picked up one of the huge ball tickers and pounded it into Mr. Shunt, knocking him flat before turning toward his true goal, Mr. Shard LeFel.
Shard LeFel raised his cane. “You will not stand in the way of my revenge! You will not stop me!” He lunged. The silver blade pierced Jeb’s ribs, clean out his back.
And the big man let out a huge wet chortle.
Shard LeFel’s eyes went wide with horror.
“Can’t kill a man more’n three times, devil,” Jeb Lindson said. “Said it yourself. You plain can’t kill me no more.”
Mr. Shunt seemed just as shocked as Shard LeFel and stood, weighing his options. Cedar barreled into Mr. Shunt and tore into his neck, shaking and breaking it. Then Cedar ripped Mr. Shunt apart, limb from limb, stringing bone and guts and metal out of him like pulling the meat out of a crab, until Mr. Shunt stopped moving, stopped twitching, stopped ticking.
It took no more than a minute before Mr. Shunt was reduced to a mess of cracked bits. It took a few seconds more before Cedar could reclaim enough of his mind to realize Wil, Mae, and Elbert were still trapped. Trapped by the Strangeworks.
Cedar attacked the first Strange, sinking teeth into its head and throwing himself backward, twisting off the head with the strength of his jaw.
The Strange wriggled and shrieked and sprang open like a popped seed. From that bloody mess, the little child Elbert tumbled out onto the floor.
Cedar paused just long enough to be sure the child was breathing, then ran to the next Strangework.
“No!” Shard LeFel screamed. “Release me. Fall to the ground and worship me.”
Cedar glanced at him. The door was closing, and Shard LeFel was not walking through it. Jeb Lindson was there instead, big hand wrapped around Shard LeFel’s throat, holding him one-handed in midair above the door. With a vicious smile, Jeb Lindson lowered Shard LeFel just enough, the tips of his boots slipped into the door, before he yanked him up again.
“Only gonna do one thing, devil,” Jeb said. “Gonna kill you, me and this dead iron. And it’s only gonna take me the one time.”
Jeb used one hand to smash the ball matic into the Holder at the head of the doorway.
The Holder exploded in a roll of thunder and a blast of lightning. Seven distinct bits of the device flew straight up into the night and then whisked across the starry sky faster than anything on this earth.
Cedar was on the next Strangework, biting, killing, twisting, destroying, until it disgorged his brother, Wil, who was broken, bloody. But he still breathed.
Cedar Hunt wasn’t done killing yet.
He threw himself at the last Strange. And this time, it was Mae who fell from the monstrous creature, Mae who took a hard, shuddering breath, pulling the gag from her mouth and the barbed wire from her throat.
Jeb Lindson lifted Shard LeFel away from the closed doorway in the floor, his huge hand crushing LeFel’s windpipe. Jeb Lindson laughed and laughed, his ruined face drooping with the effort to smile as he dragged Shard LeFel behind him over the rubble of the train car and down to the ground outside.
Shard LeFel scrabbled, reaching for the door, reaching for the stairs, trying to scream through a throat that could do no more than gurgle.
And then Jeb stopped laughing. “For Mae,” he breathed. “
Jeb pounded LeFel’s face methodically with his fists, breaking his beautiful features, snapping his elegant neck, cracking his graceful back, then every other bone in his body, before crushing his skull and digging his brain out with his knuckles. Just for good measure, he pounded the bloody scraps of Shard LeFel with the metal ticker, until all that remained of him was pulverized into a fine mash.
“Mr. Hunt?”
Cedar looked away from the bloody spectacle.
Rose Small stood on what was left of the platform, her rifle smoking, her goggles pushed up, little Elbert hugged close against her hip. She was dirty, singed, a little bloody. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile so brightly.
Rose assessed the damage to the railcar. “Don’t know if you can jump down, and I wouldn’t advise you to drop too close to Mr. Lindson. He’s of a powerful single purpose right now. Can you make it here to the platform next to me?”
Cedar took a step, looked back at Mae, who had somehow pulled herself up on her feet and was walking, a bit dazed, toward Rose. Cedar nudged Wil until his brother gained his feet and blindly followed him. The door in the floor was closed, the white light gone. Cedar knew he’d need to break that door, maybe burn it down, but could not summon the effort, nor could he begin to think of the method to do so.
He was suddenly very tired, very much in pain, and very hot. All he wanted to do was lie down and lose himself to the soft, luxurious promise of sleep. What was wrong with him?
He glanced at the sky behind Rose Small. It was no longer dark and star-caught, but instead blushing with pink. How had dawn come so soon? Rose was helping Mae to sit, and looking over both Mae’s and Elbert’s injuries.
Dawn was on its way.
Rose glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “That’s good, Mr. Hunt. You’re almost there. Mae and Elbert are torn up pretty bad, but they’re mostly whole. A fair bit better than I reckon they should expect to be.”
The slide of dawn and the grip of pain blurred Rose’s words and made her seem far away. He wanted to go to Mae, to touch her and know she was safe, but he could not move. So he listened to Rose Small’s words and knew they meant safety and tending. Cedar lay down to rest. Then the moon drained away, taking the wolf with it and leaving him free to be a man once again.
Rose Small did not avert her eyes as Mr. Hunt slipped his wolf skin and stretched out into his bare naked self. It didn’t take long at all for him to turn from wolf to man, and he made no sound, gave no indication that it hurt.
He simply was looking at her from a wolf’s eyes, then rolled his shoulders, stretched his legs, arched his back that had three bullet wounds clean through it, and was kneeling in his man form. Near as she could tell, he fell asleep right there. The wounds in his back started mending some, even as she watched, though they leaked a strange black oil.
She looked over at the other wolf, who regarded her with eyes the color of old copper. He limped over and laid himself down next to Cedar.
“I’m supposing you’re not just a wild animal,” Rose said as she took a step toward Cedar. “But seeing as how everyone here is still bleeding, I think we’ll need to find some water and shelter before folks in town come looking for what all the noise was about.”
She shifted the pack on her back, sliding her arm out of one strap. The wolf closed his eyes, and seemed to fall asleep just like Cedar.
“Well, don’t that beat all?” Rose knelt and pulled her blanket roll off the bottom of her pack and unrolled the wool blanket—one that she had bought from Mae—over Mae and little Elbert.
At that touch, Mae seemed to come to, brushing back her hair with bloody hands, and fixing Rose with a clear-eyed stare.
“Jeb?”
“He’s here, as much of him as can be.” Rose nodded to where Jeb knelt, unmoving, above the gory mash that had just a moment before been Mr. Shard LeFel.
Mae moved the blanket so that it was wrapped around Elbert, and handed the boy to Rose. Then Mae walked down what was left of the train-car stairs, toward what was left of her husband.
“Husband? Jeb?”
Jeb raised his head. “Mae?” The word was a sigh, almost unrecognizable from what was left of his mouth.
“I’m here, my love.”
Jeb struggled to stand, finally pushed onto his ruined leg and broken ankle, steadying himself with will alone.
