Revenant's Storm (The Wicked West series)

Theo woke with the abrupt fright of not recognizing her surroundings, starting upward in bed with a small shriek. She realized then, foolishly, that she had expected to see her bright little window next to the Rhine with the shimmering aspens trembling in the breeze, although she had not been there for weeks.

She knew hazily that she had woken from a sound, but could not recall what the sound had been. She was trying to decipher what the noise now was.

It took a moment for her senses to come to her through the veil of groggy sleep; emerging like a slow dawn. She puzzled together that Ace had loudly began to sing outside her door in the early hours of dawn, just after she had finally drifted into a fitful dream. Theo cared less than ever about tricking him in the casino.

“Got a girl as strong as whiskey
with a temper as wide as the sea.
Her kisses have gotten me tipsy;
Black-heart Bette, say you’re aching for me!”

Despite the disturbance, she couldn't help but notice that his voice was a pleasant tenor. She tasted its playful tune on her lips throughout the day.

Ace had probably intended to sabotage her with the early rising, that spiteful man, but his antics had temporarily distracted her from the unrelenting terror which had seized her the entire night. And for that, she was endlessly grateful, though he would never know it.

The daylight had cleared some of the cobwebs from her frightful mind. She was ready to focus on the task at hand: her meeting with Cyrus this very morning to confirm their contract. To tour the research facility. Soon, she would get to continue her passion in the laboratory, although without Dr. Hertzog with her, it felt like a hollow victory.

For some reason, although she could not explain why, Theo could not shake the peculiar feeling that she was signing her soul away. She considered turning to religion for answers, and then decided simply to handle things as they came.

“I like this Black-heart Bette,” Theo had yawned as she stretched.

Theo walked past the extravagant wardrobe and dressed from her suitcase. She was comforted by the photograph of Dr. Hertzog in her skirt pocket. She had cached her winnings in the pockets of a blustery teal frock hanging in the wardrobe (in case of burglars.)

After a final once-over, she was satisfied that everything was in its place and that she was prepared for the day. Before she left for the morning, Theo could not resist looking one last time over her shoulder.

To the vanity drawer, which held the note and the small glass bottle.

The morning was brightened by birdsong and a tickling breeze. The cowboy tossed her something after she had locked her door with her new silver hotel key and she fumbled, barely catching the object in time. She inspected the coarse, sticky bread in her hand with extreme trepidation. Ace only smiled innocently.

“Is this poison?” Theo asked, frankly.

“Honbey bibscuit,” Ace explained around a mouthful of bread. He had tied his hair back with a thin strip of leather, and Theo realized begrudgingly that he had very pleasing features. He swallowed and flashed a crooked grin. “You’ll have to find out if it’s poison fer yourself.”

Theo thought, absently, that such a statement could be true for everything here. Dominance and survival in the brawl for finite resources. Natural selection at constant, frenzied play. She smiled, thanked him, and tore off her first bite with her teeth.

* * * * *

When Theo returned to her suite from her meeting in the late morning, Ace observed from his post that she looked weary and distracted. It was a strange reaction to have after signing an illustrious contract. What could they have negotiated?

He had been trying to flip a brothel token three times in the air before catching it in his palm. As she approached, Ace began to recite the annoying remark he had spent the morning drafting. When Theo brushed past him and into her room without a word, he perked up, like a defiant child instructed not to do something.

“In a rush?” he called out, into the hallway. He could only hope that his voice would seep through her door. Conversing with Theo like this was somewhat like talking with God.

He could hear her bustling around inside. “I am only going to pack up a few things,” she huffed, “before returning with Englestead to tour the laboratory.” Her haughty accent left an impression of sophistication, like he was talking to a rich person.

“Englestead,” Ace muttered, and stepped away. “Laboratory.” He tucked the brothel token back into his shirt pocket, right above his heart.

Despite himself, he was curious about her. The scientist. The swindler. Ace was not one to resist any temptation, no matter how perplexing. In his candor, he preferred to enjoy life wherever it met him and whatever the circumstances.

Theo locked her door with a decisive click! and strode past him. Ace began to recognize that it was simply how she walked by default; venturing boldly into the unknown. He followed her in a leisurely stroll, having no trouble keeping pace with her short stride.

They went, together, through the hotel courtyard. The morning sun dappled her rose brown curls through the shade of the leaves. She was in a dusty striped dress that glowed in the daylight.

“You look tired,” Ace observed.

Theo only shrugged. “Much work to do. Much risk involved.” She admired the rustle of leaves as she walked. “It is not so bad here.”

Then, so softly that he almost could not hear her say it, “You have a nice voice, when you sing.”

He had taken an unintentional step towards her. He did not know what he intended to do, but it did not matter anyway, for a hand suddenly gripped Ace from behind.

Ace sprang back like a mouse trap, pistol already unholstered, and halted at the press of a dagger to his throat. A bead of ruby red beaded under its wicked point. His throat bobbed as he swallowed his ungraceful yelp.

“Ease, friend,” soothed Quicksilver, with her onyx eyes and obsidian skin. She slowly lowered the blade as Ace reholstered. “Esmeralda would like to see you.”

Ace forced himself not to tense, but Theo had seen it and already diagnosed it as the fear-induced rigor mortis that she herself had suffered the night before. Ace did not see the concerned look she shot him and raised his brows at Quicksilver in surprise. “Lucky me.”

Inside, he was shivering. He did not want to go into that damned room with that devil woman and all those unblinking, yellow eyes watching his every move. He set his shoulders before he could lose his resolve and strode off. Before he could think about it too much.

Theo watched him go, a forlorn expression on her face. She had never thought that Ace could make such a panicked expression, and though they were not necessarily on good terms, she did not wish for him to suffer.

What had frightened the arrogant cowboy so badly? Should she be frightened of it, too? Though she would not acknowledge it, concern for the gambler had already begun to brew in her heart.

Quicksilver was not one for introductions. She simply starting walking and expected Theo to hustle after her.

“My name is Theo,” Theo said as a means of introduction. She matched the Hound’s pace. “You’re new. I mean, you haven’t guided me, I suppose. Well, yet.”

Quicksilver was amused. Her movements were a whisper and an eclipse. A moonlit waterfall. She tossed her long lock over a slender shoulder. “Oh, I have. A few times now.” She waved a hand dismissively. “You wouldn’t have noticed me.”

Theo harrumphed. “And why not?”

Her smile was the flash of a silent dagger in the night. “I am never noticed, not until it is too late. Not until I have already struck the killing blow. Best not to make an enemy out of me.”

Despite the thinly-veiled threat in front of her, another name sprang immediately to Theo's mind. Cyrus, and his nectary promises. Her laboratory, her lifelong dream, a honeyed Venus flytrap snapping shut around her. She had promised him she would be right back, and he had shot that devilish grin at her.

The contract was simple. Theo would come to work in the laboratory as often as she could to prepare reagents and organize the inventory, until he could come to trust her. She would earn wages. In return, Englestead had used his resources to launch the search efforts. The net had finally been cast out to snare Dr. Hertzog.

Meanwhile and elsewhere, Ace had already been tangled in his own trap for quite some time now. He was a frog in a kitchen pot; the heat had been notched up slowly until it was too late to jump out of its boiling waters.

He passed through that mysterious corridor in the hidden annex of the Indigo Plume. He was tapping his fingers against the turquoise handles of his pistols in a frantic percussion. He convinced himself that he was not uncomfortable as he entered the threshold to Esmeralda’s parlor.

To her precious Menagerie.

The musky odor of captivation consumed him instantly. He noticed, at first and as always, the imposing wall of cages, all stacked atop one another from floor to ceiling. Inside were the rustling forms of exotic and invasive species. Bright, slender birds. Sleek-furred varmints. Large reptiles like replica dinosaurs basking lazily under their toaster oven heating lamps. Esmeralda had a flair for the exotic.

She also had a flair for the deadly. The bright hazard bands of venomous snakes twisted and knotted in their cages. Dart-like, slimy frogs with toxic red gloves blinked asynchronously.

Tigríno paced her cage in the corner. She watched Ace with a murderous ferocity. Her gold coin eyes flashed from beneath her tattoo crown. The tiger was a true reckoning of nature in all its bloody glory: Tigríno was a Maneater in earnest.

Her collection was sentimental, entrepreneurial and practical, all at once. A hobby and an enterprise and a solution, when the bodies had to be disposed of discreetly. The tiger ate well. Many people went missing.

Esmeralda watched him enter from her ornate chair. She was draped by the jeweled, oil-slick coil of a large python. Her iron-pressed tresses fell in tumbling waves, perfumed and oiled. The kingpin’s vulpine features were schooled into a mask of calm expectancy, but her citrine eyes devoured him where he stood. Her lined fine was quick-witted. Her Dobermans slept unchained at her snakeskin-booted feet.

Esmeralda. The leader of the Hounds. His benevolent employer. His terrible captor.

The truth of Esmeralda was more terrible than Ace could have ever fearfully imagined: she believed wholeheartedly that she was the only human on earth. Everything else was either inanimate or an animal. She wanted to keep them all as her pets. She provided for them and groomed them. And when they betrayed her and they bit her and they gnashed their teeth, she put them down. She looked upon handsome Ace as she would her ferrets, or a well-groomed chinchilla. Adoringly.

Domingo stood behind her paisley chair. He was Esmeralda's protector and executioner, all in one. When he had first met Esmeralda, who had been the daughter of a client, he had been thirty seasons younger and nearly two score her senior. He recognized within her a ruthlessness and cunning. He admired these qualities in such a promising youth. Together, they would commit sickening, sinister crimes.

After everything they had been through together, Domingo understood her cruel mind better than anyone. And he was offended by her disgusting infatuation with the maggot Ace.


“Come here,” Esmeralda commanded, and Ace forced his feet to move forward. The Dobermans growled, snarling lips curling back over snapping fangs, and he stepped over their rumbling bodies, so very, very slowly, trying desperately not to let his fear show.

“Lovely as ever,” Ace said and stooped and kissed the black diamond ring at her knuckle. Her python, with its beady little eyes and its devil’s pitchfork tongue, began to slither curiously towards his stiffened shoulder.

Ace's voice remained even and pleasant. He was repulsed by these little trysts, but Ace had to admit that he could be quite the performer, when his life was on the line. He smiled serenely at her. “To what do I owe the honor, darlin’?”

Esmeralda placed her hands on Ace’s broad shoulders. She smoothed the fabric there. Ace stayed very still, like a possum playing dead. “How is it? With the scientist Is she...?”

The unspoken question hung in the air. The unspoken answer flashed in the tiger’s doubloon eyes.

“She’s no trouble,” Ace lied quickly, and then resolved himself to this new tack, filling out the role he had just thrust himself in. “Small. Weak. On good terms with Englestead.”

Esmeralda curled her fingers into this hair. The snake looped around the back of his shoulders. She had such a cruel beauty. Esmeralda mused, “I suppose you’re right. We’ll keep an eye on her, won’t we?”

Ace was sickened. The animals rustled in their cages all around him, and he could not help but feel boxed in by the shrinking walls. He looked down at the floor and did not look up again until his shame had passed. “Yes.”

There was a tug and a sudden looseness as his hair fell around him. She tossed the leather strip to the side with disgust. Esmeralda unfastened a jingling bracelet from her slender wrist and retied his hair.

Ace wished in that moment on his lucky star to be anywhere else in the world but here.

Domingo seethed from the shadows, teeth gritted and hands clenched into shaking fists where they were clasped behind his back. His rage boiled off him. He felt the tremors of it at his very core. He met Esmeralda’s gaze from over Ace’s shoulder imploringly.

If looks could kill. Her icy stare was confirmation that her stance on the gunslinger had not changed.

Domingo knew what he had to do. He had been used as a tool of deadly intent for his entire life. So, it was with a sort of cautious rebellion that he resolved himself for disobedience. His sweet Esmeralda was blinded by her adoration. Couldn’t she see that the belvedere was nothing but a liability?

No, Domingo would do what needed to be done. She would be upset, but it was all for her sake. Esmeralda would come to understand, in time.

Cheap pets like Ace could always be replaced.

Tigríno watched this exchange with cool dispassion, and she understood. She patiently waited for her opportunity to come to her. She watched, and she understood, and she waited for her chance to strike.

When Ace pushed into the blinding daylight of the alley, he was immediately sick in the gutter. He spat miserably into the dirt and wiped his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. He gulped in mouthfuls of fresh air, but the perfume of captivity hung heavy in his lungs and conscience.

Ace had a secret: he was afraid of Esmeralda. She haunted his nightmares. He was so terrified of her that Ace genuinely did not know how much longer he could take it, and that scared him more than Esmeralda’s tiger ever could. In his terror, Ace allowed his thoughts to travel down a forbidden path.

How had it come to be this bad? Why had he let himself fall into this situation? What would happen if he broke his contract and left?

If he did leave, after all this corruption, was it too late to salvage his soul?

Was is possible to go back to the life he once had? Or were the man he was now and the boy he was then strangers?

Ace could not tell. Though he was often lonely, he felt in this moment truly, utterly alone.

When the sun had passed over the sands and over the horizon, Jozefo’s friends huddled around each other over Foxtrot’s bunk past curfew. A lantern had been lit and sat on Jericho’s lap, who sat cross-legged on the bunk. The lantern illuminated all of their faces from below. It left a certain atmospheric effect, like a skilled storyteller might employ while retelling a ghost story. Peabody stood, but was still noticeably shorter than Maverick, who hunched sullenly on the edge of the bed. Maverick had become maudlin as after Jozefo’s disappearance.

“Kettle’s gone,” Foxtrot announced as a means to start the rendezvous now that everyone was in attendance. The light had washed out his pale face and with his shock of red hair he resembled a candle flame.

Peabody spat onto the ground, unknowingly hitting his boot in the darkness. “Kettle’s a rat bastard. He abandoned us. That ain’t right.” He pounded a fist over his chest. “Womb to the tomb!”

“Womb to the tomb,” the boys echoed solemnly, and crossed their hearts.

Jericho drew his scuffed up shins to his chest and said in his quiet voice, “What if he had a reason? We’re his friends. We should give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Maverick wiped a tear from his eye, and Peabody clapped a hand over his shoulder in solidarity.

Foxtrot shook his head. “You should’ve been him after the mission. He was devastated.” He punched a fist into his palm, angrily. “Ralph is the rat bastard, Peabody. He should have never hit that man.”

“Foul play,” Maverick intoned sadly.

Foxtrot nodded. “Foul play indeed, Mav. Very well-put. No, I think… I think Jozefo left on his own accord.” He twisted the frayed string on his pajama pants. “But I don’t think he was in his right mind. He abandoned us, but he’s only putting himself in danger.”

“Oh, yeah? What can we do about it?” Peabody shoved Foxtrot in the chest. He stood over his sprawled out form on the mattress. “Follow him into the desert? Break Colonel’s heart?” He shook his head and stepped back. “Not me, Foxtrot. Never me.”

Foxtrot rose to his elbows and coughed from the impact of the shove. “We’re not defecting, Pea, so untwist your long johns. I’m just saying...”

What am I saying? Foxtrot thought. He did not know, but he wanted to see how it would unfold, so he continued in a sort of impromptu monologue. “I’m just saying, we keep an eye out for him. If we see him on a mission, let’s bring him back. There’s no way Colonel wouldn’t let him return. Kettle would have to clean latrines forever, but...”

The boys considered this, and found it satisfactory. They spat into their hands and shook on it, and say the approaching glow of a candlestick down the hallway and had to quickly extinguish their lantern. They held their breath, barely moving into place in time, and pretended to be fast asleep.

Kernel stood, in his robe and pajamas, and watched the boys slumber from the doorway. He had ventured out like this the past few nights in the vulnerable hours of the morning where his thoughts were most palpable.

He missed Jozefo. The empty space on the bench in the canteen during meals filled him with an incredible. He looked for him everywhere he went. Kernel was not angry in the slightest. He wanted Jozefo to come home.

Kernel pulled his robe tighter around himself. He understood the loss of a child that his old friend had been burdened with all these years. Kernel told himself that he would visit Jules Lewis as soon as he could.