The Gunslinger's Man Read online

  Nyle shrugged. “Thought we ought to catch up. You left in such a hurry, we didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.” He pinned his hands on the far side of Asher’s desk, rattling his array of instruments. “’Course, you’re a new man now. Maybe you don’t recall—”

  “I remember everything.”

  A wide, gratified smile crested on Nyle’s lips. “Then you know you’ve got a debt to repay. Now, lucky for you, I ain’t no banker. I don’t charge interest. But I will see my investment repaid.”

  “Does Halloran know you’re here?”

  Nyle shook his head, his eyes never leaving Asher’s. “Probably out huntin’ Redemption vermin…or practicin’ his letters.” He snorted. “But I won’t tell if you don’t.” And with that, he swung his legs over the desk, sending the gas lamp flying and scattering Asher’s tools like seeds on the ground.

  Asher barely had the chance to slide his chair back to avoid getting Nyle’s boot in his face. He had nowhere to go. The wall was behind him, the chair fallen on its side. In front, Nyle seemed keen to press his advantage with a hungry grin.

  Panic ignited a timid flame in Asher’s gut. Not again.

  He registered Nyle’s fangs almost as an afterthought. The moment he dove was the moment Asher parried with his metal-plated arm and planted a fist into Nyle’s solar plexus.

  Vampire speed being what it was, he didn’t have time to extricate himself from Nyle completely before a foot hooked his ankle and sent him tumbling to the floor. His teeth rattled as he hit the ground, the impact more sobering than distressing. No. We’re not doing this again. Irate, he kicked up with his mechanized leg, the pistons in his knee doing what human joints could not.

  Nyle flew back into the wall, looking, for the first time, slightly flummoxed.

  “Fuck me,” he blew out on an almost-whistle. “He was right.”

  Priceless metal gears crunching underfoot, Asher levered upright. “He?”

  The answer, when it came, wasn’t delivered by Halloran’s rider.

  “That will be all, Nyle, thank you.”

  Adrenaline pounding in his ears, Asher glanced to the door. Malachi stood there in a long coat that had probably last been in fashion when the North was kicking their asses.

  “You’ll have to forgive my methods,” he said, once Nyle scurried off. “I will compensate any damages, of course.”

  “Of course,” Asher echoed, shamming a smile as he dusted himself off. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Calling it one was about as accurate as saying summers in the valley were mild.

  “Can’t a man express an interest in his father’s property?”

  A man could, but like any vampire, Malachi held himself to be above mere mortals.

  “And here I thought your father gave me away.”

  “Yes, and wasn’t that an inspired move?” Idly pacing the room, Malachi grazed the shelves with a fingertip. So much of what should have been on display had been destroyed. What remained was Uncle Howard’s life’s work, distilled into a few automatons that didn’t work properly and a number of half-finished contraptions.

  Asher’s skin prickled. He didn’t want Malachi touching any of it.

  “What can I do for you, Malachi?”

  Pouting, the vampire gave up his stroll. “I’m here to invite you to sup with my family. You can start by giving me your gracious promise that you’ll attend.”

  “Why?” burst out of Asher before he could clamp down on the inane question. As if Malachi would ever outline his motives.

  “My father is in another of his moods. Seeing what his power has wrought will cheer him up.”

  He meant seeing Asher restored. He meant Uncle Howard’s painstaking efforts to bind metal and flesh. None of it was Ambrose’s doing, but in a town where only vampires counted as whole citizens, human achievement meant precious little.

  “Shouldn’t you be asking Halloran?” Asher deflected.

  “I already have.”

  “So this is just a courtesy visit.” And all the more astonishing for it.

  “Not quite.” Malachi’s smile grew teeth. “Halloran refused. No doubt so you wouldn’t have to… It was very sweet of him—a vampire sticking up for his pet.” His tone suggested that he found it anything but. “Idiotic, of course, but sweet.”

  “If he turned you down, then—”

  “Oh, I think we both know the influence you have over him,” scoffed Malachi. “You’ll set him straight. I’m expecting you both tonight.”

  Nothing was more likely to spoil Asher’s evening. But that wasn’t the sticking point. “What influence? I don’t have…”

  Malachi’s leer was as effective as any taunt.

  “You heard us,” Asher surmised

  “There’s not a vampire in town who didn’t,” Malachi confirmed cheerfully. He pinned a hand to the desk and swung around its broad, untidy surface to peer closer at Asher and the metal scales on his neck. “I would’ve expected it to bother him, you know. That pretty throat all hidden away…but then I suppose you’ve got enough flesh left to find a pulsing vein.”

  For a moment, he seemed intent on finding out. His gaze bore into Asher like a scalpel, stripping away the flimsy cover of clothes and peeling back his armor.

  “I wonder.” Malachi dipped his gaze lower. “Are you still—?”

  “We’ll be there,” Asher bit out. He’d had enough of indulging Malachi’s curiosity.

  A wide grin broke on Malachi’s lips. “I’ll make sure you have the best seat.”

  “Just don’t put me next to your brother. I may stab Octavian with the fork.”

  It was an idle threat and they both knew it. Whatever protection Halloran could provide him, Asher was still subject to all the old laws. No lifting a hand against a vampire. No threatening bodily harm, let alone death.

  Moreau alone knew that Asher had long ceased adhering to such rules—and he wasn’t talking.

  “You haven’t heard?” Malachi furrowed his brow. “Oh, that’s right. You left us just as it happened…”

  “Just as what happened?”

  His eyes wide and guileless, Malachi pressed a hand to his silent rib cage. “My dear, stubborn Asher… Octavian is dead.” Although he clearly tried to fight it, a smile teased at the corners of his lush mouth, as if he found that disclosure amusing.

  * * * *

  The saloon doors swung creakily in Asher’s wake. His hands itched from sweeping and digging out the tiny screws scattered all over the shop floor. He blamed hard labor for the twitch in his fingers as he hoisted himself onto a barstool.

  The last time he’d been here, the saloon had been all but empty. The Red Horn Riders had walked in and everything had changed.

  “A bit early for you, isn’t it?” Romero drawled from behind the bar. Months on and she was just as nonchalant as she’d been that day. Her black hair had a little more gray in it, perhaps, but her features were just as severe when she reached for the rye.

  “Just beer,” Asher said.

  Romero cocked an eyebrow. “New man, new tastes, huh?”

  Asher hunched his shoulders into a noncommittal shrug. He wasn’t sure what kind of man he was, old or new, and his tastes had never interested anyone before.

  He settled his palms into the grooves of the bar as if reclaiming lost territory. His fingernails knew every nick and crack in the wood. The heels of his boots anchored effortlessly onto the brass footrest. He wouldn’t have thought it possible to miss this place, or Sargasso as a whole. But timber walls and hardened faces was the closest thing Asher had to a home.

  “I hear Octavian bit it,” he volleyed.

  Romero’s expression gave nothing away. “He did. Damn tragedy.”

  “How?”

  “Didn’t your Redemption buddies say? He was ambushed on his way to meet the train. Burned to death.”

  Asher suppressed a shiver. He would’ve struggled to imagine it before he saw Redemption go down in flames, although he would’ve felt gratified
to know Octavian had suffered in his last moments. But now he had seen what fire brought to Octavian’s kind.

  He couldn’t revel in that knowledge.

  Something else niggled at him. “How do you know it was Redemption what did for him?”

  Romero slid a glass of piss-colored beer down the bar. “Who else could it have been?”

  “Octavian wasn’t exactly Mr. Friendly. He rubbed people the wrong way.”

  “Humans,” Romero corrected. And they didn’t matter.

  Asher picked at a divot in the bar. “Town mayor didn’t sound like he’d just knocked one of Ambrose’s knights off the board.” If anything, Redemption had been a harried place just trying to survive in the face of Sargasso’s attacks.

  “You’re overthinking it,” said Romero and resolutely turned her back to attend to another customer.

  “Did it happen when Octavian went to meet the doc?”

  The fingers of one hand would’ve sufficed to help Asher count the number of times he’d seen Romero show fright. He added this one to the tally.

  Her shoulders squared, Romero clenched her fingers around the bottle. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” Asher dropped a few coins to the bar and hopped off his stool.

  He was halfway to the door when Romero called after him.

  “What about your beer?”

  His thirst had evaporated, but he made a point of snatching up the glass anyway and peeling off the contents with a few deep gulps. Unlike whiskey, there was no immediate burn in the pit of his stomach, no satisfying kick in his knees.

  He watched Romero watch him all the while, as though she expected him to lob another question she couldn’t possibly answer.

  The beer diminished by the sip, revealing in the bottom of the glass that plaque behind the bar. Property of Ambrose Solomon warped this way and that, the lettering melting into gibberish.

  Asher slammed his glass on the bar and licked his lips. “Much obliged.”

  “Anytime.”

  Neither of them was talking about the liquor.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Halloran insisted on sticking to his battered duster and brown waistcoat. He hadn’t dressed up for Ambrose the last time he was summoned, and he wasn’t about to start now. Asher could ask nicely and he could threaten, and still it made no difference. Pigheaded didn’t begin to describe Halloran’s insolence.

  “How many vampires in this town do you think get to sit at Ambrose’s table? And you’d not only pass up the opportunity, but you don’t even care about making a good impression,” Asher lamented as they trooped down the stairs.

  So far, all of his meals had been brought to his room by the same mute, hollow-eyed maids he’d glimpsed on his previous visit to Ambrose’s home. He didn’t mind.

  The rest of the house teemed with vampires, half of them Ambrose’s brood, and occasionally scuffles broke out among the youngest. The maids were the only humans there, barring the beautiful Angelita. Asher had been told that she, too, resided in the house, though he had yet to catch so much as a glimpse of her. Perhaps she, too, kept to her room. Perhaps, unlike Asher, she was banned from leaving it even during the daylight hours.

  “For a man who plotted his assassination,” Halloran muttered, “you’ve sure changed your tune.”

  The foyer was empty, gaslights gleaming in the brass sconces on the walls. It was almost enough to make Asher feel as if they were alone.

  He placed his hand on Halloran’s arm and squeezed. I haven’t. He knew better than to say it aloud. “I heard about Octavian,” he offered instead, a harmless observation should any other vampire overhear.

  Any reply Halloran might have offered was silenced by the whisper of the dining room doors swinging open. Malachi stood in the gap. “There you are! I almost thought I’d have to drag you two lovebirds down here myself.”

  Asher’s insides churned. Over Malachi’s shoulder, he could see the rest of their party assembled around the table. Gold cutlery and ivory-white bowls shone in the low firelight. The room was made even darker by deep a mahogany fascia and a burgundy tablecloth. Only six places had been arranged around the dinner table, a sharp contrast to the banquet Ambrose had hosted on Asher’s last visit.

  The reason for it rested with the vampire sat at the head of the table, staring broodingly into the fire.

  “Father, look who’s joined us,” Malachi enthused. He looped an arm around Asher’s elbow, hooking him like a fish on a line.

  Ambrose peered up. His gaze passed over Asher like he wasn’t there. “Any news?” he asked, addressing Halloran and Halloran alone.

  “We’re still searching.”

  “That bastard,” Ambrose muttered under his breath and returned to staring at the flames dancing in the grate.

  “Just for one night, can’t we talk about anything else?” Malachi grumbled. “No, Halloran, you sit by me. Asher, you’ve met Angelita, haven’t you?”

  Asher had, but it took him a moment to connect the pallid, gray-haired creature to Ambrose’s left with the lively brunette who’d danced and laughed so heartily on the mayor’s arm. “Of course…” He fumbled for an appropriate compliment to pay the young lady, but all he could think of was how diminished she appeared. “Miss, it’s a pleasure.”

  She smiled and held out a bony hand, which Asher discovered was as cold as it was fragile.

  “And Doctor Matheson,” Malachi added, “whom you already know.”

  The quack nodded in acknowledgment. Two spots of color crested on his cheeks, a telltale sign that the wine before him might have been a refill.

  Asher sat. He had prepared himself for a markedly different evening—as sure to be uncomfortable as it was for flies to follow a herd, but not like this. He’d expected Ambrose’s ego to have been fueled by the raid on Redemption. He’d teased Halloran with the so-called exclusivity of such an invitation even as he expected to find the dining room teeming with Ambrose’s acolytes.

  “This is what our evenings are usually like,” Malachi lamented. “A quiet supper, a bit of conversation—”

  “You’ve sent out scouts?” Ambrose asked, his focus once more to Halloran.

  “A bit of beating the old dead horse,” Malachi finished with a drawl in his voice.

  His father heard him this time. His eyes narrowed.

  Two seats from Malachi, Asher would have felt it if something was lobbed at him under the table. He certainly saw nothing fly over the bronze-covered platters upon it. And yet Malachi seized as though he’d been struck.

  Asher wasn’t the only one to notice. Dr. Matheson jolted in his seat. Angelita let out a long breath.

  “My men will find him,” said Halloran, alone in appearing unruffled.

  “Your men?” Ambrose spat. “You should be out there looking for him yourself! I don’t pay you to sit around.”

  Halloran returned the mayor’s sputtering temper with a level gaze.

  Asher suppressed a shiver. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped about twenty degrees.

  “You paid me to burn down Redemption,” Halloran said evenly. “Thanks to Asher, that’s what I did.”

  Thanks to…what? Asher couldn’t chisel surprise out of his expression swiftly enough.

  Ambrose noticed it. “That’s certainly what you claim.” As strange as it was to see him distracted and brooding, the return of Ambrose the shrewd was much worse. “Tell me,” he asked, looping one massive hand around his glass, “how did you aid us, boy?”

  The transition from invisibility to center of attention left Asher fumbling. “I, uh…” He swallowed in a dry throat, the plates on his neck rearranging with a succession of faint clicks.

  “He gave us information about the town’s defenses,” Halloran put in. “Like I told you he would.”

  “Oh, I remember what you told us.” Ambrose swirled the thick, viscous liquid in his glass. Red clung to the sides, shiny in the firelight. “I’d like to hear it from him. You wanted a more divert
ing evening, Malachi? Here it is. Human entertainment.”

  The last time Asher had been made the focus of the party, he’d been about as eloquent as a baboon. He didn’t relish the renewed opportunity.

  “Moreau took me in,” he blurted.

  Ambrose snorted. “Of course he did. Like calls to like, don’t it? Traitor to traitor… Go on,” he encouraged, motioning to one of the dumb, eerie maids to unveil their supper.

  A vampire’s idea of dinner was not something Asher expected to enjoy. The best he figured he could hope for was something at least vaguely comestible. He was surprised, then, to discover beans and rice floating fluffy and fat in a bowl of soup.

  “Tell us more,” Ambrose goaded, before Asher could pick up his spoon.

  Sing for your supper.

  His mouth watering at the smell of oregano and chili rising from the bowl, Asher forced himself to speak. “It’s true, what Halloran said. Getting on Moreau’s good side put me in a position to find out the weak links in their defenses. Also saw there weren’t a whole lot of vampires left…” That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true, but the Riders had culled the population in previous assaults and Asher reasoned they wouldn’t have known just how many of their victims still had a pulse.

  “And what of Moreau?”

  “What about him?” Asher asked, hunger making him sloppy. He’d never starved in Sargasso, even when the harvest was poor and cattle were rustled from under their noses—Uncle Howard made sure of that—but there was a vast difference between eating to stay alive and eating enough to fill his belly day in, day out.

  Ambrose hadn’t finished with him yet, though. “You didn’t happen to see where he went after the fightin’ was done?”

  “No.”

  “You wouldn’t have helped him escape, would you?”

  “Father,” Malachi chided, more subdued than he’d been before his painful rebuke. “You’ll upset Halloran.”