by john | Apr 19, 2018 | Fiction, Harker
Since She Talks to Angels releases today, I thought I’d give you all a sneak peek into the opening of the book, kinda like a tease to get you to go out and buy that shit. Here’s the linky to aforementioned shit.
Chapter 1
“Not a good time, Harker,” I said into my cell phone as I put the Toaster in park. My beat up old Honda Element isn’t sexy, but it’s paid for and has all the cargo room I need for my day job. That day job at the moment had me stashing my panty-dropping grocery grabber at the far end of a parking lot across from The Last Ride, a biker bar on the outskirts of St. Louis. The preferred modes of transportation for the occupants of the bar apparently had at least one, usually two fewer wheels than my Element, but there were a couple of old Detroit-made penis compensation methods in the gravel lot as well. Still, I thought I’d be better off leaving my sensible sport utility vehicle parked away from all the testosterone. By the looks of the place, my car would get chlamydia if it got too close.
“I don’t really care, Gabby. This is important,” the self-important prick known as Quincy Harker said from my phone. I don’t like Harker. I don’t like the fact that he lied to me to get me to help him on our first case together (admittedly I mean more “not shoot him” than actually help). I don’t like the fact that he spends the majority of his time with Dracula, the monster my great-grandfather famously hunted and thought he killed. I don’t like that he seems to know a lot more about Grandpa Abe than I do, having actually met the old man when he was a little kid. And I really don’t like that he and his little merry band of assholes called The Shadow Council keep talking me into doing shit that goes directly against my best interests, like getting in the middle of a goddamned demon invasion in Georgia, of all godforsaken places.
Fuck Georgia. I’m a Midwest girl, through and through. I like St. Louis. I like Chicago. I even like Detroit, and nobody likes Detroit. So even six months later, I was still irritated at Harker for getting me wrapped up in some bullshit save the world scheme in Atlanta last year.
“So is me getting paid, Harker. Some of us have jobs, remember? We can’t all live off the riches our parasitic uncles have stashed all over the world.”
“You know there’s a stipend available for all Council members, right?”
I felt my eyes widen at his slightly distorted words. I took the phone off speaker and brought it to my ear. “No. That wasn’t part of the friggin’ welcome packet, you prick.” Did this asshole mean to tell me that I’d been living on ramen and shitty bail jumper gigs for almost two years since he fucked my deal with Homeland Security?
“Oh, sorry about that. Must have slipped my mind. We can have all your back pay deposited into your account this afternoon. Now can I tell you about Lucifer?”
“No,” I said. “We are not done with me bitching at you yet. You think you can just kill my contact at Homeland Security, get my monster-hunting contract with the government cancelled, and I’ll forgive you just because you wave a fistful of singles under my nose like I’m some dancer at your favorite topless bar?”
“One, I don’t go to strip clubs anymore. My fiancée doesn’t approve. Two, you didn’t even know Smith was your contact until he was dead and your contract got cancelled. And three, the stipend is a little more than a fistful of singles.” Harker named a figure, and I got quiet. That was a big fistful of money.
“Is that the two years I’m owed in back pay?” I asked, swallowing hard.
“No, Gabriella, that is your annual stipend. So you’re owed double that. Like I said, I’ll have Dennis deposit the money this afternoon. Now can I get you to focus on the important things, like saving the world?”
I put the phone back on speaker and set it in the cupholder. I leaned back, keeping an eye on the front door of the bar. My intel said that the skip was inside and unlikely to leave until daylight, so I wasn’t in much of a rush. “Got ahead, Harker. Spill it. What’s so damned important? I thought we were just hunting down your hottie angel’s wings.”
“Yeah, it got more complicated,” he said. “Lucifer is involved, and he’s taken Uriel, one of the other Archangels, to Hell. If he kills Uriel while they’re on a divine plane, he can take up Uriel’s mantle and become an Archangel again. Then Lucifer will be able to get back into Heaven at will. I’m guessing you can see how that ends poorly for most of the known universe.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound good. So are we off of Operation Wingy-Dingy now and back on the Save the World train?” I asked.
“Not yet. We need to figure out how to get to Hell—”
“I’ve told you to go to hell a lot. You should have listened.”
“Funny. Anyway, Luke and Dennis, along with Sealtiel, are trying to figure out how to get us across the planar divide without the requisite dying. Until they get that figured out, we’re still working on the idea that the more Archangels we have at our side when we storm the Gates of Hell, the better.”
“Makes sense. I’ll get right on finding Ragu as soon as I’m done here.”
“Raguel,” Harker corrected.
“Gesundheit.” I hung up the phone, laughing. It was petty, and I knew it, but he was just an infuriating son of a bitch. He had it all—looks, sexy British accent, and a girlfriend that I would just love to get alone for an hour or ten. I shoved the thoughts of Harker and his hottie aside and refocused on the target at hand.
I swiped and tapped at my phone for a couple seconds, and a picture appeared. James Monroe “Blackheart” Burris was a big guy, six-three according to his mug shot, with a dark ponytail showing a little gray and a salt-and-pepper goatee. Tattoos all over his arms and creeping up from under his shirt to peek out under the neck of his t-shirt. According to my surveillance, he favored black t-shirts, often with a Harley logo, jeans, engineer boots, a chain wallet, and a leather jacket with his Sons of Hell cut on the back of it.
You know, just the kind of guy you want to take home to mama. If mama was a psychopath. I swiped across the screen, and my motivation for this job popped up on the screen. Taneisha Cooper Burris, estranged wife of the asshole currently sitting in a biker bar with his hand on a twenty-year-old waitress’s ass while Taneisha sat home worrying about losing her condo if this dickhole failed to appear in court in three days. In Chicago. In Illinois, where Blackheart Burris was supposed to remain until such time as he faced trial for armed robbery according to the terms of his bail.
So while his wife worked two jobs to keep his four-year-old daughter clothed and fed, Blackheart yukked it up across state lines with some of his Sons of Hell buddies from another chapter. He’d been hanging around St. Louis for about a week before I caught wind of him, and I’d had eyes on the clubhouse for a couple days now. It was your typical biker bar—dingy, well-armed, shitload of David Allen Coe on the jukebox, and next to no police presence in the surrounding blocks.
I got out of the Toaster and walked around to the back doors. Pulling them open, I flipped the back seats down, yanked the headrests off, and lifted the inside edge of each seat, then hooked it to the wall. That turned the back of the Element into essentially a small panel van. I opened the tool box I had bolted to the floor and took out my Sig Sauer P320. I clipped the holster to the inside of my jeans and slipped the pistol home in the front of my jeans. I pulled on a loose black hoodie, dropped the front of the sweatshirt down over the butt of the gun, and grabbed two pair of zip cuffs out of the box. Not for the first time, I wondered how badly my little toy box would be received in a traffic stop and vowed to obey more speed limits and road signs in the future.
I closed the doors of the Toaster, took my hair down out of the ponytail I usually wore, and used my reflection in the rear windows of the car to slut up my lipstick and poof my hair a little. I thanked Eema for the thick black hair her Romany heritage blessed me with and put a lot more strut into my walk than normal, then headed toward the front door of the club.
I was halfway there when I realized I’d left my phone sitting in the cupholder. Oh well, it’s not like there was anybody I could call to bail my ass out if I got in over my head anyway. Just another day in the glamorous life of Gabriella Van Helsing, great-granddaughter of the most famous vampire hunter in history, now reduced to chasing down bail jumpers in shitty bars in Missouri. But hey, on my off days, I got to save the world with a bunch of weirdos and monsters. Yay.
The no-neck imbecile at the door didn’t even pat me down, just looked down my hoodie at the cleavage on display and waved me in. It’s not even like I was wearing anything sexy, just a scoop-neck t-shirt. But men are stupid. I might as well use that stupid to my advantage.
Aforementioned stupid was on display at its finest in the bar, which boasted not only dim lights, thick smoke, and loud music, but also a pair of behemoths arm-wrestling, two stick-thin girls weaving between pinching fingers to deliver drinks, and a giant bald guy behind the bar glaring at everyone and everything. Why is the guy behind the bar always pissed off? It’s not like he gets hit in the inevitable fights, he’s got bar to hide behind. I sauntered over to the bar, making sure to get my hips rocking from side to side as I strutted across the sticky floor, and I leaned my hoodie-clad elbows on the damp wood.
“How about a shot?” I asked, giving him my best “come hither” look.
He responded with a scowl. “What you want?”
“Let’s try something fun. How about a red-headed slut?” I gave him a smile usually guaranteed to get me at least a couple of phone numbers, if not a free drink or three.
He didn’t return the smile. If anything, his scowl deepened. “All our sluts are brunettes. You want Jack or Jim?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the limited booze selection.
“How about Wild Turkey? I’m feeling like bourbon. Wanna feel?”
Still nothing. Not even a crack of a smile. Damn, that one even gets me a laugh at gay bars where all the boys are prettier than me, but this guy was not interested. He poured me a shot of bourbon, and I knocked it back, feeling the brown liquor burn all the way down. I turned the glass upside down on the bar and looked at CueBall. “Another. This one on the rocks.”
Then I turned around and looked around the rest of the bar, trying to zero in on my quarry. I found him easy enough, sitting at a table with his back to a wall and a blond piece of jailbait on his lap. The remains of most of a case of beer littered the floor around his table, and he and a pair of other goons passed a joint around the table right under a No Smoking sign. Everything pointed to a pretty rocking poker game in progress, and every time Burris dragged a pile of chips back to his side of the table, he slipped one into the brassiere of the girl on this lap. After a run of particularly good hands, the married bail jumper whose wife was about to lose her house because of his unauthorized travel plans spun the girl on his lap around and spent a good minute and a half using his tongue to check the health of her tonsils.
Yeah, this guy was going to get an ass-kicking. I sipped my bourbon and watched my quarry until I was down to ice cubes, then I reached behind me to set my glass down and go get my jumper. That’s when the bartender grabbed my wrist and leaned over. “You’re about to make a big mistake, little girl.”
I really hate being called “girl.” Shit was about to get real.
Did you dig it? Do you want more? Buy it here! Hell, you can even read the whole thing for free if you’ve got Kindle Unlimited! Want to read this and everything else I release early? Or on a non-kindle ebook platform? Join my Patreon and get pre-release copies in whatever format you like!
by john | Oct 22, 2017 | Angel in the Dust, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
Chapter 2
“I reckon we need to come up with something to call you,” Wayland said as they chewed their breakfast of tough jerky and tougher coffee. “If you have no recollection of your name, then I suppose you pick any name you like.”
The girl smiled at him across the fire, the denim in his shirt making her eyes blaze blue. “I think I should be called…Elizabeth,” she pronounced with a nod of her head.
“Elizabeth…” Wayland said, rolling the name around on his tongue. “I can get behind that, I reckon. I might call you Liza for short, though.”
“I suppose as how I could live with that, as long as I can call you Way. Calling you Brother Wayland all the time might get tiresome,” she gave him a playful grin, and he grinned back. They settled into an easy silence for the next few bites, then Elizabeth cleared her throat.
“What’s on your mind, Liza?”
“What are we going to do?”
“Well, now we come back to you asking questions that can go in a myriad of different directions. How about you narrow the focus for me a touch, and I’ll consider my answer.”
“What are we going to do about the fact that we are apparently several days’ ride from anywhere to get more food, with one horse, two people, and I am wearing nothing more than your castoff shirt? I think that might be a fair place to start.”
“Those are indeed fine questions,” Wayland relied, popping the last chunk of jerky into his mouth. He chewed on the leathery meat for a long moment, then washed it down with a big gulp of coffee before continuing. “Well, the way I see it, we need to find some shelter, and some provisions, and then look to acquiring a horse. That is, if you wish to travel along with me.” He held up a hand as Elizabeth opened her mouth. “I’m not saying you don’t want to, but I also don’t want you thinking you have to accompany me through the desert. If you should decide you’d rather strike out on your own, I will help you acquire such food and water as I can spare, and you can retain ownership of my shirt. I suppose I can buy another one sometime.”
“I think I should stay with you, at least for now. Since I know neither where I was coming from nor where I was going, nor, in fact, who I am, I think it might be useful to have someone around who is familiar with weapons. I assume that part of your work as a Brother of the Gun does involve the use of one?”
“I have been known to make use of a shooting iron on more than one occasion.”
“Then I think I’ll stay with you for the time being, if you’ll have me.”
“Well, you snore less than Mazy, so that’s good,” Wayland said with a half-grin. “Now all we need to do is find a spring to replenish our water, someplace to trade for food, and some boots for you, and we’ll be in fine fettle.”
“Pants might also be nice,” Elizabeth said, gesturing at her bare legs.
“I can see as how that might be a benefit,” Wayland agreed. “For today, you’ll ride pillion with me on Mazy. She won’t hardly notice the little bit of added weight, and I can roll up a blanket for you to sit on. If we make good time and don’t encounter any interruptions along the way, we can make Pecos in about two days. Shouldn’t be any trouble to resupply there and get you some clothes and a good hat. Until then. Make sure you keep your sleeves down and tie these bandannas around your face so the sun doesn’t scorch you completely blind.” He handed her a pair of faded red squares of cloth, and she did as he said.
Wayland got up and rooted around in his pack, coming up with a pair of tattered jeans. “These are gonna be a might long and big around for you, but it’ll be better than going naked. I dug out a pair of socks, too, so your feet will have some cover. I don’t have anything for shoes.”
“Thank you. This is more than I expected. I’m sure you don’t plan on rescuing half-dead amnesiac women on the road.”
“It’s not an everyday occurrence, I’ll grant you that,” he said, that half-smile flashing across his face again, moving him almost partway to handsome. “Now get your britches on and let’s put this fire out. I’m going to get Mazy saddled up and we can ride.”
*****
Hours later, Wayland snapped the reins and clucked the horse to a stop. “Whoa, girl,” he said, his voice dry in the midday heat.
Liza stirred from where she drowsed against his back, then sat bolt upright. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing back away from him. “I must have fallen asleep.”
“It’s fine, little one,” Way chuckled. “But I need you to slide down now. Mazy needs to drink, and it wouldn’t hurt us to refill our canteens.”
The girl looked around, then peered around Wayland’s shoulder. “Where is she going to find a drink? I don’t see anything.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Wayland said. “Take my hand.” She did as he instructed. “Now sling one leg over Mazy’s rump and slide down.” She did, then immediately dropped to her knees in the sand.
Wayland dismounted and looked down at her, a kind smile reaching across his face. “Let me get this old girl unsaddled, and I’ll help you up. For now, just let your legs stretch out a bit. Ain’t nothing easy about your first long ride.” He loosened the cinch and pulled the saddle off his horse, then tossed it onto the dirt. He pulled the saddle blanket off and laid it on top of the saddle, then reached down for Liza’s hand.
She took it and stood, rubbing her thighs and grimacing with every small step. “Where are we going? I still don’t see anywhere to water the horse.”
“You won’t,” Wayland said. “You have to know it’s here.” He led the horse and the limping girl across the broken highway to a smooth patch of concrete and the last remaining wall of a ruined building. The small cinderblock building had crumbled through neglect or malice many years ago, but two four-foot high chunks of wall still rose in a rear corner, marking where the building once ended and the desert began. Now, the desert claimed the entire space, and just a few splintered blocks and a patch of cracked concrete floor marked it as a place of men. Wayland led them around to the back of the building, along the outside wall, and reached down to turn a small valve on a pipe that jutted out of the wall. The pipe coughed, sneezed a brown explosion of water, then after several seconds of spluttering muck across the ground, a steady trickle of clear water ran from the faucet.
“How in the world…?” Liza’s tone held wonder, and more than a little fear. “How did you find this?”
“I didn’t,” Way said, his voice soft. “Someone showed it to me, when I was a young man. He took me through the desert, and taught me the places where water still runs from the Time Before. There aren’t many, and they dry up faster and faster, but this one still has a few drops left for us.”
He knelt, passing his hands under the water and scrubbing them across his face. Lisa stood and watched as he filled his cupped hands once, twice, and sipped long draughts from the stream. “Now you,” he said, standing up. “Might be easier if you just fill the canteen.”
She looked at him, then, seeing no mockery in his face, knelt in front of the faucet. She rinsed her hands and face, then filled her canteen and stood. She sat on the top of the broken wall, sipping the water.
“Drink your fill,” Wayland said, pulling his hat off and placing it upside down on the ground, making a basin for the horse to drink from. He filled a canteen of his own, then stepped away so Mazy could drink from his hat. The horse stuck her head down into the stream, then backed away, spluttering and giving Way a nasty glare. “You know better, you glutton. If you wait until I turn the water off, you won’t get your nose soaked.”
Liza laughed, then looked around, as if surprised.
“What’s wrong?” Way asked.
“I don’t know…I guess it just feels like I don’t laugh very much.”
“You don’t have to lose your memory for that. Nobody laughs very much. Haven’t for a long time, from what I’ve read.” Wayland took another long swig from his jug, then reached down to turn off the water. Mazy ducked her head and started to drink from his hat, delicately keeping it from tipping over.
“She’s a very smart horse,” Liza said.
“She’s pretty extraordinary,” Way agreed. “I don’t say it often, at least not where she can hear it. I don’t want her to get the big head.” Mazy lifted her head to throw a baleful eye at the man, drawing another laugh from Liza.
“Is she…I don’t even know what I’m trying to ask.”
“Enhanced? No, she’s all horse, and all Earth-native, at least as far as I know. She’s just really smart is all. If we’re going somewhere we’ve been more than twice, I can just tell her where to go, and I can sleep in the saddle if I have to. Comes in handy if I’m hurt, too. More than one time I’ve passed out in the saddle and woke up in front of a doctor’s office or hospital. Took me a while to convince her that a vet wasn’t the best solution.” He laughed and looked down at the horse. “She’s a good girl. A good partner.”
“How long have you had her?”
“Almost ten years now. Ever since…” His voice trailed off and he took another drink. “Ever since her last rider, the Brother that mentored me, died.”
“I’m sorry. What happened?” She held up her hands as his face whipped around to her. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I was just making conversation. I don’t have a lot to contribute, since…” She gestured toward her head as if to remind him that she had no memories.
“No, it’s fine,” he said. “It’s just not something I talk about often. But I reckon we’ve got a fair bit of riding left to do, so let’s make sure all out canteens and waterskins are filled, and I’ll give you the whole sordid story once we’re back on the road.”
by john | Oct 16, 2017 | Angel in the Dust, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
Here’s the next chapter of that serialized thing I’m working on. Let me know what you think.
Chapter 1
She jerked awake, sitting bolt upright with her mouth wide open. Silent at first, she drew a breath to scream, but he was there with his hand pressed tight to her lips.
“That would be very bad,” he whispered. “There are things out there in the dark that I cannot save you from, cannot save myself from, either. So in order to keep us both alive long enough for me to answer your questions, you must be very quiet. Can you do that?”
She nodded. He took his hand from her mouth and moved a few feet away, far enough to let her feel less threatened but not so far away that she had room to escape, should that be on her mind. She looked around, at the rough campsite that was nothing more than his bedroll, the spare blankets and clothing he had scrabbled together for her, a small cookfire surrounded by rocks, banked to glowing embers and dug deep enough into the sand as to be invisible from more than a few feet away, and a metal pole jammed into the ground with a ring atop it. His horse was tied to the ring and stood staring at her, as if waiting to see if she was going to be interesting, or edible, or both.
Other than the three of them and his meager belongings, there was nothing to see but the night sky. The moon had set, or perhaps had yet to rise, and stars dotted the dark like some demented toddler had thrown a bucket of glitter into the blackness, with little clumps and streaks of shininess blinking overhead. The moon was down, but one of the blinking Voltarr motherships hung huge in the sky, too small to be a moon, but obviously too large and close to be a star. It could only be one of the orbiting homes of the invaders. Turning her head past each shoulder, the girl saw no lights in the distance to indicate the presence of a town or city, or even fires to show some sign that they weren’t the only people in the world.
She looked at him, sitting cross-legged by the fire. His wide-brimmed leather hat lay on the ground beside him, and he watched her with a steady gaze. His eyes, reflected flickering crimson in the dancing light of the cinders, tracked her every move like a wolf staring down a rabbit. His face was narrow, with chiseled jaw and cheekbones covered in greying stubble, and the creases in the corners of his eyes seemed like they came more from squinting against the sun that any tendency to smile.
“Wh-whe-“ she tried to speak, but couldn’t force the words out through sun-scorched and desert-parched throat. He tossed her a battered metal canteen, and she looked at it for a moment like she’d never seen such a thing, then twisted the cap off and took a sip. Clear water flowed over her teeth, quenching her mouth and throat. She gulped, raising the bottle higher and letting the glorious liquid dribble from the corners of her mouth and down her chin. She lowered the bottle from her lips and took a breath, then raised it again.
“Careful,” his whispered voice sliced the night like a razor, and she stopped, hand halfway to her lips, and stared at him.
“You’re dehydrated,” he said. “If you drink too much at one go you’ll throw up. Then you’ll be even more dehydrated, and I’ll be out a half day’s worth of water. I don’t think that’s something either of us wants.”
She looked back at the canteen in her hands, longing writ large on her face, but she screwed the cap back on and extended it to him.
“Keep it. You need to drink, just don’t drink the whole thing at once.”
She nodded and set the round canteen upright in the sand beside her, leaning it against her leg so it didn’t fall over.
“Where am I?” She asked.
He chuckled, an unexpected sound that rolled across her in the darkness and warmed her fingers and toes. “That’s an interesting question, miss. How do you want me to answer that? Do you need your location, because you were set upon by bandits, or reavers, or sand dogs and don’t remember how far you ran? Do you think you are dead, and this is Hell? Because you surely wouldn’t be the first to think that, although I must unfortunately notify you that we are most definitely alive, and this is no more Hell than a piece of Oklexas dirt can be, which I will acknowledge might be closer to Hell than I care to admit. Are you a Traveller? Which I doubt given that I found you with no tech and practically no clothes, much less anything to indicate you are from anywhere other than Earth. Or are you purely a creature of philosophy, and my correct answer would be ‘here?’”
The girl stared at him for a moment, then took another small drink of water. “Could we start with the first one, please?”
The man laughed an almost silent laugh, then said “We are currently four days’ ride west of Amarillo on the edge of northern Oklexas. I was planning on crossing into Nueva España tomorrow morning and heading to Albuquerque from there, but you might be throwing a little wrench into that plan.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, and he realized for the first time that she was very young, or at least very innocent. He struck a few options off his mental list of things that may have brought the young woman out into the wilderness on her own, and this raised even more questions.
He stared at her across the fire, his one spare shirt swallowing her gaunt form. The rag she wore as a shift fell almost to dust when he picked her up and tossed her across Mazy’s back to carry her to camp, so when he found a spot he thought looked defensible enough to make camp for the night, he dressed the scratches on her back and stomach, put aloe cream all over her face and arms, and wrapped her in his spare shirt. Now he could see how small she was, how slim her figure, stirring emotions in him he thought were long dead. Not lust, no, she was too young for him that way. Just…feelings.
“Where are you going?” She asked.
“I might ask you the same thing,” he replied. “But let’s start with the less important things. What’s your name, child? I’m Brother Wayland.”
“Are you some kind of priest?”
“Some kind,” he chuckled. “I’m a Brother of the Gun.”
She looked blank. “I don’t know what that means, I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t really seem to know anything.” Her brow knit and she closed her eyes. “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what a Brother of the Gun is, I don’t even know my name. I don’t know anything!” Her voice climbed in pitch and volume as she spoke, so Wayland moved to her side.
He put an arm around her, and she clutched at him, trembling. Way felt her ribs through the shirt, reached inside his pocket for a handkerchief, and passed it to the girl. She took it, dabbed at her eyes, then wiped her nose and held it out to him.
“Keep it,” he said, hiding his smile in the darkness. “If you really can’t remember who you are, it might not be the last time you find yourself in need.”
“What is a Brother of the Gun?” she asked again when she had herself more composed.
Wayland fixed her in place with his steady gaze. His eyes were cold, light grey like sun-bleached steel, and spoke of long days in the saddle. “We help people. We deliver justice in places where there often is none, and we offer protection to those who would otherwise be defenseless.” The words sounded old, like something memorized long ago, but also heartfelt. Brother Wayland meant what he said.
The girl sat, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She looked across the fire at Wayland. “So who am I?” Her voice trembled a little, but she didn’t cry. The bulging muscles along her jaw told of the effort that required, but she held her emotions more tightly than she clutched her knees against the cool desert air.
“I have no idea.”
“Why am I here?”
“This is as far as I could carry you from where I found you.”
“Carry me?”
“You were laying out there in the desert, half-covered up in sand and scorched from being out there for at least a couple days. I found you, and brought you here. I thought to put you on Mazy and take you on to Nueva España with me, but you ain’t got the strength to ride yet. So here we are.”
She looked at him, fire kissing his jawline and painting him orange and yellow. He had a strong jaw, a narrow face, and a short beard. Mostly brown, but with a few touches of grey popping through to catch the firelight different. “I…thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me yet, little one. It won’t take much time in the sun for you to realize I didn’t do you any favors keeping you alive, and if some of the predators in the night get ahold of you, well…then I reckon I’ll have done us both a disservice.” He scooted away from her, creating space between her bare leg and his denim-clad one.
The girl picked up her canteen and looked across the top of it at Wayland. “You said I…threw a wrench in your plan. What does that mean?”
Way looked at the girl, her wide eyes, dirt-crusted hair and sunburned face. There was no hint of irony or guile in her. She honestly didn’t have any idea what he meant by the common expression. “Well, I reckon I meant that since you can’t ride yet, or couldn’t at least, that I probably won’t get to Albuquerque in three days like I expected to. That, coupled with the fact that I only carried water for one, means that I’m going to have to some refiguring of my plans to keep us both alive long enough to get anywhere that’s anywhere. As opposed to here,” he said, gesturing to the wide expanse of empty desert. “Which is about as close to nowhere as anything I can imagine.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said. Her voice was thready, weak, as if she could barely move enough air to cause a sound. Way couldn’t tell if she was trying to keep quiet, or was just that broken down by whatever left her lying under the sand.
“Don’t be. I couldn’t just leave you there to die. Nobody would do that.” He didn’t bother to tell the child that a fair number of somebodies had obviously done just that. The road between Amarillo and Albuquerque wasn’t heavily traveled, but Way had met at least a half dozen riders or wagons since he’d left the last outpost in Oklexas. At least some of them had to have ridden right by the child lying by the roadside, slowly being bleached to bone in the scorching sun.
“Then thank you,” she said, stronger this time. “I…I think I need to pee.”
Wayland waved his hand off to the right. “It’s pretty safe as long as you stay within sight of the fire. I have no interest in watching you relieve yourself, so you don’t have to fear me peeking.”
She stood, legs wobbly, and Wayland scrambled to his feet to help her stay upright. After a minute, she took a tenuous step forward, holding her arms out to the side for balance. Way held her elbow to steady her, and after a few more shaky steps, she shook him off. “I think I’m fine now.”
“I think you’re a long way from fine, child, but I reckon as how you can manage to go to the bathroom by yourself. Call out if you fall or need help.”
“I thought you said things out there would hear me?”
“They might, but that’s a sight better than something finding you out there helpless. And I don’t have a light, so I won’t be able to find you without some kind of help.” He watched as she walked out of the circle of firelight, wobbly at first, but gaining confidence with each step. Way went over to his pack and pulled out a few strips of jerky, tearing a hunk off one and chewing it as he stared out into the night.
Who was this child?
What was this child?
What did it mean, finding her out here like this? It all means something, it always did,
What kind of Hell was he calling down upon his head, helping her?
by john | Sep 4, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
Epilogue
There were only three of us at the graveside for Jeff’s funeral. Me, Willis, and Reverend Turner. The rest of the deputies disavowed any connection with the murderer, and I couldn’t really blame them. The town tried its best to forget they ever knew the man, too, because to claim him would be to claim their part in making him what he was, to claim their tiny piece of guilt. His family was long dead, the only person in the world who depend on him was a sweet little Corgi named Butch, who I had on a leash next to me at the funeral.
Reverend Turner spoke kind words about the man, ignoring his end and focusing on the parts of his life he spent in service. He kept it short, though, not needing to embellish for his audience of two. When he was done, I knelt beside the casket for a moment and prayed for him. I knew full well he wasn’t in a better place, I’d seen him go, but maybe my prayers could lessen his sentence a little bit. The things he did were terrible, and he deserved to pay for them, but he was, in the end, a pitiful, scared little man, and that deserved a little leniency.
Reverend Turned stepped over to me and extended his hand. “Lila Grace, I feel I may have wronged you,” he said, looking me straight in the eye.
I stood up, brushed the dirt off my knees, and shook his hand. “All is forgiven, Reverend. I appreciate you speaking here today.”
“If I don’t minister to the lost, what kind of shepherd would I be?” He asked with a gentle smile. “I don’t understand what you do, but I believe now that there is no malice in you, and no touch of evil in your gifts.”
“Thank you, Reverend. I might not ever turn Baptist, but I reckon we can at least sit next to each other at the church softball games,” I said, smiling back at him.
He shook hands with Willis and turned to walk into the church. Willis raised an eyebrow at me. “That was unexpected.”
“Not really. We had a talk a little while ago. I think he learned a thing or two.”
“Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks,” Willis said with a grin.
“Maybe,” I said, grinning back “As long as one of those tricks is putting the toilet seat down, we’ll be fine.”
We laughed as we walked back to the patrol car. I stopped at the door and looked back at the grave, where three filmy images of old woman wavered in the wind. The Dead Old Ladies Detective Agency had helped solve their first case, and even if it didn’t end happily for everyone, it did end, and we did put Jenny Miller to her heavenly rest. I had to count that as a win, I decided.
Then I slid into the passenger seat of the sheriff’s car and let my boyfriend drive me home, the first time that had happened in my fifty-seven years. I guess that was another win, this one for the Living Old Lady.
THE END
by john | Aug 28, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
29
I was stuck in a ramshackle trailer in the middle of the woods in a makeshift fishing camp nobody knew about, with a crazy as a loon deputy turned murderer pointing a pistol at my head. My only living backup was shot and unconscious on the floor across the room, and I, being a genius hostage negotiator who’s seen way too much Law and Order, had disarmed myself. So all I had to save me was my wits and a couple of ghosts.
This was not how I thought I would die, let me just be clear about this. Like everybody, I’ve imagined my own death on more than one occasion. When I was younger, I assumed I would die at home, surrounded by a passel of grand- and great-grandchildren, my descendants all dutifully weeping in the parlor while I passed my last breath in some lavender-scented dignity that in no way involves messing my bed or any other bodily fluids.
As I grew older, and my lack of descendants became more pronounced, I realized that if I was lucky I would be able to shuffle off my mortal coil in a decently appointed rest home somewhere, but if the cost of things continued to do what they inevitably do, I would most likely be relegated to some state-run old folks’ home with last week’s sheets and and yesterday’s Depends.
At no point did I envision myself getting shot in a trailer while trying to save a woman who despised me from a former student who once idolized me while my brand new boyfriend lie perforated on the floor and two dead people watched the whole sideshow unfold like a tawdry hillbilly episode of Murder, She Wrote.
“Jeff,” I switched into my “teacher voice,” and his head snapped up. It was good to see I still had it, at least a little. I managed to hold my voice steady and my expression severe. “This has gotten ridiculous. Put that gun down, untie that woman, and turn yourself in immediately. You are not going to shoot me, and you are not going to hurt anyone else tonight. What Karen and her friends did to you back then was awful, but it did not ruin your life. It ruined your prom, but anything that happened after that night was your responsibility.”
“I couldn’t go back to school!” He wailed. “I couldn’t take them laughing at me in the halls. Every time I saw somebody from school, I knew that was all they were talking about.”
“For a few days, yes,” I agreed. “You were a laughingstock. For a little while. But you know as well as I do that children can’t keep a thought in their head longer than five minutes. You would have had a bad week, maybe two, but by the time school was out it would have all blown over. But you didn’t let it, did you?” I poured it on. I knew the only way I was walking out of that trailer was to get him to move off his plan of killing us all, and this was the only thing I could think of to do that.
“No,” he said, his voice wavering. “You don’t know what it’s like to have everybody whisper about you.”
“I don’t? Boy, have you even lived in this town? Who do you think you’re talking to? Why, the woman in that chair right there wouldn’t even eat my casserole because Reverend Turner convinced her that Satan helped me bake it. Like the devil himself would help me snap green beans,” I said with a laugh.
My voice softened, and I took a step closer. “Jeff, sweetie, I’ve been the one they talk about behind their hands for fifty years, and I’m still here. My front yard has had more toilet paper in the trees than the principal’s house, and I’ve been thrown out of more Bible study groups than the Whore of Babylon. I know exactly what it’s like to have the whole town staring at you, and talk about you, and that’s how I know that it don’t hurt. All you have to do is hold your head up and walk on by. If you don’t acknowledge the fools, they can’t touch you.”
He looked up at me, his eyes full. “But I let them. I let them, and they just kept going, and going. That’s why I didn’t get the sheriff’s job, because I wasn’t strong enough. It’s why I never got married, because I was too weak. Well, I’m not weak now! I’m strong! I’m strong, and everybody’s going to know how strong I am!”
His gun, which had drifted to point toward the ground while I spoke, snapped up and pointed at Karen Miller’s head from less than three feet away. There was nothing I could do, no way I could get there in time. He was going to kill that woman, and all I could do was watch.
But Jenny didn’t. Jenny, sweet, dead Jenny, who helped start all this in motion by picking at Jeff with her stupid little pretty girl teasing, summoned up enough energy somehow to smack his wrist away and send the bullet slamming through the side of the trailer. Jeff looked down at his hand, then looked to where Jenny was standing right in front of him.
She looked more solid than any ghost I’d ever seen, and the way the color ran out of his face, I knew Jeff saw her, too. He staggered back, raising his gun and firing into her face three times. The bullets passed right through her, barely making the girl’s image flicker, and he backed up more until he slammed into the small bar separating the kitchen and living room.
“Jenny?” Karen’s voice was soft, thready, a timid little thing that might escape at any moment.
Jenny turned to her mother, and Jeff did at the same time. He raised his pistol again, but before Jenny could whirl back to strike his hand, another shot rang out, followed by two more. Jeff’s eyes went wide, and his legs went rubbery as he collapsed straight down, blood pouring out onto the carpet.
I looked to Willis, who sat on the floor holding his pistol, smoke wafting from the barrel. “You’re alive!” I said, thrilled and surprised in equal measure.
“This is one of those nights I’m glad I bought new vests for the department when I started. I reckon I’m also glad not everybody decided to wear them.” He nodded to Jeff, who lay on the floor, his eyes open and glassy.
Before my eyes, his spirit peeled up from his body, looked around the room, and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.” Then he vanished, a small dark hole opening up in the air around him and taking him to wherever he was destined to spend eternity.
“Apology not accepted, asshole,” Jenny replied, and my head whipped over to where she stood by her mother’s chair. A bright white light appeared behind her, and she looked up at me with a wistful smile. “I guess it’s time for me to go, huh?”
“Yes, sweetie, it’s time for you to go,” I said.
“What’s happening?” Jenny’s mother said, her head whipping around.
“There’s a white light opening up right past that wall over there, and Jenny is supposed to go to it. She’s done what she stayed here to do, and now it’s time for her to go.” Karen smiled at my words, but one tear slid down her cheek all the same.
“Time for me, too,” came a gravelly voice from the kitchen as Sheriff Johnny walked through the bar and headed to the light. “I think my town will be in fine hands. But tell that boy to take care of my people, or he won’t like it when I come back to pay him a visit.”
“Will do, Sheriff,” I said with a smile.
Jenny and the sheriff walked into the light, which blossomed to blinding brilliance before fading to just water-stained paneling once more. “They’re gone,” I said. I felt a strange wetness on my own face, and reached up to find tears on my cheeks. I didn’t even know I was crying, and I certainly wasn’t sad, but it was a night full of emotions, that’s for certain.
I helped Willis up off the floor, and we untied Mrs. Miller, then we waited outside for the ambulance and coroner and crime scene unit to arrive. I scrounged up a blanket from behind the seat of my truck to put around Karen, since she was in her pajamas, and then Willis went down to pull my truck up into the yard beside Jeff’s Bronco. We told our story more times than we cared to, leaving out any mention of dead sheriffs or daughters, and the sun was peeking over the horizon before we finally pulled back onto the highway and headed back to my house.
We didn’t speak as we walked in the front door, I just reached back and took his hand. I led Willis through the house to my bedroom, undressed him, and laid beside him, feeling his solid masculinity next to me as I drifted off to sleep. There would be more to come, I was sure, but there was plenty of time for that.
by john | Aug 24, 2017 | Fiction, Writing
I’ve got two new releases this week, and it might get a little confusing for folks, so here’s the deal, just in case you want to buy a bunch of shit. I want to help you with that!
Once upon a time, I wrote several short stories featuring Bubba’s Great-Grandpappy Beauregard, the original family Monster Hunter. These were featured in anthologies and collected into a three-story volume called Moonshine & Magic.
If you bought that, and you enjoyed it, then you should pick up the fourth Great-Grandpappy Beauregard short story, called County Fairy Tale. It’s available for a buck, and has this awesomeballs cover from Natania Barron.
This story was originally published in Capes & Clockwork 2 from Dark Oak Press. The rights have reverted, and now I’m selling it as a stand-alone. You can get it on Amazon here.
It will be available everywhere else, too. I just haven’t done that yet. If you want it, go get it. 🙂
If you’ve never read any of Great-Grandpappy Beauregard’s adventures, then you can get all four short stories in the collection Shinepunk, which also features a cool-ass Natania Barron cover.
It looks like this.
This collection features four short stories, and is on Amazon here. It will also be available everywhere else, I just haven’t done that yet, either.
These four stories are all set in Georgia in the early 20th century, and feature moonshine, ghosts, fairies, explosions, and a redneck Frankenstein.
What more do you want out of life?
Oh, a preview? You want to little taste?
I can do that. Here’s a piece of the very first Beauregard the Monster Hunter short story – Fire on the Mountain.
Fire on the Mountain
“Beauregard Ulysses Brabham, get your worthless ass down here and help me!” The shrill voice rang out over half the valley and Bubba sat bolt upright in his bed. Only he wasn’t in his bed, he was in the hammock out in his back yard, so the motion of sitting up quickly deposited all three hundred pounds of him firmly and swiftly onto the hard-packed earth. Bubba hauled himself up to hands and knees, then crawled out from under the hammock, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs. How did I end up in the hammock? He wondered. And where are my pants?
The answer to the second question revealed itself a few moments later as Bubba walked around the house to the front porch. His worn overalls were folded carefully over the porch railing, with an empty quart jar sitting next to them. Well, that explains about everything, I reckon. Bubba thought. Apparently Preacher Mason had come by with a sample from his newest batch of ‘shine and they had commenced to tasting. It all made sense to Bubba now. After the better part of a jar of Preacher Mason’s recipe, the wind through a man’s beard felt mighty fine, and the best way Bubba had to generate wind was to swing as quickly as possible in the hammock. That didn’t explain why he felt the need to remove his pants, but perhaps in his state of mind last night he wanted to feel the wind other places than just his beard.
Regardless, he put his pants on then pulled on his battered leather work boots. He had just stepped onto the porch to go inside and fix up some grits and bacon and maybe see if there was a slash or two left in that jar when Octavia’s voice rang out again, this time sounding even more irritated. “Beauregard! Come here, boy! I need you!”
Godawmighty you’d thing she was my wife instead of my little sister the way that woman abuses me. I need to get her married off so she’ll have somebody else to make miserable, Bubba thought. He sighed the sigh of a man who knew he was ruled by a woman, and started off down the hill to see what his sister wanted this time.
* * *
Octavia was standing on her own porch peering into the woods when Bubba came stumping down the trail. “What in the blue blazes do you want, woman? Don’t you know a body needs his rest?” Octavia was dressed for work on the farm, in a plain homespun dress and apron, with her long blonde hair tied back from her strong jawline. She was what the mountain folk called a “healthy woman,” with “child-bearing hips” and a shelf of bosom that was impressive on an otherwise slender woman. She wore sensible leather boots and had a shotgun leaning on the porch rail beside her, along with a haversack.
She lit into her brother the second he hove his gigantic form into view. “Bubba, it is three hours past the noon meal you worthless layabout, so do not be speaking to me of rest! Now get your fat, lazy carcass down here and aid me in my moment of peril!”
“Moment of peril? You’re on your porch, what in the hell could possibly be periling you?”
“Don’t you swear in my presence, Bubba, for I am a lady. And it is not just my moment of peril, but the entire valley. We are under attack by sorcery and blackheartedness!”
“I told Pap he never should have taught you how to read, Tavvy. Now you ain’t never gone find a man.”
“I neither need nor desire a man, brother dear. Not for those purposes, at any rate. Now are you going to help me or not?”
“You got anything to eat?”
“There’s a rasher of bacon on the table with some grits, a half dozen biscuits and some gravy. Take what you like.”
“If you’ll feed me, Tavvy, I’ll do whatever you need.” Bubba pushed past his sister into the neat little kitchen. In complete contrast to his own, Octavia’s kitchen contained a modern icebox, a stove heated by some strange series of pipes from the wood stove out back, and food. There were also clean plates and no insects to be seen anywhere, both remarkable upgrades from Bubba’s house. Bubba piled all the food onto a serving platter and carried it back out to the porch. He sat down on the porch steps and called Octavia’s hound Buster over. After giving Buster a good scratch behind the ears, he slipped the dog a piece of bacon and started in on the biscuits.
A few minutes later the bacon and biscuits had all vanished, and Buster was licking the last remnants of the grits from the platter. Bubba leaned back on his elbows, let out a mighty belch that rattled the windows in Octavia’s cabin, and lookedup at his sister.
“Alright, Tavvy. What’s periling you today?”
“The children are missing, Bubba.”
“You ain’t got no children, Tavvy.”
“Not my children, you great lummox! The children from the congregation!” Octavia swatted him on one giant shoulder.
“What children?”
“If you would darken the door of our house of worship more than twice a year, you would know these things, Bubba. There are six children missing from nearby farms and homes.”
“I darken the door, Tavvy, I just can’t seem to find my way through it. Maybe if the door was taller I’d have an easier time of it. Where’d them young’uns go?” Bubba asked, sitting up and picking a tick from one of Buster’s ears.
“Nobody knows, Bubba! That’s why they’re missing.”
“Oh. Okay, what do you want me to do about it? You want me to go look for ‘em? I know the woods and these hills pretty good I reckon, but I don’t know where I’d start looking for kids…” He trailed off as he caught the black stare Octavia was giving him.
“You don’t want me to go looking for the kids, do you?”
“No, Bubba. I do not need you to go looking for them. I know where they are, I need your help to go get them back.”
Bubba stood up and snapped his fingers for Buster. The dog crouched beside Bubba’s feet but stayed alert. “Well, let’s go get ‘em! Are we gonna have to carry ‘em, Tavvy? ‘Cause half a dozen young ‘uns is gonna be hard to haul in one load.”
“Bubba, are you the stupidest human being in six counties? I don’t need you to carry the babies, I need you to shoot whatever took ‘em!”
“Oh. Well I can do that. Lemme go get my gun.” He stood and started back up the hill to his cabin, but stopped at Octavia’s exasperated sigh.
“Get in here, Bubba. You don’t need to go get that stupid double-barrel. I got something better.” She turned and went into her house, and Bubba followed. She led him through the kitchen into the rest of the cabin where they had grown up. Bubba took a moment to observe the changes Octavia had wrought upon the old home place since their Pap died just two short years ago. Gone were the spittoons that once nestled in a corner of every room. Gone were the ashtrays on the arm of every chair. Instead the floors practically gleamed, they were so clean, and the windows had been scrubbed spotless and new curtains hung in every one. Bubba thought fleetingly of asking Octavia up to clean his cabin, but decided against it for fear he’d never find anything again.
