“I do.” A complication had been that Preacher Shine in his own past life had been known as Handsome Harry Ravenwing, a killer of note who with a sawed-off shotgun had sent to their otherworldly rewards eight men, two women, a little boy and a federal marshal’s horse in a robbery and murder spree from Arizona to Texas. Preacher Shine had still been carrying the shotgun when Lawson had caught up with he and the laudanum-dazed young girl in the cactus-stubbled nighttime badlands just on the Texas side of the border. The girl had been returned relatively unharmed to her father, while Preacher Shine alias Harry Ravenwing had flown away with a .44 bullet between his eyes. A mad dog on a holy mission could not be brought in tame on a leash. Lawson particularly was challenged on that job because of the large distances he had to ride on his horse Phoenix, under the threat of sunlight, but even two years ago he could dare at least the dawn and dusk more comfortably than at present.
“I got your card a roundabout way,” Cavanaugh went on. “Needless to say, I didn’t spill any beans to my friend except to say I needed the help of a professional.”
Lawson was about to say I am here, but he corrected himself before it was spoken. “We are here. What’s the nature of your problem?”
“I’m a rich man,” said Cavanaugh. “A well-connected man.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I have aspirations and a solid foundation of loyal customers and supporters. In fact I am in the process of conversations that might direct me to the United States Senate in the near future.”
“Congratulations,” said Ann with a bit of an edge to it. Cavanaugh paid her no attention. He kept his small dark eyes focused on the vampire sitting across the desk from him.
“You’re very pallid, sir,” came the remark that Lawson had expected. “Even in this light. May I ask…are you ill? Is that the reason you travel only by—”
“I have a skin condition that sunlight affects. My eyes also are afflicted. But you can be sure I—we—are able to get the job done.”
“If history is truthful, then I have no reservations on that account.”
History was indeed truthful, Lawson thought. No ifs there. He knew what he looked like: lean and rawboned, pale as a New York accountant, a tracery of blue veins at his temples carrying the strange ichor of the vampiric tribe, clean-shaven because he no longer had to shave—a result of his condition—and blonde hair combed back from a high forehead and left shaggy at the neck. Likewise, he no longer needed the clippers of a barber’s shop. His blue eyes were intense and clear, though sometimes he thought that a mirror could catch the spark of red embers in their pupils, though this image was fleeting and it might have been his imagination only. He had been called handsome by the wife he had left behind and by the female creature who in a blur of red had gone for his throat and afterward whispered with crusted lips at his ear, I’m going to make you my finest creation.
Trevor Lawson appeared to be a man of about thirty but that counting of years no longer mattered after April of 1862 at the battle of Shiloh. In human years he was fifty-four. In the counting of the vampiric span he was yet a child.
Though an angry child who sought not so much revenge as the freedom to live and die as a human being.
“I didn’t want us to be disturbed tonight,” Cavanaugh said. “I doubt there are many out because of the weather, but I take no chances that someone I know might see a light here and come up for a visit. As I say, I am well-connected.”
“And secretive,” said Lawson. “There must be a compelling reason.”
Cavanaugh nodded. “My wife and I have three sons. One is a lawyer here, another works in the land trade business in San Francisco. It is my third son, the youngest, who is in need of your services just as much as I.”
Neither Lawson nor Ann spoke; they waited for the rest of it.
“Eric was rebellious,” the rich man of Omaha went on. “He hated the life of wealth and privilege. Why, when his brothers took to it so well?” The large shoulders shrugged. “Who can say? But he spurned every chance he was offered and went off to, as he told me, make his own life, on his own terms. We’re speaking of a twenty-year-old here, who hardly knew his mind nor anything of the world. Well…he is twenty-three now. He has been educated by rough hands, and he wishes to come home.”
“All right,” Lawson ventured. “And the problem is…?”
“Eight months ago he threw in his lot with three other individuals. He understood they wanted to go north to work the goldfields of the Montana Territory. But on the circuitous way there, he realized they were cutthroats and thieves who thought they had discovered as wild a buck as themselves. They were recruiting new blood for their gang.”
“New blood,” said Lawson. He lifted his eyebrows. “Hm.”
“He couldn’t get away from them after he witnessed the first murder of a stagecoach driver. It’s been difficult for him to get letters out, but he’s managed to send two at the risk of his life.”
“A high risk,” Lawson said. “He’s going by his real name?”
“No, he was smart enough not to use the family name. He’s calling himself Eric James. He hasn’t been required to kill anyone but he had to take part in two bank robberies in the Wyoming Territory, to prove himself. Thank God no one else was killed in those, or Eric killed…or captured by the law. Do you see where I’m headed?”
“A bad place,” said Ann.
“Damn right,” Cavanaugh answered, and for the first time looked at her as if she really had a role to play in this. His eyes slid back to Lawson’s. “They have taken my son to their winter…shall we say politely…quarters. A town called Perdition, about thirty miles north of Helena by rail. If those men find out who my son really is, they could hold him for an extreme sum of ransom. Plus…” He hesitated, staring at his clasped hands. “Plus,” he went on, “my own future and that of my family would be destroyed.”
Lawson had the picture, and it was not a pretty one. “You want us to bring your son home out of a snakepit.”
“Eric wrote they have rewards on their heads from previous crimes. They’re wanted dead or alive in both the Wyoming and Dakota territories.”
“Their names?”
“The leader is named Deuce Mathias. The others are called Keene Presco and Johnny Rebinaux. They seem to be very good with their guns.”
“What a coincidence,” said Ann.
Lawson was silent. He listened to the wind shrilling outside the walls. The glass trembled in its windowframe. He was thirsty. His body ached. So did his soul. From a pocket inside his suit jacket he brought forth a small red bottle, a Japanese antique purchased in New Orleans. He uncorked it and wafted it back and forth under his nostrils. It was a heady scent that made iridescent colors bloom behind his eyes. Usually a spool of the thick crimson liquid would go into his favorite libation of rye whiskey, simple syrup and orange bitters, but tonight…
He drank just a sip, just enough to get a taste, just enough…
He recorked it and put it away.
“Good for what ails me,” he told Cavanaugh. “My little sin.”
“We all have them,” was the rich man’s response. He leaned forward on his blotter, planting his elbows like bulwarks to defend his pride, his ambition, and in this case also his desperation. In the eyes of that broad face perhaps there was a hint of pleading that this office had never witnessed by day. “Will you get my son out of there, and home?” Cavanaugh asked.