Free Dust of the Damned (9781101554005) by Peter Brandvold Page B

wolf’s howl rose and circled the night sky. It silenced the mandolin and the drunken voices from the direction of the hobgobbies’ camp. Angel drew a sharp breath and hunkered low behind her covering boulder, feeling chicken flesh rise along her spine.
    She waited, breathing shallowly, as though the beast could hear the breath rake in and out of her lungs. Relief loosened her shoulders when no other howls followed the first. There was only silence save for the faint crackling of the demons’ fire and the beating of Angel’s own heart.
    Finally, the strings of the mandolin were strummed once more. They were not tentative strains but challenging ones. Angel ground her teeth. The males and lone female spoke loudly, as though intentionally drawing the werewolves in.
    Angel looked down at her cartridge belt, saw the lead and silver bullets housed there in the leather loops for such nights as this. The Winchester was loaded with lead cartridges, ready to go. She had more than enough. No need yet for the precioussilver, because hobgobbies could be taken down the same as men. Her silver-chased Colt Peacemaker was holstered low on her leather-clad right thigh, fully loaded as well, and her ancient but well-preserved, razor-edged, silver Spanish sword, a gift from her father when she’d followed in his footsteps and joined the ranks of the U.S. Marshals, was sheathed in a matching black scabbard on the outside of her right leg. Jutting from a boot was a ten-inch Mexican dagger she’d pulled off a swiller bathhouse owner in San Antonio.
    In addition, she had three ninja-style shurikens with five points of thinly shaved silver tucked into two separate pouches inside her cartridge belt, over her belly. She’d trained herself to throw the discs nearly as well as a twelfth-century samurai.
    She was well armed and well skilled, a formidable foe against even hobgobbies.
    How many wolves could be out here, anyway? To avoid leaving a too-clear trail for hunters, they usually ran in fairly small packs.
    Finally, when the music and voices dwindled and it seemed the hobgobbies were settling down, Angel rose from behind the boulder and began following the trail Leonora and Rubio had followed, moving quietly in her boots and keeping her eyes and ears skinned for a possible night guard. She doubted the demons would post a lookout—for all their savagery, they were a drunken, arrogant lot—but she hadn’t climbed the ranks to deputy U.S. marshal by being careless. Moving as gracefully as a puma, she stole up and over a low rise, following the game path through the scattered trees and desert shrubs.
    Ahead, the fire’s pulsating glow shone—a circle of umber light in a slight clearing. The strummer had put away hismandolin and was at the far edge of the firelight, his back to Angel. By the set of his head and shoulders and position of his arms, he was relieving himself in the brush.
    Leonora was arranging a bed for herself a few yards to the right of the mandolin player and casting jeering glances at Rubio. Her unsatisfactory lover was keeping his head down, scowling as he poured coffee from a black-speckled pot into a dented tin cup. The two other males in the group, one of whom was the leader, Rafael Ortiz, were resting back against their saddles, grinning mockingly at Rubio, their near-lipless mouths stretched wide beneath their long, pointed noses.
    Angel heard the murmur of their voices, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. They seemed to be speaking to both Rubio and Leonora, who grunted her responses while keeping her dark-eyed, incriminating scowl on Rubio, who said nothing.
    Good. They were all distracted.
    Angel hurried forward, moving on the balls of her feet. She’d learned to tread quietly on the quietest of desert nights, always leaving her spurs in her saddlebags and wearing no ornamentation on her clothes. She gained a cottonwood about thirty feet from the clearing, crouched behind it, and drew the Winchester’s