Blood Ties (2 page)

Its arms rose, spreading wide as if to welcome Jake and his company like the God Almighty.

In the few seconds he had, all Jake could do was watch.

With a staggering
BOOM!
the assault unit opened up on the right flank with a blast from its anti-personnel cannon. Men and horses screamed. With a sharp staccato of repeating gunfire, the Gatling chewed into the left flank. A burst of white-gray smoke blossomed from the muzzles of all six cannons, and a deafening, multi-rifle report washed down the hillside. Jake felt the concussion hit his chest. He heard the whistle of incoming shells and the popping of rifles like kernels on a griddle. He closed his eyes, but he didn’t have long to wait.

The earth erupted around him. His mouth filled with the taste of black powder as his whole world turned upside down.

O O O

Jake couldn’t hear himself screaming.

He knew he was screaming. He felt his chest heaving, felt the rasp in his throat as he cried out in blinding anguish. The bloody, charred stump of his left arm flailed, and little remained of his legs below the thighs other than burned fabric, shreds of flesh, and the white glisten of exposed, shattered bone. Raw, seething horror tore at him, heart and soul. He felt his gorge rising in his throat and spilled what little he’d eaten upon green, dew-covered grass.

The sound of his screaming and heaving never made it past the cacophonous hiss that filled his ears. That one sound filled his world, wrapped itself around him like a soothing balm, and he was grateful for it.

The strange thing about battlefield trauma is that the mind plays tricks on a man. It does its level best to take him out of the moment, distract him from the reality of charred, bloody stumps, shattered bones, and an agony so intense it makes him vomit. That’s how Captain Jake Lasater found himself pondering whether history would care that a pig-butchering war profiteer named Cromwell had ended his life at the battle of Jackinaw Ridge.

Chapter Two – Battlefield

“You have to keep in mind that I wasn’t there for everything. Some of his story came to me in pieces … over breakfast or a cup of coffee … around campfires … sometimes second- or even third-hand. But I remember it all. I owed him that from the first day I met him. We all did.”

~ Captain Jane Wilson

A crowd hovered around the table—waiting and watching—wondering if Jake Lasater had finally met his match. Hushed whispers slid back and forth like wind through pines. Beyond the crowd, gamblers, travelers, drunks, and barmaids went about their business. An electric harmony floated over it all as an automaton band sang about somebody’s sweetheart on Saturday night.

For the first time in months, an out-of-towner had given Jake a run for his money.

Three men already lay fallen, worn down and wiped out by the two professionals who now faced each other. Everyone knew only one would walk away victorious. It was a matter of pride at that point. The money didn’t matter.

Not as much as the pride, anyway,
Jake thought, glancing around the room. The Colorado Brewery was like a second home to him, all dark walnut and polished brass. The Colorado brought in everything from dregs in dirty overalls to ladies in bright silk.

Jake worked the end of a cigar, smoke dribbling out the corner of his mouth. After six hours, he was tired, his shoulders ached, and his butt hurt. He shifted in his chair to relieve some of the ache and glanced at the impressive pile of bills and coins on the table. He flicked a blob of ash into an already-f ashtray and cocked an eye at Quinn, the burly, half-Asian sitting across from him.

Pale, ghost-white eyes stared back—emotionless—and Jake had never seen anything like them.

Quinn was six feet of corded muscle topped by a jet-black ponytail that rode high upon his crown. His ashen face was as stony-cold as his eyes, giving away nothing. Layers of bronze mail stretched from a thick iron collar around his neck to spiked bracers at his wrists, and similar mail covered his thighs and shins. The bronze gleamed like reptilian scales in sunlight, and he wore heavy, black clothing underneath. He looked more like some sort of dragonkin than a man.

Jake leaned back and fingered the smooth grip of the cavalry officer’s pistol holstered at his right hip—an old habit. For him, poker and gunfights were damn near the same thing … well, except for hot lead flying around. And he was one of the best—at both—and for the same reasons.

He could size up courage and cowardice like normal folks read a penny dreadful. And he usually knew when the man he was up against was full of shit or armed for bear.
Usually
. It all came down to making the right move at the right time.

Unfortunately, Quinn wasn’t giving up a thing.

Jake lifted the short, black leather topper off his head and ran a gloved hand through dark, wavy curls. Replacing the topper, he scratched beneath the intricate, clockwork ocular covering his left eye. The Rebel cannons had left his eye permanently dilated—among other things—bringing to an end his tour as a Union cavalry officer. Without the ocular bright light blinded him, but he could see in the dark almost as well as a cat with it.

He blew a puff of smoke through the corner of his mouth, and it drifted out over the money. The cloud dissipated quickly on currents dancing through the brewery, stirred by the airy rhythms of electric ceiling fans. Half of Denver was on electric, the places that had money, anyway.

Ignoring the smoke, Quinn’s pale eyes remained cold, his face carved in granite.

Jake leaned back in. “Call,” he finally said in his slow Missouri drawl, dropping a twenty-dollar bill on top of the pile.

More whispers circled the table.

The dealer nodded. “Pot’s right,” he said, laying down the last face-up cards.

Quinn was showing the jack and eight of clubs, ace of diamonds, and king of hearts—garbage to Jake’s eyes. But Quinn had opened the betting heavy and kept it up as the hand evolved. Jake knew Quinn had something worth fighting for, probably two pair—kings and aces—or trips of some kind. He looked down at his own garbage: ace of hearts, five and seven of spades, eight of diamonds. His hole cards were the four and six of spades. The eight of diamonds had given him a straight, and with one more down card coming, he had a fair shot at a flush. It was why he’d called on the last round. Even without the flush, though, a straight beats two pair or even trips every time.

“Fifty,” Quinn said quietly as he threw more bills on top of the pot.

Solid bet, Jake thought. Small enough to keep me interested, but not big enough to drive me out if I’m chasing the straight.

Jake’s face was chiseled of the same stone as Quinn’s, but he was smiling on the inside.
This is why I play poker,
he thought,
a test of wills.

He pulled on his cigar and blew out another cloud. He wanted to savor every moment. He picked up the bottle of Cap’n Plat beer he’d been working and took a swig. Leaning back once again, he placed his gloved left hand on his cards and tapped a finger thoughtfully. It made a dull, solid, thudding sound, not like flesh at all.

“Call,” Jake said, adding a trace of resignation to his voice.
Gotta play this just right
 … he thought. He pushed fifty into the pot.

The dealer laid down their last cards.

Quinn reached out and lifted the corner, his eyes darting to whatever lay beneath.

Jake watched closely, looking for any sort of tell, but his opponent’s face was as immutable as the Chinese statues he’d seen once in a Chicago museum.

This time Quinn waited, letting the drone of the brewery fill the silence.

Jake waited, not even looking at his hole card as he scratched beneath the edge of his ocular again.

“Everything,” Quinn said quietly, pushing in his entire stack.

A gasp washed through the crowd, and for the first time all night, Quinn’s voice carried a hint of emotion—
victory
. His face was still a blank slate, and he had pushed in what looked to be about two hundred dollars.

Jake raised his eyebrow behind the ocular, certain Quinn’s last card had given him trips, or even a full house, which would crush Jake’s straight. The money on the table represented his whole bankroll. He hadn’t had a decent job in weeks, and his crew was eating him out of hearth and home.

“So that’s how it’s gonna be, is it?” Jake asked around the cigar.

Quinn nodded once, and the trace of a smile crimped the edges of his mouth.

“I guess I better see what I have, shouldn’t I?” Jake glanced at the upturned corner of his last down card. He laid it flat slowly and eyeballed his money—about two-hundred-and-fifty dollars. If he lost, he’d still have fifty to keep his crew fed until another job rolled in …
hopefully
. Either way, Jake was pot-committed, and both gamblers knew it.

“Call.” Jake sounded defeated, and he let his shoulders slump a little. Another gasp erupted from the crowd as he put in his money and laid his palms flat on either side of his cards.

Quinn’s smile was reptilian as he flipped over his hand, pushing forward the aces of spades and clubs he’d had in the hole from the beginning—three aces. He pushed forward the eight of clubs, and with a flourish he flipped over his last down card—the eight of hearts—a full house.

“Dead man’s hand,” someone in the crowd whispered.

Quinn sneered. “Aces over eights,” He licked his lips as he eyeballed the pot, but he was too much of a professional to rake it in before Jake turned over his hole cards.

Moving like a man headed for the gallows, Jake flipped over his first two hole cards. Everyone saw the straight, and most of the women gasped while a few men cheered. Jake figured the ones cheering were past losers all-too-happy to see him finally getting cleaned out. The cheer made the rest of the brewery go silent. Everyone, even the automaton band, turned their eyes to Jake’s table.

One of the spectators spoke up with a good deal of venom. “Looks like he’s got ya, Lasater.”

Definitely a sore loser,
Jake thought. His shoulders drooped and his head hung low. “Well, I guess you’re right,” he finally said. “A dead man’s hand beats a straight every time.” Jake let loose a long, drawn out sigh.

Quinn smiled like a predator moving in for the kill. He reached out his hands and wrapped them around the money.

Jake’s voice was as hard as steel when he locked eyes with Quinn. “But I don’t have a straight.” He squared his shoulders.

Quinn froze, his smile fading back to cold stone.

“What?” the venomous spectator shouted. “You sure as hell do! I’m looking at it!”

Jake leaned in with a grin to beat all. He flipped over his last card—the eight of spades.

“That there is a straight
flush
,” Jake said. “And last time I checked, a straight flush beats a full house—even a dead man’s hand—
every
time.”

A cheer rose from the women, and Jake heard a few of the sore losers shout,
“Unbelievable!”

Quinn’s fists clenched on the table, his knuckles white. His face remained frozen, but Jake saw fury in the dragon’s eyes.

“You’re a hell of a good card player, Quinn,” Jake said in a friendly tone. “I guess lady luck just wasn’t with you tonight.” He reached out and pulled back what he figured was over fifteen-hundred dollars. It would keep his crew afloat for a while. “Now, if you boys will excuse me, I need to get on home.” Jake pulled a blue bag out of his burgundy vest, kept there for just such occasions, and scooped the money into it. He stood, fluffed the emerald cravat at his throat, and adjusted his gun belt, making certain Quinn saw both pistols holstered there. The bag went back into his vest, leaving a noticeable lump, and he took one last swig from his Cap’n Plat. Tipping his hat, he said, “Y’all have a good night.”

He turned his back on the table and caught his riding partner’s attention. Cole, his mulatto skin deeply shadowed under a weathered, Buffalo Soldier’s hat, was waiting for the gentleman next to him to bet. Cole raised bright blue eyes and spotted Jake, who thumbed towards the door. Cole nodded, motioning that he’d finish the hand and follow.

Chapter Three – Sore Loser

“Trouble finds Jake like flies find corpses. Hangs around the same way, too.”

~ Cole McJunkins

Jake stepped out into a late summer night, the air scented by cut hay, boiling hops, and machine oil. He heard the faint gurgle of Cherry Creek only a block and a half away. As usual, the cobbled length of 12
^th
Avenue lay empty. Anyone up at that hour on a Thursday was either in the Brewery or one of the whorehouses along Larimer Street around the corner. Decent folk—a group Jake did not consider himself a part of—had already chewed their way through a fair bit of a good night’s sleep.

The doors swung closed behind him, changing the buzz of bar patrons and automaton music to a muffled thrum. A row of horses stood hitched outside, their tails swishing quietly as horseflies tried to burrow deep and drink their fill. There were two steam-driven carriages parked nearby, brass fittings and copper pipes gleaming dully in the lamplight.

Jake pulled out his father’s pocket watch and clicked it open. It showed just shy of 11:30, so he figured he and Cole would be home a little after midnight. Clicking the watch closed, he turned towards the stables off to the left. A soft pool of electric lamplight cast the doors in an orange glow. Several more steam carriages sat parked beyond, nearly lost in darkness. Jake headed towards the stables but paused, caught in the harsh landing lights of an incoming zeppelin. Its motors filled the empty street with the sharp drone of reversing propellers, and he looked up at a stocky cargo carrier. As the light moved past him, Jake flicked the stub of his cigar into the street.

He had taken two steps past a gleaming steam carriage when a voice from behind hissed, “Raise your hands and go into the stables.” The point of a blade poked hard into his lower back. Jake hadn’t heard anyone come up behind him, but he knew who it had to be.

“Boy, you sure are a sore loser, Quinn.” Jake’s voice held no fear, simply disappointment. One man with a short sword frightened him about as much as a kid with a broom handle. Jake raised his hands and looked over one shoulder … and then the other.

A knot of fear tightened in his guts.

There was no sign of Quinn. Instead, Jake found himself looking at three strangers in black, their heads topped with black bowlers, their faces covered by strange looking goggles whose opaque lenses glowed faintly green.

The man directly behind him stood close enough for Jake to smell sour breath. The other two flanked behind about five feet. The flankers twitched their right wrists. With metallic clicks, eighteen-inch blades popped out from their sleeves.

Oh shit,
Jake thought. He’d seen such weapons before. The pit fighters and generally unsavory sorts who used them called them
slashers
. Each of the flankers stepped in, pulled one of Jake’s pistols, and tucked it into his black sash. The knot of fear in Jake’s guts turned to pure dread. Three against one was long odds anytime, and now they had his pistols.

“Shut up and
move
!” the first man whispered in Jake’s ear. He shoved hard into Jake’s back.

Stumbling, Jake banged into the stable door face-first. Recovering quickly, he reached out and slid the door open. He still couldn’t hear the men moving behind him.

They’re pros, whoever they are,
he thought.

He stepped into the darkness, his arms raised, and started to reach for the light switch just inside the door. His arm froze in place, hope pushing away the dread. In the dark he might have a chance, albeit a slim one. But slim was better than none anytime, especially against three armed killers.

With his arms still raised, Jake lowered his left hand a bit and twisted the ocular, allowing in all the available light. He passed the massive, tan hindquarters of his mount Lumpy, tensing his body to leap away.

“Don’t even think about it,” the man behind him said with a mild accent familiar to Jake. Jake froze. “We know all about that eye of yours. Now turn around.” Jake did as instructed. The goggles glowed more brightly in the darkness. The man raised his finger and tapped the goggles for emphasis. “We see you fine.”

Jake was just about out of tricks. The man shifted the dagger to his left hand and twisted his free wrist. A slasher popped out with a loud click, and then all three stood facing him, motionless.

Seconds ticked by.

Jake was a patient man, but he wasn’t in the mood to wait around for someone to open him up like a Christmas goose. “So, are you fellas gonna make a move, or are we gonna just stand here and stare at each other?”

“We definitely will not be staring at each other, Mr. Lasater,” Quinn sneered as he stepped into the doorway. Quinn turned the light switch.

The sudden brightness made Jake wince and close his left eye.

“I have something else in mind.” Quinn added as he slid the door closed behind him.

“If this is about the money, Quinn, I’ll just hand it over.” Jake knew when he was beat, and he wasn’t willing to risk his neck over fifteen-hundred dollars when the odds were stacked so high against him.

“The money is not why we are going to kill you.” Quinn smiled like a predator. “Although I will enjoy taking it off your corpse when we are finished cutting you to pieces.” Quinn drew the sword at his waist as he approached. The curved blade gleamed in his hand. “I will consider it a bonus on top of what we have
already
been paid.” He spun the blade a few times and loosened his neck and shoulders as he stalked down the middle of the stable. The other three spread out behind Lumpy, crouching down into fighting stances that gave Jake a bad case of déjà vu.

Jake didn’t see how he could beat four trained killers when they had blades. It did seem odd that none of them was packing iron, but even without pistols, four-to-one was over his head. He glanced around, looking for a way out. Walls, hay, dirt, a few harnesses—there was nothing he could use to protect himself. His gaze stalled on Lumpy’s hindquarters, and an idea popped into his head.

“Well, at least let me take off my hat,” he said smoothly. “It cost me eighty dollars in Kansas City.”

“It won’t make any difference,” Quinn replied almost sweetly as he lowered into a stance of his own.

Jake lifted his hat off, holding it high above his head. “You boys haven’t spent much time around big farm animals, have you?”

Confused looks flickered across the faces of all four killers.

Jake threw the short, leather top hat as hard as he could straight at Lumpy’s ass. The startled beast bellowed, rattling the walls of the stable and shaking dust from the ceiling. In a flash, Lumpy lifted his back legs and kicked out with all the force more than a ton of pissed off Brahma bull is capable.

One of Lumpy’s hooves caught the closest attacker in the head. The other hoof smashed into the next attacker’s shoulder. Both men flew into Quinn, and all three shot sideways and disappeared into the stall on Jake’s right, crashing into the far wall. Jake figured they were out of the fight for good. The odds were looking a little better now.

The remaining flanker was only startled for a second before coming at Jake with murder in his eyes. He stepped in like a panther and shot a kick into Jake’s mid-section. Air
WHOOFED
out of Jake’s lungs, and he crashed into a support beam in the middle of the stable. He saw stars but didn’t lose his focus on the man coming at him. The flanker raised his slasher high and brought it down.

A high-pitched whine of clockwork rang out as Jake’s left hand shot up in a motion too fast to follow. The slasher clashed as it hammered, metal on metal, into Jake’s upraised, brass wrist. The blade snapped off with a
TWANG
of broken steel, the point embedding itself into the support beam beside Jake’s head.

The surprised look on the flanker’s face was all Jake needed. He brought his left hand across like a sledgehammer. A squelching thud of meat and bone ruined the assassin’s features. His head twisted like a top, and he staggered sideways two steps before collapsing in a motionless heap.

A sense of pride replaced the worry that had filled Jake only moments before. He couldn’t keep from smiling. “Well that went better than I expected,” he said aloud.

Movement in the stall to his right turned his smile southward.

Quinn growled from the shadows, “We’re not finished.” His voice was deeper, more primal that it had been. He stepped out into the light, grinning, and Jake’s breath caught in his throat as his eyes went wide.

Quinn wasn’t
human
.

His ghost-white eyes glowed with an inner light. His predatory smile was full of sharp teeth, incisors considerably longer than the rest. The tops of Quinn’s ears narrowed to points, and his fingernails stretched into vicious white claws.

“Oh shit,” Jake muttered. He’d seen a few
unnaturals
in his time, things that would scare the sin out of even the hardest cowboy, but this was a new kind of different. He was in real trouble, and he knew it.

Quinn’s smile grew impossibly wide, a jagged rictus promising death. He looked at the body between them, and a quiet snarl slithered past his fangs. His gaze rose slowly, pausing briefly at the glint of bronze beneath the slash in Jake’s sleeve. Then their eyes met, steel on steel.

Jake sighed, resolved but not resigned to what was about to happen. “The eye ain’t the only thing that got messed up in the war,” Jake said grimly.

It was one-on-one again, but the odds were still stacked against him. He thought about hollering for help, but Quinn might bolt, and Jake wanted to end this now.
All, or nothing,
he thought.
I’ll be damned if I’m gonna look over my shoulder for the rest of my life.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed, flickering briefly to Jake’s clockwork arm. He shifted his stance and came forward slowly. He was going after Jake’s right side, guessing it was flesh and blood.

Unfortunately for Jake, Quinn guessed right.

Jake’s eyes darted to the glinting, filigreed Peacemaker tucked into the sash of the dead man between them, the runes traced into the metal glowing a faint, ethereal green. If he could get his hands on his pistol, the fight would be over in an instant.

He dove towards his Colt, putting every ounce of strength he had into it. His clockwork legs screamed. He moved like lightning, faster than any normal man.

Quinn saw the motion and became a blur.

As Jake’s hand wrapped around the grip, Quinn appeared before his eyes like some sort of ghostly nightmare and slapped the pistol from Jake’s hand with impossible strength and speed. Jake had never seen anything move that fast, not even the werewolf he’d faced down the previous summer. The pistol went sailing into the shadows at the back of the barn, bounced off the wall, and dropped into the dust. Quinn’s backhand hammered into Jake’s jaw, lifted him up, and sent him sailing back into the support beam. Pain shot through his spine, and his jaw felt like it had been torn out. Dazed, his knees buckled, and he slid partway down the post. He shook his head to clear it. As his eyes refocused, the blur came at him again.

Jake lashed out with a haymaker, the best he could manage in his state, but Quinn shifted easily, avoiding it. The creature took the opening and sent a hard punch into Jake’s stomach. Jake grunted with the impact and swung his left out in a backhand, clockwork gears screaming.

Quinn ducked under it, stepped out, and sent a brutal roundhouse kick into Jake’s left knee. His foot impacted on the hard metal of Jake’s clockwork leg, and the metal joint shifted slightly but didn’t buckle. Quinn’s eyes went wide with pain, his face filling with rage. He changed tactics and slashed again and again with ragged claws in fast arcs that angled in from every direction. Jake shielded himself with his left arm, the only thing fast enough to keep Quinn’s attacks at bay. The stable filled with the sound of bone hacking and scraping on metal. Shreds of Jake’s shirtsleeve fell before the onslaught; the gleaming bronze flashing beneath the fabric as it was torn to pieces.

In mid-swing Quinn’s knee came up into Jake’s midsection, smashing him back against the support beam. Quinn lunged just as Jake’s clockwork left shot out and clamped down onto his attacker’s shoulder like a vice.

Quinn’s collarbone snapped, a hollow, popping sound as the bone gave way. The killer’s face twisted in pain and rage. He grabbed at Jake’s arm, trying to dislodge it. And then he wrapped one claw around Jake’s throat.

His breath caught in his throat and his lungs burned in protest. As the pressure of Quinn’s grip increased, a gleam of metal caught Jake’s eye. The broken slasher blade was still stuck in the post near Jake’s head.

“You’re still holding a dead man’s hand,” Jake rasped with cold determination. He brought his right knee up into Quinn’s mid-section like a piston. The clockwork leg hit like a freight train, and Quinn
HUFFED
with the impact that lifted him off the ground. Jake held firm as Quinn came back down on wobbly legs. He released Quinn’s ruined shoulder, and in a blur his metal fingers clicked around the embedded blade. He swung wide and jammed six inches of steel into the side of Quinn’s head. The blade ruptured Quinn’s right eye as it passed through flesh and bone.

Quinn’s remaining eye went wide and he howled like a wounded animal, staggering back, black blood poured down his cheek. Jake expected the assassin to drop where he stood. Instead, Quinn stopped and stood straight. His left eye focused on Jake, and a wicked smile split his face. He reached up, grabbed the blade, and wrenched it free, dropping it into the dirt at his feet. In a voice with little humanity left, he said slowly, “You’ll have to do better than that.”

Jake knew when he was outmatched. He didn’t hesitate. He only had one chance. He rolled away from the post, and leapt towards the shadows at the back of the barn.

Quinn snarled and dove after him.

Jake took two long strides and jumped. His aim was true. He sailed the remaining fifteen feet and came down on top of his Peacemaker. He clutched at it just as Quinn dropped on top of him. Jake felt the creature grip his shoulder and screamed as Quinn’s claws dug in. Quinn heaved. Jake found himself flying back towards the middle of the barn. He landed hard and slid through the dirt and hay, coming to a quick stop.