7

Dolarhyde ventured a step toward Jake, pointing at the weapon on Jake’s wrist. He bent his head at the monstrous thing lying in the street. “You shot it … with that iron. Where’d you get it? It was shooting the same kinda lights they were.”

Jake was saved from having to answer by Doc Sorenson, who stumbled up to him, eyes still dazed. His expression told Jake that Doc was in worse shape, as far as understanding what had happened, than even he was. He remembered seeing Doc’s wife pulled screaming into the sky.

“What the … hell was that?” Doc asked. His voice shook. “They got … Maria … they took my wife.…”

Emmett came up beside Doc, his eyes red, tears still running down his face. “They got my grandpa.”

A sudden loud hissing from the fallen sky demon drove them all to abrupt silence again.

Jake turned on his heel to face it. The fallen demon’s glowing eyes had all gone dark; it looked deader than before. But it was still a demon.…

Abruptly the wrist weapon began to shut down. As Jake and Dolarhyde both watched, it retracted piece by piece into itself; Jake opened his hand reflexively as the metal band across his palm withdrew. The ring of slender tubes that fired light disappeared back into the patterned surface of an ornamental cuff. Within seconds, it was again only the damnedest shackle he’d ever seen.

Slowly Jake lifted his head, until his eyes met Dolarhyde’s. He saw that whatever else Dolarhyde was feeling now—hatred or loss or shock or awe—there was a healthy dose of fear in his eyes, too, when he looked at Jake. Jake raised his head a little higher, his eyes cold.

But there was also a trace of respect in Dolarhyde’s gaze now—an acknowledgement of Jake’s nerve in facing down the demon. And under it, a darker awareness that whether the weapon belonged to Jake, or Jake belonged to the weapon, he wanted them on his side.…

Dolarhyde looked toward the demon, glanced back at Jake; his pistol was still in his hand. Jake nodded, and drew his own revolver. Slowly, warily, they made their way toward the thing.

As they walked, Jake subconsciously took note of how the other man moved; realizing as he did that there was a lot more to Woodrow Dolarhyde than just a mean-tempered son of a bitch with too much gold for his own good.

Dolarhyde was no coward, Jake had to give him that. In fact, Dolarhyde moved with the confidence of a man who’d spent a lifetime using weapons—all kinds of weapons—to kill all kinds of people. He just might be as dangerous as Jake himself had looked, reflected in Dolarhyde’s eyes, or in the sheriff’s.

But Jake felt sure Dolarhyde meant to keep the silent truce that held between them—at least for as long as he was useful to him. And by the time he wasn’t, Jake figured to be long gone and far away from Woodrow Dolarhyde’s revenge.…

They closed in on the flying demon where it lay, its nose half buried in the street, a wake of dirt and stones piled up around it. Even up close, there was nothing about it that resembled any creature Jake had ever seen, except maybe insects: a hornet’s body, a dragonfly’s wings … a dragonfly with a wingspan the length of a freight wagon, and five wings on each side. Dolarhyde glanced at the weapon on Jake’s wrist again; so did Jake. It was still nothing but a shackle.

And the demon sure as hell looked dead; in fact it looked like its head had been nearly ripped off, as they approached its front end. In the flickering light of too many fires, they could see clear into its strange guts.

Except there wasn’t really anything inside to see—nothing a human could recognize, at least. No blood, nothing torn … no human bodies … just an empty hole. The weapon on Jake’s wrist didn’t stir, as if whatever it really was meant to kill wasn’t there anymore.

“You see anyone in there?” Doc called out. The rest of the crowd had stayed where it was. “Is—is my wife in there?”

Neither of them answered, still peering into the mystery of the demon’s shell, spellbound by the sight of it … like a cicada’s husk, or an abandoned cocoon.

“Hey—!” Doc shouted.

“No, she’s not here!” Dolarhyde answered irritably. Neither was his son. Looking at Jake, he asked, “Is it dead?”

Jake kicked it with his boot, not too hard. Its surface resisted with an odd clunk. “It’s metal,” he murmured, surprised. A flying machine? An infernal killing machine … He glanced at the weapon on his wrist again and holstered his pistol. Turning away, he started back to the others. Dolarhyde followed, his face brooding.

As they rejoined the small crowd of townsfolk and ranch hands, Emmett asked, “Is it demons?” as if he’d read Jake’s mind. But he was asking Preacher Meacham, not Jake.

Apparently the preacher wasn’t in the habit of having demons come to call. He tried two or three times to speak, before he said, “I don’t know what it is … but it sure fits the description.”

That was met with another long silence. At last Doc turned to the preacher, exasperated. “Well, what the hell does that mean? Jesus Christ, Preacher, what the hell does that mean: ‘Demons’? Bible stuff? Talkin’ about the Good Book? Hellfire, and all that—?” His voice rose, angry and resentful and grief-stricken.

“Calm down, Doc…” Meacham said, somehow keeping his own voice calm. “You’re scarin’ the boy.”

“‘Calm down’?” Doc half shouted. “You telling me a bunch of demons came and took my wife—took our people—and you want me to calm down?”

Jake glanced up, as behind Doc something blurred past on the rooftop, too fast for him to see it clearly. The demon gun on his wrist lit up, and everyone around him turned, their faces stricken, as he raised his arm. But the weapon didn’t transform, even though Jake could hear heavy footsteps thudding as the demon bounded from rooftop to rooftop. It disappeared again before Jake could track it far enough even to get a clear look at it.

“… What is it?” “Where’d it go?” “There!” “—No, there—” The crowd began to panic again, some of them drawing guns, firing at any place they thought it had been, or might be, while others pointed and shouted, seeing monsters everywhere.

A window shattered and wood splintered as the demon crashed through the side of a building. They all heard a woman’s scream, and then a shotgun, fired twice; Jake saw the muzzle flashes through a window. Then a man screamed, as if something had ripped his gun away, and his arm with it. The sounds that came next were too hideous to be human, sounds only a demon could have made. Somebody’s entrails splattered across the window glass.

People in the crowd cried out, or else turned away, sickened.

The unseen thing crashed out through another wall on the far side of the building, landing heavily in the alley behind it. Jake caught fleeting glimpses of a shadowy figure beyond the slats of a fence, but the darkness and the milling crowd kept him from seeing any real details. All he could tell was that it was huge, and it hadn’t looked human.…

The demon’s hulking, misshapen form disappeared from sight completely as it fled the town. Everyone had turned to watch it go, trying to see which way it was headed. Their muttered voices debated whether it was likely to come back.

The alarm signals on Jake’s weapon shut down. The real demon, the thing that had shed the skin of the flying monster, had killed two more people and gotten clean away, and the weapon hadn’t even let him try for a shot. Why—? Jake’s hands made fists at his sides.

But as silence began to fall again, he realized that at least the thing’s failure to act had reassured everyone else that they were finally safe. Jake watched them pull themselves back together, until at last he felt as relieved as they were. He only hoped the demon gun was right.

Deputy Lyle moved his head like he was shaking off a daze, and went to where Emmett was standing. “C’mon,” he said quietly, “let’s get you back inside.” He led Emmett away, without glancing twice at Jake.

“How’d you do that?” Dolarhyde demanded finally, gesturing at the weapon on Jake’s wrist.

Jake just stared at him, without even the words to explain how much he didn’t know. “I got no idea,” he said at last.

“Do it again.” An order, not a request.

Jake went on looking at him, as frustrated by Dolarhyde’s failure to get the point as by his own failure to understand anything at all. “I can’t.”

“Where the hell did you get it?” Dolarhyde said, as if his brain couldn’t absorb anything Jake told him … or, more likely, thought it was all lies.

Jake took a deep breath. “For the last goddamn time: I. Don’t. Remember.”

“What do you mean, ‘You don’t remember’?” Dolarhyde’s glare would’ve flayed him alive, if it could have.

Jake would have hit him then, except that Nat Colorado’s voice called out from a distance, “I found tracks!”

They followed his voice to a spot near where Jake had caught his last glimpse of the demon. Dolarhyde was carrying a shotgun now.

Nat Colorado was kneeling by a deep footprint—the print left by something big, massive, with talons on its inhumanly shaped foot.

Dolarhyde’s men and the townspeople who were still following them gathered around the footprint, murmuring in subdued voices as the sight of it brought back their fear.

“What the hell is that?” Doc asked.

“Not like any tracks I’ve ever seen,” Nat muttered. Jake figured that had to be an understatement. He remembered the final sounds he’d heard; the sight of entrails splattered on a window.…

“Whatever the hell they are, they’re headed west with our kin,” Dolarhyde said. He turned toward the handful of his men who’d survived. Raising his voice, he called out, “Find the horses! We’re going after it before we lose the trail.”

The men behind him traded dubious looks and reluctant glances. “I said move!” the Colonel snarled, and they did. Only Nat remained behind, a protective shadow to his boss, the way he’d been to his boss’s son.

“Wait a minute,” Doc protested. “What do you mean, you’re goin’ after them? What are you goin’ after, pal? What the hell you plannin’ to do?”

The man had a point, Jake decided. Now that he had time to think about it, taking on a whole hive full of demons, even with the weapon on his wrist, didn’t appeal to him. He’d just survived Hell on Earth … and he hadn’t lost anybody to the monsters. Instead, he’d gotten back his freedom.

Absolution was just a place, and he’d done all he could for its people—all he wanted to do, and most likely more than they deserved from him. He turned away quietly and began to walk toward the street.

“Hey!” Dolarhyde said.

Jake stopped and turned around as Dolarhyde started after him, because he didn’t want to end up shot in the back now.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Dolarhyde asked, as if Jake was as thick-headed as he was.

“I heard what you said.” Jake met Dolarhyde’s stare, his face expressionless. “I don’t work for you.”

“Did you hear what I said?” Doc protested, because as usual nobody was listening to him. “What exactly you got in mind!”

Dolarhyde went on ignoring him, all his attention on Jake like a burning-glass. He pointed at the metal bracelet. “I need that thing. It’s the only weapon that counts. And you owe me.”

For something he didn’t remember doing. Jake’s face got more stubborn. “I don’t see it that way.”

Dolarhyde swung at him. Jake barely had time to react before Dolarhyde hit him in the jaw, making him stagger.

Jake couldn’t believe Dolarhyde had moved that fast; he’d barely missed the full force of the blow. Any other man would’ve had a broken jaw.

Dirty bastard … Jake lunged at Dolarhyde and punched him with all his strength, returning the favor. Dolarhyde reeled backward, but stayed on his feet somehow. Nat started forward, his hand on his revolver, but Dolarhyde’s sharp gesture stopped him in his tracks.

Everything stopped then, and everyone. They watched as Jake began to back away, his gun drawn, his eyes never leaving Dolarhyde.

Glaring back at him, Dolarhyde finally muttered, “Let him go.”

He was officially useless again. Their brief truce was over. Jake kept on moving away into the shadows, keeping to them until he could round a corner; until Dolarhyde and all the rest of Absolution’s survivors were gone from his sight.

*   *   *

ELLA WATCHED JAKE go, standing unnoticed in the crowd. Her eyes clung to the spot where she’d last seen him, her face haunted by shadows of her own. As she glanced back at Woodrow Dolarhyde, her gaze filled with frustration and anger. Thanks to him she had lost the man she needed more than any of them did, again, to a fate as harsh as the land it ruled with a cruel, amoral fist.

Dolarhyde rejoined the others, his face set, his eyes still burning with hate. He searched out Nat, waiting at the edge of the crowd. “Start packin’ the horses. We leave at dawn.”

Nat nodded, and headed toward the street to pass along Dolarhyde’s orders.

*   *   *

BY THE TIME Nat had reached the main street, Jake was no longer in sight—he was already headed out of town, on the first riderless horse he’d found. He rode east, toward the dawn, a free man.

A running man, fleeing demons … or a wanted man, riding straight toward them. Cottonwood Grove lay east of Absolution … Cottonwood Grove, where the sheriff had claimed Jake Lonergan killed a woman named Alice Wills.

*   *   *

“RECALL THE BOOK of Numbers: God commanded Moses into the promised land of Canaan…”

A new day began to fill the streets of Absolution with light, driving out the darkness, rekindling the spirits of its frightened, weary, grief-stricken people.

A crowd had gathered at the crossroads in the middle of town, where Preacher Meacham stood, wearing his official Sunday coat and hat. He offered his impromptu sermon to all who cared to listen—people who had come out just to hear him, drawn by need, and those working all around them, searching for more survivors, or just for what remained of their own belongings. His familiar voice comforted them and renewed the faith of most who heard him.

He spoke from his own heart as he looked out at their faces; his spirits rose as he saw them working side by side to clean up the wreckage of homes and stores, or help each other search for things they had lost—lost, but waiting to be found, he prayed.

Like Jake Lonergan, who had saved the town from demons last night with the otherworldly weapon on his wrist—and then ridden away like the devil was on his tail, after trading words and blows with the Colonel.…

Jake Lonergan: wanted, dead or alive. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t even remember. God help him, Meacham thought, with complete sincerity.

He saw Emmett, who had lost his grandfather—his only kin—helping a little girl pull her half-burned doll out of the rubble that had been her home. Meacham smiled at the sight. Emmett was trying to deal with his loss in the best way Meacham knew by helping others deal with their own loss.

“… BUT MOSES SENT his spies to survey the land, and they returned with fearful hearts … for they’d seen giants there, evil beings more powerful than they’d ever encountered. ‘We won’t survive against them’, they said.…”

Emmett wandered on down the street, seeing his life in a mirror … a broken mirror: This was his life, lying in ruins. He’d lost Grandpa, even Abuela Juanita … but somehow he was still here, although his own body didn’t even feel real to him.

When he looked in the mirror, it was empty. He must have thought that same thing a hundred times over. But no matter how often he thought it, he couldn’t really feel it; not yet. His mind and his body had gone numb, like they had when Mama died. He knew how much it would hurt when the numbness went away.… What was he going to do then? What was he—

He stopped suddenly, as he saw Preacher Meacham’s Bible lying in the street, dusty and slightly singed, but miraculously intact. He picked it up and brushed it off, then turned and ran back up the street to where Preacher Meacham was speaking.

*   *   *

MEACHAM GLANCED DOWN, breaking off in mid-sentence as Emmett held his Bible out to him. He smiled for the first time since yesterday—which seemed like a hundred lifetimes ago, now—as he accepted the boy’s offering, and realized that the answer to his one personal request to God had been “Yes.” The smile he gave Emmett then was one that last night he could have sworn would never touch his face again until Judgment Day.

Seeing it, Emmett smiled, too, although only moments before, he’d been sure he’d never smile again. Resting his hand lightly on Emmett’s shoulder, Meacham murmured, “Bless you, boy,” as he felt his resolve double. God had not abandoned him, or these people.

“… and for their faith, the spies were allowed into the promised land, where they stood tall against the giants, and were saved.”

As he picked up the thread of his sermon, he glanced toward the Gold Leaf Saloon, where this morning Doc was engrossed in his true calling as a healer. All night Doc, aided by family members and volunteers, had been treating townsfolk who’d been seriously injured but were still alive. For one day, at least, the saloon had become a field hospital, and Doc could refocus his life for a time, without spending every moment grieving over Maria.

Doc glanced up from his work, hearing Meacham’s words, looking out the window. His eyes met Meacham’s, then looked past him at the sunrise. His face filled with certainty and purpose, things Meacham couldn’t remember ever seeing there before. Maria might be missing, but with God’s help or without it, Doc meant to get her back alive.

Meacham gave him a slight nod, and looked around where he stood. If he turned in one direction, he could see the infernal machinery of the demons. If he turned another way, he faced the rising sun.

Suddenly inspired, his thoughts became his own call to arms to the people working all around him. “If those creatures are proof of Hell,” he said, pointing at the dead machine, “then they’re also proof of God! He’s testing our faith—so we’re goin’ after our kin. Thy will be done, Lord, and there’s an amen behind it.”

Still smiling, he turned back toward the church to begin preparing for the journey.

*   *   *

JAKE WAS ABLE to make better time as the new day brightened around him. He could leave the main trail now and head across open country, where he was less likely to meet anybody else who thought they knew him.

But as he topped another ridge, a sense he couldn’t name ran its fingers up his spine, making the back of his neck prickle: the same thing he’d felt yesterday in the saloon, just before the sheriff and his men had come through the doors.…

He reined in his horse, looking over his shoulder: He was being followed. His hand went to his gun out of habit as he watched his back trail, waiting. Had Dolarhyde changed his mind—?

His mouth tightened as the rider who was following him came into view: only one person, a woman … Ella. He recognized her by her dress. The only concession she’d made to riding out alone into the desert was that she had a man’s hat pulled down over her long dark hair, for protection from the sun. That woman had to be crazy. He wondered if she’d even brought a canteen with her.

It suddenly occurred to him that maybe she did want the bounty on his head. A thousand dollars was enough to turn a lot of people crazy … with greed.

Frowning, Jake stayed where he was until he was sure she’d seen him, too. He watched as she headed up the slope toward him, and then he dismounted.

When Ella reached the top of the ridge, she found Jake’s horse cropping grass in the scrub, riderless. Jake had disappeared. Her face fell as she searched the far slope of the hill, where Jake wasn’t, either. She looked from side to side at the mesquite, sage, and creosote bush that turned the entire ridge into a maze.

The look on her face became one of despair; the obsessed light faded from her eyes. She gave a sigh that sounded more like a sob of exhaustion as she began to pull her horse around—

Jake’s arm came out of nowhere; his hand caught the back of her gun belt and jerked her from the saddle. He slammed her to the ground and straddled her, pinning her arms, glaring down at her with the feral eyes of a hunter who’d been hunted almost to extinction. His voice was murderous as he said, “You come clean right now, or I swear I’ll kill you.”

Ella met his stare with eyes like a wall, her gaze filled with disgust and resentment. But then something changed, in the mind behind her eyes, until she wasn’t even seeing him anymore. Her eyes filled with tears—tears that had nothing to do with the pain of the fall, or any threat of death. “They took my people too,” she said, and her voice shook with grief.

Jake blinked, and blinked again, as the unexpectedness of her reaction broke the spell of his fury. Suddenly he could see her face clearly, as if he was seeing it for the first time. He let her go, moving aside, sitting back on his heels as she pushed herself up from the dry grass.

Her eyes were alive with memory, and the kind of loss that could only exist in someone whose entire reason for living had been torn away. “I’ve been looking for them a long time,” she said, her voice growing steadier as she got her emotions back under control. “I know you can help me find them.” Her strange gaze suddenly held him captive again, pleading with him to admit that he understood … as if she knew him better than he knew himself, or thought she did.

Yesterday in the bar her eyes had looked straight in through his own like they were open windows … and somehow she’d seen the truth: that he couldn’t even remember his own name.

But she’d seen something more, too … lost in the darkness, afraid of the light, she’d seen her own soul reflected back at her in the eyes of a wild animal.

Pain like he’d swallowed broken glass cut him up inside. He couldn’t tell her feelings from his own, suddenly, didn’t know which ones were trying to make him answer, Yes. I will. Anything. Because I know.…

No! He turned away, breaking the bewitchment of her gaze, even though it took every shred of his willpower to push her out of his mind. He got to his feet, and jerked his horse’s rein free from the shrub where it waited.

He was more sure than ever now that she was trying to manipulate him, that she wanted the weapon on his arm and nothing more, even if it killed him … just like Dolarhyde.

He didn’t care who she was; it didn’t matter how she’d done that to him.… It only mattered that she could.

“Stay away from me,” he said, his voice like sleet. He barely glanced at her as he swung up into the saddle.

Ella got to her feet, holding out her hands as if she was actually begging him to listen. “I can help you—” she said.

Even with his back turned, he could feel her eyes, her whole body, reaching out to him. He touched his horse with his spurs, and headed away down the slope beyond the ridge. Don’t look back … ever.

*   *   *

ELLA STOOD ALONE at the top of the ridge, her face stark with failure, watching Jake disappear until he was only a speck on the bleak rising plain, lost to her eyes among the distant rocks and desert scrub. He never looked back, even once.

How could she have been so wrong about him … about everything? The desperation inside her doubled. How did these miserable people live with themselves, let alone each other? Why was she even here—?

At last, drained by the unexpected intensity of her own emotions, and Jake’s reaction to them, she made herself stop watching nothing at all disappear into a greater nothingness. What was the matter with her…?

Turning away, she picked up her hat and got on her horse, and started back toward town. There was only one choice left to her now, and she didn’t like it any more than she liked the people it involved.