Of Grave Concern Part 25

The woman wore a stained buckskin skirt, fringed at the bottom, a blue blouse, and a bead-and-sh.e.l.l necklace around her neck. I could not tell her age. She might have been thirty or fifty. Although her body seemed strong, her face was deeply lined, and her eyes were dark with sorrow. The boy wore dark wool pants, moccasins, and a red print shirt. His bright eyes warily watched Vanderslice as he worked on the meat.

As I drew closer, I could see that what was being turned on the spit was the torso of a man.

"Knew you'd come," Vanderslice said to me, throwing another strip of meat to the whackers. "Women are just dying to meet me."

"I come because of the Russian girl."

His hand went to the pocket with the missing b.u.t.ton.

"So . . . what they say about you is true," Vanderslice said. "You do talk to the dead. What did pretty, stupid, dead little Anna have to say?"

"That you betrayed and then killed her."

"But of course," Vanderslice said. "I sold my soul to Malleus."

"I hope it was worth it."

"He'll give me you," he said. "He'll kill you, in the end. But before he does, he'll turn you over to me. And you'll be sorry that you were so rude to me on the street in Dodge City."

"I think not."

"I'm guessing you're not here alone," Vanderslice said, his eyes darting over the creek. "But I reckon we'll find out who and how many soon enough."

"Is that Castor Adams?" I asked.

"The same," he said. "One of the boys did wrong in killing him, but it seemed a shame to let the meat go to waste."

He carved another slice, but instead of throwing it to the whackers, he took a bite. He chewed, then offered it to me.

"Hungry?"

"Not now," I said.

"Oh, it ain't half bad," he said. "I don't see what all the fuss was, with the Donner Party and old Alfie Packer. Meat is meat. We're all animals, right? Seems to me, a good many human animals would be of more use as vittles anyhow."

He threw the rest of the slice to the whackers. One of them jumped and caught it in his mouth.

"Is Malleus here?"

"In the temple," Vanderslice said, jerking his head back to the ruins.

"Call him out," I said. "I want my soul's shadow back."

Vanderslice laughed. "That ain't going to happen," he said. "Old Malleus is very particular about those shiny bits of stuff that he keeps in a bag on his belt. It's where his power comes from. He reaches up through the solar plexus and s.n.a.t.c.hes them from people. He keeps the bigger and brighter ones, like yours. The others, the dull ones, he uses to turn wolves into whackers."

"So they're not werewolves."

"Just the opposite," Vanderslice said. "Weremen."

"That's why they go back to wolves when you kill them," I said.

"My, you do catch on."

"But what about Shadrach?"

"Oh, he was a real man, all right," Vanderslice answered. "Not much of a man, I'll grant you. Old Malleus had quite enough of his stupidity after he busted another wheel, so he shot him with somebody else's aura. When that happens, it's like two bottles of nitroglycerin being smashed together-kaboom!-it blows your whole chest apart."

"That's what Malleus uses that antique pistol on his belt for."

"It's good that you're still dressed for a funeral," Vanderslice said, and smirked. "Because the next one's going to be your own."

Then something stirred deep in the ruins Vanderslice called the temple, and I could see a shadow walking up the stairs. I was expecting Malleus, but what emerged, instead, into the daylight was a woman wearing a black silk robe, open to the waist, with nothing beneath. She was about my age-and was nearly my image in every other respect.

Her face was smeared with red ochre, and abalone baubles dangled from her earlobes. She moved with an animal grace, like a lazy housecat walking across a porch warmed by the sun. The whackers seemed both excited and repelled by her; and even though they scrambled back out of her way, their hungry eyes locked on her body.

"Whiskey trader, you talk too much," the woman said.

"I was only-"

"Shut up," the woman said. Her voice had the same odd accent that I had detected in Malleus's voice.

"I should have let Malleus cut out your tongue long ago. How much have you told her? Oh, never mind. I'm going to a.s.sume everything."

The woman walked over to me and smiled. She reached out with a cold hand and lifted my chin.

"Now we see through a gla.s.s, darkly."

It was Katie Bender.

32.

The woman took my left hand in hers and pulled me toward the stone steps leading down into the shadows, but I resisted.

"Come along," she said. "You came here to see Malleus, didn't you?"

"Yes," I said, and stumbled after her. I looked over my shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of Calder striding across the gravel bar, but there was nothing but woods and water.

"I've been feeling you for a long while," the woman said. "Years, in fact. Always at the edge of my consciousness, like a half-remembered dream when daylight comes. But here you are in the flesh, at last."

"What should I call you?"

"Ah, there's a problem," she said, stopping. She leaned close and cupped a hand around my ear, brushing away the hair. "Don't call me 'Katie,' because that is a weak and diminutive form of my name. But your modern tongue would break itself in attempting to p.r.o.nounce 'Aikaterini.'"

"What language is that?"

"Ancient Macedonian."

She kissed me. Her lips were as cold as steel.

"Where are the others?" I asked, pulling away.

"There are no others."

"Ma and Pa Bender? Your brother, John?"

"Ah," she said. "Them. The old ones were merely slaves, and the stupid young one only a consort. They are dead. I killed them all, soon after we left that wretched cabin. As mortals they thirsted after land, and now they have their wish-they sleep beneath the prairie for eternity."

"Did you slit their throats?"

"There was no time for pleasure, darling," she said. "I shot them all, with a marvelous invention-the Colt 1873 revolving pistol, a forty-five-caliber, also called 'the Peacemaker.' Oh, how I love you Americans and your sense of humor!" She laughed wickedly. "Oh, would that Alexander had a thousand such weapons. Macedonians would rule the world still, instead of yet and again."

"You knew Alexander the Great?"

"A casual relationship," she said. "He loved boys more."

"That had to sting."

"Enough talk!" she said. "Malleus awaits."

At the bottom of the steps was a room with a fire pit in the center and all manner of objects piled against the walls: expensive clothes flung carelessly about, caskets overflowing with jewelry, books, marble busts of Greek and Roman statesmen, dusty wine bottles. Also piled about were human skulls the color of parchment. The ghosts here were old-very old. Their voices were the murmur of a shallow river in a deep cave unseen by any man.

Malleus was sitting-or rather squatting-on a throne that looked like it would have been at home in the court of Nero. He was wearing a dressing gown over his enormous body, and from a wide leather belt dangled the antique pistol and the leather bag. His hands were the color of dead fish and were resting on the silver handle of a walking stick.

"Take off your hat," she said.

When I refused, she knocked it to the floor.

Then Katie dropped to one knee and attempted to pull me down with her, but I refused.

"Malleus, my lord," she said. "I have brought the other."

"Welcome to h.e.l.l," Malleus said, opening his arms. Then he smiled, revealing those teeth the color of old tusk, and I could not help but shudder.

"It could use some cleaning," I said, "but it is hardly my idea of h.e.l.l."

"Pahghh!" Malleus spat. "You mean your Christian idea. How bored am I of this theology for simpletons. One G.o.d to rule all-how uninspired! Give me that old-time religion, when there was a G.o.d for every temper. And h.e.l.l is merely the netherworld, the place of the dead."

Malleus motioned for Katie to come to him, and she scooted across the floor and put her back against the throne. She loosened the silk gown and he caressed her bare shoulders as he spoke.

"Why have you come here?"

"My aura," I said. "Give it back."

"You had your chance," he said. "I dropped it from surprise when I took it-it was made of better stuff than I expected. It lay there in the mud, and you could have s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, but you did not. I placed it in my collection then. When I have enough of the shiny ones, I will transform into something more pleasing. . . ."

"Are you Macedonian, too?"

He waved dismissively. "I speak more dead languages than any Oxford don," he said. "No man has heard my native tongue in five thousand years, and none know its name. Call it 'Enigma.'"

"Obviously, you aren't human," I said.

"Brilliant," he said. "Any more revelations for us?"

"What are you?"

He smiled. "If I told you," he said, "I might be lying. Or I might not."

I had my answer.

"What are you doing here?"

"Anything I want," he said. "And what I want at the moment-meaning the next hundred years or so-is to set loose a new kind of evil upon humanity. Murder as a kind of sickness. I don't know what to call it yet, exactly. I might just wait and see what kind of bad name you can give it. You get so many things wrong! Oh, some of my favorites-spontaneous generation, the miasma theory of disease, pinochle, maternal imprinting, phrenology, Lamarckism."

"We get a few things right."

"Given enough time, perhaps," he said. "Problem is, your race doesn't have time, does it? What can you accomplish in your biblical three score and ten? The best of you make some music for others to hum, scribble some dreams or nightmares for others to share, or work a lifetime to discover and perfect some new knowledge. But the rest of you-driven by the pursuit of pleasure and profit, turning a blind eye on the pain of others, and always beating ploughshares into swords. Yours is a murderous race. Why, look at what you have done here on the plains in the s.p.a.ce of a single generation. You have driven the aborigines from their lands, destroyed a mult.i.tude of cultures, and slaughtered the bison to near extinction."

He made a motion with his hand, and Katie somehow knew what he wanted. She brought him one of the skulls from a pile near the wall.

"Look upon the legacy of an empire," he said, holding up the skull as if he were in a play. "You have no name for them, but they ruled this land for a thousand years and did but a fraction of the harm you have done in a handful. Their empire collapsed, in time. Now, even their name is known only to the wind."

He squeezed the skull, and his fingers crushed the ancient bone as if it were thin plaster; teeth and dust falling to the floor.

"That is man," he said. "That is your fate, and soon. But I offer something . . . better."

"What?" I asked. "You want to turn me into one of those whackers?"

"Why would I do that when I have a surplus of dull auras and an unlimited supply of prairie wolves?" he asked. "No, I want you to serve me as your ageless sister, Aikaterini, serves me. In return, I offer eternal youth, power second only to my own, and a seat at the table of darkness."

"And if I don't?"

"I'll kill you, of course," he said. "Your soul will wither and die without its shadow."

"Doesn't sound like much of a choice."

"Oh, but it is," Malleus hissed. "I can kill you, but I can't make you serve me. You must do that of your own free will. Choose now."

"Thanks, but I'm tired of playing this game," I said. "Just give me my aura, and I'll be on my way."

"You're choosing death," he said. "You'll become food for the whackers."

"Well, I always liked dogs."