Michael Spradlin: Blood Riders

Chee caught a glimpse of black-and-brown fur darting across the far end of an alley off Leavenworth’s main street and smiled to himself. It was Dog. He had waited in the countryside surrounding Leavenworth for him to be released. Dog had no doubt been living off the land, hunting the prairie and scrounging for food while Chee was incarcerated. But each night Chee had heard his familiar howl, a signal from Dog that he was still there, and while he might not have understood why Chee was locked up, he would wait there until he got out.

Dog was a variety of unknown breeds. He was big, with a crazy twist of brown-and-black fur. He looked more like a wolf than a dog, and as a result, his presence tended to make folks uncomfortable. He had learned to keep to the shadows, avoiding contact with most humans. He’d been shot at more than a few times, but never hit, and it was enough to make him dislike guns a great deal.

Chee darted down the alleyway, calling out quietly, “Dog! Dog!” and was nearly bowled over when the giant beast burst out from behind a stack of crates lined up near the back door of a general store. He jumped up, putting his paws on Chee’s shoulders, and licked his face enthusiastically.

“It’s good to see you too, boy,” Chee said, rubbing the animal’s chest. He cradled the mutt’s head in his hands and looked him over. There was a slight tear in his left ear that hadn’t been there when Chee had gone to prison, a scar from the hard living Dog had done the last year and a half.

When Chee had joined the army at age nineteen, he’d been stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. While off duty he liked to ride across the surrounding countryside. On one of his rides in the late spring he had found Dog as a young pup, wandering alone, half starved and nearly dying of thirst. Chee gave him water and some jerky from his saddlebags and carried the pup back to Fort Sill with him.

Fort Sill was an open post on the frontier, and Chee was able to keep the pup in a small overturned crate behind his barracks. With regular food and water Dog grew quickly and in a few months weighed well over one hundred pounds. He took to roaming the countryside around the fort but was always outside Chee’s barracks in the morning. Chee’s sergeant overlooked the fact that soldiers weren’t allowed to keep pets, mainly because he was a little scared of both the solitary Chee and the dog.

One night three troopers returned to the barracks too drunk to know better, when one of them pulled his pistol and fired a couple of rounds at Dog. Neither shot hit him, but Chee heard the shots and came bursting out the back door of the barracks to investigate. He arrived in time to see the trooper point his pistol at Dog again, and with great speed and efficiency removed the pistol from the trooper’s hand. The man slumped to the ground, unconscious.

It could have ended there. Chee was a corporal, the three troopers were privates. But the other two men took exception to Chee’s intervention and attacked him. The drunks were hardly a challenge for Chee, given that his father was half-Chinese and his grandfather had taught him Shaolin kung fu. But one of the men pulled a bowie knife from his boot, and when Chee threw the man across his hip without removing the blade from his attacker’s hand first, the man fell on it and bled out before they could get him to the post’s surgeon.

The remaining two men testified against Chee, saying he went crazy and attacked all three of them. Even though Chee had an exemplary record, he was a mixed-race loner and was found guilty of manslaughter and sent to Leavenworth. Chee remembered riding in the prison wagon all the way to Kansas, watching Dog follow along, mostly keeping out of sight.

And here he was, nineteen months later. “Come on Dog,” Chee said. “We got somewhere to be.” He took the alley east and stayed off the main street. As a “mixed mutt” himself, Chee knew enough about people to realize even his army uniform wouldn’t give him a free pass if some bully decided to make trouble. Chee could handle himself, but he didn’t want to be late meeting the major.

Not when there were so many questions he needed to ask.

Torson City Mining Camp, Colorado

The deserted mining camp (Shaniah found it humorous that the humans had called it a city) lay less than half a mile below her. She sat astride Demeter in a stand of quaking aspen trees lining the small canyon rim above the “city.” It was nothing more than a few buildings, hastily constructed: a general store, a saloon, three sheds filled with mining equipment, and a few low-slung structures that looked to be barracks or bunkhouses in which the miners slept.

The sun had just set and the western sky had taken on a rust tone, which probably meant rain was coming. Archaics like Shaniah were not comfortable with water. In almost any form it made them weak. When her race was cursed, back in the ancient days, they were technically rendered soulless and therefore burned by the touch of consecrated holy water. Over the centuries her people had learned to tolerate unconsecrated water, but Malachi and his band, now partaking of human blood, would be severely burned by water and even killed by enough holy water.

The Council of Elders had made arrangements with a Russian shipping company to carry her to America, and the voyage had been difficult. They were paid in advance in gold and asked no questions, even though their passenger spent most of her nights in her cabin violently, deathly ill. The prolonged smell of salt water-the very proximity of it-had weakened her and nearly driven her mad. But she had survived. Upon her arrival in Philadelphia she was already several weeks behind Malachi and the others, who had commandeered a ship from the main port of Romania.

Shaniah shuddered to think of what had happened to the crew of the ship as Malachi and his then small band fed on them one by one, leaving only enough crew alive to pilot the ship to the American shore. Shaniah guessed Malachi would have forced the captain to sail the ship up a river until finding a spot to go ashore unnoticed. After landing, he likely killed everyone remaining and burned the ship.

It was only conjecture, but it is how she would have done it if she had gone mad like Malachi, defying centuries of Archaic laws and feeding on humans again.

Weakened and sick from her journey, she left Philadelphia as soon as possible and moved to the countryside. She found an abandoned farmhouse and rested there for several weeks. She stayed hidden, and hunted deer, feral pigs, and even a few wild dogs, until she regained her strength. Demeter had traveled with her aboard the Russian vessel and had survived the trip in fine shape.

She and Malachi had lived for centuries, and every one of her people agreed: one or the other would one day lead the Archaics. There would come a day when Shaniah, like the rest of the Old Ones, would live long enough to become an Eternal. But the process took centuries. Shaniah had become an Archaic during the Middle Ages, but in the human world she passed for a woman in her twenties.

And when the previous leader of her people, Genevieve, had been killed-in an accident, many thought, that Malachi had arranged-the Council of Elders made it clear the choice was between Shaniah and Malachi. There were weeks of private deliberation, dissecting the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. It was generally agreed among her tribe that where Malachi was aggressive, headstrong and vain, Shaniah was thoughtful and deliberate. He embraced his animal nature. Shaniah knew the survival of her people depended on remaining hidden, separate from humans. It was her steadiness and courage that drew her people to her. Many centuries ago, Archaics had fought against humans and while they possessed greater strength and other attributes that humans did not have, the war between them had been disastrous.