A faint scraping noise somewhere behind him made him shiver, with excitement or something darker. Just a rat, he told himself, and went on walking, a little faster.
This place really would’ve scared him if he hadn’t had his knife. But he felt invulnerable as he watched its blade shine . . . even though he figured he’d need a little practice to get as good with it as Mr. Dolarhyde was. He wondered why Grandpa and Mr. Dolarhyde had never gotten along.
If he had looked back, he would have seen a piece of what he’d taken for fallen machinery detach from the solid mass of darkness and slowly unfold, until it loomed far above his head, more than seven feet tall.
Nothing Emmett had ever seen, no picture books of strange creatures from foreign lands, no tales of heroes who battled monsters—nothing in the darkest corners of his imagination—could have prepared him for the thing that turned to follow him now.
But at the last moment, it paused. It turned away and started off in another direction, as its inhuman senses registered signs no human would even have been aware of.
DOLARHYDE’S MEN HUDDLED around the camp-fire they’d made from the broken furniture they found in a salon as far from the Colonel as they could get, and with enough floor space for six tired, disgruntled cowhands to bed down.
They’d found a couple bottles of first-rate bourbon, too, which had made this place even more appealing. Drinking all the liquor had kept them awake longer than they’d intended, but it hadn’t done anything for their mood. They still sat close to the warm light of the fire, their discontent only growing every time the bottle got passed around.
“What the hell’re we doin’ here?” Greavey said resentfully. He passed the bottle to Jed Parker, watched him take a swig. “We should be ridin’ in the opposite direction of these things—”
“We do that, the old man’s likely to shoot us himself,” Parker muttered. “Only way outta this is—”
His thought went unfinished as a horde of panic-stricken rats came pouring into the room, scurrying around and over the men as they scrambled to their feet, cursing and kicking. The rats ran on, oblivious to human presence, fleeing something they found infinitely more terrifying. The men turned back, facing the door the rats had come in through.
A sudden bolt of lightning made the room as bright as day: Standing in front of them was the thing that had driven the rats into a frenzy . . . a monster that made all of their worst nightmares combined pale by comparison, as it towered above the men’s heads. A demon . . .
They stood frozen a moment too long, too drunk even to act on their animal instinct to run away. And then the bottle of whiskey smashed on the floor, forgotten, as they went for their guns.
Before a single man could fire a single shot, the demon swung a forelimb the size of a small tree; its hide was as thick as armor plating, and its hand ended in razor-sharp slashing talons. The arm came down, ripping through flesh, snapping human bones as if they were bird legs. A man’s scream of terror and pain began and ended, cut off in a gurgle and a fountain of blood, drowned out by sounds of inhuman frenzy.
More lightning flashed, as the other men finally ran like rats. They didn’t stop until they were out in the storm, dragging horses and gear with them onto the plain, where—they hoped—they could tell if a demon was following them.
They saddled up in record time and rode away into the teeth of the storm, leaving behind the cursed riverboat that had offered them such dreadful sanctuary and everyone who was still in it . . . leaving the Colonel to fight all the demons he wanted, right there in the ship that had become a trap, a slaughterhouse, a morgue. . . .
EMMETT HEARD THE dog barking somewhere—barking and barking, like it had something cornered . . . or something had cornered it. Suddenly worried, he doubled back, toward the place where Charlie Lyle and the preacher were sleeping. He made the best speed he could, retracing the turns of his wandering path until he realized that the dog was somewhere nearby.
He followed the sound of barking down one corridor, and then another, until at last he found the room where the dog was. He found the black dog standing on a hill of piled-up furniture, its hackles standing on end, barking furiously at a darkened corner.
Emmett entered the room, holding his knife, trying to make out what the dog was barking at. “Easy, easy . . .” he murmured, coming up beside it. “What’s wrong, boy?” The dog glanced toward him with a small querulous whine as he stroked its back. But then it looked away again, at whatever had been making it bark almost hysterically.
“Hello—?” Emmett called out uncertainly, peering into the shadows beyond the pile of furniture, trying to tell if anyone else was in the room. He heard a rustling, creaking noise, but no one answered.
Suddenly the dog growled, and sprang from the pile of furniture into the darkness. Emmett heard a thud, and a yelp of pain.
“No!” Emmett started forward . . . skidded to a stop, as the massive silhouette of something huge and indescribable began to take form out of the deeper darkness, and he realized—
Emmett darted back and crouched down behind the pile of furniture worming his way beneath it. He held his breath as the demon moved slowly past his hiding place, then paused, shifting what could have been a head from side to side as though it was searching for something . . . for him. . . .
But then it moved on, forcing its enormous bulk through the doorway as it went back out into the hall.
Emmett exhaled, a long quiet sigh of relief. He stayed where he was until the demon’s heavy footsteps had faded away down the corridor.
He crawled out from under the furniture and got up, moving as softly as he could, his heart still pounding so loudly he was afraid the demon would hear it. “Dog—?” he called softly. “Hey, fella . . . where are you, boy?” But there was no answer. Either the dog had escaped out of the other entrance to the room, or it . . . it. . . . He couldn’t bring himself to search the cabin’s darkened corners to find out.
He slipped out the other doorway, hoping the dog had gone that way too, but realizing that the most important thing right now was to find Charlie and Meacham, to warn everybody else.
He headed on down the corridor, afraid to go back the way he had come, fearful of running into the demon if he did. But he could barely remember the turns he’d made then; he realized he had no idea of where he was heading now in this dark maze. He could only go on searching until he found somebody, or at least something he recognized.
After a few more turns, Emmett suddenly found himself entering a vast open space—the Grand Ballroom, the first real room they’d entered, when they’d come onto the ship. He felt his confidence come back as he started out into the ballroom. From here he was sure he could find the way to where he and the others had bedded down for the night—
He froze in midstep as he heard a sound behind him in the hallway he had just come through; not a sound he recognized. He turned slowly, unwilling, to look back; choked off the cry that rose in his throat as he saw the demon.
The demon paused as it entered the room after him. Even though the near-constant sheet lightning in the clouds overhead made Emmett stand out clear as day, the thing didn’t seem to see him as he backed up slowly, slowly, until he was pressed against the wall.
And then his foot bumped the fallen picture frame beside him. It crashed flat on the floor, its glass shattering loudly in the silence.
Before he could even gasp, the demon was looming over him, its enormous claw-fingered limbs sunk into the wall on either side of his body, blocking any escape.
Emmett opened his mouth to scream, but no sound would come out. What seemed to be the demon’s head lowered toward his; slits in its protruding, reptilian face opened, revealing red, pupilless eyes like polished agates, peering down into his own with hideous fascination.
The thick, roughly plated hide on its chest split open, revealing a small set of glistening inner limbs protected beneath its outer skin. The limbs extended toward Emmett, and began to poke at his cheeks,
nose, mouth . . . exploring his face with its fingers like a blind amphibian. Being touched by them was like being covered in worms, or the clinging toes of wet frogs, slippery and sticky all at once; they set off the nerve-endings in his face, until every muscle was twitching.
Sometime during the demon’s exploration, Emmett began to cry helplessly. The Bowie knife dropped from his fingers and landed on the floor, forgotten. He was still crying as the demon’s mouth slowly opened, and through his tears he saw its massive jaw unhinge like a snake’s, until it opened even wider. Row after row of razor-sharp teeth lay waiting inside. The demon lowered its head above him—
The sound of a shot echoed throughout the room as Preacher Meacham fired his rifle. The demon’s plated shoulder ripped open, spraying a gout of green blood. It screeched, the noise drilling into Emmett’s ears.
“Get away from him!” Meacham shouted. He cocked the rifle and fired again. Another bullet struck home. The alien shrieked, and turned away from Emmett and toward Meacham.
As Meacham stopped to reload his gun, the demon leaped, soaring across the space between them, and drove one of its heavy claw-talons straight through the preacher’s chest.
JAKE HAD FOLLOWED the sound of gunfire into the Ballroom, his demon weapon open and ready to fire—just in time to see the demon stab its arm through Meacham’s chest.
He fired the demon-killing gun with an inarticulate cry of fury, and missed as the demon leaped aside. He ran forward, firing at it again, with nothing in his mind now except the need to see the monster dead.
The demon, escaped his second shot, leaping faster than Jake’s eyes or arm could follow. It sprang away, up the wall, moving like some monstrous cockroach as it skittered back across the ceiling-floor, and vanished through a hole.
Jake reached the place where Meacham lay in a spreading pool of blood and crouched beside him while Ella crossed the room to Emmett.
The preacher’s eyes opened and he looked up at Jake with that insufferably good-hearted smile, as if he was perfectly at peace, and glad to see him.
“Easy now . . .” Jake said, afraid even to lift the head of a man with a wound like that. “Don’t move—” His first impulse was to call for Doc, but his eyes had already told him there was no point.
Emmett, held in Ella’s arms, cried out, “Meacham!” and wept harder.
“It’s okay, boy,” Meacham murmured. “I’m going home. . . .”
Jake jerked his head at Ella, who was still clinging to the boy. “Get him outta here.”
Ella nodded, and began to draw Emmett with her out of the room, neither of them wanting the boy to witness Meacham’s dying moments.
Meacham glanced down at the demon gun on Jake’s wrist; his eyes searched Jake’s face. “Get our . . . people back,” he murmured.
Jake nodded, meeting the preacher’s gaze. “Stop talking,” he said thickly, barely getting the words out without his voice breaking. Why the hell couldn’t the damned thing on his wrist have been for healing, not just killing—?
Meacham caught the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. Jake’s hand gripped the preacher’s in a silent promise, as blood ran from the corner of Meacham’s mouth, and the preacher began to gasp for air. Eye to eye with Jake, he whispered, “God don’t care who you were, son . . . only what you are”
Jake pressed his lips together, blinking hard as the unexpected, unfamiliar burn of tears stung his eyes. Meacham’s last breath bubbled out between his lips; his eyes closed, and his hand released Jake’s shirt.
Jake crouched, strengthless, for a long moment by Meacham’s side. He saw the cross the preacher always wore, now covered in blood, and his eyes filled with unholy rage—not against the symbol, or the faith it symbolized, or the man who’d worn it; but against the demon that had stolen the life of the man, and all he stood for . . . from him, from everyone here, from all the people of Absolution.
He put his hand on the demon gun. It had become dormant again, returned to its shackle-form as soon as the demon had disappeared.
Part of his helpless anger turned back on himself—and on the weapon—for his failure to reach Meacham in time, the weapon’s failure to warn him in time. “Chain a man to his worst enemy . . .” Taggart had said. “Best way to make him stay put.”
Jake got to his feet at last, cursing all creation as he walked away alone into the darkness.
BY THE NEXT morning the storm had passed. At least the rain had softened the ground enough so that Jake could dig a grave. He started before dawn, when there was barely enough light to see a shovel bite into the earth. His anger had been eating a hole in his gut as bad as the hole where his memory used to be. He almost felt like thanking God for the chance to dig a grave, as the hard physical labor burned away some of his useless frustration and kept his mind from thinking about anything at all. Almost.
By the time the others were stirring again, he had laid Meacham in his final resting place and driven a makeshift cross into the ground.
Ella came out of the ship, bringing him a cup of coffee and a tin plate piled high with real food; he accepted them with real gratitude. She looked from him to the grave with too much pain in her eyes; touched his shoulder, as if she was thanking him for something, too, and went back inside the ship. Jake ate alone, sitting on the ground.
He watched the others come out, finally, carrying saddlebags and blankets, reloading supplies onto the mule, saddling up horses. Doc had Meacham’s rifle slung over his shoulder. Jake observed that their party was missing more people than just Meacham, and frowned as he remembered the screaming last night.
Emmett was wandering around the far perimeter of what was safe territory for now, looking for something, while Nat Colorado searched for the demon’s tracks. Jake heard Emmett calling, “Dog? Come on, boy—!”
Dolarhyde, already impatient to be moving, shouted at Nat.
“Tracks turn north—” Nat answered from the rise where he was standing.
“Where’s the rest of the boys?” Dolarhyde asked.
Nat came back down the hill, watching the ground, not looking Dolarhyde in the eye. He reached the bottom, his eyes still averted as he said, “. . . They ran off.”
Jake wondered whether Nat actually couldn’t look Dolarhyde in the eye because he was afraid of Dolarhyde’s anger, or simply because he hated having to tell anybody news like that.
The hellfire look he knew too well was back on Dolarhyde’s face; but underneath it, this time, he saw the real burn left by the stinging slap of abandonment. Dolarhyde mounted his horse, muttering, “Goddamn cowards. . . .”
Emmett returned, looking up anxiously as Dolarhyde settled himself in the saddle.
“Can’t find the dog—” Emmett said, his eyes pleading for more time, as if he was certain Dolarhyde would actually understand.
Dolarhyde’s mouth turned down. “Probably dead.” He raised his hand, a signal to the others. “Let’s go.”
“He ain’t dead!” Emmett shouted furiously, but Dolarhyde rode away without listening.
Ella and Charlie Lyle came up to the boy. Ella put her arm around him. “It’s okay, he’ll find us,” she said, with that way she had of looking at someone that could make him believe she knew everything. “He’ll be fine.”
But Emmett wasn’t fine with that, and the look on his face was only heartsick as he began to follow them toward the horses.
Doc glanced at Jake, at the dirt on his clothes and the fresh grave with its marker behind him. “Wait—” he called after Dolarhyde, “aren’t we gonna say something?”
Dolarhyde looked back at him in disgust. “The only one who knew what to say’s underground. Isn’t it enough we wasted time burying him?” Dolarhyde’s eyes struck Jake, as if Jake had made them wait. Jake’s fists knotted at his sides, but he said nothing.
Doc glared at Dolarhyde, fresh grief and anger filling his face. “Shame on you,” he said, as if he actually meant it like a curse. “Show some respect.”
Dolarhyde onl
y turned his horse’s head and rode away, with Nat following silently behind him. Leaving behind regretful and apologetic looks, Ella, Charlie Lyle, and Emmett followed them, one by one.
Doc turned back to the grave, staring at it. Jake stepped up beside him, taking off his hat.
Doc gave him a fleeting smile. He stood a moment, then he bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Uh . . . Lord, if there is such a thing as a soul, he had a good one. Please protect him.”
He raised his head again. Loss and empathy showed in his eyes as he looked back at Jake. “How was that?”
Jake nodded, more grateful than he knew how to express. The words had been good ones, and at least somebody besides him had borne witness to a man who had lived and died with a kind of courage that deserved everyone’s respect. And God knew, Doc’s eulogy was better than anything he could have said himself, if his life depended on it. “C’mon,” he murmured, turning away toward their horses.
THE DEMON HUNTERS pushed on into the heart of the desert, only seven of them, now, but seven resolved never to turn back, never to yield to anything less than Death itself.
By the time the sun had been up for an hour, it was impossible to tell that last night the arid land had been flooded with rain. Red dust stirred by their horses’ passage hung in the air like a blood-tinted shroud, with barely a breath of wind to carry it away.
Beyond the bleak plain where the riverboat lay, more broken stone and twisting canyons waited for them. All obvious traces of flash-flooding had vanished as they entered the labyrinth of stone, following the demon’s random footprints through the time-jumbled remains of ancient sea bottom.
Eons of sandstone lay piled one age on another, or folded like strips of bacon, stained sunset red and purple-brown by pigments from iron and manganese, or showing a chalk-white underbelly of limestone, further broken by extrusions of hardened lava.