Chapter Twenty-Three

 

 

 

With expert stoicism, Halloran avoided the lure of the pristine bedding, Asher’s gaze and the indecent amount of flesh on display. “Put your clothes back on.” He spoke with his usual asperity, but the corners of his mouth tugged down as though he didn’t want to be speaking at all.

“It’s past ten,” Asher pointed out, bemused.

“It is.”

“Did Ambrose want to see me?” Since the last brief and disastrous dinner party, Asher hadn’t had the pleasure of the mayor’s company for three days. The reprieve suited him just fine. “Or Malachi—”

“Malachi don’t get a say. I told you to get dressed,” Halloran growled. “Are you defying me?”

Too many days of almost familiar routine and too many nights of sharing his bed with Halloran with no consequences had indeed lulled Asher into a false sense of security. He was tempted to acquiesce out of sheer recklessness.

A reminder that the creature who laid beside him night after night could rip him to shreds wouldn’t hurt.

Sense won out. Asher tugged his pants back on and buckled his belt.

“You’ll need your duster too,” Halloran mumbled.

“I don’t have one… Are we going somewhere?” Timid hope flared in Asher’s chest. Perhaps Ambrose had finally given his permission and they could return to Willowbranch.

There had been a time when the prospect would’ve sent him into a panic. That was before he knew the joys of living in a house that felt more like a tomb.

Halloran stripped off his own duster and tossed it over. Predictably, he kept his answers to himself.

Outside, two horses waited tethered by the hitching post. One of them was Halloran’s. Asher’s breath caught at the sight of him. The last time he’d seen the snorting, temperamental beast, it had been fleeing Redemption—and in so doing depriving Asher of his own escape.

The horse tossed its head as he drew nearer. It knew him and it didn’t seem especially thrilled to renew the acquaintance.

You and me both, buddy.

As his vision adjusted to the thick night, Asher noted three of the remaining four Riders pacing the empty street, as if they or their mounts couldn’t keep still. They were the only commotion in town.

“Where are we headed?” Asher asked again, not particularly concerned if his voice carried.

Sargasso was feigning sleep.

“New Morning Farm,” Halloran bit out through clenched teeth. “Now mount up.”

As answers went, it didn’t satisfy. But the urgency in Halloran’s voice told Asher the window for asking questions had just slammed shut.

His placid bay took direction well, at least, and seemed more than happy to follow the rest of the herd. Caught in the crisp desert wind, the animal’s long mane fluttered over Asher’s hands. He only pricked up his ears once they’d left Sargasso well in the dust.

It was another long moment before Asher grasped why.

New Morning Farm was the easternmost point in Ambrose’s empire. Its stone walls had been constructed when the town was only a glimmer in the eye of the first settlers. Seventy-odd years later, it still stood proudly in the heart of the valley, breeding cattle rather than horses and spreading its profits exclusively among vampire owners.

As long as there was profit to be made, that would always be the case. The agitated black and brown beasts dotting the plains called that guarantee into doubt. The fire engulfing the barn roof, all the more so.

“Holy Christ,” Asher breathed, his heart slamming against his ribs. He tugged on the reins before the bay drove him any nearer to the blaze.

Shouts echoed from the farmyard as the hands struggled to put out the flames. With only one water pump, it wasn’t likely to be an easy task.

A gray plume of smoke filled the air with the smell of charred meat and burning logs.

“Cattle rustlers,” one of the Riders yelled out. “Do we chase them, boss?”

“Get the animals together!” Halloran called.

From the corner of his eye, Asher saw him circle back.

“Asher.”

But Asher couldn’t look away from the fire. He tasted cinders on his tongue. He heard the screams of women still trying to salvage worthless trinkets. White nightgowns fluttered around flame-blistered legs, the fire licking at their fraying ends.

“Asher.” This time, Halloran pulled up alongside and took his arm. “I don’t have enough men. I need you to—”

“No. No, I can’t.” The bay gave a protesting whicker when Asher pulled him sharply back. They were five hundred yards from the farm, but the wind carried the heat and stench of the fire. Asher choked on it.

Halloran grabbed the reins from his hands. “You must.”

“I ain’t getting near that!”

“Nor should you. But if we don’t get those cows back, Ambrose’ll have our heads. And he ain’t gonna start with his own kind, you understand? Think of Charlie.”

Asher blinked. Charlie Wheeler. Charlie, who was Wesley’s friend, who herded cows and went all soft and pliant for Blackjack.

Charlie, who’d told Asher’s friends how to get him out.

“Don’t know where you got the idea I’m the guy to ride that river with,” Asher muttered, but Halloran’s threat had the desired effect. “Give me the fucking reins.”

Halloran dithered a moment before letting go. “We’re drivin’ them to Willowbranch. You still remember the way?”

Asher could hardly not. The last time he’d ridden these plains, the sky had been just as dark. Fear had choked him then too.

The other Riders had already split up to gather the herd before it fled any farther north. Asher took the south flank, putting his back to the fire. Cattle wailed as he drove the bay around them, blocking their exodus and steering them back toward the firelight. Feed supplies running so low, the cows weren’t very big, but they were as shy of brains as a terrapin was of feathers. They stumbled along ten paces one way only to turn sharply at the eleventh and have to be nudged back toward the rest of the herd.

Asher shouted and cursed until his throat ached. His hands began to sweat around the reins. The cold night gusts became a welcome balm. And, slowly, as the beasts were driven farther and farther from New Morning Farm, their frenzied attempts at flight diminished.

Willowbranch welcomed them with darkened windows and an empty yard. There would be no hay to soothe the cattle until the sun came up, but corralling them into a pen and closing the gate was triumph enough for one night.

His knees like rubber, Asher leaned against the gatepost to catch his breath. The sky had already begun to lighten to the east.

The night had come and gone.

“How many did we lose?” Halloran asked his men.

“Couple of cows,” said Maud. “Three calves.”

“Not as bad as it could’ve been,” Nyle offered.

His eyes hidden under the brim of his hat, Halloran nodded. He seemed satisfied with that tally.

But in the distance the farm still smoldered, black smoke rising from its ruined barn in purplish filaments. “What about the ranch hands?” Asher heard himself ask.

No one volunteered a number. That wasn’t as important a calculation. Humans, after all, were replaceable.

Asher found his bay on the other side of the pen, chewing indifferently at a clump of bunchgrass. It raised its head to acknowledge him, but otherwise seemed to find no reason to interrupt his meal.

Halloran’s approach didn’t provoke the same amount of interest.

“We headin’ back?” Asher guessed, his voice stripped of all emotion. There was no sense in doubting it. Whatever he did, Sargasso always reeled him back in again.

“Not yet.”

From a pocket in his waistcoat, Halloran produced a cigarette case and a box of matchsticks. He lit up in silence, shaking out the flame before Asher’s gaze could latch on to it.

“What happened to the stogies?”

“Ran out,” Halloran said on a smoke-filled breath. He held out the cigarette over the four feet between them, and Asher took it. “Answer’s two, by the way.”

“Two what?”

“Dead cowherds.”

Asher exhaled. “Charlie?”

“Don’t know yet, but I didn’t see Blackjack blow his stack, so…”

“Like he’d give a damn.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“By dumb humans stealing cattle in the middle of the night, sure. Not by one of you.”

Halloran slipped his large, cold hand around Asher’s and retrieved the cigarette. “Cattle rustlers don’t burn farms.”

“You’re the expert.”

The quip earned him a glare, the bright end of the cigarette illuminating Halloran’s brow. A month ago, backtalk would have earned Asher at least the threat of violence, if not its delivery. He wondered if it was the patchwork welded into his skin that put Halloran off.

Halloran exhaled another puff of smoke and tossed his cigarette into the dirt. “Come with me.”

“Why?” Asher shot back, already pushing away from the wooden fence to follow. He couldn’t seem to learn his lesson when it came to asking questions. He should’ve known by now that Halloran would treat him to the same silence he’d offered in leaving Sargasso. That he’d stalk into the flat wilderness surrounding Willowbranch with an indecipherable sense of purpose.

Trepidation still blossomed as Asher fell into step beside him, able to keep up with a vampire’s gait only because said vampire allowed it.

“On the shoot again, huh?” When he spoke at last, Halloran’s voice was an unnecessarily low whisper.

“No, I ain’t.” Denial was the easiest way to handle accusations that struck a little too close to home.

It made no difference. Halloran parked a foot on a scraggly piece of rock and abruptly ceased marching them into the unknown. “I need you to stop.”

“Or you’ll make me?”

Halloran shook his head. “I told you it wasn’t cattle rustlers.”

The conversational about-face seemed to come out of nowhere. Asher frowned, perplexed. “What’s that got to do with—?”

“Ambrose thinks we’re in the clear ’cause we took out Redemption.” Halloran blew out a breath. “He’s wrong.”

A chill shivered down Asher’s spine. Halloran didn’t need to talk in riddles to get his point across. If he was doing it at all—

Asher slanted a glance toward the farm. Candles and lamps had begun to glow like beacons in the windows. The other Riders must have made their way indoors. But walls didn’t mean they couldn’t eavesdrop on Halloran and Asher.

The whole town heard you two, Malachi had taunted. Per Halloran’s confirmation, it was probably true.

“It ain’t Moreau,” Asher heard himself say, equally hushed.

“We don’t know that.” Halloran cocked his head. “Do we?”

The creeping dawn deprived his ruddy face of the mysterious allure he carried so well at night. He looked a little too much like a man. Too much like someone Asher might have been sweet on, in another life.

In this one, there was no room for carrying torches.

“Yes, we do,” Asher murmured. A human might have struggled to hear him. A vampire knew no such impediment.

Halloran held his gaze for such a long time that Asher became acutely aware of every heartbeat throbbing in his neck. He shouldn’t have said that. He shouldn’t have given even an inch. What was he thinking? Halloran had Ambrose’s ear. He was invited to eat at his table by Ambrose’s de facto successor.

A kernel of fear sprouted roots in Asher’s gut, but it was too late to swallow the words and no easy excuse presented itself for saying them.

At length, Halloran straightened and tucked his thumbs into his pockets. “We’re gonna go for a walk…and you’re gonna tell me everything.”

It was the kind of order that didn’t brook opposition.

Asher nodded. He could do little else.