavily through his nose.

  He continued forward, crossing the room. Zane followed him, glancing down as he passed the piano, to see an ashtray in which a half-smoked cigar rested, its coal cleanly removed, saving the stogie for later. Zane wasn’t sure why, but the image made the nerves along his spine twang as he ducked through the doorway to find himself in a long room, even danker than the others, in which seven mahogany coffins sat on pedestals draped in red, purple, or pink velvet with gold tassels.

  “Let’s set to it,” Zane said, moving to the first coffin and unslinging his crossbow from his shoulder.

  The coffin had varnished wooden handles carved in the shapes of lions’ feet. Zane grabbed one of the feet and raised the lid to stare down at a pale, silk-suited man with gray hair and a carefully trimmed gray beard and handlebar mustache. He slept with his thin-lipped mouth closed. Wrinkles at the corners of his eyes made it look as though he were smiling. A leather-bound copy of Ivanhoe lay open on his chest, as though he’d been reading just before he turned out the lamp on the table beside him and drew the coffin lid closed.

  Zane lowered the crossbow in both hands and triggered an arrow through the swiller’s chest, just above the book. The eyes and mouth snapped open. The large, powder-white, beringed hands jerked as though to grab the arrow, but they didn’t come up even halfway before they relaxed, and the light left the swiller’s eyes.

 
Blood oozed out around Zane’s arrow, which he’d bought from some Hunkpappa Sioux up in eastern Wyoming—he preferred Sioux arrows because they used the tough, reliable wood of the chokecherry shrub—to stain the silk shirt behind the black silk double-breasted jacket. That was a lot of blood for a swiller, which meant he must have drunk recently—a bedtime snack, perchance?

  Zane moved to the next casket, Junius following him closely, wringing his hands. As Zane opened the next lid, the prospector plucked a battered old railroad watch from a pocket of his baggy duck trousers and flipped it open.

  “Oh, Jesus…damn near six, Uriah. The sun sets around six in these parts this time o’ the year!”

  “Don’t get your bloomers in a twist,” Zane said, as he fired another arrow, mortalizing the immortal, red-haired gent in his crossbow’s sites. As the beast’s jade eyes opened in shock, Zane said, “Nighty-night, pard,” and hurried over to the next casket.

  Nocking his crossbow again, he opened the lid. His eyes widened in surprise. The female’s eyes were already open and staring up at him, fear trickling into them and causing the pupils to widen. Her red-painted lips began to spread, as though she were preparing to scream. Zane quickly aimed the crossbow straight down at her chest, and thumped an arrow between her breasts that were all but revealed by her low-cut, green velvet gown.

  “Oh!” she cried, lifting her head sharply and closing both slender hands around the arrow, groaning and grimacing. “Oh, you dirty…shit!”

  “Holy hobgobbies!” Junius exclaimed, leaping back. “Your fear up now, Uriah?”

  Quickly plucking another silver-tipped arrow from the quiver down his back and nocking the crossbow, Zane hurried to the next casket, finding another swiller coming to life before he hastily killed it forever. The next two were also beginning to awaken before Zane drilled arrows through their hearts, then turned to the final coffin.

  Junius stood beside the casket, facing Zane, who yelled, “Look out!”

  Too late. The suited, black-haired beast leaped out of the open casket and kicked Junius hard in the side of the head. Junius yelped and flew sideways into one of the other coffins, he and the casket tumbling in a heap from the pedestal and hitting the floor with crunching thuds.

  The black-haired beast—a young man in shiny black cowboy boots that had never been near a cow pie, and an Indian-beaded, fringed elk-skin jacket stained snow-white and fancily trimmed with whang strings along its arms—bolted, snarling, toward Zane.

  The beast’s fangs were fully extended, its eyes red as it sprung off its shiny black boots. Zane triggered the crossbow a half second before the beast slammed into his chest. Zane flew straight back into another casket, knocking the casket off its platform and following it down to the cave floor, the snarling, slithering, red-eyed beast on top of him clawing at his throat and trying to bury its jaws in Zane’s neck.

  Zane released the crossbow, managed to snake his arms up and close his hands around the beast’s throat. He wasn’t trying to kill the thing—he knew strangulation wouldn’t work—but only to keep those damn fangs from tearing into his neck.

  No need. The beast’s jaws stopped snapping. His body relaxed. The pale lids did not close down over the red eyes, but the eyes lost their savage light.

  Wincing at the pain of the casket under his back, Zane shoved the swiller off him and lay there against the coffin, catching his breath. Junius was on all fours, breathing hard and groaning and shaking his head as if to clear the cobwebs. Blood dribbled down from a cut on his earlobe.

  Zane heaved himself to his feet and grabbed his hat and crossbow. “You all right there, partner?”

  “Ah, hell, Uriah.” Junius winced and cupped a hand to his ear. “I don’t know how you do this for a livin’. Let’s get outta here. I need a drink. I need a drink bad, hoss!”

  Zane grinned and was about to inform Junius of the bottle he had in his saddlebags outside the cave, but closed his mouth and frowned. He heard a distant squawking sound, as though of creaky hinges, and the scuffs of shoes across the cave floor behind him. There were groans and what could only be described as muffled, savage snarls.

  Junius’s torch was almost out. Uriah scooped up the second one and touched it to the first. Fire caught the kerosene-coated burlap with a whoosh, and Uriah swung around to face the direction the sounds were coming from, fear making his heart skip beats.

  It skipped more beats when he saw that this anteroom of sorts led to others, and from those others, more well-dressed swillers were stumbling, bleary-eyed and a little disheveled, still waking up from their naps, but, realizing the lair had been invaded, were hissing and starting to run toward Zane.

  The ghoul hunter swung around and grabbed the prospector’s arm, pulling the man to his feet. “Let’s pull our picket pins, Junius!”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “More!” Zane shoved the torch into Junius’s hand and pushed him toward the door. “Run—I’m right behind you!”

  He swung around as the first swiller sprinted, snarling and cursing in some language Zane didn’t recognize, and Zane quickly nocked his crossbow and buried an arrow in the center of the beast’s paisley vest. That slowed the throngs of others that were jostling shadows behind him, but not by much. There were too many for Zane’s crossbow.

  Cursing under his breath, he dropped the crossbow down his back and grabbed the stout LeMat snugged into his shoulder holster. He triggered the shotgun shell under the main barrel. The shell was filled with crushed silver dimes and nickels, and it laid out two or three of the oncoming horde, before Zane, striding awkwardly backward, flicked the LeMat’s lever toward the main cylinder and squeezed off a silver.44 round, dropping a fat, blue-fanged woman in a gaudy pink dress. He bolted out of the room behind Junius, who was sprinting as fast as his old, bowed legs and creaky ankles as well as his heavy hobnailed boots would allow, the torch flaring above his head and showing his long, thin hair bouncing across his shoulders as he ran.

  “You’re a dead man, Uriah Zane!” one of the swillers shrieked behind him.

  “Damn,” Zane said, not breaking stride as he headed toward the rush of the underground river. “I didn’t realize I was famous in these parts.”

  “Oh, you’re famous in all parts, Uriah!” a male swiller shrieked behind him.

  Through his moccasins, he could feel the vibration of the stream as well as the pounding of running feet behind him, and just a glance over his shoulder showed the jostling shadows of the horde catching up to him—at least a few. One made a dive for his feet, tripping Zane, who nearly went down but regained his balance and momentum after firing the LeMat into the swiller’s head, and continued chasing Junius.

  Ahead, the torch dropped, and Zane saw Junius’s crumpled frame on the cave floor beside it, about ten feet in front of the bridge.

  “Goddamnit, Junius!” Zane shouted above the river’s roar. “Get up an’ run!”

  “Twisted my ankle,” the old prospector grated out.

  Zane grabbed the old man’s arm, and Junius tried putting weight on one ankle. He cursed as it gave out beneath him.

  The ghouls were too close, their shadows lurching across the floor around the torch. The hissing sounded like an awakened rattlesnake nest. Zane aimed the LeMat and fired, the report sounding like a hammer rapping an empty rain barrel in the close confines. That gave the running horde momentary pause. Ten or fifteen of them were behind him. Except for their blazing eyes and bared fangs, they could have been a moneyed, well-read group of civic boosters just now leaving a natty opera house on Larimer Street in Denver. Despite their slight dishevelment upon waking, the ladies were immaculately coifed and gowned, the men suited and well-groomed, pomade glistening atop several combed black or sandy heads.

  Zane shoved the LeMat at them, and they lurched back. He triggered a silver round into the chest of one who looked especially determined, and then, as the dead, snarling swiller fell back against several of the others, Zane reached down and pulled Junius
up and over his shoulder, leaving the torch where it lay, heading for the bridge.

  Not to be thwarted, the howling vampire horde jerked back to life behind Zane. As he gained the bridge’s other side, he could feel the jostling of the planks. He set Junius down near the Gatling gun, palmed his Colt Navy from the cross-draw holster on his left hip, and drilled the first swiller on the bridge in the chest while triggering his LeMat into the swiller behind the first.

  The second swiller yelped indignantly and clutched his breast, from which blood issued as well as several white smoke tendrils.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Zane said, his face brightening. “I believe Father Alejandro’s blessing gives these slugs an extra pop!”

  “Huh?” Junius asked, incredulous.

  “Never mind.”

  Zane emptied both the LeMat and the Colt, then holstered both pieces. He scooped up the Gatling gun, quickly spread its three legs, and directed the canister toward the nattily dressed figures once again making a dash, Indian-file, across the bridge. The first one was ten inches from the end of the Gatling’s six-mawed barrel when Zane began twisting the wooden crank.

  Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

  The first slug tore a big hole in the belly of the nearest ghoul, who stumbled back and down while the next slug tore into the gent he’d fallen into. That gent screamed and fell sideways over the bridge and into the raging river.

  As the Gatling gun continued roaring, the shots sounded like massive empty barrels tumbling down a rocky ridge, causing Junius to drop to his knees and clamp his hands over his ears. The other ghouls on the bridge were blown back onto the planks or thrown over the sides and into the stream.

  Junius whooped and hollered as the blasts continued, cutting into the hordes still coming, so enraged at the invasion of their lair that they’d sacrifice themselves to the Gatling gun in an attempt to get at the big man in wolf furs crouched over it, cranking the flashing, hammering cylinder.