Chapter 5 | le salade

Chicory hearts, stripped and bittered, served with blood oranges, walnuts, Bleu d’Auvergne, and a sherry vinaigrette.

The storm raged for two days, and Alys and I holed up in the mission, learning the contours of each other’s bodies and souls. Alys had been foresighted enough to bring food and water and even a little whiskey, so in between bouts of carnality, we ate and drank and laughed and talked.

I learned a great deal, especially about her and her ma. Her people, the tylwyth teg, were an old race when the world was young, kin to the aos sí of Ireland. They’d called Cymru home for longer than humans had walked the Earth. But the coming of man to their shores meant a sea change. They became hunted and hated. They tried to blend in with the newcomers, and that sometimes worked, but they could never truly disguise their differences. Christianity did them no favors, neither. Priests branded them devils and demons, and tortured them with fire and cold iron. The few who could fled across the sea. Perhaps all gone now, save for Alys and her ma.

She spoke of sin eating, too. It was a corruption, she said. In the dim and misty past, her people had been nearly deathless. At the end of their long, long lives, they consumed fragments of their loved ones’ souls, so every living member of the tribe was a collection of all the tylwyth teg who had come before. Humans were shut out from the beautiful parts of that ritual. They could not receive pieces of others’ souls, and they could only share the very worst of themselves; their sins.

On the third day, we emerged into a changed world. The storm had drowned much of the land and had brought winter with it. We quickly retrieved Astrid from the stable and Alys’s gelding from the rear of the mission before heading for town. Our horse’s hooves crunched through a thick rime of frost and clattered across puddles frozen solid. Ice glinted on the needles of the piñon pines and bare branches of wild plum trees.

Nearing town, Alys pulled up beside me. I had the sudden urge to take Alys and ride away, but she spoke before I could give voice to my premonition. “Mam will be worried, I’d best see to her. Come find me tomorrow.” We kissed again, then parted. Alys headed south, and I turned north. Would that we’d ridden away together. It would have been a very different story.

Coming up the road toward my house, I slowed my mare to a stop. Something was wrong. I counted three horses tied to the hitching rail. One was the ill-tempered stallion Pastor Goodman rode, but I didn’t recognize the other two. A mound of dark shapes lay in the mud and ice of the yard.

I dismounted in the yard and walked my horse into the yard. On closer inspection, the mound was made up of my few belongings, now mud-spattered and half-trodden into the muck. I turned my attention toward the house proper. Two men waited there, one occupying my pa’s old rocking chair and the other seated on the steps. One was Daniel Oglesby, a local tough whose idea of jollification was hammerin’ on those unlikely or unable to hammer back. The other was Javier Hermenz, a young man easily swayed by others, who would eventually be hanged as a horse thief. Both wore guns on their belts.

“Boys,” I greeted them, walking Astrid toward the barn.

“Kit,” Javier returned.

“Don’t bother stablin’ that nag,” Daniel said. “Boss man said to send you to him straightaway. Reckon’ you can tie her up here with ours.”

“The boss, huh?” Not seeing any way around the situation and not eager to antagonize two men with guns when I was without, I did as Daniel suggested. “You working for Goodman, then?”

“He hired us as bodyguards if you can believe it.” Javier’s grin was almost innocent.

“What’s a man of God need with hired muscle?”

“Some folks ‘round here aim to make trouble for the good pastor.” Daniel’s tone made it clear who he thought was causing the trouble.

“Don’t know anything about that myself.” I looped Astrid’s reins on the hitching post but took care to keep them loose. “Goodman say what it was he wanted to see me about?”

“Yer ma—” Javier began, but Daniel cut him off.

“Best you ask him yourself. He knows you’re here, and I wouldn’t keep him waiting if I was you.”As he spoke, Daniel eased forward in the rocking chair, and his hand crept closer to his revolver. Javier was less subtle and dropped his hand to the butt of his weapon.

“Y’all gonna let me in to see him or gun me down here in the yard?”

“We’re just protectin’ ourselves. You bein’ a dangerous, unpredictable outlaw and all,” Daniel said. His grin revealed the brown stubs of teeth.

So, that was the game. Goodman proclaims me a danger, his boys shoot me down, and he’s the town hero all of a sudden. Some around town would question it, but most would stay quiet.

“He don’t look armed,” Javier said, thoughtfully.

“Hey, dummy, Goodman says the boy’s armed, then the boy’s armed. Simple as that.”

Javier paused and tried to parse that, but I knew what had to be done. I set one foot on the bottom step. Daniel reached for his gun, but his position slowed him. My hand was already in motion, and my belt knife cracked the man in the skull. He tottered, dazed, but the throw had been off. Rather than striking with the blade, the heavy hilt had slammed into his brainpan.

I dove for the gun that dangled from momentarily nerveless fingers. My hand closed around the cylinder just as Daniel regained his senses. He raised it and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He’d failed to cock the hammer. With my other hand, I snatched my knife from the ground and buried the blade in his throat. His eyes went big, and he chuffed air and blood before sliding back into the chair, a look of surprise forever on his face. Without missing a beat, I had Daniel’s gun in my hand, and I didn’t forget to cock it.

“Javier, drop your gun on the porch.”

Javier had never been too sure about anything in his life, but as he stared down the barrel of his friend’s gun, he knew he wanted nothing to do with the young man standing in front of him with fire in his eyes. He dropped his gun to the porch with a thunk and hightailed it for home. I grabbed his gun and shoved it in my belt before recovering my knife. Then, Daniel’s gun at the ready, I went inside to palaver.

I found the inside of my home greatly changed. The dining room table lay on its side against the far wall. A huge chair had been dragged in from somewhere and set in front of the fireplace. Pastor Goodman sat enthroned there, hat cocked at a jaunty angle, burning eyes and sulphurous smile at the ready. My ma squatted naked at his side.

“Ma?”

Goodman’s laughter boomed through the house. “Welcome home, son.”

I chose to ignore him and took a few more steps into the house. My breath caught in my throat. My ma looked to have aged ten years in just a few days. Her hair was straggly and graying, and liver spots covered her arms and face. Her blue eyes, once so like mine, were a milky white.

“Ma, what’s happened?”

She turned her head at my voice and sniffed the air like a dog before growling deep in her throat.

“That’s my girl!” Goodman roared, then cuffed her with one hand. My ma hit the floor and slid a foot or more, then got up on hands and knees and crawled back to the bastard in the chair, whining the whole way.

—click—

Goodman turned immediately at the sound. “What’s this then?” He laughed. “Think you can kill me? Better men have tried, and better men have died.” He threw his arms wide. “Take your shot, boy! Kill me here and now!”

I stared down the barrel of Daniel’s gun and knew it had to be done. This was no man of God, or not any God that I knew. My mother whined again at his side, sniffing frantically at the air. I squeezed the trigger, and the gun bucked in my hand. The bullet struck Goodman in the chest, and he jerked to the side. A trickle of dark blood dribbled from the hole and down his vest. He looked down at the bullet hole, then poked a finger into it. He worked it around within the wound, then pulled it out with a squelch.

“That hurt!” He licked the gore-smeared finger clean, then grinned at me. “Care to try again?”

I fired, but the bullet went wild, smashing through a window. I cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger again, and this one hit square in the shoulder. Goodman jerked back, then stood up from the chair. “This is getting tedious, boy. I could use a man unafraid to stand up for himself. Come, join your mother at my side.”

“I’d rather go to Hell,” I swore.

“Oh, there’s so many more interesting things than that trite bullshit,” he replied. “You Christians lack imagination!” He took a couple of steps toward me. “Come,” he said again, but now his face was changing. His jaw dropped lower and widened until it was larger than his head. His eyes turned tar-black, and the stench of sulphur near choked me. “Let it all go, Kit.” Goodman’s voice was singsong. I felt my eyes growing heavy, and it was so hard to look away from his gaping maw. I could make out things moving in the blackness behind his teeth. “Let it fade away. Come and be eaten…”

Everything roiled up inside me all of a sudden: the pain of my pa’s death; the frustration and struggle to make ends meet after; the sense that I would never make a difference, never amount to anything; the hurt as my ma faded farther and farther away. Goodman could take all that away, I knew. He could consume my rage and sadness and disappointment and hurt, and I would be… emptied, eaten, hollowed out. I felt my will falter. The desire to lie down, to give up, was so strong. It would be so easy.

I stumbled forward a few feet, the pull of Goodman’s power almost propelling me on its own.

“Yes, just set the burden down, Kit. You’ve done enough, haven’t you? Come to me, come. Rest your cares in me.”

Another step.

Two.

Three steps and I could see the things inside Goodman’s mouth and throat, and my mind tried to rebel. I glimpsed rolling eyeballs, twisting tentacles, and gnashing teeth.

Four, and I was close enough to touch him.

Lightning-fast, I grabbed my knife and slashed at Goodman. The bloated-faced bastard tried to backpedal, but he was too cumbersome. My knife sliced through one ballooning cheek, black liquid splashing across the floor. Smoke billowed from the lacerated flesh, and Goodman screamed in rage and pain, one hand trying to clutch at the gaping wound. I reached for my ma, but she growled and bit at my fingers. Hot tears streaming down my cheeks, I ran out of the house, unhitched Astrid, and was on the road south before Goodman could recover.

***

Alys and her ma lived south of town. They’d bought Stephan Zeitman’s old place — an old cabin set on about thirty acres. Alys’s gelding was tethered out front when I reined Astrid in. I made it up the front steps before Alys was through the door and buried in my arms. Sobs wracked her body.

“Kit, she’s gone!” she cried.

Consumed by my own grief and the aftermath of the run-in with Goodman, I hadn’t noticed the charnel house smell. I glanced through the open front door and felt my gorge rise. Blood was everywhere, and viscera lay strewn across the floor. A dark shape I shuddered to look at lay at the edge of the light spilling through the doorway.

“What happened here?”

“It-it was G-goodman.”

I pulled back to look her in the eyes. “How can you know that?”

“She was still alive when I got here, just barely. She told me with her dying breath.”

Tears came to my eyes at the thought of Rhian Lawless lying there dying, holding onto life long enough to inform her daughter who’d done for her.

“Then we owe the bastard double.” Haltingly, I told her of Goodman’s hint about his hand in my pa’s death, as well as my own homecoming. I was tempted to gloss over his transformation. Even now, it was fading in my mind, like some half-remembered dream. “I can’t explain it better than that.”

“I can,” Alys said, wiping her eyes with a sleeve. “He’s tylwyth teg, like me.”

“You can do what he did?” I demanded.

“N-no. He’s changed somehow, evolved his abilities, but he’s still tylwyth teg at heart. That’s why your knife hurt him, but the bullet didn’t.”

“Steel’s mostly iron, and iron hurts you.” I glanced inside the house once more. “Is that what happened here?”

“No.” She pushed away from me but refused to look through the door. “Goodman wouldn’t use iron, but we can be harmed by our own kind easily enough.” She was silent for a little while, and I didn’t prod her. Finally, she spoke. “Goodman has to be stopped. Not just for what he did to my Mam and your folks, but for what he will continue to do.”

“Alys, I shot him twice, and he laughed.”

“You also cut him and truly wounded him.”

“I don’t think my belt knife is going to be enough here.”

She glanced down at the guns shoved through my belt, then slowly turned to face the doorway. “No, I have something else in mind.”