“It might be that the fighting won’t reach us.”
Slate nodded again and spun hard on his heel, moving back the way they’d come.
Crowley watched him, watched the crowd that had turned toward the sounds of dying part before Slate as easily as calm waters part before a ship’s prow, and watched also as the small shape he approached unfolded itself from a stooped position.
Lucas Slate was taller now than most of the men around him. He was taller than Crowley by a few inches, though they had only recently stood almost the same height. Crowley had once stolen a suit of the man’s because it fit well enough to allow it. As tall as Slate was, the thing that stood before him was taller by almost a foot. How it had hidden itself in so small a form was a mystery that Crowley would try to solve later.
The thing was the same color as Slate, a white that seemed too vibrant for the cadaverous shape. It had long white hair tied back in a braid, and wore clothes that looked like rawhide but that Crowley knew immediately were human flesh.
It had a very long body and a long face, eyes as dark and black as pitch and as shiny as polished glass. When the nightmare smiled his gums were gray and his teeth an unpleasant shade of yellow.
Slate and the thing spoke to each other, and Crowley listened and understood not a word of it. In the distance a dead boy kept screaming his outrage at being murdered and further away still, the gunfire continued in sporadic bursts.
The Indians came in hard and fast, and this time there were more of them and they were better organized.
Folsom’s men were doing their duty, guarding the town, and none of them took their task lightly. The day before had been reminder enough that their work was dangerous.
So when the red men came, the alarm was quickly called. Folsom stepped outside and prepared himself for the battle. The men were ready and so was he, and by God, he’d see the savages pay for their bloody assault.
The men rallied quickly and he called for them to assume the various posts he’d laid out the night before. They were ready and they were more than willing after seeing their companions taken down. One or two might well have been worried about whatever sort of monsters the Apache had brought with them the day before, but they rallied just the same and he was proud of them.
Captain Folsom walked away from the hotel and headed for the sounds of combat, his heart pounding with the thrill of combat. He was not afraid. The Lord had blessed him with a brave heart and a noble purpose. He would see the day through and take no prisoners. The savages had earned a quick death for their troubles.
Up ahead of him, Sergeant Barnes had taken a position on top of a two-storey mercantile, firing as quickly as he could into the crowd below. The man was hell with a rifle, and with each shot, an Indian dropped, but damned if it didn’t seem there were endless numbers of them this time around.
He had dealt with the Lakota before but never with the Apache until the previous day. They did not seem cut from the same cloth. They seemed more determined to stand their ground and take whatever it was they wanted.
“Fowler! Where is Sergeant Fowler?”
“Sergeant Fowler is on the other side of town, standing his ground and waiting, sir!” The man that spoke to him was just out of his sight, but he recognized the voice of Private Herbst. The voice was as distinct as the man himself, a red haired brute nearly as strong as an ox. He turned to bark an order at Herbst and saw the private’s body jerk twice, saw the blast of meat and bone that came off his left shoulder and then saw the man hit the ground, screaming.
Damned foolish of him to look away from the conflict. He looked back toward the crush of Indians charging into town and the chaos of people getting away from them. The civilians ran, as well they should. The soldiers stood their ground.
Folsom drew his revolver and took aim at the closest savage, a lean old man on a black horse. The old man saw him and charged, riding hard to reach him. The bullet Folsom fired caught the old man in his thigh and blew through the leg and the horse under it with ease. The old man screamed, the horse screamed, and both collapsed in a sliding heap. Neither was dead, but he intended to remedy that. One step closer, and the bullet from the next Indian caught Folsom in the chest, tearing through the rib above his heart and then through the organ itself. He tried to aim his weapon but his traitorous fingers dropped it. The pain, when it showed up, was as large as a mountain and crushed his chest in its grip. Folsom tried to scream, tried to do anything at all, and managed only to fall backward and land hard on the ground. The horse and rider stomped over his body as they continued into the town, followed by several other natives.
Crowley watched on from a distance, his face calm and almost expressionless, his eyes intensely focused. Slate did his best to ignore the man, which, considering the nightmare in front of him, was not that difficult.
“You have questions,” the thing said. It was a statement rather than a question. Again it was spoken in a language other than English, one completely unknown to Slate, but he understood just the same.
“What are you? What am I?”
Those vile teeth flashed and the impossibly thin, tall man chuckled. “You were given a seed. It was planted in your body. I do not see it.” It stared for a moment and then pointed to the small bump almost perfectly centered in its own forehead. When he touched it the skin parted like an eye blinking and for just an instant a greenish-gray stone showed before the skin sealed itself again. “It would be similar to this, but not exactly the same.”
Slate remembered touching the stone, feeling it; remembered that pebble, too, had a song to sing. He nodded but did not speak.
“That seed is what you are. What you are becoming. We are not many, there have never been many, but we are powerful.”
“What do I do about it?” Slate asked.
“Embrace the changes. I fought mine and in the end it caused me nothing but pain.”
“What is the song I hear?”
“That is magic trying to tell you how to grow and become strong.”
“Do you hear that same song?”
The thin man looked at him with a cold, sly expression. “I am the song.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We are a part of the world. This world and others. We can listen to the song and we can sing notes from the song and create wonders. But we must feed if we listen to the song.”
He wasn’t sure if the thing was being deliberately vague or simply lacked the ability to explain itself. Either way, he was starting to dislike the thin man.
“What do we have to feed on?”
“Mostly pain, and others like ourselves.” That smile grew larger.
Then the thin man reached for him and placed a hand on his chest and something inside of him pulled and twisted and shook through his body like a tree’s roots being ripped from the ground. Lucas Slate tried to step back, tried to break free, but the thin man’s hand on his chest burned at him and left him unable to move a single muscle. He stared at the yellowed teeth in darkened gums surrounded by white, smiling lips, and felt hatred rip into his heart.
In a lifetime full of predatory people who thought he was easy prey Lucas Slate had proven more than his share of people mistaken. He could not make his body move. He could not make his anger known by any of his previous methods. He could not, by God, even call out to Jonathan Crowley a dozen strides away. Instead he listened to the song that called to him and tried to understand the things it was saying.
The pain fought for his attention. The song had been trying to get his notice for longer.
He let the song win.
Crowley stared hard at the two pale men, waiting as they stood face to face and spoke. He could not understand a single word they were speaking and that, too, was something he was unaccustomed to. He did not understand because the words were new to him, but they were also not words, not exactly. Damned if it didn’t sound like to two of them were harmonizing.