A day of reckoning comes for the Buchanan Boys. Judge Sampson comes to town and is hankering to pass out some hangings.
But “simple country lawyer” Henry Allan Blythe and his werewolf lackeys have other plans in mind.
Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23
Joe found Miles inside the church, drawing away. A grizzly bear this time.
“Go.”
“What?” Miles asked.
“Get up and go,” Joe said. “Right now. Start walking. Anywhere. I’ll find you.”
Miles stood up. “What’s going on?”
“I am your father and you will do as I say!”
Miles sniffed the air. “Blythe! He’s in town.”
“Now you know,” Joe said. “Get out of here.”
“No,” Miles said.
“Miles you know what he does,” Joe said. “He’ll use you to make me suffer.”
“I’m not going,” Miles said.
Joe grabbed his son by the shirt collar and dragged him toward the door. Miles dug his heels in and slapped at his father’s hand.
“If she were here she’d want you to go,” Joe said.
“BUT SHE’S NOT IS SHE?” Miles yelled as he struggled with his old man before finally clocking him a good one upside the head.
That didn’t go over well. Joe’s eyes turned yellow. His muscles bulged out, ripping his shirt apart. Louder than a lion’s roar he bellowed, “I…SAID…GO!!!!”
Miles wasn’t going to argue with that.
“Fine,” the kid said as he walked away. “Do your breathing.”
Joe fell flat on his back and did just that.
Do we like Joe?
I like him but I mean this is Slade’s jam and there can’t be two heroes, right?
Yet I’m picturing a scene where a cowboy rides a werewolf instead of a horse. Joe’s an upright walking werewolf, the traditional kind vs the new kind where a guy just turns into an actual wolf.
But I picture upright walking werewolves running on all fours, sort of in a gallop when they want to go fast.
A cowboy riding piggyback on a werewolf walking on two feet would just be ridiculous.
Together they chase after the bad guy who’s getting away.
I’m pretty sure someone will say its racist for a cowboy to ride a black guy that turns into a werewolf but I mean, it’d be like they’re working together with a common goal to fight evil.
What do you think? You like him and want to keep him? He’s adding too much to the storyline and nix him?
Thoughts for the future: If people like this enough to merit a sequel, I’m not entirely sure the next book would be about Slade. He’s fun to write but I’m not sure how much I can do with a guy that doesn’t talk.
So who knows Joe could have his own book. I have a few cowboy types in mind that could be fighting zombies.
My purpose for Joe was that he had a run in with the villain (Blythe) in the past and now he can tell Slade what Blythe is all about.
The other option is that Blythe just blurts out his master plan like an idiot.
But now my worry is when the zombies come, I mean, shit, Slade has a werewolf friend who’ll just slash up all the zombies and this is a Zombie Western. You want cowboys shooting up zombies don’t you?
Oh God writing is so hard. The things you have to think about.
Input please, 3.5 readers.
From the moment Blythe walked into the courtroom, Joe felt the beast surge within him. Under his shirt, he felt his chest hair grow. His fingernails started to jut out. But he took a deep breath and held his alternate form at bay.
He and Blythe had met before. Joe positioned himself outside the door and grabbed the counselor’s arm as he walked out into the hallway.
Hewett and Becker drew their weapons instantly. Joe released his grip.
“Joseph!” Blythe said. “So lovely to see you again.”
“We have unfinished business.”
“Do we?” Blythe asked. “My, my. You never learned your lesson, did you?”
Blythe patted his hand against Joe’s cheek. “So much sorrow written all over your face. Such a pathetic inability to let trivial matters go. How dreadfully unkind time has been to you.”
“I will end you,” Joe said. “The biggest mistake you ever made was not killing me.”
“You know that’s not my way, Joseph,” Blythe said. “If I kill my underlings, how will they ever learn?”
A brief staredown.
“How’s that son of yours?” Blythe asked. “Goodness, he must be a strapping young man now.”
A guttural growl poured out of Joe’s mouth. Growls followed from Hewett and Becker.
Blythe released Joe’s throat. His agents holstered their weapons.
“To be continued I suspect,” Blythe said as he and his men left the building.
Joe breathed heavily in order to bring himself under control.
Out came Gunther. “Can you believe this horse shit? Help me unchain these assholes, will ya’? I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Midnight. The criminals snored and shifted in their seats. Smelly Jack was having a difficult time drifting off seeing as how he was chained to two of his brother-cousins. Slade and Gunther were outside on the porch. The oldest Knox was fast asleep. The two younger Knoxes were locked in a heated debate about whether or not Jesse James was an outlaw or a hero.
Joe walked to the pulpit, which Miles was using as a desk to draw his latest masterpiece.
“Are we leaving?” the boy asked.
Joe answered his son’s question with a question. “I’m that obvious?”
“I can smell your fear,” Miles replied without looking up. This time he was working on a pirate ship, complete with sails, masts, cannons, and little pirates on deck.
“You don’t smell so brave either,” Joe said. “I don’t know anyone who could at a time like this.”
“Should we go now or in the morning?” Miles asked.
“Neither,” Joe answered. “I gave my word I’d help watch these men until their trial and a man’s only as good as his word. As soon as that’s over, we’ll be moving on.”
“That’s too bad,” Miles said. “The people are nice.”
“I reckon,” Joe said.
“Mr. Beauregard’s funny,” Miles said. “The Marshal doesn’t talk much. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “Maybe his mother taught him that if he can’t think of something nice to say about someone then he shouldn’t say anything at all. He probably met too many people who fit the bill.”
“Where will we go?” Miles asked.
“Thought about down Mehico way but I hate the heat. Canada will suit us fine.”
Miles looked up from his artwork. “Pa, shouldn’t we just outright tell them?”
Joe chuckled. “Son, people talk a good game about ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night but seeing is believing. Unfortunately for most folk, by the time they see it and believe it, it’s already too late.”
“What do you think the Legion is up to?” Miles asked.
“No good.”
“Duh,” Miles said. “But what?”
“No clue. But it’s big. Bigger than anything they’ve ever tried before.”
“Shouldn’t we help?” Miles asked.
“No,” Joe said. “We’ve done our part. And we’ve already lost too much.”
High atop the town’s rickety old water tower, a massive, hairy, hulking beast observed Slade as he dozed. Black fur, dagger-like claws, a snout full of razor sharp teeth. Even at rest, the eight-foot tall creature’s breath was hot, even steamy.
The legends are true. Werewolves have lived amongst humanity for ages, blending in as humans when they can, hiding in the shadows in their alternative form when they’re unable to keep their inner beast at bay.
This one seemed rather interested in the church, having surveyed the property for several minutes. A half mile away in the distance, he saw a pair of red eyes similar to his own emerge above the courthouse. The being they were attached to drew closer, leaping from rooftop to rooftop until it too found a spot on the water tower to lay low.
What is the deadliest power a werewolf has in its personal arsenal? Its unmatched strength? Explosive temper? Incomprehensible speed?
All of these factors are palpable but many would argue that telepathic communication is what makes werewolves truly terrifying. Known to hunt in packs, they can sneak up right behind their prey and openly discuss their plans of attack inside their minds without making a sound.
“Is this the place, Pa?” the newly arrived werewolf asked.
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t look like much.”
“A job’s a job, Miles.”
Miles wasn’t quite as large as his father, but he was still menacing and formidable. Gracefully, he and his father leaped from the tower and landed on their feet on the ground below. Almost in defiance of basic laws of physics, they barely made a sound.
“They’ll never accept us here,” Miles said.
“That’s up to you, son,” Pa replied. “Control the beast and maybe we can stop moving and settle down for a change.”
Pa carried a small pack on his back. He bit the shoulder strap with his teeth, werewolf hands being much too large to manipulate human objects. Opening his mouth allowed the pack to fall to the ground.
“That’s not what I meant,” Miles said.
Father and son morphed into human form. Pa was in his forties, strong and tall with a little bit of salt mixed into his peppery hair. Miles was fifteen. About six inches shy of six feet, he looked like he would have to get soaking wet to weight a hundred pounds. His ribs could have been played like a xylophone.
Underneath the water tower, the two very naked black men carried on their conversation. In human form, they weren’t able to communicate telepathically, so they used their mouths, as people have been known to do from time to time.
“I meant they’ll never be able to accept, ‘us.’”
To Miles, the older man was Pa. To the rest of the world, he was Joe. Joe Freeman. Joe rummaged through the pack, handed his son a pair of pants, then found his own and pulled them on.
“Well, that’s a bird of a very different feather, I reckon,” Joe said.
“Can’t we just live in the wild?” Miles asked.
“You can when you’re older if you want,” Joe replied. “Me, I’d rather have a bed to sleep on and a hot meal once in awhile.”
Miles buttoned up his shirt. “No one treats you like shit in the wild.”
Joe put his hat on. “I suppose not. But you know as bad as it is for black folk now, it’s a tiny bit better today than it was when I was your age.”
“So?” Miles asked.
Joe pulled on his boots. “So Lincoln made a law to set us free but there’s no law that can make people not treat us like shit,” Joe explained. “I was born a slave. You were born free. I doubt you or I will see it in our lifetimes but I like to think that one day someone in our line will become a successful, well-to-do man about town.”
“Yeah,” Miles said. “Keep dreaming.”
“Dreaming keeps me going,” Joe said. “It’ll take a long time. Maybe forever. But I hope if we keep going about our business and standing up for ourselves, one day folks won’t even care what skin color people are.”
Miles took a seat on the ground. He grabbed a stick and doodled pictures in the dirt.
“And fairies will sing, and unicorns will dance, and leprechauns will give us all pots of gold…”
“Oh Miles,” Joe said as he laid down on the ground. “You’re way too young to be this cynical. If you want to live on the range and chase rabbits like an animal when you’re grown I won’t stop you, but if you ask me, us removing ourselves from all the opportunities of the world is what the bad men of the world want us to do.”
Miles paused to admire a rudimentary castle he drew. “So what? We take the shit…”
With his eyes shut, Joe kept walking. “And your kid will take shit…and his kid will take shit…and all the kids going on down the line will take a lot of shit but…”
“What?” Miles asked.
“Someday a Freeman will do something big that will make all the shit worthwhile,” Joe said.
Miles traced the outline of a little knight just outside the castle wall. “And if that never happens?”
Joe became annoyed that his sleep was being disturbed. “I don’t know. Then we’re all shit out of luck. Go to sleep, will you?”
Bookshelf Battle 