Lawless Lands: Tales from the Weird Frontier Read online

  The bartender dropped his gaze to the shot glasses before him.

  “That’s what I thought,” Jackson said, easing her hand only an inch or two away from her six-shooter, but not so far she couldn’t grab it if anyone else decided to take a disliking to Imala’s arrival.

  O’Reilly sheathed her blades and waved the now empty bottle at the bartender. “Why don’t you get a fresh bottle of something nice for our friend to make up for it, hmm?”

  The bartender nodded without looking up, rummaged around on the shelves behind him, and slid a bottle down the counter.

  “On the house,” he muttered.

  Jackson waited and stared at him. Hard.

  “With apologies,” he added.

  O’Reilly picked up the bottle and surveyed the label. “Unholy Temper. The man knows how to make a proper apology, I’ll give him that.”

  Jackson maintained her steady stare for a full minute more, but the bartender never looked up again. Imala slipped into the open seat on Jackson’s right. Idly, she placed her hand on the counter with a low hum. A dozen grains of sand picked up and swirled in a tiny vortex in front of her, spinning like a top. O’Reilly poured a drink and nudged it over. Imala stopped it with her palm, but the sand kept spinning, her concentration never broken.

  Spencer came up to the bar and peered over the edge, watching the sand as it drifted in lazy circles.

  “How does it look out there?” Jackson finally asked, still glaring at the bartender’s back.

  “We’ll have trouble before nightfall,” Imala replied. “And stop scaring him, Jackson. I don’t care what he said.”

  “You never care what anyone says. But I do. How much trouble?”

  Imala sent two grains of sand to chasing each other around the rim of her shot glass. One grain tumbled into the drink then bounced out again.

  “Two storms. One close to bursting. The other small and far away.”

  O’Reilly’s smile blossomed, partly from the effects of the Unholy Temper and partly from the promise of a fight.

  “Just keeps getting better and better,” she said. “Seeker’s Pass is growing on me.”

  Jackson shot a dark look in her direction. “Are there any odds that scare you?”

  O’Reilly snorted. “If there are, I haven’t met them yet.”

  Spencer peeled a finger away from the bar’s counter and pointed at the sand.

  “How did you do that?”

  Jackson, O’Reilly, and Imala turned as one to face Spencer. The bartender snapped his dishrag at him.

  “Spencer, boy, run along. You’ll get yourself killed, pestering bounty hunters with your ceaseless questions the way you do.”

  Spencer waved him off. “I’ll get myself killed no matter where I go, Mr. Hale.”

  O’Reilly laughed and tipped her bottle in Spencer’s direction. “Quick learner, that one.”

  Imala swept her hand over the counter, and the sand grains jumped into her palm, pouncing and tumbling over each other.

  “The sands sing, Spencer,” she said. “And I merely listen. That’s all they want.”

  Spencer wrinkled his nose. “They don’t sing.”

  “Oh yes, they do. You’ve heard how those sandstorms scream with power. You’ve heard them chatter as they scratch at the windows. And after I’ve listened to their song, I sing it back to them, and they dance for me.”

  “So you can control the whole desert then,” Spencer said, his eyes lighting up. “You could stop the desert and the gods from taking anyone else.”

  Imala made a small sound of disagreement. “I wish it was that simple. As much as I can control the sand, I can’t stop the sand. No one owns the desert but the desert itself. And I have tried. Believe me.”

  “Almost got yourself killed, too,” Jackson grumbled.

  Imala flashed a gentle smile in her direction. “But you were there to fix my mistakes, as always.”

  Jackson grunted in response.

  Imala’s fingers drifted over Spencer’s necklace that still lay on the dark wood of the countertop, glittering like a thread of silver starlight. She opened her mouth to ask about it, but a gust of wind cut her off. It howled between the only two buildings of Seeker’s Pass and swept into the saloon. A spray of sand grated over Jackson’s face, skittered along the edges of O’Reilly’s blades, and came to a stop in front of Imala, showering to the floor as if it had hit an invisible wall.

  “A little early, aren’t they?” O’Reilly said, sliding her blades from their sheaths. “Don’t even bother waiting for sundown anymore.”

  “You should know by now,” Jackson replied, clamping her cigar between her teeth and pulling her six-shooter from its holster. “The gods do whatever they damn well please.”

  Jackson, O’Reilly, and Imala pushed out of the batwing doors and into the street.

  Only a few feet away, against the pale wash of the sky, was a massive churning ball of sand, spinning in place, a private world of storm for the gods alone. Flickers of the gods could be seen inside, shapes of their shadows—a rattlesnake tail, a scorpion claw, a human-like face—before the sand tumbled those faint glimpses out of sight again.

  Jackson turned to find a second storm just beginning to form on the other side of town, a mere pinprick against the horizon, sucking in sand from the nearby desert until patches of hard-packed dirt and bare rock were exposed. It might be small now, seemingly inconsequential to the immediate trouble at hand, but she’d seen these storms explode in minutes, gods swarming out like cockroaches.

  A flash of movement caught Jackson’s eye. Spencer stood on the steps of the saloon, clinging to the hitching post against the tearing winds as bits of sand flew from his hair and his clothes in clouds of dust.

  “We’ve never faced two storms at the same time before,” O’Reilly said, shouting to be heard over the wind. “And here I thought this was only a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere.”

  Jackson couldn’t stop staring at Spencer, still holding onto that hitching post for all he was worth. That boy wasn’t going to let go of this forsaken town until the gods pried his dead fingers from it.

  A light touch at her elbow brought Jackson back to the present. Imala was studying her, dark eyes steady and concerned. The wind whipped Imala’s black hair around her face, but otherwise, the sands didn’t make contact with her the way it did for everyone and everything else, coating clothing and hair and skin in a layer of grit that never came off. Imala was at peace despite the chaos around her, untouched, unmarked as sand grains jumped and vibrated around her feet.

  “You can sit this one out,” Imala offered. “We won’t blame you. It takes such a toll and…”

  “It’s like that for all of us,” Jackson cut in. She paused then added, “Except maybe O’Reilly.”

  Imala said nothing. She had noticed Spencer as well, the only unarmed human who dared to be in the street with the gods so near. Jackson swore under her breath. She’d never turned anyone down when they asked for help against the gods. Few people had the power to do anything. But she did. She had it coursing through her veins, her very life’s source.

  She could feel Imala and O’Reilly staring at her. Waiting. Jackson swore again, louder this time, and marched up to Spencer until she towered above him.

  “Get inside,” she roared over the wind.

  Spencer shielded his eyes against the sand, the sun, and the wind and peered up at her.

  “Are you leaving?” he asked.

  Jackson blinked, startled. “What?”

  “I heard your friend, the Irish one with the blessed blades. She said you’ve never fought two sandstorms at once. And I can see it on your face. That’s too many. Even for you.”

  Jackson ground her teeth together. She should run. That would be the smart thing to do. Hightail it like all of Seeker’s Pass expected her to. Then again, she hated meeting people’s expectations…

  “Haven’t backed down from a fight in my life,” Jackson replied. “And nei
ther has O’Reilly. Or Imala. We’re not going anywhere.”

  The smile that transformed Spencer’s dirt-stained face made Jackson’s chest ache. He looked so young. Too young to be here with storms threatening to break. Spencer’s fist shot out, the silver necklace dangling from his fingers.

  “Don’t know how you’ll split it three ways though,” he said. “Hadn’t exactly thought that far ahead I guess.”

  Jackson tucked the necklace into Spencer’s palm and pushed it to his chest. “Keep it,” she said. “Carries more value for you anyway.”

  Spencer’s smile wobbled just a little, and he nodded.

  The winds fell away in that moment, and the sands trailed from windows and eaves like dry rain. Jackson jerked her thumb at the saloon.

  “Get inside,” she repeated. “Before I drag you in there myself. And don’t come out for anything, understood?”

  He muttered a quick “yes ma’am” before he hurried inside. Jackson returned to O’Reilly and Imala. She checked the bullets in her six-shooter, more of a ritual than a necessity since she always kept it loaded.

  “Losin’ your touch and goin’ soft, old girl,” O’Reilly said with a wry glance in Jackson’s direction.

  Jackson snapped the barrel into place. “Shut up.”

  The first sandstorm burst like a bubble in a shower of sand, and three gods tumbled out, black against the fiery gold of the desert. They uncurled and stretched, legs and limbs and scales scraping over the desert floor. Each bore a resemblance to part of the desert—a snake body, scorpion claws, spider legs—and each bore a human likeness as well, caught between two species, earning them the title of gods among men.

  “So the cavalry has arrived at last,” one god said, with a snake-like tail and a human torso. Charcoal black skin gleamed in the blazing white sunlight. The god smiled, and two perfect fangs flashed out. “It’s nice to have a bit of a challenge every once in a while.”

  A rustling rumble began to grow at Jackson’s back, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the first three gods who had emerged. She knew that sound though. The second sandstorm was expanding, hot and fast.

  “If you leave now,” another god said, this one with the long, dusty brown body of a scorpion and the head of a woman, “we’ll give you a head start, just to be generous. You might survive, depending on how fast you run.”

  “Afraid we can’t return the generous offer,” Jackson said. “If you run now, we’ll still kill you.”

  The gods hissed with laughter and seemed to swell against the sky as they shifted, fanning out around Seeker’s Pass.

  “Big talk for such tiny humans,” the snake god replied. “We’ll enjoy sucking the marrow from your bones and grinding you into the dirt. Just like every other weak human who has tried to stop us from wiping the earth clean and claiming it as ours.”

  O’Reilly lowered her head and grinned, feral and wild and hungry for the ensuing fight.

  “You’ll be the one pickin’ your teeth with your own bones when we’re through with you,” she said. With that, she launched herself at the snake god, blades singing and slicing through the air.

  Jackson bit back a curse at O’Reilly’s early attack and switched her attention to the encroaching scorpion god hurtling toward O’Reilly’s left shoulder. Jackson fired and clipped the scorpion god in the abdomen. Red tentacles of smoke curled out from the bullet wound and burst like a flower, crawling over the god’s body. It writhed and shrieked with fury, twisting in the sand, claws snapping at the curse as it worked its way under the scorpion god’s thick plates of armor and into the soft flesh beneath.

  Imala turned her hands palm-down toward the earth and began to sing, a quiet melody that gained strength with every word. The sands twisted up in strings toward her hands, swaying back and forth to the rhythm until she had dozens of strings at her command like a puppeteer. With a guiding push, she sent the strings of sand out towards the third god, spider legs stomping against the desert floor as it charged toward her. The sand tangled in the god’s legs and made it stumble before it regained its footing.

  Imala sent a second assault of sand against the spider god, this one a swarm of sand darts, peppering the spider god until it shrieked and tunneled beneath the sand for shelter.

  The second sandstorm burst apart, and three more gods tumbled out, bearing the bodies of lizards and the heads of humans, gliding over the desert floor towards them. Imala’s voice climbed another octave, stronger, louder, soaring into the sky. More sand rose at her command in a jet of dust behind her. It curled forward like smoke and blinded the second wave of gods scrambling over each other to join the fight.

  But the distraction lasted only a moment. The lizard gods tunneled below the sands and disappeared from sight. Jackson pulled up, watching the desert floor as it heaved and rippled in every direction. She kept her pistol trained on the ground, waiting for the first god to poke its head up. The saloon shuddered on its foundation as the gods burrowed underneath, making the building sway. Wood creaked and groaned in protest at being disturbed as it shifted then settled flat again. The handful of folk inside the saloon spilled out of the door and onto the sands, frantic for shelter that wouldn’t threaten to crush them.

  Jackson stepped forward, waving them back inside. A lizard god burst out of the sand like a daisy, mouth transformed to a wide open black hole, guzzling sand and humans alike before it whipped around.

  “You lose, gunslinger,” it said, then advanced on Jackson, slithering over the desert floor.

  Imala brought her hands up sharp and fast. A wall of sand shot into the air, cutting the lizard god off from its attack on Jackson. So long as Imala could keep the sand wall strong, their backs were covered. She pulled and pushed, coaxed and teased the desert into life, bigger than anything Jackson had ever seen Imala work before. Spinning ribbons of sand ducked and twisted around Imala, Jackson, and O’Reilly, fending off blows from the gods like a shield. Lightning crackled and snapped in blinding flashes as curses and blessings flew amid the billowing sands.

  Jackson could hardly see anything now as the storm grew, colliding and absorbing the storms of the gods. Imala trembled from the strain of controlling so much sand at once, but she put her head down, gritted her teeth, and held on. She wouldn’t let herself slip, not now, when Jackson and O’Reilly needed her the most.

  Jackson could just make out O’Reilly fighting off two gods, blades winking in the orange-red haze of sand. Pieces of scaled armor fell all around her as she cut and carved.

  A scream pierced the battle, small and faint and so very human amid the war cries of the gods.

  Jackson spun at the sound. Two gods ripped the saloon’s roof clean off, shingles peeling away like flower petals in the storm. And Jackson knew there would be only one person left in that saloon…

  Jackson took off running through the storm, firing over and over in desperation. There was simply too much distance between her and the saloon to make it before those gods would have Spencer. Curses coiled like snakes in the air, leaving a trail of red searing through the sands and biting into the gods’ armored bodies.

  O’Reilly sliced with her blessed blades, forging her way toward the saloon.

  And Imala screamed with the full force of the sand flaring out around the entire battle in a halo before crashing in on top of them all.

  The sands rushed away like a wave running out to meet the sea. Then the grains scrambled over each other and returned to settle at Imala’s feet, barely kissing the toes of her moccasins.

  Jackson lay to Imala’s right, just before the saloon steps, cursed six-shooter across her chest. Finally at rest after so many years of giving her own blood to others.

  O’Reilly lay to her left, her half-moon blades splayed out on either side like wings.

  The saloon was in splinters, gone. Along with Spencer.

  And the gods…the gods were nothing but massive skeletons on the desert floor, sand sifting from their bones.

  Imala’s legs
trembled where she stood. She tipped forward almost as if to take a step, then dropped to the ground with a small sound of surprise as her body shivered with fatigue.

  The three of them had never fought like that, with so much power, using up every scrap of energy they could summon in the heat of battle when they were exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.

  But the gods didn’t die like that either, not all at once as if…as if some common thread had been binding them together.

  A wink of light in the sand caught Imala’s attention. She crawled to it, fished it out.

  Spencer’s necklace came free, though tarnished slightly by the grating grains of sand caught in the delicate silver chain. She never did get around to asking him about it. But she’d seen Jackson give it back to him, refuse his payment. It meant something to him, something precious and rare in this cruel, harsh land.

  Imala closed her fingers around the necklace, and the sand fell away from it. Maybe this was what they’d been looking for all along, Jackson, O’Reilly, and Imala, wandering the desert together, killing as many gods as they could, helping as many poor, tired souls as possible. But it was Spencer’s bravery, the only one to stand up and speak for the entirety of his humble little hometown that had been the final piece they needed to end the cruel reign of the gods—Jackson’s curses, O’Reilly’s blessings, Imala’s spinning…and Spencer’s heart.

  So much power all in one place, wrapped up and entwined as it had been in that storm, no one—human or god—could withstand such a blow. Only a spinner would survive, forged by the desert sands, protected by the desert sands.

  Imala lifted her face to the sky and felt the desert sigh all around her, a bittersweet sound, filled with relief and sadness to match her own. The gods were dead, the thread tying them together broken at last. But her friends were gone, too. Jackson. O’Reilly. Spencer.

  She was the last one left standing with the pale blue of the sky stretching above and the hazy soft orange of the desert stretching below in an endless expanse of color and heat.