Dangerous Women 3 Page 3

  She staggered back, expecting him just to pitch onto his face. Instead he lurched up suddenly like a camel she’d once seen at a fair, the brim of his hat jammed down over his eyes to the bridge of his nose and the knife handle jutting straight up.

  “Where you gone?” The words all mangled as if his mouth was full of gravel. “Smoke?” He lurched one way, then the other. “Smoke?” He shuffled at her, kicking up dust, sword dangling from his bloody right hand, the point scratching grooves in the dust around his feet. He reached up with his left, fingers all stretched out stiff but the wrist all floppy, and started prodding at his hat like he had something in his eye and wanted to wipe it clear.

  “Shmoke?” One side of his face was twitching, shuddering, fluttering in a most unnatural way. Or maybe it was natural enough for a man with a knife lodged through his brains. “Thmoke?” There was blood dripping from the bent brim of his hat, leaving red streaks down his cheek, his shirt halfway soaked with it; but he kept coming on, bloody right arm jerking, hilt of his sword rattling against his leg. “Thmoe?” She backed away, staring, her own hands limp and all her skin prickling, until her back hit the wall behind her. “Thoe?”

  “Shut your mouth!” And she dived at him with both palms, shoving him over backwards, sword bouncing from his hand, bloody hat still pinned to his head with her knife. He slowly rolled over, onto his face, right arm flopping. He slid his other hand underneath his shoulder as though he’d push himself up.

  “Oh,” he muttered into the dust. Then he was still.

  Shy slowly turned her head and spat blood. Too many mouthfuls of blood the last few months. Her eyes were wet and she wiped them on the back of her trembling hand. Couldn’t believe what had happened. Hardly seemed she’d had any part in it. A nightmare she was due to wake from. She pressed her eyes shut, and opened them, and there he still lay.

  She snatched in a breath and blew it out hard, dashed spit from her lip, blood from her forehead, caught another breath and forced it free. Then she gathered up Jeg’s sword, gritting her teeth against the urge to spew, rising in waves along with the thumping pain in the side of her face. Shit, but she wanted to sit down! Just stop. But she made herself turn away. Forced herself up to the back door of the tavern. The one Jeg had come through, still alive, a few moments before. Takes a lifetime of hard work to make a man. Only takes a few moments to end one.

  Neary had dragged himself out of the hole his fall had put through the floorboards, clutching at his bloody trouser leg and looking quite put out about it. “Did you catch that fucking bitch?” he asked, squinting towards the doorway.

  “Oh, no doubt.”

  His eyes went wide and he tried to drag himself towards his bow, not far out of reach, whimpering all the way. She hefted Jeg’s big sword as she got close, and Neary turned over, eyes wide with terror, holding up one desperate arm. She hit it full-blooded with the flat of the sword and he moaned, clutching it to his chest. Then she hit him across the side of the head and rolled him over, blubbering, into the boards. Then she padded past him, sliding the sword through her belt, picked up the bow, and dragged some arrows from his quiver. She made for the door, stringing one as she went, and peered out into the street.

  Dodd was still scraping coins from the dust and into the bag, working his way towards the well. Insensible to the fates of his two companions. Not as surprising as you might suppose. If one word summed up Dodd, it was “insensible.”

  She padded down the steps of the tavern, near to their edges where they were less likely to give a warning creak, drawing the bow halfway and taking a good aim on Dodd, bent over in the dust with his back to her, a dark sweat patch down the middle of his shirt. She gave some long, hard consideration to making that sweat patch the bull’s-eye and shooting him in the back right there. But killing a man isn’t easy, especially after hard consideration. She watched him pick up the last coin and drop it in the bag, then stand, pulling the drawstrings, then turn, smiling. “I got the—”

  They stayed there awhile. He crouched in the dusty street, bag of silver in one hand, uncertain smile lit up in the sun, but his eyes looking decidedly scared in the shadow of his cheap hat. She on the bottom step of the tavern, bloody bare feet, bloody split mouth, bloody hair plastered across her bloody forehead, but the bow good and steady.

  He licked his lips, swallowed, then licked them again. “Where’s Neary?”

  “In a bad way.” She was surprised by the iron in her voice. Sounded like someone she didn’t even know. Smoke’s voice, maybe.

  “Where’s my brother?”

  “In a worse.”

  Dodd swallowed, sweaty neck shifting, starting to ease gently backwards. “You kill him?”

  “Forget about them two and stop still.”

  “Look, Shy, you ain’t going to shoot me, are you? Not after all we been through. You ain’t going to shoot. Not me. Are you?” His voice was rising higher and higher, but still he edged back towards the well. “I didn’t want this. It weren’t my idea!”

  “Course not. You need to think to have an idea, and you ain’t up to it. You just went along. Even if it happened to mean me getting hung.”

  “Now, look, Shy—”

  “Stop still, I said.” She drew the bow all the way, string cutting tight into her bloody fingers. “You fucking deaf, boy?”

  “Look, Shy, let’s just talk this out, eh? Just talk.” He held his trembly palm up like that might stop an arrow. His pale blue eyes were fixed on her, and suddenly she had a memory rise up of the first time she met him, leaning back against the livery, smiling free and easy, none too clever but plenty of fun. She’d had a profound lack of fun in her life since she’d left home. You’d never have thought she left home to find it.

  “I know I done wrong, but … I’m an idiot.” And he tried out a smile, no steadier than his palm. He’d been worth a smile or two, Dodd, at least to begin with, and though no artist of a lover, had kept the bed warm, which was something, and made her feel as if she weren’t on her own on one side with the whole rest of the world on the other, which was something more.

  “Stop still,” she said, but more softly now.

  “You ain’t going to shoot me.” Still he was edging back towards the well. “It’s me, right? Me. Dodd. Just don’t shoot me, now.” Still going. “What I’m going to do is—”

  She shot him.

  It’s a strange thing about a bow. Stringing it, and drawing it, and nocking the arrow, and taking your aim—all that takes effort, and skill, and a decision. Letting go the string is nothing. You just stop holding it. In fact, once you’ve got it drawn and aimed, it’s easier to let fly than not to.

  Dodd was less than a dozen strides distant, and the shaft flitted across the space between them, missed his hand by a whisker and stuck silently into his chest. Surprised her, the lack of a sound. But then, flesh is soft. ’Specially in comparison to an arrowhead. Dodd took one more wobbly pace, like he hadn’t quite caught up with being arrow-stuck yet, his eyes going very wide. Then he blinked down at the shaft.

  “You shot me,” he whispered, and he sank to his knees, blood already spreading out on his shirt in a dark oval.

  “Didn’t I bloody warn you!” She flung the bow down, suddenly furious with him and with the bow too.

  He stared at her. “But I didn’t think you’d do it.”

  She stared back. “Neither did I.” A silent moment, and the wind blew up one more time and stirred the dust around them. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry?” he croaked.

  Might’ve been the stupidest thing she’d ever said, and that with some fierce competition, but what else could she say? No words were going to take that arrow out. She gave half a shrug. “I guess.”

  Dodd winced, hefting the silver in one hand, turning towards the well. Shy’s mouth dropped open, and she took off running as he toppled sideways, hauling the bag into the air. It turned over and over, curving up and starting to fall, drawstrings flapping, Shy’s clutching hand strain
ing for it as she sprinted, lunged, fell …

  She grunted as her sore ribs slammed into the wall around the well, right arm darting down into the darkness. For a moment she thought she was going in after the bag—which would probably have been a fitting conclusion—then her knees came back down on the dirt outside.

  She had it by one of the bottom corners, loose canvas clutched by broken nails, drawstrings dangling as dirt and bits of loose stone filtered down around it.

  Shy smiled. For the first time that day. That month, maybe.

  Then the bag came open.

  Coins tumbled into the darkness in a twinkling shower, silver pinging and rattling from the earthy walls, disappearing into the inky nothingness, and silence.

  She straightened up, numb.

  She backed away slowly from the well, hugging herself with one hand while the empty bag hung from the other.

  She looked over at Dodd, lying on his back with the arrow sticking straight up from his chest, his wet eyes fixed on her, his ribs going fast. She heard his shallow breaths slow, then stop.

  Shy stood there a moment, then doubled over and blew puke onto the ground. Not much of it, since she’d eaten nothing that day, but her guts clenched up hard and made sure she retched up what there was. She shook so bad she thought she was going to fall, hands on her knees, sniffing bile from her nose and spluttering it out.

  Damn, but her ribs hurt. Her arm. Her leg. Her face. So many scrapes, twists, and bruises, she could hardly tell one from another: her whole body was one overpowering fucking throb.

  Her eyes crawled over to Dodd’s corpse, she felt another wave of sickness and forced them away, over to the horizon, fixing them on that shimmering line of nothing.

  Not nothing.

  There was dust rising there. She wiped her face on her ripped sleeve one more time, so filthy now that it was as like to make her dirtier as cleaner. She straightened, squinting into the distance, hardly able to believe it. Riders. No doubt. A good way off, but as many as a dozen.

  “Oh, hell,” she whispered, and bit her lip. Things kept going this way she’d soon have chewed right through the bloody thing. “Oh, hell!” And Shy put her hands over her eyes and squeezed them shut and hid in self-inflicted darkness in the desperate hope she might have somehow been mistaken. Would hardly have been her first mistake, would it?

  But when she took her hands away, the dust was still there. The world’s a mean bully, all right, and the lower down you are, the more it delights in kicking you. Shy put her hands on her hips, arched her back, and screamed up at the sky, the word drawn out as long as her sore lungs would allow.

  “Fuck!”

  The echoes clapped from the buildings and died a quick death. No answer came. Perhaps the faint droning of a fly already showing some interest in Dodd. Neary’s horse eyed her for a moment, then looked away, profoundly unimpressed. Now Shy had a sore throat to add to her woes. She was obliged to ask herself the usual questions.

  What the fuck now?

  She clenched her teeth as she hauled Dodd’s boots off and sat in the dust beside him to pull them on. Not the first time they’d stretched out together in the dirt, him and her. First time with him dead, though. His boots were way too loose on her, but a long stride better than no boots at all. She clomped back into the tavern in them.

  Neary was making some pitiable groans as he struggled to get up. Shy kicked him in the face and down onto his back, plucked the rest of the arrows from his quiver, and took his heavy belt knife too. Back out into the sun and she picked up the bow, jammed Dodd’s hat onto her head, also somewhat on the roomy side but at least offering some shade as the sun got up. Then she dragged the three horses together and roped them into a string—quite a ticklish operation, since Jeg’s big stallion was a mean bastard and seemed determined to kick her brains out.

  When she’d got it done, she frowned off towards those dust trails. They were headed for the town, all right, and fast. With a better look, she reckoned on about nine or ten, which was two or three better than twelve but still an almighty inconvenience.

  Bank agents after the stolen money. Bounty hunters looking to collect her price. Other outlaws who’d got wind of a score. A score that was currently in the bottom of a well, as it happened. Could be anyone. Shy had an uncanny knack for making enemies. She found that she’d looked over at Dodd, facedown in the dust with his bare feet limp behind him. The only thing she had worse luck with was friends.

  How had it come to this?

  She shook her head, spat through the little gap between her front teeth, and hauled herself up into the saddle of Dodd’s horse. She faced it away from those impending dust clouds, towards which quarter of the compass she knew not.

  Shy gave the horse her heels.

  Diana Rowland

  Hell hath no fury like a woman whose city has been scorned …

  Diana Rowland has worked as a bartender, a blackjack dealer, a pit boss, a street cop, a detective, a computer forensics specialist, a crime scene investigator, and a morgue assistant. She won the marksmanship award in her police academy class, has a black belt in hapkido, and has handled numerous dead bodies in various states of decomposition. A graduate of Clarion West, her novels include Mark of the Demon, Blood of the Demon, Secrets of the Demon, Sins of the Demon, and My Life as a White Trash Zombie. Her most recent books are Touch of the Demon and Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues. She has lived her entire life below the Mason-Dixon Line and is deeply grateful for the existence of air-conditioning.

  CITY LAZARUS

  A grey dawn and low tide revealed the body at the water’s edge, facedown and partially buried in the silt. One arm drifted in the sluggish current as the river plucked at it. A fetid scent drifted to the people standing on the levee, though the odor likely had more to do with illegal sewage than the corpse.

  Rain plopped onto the mud in scattered drops as the flatboat inched out to the body, a thick rope dragging in its wake and doled out by workers on firmer ground. Captain Danny Faciane watched from his vantage on the levee and scowled beneath the hood of his raincoat. He fully understood the necessity for the slow progress across the silt, but he still chafed at it. The tide wouldn’t wait for them to complete their business, though at the moment it was more the early hour and the lack of coffee in his system that frustrated him. Yet it paid to be cautious with this river. Since the collapse of the Old River Control Structure, she might not have the teeth she once had, but she still had a few tricks left in her.

  Danny’s attention drifted to his right, toward the two bridges that spanned the river. The headlights of cars only crossed along one of them. Not enough traffic anymore to warrant having both. Across the river, a grounded ship leaned drunkenly in the mud. Light flickered from a dozen places, the cutting torches of workers fighting to salvage what they could of the trapped heap. Danny wondered if the salvage workers would attack the unused bridge next, like termites drawn to wood.

  “I need to learn how to weld,” a detective grumbled from behind him. Danny glanced back to see that Farber’s attention had also been caught by the crawling lights on the defunct ship.

  Danny shook his head. “They’ll be gone as soon as they finish. Only a few ships left to cut up. Probably not even a year’s worth of work left.”

  “Maybe so, but in that year those fuckers’ll make three times what we do. Besides, I still think the city’ll have work for ’em. New Orleans has a way of taking care of itself.”

  Danny let out a snort. He had little doubt that the welders made more than Farber, but he knew damn well that they didn’t come close to matching his own take. And he sure as hell didn’t share Farber’s bright-eyed optimism about the future of the city. “Filthy work,” he said instead. “And dangerous.”

  “What we do is dangerous,” Farber protested. Danny cocked an eyebrow at him, let out a low bark of laughter.

  “Only if you’re doing it wrong,” he said, then hunched his shoulders against the gust of wind that soug
ht to drive the sluggish rain into his face. “Like this. Fuck this early morning shit.”

  The muttered commands and curses of the men in the flatboat drifted to him as they reached the corpse. They fought the pull of the tenacious mud as the river held on to her prize, but finally managed to get the corpse free of its partial grave. It flopped into the bottom of the boat, one mud-covered foot still on the edge as the workers onshore pulled the flatboat back.

  Danny walked over as the men pulled the body from the boat and set it on the ground. “Can you wash his face off?” he asked nobody in particular, waited as someone found a bottle of water and dumped it over the victim’s face. Danny scowled as he crouched by the body, and only part of it was because of the rank smell of the mud. “It’s Jimmy Ernst.”

  “Jesus,” one of the men from the flatboat muttered. “We crawled across the stinking mud for that piece of shit?”

  Danny’s mouth twisted in sour agreement as he cast a practiced eye over the body. The crime scene tech pulled a pair of gloves out of the side pocket of her pants and held them out for Danny, but he shook his head. He had no intention of touching the corpse and risking getting dirty. Coroner would take care of cleaning the fucking muck off before they did the autopsy.

  “Well, that’s damn interesting,” he said, tilting his head.

  “Whatcha got?” Farber asked, crouching beside him.

  “He was murdered.” Danny pointed to the two scorch marks on the dead guy’s neck. Maybe there were more, hiding beneath the filth, but those alone would’ve been enough. Latest generation of Tasers left that sort of mark, delivering enough punch to paralyze for about half a minute. Long enough to get cuffs on a perp. Or a few licks in. Whichever they deserved more.