“You bastard!” her husband roared.
The spell was coming back into affect. Shadows Fade pointed to a dispelling tattoo on her arm. As imperceptibly as he could, Dust nodded.
Clearing a spell on people’s minds would take time, especially when all it’d done was push their fear a little; the magic would be thin, both subtle and flimsy. There were drawbacks to such delicate spells though, hence the mage having to step in to shore it up when the mob wavered.
“Where’s the Father?” Dust asked to eat up time.
“Resting,” another woman said. Dust thought her name was Mary.
“Maybe you should wake him, let him sort this out?”
The mage shook his head. “No, no, no. Not when you’ve got your control over him, when you’re playing him like a puppet.”
“Good point,” Bowler Hat said.
“You’re a monster,” Mary whispered. “The Father needed your help! We needed your help!”
“You got it,” Dust pointed out.
“But at what cost?” the mage said. He stepped closer. The knife was an inch from Dust’s chest. “You took that poor girl and destroyed her, tore her to pieces for… Hell, I don’t even know what reason. None of us would’ve accepted that price. Not one.”
Dust wished he could slap the mage. A warm forearm warned him against it.
“No!” the townsfolk cried.
“Not at all.”
“Lord have mercy.”
Dust looked down. The mage’s knife had a spell on it too, a poison strong enough to kill a man in hours. On Dust, it wouldn’t be lethal but it wouldn’t be fun either. It’d slow him down, give Naismith more time to race ahead.
“What’s it to be then?” Dust asked. “Will you take us prisoner?”
“I reckon so,” Bowler Hat said.
“You and your red skin bitch,” the mage said, earning a hiss from Shadows Fade.
The slur bought him another couple of seconds of weaving his magic over Crucifix as well as the warrior’s ire. And Dust’s. He wondered if the mage could tell the warrior was activating her tattoos and decided if he did then he would’ve stabbed Dust by now.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Penelope said, her voice low. At least her shaking had stopped.
“Shut up.”
“When’ll you hold us ’til?” Dust asked.
The mage smiled, a sickly gesture. “Until the Solution arrive. Before she left, poor Eleanor Naismith sent a telegraph to them letting them know what you’ve done.”
It might’ve been Dust’s imagination but he swore it started raining harder then, that the wind bit into his skin a mite more. Naismith had reported him to the Solution as a torturer, a monster. She couldn’t have sent a telegraph with the line down but she could easily have sent a messaging spell to a sympathetic person in the Solution, perhaps even someone manning the telegraph station. Dust hadn’t even considered that she might magically contact her cult as it involved a rare spell.
If the mage was telling the truth – and Dust didn’t think he was powerful enough to enjoy taunting someone and maintain a delicate spell – then their chase was already over. Naismith’s report would spawn more messages and soon his reputation would be ignited. Razed even. He truly was the Wanted Man now.
Slowly, he breathed out. For Dust, the world had just changed.
Godly Claw howled then, the final act of the spell she and Shadows Fade had been casting. The sound became a blue gas that rolled like the tide and clashed against the people of Crucifix. When it touched them their eyes clouded over and they looked around in confusion.
“Where are we?” the husband asked his wife.
“Good question, Abel,” she said. “We’re outside. For some reason.”
The mage panicked and tried to stab Dust. Dust wasn’t stunned enough to not knock his hand away, grab the mage by the wrist and slam his forearm against Dust’s knee.
The mage screamed and dropped the knife, which Dust kicked out of reach. His cry got the crowd’s attention. They looked at Dust as though for the first time and then at their manhandled town drunk.
“Emmett, what’re you doing?” Bowler Hat asked.
“He attacked me!” Emmett screeched. He tried to wrench himself away but Dust pulled him back and grabbed his other wrist.
“I didn’t,” Dust said.
“It’s true, he didn’t!” Penelope shouted.
“It is,” said Shadows Fade.
The crowd looked from person to person, unsure what to do. Some gripped their weapons again, ready to believe their own. Others lowered them. It looked like there might be a fight and Naismith would get more evidence against him. Damn her eyes.
Thankfully, the Father chose that moment to stumble out from the great rip in his chapel and ask, bleary but mad as a spider, “What in the name of the Devil’s crotch is going on out here?”
Dust relaxed and Emmett tensed in his grip. The game was up.
“Emmett cast some kind of-” Dust started.
The Father interrupted. “Sweet Mary, is that Penelope?”
Penelope looked uncomfortable. If she’d had the strength, she might’ve blushed. “Do I know you, Father?”
“Jesus be praised,” the Father whispered. “But look at you, you poor thing. Come on, get in out of the rain, the lot of you.”
Penelope looked at Shadows Fade for confirmation of whether to go inside. The warrior nodded; what she’d learned of the Father must’ve convinced her he could be trusted. Penelope then delicately walked through the rift. The people of Crucifix followed after, casting confused glances at Dust and Emmett, who no longer struggled in his grip.
Then it was just the four of them. Five including Godly Claw. The Father rested against the chapel, his magic still draining him, and gave them a dull-eyed appraisal.
“First thing’s first; what happened with Emmett?”
“Don’t listen to them!” Emmett cried, rediscovering his fight. “They-”
Dust ended the fucker’s nonsense by holding a hand over his mouth. He responded by licking the palm of Dust’s hand, an annoyance but all he could really do in the situation.
“He cast a spell upon your flock then tried to stab Dust,” Shadows Fade said.
The Father shook his head then frowned, tried to work out what’d just happened. It was like he’d taken a blow to the head. The man looked to Dust, almost scared.
“She knows English,” Dust said.
“Oh,” the Father said. “Well, I’m sorry for what I said in the chapel.”
“Most men are like that,” she replied. “I try not to hold it against them; it is not their fault that their minds are limited.”
The Father winced. Dust smiled.
“Anyway,” the Father said, “what’re we going to do with you, Emmett?”
The fucker stopped licking Dust’s palm, a minor relief. Dust let go to let him speak.
“You’re going to do nothing with me,” he said.
Magic then surged within him. Without thinking, Dust picked him up and ran, worried he might be about to attack the Father.
Emmett’s body twitched and convulsed as Dust carried him over his shoulder like a sack of coal. White froth spilled from his mouth. By the time Dust got to the main road out of Crucifix, it was obvious this wasn’t an attack but a ritual cast long ago, a fail-safe in case he ever got captured.
It seemed everyone thought about being captured but Dust.
He threw the fucker down when the magic came to a critical mass and landed in a heap, propped up against the wall like a rag doll. He fixed his eyes on Dust as the ritual tore into his brain and laughed. Blood then gushed out through his ears, nose and mouth, a red torrent which lasted for seconds. Then Emmett was no more. The light left his eyes and he slumped over to bleed out onto the road.
When he was sure the ritual was over, Dust knelt and searched the corpse. Emmett was filthy, his skin clammy and uncomfortable to touch, but Dust checked everywhere to be sure. The only thing of interest was an unusual fetish around his pale ankle, a knot carved out of black wood with a silver chain to hold it up.
Dust removed it and held it toward the faint light of the chapel’s runes and spells. Remnants of magic dripped from the fetish; Dust reckoned this’d been the catalyst for that last-ditch ritual.
Shadows Fade appeared at the head of the road with Godly Claw. She noted Emmett’s death and Dust’s condition then relaxed slightly.
“You ever seen one of these?” Dust asked, holding the fetish out toward her.
The warrior approached and examined it. “No. Never.”
“Me either. But it just killed him,” he examined the knot again and sighed. “There’s a lot more too all of this.”
“There always is.”
He looked up at Shadows Fade and smiled. “Ain’t that the truth. C’mon, let’s get out of the rain.”
The warrior nodded and they both walked back to the chapel, leaving Emmett’s corpse to be cleansed by the thudding rain.
