The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel Page 28

  “A shape-changer?”

  “Nah. He never changed his skin—not that I saw, anyway. But we’ve both seen demons get into people and make ’em murderin-mad. Maybe he’s doin it and can’t help it. Doesn’t even know he’s doin it, maybe.”

  Boz sipped from his glass. “So what d’you want to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Trace admitted. “Watch him, I guess.”

  They fell quiet for a while. The sky overhead was blue velvet now, twinkling with diamond stars, and as the twilight deepened he began to feel the seductive slide toward trance, the urge to wander in the gray space for a while. He didn’t need to do it every night, once or twice a week was enough to keep the spirits at bay, but there were other enticements, other tricks he was learning …

  The scar in his right palm itched and he rubbed it irritably on his pants leg. He’d almost succeeded in not-thinking about her all day and he didn’t want to start now.

  “Did, ah … did Her Worship say aught to you about that sort of thing? Shape-changers and whatnot?”

  It was uncanny, Trace thought, how Boz could track his moods like that. If he didn’t know better he’d think Boz was a psychic.

  “Not that I recall. We didn’t talk much outside of the job at hand.” And bicker over who was withholding the most from whom. “Why?”

  “Just—it’s funny how all manner of folks have stories of men changin into beasts. When I was a boy my mam used to tell me stories bout werewolves. Said they were bad witches who made a deal with the devil and would eat up little boys who stayed out after dark.”

  Trace chuckled. “I think all mothers know that story.”

  “Then in the army, I heard stories from our Crow scouts. Most of the Plains tribes see wolves as brothers, cuz they’re smart and good hunters, and they look after the pack. Crow scouts put on wolf skins when they go out trackin the enemy ahead of a war party. But the Navajo have stories about a skinwalker, a bruja who can change his shape for real. That’s powerful bad magic. He has to kill a brother or a father to get it.”

  “The Christian witch-hunters said much the same. That werewolves were the worst of blasphemers, eatin babies and matin with animals. Claimed that demons gave ’em power to change into beasts. But Thomas Aquinas said it was all illusion, that the devil didn’t have the power to manipulate the laws of nature.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I … think after what I’ve seen this year, I’d be a fool to say anything was impossible.”

  Boz grunted assent. “Hearin you talk, it’s like my mam was right—there’s this whole other world I can’t see, but it’s waitin to pounce on me an’ eat me up.”

  Trace huffed. “That’s how I felt most of my life.”

  He tried to make light of it, but Boz’s silence was serious. There was a long, pent-up breath, and then Boz said, so carefully he might have been handling a stick of dynamite, “You miss … you know, talkin to her bout this stuff?”

  The question made him feel morose. And guilty. Because, of course, he did. He missed her cool, rational voice, laying out all the reasons there was nothing wrong with him. Her occasional scathing flashes of humor. Her frank admiration of his abilities, even as she scorned the faith that shaped and governed them.

  And as much as he felt disloyal for thinking it, he missed her mind, and her refinement of manner. Those weeks of working with her had roused a hunger for learning he’d not known was still in him. Not only learning about his power, but just plain study. It had been a long time since he’d had the time or excuse to learn anything new. He did not think he was a snob, but he had been educated better than the average ranch hand, and sometimes he craved a little … well, erudition.

  And there was the rub. If she had been merely hateful he could have banished her by now. But he had glimpsed the method behind her madness, and the desperation. Yes, she had manipulated him and hidden things from him and let Kieler serve him up to Mereck on a platter, but she had also gone to great lengths to ensure the Russian wouldn’t have him.

  (this my blood binds this man to me)

  She’d kept her end of the bargain, dammit, and all he’d done was smack her and abandon her.

  “I miss what I could have learned from her,” Trace said wearily. “I’m just sorry she had to be such a bitch about it.”

  The voices around the fire-pit changed pitch, suddenly, swelled to a mocking whoop and then yips of alarm. Trace looked over to see cowboys falling out of the way, and two bodies grappling on the ground, dangerously close to the fire.

  Trace sighed and rocked up out of the chair. “Got a minute?” he said to Boz, who made a tsk noise and got up as well.

  By the time they reached the fire-pit the Kid was sitting on Hanky’s shoulders and whaling on him with both hands. He could have done a lot more damage if he’d used his fists, but he fought like a bawdy-house harlot, slapping and clawing. Trace picked him up by the scruff of the neck and flung him at Boz, who put the boy in a full Nelson and let him thrash and kick both feet off the ground, squalling like a scalded cat.

  Hanky got to his feet with a hand to his nose, staggering a little. “You are one crazy little pecker, you know that?” he yelled at the Kid, but Trace put a hand in his chest and held him back.

  “Y’all done now?” Trace drawled. “Cause if you wanna go another round, I reckon it’ll be your last.”

  “He started it!” Hanky protested.

  “I don’t give a damn,” Trace said. “I warned you all about fightin on this outfit. Next one lays a finger on skin don’t belong to ’em, is fired. Got it?”

  “Yeah,” Hanky said sullenly.

  “What about you, Kid?”

  “You’re all godless cretins,” he spat. He had lost his glasses and his eyes shone gold in the firelight, but he had stopped fighting Boz’s hold, and his head hung low and baleful. In that moment he did look like the lycanthropy patient from the hospital, the same predatory intensity, freed of human reason.

  “That’s as may be, but if you wanna stay on here you’ve got to put up with us.” Trace glanced at Boz, who loosened his grip.

  The Kid slung off Boz’s arm. “And you keep your hands off me, you filthy ape.”

  Trace stepped forward and slapped him, hard enough that he reeled. The boy clasped a hand to his face in hurt astonishment, violence flaring up in his eyes. Trace stood his ground, looming in the way that he saved for occasions like this, waiting until the lesson sank in.

  “You wanna be real careful how you talk to people, Kid,” he said quietly. “You ain’t been alive long enough to know who’s your betters. And you keep this up you won’t live to find out. You got me?”

  No answer.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, sir.” It was hard to know if he did. The Kid’s face crumpled up and he hurtled off into the dark, not quite running, toward the dairy barn.

  The others shuffled their feet, embarrassed. Pancho picked up the Kid’s spectacles and offered them to Trace, who put them in a pocket. Hanky hung his head, ran a hand under his bleeding nose. “You hurt?” Trace asked him.

  “No.” Hanky snuffled and spat in the dirt. “Sorry, Preacher.”

  “Ain’t me you should say that to,” Trace said, and Hanky looked away. Trace shifted his gaze to the others. “Y’all got bunks—get to ’em.”

  The crowd cleared out pretty quickly after that. Someone kicked the logs apart in the fire so it would die faster.

  Trace started back to the foreman’s house. “Thanks for gettin my back,” he said, as Boz fell into step beside him.

  “Always do,” the latter replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The landscape was foggy, indistinct, though he could see blue sky overhead, and fresh-cut grass under their feet. Miss Fairweather clasped his sleeve, dainty in white muslin, her eyes cool and challenging as they turned up to his.

  She wanted to show him something. They strolled together across the mown field, other couples and families drifting a
long in the same general direction, no one in a hurry, no sense of any danger.

  And yet he did not want to go. He dragged his feet like a small boy with a loose tooth, knowing it needed to come out but dreading the operation.

  They passed a brightly colored sign, red and gilt looming out of the mist, promising wonders and miracles behind the curtain. A scantily clad acrobat danced by, snapping a banner of pink silk; a leering clown tumbled after her. A barker called from somewhere distant, Lay-dees and gennlemen, who among you has the fortitude to witness the beast that walks like a man? All the writings of the ages cannot prepare you for the shocking truth! What about you, sir?

  A long striped cane jabbed at his chest, and Trace saw that the barker was Reynolds, grinning his death’s-head grin beneath a straw hat. How bout it, young’un?

  Go on, Miss Fairweather said to him. I never expected you would stay.

  He ducked through the tent flaps and found himself in the ranch yard, just beside the remuda corral, with all the hands standing and sitting on the rails, whooping encouragements and insults to the combatants in the middle. Under and over their cheers Trace could hear the flat packing sounds of blows, the huffs of hard breathing, and a strange gasping whine like a frightened animal.

  He elbowed his way to the rail, got a glimpse of the bare-trod ground and a stout pole driven into the earth, a thick black chain stretched taut by the weight of the body hanging from it.

  The hands in those shackles were as familiar as his own—dark and square, attached to wiry wrists and corded arms. The woolly head bowed and lolled, as something huge and hairy crouched over him, tearing at his guts, battering his body against the pole.

  No! Jesus no I don’t want to see this!

  Boz’s head rolled back, eyes showing the glazed whites; his blood-filled mouth contorted with the effort to speak. Trace—don’t …

  But it was too late; the killer turned on him with lethal grace, muzzle wrinkled back to show fearsome teeth, yellow eyes blazing hate. Trace flung out an arm—

  —and woke himself up.

  The darkness of the foreman’s house was thinned by a faint orange glow from the stove. His knuckles stung where he’d struck them on the wall. Through the blood pounding in his ears he could hear Boz snoring faintly.

  Trace fell back with a shuddering gasp, easing the crush of terror on his chest. That had been a nasty one.

  But some of it was still with him. An awareness, a compulsion he’d felt before: something was happening, or about to happen.

  He felt for his clothes and boots, slipped out of the bedroom, through the office. Opened the front door as quietly as possible and stepped out onto the porch to dress. July nights were still chill at this altitude, and the wind prickled through his johnnies.

  Sounds carried to his ears—the shuffling hooves and anxious calling of horses. Something was amiss in the remuda corral.

  Later, Boz would call him a fool for walking out there alone, in the dark and without even the shotgun that hung over the office door, and Trace would not argue with him. But just then he wasn’t thinking in practical terms—his power was insisting that he go over there and get a look at this thing now.

  He jogged across the yard, fetched up against the corner of the dairy barn, where he could see into the corral. The wind was in his face, carrying the stink of blood and predator. The night-horses were clustered at the far north of the corral, shuffling and calling anxiously. And near the barn wall, something big thrashed and grunted.

  Bear, he thought, but then it reared, tossing its head, with a grisly sound like tearing cloth. Trace saw a flap of ragged flesh sling out from its jaws, saw the angle of the head and shoulders above the haunches, and for one mad moment he thought it was a man.

  But abruptly it went silent and motionless, and Trace felt a prickle of awareness go up the back of his neck. His power woke like a live thing, screeching Danger.

  A low growl carried across the corral.

  And now Trace realized he was standing coatless in the dark—alone, and absent any weapon but his spirit-talking power that seemed absurdly inadequate against this bone-and-sinew creature.

  “Hiiii!” he shouted, and the thing crouched as if to spring. He didn’t wait to see where it went—he ducked around the dairy barn and ran for the smithy, bellowing for all he was worth. The shotgun was in his office, but the woodpile was closer, and the ax was there—

  His power warned him. He felt death loom out of the darkness and cut to the left, turning in time to see the thing land with a grunt in his path. It rolled with a predator’s agility and turned back on him, snarling, bristling with coarse hair, muzzle wrinkling back over teeth as big as a grizzly’s.

  Not a bear. Nor a wolf—not entirely. There was something lupine in its elongated snout and gold-flashing eyes, but then it stood up, tall and taller, lethal grace uncoiling in its long spine and powerful thighs, long sinewy fingers flexing like a gunfighter’s. Trace’s mind fought with the vision before his eyes; he felt reality shift and reform itself into a world where such things existed. Neither Miss Fairweather nor Thomas Aquinas had prepared him for this.

  It was not the Kid. Its aura was similar to the boy’s, but smoother, more fluent. Not mindless. Not self-hating. Quite the opposite. He could have sworn it grinned, daring him to make a move.

  Somebody yelled, from the bunk-house. Trace and the beast both twitched toward the sound, and then it leapt straight at him and threw him to the ground, knocking the wind from him. He grabbed at it, foolishly, felt the hot slide of skin over muscle before it wrenched free, vaulting into the darkness.

  Men pounded up to him with lanterns and guns, Goliath and Boz in the lead. Trace sat up, wheezing, with a handful of greasy fur and the creature’s stink in his nostrils.

  “What happened? You all right?” Boz dropped to one knee, set his lantern in the grass to run a hand over Trace’s shoulders and chest.

  “… m’fine,” Trace croaked, and pointed. “Went that way…”

  The others sprang up, alert to the hunt, more men coming out of the bunk-house, voices and lanterns lighting up the yard. Goliath took up the trail, ordering the men to split up and circle around. Trace caught Boz’s arm and kept him there until there was space—and breath—to talk.

  “Your mam was right,” he said. “It’s a werewolf.”

  Boz looked at him in dismay—but very little doubt. “What’d it look like?”

  Trace held out the coarse black tuft in his fist. “Tall as me. Face like an ugly mutt’s and big nasty teeth to match. And it ain’t stupid. It coulda killed me just then, but didn’t want to.”

  “You think it knew you?”

  “I don’t know. But it ain’t the Kid.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.” He got to his feet, painfully.

  Boz turned his nose to the north, listening to the men yelping to each other across the dark pasture, sounding for all the world like a pack of wolves themselves. “If they catch it they’ll be killin a man.”

  “They won’t catch it.” Trace picked up the lantern. “It killed another horse.”

  They went back to the remuda corral. Dark spatters fanned out from the darker mound of horseflesh on the ground. Boz made a hoarse, shocked sound as their lantern-light played over the hind legs, the distinctive white socks and the splash of white on the chest, now blackened by blood.

  It was Boz’s horse, Nate. The face had been peeled completely off the skull.

  “Son of a bitch,” Boz said, as if all the air had been knocked out of him. He clapped a hand over his eyes. Trace wrapped an arm around his shoulders, felt a shuddering breath go in and out of him. He put both arms around his friend, sorry for the loss, but glad as hell it hadn’t been Boz himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Come sunrise, the mood on the ranch was an edgy combination of jubilant and spooked. The hunting party had come back empty-handed, but with a number of fantastic stories. Some of the boys claimed
to have seen an enormous wolf, as big as a horse, that led them on a chase to the river, and then disappeared on its banks. Droopy even swore he had seen the beast rise on its hind legs and look back at its pursuers, but Goliath told him he was full of shit.

  “T’was just a’ ordinary buffalo wolf,” Goliath mumbled around his bacon. “Prolly got the hydrophobia, is why it come so close to the ranch.”

  “That weren’t no wolf did that butchery,” Walt insisted. “That was a mountain lion.”

  “Oh, shut up, old man, you didn’t see it.”

  “I seen enough to know what a wolf bite looks like.”

  “What was it, Preacher?” Hanky asked. “You saw it up close.”

  “Didn’t,” Trace said, spooning sugar in his coffee. “Knocked me down and all I saw was stars.”

  “You lucky it din’t have yo’ guts, too,” Pancho informed him, and the others agreed wholeheartedly.

  The Kid hunkered over his plate and said nothing. No one said anything to him, either, and the boy hardly mumbled a thank-you when Trace gave him his glasses back. The Kid looked paler than usual, but his face was notably unmarked, unlike Hanky, who was sporting a scratch over his eye and a swollen lip.

  Boz had skipped breakfast. In fact he had not budged from the corral since midnight. Trace had pointed out the unlikelihood of the beast coming back, and Boz snapped that he knew what he was doing and to leave him the hell alone. But Trace could not do that, not after the premonition he’d had, so he’d spent an uncomfortable night sitting watch from his chair on the porch.

  Boz was currently pacing the length and breadth of the corral, head down and chin thrust forward—reading the ground, no doubt. During the night Boz had roped off the end of the corral by the barn, to keep the remaining horses away from the murder scene and help preserve whatever tracks were there. At the moment he was this side of the barn, where Trace had tussled with the beast. He studied the ground and the roof, crouched to run a hand over the grass, stood up and walked back to the corral.