CHAPTER FOUR
Paranoia tugged at my nerves. I scoped the faces in the busy intersection, probing to see if anyone showed more than a passing interest. But everyone seemed too busy getting drunk and whoring, or fleecing the drunks and johns. But that paranoia kept tugging, cinching anxiety like a noose around my kundalini noir.
I searched the streets and raked my gaze across the tops of the surrounding buildings. A lone figure stood stock still on the roof of the Marcus Hotel. Dread wrapped icy fingers around my undead heart. The hood of a cloak obscured the figure’s face, yet I could have sworn its shadowed eyes were focused right on me.
Horses pulled a coach in front of me, blocking my view. When the coach passed the stranger had disappeared. I blinked, wondering if I had been hallucinating.
My kundalini noir writhed—unsettled, apprehensive—confirming that my eyes hadn’t deceived me.
One of the Dragon’s spies? Or a spy from a rival gang? Or someone who kept lookout on the comings and goings through Wu Fei’s door for a target of opportunity like me with this weighty bag of gold on my shoulder?
My fangs extended and I kept my mouth closed tight to keep them from showing. Hooking my right thumb over the front of my coat, I got ready to flip it back so I could make an easy reach for my Colt Navy.
Retreating from the curb, I put my back against the wall. My nerves were raw, tingling with dread and foreboding. What spooked me most was that I felt marooned, cast off in this strange world. I grew to hate Coyote. Why had he sent me here? When and how could I get back?
I felt vulnerable, like it was only a matter of time before crosshairs found me. I wished I wasn’t alone. I needed vampires I could trust. My friends Jolie and Carmen. We’d been through horrific scrapes together, and I was sure they could’ve helped me find my way home. But they were unreachable on the far side of whatever supernatural wall Coyote had flung me over. Were they even looking for me? Did they even know I was missing?
Then I perceived a new feeling, one that caused my fears to loosen.
I had a friend here.
A face coalesced in my memory, like a photo coming into focus. A lean, drawn face. Caucasian skin weathered and bronzed by hard life under the open Western sky. Gray eyes the color of storm clouds, as ready to smile as they were to squint down the barrel of a Sharps rifle. Lanky, powerful limbs that moved quick as a panther’s. A man as good on a horse as I was. A mustache that rivaled mine.
Then another thought made me wince. Since when could I ride a horse?
His name hovered on the edge of my awareness.
I couldn’t let myself get distracted. I put my mind back on locating who had been watching from the roof. I let my gaze range across the street, from face to window, from window to door, from door to rooftop. No one that I could see hunted me.
Hunted. Of course. Hunted. Hunter.
My friend’s name was Malachi Hunter. He was my longtime friend and business associate. Together we had administered plenty of justice. And on occasion, he was my partner in crime. Together we were expert in exploiting the slack between right and wrong.
Malachi was where? My thoughts lagged as I groped through the sparse memories Coyote had drizzled into my mind. I looked south, down Market Street, then realized I should be one street over on Larimer. At the Dizzy Ute Saloon. I tapped my shirt pocket where I kept the telegram. I had shown Malachi the message earlier today. He and I were to rendezvous at the saloon after my meeting with Wu Fei.
New worries added to my angst. Did Malachi know I was a vampire? Was he? Or was he my chalice? Did that mean we were more than business partners? Maybe it was Coyote’s idea of a joke to send me here to snuggle with a gay lover. In which case I’d be sucking more than Malachi’s blood.
Tamping down a tide of dismay, I resigned myself to roll with whatever life and relationships I had here. Still, Malachi didn’t seem my type, and hopefully, he wasn’t.
I clamped an arm against the bag and navigated through a gaggle of revelers to 19th and east to Larimer. In the streets, horses, buggies, and buckboards jostled for right of way.
An automatic tractor chugged down Larimer, belching smoke and sparks from its engine stack. Its small, forward-feeler wheels clattered on long whip-like struts like an insect’s forelegs. Steam vented from pistons rotating the drive wheels. A yellow glow pulsed erratically from the port at the front of the boiler. Behind the tractor, an enclosed trailer rumbled over the hard-packed road. A slogan painted on the side of the trailer read: Sure-Safe Delivery. Our Drivers Never Get Drunk.
The tractor hooted a blast of steam for the other traffic to stay clear. Horses whinnied and strained at their traces. Pedestrians scurried to safety before they were trampled by beast or machine. I darted behind the wagon to cross the street. Steam plumed over me. Halting beside the wooden Indian outside a tobacco shop, I surveyed the way I had come. Nothing suspicious.
But paranoia still tweaked my nerves. My vampire sixth sense whispered danger.
Continuing toward Larimer, I turned south at the first alley. The illumination from kitchen windows threw pools of dirty light into the murk. A couple of drunks teetered against a lamppost. Above them, a gas jet’s meager flame hissed inside the broken glass lantern. Moths fluttered dangerously close, and one burst into flames. Down the alley, a back door opened and someone emptied a bucket, its contents sloshing across the ground. I studied the alley with vampire night vision. Rats and raccoons picked through garbage.
Grimacing at the smell, I stepped around the drunks, pools of vomit, and scattered trash. I passed the kitchen windows and service doors of the public halls and saloons. With my hand firm on the grip of my .45, I halted occasionally and checked behind me and along the roofs to make sure no one followed. Still that prickle of paranoia wouldn’t go away.
I reached the kitchen behind the Dizzy Ute Saloon, lifted my feet over piles of garbage, and climbed the back stoop to the open door. I entered a steamy cloud of smells: hot stew and fried meat mixed with the alley’s rank odors.
Three cooks—a large black man and a couple of Mexican paisanos—worked at the stove and a cutting table. They paused to regard me. The black man’s gaze cut to a coach gun hanging with the pots and pans above the table. The paisanos menacingly adjusted their grips on the cleavers. I showed my open hands and shook my head, indicating I wasn’t here for trouble. The black man nodded curtly to the other door and let me pass.
Once at the far side of the kitchen, I stopped at the end of the short hall. Straight ahead, beneath layers of tobacco smoke, businessmen, saddle tramps, and saloon girls leaned against the bar and crowded around tables. A piano and mandolin accompanied peals of crude laughter. No one acted like they cared two road apples about me.
To my left, stairs to the second floor. To my right, a row of three snugs.
The snugs were enclosed booths with room barely enough for four. The perfect setting to make secret deals, deliver bribes, and act as favored hideaways for respectable gentlemen and ladies seeking to indulge in unrespectable recreation. You had to be careful to make sure the tables had been wiped clean. You never knew what happened on top of them.
The doors to the snugs were closed except for the one nearest me. It was ajar. A broken lucifer protruded from a crack in the adjacent paneling. Door barely open, matchstick in the wall. Malachi’s signal that the rendezvous was on.
Still, my paranoia did not relax. I looked back to the kitchen. To the bar. To stairs and the landing above. I halted by the snug’s entrance and listened. Aside from the merriment in the saloon and the rattle of kitchen implements, nothing.
I sniffed. Tobacco. Spilled beer. Faint perfume. All normal for a place like this.
Yet the alarm kept plucking my nerves. I was missing something.
I drew the Colt Navy and slowly levered the hammer back. The pistol cocked and ready, I pushed the door, cracking it open just enough to see a man with a rangy physique occupying one of the benches. Flickering light from a ceiling oil lamp etched shadows on his craggy face. Hard eyes stared at me.
Malachi Hunter. Looking stoic as always. He could have a scorpion in his union suit and wouldn’t act bothered. His derby was tipped back and the shaggy, blond hair draped over his ears shimmered in the shifting light. His open hands rested on the table.
A man in a rumpled black duster sat on the bench opposite Malachi. Elbow propped on the table, he pointed a gleaming snub-nose revolver at Malachi’s face. One twitch on the trigger, and a slug would’ve blasted my friend’s nose right through the back of his skull.
The identity of the man aiming the revolver bloomed in my memory, like a bloodstain spreading through cloth. The gruesome scar that started at his jaw and tore its way up his left cheek to bisect his eyebrow, gave him away. El Cicatriz—“the Scar”—Saul Sanchez. Bag man and thumb breaker.
“Felix, put your gun on the table,” Cicatriz ordered with a twitch of his pistol. “Get in and sit down. Tell me what news you bring from our good pal, Mr. Wu Fei.”