Chapter Thirty-Eight

 

 

 

Under normal circumstances, Asher wouldn’t have dared bring a gun to a sit-down with the town mayor. But nothing about this was normal. Across the dining table, Malachi sprawled in his maker’s high-backed chair like a portrait of nonchalance. Only two vampires flanked him. The others had either met the true death or fled during the night. They were grossly outnumbered by Asher and the half-dozen men and women he had asked to join him at the negotiating table.

Romero was right. Six months ago, the mere suggestion that they should enter town hall voluntarily, let alone prepared to make demands of their mayor, would’ve earned Asher snickers and cold shoulders from most of his neighbors. Now, he’d been inundated with ideas. Everyone seemed to have an opinion of how Sargasso should change. Everyone was hopeful.

That wouldn’t last if Asher failed to reach an agreement with Malachi. And Malachi knew it.

“You’re aware that we’re down to whatever’s left in every man’s pantry,” Asher started, shuffling his papers. He’d brought the stock book with him so there wouldn’t be any doubt as to the findings. “We’ve made an inventory of all our grain and meat. It’s enough to last—”

“Supplies have already been sent for.”

Asher looked up from the roster. “They have?”

Malachi inclined his head. “Two of my men left this morning to secure a shipment of grain from Mesa.”

Truth or lie? Malachi’s expression betrayed nothing.

“That was…timely.”

“I care for my people. I intend to see them fed and warm this winter. And happy, of course,” Malachi added with an insincere smile.

“What about the cattle?” asked Connie. She had been the first to stand up when Asher started going door to door, looking for volunteers. Her father had tried to dissuade her, but in vain. “Without the ranches runnin’, we’ll be out of money by spring. One supply of grain won’t last forever.”

Murmurs rippled around the table.

“That’s been dealt with.”

Asher frowned. “You’ve recovered the herd? We weren’t told about this.”

“You had other preoccupations.” Malachi shifted in his seat, tilting forward to join his hands over the table. “Which brings me to my main point. Ladies, gentlemen, Sargasso has passed through the crucible. We’ve come out the other side wounded and scarred, but stronger.” He glanced from Asher to the other humans gathered around his father’s table.

Was he thinking as Asher, that in Ambrose’s day the only humans to set foot in this house would’ve been lobotomized or dinner?

“I would like to make a clean break with the past. To start over,” Malachi said, “for the benefit of our human population and my vampire brethren.”

“We want the same thing.” Asher mimicked the pose. “But we’ll reserve judgment until we hear your terms.”

 

* * * *

 

The sun had begun to dip in the sky by the time they reached an agreement. Exhausted but satisfied with the result, the men and women of Sargasso filed out of the dining room in chattering twos and threes, practically thrumming with the newfound power to decide their own destinies.

“Asher, would you linger a moment?” Malachi called from the far end of the table.

Connie tightened her grip on Asher’s arm.

“It’s all right.” I’m not afraid of him.

She didn’t seem convinced, but neither did she press the point. The click of her boot heels faded down the hall.

Asher rested his hands on the back of a chair. The whole expanse of the dining table lay between him and Malachi, but they could have been standing as near as lovers for how close and intimate the moment felt.

“I haven’t forgotten, you know, what you did to my family.”

“I’m not the one who shot your sister,” Asher lobbed back.

“Didn’t realize you were so fond of her… Or Halloran.”

A muscle twitched under Asher’s eye.

“You see,” Malachi went on, rising from his seat, “I knew he was infatuated with you. But I thought it was simply one-sided. I couldn’t believe that Asher Franklin, my father’s most unlikely foe, would stoop to feel anything but hate for a bloodsucker.” His tread was nearly soundless as he rounded the table. “How would your friends feel about that, I wonder?”

“I’m not the only man in town who’s been owned.”

“Indeed. But you are the only one for whom a vampire nearly gave his life,” Malachi admonished. “Don’t act surprised. I know it was you who killed Ambrose. And I know it was Halloran who killed my brother.”

Asher tilted his head back fractionally, the better to look down his nose at Malachi. “Seems we’re all murderers here, then.”

“No remorse, hmm?” Peering deep into his eyes, Malachi smiled. “Good. That will make working with you so much pleasanter. I simply can’t wait for our next council meeting.”

Although dismissal was audible in Malachi’s voice, Asher made no move to leave until Malachi had glanced away. “What did you mean,” he asked, already on the other side of the threshold, “about Halloran nearly giving his life?”

Malachi arched his brow. “I told you. The herd’s been dealt with.”

“Yes, you mentioned…” That piece of news had set the tone for the rest of the meeting, softening the hardliners against Malachi’s subsequent proposals. But what did it have to do with Halloran?

The herd’s been dealt with.

But not by you.

Asher opened his mouth to speak just as one of Malachi’s thugs stepped into his path. The double doors swung inward, curtailing his view of the dining room. Just before they snagged shut, Asher saw Malachi sink into Ambrose’s chair, his bony frame dwarfed by a tall backrest.

 

* * * *

 

The hammer struck a single, dull note, the thud only growing louder as Asher neared the farm.

It was a bruising dawn, the eastern sky shot with pinks and oranges, his shadow stretching long over the cracked dirt. Asher hopped out of saddle, dusty hoof prints crumbling underfoot.

His horse, a borrowed mare with a placid temperament, let herself be tugged along by the reins for the last ten yards. She sniffed along the edge of the wooden fence for grass, but the cows had already been at it.

“You gonna come down from there?” Asher called out, nudging the brim of his hat with a fingertip.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Guess that’s a no.” Asher sighed and squinted at the ground around him. He found what was looking for about three feet from the gate post.

The stone was jagged and heavy in his hand but not so heavy that he couldn’t lob it at the high barn wall. It smacked the edge of the roof and ricocheted uselessly onto a patch of dirt in the yard.

The hammering stopped. Relief flooded like sunlight after heavy rain, and just as quickly morphed into anger.

“You’re a mean son of a bitch, you know that, Halloran? I thought you were pushing up daisies, you fuck! And here you are…playing carpenter!”

The earth echoed with a muffled thud as Halloran hit the ground. He’d used no harness and no stepladder to climb up to the roof of the barn. The upper ledge had been enough to hold him up.

Damn vampire agility.

“Thought you of all people would be pleased,” Halloran said. His gruff, familiar voice dispelled any lingering fears that Asher had conjured him out of forlorn hope.

“Pleased?”

“You’re free now. I ain’t gonna bother you no more.”

Mere nights ago they’d been pulling at each other’s clothes in a desperate quest to make the most of their final moments together. It might as well have been another life. They’d certainly been different people.

Asher sucked in a breath. Was that what Halloran wanted?

He was starting back at him as if he was a stranger, wariness in the slant of his shoulders, hostility in his cold, brown eyes.

“You’re gonna turn cowherd instead, is that it?” Disbelief made Asher mean. “Pretty big change for a gunslinger…”

“Wasn’t always one,” Halloran answered, shrugging.

The faint puffing of animal breath echoed through the open barn door. Malachi had been telling the truth when he’d said the cattle were taken care of. Halloran could well be telling the truth now.

It wasn’t enough to get Asher back on his horse.

“What about me, then?”

“What about you? Ambrose’s gone. Malachi’s as weak as he’s gonna get.” Halloran hooked the hammerhead around the topmost board in the fence. “Now’s the time to leave Sargasso, if that’s still what you’re after.” His eyes searched Asher’s. “Is it?”

Asher considered it. Leave the valley, hop on a train in Mesa and see the rest of the country before the years caught up with him or his prosthetics broke down. Maybe ride as far as Yukon and see the places he’d read about in the papers. The Red Horn Riders had traveled far and wide doing harm and robbing folks from one border to the other. Retracing their footsteps ought to be easy. Asher had kept all the clippings.

But the Riders were no more. Maud had left town. The others were dead. And Halloran was in hiding. Asher would have to go alone.

“Look, what happened to Blackjack—”

“If you’ve come here to twist the knife, spare me,” Halloran growled. “I don’t need to hear it.” He wrenched the hammer free with a brutal yank and started back for the barn.

“It was him, wasn’t it?”

Asher’s question did the impossible. It stopped Halloran in his tracks.

“The one before me.” Asher licked his lips, tried again. “I asked you if there had been others—other men you kept close.” Bloodbags was too harsh a term. It didn’t fit him and Halloran or Halloran and Blackjack. “He was one of ’em.” Maybe even the only one.

The tension in Halloran’s shoulders didn’t fade one iota but he didn’t resume his retreat, either. “Does it matter?” He squinted into the horizon. The rising sun was barely a line of red in the east. “He’s gone now.”

“I know. And I’m sorry… Here,” Asher said, stirring himself, “I thought you might want to have this.” He’d had ample time to disassemble and clean Blackjack’s carbine over the past days. It pleased him to see the barrel gleam as he freed the rifle from the saddle ties and held it out to Halloran. “You ought to have it.”

Jaw flexing, Halloran glanced at the weapon. “I don’t—”

“Take the goddamn gun, you asshole. It’s all you got left of him,” Asher rasped. He tried not to look away when Halloran met his gaze. “Did you know there’s an inscription on stock?” Not a particularly neat one, almost as if Blackjack had scratched it on himself over the course of many years—a strange pastime for a strange man.

Halloran’s expression gave nothing away, but Asher thought he spied a flicker of interest in his eyes.

“It says Fate.”

Change came to Halloran slowly, a liquid tilt to his body, his features losing some of their innate sharpness. There was a glimmer of surrender in the set of his shoulders and the loosening of his fists as he slowly slid the hammer into his belt.

The carbine exchanged hands.

“Thank you.”

Asher sighed. “First time I ever heard you say that.” Probably the last too. He stuck his empty hands in the pockets of his duster. “I should head back. Town’ll be awake soon and, uh…”

“They need you.”

“By a fashion.”

Halloran shook his head. “No. They need you. Always did. Now they’re just brave enough to admit it.”

“At least someone does.” Asher’s smile floundered on his lips. “I’ll see you around, then.”

“Till the farm’s fixed up.”

Willowbranch had suffered a fire, a stampede and decades of neglect. With a little tender love and care, it would survive this latest upheaval. And after that? Asher could see it now. One day he’d ride out from Sargasso and find some other man on the porch. No tearful goodbyes would preface Halloran’s flight. When he went, he would go quietly. And he would never come back.

“Right…” Asher scuffed the toe of his boot into the dirt. “Did you ever find out what was in those vials my uncle gave you?”

“Yes.”

Aware that he was only dragging this out, Asher jerked his shoulders in a prompting gesture.

“Angelita’s blood.”

“Oh.” That made sense. She was an anomaly.

“And yours.”

Asher glanced up, surprised. He was tempted to ask how or why, but the answer would’ve made little difference. Uncle Howard’s timely act of treason had borne fruit. Halloran had recovered his strength. He’d fought for Sargasso and survived the battle. Not many people could say that—undead or not. Already that was more than Asher could have hoped for, more than he deserved.

“Is that your way of saying I’ll keep seeing you in my dreams?” he wondered, cocking his head. Some degree of bitterness was unavoidable. Halloran had picked away at him for so long, taking what he pleased, discarding him when it suited his purposes. Resentment made sense. The ache in his chess, less so.

Halloran’s expression darkened. “Like I said. I ain’t gonna bother you again.”

The finality in his tone should have been Asher’s cue to hop back onto the mare and set his sights on greener pastures. Halloran had already turned his back. Every step that took him farther and farther away only reopened the wounds Asher hadn’t had time to close.

“What, I don’t get a choice?”

Willowbranch was a hollow, empty shell. It echoed his question back at him as though in mockery.

Heat warmed Asher’s face. He’d cycled through humiliation after humiliation in this place. It wasn’t the staggering revelation that his heart hadn’t turned to stone that would make him buckle. He had to say his piece. “All that shit ’bout me bein’ yours. If those were just words, then fine, go back to the hammering your guilt away like a goddamn coward. But if it wasn’t, if there was more—if you meant any of it, then… You owe me,” Asher said, aware of his pulse thumping in his neck. “You hear that, asshole? You owe me!”

Halloran twisted at the waist, not quite facing him but not quite ignoring him, either. “Do I?”

His incredulity only bred conviction. Asher nodded. “Said it yourself. Malachi’s weak. If you want to stay on in Sargasso, then it’s gotta be on my terms.” He’d made a similar case to Malachi and the remaining handful of loyalists skulking around town. “If you can’t do that, then get your horse and your gun, and get lost.”

“You ain’t said what your terms are.”

Asher’s throat threatened to close up on him. “You give me an answer first.”

“That don’t seem fair.”

“You wanna talk about fair? You abducted me and held prisoner for a month, you bastard.” I lost everything. And won it back.

And lost you.

Asher took a step forward, closer to the gate but not through it. The air was still, even the wind seemed to be holding its breath. No sound snuffled out of the barn.

He wouldn’t beg for this.

Halloran tightened his grip around the carbine and turned toward the house. “You don’t know what you’re asking—”

“Oh, go to hell…”

“Let me finish,” Halloran snapped. “You don’t know what you’re askin’…but I got a bottle in the kitchen that wants drinkin’.” He waved the rifle in a harmless arc, gesturing for Asher to follow. “If you want talk about those terms.”

He would never be a soft-spoken man. He would never be welcome in town or friendly with Wesley and Connie. Tight-coiled rage made up the connective tissue in his body and grief had poisoned him down to the marrow of his bones.

But Malachi was right. Halloran wasn’t the only one willing to make sacrifices.

Asher made up the distance between them with a slow, measured gait. He didn’t expect Halloran to wait for him on the porch any more than he anticipated Halloran reaching out a hand, vampire-quick, and grabbing his wrist. “You get a choice. Understand? You do.”

Asher folded both hands in the pockets of his duster. He knew what he was asking. More than anything in the world, he knew that.

“You’re mine,” he murmured, “and I already made my choice.” And dipping his head, he kissed Halloran beneath the glare of a red Sargasso dawn.