The first iteration of The Clearing had been built by people who didn’t understand the land, not yet: who didn’t know what it would hit them with, or how it would struggle to destroy them. They had looked at the shallow bowl in the earth and seen, not a killing jar, not a place for rain to pool and snow to gather, but fertile soil that wouldn’t need to be cleared before it could be built upon. They’d believed the strange fingerprints driven into the ground by some unseen hand were a blessing to them, and when the wendigo had come, there had been nowhere for them to run.
The sensible thing would have been to leave Oregon with the first thaw—or, if that was somehow not possible, to build their new settlement on high ground, someplace where the advantage would always be theirs to claim, where they could see the dark coming and turn it aside. The survivors of the first settlement had not been sensible. Or maybe Hal was right when he said that they were already wendigo in their hearts, already hungry and planning for the future when they would be tall and strong and vicious. They had constructed their second home in mirror to the first, and when Dr. Michael Murphy had moved his wagons into place along the line of the road that circled the bowl, they had had no chance to run.
Seven wagons, six of them filled with armed men who wanted nothing more than to impress him, and through him, Hellstromme: that was all it had taken for Dr. Murphy to take the town. There were still people below him with guns, people who thought that they could fight their way out of this, but they were all behind the bright glare of the firelight, and from what his scouts had said, they were members of the circus to a man. The townsfolk were outside their houses, watching, some with weapons in their hands. That didn’t mean that they had fired a single shot.
Indeed, there was something almost eerie about the way the townsfolk stood there, not hiding, not shouting, and not leveling their guns. It was a standoff that made no sense, and it might have concerned him, had he not had other dangers on his mind. Like those damned circus folk, who huddled behind their fires—as if fire had protected anyone from anything since humanity crawled out of the caves—and aimed their rifles, and tried to keep him from what was his.
There was a flicker of motion at his elbow. Michael turned, lowering the cone he was using to amplify his voice for the edification of the fools below. Laura looked at him calmly, waiting for his attention to be devoted solely to her.
It burned him, how this woman assumed she had any authority, any right to command his actions. She’d been like this all the way across the country, calm as a rattlesnake coiled in the sun, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. She was his babysitter, assigned by Hellstromme to make sure he came back, and that burned, too, because it spoke of a world where he would have considered doing differently. He was loyal. He had always been loyal. He would be loyal until the day he died. To suggest anything else was not just inaccurate, it was cruel.
That others might consider him cruel—might consider what he was doing in this very moment to be nothing short of monstrous—had never crossed his mind.
“What?” he demanded.
Laura smirked. She had put her hat aside when the sun went down. Somehow, that little change had made her more difficult to see. She was darkly tanned, dressed in brown leathers, with hair only a few shades lighter than her skin. In the shadows that clung to The Clearing, she stood just to the side of invisibility.
“It’s the right circus,” she said. “One of my boys made it down and back while we were drawing their fire, and he saw the sign on their big tent, clear as anything. These people don’t know how to hide.”
“That’s not my concern,” he said. “Did your man see my wife?” Did he see my daughter? Adeline would not be perfectly identical to her sister, not after all her years of running in the sun and scraping her knees on wagon floors. Grace had been unforgivably negligent, risking his property in such a manner.
“No,” said Laura. “But then, how would he have known if he had? It’s not as if you’ve provided any pictures. I need your permission to descend.” The corner of her mouth curved into a hooked smile, reminiscent of the curve of a rattlesnake’s tail.
Everything about the woman was reptilian and terrible, repugnant in the extreme. How she hid her nature behind smooth skin and a woman’s curves was beyond even his genius to explain. Had she revealed that she was born in Hellstromme’s labs, crafted from the flesh of a hundred such snakes, he would almost have been relieved. At least then she would have made sense.
(Her origin was nowhere near so flashy, or so fabulous: Laura was a daughter of Junkyard, shaped by her environment, refined by her own fight to survive, until she was a killing blow walking in the shape of a gunslinger, selling her services to the highest bidder to keep her belly full and her shelter secure. Michael Murphy was an essentially immoral man. Laura was something different. Like the snake she so reminded him of, she was essentially amoral, willing to do whatever was required to keep herself alive.)
“I thought my permission was not required for your mission,” he said stiffly.
“Hellstromme told me to get you here safely, and then to afford you any assistance you required,” she said. “I don’t leave without you, but while we’re here, I’m to do what I can to aid you. I assumed you wanted the woman.”
“I do,” he said. “But I want the girl more.”
Laura tilted her head slightly to the side, so that a lock of hair fell across her cheek in a disarmingly feminine manner. It made his flesh crawl. Nothing as terrible as she should have been permitted to feign womanhood in a believable fashion.
“So the woman,” she said. “If she resists, you don’t mind my killing her?”
Michael paused. He and Grace were still married in the eyes of God: he had loved her as much as he was able when she had been faithful, and once she had proven false, he had been unable to entertain remarriage. Not with Annabelle still needing him so direly; not with the city ready to forgive him for losing one wife, but poised to judge him if he lost two. It had been too great a risk to take.
“Only if you must,” he said finally. “You can damage her as much as you like. She can be repaired. Women are like wagons. Break a few wheels, splinter a few axles, but you’ll still be able to find a way to put them back together if necessary.”
Laura nodded. “So may I descend?”
“You may.”
Her smile was swift and sharp, making his heart clench with the sudden conviction that he had given her the wrong instruction: that he had somehow condemned himself and his daughter both with his words.
“As you like,” she said, and turned, placing two fingers in her mouth and giving one short, sharp whistle. Two of the men hired to accompany their caravan separated themselves from the shadows and moved to stand beside her, flanking her. They were both so much taller than she that it should have made her look small, even comic. It didn’t. Instead, she seemed all the more dangerous for being so obviously overpowered. If she weren’t dangerous, how else could she have survived?
Michael watched as Laura and the two men walked to the edge of the road, where the land dropped off and rejoined the gentle slope of the basin’s walls. She looked back once, winked, and vanished into the gloom, leaving Michael standing on the road, the amplifier in his hands.
After a long moment’s hesitation, he raised it to his lips and began speaking again. “You have stolen something that belongs to me. The rules of the sovereign nation of Deseret state that a man may do as he likes with his wife. I would like to have my wife returned. If you do not—”
His words faded into so much background nonsense as Laura and her men slid down the curve of the hill, using the sides of their feet to control their rate of descent. Dust and pebbles spilled in their wake, the small, scuffling sound covered by the gunfire and shouting. Michael Murphy might be a useless rotter of a man, Laura observed, but he sure could kick up a distraction when he needed to.
In a matter of seconds, they were on level ground, stepping away from the hill and onto the territory claimed by the settlers. Laura motioned her men to silence as she looked around, waiting for some sign that they had been seen. She’d seen better killers than her taken down when they failed to account for some local kid sending up the alarm. Better to go slow, and be sure that they went unseen.
Nothing moved. They were secure.
When the settlers had chosen the location of their new home, they had probably celebrated finding something as perfect for their needs as a natural bowl in the earth, surrounded on all sides by gently sloping hillside, keeping them safe from surprise attack. They wouldn’t have thought about situations like this one, where they would need to defend themselves against a smaller force with better weapons and higher ground. That was the trouble with some people. They set themselves up to feel like the world couldn’t touch them, and then they didn’t know what to do when it touched them anyway.
Maybe. The townsfolk didn’t seem to be doing much. They were just standing there, slack-jawed and staring, while Murphy’s men fired on the circus, and the circus fired back. A few of the circus folk had already gone down, swallowing dirt like the corpses they had always been destined to become, and still the townsfolk were standing in silent witness, rather than moving to defend their homes. It was unsettling.
It was none of her concern. She was here for the brat, and for the woman, if she could get her without compromising herself. The spot she’d chosen for their descent was well behind the line of bonfires—and that, too, was a sign of the shortsightedness of the average person. The circus had created a barricade in fire and light, drawing it between itself and the settlers, but hadn’t thought to protect its rear flank. Anyone could slide down the side of the hill and take them from behind.
A few slit throats would have been educational for them. Let her ghost up to their fires, grab their sentries by the hair, and show them what it was to smile from ear to ear. The survivors would thank her. Well, the survivors would curse her name, if they ever learned it. But they would go on to build better walls, to draw circles with no weak spots, to protect themselves properly. Really, it was almost a shame that she didn’t have the time to teach them how to do that.
Regretfully, she shook her head. Nice as it would have been to educate these people—and they damn well needed education—this wasn’t the time, or the place. If she ever met any of them again, she could show them then what it meant to protect yourself. She turned back to her men, motioning quickly to show them where to go. Three people would be enough to search this circus. Especially when the bulk of their able-bodied adults were at the bonfires, trying to protect the boneyard from a frontal assault.
One of the men drew his finger across his throat before looking at her hopefully. She nodded. If they needed to kill to fulfill their mission, that was fine by her—and by Murphy as well, she was quite sure. The man was still too wrapped up in his own fancy ideas of dignity and ethicality to be a proper killer, but he could take a body apart when the need arose. She’d done her research before agreeing to sign on with him. She knew how many drifters and never-do-wells had been reported missing on or near the Murphy land. All of them had been forgiven by Hellstromme, and thus by Deseret. The two might as well have been one and the same in the eyes of the law, and a man like Murphy, well. He had no reason to restrain himself, not when there was something to be learned from the wet red treasures inside a man.
Laura pointed to the far end of the circus. The first of the men started in that direction, moving quickly, stepping light. She pointed to the center. The second of the men nodded and went where she had indicated, following the first for no more than a few yards before he veered off. She turned, squinting into the dark in front of her. Then she smiled, and slunk into the shadows.
Time to get to work.
There were those in Deseret who knew her by name, or by reputation, if nothing more than that. She was one of Hellstromme’s throwing knives. Less efficient than a bullet, which would kill whatever stood between it and its target, but more reliable in the long run. She could always come back to his hand and be flung again, while a bullet, once fired, was fired forever.
Murphy was a bullet. He had been sitting in the chamber of Hellstromme’s plans for years, and he might never feel the hammer come down, propelling him to his fate. Or he might find himself fired the second he returned to Deseret. Hellstromme wanted to see Murphy’s work completed, she knew that much. It mattered to him.
If it mattered to him, it mattered to her, at least as long as he was filling her pockets. Laura slipped between the wagons like a shadow, pausing at each one to listen to the sounds from inside.
Some were silent.
Some were filled with the sounds of people hiding from the world outside, the little scuffs and scrapes that betrayed the presence of the living. But none of them sounded properly terrified. They sounded scared, yes, like they didn’t know what was going on outside and didn’t know what they could do to help, but they didn’t sound terrified.
Grace Murphy would be terrified.
Grace Murphy would be shitting herself with the realization that this was it: she had reached the limit of her long and winding road to freedom, and was now pinned between the Oregon woods and the end of the world. She had to have known that she was always running on borrowed time: that short of finding a way off the continent, Murphy’s agents would catch up with her eventually and bring her back to Deseret to pay for what she’d done. It was a cold vendetta to draw against a woman with no resources of her own, but she should have expected it. She was Murphy’s property, and he was Hellstromme’s property, and that meant she had never had a prayer.
Laura couldn’t feel sorry for the woman. She had been given every opportunity Deseret had to offer. If she’d wanted a life of luxury, she could have stayed. If she’d wanted her freedom, she could have left the little girl. By refusing to do either, she had signed her own death warrant.
The shadows around the wagon wheels seemed thick as taffy. They tangled at her feet and clung to her ankles, until it was like they were trying to slow her progress through the circus—which was just silly. Shadows didn’t have minds. They couldn’t decide to do something like that.
A wolf howled from the forest above the town. Laura stopped, waiting for the echoes of the sound to pass before she resumed walking slowly forward, eyes darting from wagon to wagon.
The Blackstone Family Circus was a mid-sized show, smaller than the ones she’d seen outside the Holy City, but large for a production without a patron. They were beholden to no one save themselves. That must have been nice for them, to roll down the roads without worrying that they’d somehow offend their masters and find themselves called back.
At the same time, with no master, no patron, there was also no one who would come to save them if something happened.
Laura was very good at being something that happened.
A light caught her eye, shining as it did through the blackness of the boneyard. She shifted positions and saw that it was a lantern, hanging in an open wagon window. Laura frowned. Lanterns, placed like that, usually signified that there was someone inside. All the other wagons were walled up tight. So what did this one mean…?
Placing two fingers in her mouth, she whistled, long and low and sad, like the cry of a desert bird. The wolves were still howling up above; anyone who heard her and didn’t live here was likely to take the sound for just one more piece of the local landscape. She stepped back into the shadow of the nearest wagon, and waited.
It wasn’t a long wait. The nearer of her two helpers came trotting out of the shadows, his hands already clenched, ready to punch whatever she aimed him at. She stepped forward, enough for him to see her through the gloom, and waved him over.
“What is it?” he whispered, once he was close enough. Hand signals could only get them so far.
A pity. Speech was so loud. “Look,” she replied, and pointed to the lit wagon.
He turned, and his eyes widened. “Oh,” he said.
“Go,” she said.
He nodded, and went.
Part of being a throwing knife was understanding that some targets were better hit by other people. As long as she was the one who always returned, Hellstromme would continue to think of her as the truly useful one, the one who could accomplish whatever tasks he set for her. Every mission, every kill served to increase her reputation among the kind of people who could afford to pay her fees. Eventually, she’d be in a position to make demands of her own, and when that happened …
She did understand Grace Murphy’s desire to put Deseret behind her. She shared it. She was just going about it in a much, much smarter way.
Slinking back into the shadows, she let her hand rest on the stock of the pistol she had belted to her right hip and waited for the screaming to begin. One way or another, she was sure there would be screaming. All she had to do was stand back.
Her man—Hellstromme’s man, really, one of the great unwashed mass who teemed in Junkyard, waiting for the chance to prove themselves worthy of becoming something better than they were—approached the wagon slowly, cautiously, like he expected it to strike at any moment. There was something almost comic about watching a grown man stalk a wagon. Laura turned away. He would call if he needed help, and there was more boneyard to search.
Hand still resting on her pistol, she resumed her slow passage through the boneyard, pausing at each wagon. At the fourth wagon, her pause became a stop.
Someone was inside. They were crying. No: they were weeping, a soft, constant sound that reminded her uncomfortably of her childhood.
Laura drew her pistol, steadied her hand, and swung herself up onto the wagon steps, nudging the door open with her toe. The woman who had been crying lowered her hands and turned to stare.
There were three people inside the wagon: the crying woman—girl, really, barely out of her teens, still half-finished, with the ghosts of the pox living on the skin of her face like a brand—and the older woman who sat beside her, rubbing her back with one hand. There was a certain similarity between their faces and figures. They were family.
The same couldn’t be seen for the little girl who lay in the bed across from them, her white-blonde hair fanned out across the pillow, her eyes closed and her breath coming easy. She was wearing a tattered white gown, and her feet were muddy, but apart from those small details, she could almost have been Annabelle Murphy, the scientist’s lovely, dying daughter.
“Well, well,” said Laura, with a slow smile. “What have I got here?”
The older woman made as if to stand. Laura raised her gun, aiming the barrel square at the woman’s forehead. The woman froze.
“No,” said Laura, calm as anything. “I don’t think you want to do that. I’ll shoot you, don’t see if I won’t, but Dr. Murphy might be a little put out if I bring his daughter back to him all covered in your brains. That’s his girl, isn’t it?”
“You stay away from Adeline,” said the younger woman. Tears still streamed down her pocked face, but she looked ready to get to her feet and fight for the sake of the child. Interesting. “She’s not some Dr. Murphy’s daughter. She’s Miss Pearl’s little girl, and she’s not yours to take.”
“Either of you have a weapon on you? No? Then she’s mine to do with as I please.” Laura took another step into the wagon. The little girl hadn’t so much as stirred. Her mother must have drugged her before running away again. Made sense. It was easier to leave a child when they couldn’t beg for you to stay.
Unless she’d poisoned the girl, and that was why the younger woman had been weeping. Fear—a rare emotion for her—uncurled in Laura’s breast. If the girl was dead, this had all been for naught. The journey back to Deseret would kill Annabelle, of that there was no question. Hellstromme would be angry if she returned with Murphy and neither of his children. The thought of his anger …
If the girl was dead, maybe this was when she would do her own cut and run. Some things were worse than being on her own in potentially hostile territory. Hellstromme’s wrath was among them.
“Wake her up,” Laura commanded.
“It’s her medicine,” said the older woman. “She needs to sleep in order to heal.”
“Her father’s here now. He’ll see to healing her. Now wake her up, or I’ll do it.”
“We can’t,” said the older woman. “It’s not—”
The bullet between her eyes stopped her in the middle of her sentence, painting a red punctuation across the wagon wall. The younger woman began to scream, high and shrill, putting her hands over her mouth like they could somehow hold the sound inside.
In her bed, the little girl rolled onto her side, and kept sleeping.
“She’s alive, then,” said Laura. “Good—oh, stop your screaming. If you don’t, I’ll have to shoot you, too, and that would be a wasted bullet.” The sound of Murphy’s voice drifted from outside. It was far from quiet out there. The woman’s screams might go overlooked for a while.
Not forever. Screams had a nasty tendency to attract attention. Laura stepped closer to Adeline’s bed, raising her gun so that the barrel was pointed at the screaming woman.
“Sorry,” she said.
Something snarled behind her. She began to turn. Heavy paws, bristling with claws, impacted with her shoulders and drove her to the ground. The screaming continued.