Wild Country

Yuri replied.

Tolya thought for a moment.

Tolya said.

Virgil struggled to keep his fangs from lengthening to Wolf size since Becky Gott was telling him about buttons and he didn’t want to scare her.

Spotting Jacob Gott heading toward them, Virgil turned and walked away. Human pup or Wolf pup, the solution was the same: when an adult got tired of playing with a puppy, he walked away.

tell Jana?>

The humor in Tolya’s voice made Virgil growl. And she was third in the police pack. Third.

But the wolverine was the dominant female in their pack.

Virgil sighed. Mixed-species packs were harder to handle than Wolves.

He stopped at the sheriff’s office and took Rusty across the street to her piddle spot. When he brought her back to her crate and the pup looked at him with sad eyes, he gave her a scritch. “You and I will go out on the square and have a good run before your mom takes you home.”

The office door opened. Rusty tried to rush past him to welcome the person standing in the doorway.

“I took her out,” he said, holding the pup. He heard boots moving across the floor, and he felt her at his back. The wolverine walked quietly for a human—except when she didn’t, and that, he suspected, was deliberate. “She should have a good run. Been in the den too much lately.”

The wolverine sighed and crouched to give pats and accept licks. “I know. I wish I could take her with me when I ride Mel.”

“Why don’t you? The horse that is not meat wouldn’t fear a puppy.”

She looked like she was going to argue with him about the horse, but she didn’t. A passive wolverine? Should that worry him?

“You think she would be okay, would be safe, off the leash? There isn’t that much traffic on the square, but there are the buses and taxis and some personal vehicles.”

“Pups follow the adults. That’s how they learn.” Virgil shrugged. “You ride. She and I will run. And she’ll learn.”

Jana nodded. “Okay.” She nudged Rusty back into the crate and closed the door. “The person who killed the man we found the other day . . .”

“Is nearby. So is the Blackstone called the Gambler.”

“The Blackstones are Abby’s family.”

Virgil nodded. “She needs to hide.”

Jana looked at her watch. “I’ll call Barb and see if she knows where Abby is working this afternoon. But if someone spots her before I find her and follows her back to her house . . .”

“Kane is watching the Maddie pup. If a stranger appears on the street, he’ll howl for us.”

Virgil waited a minute after Jana left. Then he walked across the square to the jewelry store to see if he could flush out his prey.

Heart racing, Abigail ducked around the corner and pressed her back against the wall.

Oh gods, oh gods, he was already here. Her father was at the registration desk, checking into the hotel.

It had been so easy to talk the young man who had been assigned to clean the transient guest rooms into letting her help. He usually did other kinds of maintenance in the hotel, but they were short staffed today because two of the girls had called in sick. One girl really was sick and had been at the doctor’s office when Anya had called to confirm there was actual illness. The other girl hadn’t wanted to come in that day and was now scrambling to find some other employment before she was put on a train heading for an arbitrary destination.

The young man told her this in a voice filled with hushed awe. What had seemed like a harmless fib to have an extra day off had become a hard lesson in how the terra indigene differed from human employers.

Abigail made sympathetic noises, but she wondered how many times the girl had played the “I’m sick” card to get out of work. It sounded like it had been one time too many if Anya was calling the doctors to check on employee health.

The cleaning service she worked for was run by a human, and a good worker would be given some leeway, mainly because there were more jobs than workers right now. Still, sweet Abigail wouldn’t shrug off her job unless a friend needed help.

Six rooms. Six stones. While the young man took care of the bathrooms, Abigail used a penknife to slit each mattress near the headboard and shove one of the black stones into the slit before making up each bed. The dissonance in the stones would wrap around the person as he slept, and even something that looked like good fortune would have a sting.

They had finished up and she had been about to leave when she saw her father.

So close. A few minutes earlier and he might have seen her coming out of one of the rooms. Now . . .

Her mobile phone buzzed. She pulled it out of the pouch she used for personal items—a shapeless embroidered thing that suited sweet Abigail.

“Hello?” she whispered.

“Abby? It’s Jana. Where are you?”

Where was she supposed to be this afternoon? And where could she say she was now? “I’m . . . I’m at the coin-operated laundry near the hotel.”

A moment of puzzled silence on Jana’s end of the line, but it was the only place nearby that Parlan Blackstone wouldn’t visit and Abigail could hide.

“Stay there,” Jana said. “And stay out of sight. I’m coming to get you.”

So the wannabe deputy knew Parlan was in town and he meant danger. She could work with that.

After all, she didn’t have to fake being afraid.

The jewelry store looked more like a pawnshop that specialized in glass being passed off as real gemstones and baubles that no self-respecting thief would bother to take. Oh, pretty enough for women who couldn’t tell the difference, but a disappointment to him. Still, if that’s what they were selling in Bennett, Lawry wouldn’t even have to run a con in order to swap junk for high-end pieces of jewelry.

Parlan studied the man who stood behind the back counter—the one place that had a few decent pieces with actual gemstones. Early thirties, thinning blond hair, carrying a bit too much weight for his frame. A soft man.

But in other hands, the store could be a useful way to move jewelry and jewels that were acquired by less than legal means. Lawry might prefer that to working in a saloon, and it would be a place to stash goods for associates. Yes, that might be better than all of them working in the same business. Diversify to establish roots quickly.

“Do you sell pieces on commission?” Parlan asked.

“Those two cases all have jewelry that was brought in by the salvage company. They get a percentage from the sales.”

“Costume jewelry. Trinkets.” It took effort not to sneer at the junk. “They don’t bring in anything with gems?”

A hesitation. Something in the eyes.

Parlan swore silently. The jeweler was a fucking Intuit. And wary of him asking questions.

“Anything that is deemed valuable is held for possible heirs. But not here.”

Not even being subtle about telling him there wasn’t anything there to steal.

“I didn’t realize Intuits were living in this town,” Parlan said, sounding casual but meaning it as a threat. Intuits who lived in a human town could often be very accommodating in exchange for someone keeping their secret. But there was no reaction from the jeweler. No wariness. That meant the Intuits weren’t hiding that extra sense that had been the reason for generations of persecution. Damn it!

“This is a mixed community,” the jeweler replied. “Plenty of Intuits have settled here.”

Not what he wanted to hear. He’d always avoided Intuit communities because they were bad for business. But . . . “Have you ever heard of an Intuit who could match a stone to a person? Not just that a garnet, for example, would be a good stone for a person but picking the one garnet out of a pile of stones that resonated with the person in exactly the right way? A person like that might have a strong reaction to stones that were supposedly dissonant with whoever handled them.”

“I’ve never heard of a jeweler who could make that precise a match between stone and customer. Must be a rare ability—if it isn’t just a brag to boost business.”

Because of his own ability, Parlan knew when someone was bluffing—or lying—and the jeweler had just revealed his hand. Abigail, the deceitful, faithless bitch, was in town. Somewhere. “Well, you know how it is. People exaggerate Intuit abilities to justify their own mistakes.”

The bell over the door jingled. The jeweler looked relieved.

Parlan turned away from the counter and faced the newcomer.

The gray in the hair was too well blended into the black to be caused by age, especially when combined with the face and body of a man in his prime. The amber eyes that were fixed on him held unnerving focus. Casual clothes—jeans, shoes, checked shirt. And a star pinned to the shirt pocket.

“You must be Sheriff Wolfgard,” Parlan said, expecting the Other to be surprised that he would know.

“You must be Blackstone,” Wolfgard replied. “The Gambler.”

By all the dark gods, how had he known that? Had Charlie Webb been in town shooting off his mouth before Judd found him? Or had the mayor identified him that way, knowing he was a professional gambler? Either way, here was the sheriff rushing over to get a look at the stranger who had come to his town.

He met the Wolf’s eyes. He’d stared down plenty of men—especially the ones foolish enough to call him a cheat. But this was different. The amber eyes didn’t look away; the lips pulled back, revealing teeth that weren’t human; and the sound coming from that throat . . .

Parlan looked away, acknowledging the Wolf’s dominance.

“If you’ll excuse me, Sheriff?”

He waited until the Wolf stepped aside. It bothered him that he wanted to hurry, wanted to run.

The fucking beast made his skin crawl.

Parlan headed for the saloon. He wanted, needed, a drink. And he wanted time to consider what the clan would need to do in order to stake a claim in Bennett.

“Sheriff?”

Virgil looked at Kelley. The fear smell had been in the shop before he’d entered, so he knew he wasn’t the cause. “What?”

Kelley wiped a hand across his forehead. “That man said a couple of things that made me think he was fishing for information about Abby.”

Virgil growled. “He said her name?”

“No.” Kelley shifted from one foot to the other. “But he said some things that reminded me of how Abby had acted around some gemstones just before we moved to Bennett. It . . . caused some trouble between us. Made me see things differently. Just because our marriage is over doesn’t mean I want her to get hurt.”

“He’s trying to sniff her out.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Then we’ll have to sniff out the rest of his pack before he finds her.”

Two men were sitting at a table, drinking beer and playing checkers. Two other men, dressed almost identically in what Parlan considered a work uniform, stood on either side of the bar. The bartender had black hair, dark eyes, and olive skin.

Sanguinati. Gods, weren’t any of them blond-haired and blue-eyed? Or had they bred any other coloring out of their species?

The other man had medium brown hair, green eyes, and an easy smile. Young, with that first real-job eagerness. Watching him shuffle a deck of cards and add a bit of flash to the hand work before he dealt out two hands of cards, Parlan smiled.

The Sanguinati looked at him. “Can I get you something from the bar?”

“Whiskey from your best bottle.”

While the vampire retrieved the bottle and a glass, Parlan moved closer to the other man. “You work here too?”

“I’m the saloon’s professional gambler.”

You’re hardly that. Takes more than a few fancy moves to be a professional.

He indicated the cards on the bar. “Is this a closed game?” He’d learn more by playing a couple of hands—and losing so they would be eager to have him come back—than he would by asking questions.

“No, we can add another player. I’m Freddie, and that’s Yuri.” Freddie scooped up the cards he’d just dealt and shuffled again to include Parlan.

Yuri set the glass of whiskey in front of Parlan and set the bottle on the bar just out of reach of Parlan helping himself. Then he reached under the bar and retrieved a metal cake tin. He set it on the bar, opened it, and . . .

“Do you usually stake your customers?” Parlan asked as Yuri placed stacks of quarters in front of each of them.

“I’m still learning this game, so this is just for practice,” Yuri replied. “At the end of it, all the coin goes back in the box.”

Were they kidding? Apparently not.

“All right, gents, ante up. We’re playing five-card stud.” Freddie dealt the cards.

Parlan looked at a pair of nines. Nothing else to work with, but he put a quarter in the pot.

Freddie barely looked at his cards before pointing a finger at the vampire and laughing. “Raised eyebrows is a tell, my friend. Signals that you’ve been dealt a good hand—maybe a very good hand.”

“Or, knowing that a human would think that, it could be a bluff and I’m trying to fool you into thinking I have a very good hand when I have nothing,” Yuri replied with a little smile.

Freddie studied the vampire. “I can’t get a feel for if you’re bluffing.”

“Maybe because I’m not. I’ll call your quarter and raise another.” Yuri tossed two quarters into the pot.

“Huh. We’ll see.” Freddie looked at Parlan. “You in?”

“I’m in.” Parlan matched the bet and swore silently. Freddie was another Intuit gambler—one who would recognize someone else with his particular skill.

“And the dealer is in. Cards?”

The boy was good with his hands, clever with his patter—and didn’t cheat. Of course, it was pointless to cheat when you were playing for quarters, which was ludicrous. The saloon wasn’t going to make any money, and a gambler wasn’t going to make enough for the time invested.

His place would be for the serious gamblers, not these chickenshit children playing at being men with their penny-ante games.

They played a few hands. The vampire had no feel for the game, and his decision to bet or fold seemed to have no connection to the cards he held since he folded a couple of times when he had the winning hand—something Freddie explained when he turned over his friend’s cards.

Freddie, on the other hand, had decent skills at poker and was equally good as a blackjack dealer. At least, that was the sense Parlan had from the banter between the two males.

From their talk, he gleaned that the place had another bartender and a few girls who gave customers something pretty to look at. Neither of them mentioned the person who actually ran the saloon, which he found interesting.

“Last hand,” Yuri said. “Looks like we’re starting to get customers.”

Freddie didn’t move, just held the cards in a white-knuckled grip before setting the deck on the bar. “No. We’re done.” He took a step back. “We’re done.”

“Freddie?”

Parlan saw the vampire change from genial bartender to predator in a heartbeat.

Freddie shook his head. “I don’t want to deal this hand. We’re done.” He hurried away, heading toward the toilets, if the sign on the back wall was accurate.

Curious about what had spooked the boy, Parlan reached for the cards. That’s when something walked out of the office next to the bar. Female, with gold hair streaked with blue and red—and black eyes that, when he met them, produced a moment of dizziness.

What was that thing?

“Ma’am.” Parlan turned away. Keeping his hand on the bar, he waited for the dizziness to pass before he walked out of the saloon.

They didn’t water the whiskey; that was all. Had there been some kind of scent in the place that affected him, something that he hadn’t noticed? Since he felt fine within moments of being outside, Parlan dismissed the dizziness and strolled around the square, taking a good look at the main business district as he considered possibilities.

Scythe watched the stranger leave the saloon, his steps a little hesitant.

“Maybe you took too much?” Yuri commented as he, too, watched the man.

“Barely a sip of his life energy. Just enough to encourage him to leave.” She looked toward the toilets. “Freddie is upset. Why?”

Yuri shook his head. “The Blackstone man didn’t do anything suspicious or try to cheat. After Tolya warned me to be on the lookout for the man, Freddie and I decided on a signal if he sensed anything. But he didn’t say the words.”

“Something made him uneasy.” And it wasn’t me.

“The cards.”

“But he didn’t see them.”

Yuri stared at the deck. “No, he didn’t. And yet . . .” He dealt the cards as Freddie would have, turning them faceup so they could see each hand. “I would have had four hearts. I think, if I’d discarded the Jack of Spades and drawn another heart, I would have had a good hand. Maybe a winning hand.”

“Better than Freddie’s? He had three females.”

“I play to be congenial and because it seems to be an expected part of a male working in a frontier saloon, but I don’t pay that much attention to what wins and what doesn’t, so I can’t say if my hand would have beat his.” Yuri tapped a finger on the last hand. “So this must be the reason Freddie got spooked.”

Scythe frowned at the black cards—two eights and two aces. “Why?”

“I don’t know. But I wonder how Mr. Blackstone would have reacted if he’d seen those cards.”

Parlan stopped in the shops and talked to the people who worked there, giving his same spiel over and over—he was thinking of resettling in Bennett, had heard it was a place that held adventure as well as opportunities, even for an old gambler like himself who had loved frontier stories when he was a boy. The shopkeepers looked frazzled and a little panicked, but all of them had big smiles. Adventure? Yes. Opportunities? Definitely. A lot of work? More than could be packed into the hours in a day, every day.

He went to the diner and ordered coffee and a meal so that he would have a reason to sit for a while without anyone thinking anything about it.

Bennett was like a boomtown from the frontier days, when a lot of people converged on a place and businesses sprouted like weeds. Most of the people hadn’t been in town—or even in this region of Thaisia—a month ago, and new people arrived every day, looking for work, looking for a place to settle, looking for a buffer between them and the terra indigene. Those looking for a buffer usually took the next train out after meeting the mayor and seeing the sheriff. The rest were busy getting businesses back up and running, taking over places that existed. No need to pay the previous owners. They were dead and gone, replaced by sheep who would do what the dominant predators wanted them to do.

He spent the day looking around. He spent the evening in his hotel room thinking.

The respectable con wasn’t going to be enough. This place was going to be a magnet for opportunists and outlaws who, like himself, needed someplace to shelter for a while. They would arrive, all swagger and attitude like they would have done a year ago. But too much had changed, and what they might have gotten away with before would cause terrible trouble now. They wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t accept it, and as sure as all the dark gods smiled on shady endeavors, they would never back down for a sheriff that got furry and howled at the moon. Instead of growing and prospering, the town would break apart—unless the people controlling the town were known to the opportunists and outlaws, unless those people already had reputations and were feared.

It was just like in the frontier stories, when the outlaws were squeezed out, were corralled by lawmen and rules until the only places they could live were places not fit for humans.

He had a feeling there was only one way the clan would prosper in Bennett.

He called his brother Lawry.

“We need to take the town,” he said quietly.

“Are you drunk or crazy?” Lawry also spoke quietly, but that didn’t dilute his astonishment. “The HFL tried eliminating the Others, and look what happened.”

“They tried to destroy the Wolves and pulled all the terra indigene into the fight. We’re going to play by their rules—and win.”

“How?”

“A fight for dominance.” He’d thought for hours about Tolya Sanguinati’s comment about how leadership could change. “We challenge the existing leaders to see who will control the town. When we win, we become the rulers. We don’t mess with the smaller shifters. They can stay. And we don’t mess with what lives in the wild country. By my reckoning, there are a handful of Sanguinati and a couple of Wolves controlling the town. If we defeat them, we win.” He’d even considered how to present his argument so that Tolya Sanguinati would help make that happen.

“Until we find Sweeney Cooke and Charlie Webb, we can’t take on that many opponents, even with Judd’s skills.”

“Cooke and Webb are out of the picture. Dead. I know that for a fact. But I have a feeling that plenty of other associates will be here soon, and we’ll invite a few of them to stand with us to form a new government.”

“What do you want me to do? The boy and I are shacked up in a piss hole almost on the border that divides the north and south Midwest Regions.”

Parlan frowned. “Why are you that far south? We’re supposed to be meeting here.”

“No choice. The closest place south of Bennett is a village called Prairie Gold. Damn place is a nest of Intuits. Couldn’t sneak our boy into the truck-stop motel, and I couldn’t buy supplies for two people because the bitch in the general store was looking at me too hard, seeing too much likeness between me and something she’d seen somewhere.”

The damn Wanted poster. A family resemblance would be enough to give some Intuits a feeling about Lawry that could lead to Dalton’s capture.

“You want us to head your way now?” Lawry asked.

“Yes. And give me any news you hear about anyone of interest heading this way.”

“I heard Sleight-of-Hand Slim is riding the trains,” Lawry said. “But I also heard a couple of passengers were pulled off a train recently and eaten, so I don’t think he’ll be riding the trains much longer.”

Ending that call, Parlan called Judd next and told him the plan.

“The HFL proved that Wolves weren’t immune to bullets, but the vampires might be harder to kill,” Judd said.

“Harder, but not impossible,” Parlan replied. “In human form, they should die like anything else.” He wasn’t sure about that, but it sounded reasonable. “Besides, a fight for dominance doesn’t have to be a fight to the death. If I put this to the mayor the right way, we could pull this off with some bluster and a couple of shots fired in the air to show our superior weapons and let them surrender the field and leave town. They don’t need Bennett. Humans do.”

“And after this mock fight?”

“I become Mayor Blackstone and you become Sheriff McCall, and we keep our fine town safe from anyone who would take advantage of the smaller shifters and the humans who sank everything they had into getting here and now have nowhere to go. So we’ll look after them and put a sharp edge on the law in case they forget to be grateful.”

Judd laughed softly, a chilling sound. “I can get behind that.”

Of course he would. Judd was so good with knives because he enjoyed using them. But he was equally efficient with a gun when the work called for it.

“I can reach out to Frank and Eli Bonney,” Judd said. “Last I heard, they weren’t far from here. Same with Durango Jones.”

“Do I know him?”

“You know him by another name. He changes names more often than he changes his underwear.”

“Ah, yes. Him.” Swaggering fool with too much love for the bottle—and an equal love for making trouble—but damn good with a gun despite his flaws. The sort of man who would need to feel the sharp edge of the law once they had taken the town.

“Tell them I intend to be the next mayor, so they should all come to town as upstanding citizens. We’ve got a five-day window before visitors have to commit to working in the town. They can play tourist without anyone asking too many questions.”

“I’ll pass the word.”

Parlan waited, sensing that the other man had more to say.

“They found the damn body too fast,” Judd said. “Don’t know what those crews were doing so far out from the main town, but they found the body too fast.”

“I know. The mayor showed me a photo from the crime scene.”

“Bastard.”

“Showed me another photo of a problem solved.”

Judd understood. “What took him out?”

“Nothing human.” Parlan thought for a moment. If the sheriff knew he was the Gambler, then . . . “I have a feeling the sheriff knows you’re called the Knife. Be careful.”

“There are eyes everywhere. I can feel them. But there are a few squatters living in empty houses. They’re sufficient camouflage. Easy enough for me to slip out at night and raid nearby houses for supplies, same as they’re doing. They don’t stay more than a few nights in any one area. Then they move a couple of blocks away and set up again. Just have to watch out for those crews coming in to strip the places.”

“I’ll call when the rest of the clan, and any associates, reach town.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Yes, Judd McCall would look forward to it. And so would he.

Later that night, when the town was quiet, Tolya went to Yuri’s house.

“Did Lila Gold have any information?” he asked.

“I told her you were interested in reading about dominance fights in frontier towns.” Yuri hesitated.

“And?” Tolya prompted.

“She said she had a feeling that you should talk to Jana, that what you were looking for had to do with perception rather than historical truth.”

An interesting distinction. Did Parlan Blackstone make the same distinction?

Tolya went to the front door and looked across the street. Lights were still on at Jana and Barbara Ellen’s house, so someone was still awake.

“I’d better pay our deputy a visit,” Tolya said.

“Are you staying here tonight?” Yuri asked.

“Yes.” Unlike the humans in the town, he didn’t need to worry about crossing paths with one of the Elders, but he wanted to look at any information he could gather as soon as possible.

He strolled across the street. He’d seen Virgil at the end of block, and Virgil had seen him. The Wolf made no comment about him visiting the two females, and he offered no explanation.

Then Virgil howled, alerting the entire street and probably waking up half the humans who lived there. And then Rusty howled, responding to her pack leader and ignoring Jana’s command to hush.

And then something in the Elder Hills howled—and that sound made Tolya shiver.

Up and down the street, he heard doors that had been open to let in the cooler night air quietly close.

“Mr. Sanguinati?”

Jana stood at the door, looking at him through the screen.

Tolya smiled. “I apologize for showing up at your home, but Lila Gold suggested I talk to you about frontier stories.”

“Oh.” Grabbing Rusty’s collar, she opened the door. “I’m not a scholar like Lila, but I have some novels set during the frontier days.”

Entering the house, Tolya allowed the puppy to sniff him while he greeted Barbara Ellen, who blushed—a reaction he decided had more to do with her sparse amount of clothing than with him.

“You were preparing for sleep?” he asked when Jana led him to another room and turned on the overhead light.

“Why do you ask?”

“Barbara Ellen’s clothing.” And yours.

Jana nodded. “We weren’t expecting company.” She waved a hand at the bookcase. “What were you looking for?”

So they were going to pretend she was wearing her deputy clothes. He could do that. “A fight for dominance in a frontier town.”

“A fight that’s in a ‘this town ain’t big enough for the both of us’ kind of story or something else?”

“A fight between two packs.” Tolya watched the rapid beating of her pulse. Knew exactly where to place his mouth on her neck to drink deep.

Outside the window, he heard a soft growl. Virgil would never consider taking a human for a mate, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t protect a member of his pack even if she wasn’t terra indigene.

Jana hesitated, then selected a book and handed it to him. The cover was dominated by a badge and what humans called a six-gun. The background was land dominated by hills.

“This is the one.” She sounded unnerved for reasons he didn’t understand.

“Why?”

“The elements on the cover were part of a cryptic message that led me to Lakeside and the job fair. My foster father read this particular story a lot. It’s about a fight for control of a town. It wasn’t his favorite frontier story, but he thought it held an important lesson, especially for a girl who wanted to be a police officer.”

Tolya thought he knew what a father would tell a girl child. He smiled. “Justice prevails? The good guys win?”

Jana didn’t return the smile. “No. The lesson was that sometimes the good guys don’t win—or survive.”