Chapter 31
Dust woke to Shadows Fade and Penelope Chalmers dragging him through the cult’s temple. His dull eyes scanned them for wounds and found them safe, whole and without the Triangle’s taint. They’d won.
“He’s awake,” Penelope said, noticing his movement. She was thin, a skeleton dragging its skin around, but there had once been a pretty girl over that form and it shone through as she smiled shyly. She’d found some warm-looking clothes, plain shirts and hemp trousers, and swaddled herself in them.
Shadows Fade stopped and together they lifted him, let him stand without embarrassment. Dust planted his feet and stepped away. He’d thought he was tired after the fight in Crucifix but that was nothing; now his feet moved as though in quicksand and hurt like a bastard in the process.
“Are you okay?” Penelope asked.
“Never mind me,” Dust said. “How’re you?”
“She is clear of That Which Sins’ taint,” Shadows Fade said.
“That’s not what I asked; are you okay?”
“I don’t think I’ll be okay for quite some time, Mister Dust, but I can walk if that’s what you mean.”
He smiled at her bravery until fatigue collapsed the gesture. “What did they do to you?”
“Can we not talk about that now?” she asked. “I’m not… I haven’t come to terms with what actually happened in there. I need time to think about it. If that’s alright, sir?”
“I understand. Call me ‘Dust’ by the way.”
Penelope nodded and gave him another small smile.
“Can you travel?” Shadows Fade asked him.
Dust nodded.
“Are you sure? You fought one of the Triangle. Actually fought it. Even Resistance does not allow that without payment.”
When Shadows Fade put it like that, Dust wondered how he could even walk; Penelope had been close to becoming a Vessel when he’d found her and denying That Which Sins her prize at the last ought to have cost him more dearly. Then he remembered the extreme punishment Resistance had meted out for not shooting Naismith; it had felt justified at the time but perhaps Resistance had achieved two purposes with the same action. Something the god had been doing often recently.
“I think,” Dust said, flexing his bloated fingers, “Resistance took his payment in advance.”
Shadows Fade raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Dust looked at Penelope and realised he’d forgotten something. “Did we kill everyone in the temple?”
“I’m sure we did,” the warrior replied.
“Were there any people with… very unusual magic in them?”
“What are you really asking, Dust?”
He looked back down the tunnel, followed it burrowing deep into the earth. A gentle breeze buffeted his hair but carried no sounds with it. “A girl called Margaret escaped this cult a while ago, seeking sanctuary with Father Kilkenny. She was a Vessel for That Which Sins; a stepping stone to creating an Avatar. Four more like her were with this cult.”
“Vessel, Avatar, I do not know these words. Explain,” Shadows Fade said.
“An Avatar is a physical piece of a god; a connection between them and our world. It would allow a god to act without proxies and demons, directly wield their powers.” They were plain words but Shadows Fade’s widened pupils told him she understood the horror involved. “The Father seemed to think these Vessels were part of building an Avatar, like bricks.”
Penelope’s arm started to shake. She gripped it tightly to her body. “And that’s what the ritual was for? To make me a piece of a puzzle?”
Dust cursed his lack of subtlety. “Yes.”
The girl took a deep breath. “Wow.”
Shadows Fade tapped her chin thoughtfully. “These Vessels are dead.”
“You certain?”
“Four of the cultists I killed contained the same kind of magic as that which fills the Soul Waters Father Kilkenny holds in his chapel,” she said. “Assuming this Margaret was the Soul Waters’ former owner?”
Dust took a second to connect ‘Soul Waters’ to ‘Word’. “Damn. Things would’ve been easier if I could’ve talked to you before.”
“Perhaps. But then Naismith would have known about the Soul Waters.”
“True,” he said, his voice low. “It worked out for the best.”
Naismith. Dust couldn’t believe she’d been a damn cultist the whole time, that she’d followed him into the Badlands only to ensure his death. Their journey made more sense now; her fancy gun, her reluctance to share a tent, the ‘freeze’ that left him high and dry… If he ever got his hands on her, there would be one Hell of a reckoning. His tattoo did not warm at the thought; that was what Resistance wanted.
Her betrayal also put the Solution under a different light. Dust’d have a lot to ask Dick when he got back. If they got there before Naismith.
“Let us hurry,” Shadows Fade said. “We can discuss this further on the way.”
He looked back down the depths of the temple as another thought kicked him. “Wait, the Bond.”
“What about it?” Shadows Fade asked.
“Can you imagine that being in the wrong hangs? We’ve got to go back for it.”
“Is that the metal thing we went and got?” Penelope asked.
Shadows Fade shot Penelope a sour look and then whistled. Godly Claw appeared ahead of them, the Bond in her mouth. The Spirit Wolf’s brilliant blue was still black from magical wounds but now it also faded where her teeth touched the artefact, becoming the grey of a normal wolf.
Dust grinned at Shadows Fade’s theatricality. Some people went in for looking that prepared and knowledgeable but Dust’d never thought it worthwhile. He didn’t blame the warrior for using such arts but seeing behind the curtains was amusing.
“Good,” Dust said. “Thanks.”
It must’ve taken him a while to come to as they were soon at the surface, emerging into heavy rain. The temple entrance was located in a valley, hidden behind two great boulders so casual observers couldn’t see it. The air was clear, crisp, and the rain was cleansing. Dust scanned the Badlands and felt only background magic; the consciousnesses that’d watched them earlier had grown bored and slumped back to their holes. He saw no movement either, the scavengers having been scared off by wards and fetishes dotted along the top of the valley.
Dust’s travel pack was back with the Father so he couldn’t close the temple off with explosives and the like. And he needed to collapse it; more artefacts were in there, just waiting to be discovered. How many people could die if the temple was left open? It’d be another delay they couldn’t afford but a risk he wouldn’t take.
Shadows Fade noticed him staring back into the temple. “Don’t worry. We left a surprise for anyone still inside.”
“The dynamite?” Penelope asked.
The warrior sighed. “Yes, the dynamite.”
Dust laughed. Twice in ten minutes. He was growing to like Penelope.
Shadows Fade’s mouth tightened and she looked away. An unobservant man may have mistaken this for anger but Dust saw her lips curl upward into a smile. Godly Claw grinned as well with the Blood between her teeth, giving it away even further.
“Where’d you get it from?” Dust asked.
The warrior coughed. “I keep caches of dynamite around the Badlands, warded and hidden. Godly Claw brought it.”
“And they’re on a timer?”
“A long fuse.”
“Then we should be moving.”
“Yes, we should.”
<!–nextpage–>
They moved quickly as they could; for all her bravery, Penelope was racked with pain and her muscles had atrophied. Dragging Dust’s unconscious carcass around couldn’t have helped. By the time they left the valley, Shadows Fade was half-dragging the poor girl.
Two minutes later the earth shook as a series of distant booms echoed through the valley and out into the Badlands, bringing with them soaring clouds of dust and earth. Dust listened carefully and heard the entrance tunnel crumble in on itself; someone’d have to be pretty determined to dig their way into the temple. And when mages and creatures saw the Wanted Man leaving it with an artefact like the Bond, they’d assume that there was nothing worth digging for.
They tottered to Crucifix over the next hour, stopping often to let Penelope work out some cramp or vomit onto a brush. Mild rain fell constantly. They moved without any light to avoid being seen, Dust or Shadows Fade leading the girl forward. The pauses meant Naismith would be gaining ground but Dust would’ve had to call for rests anyway for the first half hour. He appreciated being able to save face. Especially with distant eyes still paying him close attention.
“Where are we going?” Penelope asked during their fourth break.
“Crucifix,” Dust said, leaning against a small boulder with deep claw marks set into its crust. “A small town nearby. We based ourselves there and need to get our equipment before we head to the Solution.”
“The Solution? So they did send you?”
He gathered his thoughts on the Solution for a moment, thought through what their benefactor’s daughter being an Omnis worshipper meant. He had to wonder how she’d even got into that game; had she been corrupted by something from the geniuses’ labs or had she sold herself long before that? There’d have to be a big investigation if they could get there first, which meant a lot of questioning Dust wasn’t looking forward to and people he probably liked being hung like meat.
“Yeah,” he said. “The Solution sent us to rescue you after getting the cult’s demands, knowing they were up to something. Cults always pull these stunts; the leather bastard expected you’d stay once you were a Vessel. Even if you’d not turned and we’d brought them what they wanted, they wouldn’t have let you go.”
“Exactly. These events were about three things,” Shadows Fade said. “Getting their lost ‘Vessel’ back, adding another one to their ranks and capturing the Wanted Man. Eleanor Naismith came to ensure the last two would happen.”
Dust couldn’t figure out why, though. He kept his counsel for now.
Penelope blinked. “So they only ransomed me to capture you?”
“Yup.”
She shivered then and had no more questions.
They walked on. The rain started pounding onto them, cruel and unflinching. As time passed and the fatigue slowly drained from his muscles, Dust became more and more concerned by the things watching them; yes, he’d just destroyed a temple as far as they were concerned but he shouldn’t still be this interesting. By the time they broached the decline to Crucifix, the number of spells aimed his way had tripled.
Dust drew his other gun.
“I feel them too,” Shadows Fade said, speaking up to be heard over the deluge.
“Feel who?” Penelope shouted.
“There are monsters and people who can watch someone from distance with magic,” Dust said. He stopped scanning the horizon and looked at her. “Some are giving us the eye.”
“Are… are we going to be attacked?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “C’mon, let’s head down.”
Dust and Shadows Fade helped Penelope traverse the decline. The girl’s eyelids drooped now and her movement was slower, more clumsy; they’d need to settle in Crucifix for the night before moving on, even if she rode Horse. He cursed but there was no other option if he wanted to save her life.
When they got to the town’s limits, a voice called out “They’re here!”
The people of Crucifix rounded the chapel, a torn husk which’d need a good amount of repairing, and walked over to greet them. They were armed but that was only natural given what’d happened to them. Bright torches cast multiform silhouettes around them as they marched. Dust managed a small smile; a welcome might cheer them up after a long day.
“You’ve got some nerve,” one of the townsfolk said. It wasn’t a compliment.
He noticed their angry faces then, hardened expressions under pouring rain. This stank of Naismith’s treachery. Godly Claw’s hackles raised and she issued a low growl. Dust held out a hand to stop Penelope and Shadows Fade then put his other gun away. Any tiredness he’d been feeling was swallowed beneath his will.
“What’s the problem, friend?” Dust asked the man who’d spoken, their apparent leader. He had a rough bowler hat on. The raindrops burst on its rim as he glared.
The crowd gathered round Dust. Bowler Hat stepped forward, stood inches from Dust, and said. “You’re the problem. And I’m not your friend.”
“How could you?” a small, tough woman shouted.
“What did she do to you?” said a man stood just in front of her, presumably her husband. He tapped a lumpen hammer against his palm.
“Stand down,” Shadows Fade hissed.
“Or what?” the leader asked. “You’ll torture us too?”
Dust waved for the warrior to back off. He opened his palms to them and said “I don’t know what you think’s happened but whatever it is ain’t true.”
Bowler Hat laughed. “You expect us to believe that?”
“She was a wreck,” the small woman said. “You hurt her bad.”
“What’d she say?”
“Who are they talking about?” Penelope asked. She sounded drunk.
“Eleanor Naismith,” Dust said, a statement and a question.
Bowler Hat tightened his grip on a splintered length of wood. That was a yes.
“But you didn’t do anything to her?” she said blearily. “She escaped.”
None of Dustin’s memories had prepared Dust for the limitations, the weakness, fragility and coldness, of being a normal man; people get used to their limits, call it ‘human nature’ but Dust wasn’t human. But after experiencing human nature, Dust no longer blamed the crowd or anyone else for their fear of him. He ran his eyes over them and felt a fledgling compassion, one he’d have to show to defuse the situation.
Dust smiled, keeping a little warmth in the gesture so it didn’t provoke them. Particularly with Penelope talking of ‘escapes’. “Well, these people don’t believe that. They’ve been scared of me since I got here, questioning me, thinking I was as bad as the things that’ve been killing ’em for years. And naturally that fear, like any fear of something different, has been itching for an excuse to become anger. Eleanor gave ’em that excuse.
“Now I haven’t done a thing to you besides risk my hide to save yours. What you have is one person’s word against another, and that’s not enough for a court of law. If you step down, we can talk this through some. But consider this; if I were a dangerous monster, wouldn’t I have started shooting by now?”
Bowler Hat stepped back. The small woman didn’t look so sure of herself now and her husband looked back at her for direction. Others in this lynch mob – and that’s what it might’ve become if Penelope hadn’t been with them, given them pause – lowered their weapons a little.
They were stepping down. Dust nodded but collapsed his smile in case it were misconstrued.
“C’mon, you can’t believe that!” someone roared. A greasy man with drinker’s eyes and nothing to shield him from the rain pushed to the front of the crowd. He waved a knife Dust’s way. “We know he’s a monster. We can’t let him get away!”
Dust held his hands up, more to show willing than fear. “Ho there. If my words aren’t enough, why don’t we just get the Father out here?” he asked. “He’ll be able to-”
“No! Fuck no! You cast some spell over him with your heathen symbols and your darkie voodoo.” He looked at the rest of the mob. There was something odd about the way he moved, a hidden poise, a secret rhythm. “You know that’s true. Look at the Father; he’s tired as a dog after tonight. That never happened before. This bastard used his magic to drain him like a tick. Probably took control of his mind too.”
His words were a little too slurred, his movement too controlled, for this to be real. The drunk was acting. The mob bought his play though, raising weapons and baring teeth, but they bought it too cheaply for Dust’s liking. He ran his magical senses over them and felt a mere hint of a spell connecting them to this newcomer.
“I’m not the one who knows about controlling minds, friend.”
“What do you mean?” the mage asked, adding extra sway to sell the lie. But within the movement he traced a fortifying pattern with his hand, clear as water; he was still casting his spell!
Which gave Dust pause. A spell like this wouldn’t be simple to set up so why control Crucifix’s people? Then it clicked that Naismith had expected him to die in the temple. This angry group would likely have been made to give a bad account of Dust to the Solution, accusing him of all manner of things and tying up the loose ends in her story. This current charade was the mage making the best out of a bad situation when Dust unexpectedly rolled into Crucifix.
Penelope began to shiver, teeth chattering loudly over the rain. She held herself to try and quell it but to no avail. Shadows Fade put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and caught Dust’s eye, raised an eyebrow, to ask whether she should act.
“Have you done the same sort of thing to this girl?” the small wife hissed. “You beast.”
“You bastard!” her husband roared.
The spell was coming back into affect. Shadows Fade pointed to a dispelling tattoo on her arm. As imperceptibly as he could, Dust nodded.
Clearing a spell on people’s minds would take time, especially when all it’d done was push their fear a little; the magic would be thin, both subtle and flimsy. There were drawbacks to such delicate spells though, hence the mage having to step in to shore it up when the mob wavered.
“Where’s the Father?” Dust asked to eat up time.
“Resting,” another woman said. Dust thought her name was Mary.
“Maybe you should wake him, let him sort this out?”
The mage shook his head. “No, no, no. Not when you’ve got your control over him, when you’re playing him like a puppet.”
“Good point,” Bowler Hat said.
“You’re a monster,” Mary whispered. “The Father needed your help! We needed your help!”
“You got it,” Dust pointed out.
“But at what cost?” the mage said. He stepped closer. The knife was an inch from Dust’s chest. “You took that poor girl and destroyed her, tore her to pieces for… Hell, I don’t even know what reason. None of us would’ve accepted that price. Not one.”
Dust wished he could slap the mage. A warm forearm warned him against it.
“No!” the townsfolk cried.
“Not at all.”
“Lord have mercy.”
Dust looked down. The mage’s knife had a spell on it too, a poison strong enough to kill a man in hours. On Dust, it wouldn’t be lethal but it wouldn’t be fun either. It’d slow him down, give Naismith more time to race ahead.
“What’s it to be then?” Dust asked. “Will you take us prisoner?”
“I reckon so,” Bowler Hat said.
“You and your red skin bitch,” the mage said, earning a hiss from Shadows Fade.
The slur bought him another couple of seconds of weaving his magic over Crucifix as well as the warrior’s ire. And Dust’s. He wondered if the mage could tell the warrior was activating her tattoos and decided if he did then he would’ve stabbed Dust by now.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Penelope said, her voice low. At least her shaking had stopped.
“Shut up.”
“When’ll you hold us ’til?” Dust asked.
The mage smiled, a sickly gesture. “Until the Solution arrive. Before she left, poor Eleanor Naismith sent a telegraph to them letting them know what you’ve done.”
It might’ve been Dust’s imagination but he swore it started raining harder then, that the wind bit into his skin a mite more. Naismith had reported him to the Solution as a torturer, a monster. She couldn’t have sent a telegraph with the line down but she could easily have sent a messaging spell to a sympathetic person in the Solution, perhaps even someone manning the telegraph station. Dust hadn’t even considered that she might magically contact her cult as it involved a rare spell.
If the mage was telling the truth – and Dust didn’t think he was powerful enough to enjoy taunting someone and maintain a delicate spell – then their chase was already over. Naismith’s report would spawn more messages and soon his reputation would be ignited. Razed even. He truly was the Wanted Man now.
Slowly, he breathed out. For Dust, the world had just changed.
Godly Claw howled then, the final act of the spell she and Shadows Fade had been casting. The sound became a blue gas that rolled like the tide and clashed against the people of Crucifix. When it touched them their eyes clouded over and they looked around in confusion.
“Where are we?” the husband asked his wife.
“Good question, Abel,” she said. “We’re outside. For some reason.”
The mage panicked and tried to stab Dust. Dust wasn’t stunned enough to not knock his hand away, grab the mage by the wrist and slam his forearm against Dust’s knee.
The mage screamed and dropped the knife, which Dust kicked out of reach. His cry got the crowd’s attention. They looked at Dust as though for the first time and then at their manhandled town drunk.
“Emmett, what’re you doing?” Bowler Hat asked.
“He attacked me!” Emmett screeched. He tried to wrench himself away but Dust pulled him back and grabbed his other wrist.
“I didn’t,” Dust said.
“It’s true, he didn’t!” Penelope shouted.
“It is,” said Shadows Fade.
The crowd looked from person to person, unsure what to do. Some gripped their weapons again, ready to believe their own. Others lowered them. It looked like there might be a fight and Naismith would get more evidence against him. Damn her eyes.
Thankfully, the Father chose that moment to stumble out from the great rip in his chapel and ask, bleary but mad as a spider, “What in the name of the Devil’s crotch is going on out here?”
Dust relaxed and Emmett tensed in his grip. The game was up.
“Emmett cast some kind of-” Dust started.
The Father interrupted. “Sweet Mary, is that Penelope?”
Penelope looked uncomfortable. If she’d had the strength, she might’ve blushed. “Do I know you, Father?”
“Jesus be praised,” the Father whispered. “But look at you, you poor thing. Come on, get in out of the rain, the lot of you.”
Penelope looked at Shadows Fade for confirmation of whether to go inside. The warrior nodded; what she’d learned of the Father must’ve convinced her he could be trusted. Penelope then delicately walked through the rift. The people of Crucifix followed after, casting confused glances at Dust and Emmett, who no longer struggled in his grip.
Then it was just the four of them. Five including Godly Claw. The Father rested against the chapel, his magic still draining him, and gave them a dull-eyed appraisal.
“First thing’s first; what happened with Emmett?”
“Don’t listen to them!” Emmett cried, rediscovering his fight. “They-”
Dust ended the fucker’s nonsense by holding a hand over his mouth. He responded by licking the palm of Dust’s hand, an annoyance but all he could really do in the situation.
“He cast a spell upon your flock then tried to stab Dust,” Shadows Fade said.
The Father shook his head then frowned, tried to work out what’d just happened. It was like he’d taken a blow to the head. The man looked to Dust, almost scared.
“She knows English,” Dust said.
“Oh,” the Father said. “Well, I’m sorry for what I said in the chapel.”
“Most men are like that,” she replied. “I try not to hold it against them; it is not their fault that their minds are limited.”
The Father winced. Dust smiled.
“Anyway,” the Father said, “what’re we going to do with you, Emmett?”
The fucker stopped licking Dust’s palm, a minor relief. Dust let go to let him speak.
“You’re going to do nothing with me,” he said.
Magic then surged within him. Without thinking, Dust picked him up and ran, worried he might be about to attack the Father.
Emmett’s body twitched and convulsed as Dust carried him over his shoulder like a sack of coal. White froth spilled from his mouth. By the time Dust got to the main road out of Crucifix, it was obvious this wasn’t an attack but a ritual cast long ago, a fail-safe in case he ever got captured.
It seemed everyone thought about being captured but Dust.
He threw the fucker down when the magic came to a critical mass and landed in a heap, propped up against the wall like a rag doll. He fixed his eyes on Dust as the ritual tore into his brain and laughed. Blood then gushed out through his ears, nose and mouth, a red torrent which lasted for seconds. Then Emmett was no more. The light left his eyes and he slumped over to bleed out onto the road.
When he was sure the ritual was over, Dust knelt and searched the corpse. Emmett was filthy, his skin clammy and uncomfortable to touch, but Dust checked everywhere to be sure. The only thing of interest was an unusual fetish around his pale ankle, a knot carved out of black wood with a silver chain to hold it up.
Dust removed it and held it toward the faint light of the chapel’s runes and spells. Remnants of magic dripped from the fetish; Dust reckoned this’d been the catalyst for that last-ditch ritual.
Shadows Fade appeared at the head of the road with Godly Claw. She noted Emmett’s death and Dust’s condition then relaxed slightly.
“You ever seen one of these?” Dust asked, holding the fetish out toward her.
The warrior approached and examined it. “No. Never.”
“Me either. But it just killed him,” he examined the knot again and sighed. “There’s a lot more too all of this.”
“There always is.”
He looked up at Shadows Fade and smiled. “Ain’t that the truth. C’mon, let’s get out of the rain.”
The warrior nodded and they both walked back to the chapel, leaving Emmett’s corpse to be cleansed by the thudding rain.