Silver and Salt(9)

I shook my head. That was the best part of pretending to be a cowboy. Not having to think thoughts like those. No matter how it had happened, what grisly magic was unleashed, nothing worked. Cars didn’t run. Houses didn’t heat. Lights stayed dark and forever would. I didn’t much care about the cars, although they would’ve made the chases shorter. But a warm bath—to soak away months of dust and the ache of the trail, I’d have given Scotch’s right arm for that. His left too, if that’s what it took.

I patted my horse’s neck and wiped a damp hand on my pants. At least the guns still worked. I’d cut one of the son of a bitches’s throats if I had to—and I had, but just the touch of them made your flesh revolt. Unnatural. Unclean. Murderers of the world. We passed what had once been a cactus. It should’ve died in ten years of cold but it hadn’t. It had twisted and warped, turned black and wept a slime that slowly ate through the ground around it with a sizzling stench.

I looked away. We were in Hell. I’d never believed in Hell, but that’s where we were. Clearing my throat, I asked my partner, “You remember your first dance? With a girl?” I grinned lazily as the horses plodded on. “Maybe I’m jumping the gun. Maybe it was a right purty sheep, flowers in her wool?”

Scotch scowled. His face wasn’t made for it. It didn’t stop him from trying, but with a straight nose, clean jaw-line, eyes the same color the sky had once been, a scowl just didn’t take. It made him look noble and probably prettier than the girl he’d danced with. Which I promptly told him. It was a better insult than the sheep one.

The scowl disappeared and he laughed. I didn’t hear him do that much. I didn’t do it much myself, not and mean it. These days who did? “I will never know why I didn’t kill you ages ago,” he snorted.

“Because you’re not good enough,” I said smugly. “You were never able to take me down.” It wasn’t as if we hadn’t gone at it over the long years. Boys will be boys and all that crap. “Not even in racing. Your nag never saw anything but the ass-end of Pie.” Pie, hearing his name, lifted his head and rolled an eye back at me. I gave his dark neck another pat. Despite the grime of the trail, his coat gleamed as black as a ripe blackberry. Not that there were blackberries now, only the memory of the sweetness of a sun-warmed one bursting on your tongue.

“Nag? Shall we see about that?” Scotch caught me off guard as his mount took off like…how’d they say it? Oh, yeah, like his head was on fire and his tail was catchin’.

Or more like the unreal slide of ice and snow in the beauty of a frozen waterfall falling down a mountain. His coat was as white as Pie’s was black. Or it had been. He hadn’t fared as well against the dirt and grime as Pie had, but I remembered what he’d looked like before we pulled this assignment and ended up in this nightmare mess of a desert. He’d been winter incarnate. But now he was a dirty bat-out-of-hell that I sent Pie after with one loud yee-haw.

“I heard that, you bastard,” Scotch’s irritated words trailed behind him. I corrected my earlier thought. Everyone needed two hobbies. Dispatching murderers and irritating their partners.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one that heard. Someone had been waiting for us and our race was over seconds after it had begun. Scotch was galloping his horse past a rusty-red outcropping of rock when the monster took him down. The cat leaped over and tackled him out of the saddle and to the ground in a movement so fast and fluid I barely saw it. Pinning Scotch to the ground, it saw me coming and lifted its head to unleash a growl that put the rumble of thunder to shame.

But it hadn’t seen me coming after all. It had heard me. It had no eyes, not ones it could use to see. Skin was seamed shut in ugly ribbons of red flesh where eyes should’ve been. Its ears were larger than they should’ve been as was its widely splayed nostrils that sampled the air while spraying pink tinged mucus. It wasn’t a monster, no matter how it looked. It was just another victim.

I hurt for it, something that should’ve been a glory of nature, hurt to my core. And while I knew it had to eat, same as we all did, I couldn’t let it eat my partner. I hit it clean-center with a shot between those two absent eyes. I almost felt guilty, but it was fortunate to be out of this world and hopefully on to a better one. Then again, it might just be dead and there was nothing more—nothing clean and pure. The dark magic could’ve destroyed that too, but if that were true, I still thought it was better off.

I vaulted off Pie and helped roll the big cat, heavy as I was at least, off Scotch. My partner had puncture marks in his upper chest with a small amount of blood soaking through his faded green shirt, but other than that and having the wind knocked out of him, he seemed all right. He coughed and wheezed, pulling in air, as I fisted his hand with mine and pulled him up to a sitting position. “I…still…won,” he panted.

“Yeah, if the race lasted four seconds and the finish line was being eaten by a big-ass desert cat, you won. What do you want for a prize? Pie can give you a big sloppy kiss. He likes the blonde mares,” I drawled.

“Braying…ass,” he hissed and glared.

“Nah, he’s not so much for those.” I waited a minute then when he could curse me without running out of air and his eyes rolling back in his head, I heaved him up to his feet. “You all right? You want to go ahead and make camp? We’ve been on this one son of a bitch for a week now. Another day won’t hurt.”