Westward Weird Read online

  “I wish it hadn’t come to this.” Jonathan withdrew his hand from his coat, bringing the pistol into the open, and aimed it at Fran’s chest. “I need you to answer my questions, miss. I won’t say the fate of the world depends on it, but your continued survival certainly does.”

  The knife sliced through the air next to his head and embedded itself in the wall of the trailer before Jonathan even saw her move. He froze, gun still aimed at Fran, who was now holding a throwing knife in either hand.

  “The way I see it, you might be able to shoot me before I put a pair of these in your throat; then again, you might not,” she said amiably. “Do you really want to go down this road?”

  For a moment, Jonathan couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He was saved from needing to by the small white mouse that popped out of his pocket, ran up his arm to his shoulder, and gleefully declared, “Hail, Priestess of Unexpected Violence!”

  Fran dropped her knives.

  ~ * ~

  Ten minutes later, Jonathan was sitting on Fran’s bed, Fran—now wearing jeans and a proper shirt— was sitting at her vanity, and the mouse was sitting on Fran’s hand. Of the three of them, only the mouse appeared to be pleased with the situation.

  “You’re a mouse,” Fran said.

  “Yes, Priestess!”

  “And you talk,” Fran said.

  “That is so, Priestess!” The mouse showed no sign of tiring of this exchange, even though they’d had it six times already, word for word.

  Jonathan, on the other hand, was rapidly losing patience. “He’s an Aeslin mouse,” he said sharply. “They all talk, and they never forget anything. That’s why they travel with me. They’re more accurate than a diary and much harder to lose. And you: she’s not a Priestess. She’s a woman who happens to have been at the site of more than fifty truly disturbing killings.”

  “So you brought your talking mouse to make me admit to mass murder?” Fran finally looked away from the mouse, turning a frankly bemused stare on Jonathan. “That was your plan? Trick me with confusing rodents?”

  “Actually, my plan involved getting you to admit that you’re an inhuman creature, using the guise of a trick rider to bring you closer to your prey.” Jonathan sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “The first of the deaths corresponded with the poster that I used to track your show to Tempe.”

  “Aw, hell. I told Paul that thing was a bad idea. Mr. Mouse, do you mind if I put you down?”

  “No, Priestess,” replied the mouse, worshipfully.

  Fran gave it a quizzical look, but said only, “All right, then,” before setting it down atop her vanity. She stood then, crossing to the free-standing wardrobe that served her tiny trailer as a closet. “See, the show, it runs on a narrow margin in the best of years, and we’ve lost some acts lately, so Paul thought he’d try to make me out to be a bigger draw than I am.”

  “A bigger draw?” Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “You seemed like a lovely draw to me.”

  “Thank you kindly, but I can’t do anything a half-trained rodeo rider can’t do, and I won’t wear less than a leotard. About the only thing that’s impressive is the knife-throwing, and that’s a dangerous party game. One slip and, well. Dead rubes don’t do a circus too much good.” Fran rummaged around the top shelf of the wardrobe until she found a shoe-box and pulled it down. “Here it is.”

  “Here what is?”

  “My clippings.” She walked to the bed this time, not the vanity, and sat next to Jonathan before opening the box. “I used to figure my mama would come looking for me one day, and that she’d want to know what I’d been doing to keep busy. It turned into habit, so I kept going after I knew she wasn’t coming.”

  “That’s very sweet,” said Jonathan uncomfortably. He wasn’t sure what one was supposed to say to beautiful, heavily armed women who’d given up on waiting for their parents to come for them. The only time his parents had been more than a few miles away was when he went to college, and he’d returned home as soon as he graduated.

  “It was damned stupid of me,” Fran replied. She flipped quickly through the pile of clippings, tugging one loose. “Here. This was the first one.”

  Jonathan took the piece of newsprint, frowning as he saw the headline. “This isn’t in our files.”

  “Of course not. It wasn’t a townie.” Fran scowled. “Bull was a good strongman. He loved this show. We found him in pieces behind the trailer where we keep the horses. I couldn’t ride Rabbit for a week after the scare that gave him.”

  “Your horse is named ‘Rabbit’?” asked Jonathan.

  “Your mouse talks,” countered Fran. “I don’t think you get to say a word.”

  “Fair enough,” Jonathan said. “Please continue.”

  “The first dead townies were found the next night— after we lost one of our own. I don’t care what you think I am—and if you didn’t have a talking mouse, I’d think you were crazy, just in case you wondered—but there’s no way I’d ever hurt one of our own.”

  Jonathan nodded. “I believe you. I’m sorry to have troubled you. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to be going.” He stood, extending a hand toward the vanity to let the mouse climb back up his arm.

  “Really?” Fran set her shoebox aside. “Where’re you headed?”

  “There’s something out there that needs to be put down before it slaughters anybody else.”

  Again, he didn’t even see her move. The knife was simply in her hand, appearing as if by magic. “Sounds like fun,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  ~ * ~

  “This is not a good idea,” said Jonathan.

  “This is a fantastic idea,” countered Fran, tightening the straps on Rabbit’s saddle. “We already know he doesn’t like the smell of the whatzit. So if he starts panicking, we know that we should consider running away. Or killing something. I’m not feeling picky right about now.”

  “This is a terrible, horrible, incredibly foolish idea,” said Jonathan.

  “Oh, it’s probably all of those, too,” said Fran amiably. Grabbing hold of the pommel, she hoisted herself onto the back of the Appaloosa. “You can ride behind me, city boy.”

  “This idea somehow mysteriously manages to get worse by the moment,” muttered Jonathan, struggling to climb up into the saddle. It didn’t help that Rabbit kept shifting his weight, apparently unhappy about having two riders at the same time. “And I have a name, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. You never told me what it was.”

  “I... ah.” Jonathan grimaced. “My apologies. My name is Jonathan. Jonathan Healy.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mister Jonathan Healy. I’m Frances Brown. You’re a monster-hunter?” She tugged lightly on Rabbit’s mane. He started forward at a slow trot.

  “I prefer the term cryptozoologist.”

  “What’s that when it’s at home with its boots off?”

  Jonathan sighed. “Monster-hunter.”

  “That’s what I thought. Hold on tight, monster-hunter.” Fran leaned forward. That was all the warning Jonathan had before Rabbit broke into a canter, forcing him to grab Fran by the waist if he didn’t want to go sprawling.

  “How in the name of all that is good and holy in this world did I wind up in this position?” he demanded, raising his voice to be heard above the sound of hooves.

  Fran laughed. “Good luck and clean living!”

  Not to be left out, the mouse in Jonathan’s pocket cheered.

  “I’m going to die out here,” Jonathan muttered, tightening his hold on Fran’s waist.

  Rabbit maintained his canter until some signal from Fran told him to slow down to a walk. “This is about the distance we normally find the bodies,” Fran said, looking over her shoulder at Jonathan. “Never closer to the tents, not since that first night. Never much farther away. I figure the whatzit follows the light, but doesn’t want to be seen.”

  “That, or the whatzit is starting out at the circus, and prefers to take its kills a
certain distance away when possible,” said Jonathan.

  Fran sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t start thinking in that direction.”

  Jonathan stiffened. “Miss Brown, I truly do hope you haven’t led me out here to dispose of my body.”

  “Nah. If I wanted you dead, I’d have slit your throat while you were in my trailer, and then said you’d been trying to take advantage of me.”

  “That’s ... quite clever, actually.”

  “We raise ‘em smart out here in Arizona.” Fran grinned before her attention snapped abruptly back to her horse. “Rabbit? What’s wrong, sweetie?”

  Jonathan tried to peer past her. “How can you tell that something’s wrong?”

  “You work with a horse long enough, you learn the signs. You might want to hop down now. He’s getting pretty worked up.”

  Not wanting to be on the back of an animal that was getting “pretty worked up,” Jonathan scrambled hastily down, somehow managing not to lose his footing on the rocky ground. Once he was a few steps back, it was easy to see that Rabbit wasn’t happy. He was pawing at the ground, his ears flicking rapidly back and forth, like he couldn’t decide which way to turn.

  “This is definitely not a good idea,” said Jonathan, drawing his pistols and holding them low in front of him. The landscape was easier to see now that it wasn’t moving, even if the quality of light in the desert was strange to his eyes. It was brighter than the forests outside Buckley, while still being dark enough to make navigation difficult.

  “You’ve got that right,” Fran agreed, sliding down from Rabbit’s back. Her hands were empty, but given that he’d failed to see her draw her knives before, that didn’t seem like a concern. “City boy like you shouldn’t be out in the desert after dark. You’re likely to get yourself killed. Good thing I volunteered to come along.”

  “You call that volunteering?”

  “I didn’t stick a knife in you.” She smiled winsomely, and Jonathan was forced to admit—if only to himself—that she looked lovely in the moonlight.

  Something howled in the distance. He tensed, and Fran chuckled, patting the side of Rabbit’s neck. The big horse snorted.

  “Calm down. It’s just a coyote.”

  “Charming.”

  Something snarled, much closer than the howl had been. This time, Fran tensed. “That wasn’t a coyote.”

  “Then what—” He didn’t have time to finish the sentence. With a loud, whinnying shriek, Rabbit took off running, heading back toward the circus as fast as four legs could carry him. Fran swore, chasing after her horse.

  “Pursue!” shouted the mouse, right into Jonathan’s ear.

  He jumped. “I told you to stay in my pocket!”

  “You must pursue! The Priestess is running into danger!” The mouse gave his earlobe a sharp tug to illustrate the point.

  “She’s not a Priestess!” Jonathan snapped, shoving his pistols back into their holsters, and ran after Fran. She was making decent time across the rocky soil, but was no match for Rabbit, who was easily fifteen yards ahead of her. He seemed to be making straight for the lights in the distance. Jonathan was about to shout at her to stop when he heard a sharp rattling sound coming from the shadows to the right.

  Anyone who’d ever heard about the American West knew what that sound meant. Jonathan found a burst of speed he hadn’t been aware of hiding, hollering, “Fran!” as he ran after her. The rattling got louder. Not allowing himself to think about what he was doing, he grabbed her arm and yanked her back, just before something the size and shape of a small lion leapt from the shadows and landed where she’d been standing.

  It had the body of a cougar and the head of an impossibly large viper; when it hissed, it displayed a chilling mix of leonine and serpentine teeth. The rattling grew even louder as the creature lashed its tail from side to side—a tail tipped with a rattlesnake’s noisemaker the length of a man’s foot.

  “What is that?” asked Fran, eyes going wide.

  “I think that’s what frightened your horse.” Jonathan began to walk backward, pulling Fran with him. “Move slowly. Maybe it’s frightened. Maybe it will go away.”

  “Do you see the teeth on that thing?” Fran demanded.

  “Optimism is a virtue,” said Jonathan.

  The cougar-snake-thing made a sound that was somewhere between a hiss and a snarl, and began stalking forward.

  “So is speed,” said Fran. “Run!”

  They ran. And as is so often the case, the monster pursued.

  ~ * ~

  “What the hell is that?” Fran demanded, between gasps for air.

  “I think it’s a Questing Beast!” Jonathan twisted enough to fire at the creature that pursued them. The bullets had no visible effect, and he mentally crossed “silver” off the list of things that might save his life tonight. “It must be a North American breed! This is something entirely new!”

  Fran grabbed his collar, dragging him behind a large rock. A gun had somehow appeared in her free hand. That was an interesting change from the knives. “You’re not going to get to brag to the other monster-hunters if it eats us! Now what the blazes is a Questing Beast, and how do we kill it?”

  “It’s—ah, it’s a large predator, generally faithful to a single master, capable of wreaking untold carnage,” Jonathan said rapidly. “It’s considered a chimera of the viper and panther families. No one knows how that could be biologically possible. We haven’t had the opportunity to study one in generations.”

  “Well, here’s your chance to study one from the inside!” Fran peered around the edge of the rock. “It’s about ten yards off, looking at the ground. Think we can make a run for it?”

  “No. If it’s looking at the ground, not following our voices, that’s because it hears like a snake instead of like a cat. If we run, it will sense the vibrations and be on us like a shot.” Jonathan drew his second pistol, taking a deep breath. “To answer your other question, I have no real clue how we kill it, and was planning to shoot it until either it ate me or was made so thoroughly of holes that it no longer had any interest in swallowing me whole.”

  Fran grinned, the moonlight glinting off her teeth. “Sounds like my kind of a party.”

  The Questing Beast was still studying the ground when they stepped out from around either side of the rock and started firing. The bullets just seemed to aggravate it; it made that horrible shrieking, hissing sound again and charged toward them, gathering speed.

  “We should run!” said Jonathan.

  “I have a better idea!” Fran dropped her gun, and both her hands were suddenly filled with knives. “Keep it coming!”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” muttered Jonathan, and kept firing at the Questing Beast. Enraged, it tensed, and leapt, mouth open and fangs glistening with venom—

  —only to find Fran’s throwing knives embedding themselves in the back of its throat, thrown with her usual unerring precision at the one spot on its body guaranteed not to be armored. Jonathan kept firing as he dove to the side, but it wasn’t necessary; the Questing Beast went limp mid-leap and hit the ground in a graceless, crumpled heap.

  Jonathan and Fran lowered their weapons, staring at the fallen creature. And the mouse, standing on Jonathan’s shoulder, cheered.

  “What are you planning to do with this thing?” Fran asked peevishly. They’d been dragging the body of the Questing Beast across the desert for almost an hour, and she was clearly getting tired.

  “Dissect it, prepare it for taxidermical preservation, and ship it to Michigan for further study,” Jonathan replied. “A new species of Questing Beast doesn’t come along every day!”

  “And thank God for that,” said Fran. “Who do I bill for my throwing knives?”

  Jonathan looked startled. “We can recover them easily. The Beast didn’t have time to swallow.”

  “No,” said Fran firmly. “We can’t. Because that’s disgusting.”

  Jonathan looked at her expression, and decided not to argue. “V
ery well,” he said. “Someone must have raised this thing. We should find out who it was, and tell them not to do it again.”

  “What? You’re going to shake a finger and say ‘shame, shame, don’t make monsters’? I don’t think that’s going to be too effective.”

  “No, I’m going to point out that my family possesses a great many guns, and doesn’t appreciate it when people get torn apart for no good reason. This Questing Beast would have been perfectly happy living in the desert, never bothering anyone, but it got brought into contact with man, and this was the result.” Jonathan sighed. “People just don’t think things through the way they should.”