The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel Page 35

  Trace had a bit wedged in his teeth and a number of check-reins looped around his arms and legs. He was trussed up like a country ham, propped across the cold fire pit from the cook-shack. He couldn’t see how bad Boz was hurt, at this distance in the dark, but at least he was still healthy enough to jerk and grunt when they prodded him. The pack had worn out their blood-lust for the moment and were confining themselves to teasing.

  “Listen, Kid,” Trace said, speaking carefully around the metal bar across his tongue, “I dunno what Mereck told you, but this ain’t gonna win you any favor with him—”

  The boy gave a low laugh. Ironically, he was more human in shape than any of the others, but he had retained the hair on his jaw, the savage teeth, the slightly elongated ears. With his broad, flat face he looked fey and wild. “You’re a fool, Preacher. A liar and a false prophet, like the rest of them. All your blather about men being equal, when you know perfectly well they aren’t.” He rolled his razor-clawed fingers before his face and grinned. “Some of us are special.”

  “Kid—the man you been talkin to—he ain’t God—”

  “Oh, how would you know?” the Kid sneered. “It was all I could do not to laugh when you told me that sob story about your old man. I couldn’t wait to kill mine. The sonofabitch tried to exorcise me four times. The fourth time, Mr. Mereck found me. Let me out.” The boy tapped his temple. “It was all in here, the whole time. He just showed me how to let it out.”

  Across the yard, Boz let out a scream. Trace jerked, his teeth clashing against the iron bit, and the Kid glanced over his shoulder with faint gratification. “Mr. Mereck says you’re more than you seem. I guess you must be, if you’re protected against His curse. But all I ever saw in you was weakness, Preacher. Always licking up to Miller, your second daddy. Hauling that nigger around like a cross on your back, to keep yourself down.”

  “Hell with you, Kid. You ain’t half as smart as you think.”

  The Kid laughed and pounced, landed straddle-legged across Trace’s knees, catching Trace’s chin in his clawed hand, five needlepoints digging into his cheeks and the bit making his jaws cramp. “I caught you, didn’t I? Led you right back here, just like one of those stupid traps the wolf-hunter left laying around. Couldn’t wait to come save me from myself. Put me right back into the cage you can’t get out of.” He let go Trace’s face with a spiteful wrench. “You’re weak, Preacher, and the Master only picks the very best for His service.”

  Trace heard the fawning note in the Kid’s voice, and it disgusted him as much as it was frightening. “Listen, Kid. I’ve seen what Mereck does to his followers. He uses ’em up like hack nags. There was a man named Kieler—”

  “Oh, I know all about him. Master told me all about his traitors, the ones who failed him. I already did better than that fool Ferris.” His face turned sly. “Yeah, I know about the Fire-Master. Lost his nerve, stupid prat. I imagine he’s having a worse time than your boy, right now.”

  Across the yard, Boz made a low, guttural moan that built into a scream and Trace jerked in his bonds. “Goddammit, Kid!” His teeth clashed against the bit. “He didn’t do nothin to you! Mereck ain’t gonna want him so you may as well turn him loose!”

  “Oh, no. The Master was real specific—find his weak point, he said. And that’s your pet nigger. So I figure I soften you both up for him, before he gets here.”

  “And when’s that supposed to be?”

  A beatific smile crossed the Kid’s face. “Soon.”

  “How’s he gettin here? Where’s he comin from?” Behind his back, Trace fought with the knots of his bindings. They were not tight, but the leather straps were stiff and difficult to move. Even if he got them loose he had no guns and no way to flee. The horses were still trapped in the house—at least the wolves had been too busy with their captives to indulge in further slaughter—and since he’d removed his coat while they were barricading the windows, he didn’t even have the apothecary bottles on his person.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the Kid said. “The Master has many ways of watching His faithful. He can listen on the wind. Not a sparrow falls without His notice. That’s how he found me—my blood cried out to Him. He sees into a person’s soul, and He only takes the pure at heart…”

  Trace tuned him out. While the Kid went on eulogizing, Trace slipped out of his skull and into the gray, hoping to get a look at the wolves’ spirit-selves—maybe count their numbers, look for holes in their defenses—and to see whether Mereck was as close as the Kid seemed to think.

  He saw immediately how the Kid’s aura had changed. He had shed whatever restraints of morality or self-control had held back the beast; the power had settled over him like a coat, merged with his skin and bones, embraced him. And with that interference removed, Trace easily recognized that other hovering echo: Mereck’s cold, hungry presence, whispering to the boy, stroking him, holding him in thrall.

  The wolves, by comparison, resembled the keung-si more than anything. In the gray space he saw them as an absence, dark places that seemed to eat the light around them. And yet within each black void Trace could sense the living sparks of the men he had known, writhing and tormented, trapped in the nightmares of their own minds.

  The pack suddenly roared in excitement, and the Kid broke off his monologue to snarl in their direction. “Hey! None of that!” Two of the wolves had turned on each other, snapping and tussling on the ground. “I said stop!” the Kid shouted, and started over that way.

  Hot, rough hands closed over Trace’s wrists, and he jolted back into his skin, which felt tight and breathless.

  “Jus’ keep still,” Remy’s voice muttered, his fingers fumbling at the bonds. There was a slither and a snap, and the leather immediately loosed around Trace’s forearms. “Your guns is here behind you. Can you track Remy in the dark?”

  “Yeah.”

  The loup-garou moved around and tugged at the straps around his ankles. Trace shrugged out of the remaining bonds and spat the bit into the dust.

  “In a minute Remy gonna move upwind. They gonna chase him. You get to your man, get ’im down, get to ranch office. Is shotgun in dere, oui?”

  “Yes.” It was maybe forty feet from the fire-pit to the foreman’s house. Trace thought of the thin door, the heavy desk, the shotgun on the wall.

  “You wanna shoot after dem when dey run, is good, but don’t shoot Remy, d’accord?”

  “Bien sûr,” Trace said, and Remy grinned, his teeth flashing in the moonlight, before slipping away into the darkness.

  Trace felt on the ground and located the cool, smooth handles of two pistols: Boz’s top-break Scofields with their silver grips.

  Twelve shots. One for each of the wretches. He hoped Mereck felt every one of them.

  Abruptly Boz hollered, and the pack howled for blood. Two of the wolves had seized his legs and were pulling, until abruptly the yoke slipped off its post. Boz crashed to the ground, and then they were on him—nipping, clawing, kicking. One of their number shoved his way to the center, crouched over Boz’s chest, and raised a clawed hand high.

  Trace shot him through the head.

  The man-wolf pitched into the midst of his brethren and they yelped and bounced in chorus around the body, over and across Boz, who flinched and thrashed under their churning feet. They seemed to have no idea where the shot had come from, except for the Kid, who turned in Trace’s direction, his face contorted in a snarl.

  A long howl echoed across the yard, bouncing eerily off the close-set buildings. All heads turned; Trace spotted Remy at the same time as the pack—five paces beyond the lean-to, standing in the open ground between it and the office. He was in his half-human state—as tall as Trace and twice as heavy. His muscular thighs and shoulders crouched in an unmistakable invitation, his snout wrinkled back in a brawler’s grin.

  The pack broke. The first four or five took off like shots, melting lower to the ground, becoming sleeker and more lupine as they ran. They moved almost as one, merg
ing into a V-formation like geese, intent on their target, who turned and fled.

  The acquisition of grace might’ve been beautiful to watch except that one by one the pursuers were yanked short and bowled over with a yelp. Steel snaps echoed back across the yard as the wolf-hunter’s traps triggered. Three, four, five of them were caught, in a double row of bone-breaking jaws, placed in strategic formation like the wolves’ own hunting pattern.

  Some of the others, less fleet and thus luckier, leapt over their fallen comrades and continued in pursuit of Remy while the Kid stomped his feet and screamed for them to come back. Three or four circled around, two-footed and less agile, and Trace walked steadily toward them, toward where the Kid stood and Boz lay still on the ground, and when they noticed him coming he started shooting.

  Two fell; the others scattered. The Kid ran like his tail was on fire. Trace shoved one pistol in his pants and grabbed the lead ring of Boz’s yoke with his left hand. He backed up swiftly toward the foreman’s house, gun hand covering the yard ahead of him. He shot the wolf that leapt out of the darkness, kicked the door open with his heel and wrestled the heavy yoke and his partner’s limp weight into the office. His limbs were trembling, his back running with cold sweat. A werewolf tried to charge the door and he shot it back. He dragged Boz out of the way, closed the door and ran around the heavy desk to push it into place.

  It wouldn’t budge; the legs were nailed to the floor. “Jesus Savior sweet Mary PLEASE!” Trace put his feet against the wall and shoved with all his might. There was a mighty crack as the legs split off the front end of the desk and its awkward weight toppled and skidded across the floor. He wheelbarrowed it against the door and dropped it face down by the wall.

  He slid down beside it, panting, exhausted. Gradually Boz’s ragged breathing intruded on his fog and he pulled himself up, crawled over to his partner’s side. He clawed loose the ropes holding Boz’s arms to the yoke and kicked it away.

  It was very dark in the office. The sliver of moonlight coming through the single high window was little help. Even his spirit-vision could not help him see the damage that had been done—it showed him only how dim Boz’s aura had become. The lightest touch of his fingers found only sticky blood and lacerated flesh, and made Boz’s breath hitch in pain. Trace gathered him up in his arms as carefully as he could and held him propped against his own chest, leaning them both against the wall so Boz could breathe more easily.

  Things became quiet outside. Far off in the distance he heard two shots, but that was all. He sat with one arm across Boz’s shoulders and a revolver in his other hand, expecting at any moment the wolves would start throwing themselves against the door. That desk wouldn’t keep them out. They were too strong.

  He had five shots left. He’d seen three wolves left outside—at least two of those he’d shot had seemed to stay down. So maybe bullets could finish them off. But he only had five shots left, and Trace figured on saving the last bullet for himself. He’d be damned before he’d let himself be served up to Mereck.

  Boz was dying, anyway. His life was soaking Trace’s pants and the floorboards where they sat. Maybe they’d end up haunting this place together—an eternity of telling each other I told you so. Trace wondered if his power would render him different from the usual lost souls; if he would retain a sense of himself, maybe end up a spirit familiar for some half-baked medium like Kieler. Or find himself enslaved to someone like Mereck, or Miss Fairweather.

  Maybe suicide wasn’t the best option after all.

  A foot landed softly on the stoop outside, making his every nerve twitch. He pointed the gun at the door.

  There was a polite knock. “Mr. Tracy?”

  It was a young man’s voice. It sounded like the Kid, but the cadence, the diction were wrong.

  “Mr. Tracy, I hope you will excuse my addressing you in this manner.” The voice was cultured, with a slight foreign accent, full of gentlemanly chagrin. “I believe my servant has been acting rashly, and I have temporarily taken possession of his body. I thought you might feel more at ease if we were to converse in this manner.”

  “And who the hell are you?” Trace demanded.

  “I think you know of me, Mr. Tracy. My name is Yosef Mereck.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  That name, spoken aloud in the darkness, chilled the breath in his lungs. He became aware of a stealthy enmity sniffing around the edges of his brain and shrank into himself, pulling up his shields like a child pulling quilts over his head. “I got nothin to say to you.”

  “Will you do me the courtesy of listening, then?”

  Trace could think of no dignified answer to such a request. The gun, still pointed at the door, began to weigh on his shaking hand.

  “Mr. Tracy, I expect you will find this incredible, but I did not instruct this young werewolf to harm you and your friend. I asked him only to seek you out and report your whereabouts to me, until such time as I could arrive and meet with you in person. I am dismayed to find this young man’s mind is far less stable than I supposed it to be. Religious fervor can … warp a youth’s perceptions of the world, don’t you agree?”

  Of course he agreed. But he was repulsed by the implication they had anything in common. “So you just set him to spy on me. That makes it all right, then.”

  “Mr. Tracy, I do not wish to engage in an exchange of accusations and counter-accusations, but I have reason to believe you have been investigating my activities for some months now. Under the aegis of Sabine Fairweather? I cannot know what, precisely, she has told you of me, but I doubt she had any praise for my name. Will you give me the chance to speak in my own defense?”

  The voice was warm, calm, reasonable. And the presence stroking his mind had turned curious, friendly. The hunger was still there—like a blind, grasping maw underneath—but Trace felt it had been leashed, scolded into the background.

  “Mr. Tracy, I want you to know it was not my intent to infect all of your comrades with this plague.” Mereck’s voice sounded as if he were very close to the door, breathing on it.

  “Why’d you make it, then?” Trace demanded. “What possible purpose did that serve?”

  “It is an unfortunate side-effect of my research. My aim is to help people like your young friend, and like yourself. Herr Kieler told me you detested your power, and wished to be freed of it—”

  “Was this before or after you killed him?”

  There was a slight pause. “Herr Kieler’s fault was always pride.” The cultured voice was regretful, but resigned. “He undertook a dangerous venture into the spirit world, that he was in no way equipped to control, and summoned up forces beyond his comprehension. You, I believe, are more circumspect. You have been hiding yourself with fine control for almost half your life, but now I fear my former pupil has pushed you into extending yourself too far, too fast.” That probing sensation lapped at Trace’s mind again, as if it were tasting him, and he cringed away from it. Immediately other tendrils began to creep closer, like the leeches at the dinner table, inching toward the meat of his brain while he retreated, smaller and smaller within himself.

  But mention of Miss Fairweather had distracted him from his fear. He remembered her cool, sensible voice saying, Protection to you, defeat to him. A sword and a shield, if you would use it.

  He remembered the banquet table, with all of the leeches leading away from the diners and toward the fount that Mereck drank from—a painfully obvious metaphor, now he thought about it. Miss Fairweather poisoning her own blood and feeding it into that fount.

  The circle of their clasped hands around the séance table, that clash of power as Kieler and Miss Fairweather both touched him.

  That same jolt of connection when she had ground her bloody palm into his, and Mereck’s sudden recoiling from it.

  Her blood and her spell had protected him twice—once in the library and again when the Kid bit him. Though both times she had been merely the catalyst, showing him how to use the power he already had
.

  You are as strong as he, Mr. Tracy. You can fight him.

  Trace wasn’t so sure about that. The Russian was sneaky, and far older than Trace—he wasn’t sure what gave him that impression but he knew it to be true. And anybody who could keep a thing like Reynolds on a leash—even if he slipped it now and then—was bound to be a real curly wolf.

  But wolves got hungry. And the scent of fresh blood would bring ’em every time.

  Never will your power away. Do you hear me?

  “Mr. Tracy?”

  “I’m thinkin.” He eased out from under Boz’s weight and settled him gently on the floor. Boz’s aura was very dim, now, his breathing fast and shallow. Trace touched his lips to Boz’s forehead, felt how cool his skin had become, the greasy chill of his sweat.

  Then he sidled across the floor, to the clutter that had slid off the desk, and began to feel through it, searching.

  “Mr. Tracy?”

  “I guess I’m wonderin what you might teach me, that I couldn’t figure out for myself.”

  “My dear fellow, that very question conveys to me the inadequacy of Sabine’s instruction. She possesses a fine mind, but she has always felt herself slighted by her male colleagues. It makes her suspicious and miserly. Whereas a partnership between you and me could be one of equals.”

  Trace’s hand closed on the paper knife. He tested the edge with his thumb. Sharp enough. “So what kinda partnership are we talkin about? Fairweather may be a mean stingy bitch, but she pays well, and I got mouths to feed.”

  A friendly chuckle from the porch: ripples of contempt through the gray space. “Mr. Tracy, I am proposing to reveal all the mysteries of the universe to you. The minds of men, the future of investments—the very bowels of the earth will yield up their treasures for your retrieval. I assure you, after a few weeks of my tutelage, money will never again be a concern of yours.”

  Trace did not doubt it. He ground his teeth and drew the knife across his palm, reopening the old scar and the half-healed bite mark. It hurt less than he might have expected. The gush of blood was warm and slippery down his wrist. He smeared the blade and then cupped the hilt in that same hand, holding the point flat against his forearm. He felt for the pistol he had set aside and tucked it into his waist as he stood up.