jutting, shading those jade eyes in bony hollows.
Provo pissed himself.
But he could not speak, not even think of begging for his life…he was simply awed by these things, these demons what had burst the gates of hell. A stench came off them, an ugly odor of blood and meat. The beasts seemed to nod to one another, thick lips pulling back from those anxious teeth.
A third one came up the steps, elbowed past the others.
The beasts grunted and snapped at one another.
This latest one wore a duster, a wide-brimmed hat like the others. Its shirt was open to the waist, the hairy and oddly muscular chest heaving with each breath it sucked through that blood-dripping maw. It carried a Colt pistol in each clawed hand. And they were hands, Provo saw, not pads or paws, but hands. Human hands. But grotesquely long and narrow, the fingers incredibly thin and taloned.
It spit a gob of blood on the floor. Its teeth unclenched like a spiked mantrap and it made a gargling, guttural sound in its throat that became a voice of all things. ” You make it past us, you little fuck, we let you live…”
The others laughed…a strangled, wet laughter.
Maybe it was instinct or terror or God-knows-what, but Provo sprang to his feet and decided to run the gauntlet. He charged right at the Hide-Hunters and such was his ferocity, they actually stepped back. And maybe he would have made it. Maybe.
But something tripped him up.
Something sent him crashing into that greasy stew of human remains and as he squirmed and fought on the floor to be free…he saw it was entrails. Human entrails spread over the floor like wet ropes and he had stepped into them in his mad dash and snared his foot.
Shrieking, he tried to untangle himself. But they were oily and rubbery and moist. He only tangled himself worse. The first two beasts stepped over to him, almost nonchalantly. Taking hold of him and heaving, they pulled his limbs free, one after the other like a child pulling the wings from a fly.
Provo tried to wriggle away, but his life’s blood pissed in an ocean around him. He gagged and coughed and his mind went with a warm wet sound that only he could hear.
The Hide-Hunter with the Colts came over to him.
It pulled his head up off the floor, staring at those glazed, shocked eyes. It stuck the barrel of one pistol into his mouth.
“ I dearly hate to see these things suffer,” it said in a gravelly voice.
And blew the back of Provo’s head out. It kept pulling the trigger until there was nothing but a smoking hole at the rear of the man’s head and the slugs chewed into the wall.
It dropped him, leaving the pistol in his mouth.
Then the three of them went downstairs before the best meat was gone.
In his shack across the road, Jack Turner-the last human being in Sunrise-came out of a drunken slumber to the sound of scratching, of clawing, of something like nails being drawn over the outside of his door.
An animal. Something.
Maybe a wolf, he thought.
Damn things. Probably hungry, probably forced down out of the high country for food. But it wouldn’t get any tonight. Turner could hear it panting and sniffing and scratching like a dog at a rabbit hole.
Turner threw his bedroll aside and took up his. 36 Patterson.
Carefully, silently, he pulled the bolt and kicked open the door.
It wasn’t a wolf that he saw…not really. The moon was out, riding a lattice of clouds, and it was bright enough that Turner could see it was a man he was looking at.
A man with the face of a beast.
Whoever or whatever it was, wore a hide poncho that flapped in the wind like a campaign flag. A boiling, hot, nauseous odor blew off him. Turner felt his insides run like wax.
That face.
That godawful devil’s face.
To the right it was the monstrous face of a wolf, furry and green-eyed and yellow-toothed…but to the left, just the skinless skull of a beast covered in ligament and muscle, a scarified black cavity where the eye should have been. The skin was perfectly bisected as if some invisible line were drawn down the center of that awful face…half flesh, half bone.
A discolored tongue licked over the spiked teeth.
A horrible, wizened voice seem to come from some great distance, leagues away, echoing through the mountains and riding that black November wind like coveted sin. “Welcome to hell,” it said.
And Turner expected those claws, those teeth.
But the beast brought up a sawed-off shotgun and gave him both barrels at point-blank range. The impact blew his chest to fragments and threw him back inside the shack.
Then whatever it was, stalked off.
It made an odd, droning sound that could only have been humming. Amused, satisfied humming.
13
While Hell paid a little visit to Sunrise and Sheriff Dirker got his first look at the remains of Katherine Modine…Tyler Cabe, unable to sleep, was over at the Cider House Saloon pulling back beers and slugging shots of Kentucky bourbon. He told himself he wasn’t going to make a habit of it. He was here to work, to hunt down the Sin City Strangler (if he was indeed squatting hereabouts)…but, sometimes, a man needed a taste. And particularly when that man was Tyler Cabe and the war was all over him, engulfing him in a bleak and horrible smell of death and burnt powder. When it got so the memories were so vivid, so very real that you could taste the blood and steel and despair on your tongue, only alcohol would chase them away.
The Cider House was essentially a log house with timber walls and a rough-hewn floor of green wood that had split and cracked in wide gashes. The roof was thrown together out of planks and scraps and leaked like a sprinkling can. A set of dusty windows overlooked the muddy street, ore samples lining the sill. There was a carved mahogany bar against one wall, a real fancy outfit, and it looked as out of place at the Cider House as lace ribbon on slopped hog. It was similar to a dozen other taverns in Whisper Lake…a place tossed-up while there was still money to be had, but surely not built to last.
Men of every stripe were gathered over steel mugs and shot glasses-drifters, tramps, miners, company men, trappers down from the high elevations for a few days of drinking and fucking-and the atmosphere was thick and close and cramped. It stunk of unwashed bodies and wet saddle leather, dirty wool and soiled buckskin, booze, smoke, and dirty dreams.
Cabe was listening to a tall, lean fellow named Henry Freeman who claimed to be a Texas Ranger and had the tin star to prove it. He wore a duck-canvas duster and a stiff-brimmed Stetson. Both spotless and gleaming. His face was gaunt, his eyes just as dead and flat as shoe buttons. Despite being a Texas Ranger, as he claimed, he did not have a Texas accent. Though, of course, the Rangers probably had folks from everywhere in their ranks by that point. But the way he talked…wasn’t like a Southerner or a Yankee. An odd, even tone without inflection.
Cabe drank him in along with the whiskey and warm beer, didn’t particularly care for his flavor, but what he had to say…that was something else.
“ Way I got it figured, Cabe, is this,” Freeman said, studying his own dour reflection in the cracked bar mirror. “Our friend…this Sin City Strangler, as they like to call him…he’s smart. He’s not your average criminal. I’m of a mind that he’s of superior intelligence. That this is all some sort of game with him, you know, sort of catch-me-if- you-can. There’s a lot of money riding on his head and he gets a kick out of that.”
Cabe took a swallow of beer. “What makes you think he’s so damn smart?”
Freeman, who made a habit of never looking at who he was talking to, said, “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
