The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel Read online

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a lead on that boy since sunup?”

  “No sir, we haven’t run him down yet, but I’ve got men out combing the rail yards and watching the depot—”

  “Call ’em off,” Trace said. “He’s too smart to take the train out of town and too dangerous to confront around civilians. He’s got a condition, makes him unpredictable and strong like a madman. You don’t want your men goin anywhere near him.”

  The sheriff cleared his throat. “With respect to you and your employer, we had a murder here of our own—”

  “The Eagle Rock killings take precedence,” Reynolds said.

  Trace nodded agreement. “That boy’ll be brought to justice, one way or the other. If by some miracle he slips through the noose, I will personally bring him back here to face Territory justice.”

  The sheriff didn’t look happy about that, but Trace shot down all his protestations and bullied his way out of the office, herding Boz in front of him and leaving Reynolds to follow.

  Ten minutes later they were all standing in the alley behind the jail, Reynolds fidgeting on the balls of his feet, Boz looking worriedly between the two of them.

  “So now I’m a Pinkerton, huh?” Trace said, shrugging into his coat.

  “Okay, so it was a hack job,” Reynolds snarled. “I was in a rush. And you’re welcome, by the way.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because you’re too thick to take a hint,” the reporter snapped. His dark eyes were showing sparks of red in their depths, and for the first time Trace felt a real fear of him. He had never seen the demon so agitated, or so careless about his diguise. “You think I like poking my fingers through your soupy brains at night? The Boss is coming for you.”

  I know, Trace wanted to bite back, but that would get him nothing new. “Look, I got no part in the quarrel between him and the witch. That séance was all her and Kieler—”

  Reynolds’s laugh was dark and choked, as if he were gargling blood. “You are tender meat, ain’t you boy? The Boss’s had his eye on you since March. That fool McGillicuddy staked you out right away, which was pretty careless of Her Snootiness. I thought she had better sense than that.”

  “So you showed up at the Herschels’ already knowin who he was,” Boz put in. “And I guess you’re the reason the little demon in the press suddenly went for bigger game.”

  “Well, look who just caught up,” Reynolds sneered. “More to the point, Buck, I knew your buddy here’s the tastiest morsel anybody’s seen since … Well.” He actually gnashed his teeth, and for a second Trace saw the thing within the meat-sack, bones straining at the flesh as if they would tear through. Trace’s own face crawled, with the instinctive fear of prey for a predator. His power was screaming at him to get away from this thing, but he held firm.

  Reynolds controlled himself as well, subsiding beneath the human façade. “Once the witch flushed you out, it was a matter of time til the buzzards came circling. And I figured you were too green to survive your own bad luck and her bungling, so I took a friendly interest. Kind of a shepherding hand, you might say.”

  “On Mereck’s say-so?” Trace said, knowing the answer. “Or your own?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Reynolds said. “How would you like living in a bottle? Sound a bit constraining? Well it is. And if you don’t wanna end up the same way, I suggest you get your holier-than-thou arse out of town. In fact, out of the western hemisphere might not be a bad idea.”

  “How long have I got?”

  “Couldn’t say. That blood-spell makes you hard to pin down in the gray space, which is why the Boss started recruiting Dickensian orphans to hunt you down.” Reynolds turned his head suddenly, as if hearing a faraway call … which he might well be, Trace realized, feeling a twinge along his own internal telegraph lines. The scar in his palm stung and he clenched his fist.

  “I gotta go. And you will too, if you know what’s good for you.” Reynolds drew a telegram envelope from his pocket and tossed it at Trace. “Take advantage of the witch’s hospitality. If anybody knows how to hide from him, it’s her.” He began to back away down the street. “And for blazes’ sakes don’t be taking any more jaunts in the gray space until she shows you how to do it properly. You might as well smear yourself in hog fat and throw yourself to the wolves.”

  Reynolds turned on his heel. And between one step and the next—Trace wasn’t even sure he blinked—the reporter disappeared from view.

  Boz’s breath gushed out as if he’d been holding it. “Jesus Christ, Trace. Jesus Christ—”

  “Breathe,” Trace said sharply. He put a hand under Boz’s armpit just as his knees buckled. He didn’t faint, but he did turn awfully gray. Trace folded him onto a nearby hay bale, sat beside him, and kept a hand on the back of Boz’s neck until he started breathing normally again.

  “Sorry,” Boz muttered at length. “Stupid…”

  “No,” Trace said. “He affects me the same way. I’ve just got more protection than you do.”

  “He just showed up this mornin with that telegram, and I didn’t know what else to do—”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You gonna tell me what the hell happened last night? That boy bit you, didn’t he? And it did somethin to you.”

  “He tried. Miss Fairweather’s spell is still protectin me.” He turned the telegraph envelope over in his hand, but there was no note inside, just several pieces of paper money. Trace retrieved the telegram from his breast pocket and unfolded it. This time there was no blurring of the words, and despite the disjointed language of the telegram he heard her voice in his head as he read:

  SPIRIT ACTIVITY IN AREA RESEMBLES KEUNG-SI STOP LYCANTHROPE UNIMPORTANT REMOVE SELF FROM DANGER LYCANTHROPY HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS AVOID SALIVA BLOOD EXCRETA STOP SILVER NITRATE OR ACONITE MAY SLOW INFECTION BUT IF VICTIM INFLUENCED BY OUTSIDE FORCES NO HOPE I IMPLORE YOU RETURN IMMEDIATELY

  S. FAIRWEATHER.

  Somehow he hadn’t been frightened until he heard the fear in her words. I implore you. Remove yourself from danger. I have been searching for someone like you, for so long—He felt the power trying to well up, to put that shield between himself and his fear, but he pushed it down. If he took the fear away—gave in to that sense of invulnerability—he was liable to do something stupid. As if what he was contemplating wasn’t bad enough.

  “What did she say?” Boz demanded.

  “To leave the Kid alone and come back.”

  Boz stared at him. “But you ain’t gonna do that. Are you.”

  Trace shook his head. “Mereck picked out that Kid cause he was like me—religious family, power he couldn’t control. Maybe just meant for him to get close to me, maybe thinkin he could make himself a pack of werewolves if I didn’t cooperate. I don’t know. But I don’t think he was supposed to bite me and I’m pretty damn sure he wasn’t supposed to kill that girl.”

  Boz stared at him for a longer moment. “You mean to hunt him down?”

  “I don’t see as how anyone else can … Where’s Hanky? At the corral?”

  “I sent him back to the ranch. Gave him the bank-books and a message for Miller—”

  “Shit,” Trace said, because as soon as Boz said it, Trace’s mind grasped and pulled on some thread he had been unaware of—the Kid’s aura, faint and skittish as a shooting star, headed north.

  “Well, I didn’t think he ought to be around here, askin questions—”

  “No. But the Kid’s headed that direction, too. We got horses?”

  Boz’s throat worked for a second as if he were going to throw up, but when he spoke, his voice was startlingly normal. “I kept back three. Told Hanky to tell Miller we was takin ’em in payment for the last two months. The paint for me and a couple o’ spares for us to change out, in case we have to ride hard.”

  Trace shook his head, lurching off the hay bale even as the words were leaving Boz’s mouth. “Take ’em, Boz. Take the rest of the money and go. Don’t even te
ll me where—”

  “Shit on that,” Boz said harshly. “Shit all over that, partner. You don’t get to choose for me.”

  Trace looked away, far down the street. He didn’t know which was worse, the fear or the craven, selfish relief. After a minute he said, “Are we ready to go?”

  “I’m ready. You maybe wanna change clothes.”

  “Yeah. And visit the druggist.” Trace began to turn toward the stockyards, their hotel, raking a list together in his head: Aconite. Silver nitrate. Riding clothes. Bullets. Rope …

  “Trace.” Boz put out a hand and caught his lapel, forced him to meet his eyes. “Just tell me you ain’t plannin to ride out there and die.”

  Trace looked at him—the wide weathered brow, the steady dark eyes, the one mouth that had never lied to him, nor asked him to be anything he wasn’t. “It’s not me I’m afraid for.”

  Their faces were inches apart. He couldn’t miss the subtle tightening of Boz’s face, the mist of fear that welled in his eyes. “If I ride away you’ll go after him on your own. Won’t you.”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “I think I have to, Boz.”

  Boz nodded, once, and let go Trace’s coat, smoothing the lapel with a caress so loving and bitter that Trace wished he would have just hit him, instead.

  “All right,” Boz said, not looking at him. “Go do your business. I’ll wait for you at the corral.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was eighty miles to the ranch. They had taken two days on the way into town, but it could be done in a day, by two good riders with a change of mounts. Boz guessed Hanky would stop at nightfall, in the same place they’d camped on the way south, if they didn’t catch up to him first.

  And it was important that they catch Hanky before nightfall. Because woven in and out of Hanky’s easy-to-follow trail—the single pony with a light rider, and nine horses on a string behind him—was a set of barefoot tracks, those same peculiar five-toed prints they had seen outside the ranch bath-house. Except now Trace could see they were the front part of a man’s foot, the big toe prominent, long claws like a dog’s cutting through the soil with each step. No marks of heels, and spaced at a length and depth that suggested a speedy lope.

  “That’s him,” Boz said, mouth curled in distaste. “Followin Hanky.”

  “Leadin us,” Trace corrected. He was getting more frequent flashes of awareness from the Kid as the afternoon shadows lengthened—twinges of excitement and gloating contempt. Like a trail of feathers and blood, leading to the gnawed and discarded carcass.

  “You know this’s a trap, right?” Boz said.

  “I expect he thinks it is. I aim to catch him before he can spring it.”

  “And then what?”

  “Shoot him.”

  “Bullets didn’t kill those bloodsuckers.”

  “I know it. But Miss Fairweather said silver nitrate might work. So I got some of that.” He reached in his vest pocket and pulled out a small brown bottle, tightly corked.

  “What is it?”

  “An ointment. Doctors put it on wounds and burns.” The lycanthropy patient had been deathly afraid of it—had screamed and swore the nurses were trying to poison him when they tried to apply it to the numerous wounds he inflicted on himself.

  “So, what—you plan to throw it at him? Hold him down and pour it down his throat?”

  “If it comes to that. Also got some aconite tincture. Remy said it’s good for wolf-bites, and Miss Fairweather mentioned it, too, so I got some of that, against either of us gets bit again.” Not that it would do much good, he suspected. But he wasn’t going to tell Boz that.

  They continued north as fast as they dared, talking little, following the Sweetwater’s dry gorge. The little canyon was shallow and wide, carved by eons of spring runoff, but this time of year the water was low.

  “We’re catchin up on ’em,” Boz said, the next time they changed horses.

  Trace nodded, but he was wishing Hanky had stopped sooner. It was falling dusk by that time, and they were coming to a place where the trail led down into the canyon, a shortcut through the gorge that was quicker than riding around the long curve of the bluff. It was the same path they had taken on the trip out, but then they had been four men in broad daylight. The canyon was a bad place to be in the dark, full of crags and rocks and shadows to fool the eye.

  Hanky, of course, had taken the shortcut. They followed his trail into the canyon along with the last of the daylight. The wind whistled over their heads in hymn chords and the horses’ footsteps echoed in so many directions they sounded like a whole cavalry. Darkness settled over them like a goose-down comforter, and with it came the familiar dreamy caress of power up and down Trace’s nerves—like being horny, but of the mind rather than the body. He began to hear voices murmuring to him, one high and one low, like an imp and a devil having a sniggering conversation behind his back. As if they were taunting him to come and investigate, like the demon in the drunk tank, urging him to take a drink …

  “You see a light?” Boz said, low.

  “Where?”

  “Bit to your right.”

  The floodplain of the river had opened up to a wide place, flanked by bluffs ten or twelve feet high, bottomed with gravel that slid treacherously under the horses’ feet. And after a second he saw the light—not the flicker of flame he’d been looking for, just a glow, and no smoke at all.

  But it was a campfire, built back in a semi-sheltered curve of rock wall. Half smothered by the cooking pot that had been dropped into it, blackened remains of dinner slopped over the side. Nearby were lumpy shadows of a bedroll, rucksack, saddles.

  Their horses didn’t like that place. They shuffled and shied away from the fire, backing down the gravel to the ribbon of water.

  Boz dismounted and approached the fire, kicked the pan out, and set a long branch of dried brush onto the embers. It quickly began to snap and pop, little licks of flame flaring up along the dead tinder. In the swelling light Boz inspected the tack alongside the bedrolls. “This is Hanky’s saddle.” He traced the ground with his eyes, turned in a circle and paced a few yards away, where he abruptly stopped and crouched. “Aw, hell…”

  Trace dismounted, moved to Boz’s side.

  It was Hanky, dropped like a pile of old rags on the gravel. One arm was pinned under him, the other flung up and out. His gun was still in his hand. His guts were all over the creek bed.

  “Holy Mother.” Trace crossed himself, touched his fist to his lips for a moment, then reached out and pressed Hanky’s eyes closed.

  The jolt he got was a kick to the chest—like plunging out of a steam tent into a cold river. Darkness closed around him like a vise, the darkness of someone else’s memories; the vision was coming at him like a freight train and it was going to hurt—

  close, confined space, like a storm cellar or an old well—damp walls, aching back and stinging skin from the bite of the strap, indignity of his own stink and a hateful rage boiling in his blood, loosing hot tears of impotence and self-loathing, and then the quality of the darkness changed, became intimate, caressing—a voice whispering assurance, invitation, such a voice as God was supposed to have, but this was not the God of his father, demanding bowing-down and submission, this was a God of retribution, of blood-lust and hunger, it spoke to the rage inside him, stroked it and made it sweeten, and he opened himself to the darkness, welcomed it in, and it filled him up and made him strong, made him matter, and O those unbelievers were blind and puny in their ignorance, especially that one who had the gall to call himself Preacher, and now it was time to make restitution—

  Trace was dimly aware of Boz’s voice barking at him, Boz’s hands gripping his shoulders and pushing him away from Hanky’s body, rough gravel at his back, Boz’s arms holding him down as he fought the sickening carnality of the Kid’s soul, not wanting to feel the gloating anticipation in him nor see what was coming—

  Hanky was a small shadow bent over a small fire, surrounded by
the comfortable forms of horses, looking up startled as they snorted and shied, one hand going to the unfamiliar gun on his hip, feeling suddenly his smallness, his aloneness beneath the uncaring sky

  hot surge of triumph at the fear on his face, the quick clumsy shot squeezed off, the single cry of shock before his jaws were on the unbeliever’s throat, the ecstatic spurt of hot blood in his mouth, better than sugar, better than his father’s false tongue when he had bitten it off, because he was doing the will of the Master, and finally he had the strength and the authority to wreak all the havoc he wanted—

  Trace rolled on all fours and retched. Bile drowned out the tang of blood and the wracking spasms broke him free of the trance. He put a mental shoulder against that door in his mind and shoved it closed, pushed the power down so hard he felt his brain cramp with the sudden collapse into silence.

  He sat back on his heels, panting and wiping a sleeve across his mouth. Boz kept a hand on his shoulder, not saying anything, just waiting for the verdict.

  Trace turned his head and spat into the gravel.

  “Kid?” Boz said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Same as the horses?”

  “Yeah.”

  Boz turned in his crouch, surveying the desolate place and the ruin of a young man barely out of boyhood. “This’s worse than the bloodsuckers. Those things were hungry, but this … don’t make no sense.”

  “It makes sense,” Trace said. “This is what happens when you take a child with a power he doesn’t understand, and tell him every day he’s bad and evil for bein what he is. He becomes the thing you tell him he is, cause he doesn’t know any better. And if somebody like Mereck gets ahold of a powder-keg like that, this is what you get.”

  “Yeah, but how much of this is Mereck’s play and how much is just mad-dog crazy?”

  Does it matter? Trace was about to say, when one of the horses snorted, loud.

  They both froze, hands to guns, listening. Boz turned slowly around, back to the fire, squinting into the darkness. Trace got his feet under him, scanned the upper edge of the nearer riverbank, over Boz’s head. The rock face of the bluff reflected some firelight, but above that all was blackness. The wind moaned over the mouth of the washout with a sound like blowing across a bottle. Everything else was quiet enough to make his skin crawl.