quality but as his lips shaped around the word ‘Heaven’ it coalesced into something blacker and thicker until it looked like jags of black lightning tearing out through the canvas and into the night on the other side. There was a rush of wind, and the flaps of the wagon’s sides slapped out and back so hard it cracked like thunder. The Deacon reeled up and back, the talisman suddenly alive and squirming in his hand. In that moment he sensed it – it wasn’t just alive, it wasn’t just hungry; it was malevolent.
He caught himself with one hand on the wall of the wagon and tucked the pouch back into his shirt. It was cool and still, the magic burned out. No one was looking at him. The woman he’d first met had rushed past him to kneel at the pastor’s side.
Then The Deacon realized his first perception was wrong. One person was looking at him. The Pastor was awake, and staring up through blurred, reddened eyes. The corners of those eyes sparkled with tears. When he broke the silence his voice was pitifully weak: 'Praise the lord.'
The man shivered, his hands curled like claws around the sweat stained blanket. He looked like hell, but it was obvious his fever had broken. The Deacon watched a moment longer, and then he stumbled to the back of the wagon and half-climbed, half fell to the ground beyond. The earth was mucky and moist, and it soaked through the knees of his jeans, but he ignored it. He felt a surge of something inexplicable, a burst of energy and vitality that defied explanation. Inside, he roared. The pouch throbbed and pulsed against his blistered chest and he gasped for breath.
And then, as suddenly as it had come, it passed. Whatever it was he’d felt drained from him in the time it took for him to lick his bone-dry lips. He rose to his knees, panting for breath and soaked in mud. He lost track of everything beyond the rise and fall of his chest and the ragged sound of his breathing. The next thing he knew, hands dropped gently onto his shoulders. He glanced up. The two women stood, one on either side of him. They lifted him to his feet seemingly effortlessly.
And he stood there, shivering and cold as they stared at him.
'He’s healed,' the first woman he’d met spoke quickly. 'I don’t know what you did. . . I don’t . . . You healed my husband,' she said, shaking her head. 'He’s sitting up. He’s asked for food. I never thought I’d hear his voice again. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to thank you. You saved his life.'
'I am glad,' The Deacon replied, not certain what he should say – what the woman wanted him to say. 'The Lord is pleased.'
'He sent you,' the older woman told him with utter conviction. Her voice broke as she sniffed back the tears. 'We were going to be stranded here, alone, but He sent you. He provided.'
The Deacon ordered his thoughts. 'Such is His way,' he said, lowering his head slightly.
'Come back inside,' the first woman said. 'My name is Grace. What we have is yours. You will not sleep in this weather while we have walls surrounding us.'
Grace. It was a fitting name; the gift that separated the angels from the filth of mankind. The Deacon followed them back inside. After so long alone the woman had something of the divine about her, he thought, watching the sway of her backside as she climbed back up into the wagon. He followed her in. The Pastor was sitting on the bed, naked to the waist. The old man and the boy hovered over him, staring down as though they were sure the miracle was about to be snatched away from them at any moment – it was obvious in their eyes that they didn’t trust it. . . and with good reason.
The old woman screamed, and Grace fainted.
The Deacon caught her in his arms, though his own legs had lost most of their strength.
Protruding from the Pastor’s side, twin dead eyes gazing up at them, a face pressed outward from the ribcage. The features were misshapen and stretched. Where the mouth should have been, the skin rippled.
Pastor Ochse glanced up at the Deacon. Instead of an expression of horror, he wore a beatific smile.
'It’s a sign,' he said softly. 'I was dying, but now I am healed. You brought the healing, and now there is… this. It is a reminder, that I might not lose my faith, or take this life for granted. You have given me life, and a new cross to bear – proudly.'
The Deacon swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat, and managed the barest of nods.
'You have a great gift,' Ochse said. 'A great and wonderful power. I will follow you. We will all follow you. Such a gift must be shared. That is God’s will. That is your purpose.'
Again, The Deacon nodded. He laid Grace gently beside her husband. Without a word, he leaned out, retrieved his bag, and carried it to the bar end of the wagon, where he set it down on the floor. He dropped then, utterly drained and unable to support his own weight. He laid his head on the pack. He slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep. The others watched wordlessly.
That was the first.
‡‡‡
The Deacon sensed the presence of that dark woman, that spirit, again. He felt the weight of the talisman as he never had before. He felt things coming to an end, things outside of his ken. There was an aura of imminence; the air was charged with potential about to be fulfilled, and that fulfillment chilled The Deacon to the bone. He felt the weight of fate hanging over him. Twice in the last hour he had glanced over his shoulder, sure she was there, looking at him. He harbored no illusions. Whatever she was, she had no interest in his future or in his desires. More likely he’d be a casualty, tossed aside and forgotten, and that just wasn’t how he saw the story playing out.
He turned back to his desk. On one corner sat a jar. Longman had delivered it that morning. It contained all the venom collected from Cy and Andy’s haul of serpents. Normally when they performed a serpent handling ceremony, the venom was used to create anti-venin. The Deacon was a man of many talents, and the snake-bite cure was worth good coin at nine out of ten stops along the road, but this time it was different.
He hadn’t told Longman, but he sensed that the little man knew more than he let on. He sensed, in actuality, that
Most of his flock had come to him for healing. Most of them had given to him – or to the talisman – at times there was little difference between the two of them – some part of themselves. They were bound to him and served out of warped and broken gratitude. Within the circle, another circle had grown steadily. They had their own ways and their own ripples of influence. The children gathered at Longman’s wagon to watch him paint. Everyone in the camp went to the sisters and sat rapt at their fire, watching the falling bones and listening to their cryptic foretellings.
There were others. Cy had a knack for dropping scripture into any situation that actually changed things. He saw more with a single eye than most saw with two, and yet he was slow to speak and slower to act. His time was not the time of the world, it was somehow distant and removed.
They gathered, and The Deacon observed. They did nothing to impede his efforts, and more often than not, they served just as the others did. The talisman drew them. The signs compelled them. Soon, he would know why. Soon they would know that he was more than a pawn in their game – that, or finally, he would find out that he was a fool after all.
He returned to the book and continued to read as his lantern burned long into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Creed and Brady kept watch on the streets through the night. Both felt the same prickling unease but there was no sign of the dark strangers. The sky was empty of fluttering wings and no strange cries rang through the shadows. People stayed later than usual in the saloon, drinking. The talk veered between two extremes, the fear of the gunfight upstairs and the excitement of the coming revival.
