Chapter 6 | le fromage

Cendre de Sainte-Maure, finished over an open flame, served with levain, honey, and fig jam.

I had to wait for sundown to find out what Alys had in mind. She said night would be better suited to her work, although she refused to explain what that work might be. I was to learn soon enough. In the meantime, we discussed her plan.

At first, I was dead set against it. “It’s too risky. Too much to go wrong.”

She grabbed my hand and brought it to her lips. Their touch was like lightning dancing over my skin. “We’ve no other choice.”

“We could leave, join a wagon train for California, or the Washington Territories.”

“Could you do that after what he’s done to your mam? To mine?”

I didn’t have to think about my answer at all. My suggestion was born out of some fool notion that the problem would go away if we just didn’t look at it. Evil don’t work that way, though. It needs to be dug out, root and branch.

“No, Goodman needs to be stopped.”

She smiled sadly at me. “Besides, he’d only follow us. He’s got our scents now, and he’ll track us wherever we go, leaving a trail of death in his wake.”

I nodded slowly, finally understanding what was at stake. What good was a lifetime together if it was spent always looking over our shoulders or counting the dead who’d died because we failed to act?

“What does he want?” I demanded suddenly. “Why us in the first place?”

Alys didn’t answer at first, staring at her ma’s corpse on the cabin floor instead. Then, finally, she replied, “He came for us, my mam and me. He went after you and yours because of us.”

“What’s he got against you and your ma?”

“Remember when I told you that the church took special joy in persecuting my kind?”

“Back in Cymru.”

“Yes. One of their greatest achievements was turning some of us against their own kind.” She stood and began pacing. “Mam told me the priests would sometimes steal our young and raise ‘em themselves. They’d turn them into weapons against their own, corrupt and taint them, then train them to hunt us down and destroy us. Made them hate themselves and what they were, dedicated to erasing us from the face of the Earth.”

“Goodman said Christians lacked imagination. Feels off if he’s one of those priest-trained killers.”

She stopped her pacing and looked at me. “Some of the turned ones rebelled and killed their makers, but still came after their own. I think Goodman was such a one, but he’s grown. Mam said he’d found a way to get stronger from the folks he consumes.”

I shuddered, thinking again of that horrid, gaping maw and the things I’d seen moving in his cavernous gullet. “How do we stop something like that?”

“Unload your pistols.” Alys knelt by her ma’s side, gently brushing her hair back from her face.

I did, standing nine bullets on the rickety old table — nine bullets against something like Goodman. I felt my heart sink.

“Now, bring me that loaf.”

I grabbed the stale loaf of bread from the table and brought it to where she knelt, skinned knees beside her mother’s head. Rhian Lawless was hard to look at. Her corpse ended just above the hips, entrails spilling out onto the floor. Her legs lay across the room, blood and offal in a trail from one point to the other. My stomach tried to rebel, but I forced down my gorge. Whatever was about to happen, Alys needed my support, and Rhian deserved to have her life and death recognized.

Alys held the loaf in her hands for a moment, then set it on her ma’s breast. She spoke two words that sounded like nothing more than the wind through the trees, and then bowed her head. She spoke again, and I recognized something of it from that long-ago day when Rhian had eaten Old Man Schein’s sins. As then, black stuff bubbled up from Rhian’s open mouth and dark vapors boiled out of her ears and eyes. Alys guided it all into that stale old loaf of bread, and when it was done, she held it before her, tears streaming down her face.

“I love you, Mam,” she said, before tearing into the bread. Rhian Lawless’s sins darkened her daughter’s lips and ran down her chin. Alys choked for a moment, then forced herself to go on, eventually finishing the entire loaf.

“Bring me your bullets,” she said, voice thick and not entirely her own.

I set them in her hands. She bent over and muttered another couple of words that made me think of rocks banging together or maybe thick river ice breaking up in the spring, and then she began to vomit into her hands. There weren’t no chunks of bread or bile, though. She vomited pure, liquid light. It poured from her mouth like water, but glowed with a white, inner fire. The light pooled in her cupped hands, covering the bullets, and then absorbed into them without a trace. Alys was left holding nine ordinary-looking bullets. Weakly, she handed them back.

“Load your guns, Kit, we’ve got a monster to hunt.”

Outside, the sun was beginning to crest the eastern horizon.

***

Since the guns weren’t a matched pair and took different ammunition, one of us would be stuck with three bullets while the other had six. She took the three and would wear gloves so the metal would not contact her skin. “It just makes the most sense with the plan, Kit,” she said when I argued.

Alys’s plan was deceptively simple. Since Goodman wanted her, she would use herself as bait. She’d go to my home and lure him out into the yard. I would come in from behind the stable, and we’d catch him between us.

“And these will kill him? They’re still made of lead.”

“Remember when I told you we could hurt our own easily enough? I put my mam’s essence into those bullets. They’ll do the job better than iron ever could.”

As reassured as I could be, we went our separate ways. I left first because it would take time to get out there and then circle around so I could come up from beside the stable. We’d agreed that Alys would wait half an hour, then follow.

Everything that hadn’t dried out the following day had frozen again during the night and began to thaw as the morning progressed. I made good time at first, but as the mud thawed, the going got slow. Astrid did her best to slog through the sucking mud, but I had to dismount and walk several times. Going through town would have been faster and easier, but it also would have alerted Goodman to my presence. I doubted that Javier and Daniel were his only converts from amongst the townies.

I eventually reached my destination. I could see the top of the barn over the trees and knew the stable lay just over the slight rise before me. I dismounted and tethered Astrid to a nearby pine. Then I crept over the rise and up behind the stable. Everything seemed quiet, so all I had to do was settle in and wait until — a scream cut through the morning air, followed by a chorus of rough laughter.

“Why spurn my hospitality, girl?” Goodman roared, an edge of dark humor in his voice.

Something had gone very wrong, I realized. Alys screamed again, whether from pain or fear I could not tell. I stole along the edge of the stable, revolver in hand. Reaching the corner, I peered around and beheld a scene from my worst nightmares.

Goodman stood in the yard not too far from the porch steps, my mother ever-present on her hands and knees at his side. A couple of open wagons stood around the edges of the yard, and I counted four other men: Javier Hemenez, who’d found his spine, as well as Jake DeLong, Mace Cantrell, and Homer Humphries. I knew the three from my pa and my time helping Judd Angstrom. Javier and Homer were laughing about something, while Jake and Mace held burning torches. But what near stopped my heart was the stake set up in the center of the yard with wood piled all around the base. Alys was chained to the post. She jerked at the bonds, and even from this distance, I could see smoke curling from where the manacles touched her flesh: iron.

One of the wagons was almost directly in front of me, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to the periphery, so I crouched down and ran for its cover.

“Scream again, girl,” Goodman shouted. “Let’s flush your boyfriend out. Or maybe he’s turned tail and decided to leave you to your fate?”

Alys bit back her screams. “You have me. You killed my Mam. You’ve gotten what you wanted, didn’t you? Leave Kit out of it.”

“Oh, child, if only that were possible. No, he’ll have to pay the price for defying me. Unfortunately, that’s likely to prove fatal for him.”

Homer was the closest to me, watching the goings-on and laughing. I stood up from behind the wagon, and he saw me instantly. There was a second’s hesitation, and he went for his gun, but mine was already in my hand. It roared, and a red flower blossomed on his cheek, just to the left of his nose. He crumpled to the ground without firing a shot. Unfortunately, killing Homer removed the element of surprise. Javier drew his gun and fired, but I ducked, and the slug buried itself in the wagon’s buckboard.

“Light her up!” Goodman yelled.

“No!” the cry burst from my lips, and I was rising from behind the wagon. I thumbed the gun’s hammer and pulled the trigger. Javier went down. Thumb, pull, and miss. I ducked because Jake DeLong had managed to get his weapon out and was firing at me. I risked a shot around the back of the wagon, and Jake went down. That left just Mace and Goodman himself. Someone else was shooting at me; the bullets whined through the air around me. I rolled under the wagon and got a glimpse of Mace, pistol in one hand and torch in the other, firing away at me.

“Light the fire, you fool!” Goodman shouted again.

Mace must have finally heard his boss, because he stopped shooting at me and began lighting the pyre around Alys’s feet. She kicked at him and jerked at her chains, but it was no use. I dared not fire for fear of hitting Alys, so I did the only thing I could think to do — I charged Mace. I crashed into him and, despite him being bigger and heavier than me, managed to bowl him over, but not before he’d done the task Goodman had set him. Tongues of flame greedily licked at the dry wood, crackling as they devoured. I left Mace where he was and ran to help Alys, but something cracked me in the side of the head. The world around me blurred and tipped, and I found myself on the ground. Rough hands lifted me up and dragged me away from the pyre, before throwing me on the ground again.

As my vision cleared, I realized Goodman stood before me, and my gun was gone. Mace stood behind me, prodding me with a boot. Something warm ran down the side of my head.

“Thought you could pull one over on me, didn’t you, boy?” Goodman asked, twirling a key on a golden chain. Beside him, my mother growled and pawed at the earth. Smoke and the stench of burning hair came to me, and my stomach clenched.

“You bastard, let her go!”

Goodman laughed. Something glinted in the cold sunlight at his waist. It was Alys’s revolver, tucked into his belt. Mace’s boot stomped down on the back of my neck.

“Don’t you raise your eyes to him! You show proper respect!” he shouted.

I spit out a mouthful of mud and pebbles. The fire crackled behind me, and Alys shrieked in agony. “Kit! Kit, the key!”

I threw an elbow into Mace’s knee and felt it give sickeningly, then got to my feet and launched myself at Goodman. His eyes widened in surprise as I plowed into him, and we both fell to the ground. Even as we were falling, I was reaching for Alys’s revolver. My hand closed around the handle, and I jerked it free. I pushed off from Goodman, whirled, took three steps, and fired point-blank into Mace’s chest. Blood dribbled from his mouth as he fell to the ground. I turned back to Goodman just in the nick of time. His mouth was already distended, and his eyes were pitch black.

“Fool,” he growled. “I will eat you and then her charred corpse and be stronger than ever!”

Tentacles shot from his still-growing mouth, wrapping around my hips and shoulders, dragging me forward toward that waiting maw. I could hear other voices from within his mouth whispering and chittering at me. The tentacles gave a huge tug and jerked me off my feet. His mouth was just feet away now, and I could feel his fetid breath as he hummed and sang. A weight settled on my chest, and my eyes felt like they were filled with sand. Suddenly, all I wanted in the entire world was to sleep, to rest, to put down my burden. My gun lowered an inch, then two.

“Fight it, Kit! It’s a lie!”

Alys’s ragged voice broke Goodman’s spell like a knife through flesh. I raised Alys’s gun, and with only two feet between Goodman’s maw and my body, I fired, then fired again. The bullets tore through tentacles and teeth, punched through distended flesh and bone, and buried themselves in his body. For half a second, nothing happened, and my heart quailed. Had we failed? Then Goodman’s flesh quivered, and a blue-white light began to shine out from the bullet holes.

“What have you done?” he gasped.

I grabbed the key just before he burst into blue flame. His screams of agony were deafening, but I had no time to watch him die. I threw myself headlong into Alsys’ pyre. The heat was intense; I felt it burning my hair away. Any second now, and my clothes would ignite, but I could not stop. She hung limply from the post, hair burned away, and skin blackening.

“Alys!” I managed to get the key into the lock and the mechanism released. Alys slumped into my arms, and I dragged her free of the flames before laying her on the ground. She opened her eyes blearily. “I’m sorry,” she said. “They ambushed me as soon as I set out. It was a trap to get us both.”

“Hush now. Goodman’s dead, your bullets did the trick.”

She smiled weakly at that. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Those were the last words she would utter. I found a blanket in the back of one of the wagons and wrapped Alys’s body in it before carrying her into the house. Goodman’s blackened corpse lay on the ground before the steps, burned from the inside out. My ma lay dead by his side, but I knew in truth she’d been dead for a long time.

“Rhian Lawless sends her regards,” I spat as I passed his corpse. I laid Alys on the table, closed her eyes, and wept like a babe.

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