Dick woke up after several hours to me making a kettle of tea.
Mary Ann still hadn't woken from the shock.
Not that I blame her. Having one's arm ripped off is not an easy thing to get over. She slept fitfully in the cell next to Dick's.
When he first saw her he screamed bloody murder till I threw one of my spent casings at him.
"Quit yer honkin." I told him. "You sound like a little girl who got a look at a rat. She's handbroke and missin an arm. She's not dangerous anymore."
He looked harder at her. "Fore God, Sheriff. You really did it. You took down one of the Waters family!" He turned his plain old brown eyes at me in wonder. "How did you do that? Normally she just throws a little dust and men either catch fire or damn choke to death."
"Oh she got me. But I got her better ." I told him as I sat behind the desk again a cup of tea in an old tin cup I had pulled from Rosie's saddle. "Now, Dicky my boy, you are gonna tell me every detail you know about the Waters family. If I'm satisfied, I'll cut you loose." I took a sip. "I'll say you was threatened or some such and believed your life was in imminent and immediate danger. "
He began babbling.
Wasn't much useful. the brothers were huge hulking fellows and the sisters were as opposite as the brothers were the same. He didn't know if they were actually related or just called themselves a family.
The brothers were as strong as trains and the sisters seemed to have some sort of power to know when somebody was leaving. And they had something to do with the kiddos. I perked up.
"What do you mean?" I asked. Now we were getting somewhere.
He shrugged. "I don't rightly know. They just seem to like them. All the babies in town fight like cats and dogs to be around the younger sister all the time. And the older one seems to have some draw over the older kids."
Children and women with strange powers over them. "Do you ever hear them sing or anything like that?" I asked him.
"It doesn't matter, what their gifts are you bastard. You're going to die just the same." A waspy female voice cut in before he could respond. "You are gonna rue the day you tried to mess with the Waters family."
Mary Ann was awake and looking at me with venom in her eyes. I gave her a consoling look. "Don't worry dear, you're going to get your turn." I looked back at Dick. "As you were saying?"
There was a screeching from the cell. "You tell him anything else, Richard and you will go to hell just enough ahead of him to hold the door!" She was standing now, her pretty face made ugly in her hatred. "Do you hear me?!" She had her forehead pressed so hard against the bars I could see it turning white.
Dick looked at her and then swallowed.
He squared his shoulders and though his voice was a bit shaky he told her, "I ain't gotta listen to you no more! Dodger done got you in a cell!" He swallowed again. "And... and he's gonna catch the rest o' y'all too!"
I am not gonna lie.
I puffed up like a blowfish.
Hearing somebody who'd been so terrified of these people that he was willing to kill for them suddenly tell one of that group that I was gonna be the one to stop them?
It's a hell of a confidence booster.
She laughed in his face. Her face was strained with pain and instead of trying to point she just sort of indicated in my direction. "This little puke? He doesn't have a prayer."
I coughed. "Dick, you can go. Me and Ms. Waters here are gonna have a little palaver. If I were you, I'd go somewhere quiet and hidden then tuck myself out of the way till all the shootings done."
"Thanks, mister. I hope ya get all these bastards. Make em pay for what they done." And with that, he tucked out the back and was gone.
I turned my eyes to Mary Ann, sitting still with her face against the bars.
"Welp... I guess..." was all I got out of my mouth before she butted in.
"What are you?" She hissed. "Nobody has ever survived that. Much less been able to fight back! And you remember it! What. Are. You?"
It was a demand! Lamb's sake, this woman was arrogant. I just stared at her, then took off my eyepatch, letting my eyes meet hers. "You tell me."
She recoiled. "Vampire! But how? You were walking around in broad daylight! No leech can do that!"
I leaned back again, my gun in easy reach. Putting my feet on that old desk was really comfortable. "Well, you're half right. I'm what they call a thinblood or a dhampir." I belched suddenly.
It was a trail food burp, tasted like jerky and bread with an aftertaste of sorceress.
Not a good flavor.
I shook my head and continued. "That ain't the important bit though. The important thing is I'm a Ranger. With a capital are."
She blanched. "But I thought you were all dead or a myth... Oh shit..."
I looked at her hard. "Watch your mouth. Lady ought not speak like that. And no, we are alive and kicking." I kept my feet up but let the chair hit the floor with a thump. "So, now that you know the score, why don't we skip the part where you swear revenge and curse my name? Also can we avoid the part where you say you won't talk? That way I won't have to bring out the hot irons and small knives." I told her flatly.
I wasn't going to torture the woman. I didn't have it in me. If it had been a man I might have been able to work up the guts but the thought of doing it to a lady turned my belly to water.
But she didn't have to know that. I hardened my two toned eyes trying to draw on just enough of my curse that they would redden. Would make me look more monstrous. We stared at each other for a while like that. When it looked like she was going to get stubborn, I sighed and stood up. "Damn. Have it your way then." I stood up spinning my gun into its holster and started to walk out of the room as if with a grim purpose. When she told me to wait, it took all of my willpower not to sag in relief. I turned back to her.
"What's in it for me?" she asked. "If I tell you, then wait here, a rope waits for me. If I don't tell you torture me then I tell you and I still swing. I don't see what I have to gain by telling you."
"I will let you go." I told her flatly. "After I finish with the rest of your family of course."
She looked astonished.
I shrugged. "Look, you said it yourself. I don't really have any jurisdiction in this town. But your actions are what placed the Facade in danger. So it's my duty as a Ranger to protect the facade. You can't take those actions anymore." I pointed at her mauled limbs. "That hand will never heal the same, lessen maybe you find some crazy witch doctor somewhere, so you can't make your weirdly precise hoodoo gestures."
Again she looked baffled.
"How did you know that? I thought vampires couldn't do sorcery."
"I can't. But I know the difference between sorcery and magic. One is more like some weird sciencey type thing that requires precision and a whopping long time to study." I shrugged, explaining patiently.
"Wizards and witches just kinda make it happen." I grinned at her, my most charming grin. "You can't hurt anybody now, less ya shoot em."
She looked like she wanted to cry and fell back on the bed trying to clutch her left hand with a right arm that was no longer there.
Oh, boy did that hurt.
I can't stand to see a lady upset. Even a bad one. Specially when I was the cause, but... she chose this. Not me. "I guess you're right... my magic is gone." She said in a dead voice.
No hint of anger or hatred just a sort of shocked apathy. I had to fight the instinct to correct her. Sorcery wasn't magic, strictly speaking. Dusty had to wallop that into my head more times than I liked to admit.
Even still, This didn't even seem like the same woman that had fought like a tiger a minute ago. She was wounded... vulnerable. "Tell me what you know."
And she did. Horror filled me. A Banshee, A Siren, and though she didn't know exactly what the brothers were... I could guess.
Two Revenants.
God above, I had my work cut out for me.
As I picked my jaw up off of the floor though she said something that perked up my ears. It made me so damned excited I started to vibrate.
"Stop right there!" I told her, nearly bouncing up and down. "Run that by me again, just that last part. Those last few sentences."
"I said we never should have trusted that damned eastern bastard in the first place." She said, obliging me with a repetition. "I knew he was trouble when we met."
"Tell me about him." I demanded, "Don't leave out a detail."
She shrugged then winced. "Ain't much to tell. He just a sort of contractor I guess you could say. He collects up folks like us and puts us in groups and sends us out to make sure the locals pay taxes, or to rob stagecoaches. We ain't ever allowed to take it all or he'll send his goons after you. But then he called us in and told us to come here."
She chuckled a bit then winced as the movement shook her hand. "Was a pretty good racket till you showed up."
"This man, did he have some sort of crazy sword, slightly curved thing and a strange black armor with a dragon on it?" I asked her.
She thought for a while then nodded. "Well, it wasn't black but it was dark green. And he always had those swords you talking about hung in a rack behind him." She screwed up her face. "Why you asking all these questions, Ranger? You got a grudge against that chink or something?"
"Don't use that word." I told her flatly. I meant it but it was off-hand. My mind was filled with a dozen ideas and was busy fighting the urge to say the hell with this place and to ride out toward this strange Oriental man as fast as Rosie could carry me. "Where is this fella?" I asked her.
"Southwest of here, just outside of a place called Dodge City. Small little place mostly ranchers and buffalo hunters." She was genuinely curious. "Again, sir, I ask why you are so curious?"
I shook my head. "Don't worry about it." I told her. "Now let's see to that hand." I did. She bore it as well as most men would have and better than some I'd known. When it was all splinted up best as I could manage I locked her back in the cell. "Sleep tight, Ms. Waters." And I went to get my things.
I was troubled over the Siren and Banshee. They had surrounded themselves with children. Their power over small ones was nearly absolute. I wasn't really worried about the Siren as much as I was the Banshee.
The Siren could bend you to her will, make you do things to yourself or others. Cause fights, even suicide if it got its claws in deep enough.
But the Banshee was a horse of a different color. Its voice was a weapon as deadly as any ever devised by man.
As I prepared a mixture of beeswax and dirt to create a plug against the Siren, the Banshee woman gnawed at me. Forced the worry away I focused on my first task.
Mary Ann had told me that the brothers had set up housekeeping in the edge of town, in an old half-finished hotel.
I thanked God, because dealing with them was going to be a bloody business and the Facade couldn't cover the damage I would have to do.
Revenants didn't have powers that were ostentatious enough to truly break the Facade unless you actually saw one rise from the dead. So I was in for one hell of a fight.
But still... the Banshee had my mind consumed.
Contrary to modern opinion, Banshees are protector spirits. Women who have lost their children and in their extreme grief died from heartache.
But they defied damned ol' Death and gained a power to make sure they never had to suffer that again, they could make birthing easier and prevent stillborns.
They often ended up running orphanages, or as midwives. Dusty even told a story once of one working as a carriage driver, protecting little babies on the road. Anything that offered them a chance to protect small children.
What could cause such a Creature to turn monster?
I gnawed on it like a dog with a bone. In fact, I was so deep in thought that when the bushwack came it was almost the end of my career.
I heard the sound of a whistle just in time to slide out of my saddle to avoid the blast. Well, saying I slid out makes it sound graceful. It was more like I violently hurled myself free of Rosie and flopped my face into the dirt.
The air above me cut like a blade, shearing branches and limbs. Where this rush of sound had touched, sawdust puffed up, the branches completely disintegrated. Rosie just stood there. I jumped to my feet and slapped her haunch, telling her to go.
She got.
Then the kids rushed me, a dozen of them from ages 6 to 16 all armed with clubs or knives. A couple of them popped off shots with rifles, the balls blowing up the dirt around me.
I rolled to the right, trying to avoid the shots when a brutal boot caught me in my ribs. I flew backwards. Thankfully an old pine tree broke my flight. I thought I had just wadded up around it. The air left me in a rush. I groaned and flopped to my belly, trying to drag myself up onto my hands and knees. I looked up into the face of a little boy of about seven.
His eyes were glowing an unnatural toxic green and he tried to drive a knife into my eye. I slapped it aside while gasping for breath.
I caught my equilibrium just in time for a massive mountain of a man to grab me by my throat and slam his fist into my nose. I could smell blood, but luckily I was juiced. I kicked out with my foot and felt the satisfying crunch of a shin in front of my boot.
He fell sideways but his titanic grip never loosened. The problem with Revenants and Zombies is that they don't feel pain.
So even though I had probably turned everything below his leg to paste, he didn't care he just kept his iron grip, intent on choking the life out of me. He was a big man with scruffy shoulder-length hair, a big scraggly beard and a mouthful of rotted broken teeth.
"I'm gonna enjoy you." He told me in a raspy gurgling voice. With one hairy hand wrapping all the way around my throat, he reached up with his other and began to distend his jaw.
The bones cracked and creaked as he pulled it, wider and wider.
Spittle flowed over the back of his wrist and his breath could have made an old billygoat
faint. I was now staring into a cavernous red maw that would fit my shoulders into it.
Those jagged broken teeth grew till they were mismatched tent pegs in his jaw.
I watched in horror as he lowered that distended jaw in my direction, the hunger blazing in those rheumy dead eyes. the entire time I had been reaching for my knife on my belt. At long last, I felt the curve of its deer-horn hilt in my palm.
I snapped it out and sliced at the jaw first, severing the tendons of this creatures face with the blade. He couldn't close his mouth. He was confused. His moment of shock allowed me to pull back and take the knife to his wrist. My blade sliced through, propelled by my inhuman strength. There was no drag as my Bowie passed through skin, muscle and bone with ease. The hand fell limp from my throat.
I drew my Remington with my left hand, put the muzzle against his fat bulbous nose and let roar the thunder of that awesome weapon. He flopped backwards flat on his back. As quickly as I could, I took a small twig and jammed it into the hole in his skull. His hair and bone nearly stitched my hand inside as they regenerated.
See, Revenants cannot be killed through conventional means since they aren't technically alive. They are horrible abominations that have had their souls willingly separated from their bodies. Then that corpse is twisted to become a sort of regeneration monster. Then the soul is replaced and the new monster is a living breathing Revenant. Don't bother asking exactly how it's done.
I ain't a sorcerer.
So, the only way to do the deed is to knock them down and then stick an object in, that the body can't move, and in a place where a necessary organ such as a brain or heart or their lungs.
Then you have to set them aflame and keep them burning until nothing is left but ash. But, I didn't have time for that so the stick would have to do.
Another shot exploded the dirt. Two more of the damned kids had come around through the trees, armed with rifles. They had bayonets! What sort of country bumpkin kiddos walked around with rifles affixed with bayonets?!
After their shot the two rushed me. I brought my pistol up then hesitated. But I didn't have a choice. I shot the barrels of both guns, trying to knock them free of their grasps. I succeeded with the younger boy, the rifle was knocked free from his grasp and he held his stinging hands.
But the older kid, a mousey haired girl of about 13 managed to keep her grip and charged on roaring like an experienced soldier. My stomach turned.
Damn.
I thumbed back the hammer and fired again. This time, I didn't aim for the gun. She wouldn't drop it. My gun thundered and blood sprayed from the kid's forearm.
Her battle cry turned into the wailing scream of a young girl in pain. God above forgive me for that.
Please.
It is one of my greatest regrets. I hadn't killed her merely let the shot graze a deep bloody gash along her forearm. I didn't have a choice... I didn't have a choice.
Right?
I had to get clear. I leapt straight up onto a branch that would support my weight. I was wrong, I had to kill the Siren first.
Even if her song wasn't a threat to me, Her hold over the older kids presented the greatest danger to me. I wasn't willing to shoot another child.
I dashed forward using all of my speed. Where was she?! Dammit! I broke through the treeline chasing the direction that the main line of children had come through.
There they stood, two women, and they had been waiting for me. They were staring right where I had burst from the trees. The Banshee lady, a woman in her forties that you wouldn't have been able to distinguish from the local schoolmarm, whistled.
I pulled the trigger on my Remington. I was guessing, hoping.
I truly think hope is a gift from God, because it worked. The sound from my shot seemed to cause that wind blade to break up somehow. It split to either side of me. I rolled and dashed sideways. Why hadn't she screamed?
If she had screamed everything in 25 yards would be blown apart... then I cottoned on. Banshees, for all that they were lethal monsters, adored children. With all their souls.
There was a reason she couldn't scream. A child would be in danger if she unleashed that kind of blanket attack.
Meaning I was relatively safe from her if I could just keep moving. Had to close the gap. I turned and ran toward them snapping my gun up, I fired. She chirped. The lead ball fell in two pieces on the ground. I pulled my LeMat and fired again. Once more her damned reaction speed was a sight to behold. She cut the round.
My moment of hesitation caused my feet to slow. In that instant the bullet ripped through my thigh. Pain blossomed up my leg. I had missed the Siren pulling a gun. I tripped and rolled across the ground, my momentum carrying me at least twenty yards, maybe more.
But I was trained for this. I popped to my feet, gritting my teeth and defying the pain. I charged again. I couldn't shoot them, the Banshee was going cut the round. But, if she were cutting my rounds, the big windblade couldn't be used. She couldn't be sure to hit the bullet with that kind of attack. So I just had to keep her fended off and get to the Siren. Who was wearing a large blanket around her shoulders, and a bag.
Oh, and by the by, the Siren was trying to control me with her song but the beeswax nullifies the effect or at least dampens it to the point of ineffectiveness. All she was doing was shooting at me. So I danced and dodged, avoiding the gunfire while keeping the Banshee busy.
An animal roar came from behind me, a huge slackjawed monster roaring out of the wood line.
I stopped shooting, I turned feigning surprise, putting myself directly between the women and the Revenant. The Banshee saw an opportunity and unleashed a powerful windblade. The instant I heard her draw breath I leapt straight up.
The Siren tried to warn the other woman but it was too late. That blade ripped through her friend like he was made of paper. He wasn't finished but I'd bought myself about 3 minutes.
I turned and ran using their moment of shock to close the gap. The Siren was fast she actually managed to get her wrist up before I crashed the barrel of my gun against her temple. Blood sprayed from the side of her homely face.
I aimed the Remington at the Banshee but she just put her hands to her face, weeping. "I'm sorry..." She kept saying over and over again.
Then I heard the cock of a hammer on my right. I raised my LeMat pointing it at where the Siren lay sprawled.
The cry of a small child split the air and I felt a void in my chest. When I looked the Siren woman had that shooting iron aimed at the temple of a small baby girl of about 2.
The baby's body was spread eagle, her screams piercing the air as one clawed hand clutched her torso, forcing her to stay in one spot.
The Siren was using the child, like a shield, to cover her organs.
"Drop the gun, law man or you'll be cleaning crotch goblin out of your trousers."