Marked

Culyn Blackmore would have pulled the trigger by now if he didn’t believe there was still a mite of good even in the guiltiest of folk—the added fifty prisari for bringing the mark in alive instead of leaving him cold wasn’t bad incentive either.

Staring through the scope of Fyrefel at the man who just days prior robbed the apothecary in Kazita Post and killed three innocents in the process leading Culyn on this drawn-out chase, patience wore thin and a prickle on his finger begged to be itched.

Presently the thief--a man by the name of Jamethin--stood in the window of the house he’d commandeered from some steaders and took a pull from a fresh bottle of whiskey. Culyn wondered whether he’d pass out of his own accord, allowing him to waltz right down from his perch there on the cliff side and meet the damn fool. Culyn also wondered whether he’d killed the family, but when saw a woman in a pale blue dusty dress run out to the well pump an hour ago, it confirmed the madman had at least left some of them alive. A mound of freshly piled dirt just southeast of the paddock told Culyn someone hadn't survived. A haphazard grave digging job if he'd ever seen one.

It wouldn't have surprised Culyn if Jamethin was a duster—after all it would have taken a sizable amount of being out of one’s mind to pull what he did, and folks hopped up on the blue were nothing if not that. But that didn’t add up to a hill of stones, seeing as how he if the man needed coin, any modicum of elarium dust would fetch a fair price. Besides, he wasn’t glow-eyed and twitchy like a man on the blue.

Culyn found it curious he didn’t take much else—the sizable amount of prisari and emperyial notes in the store cache, for one, but regardless of why he had chosen to take those kind of supplies, fact of the matter was three people died in his botched escape. He panicked when they screamed, and he started shooting. That was the account Culyn was given by the local deputy who was very much out of commission, one of Jamethim’s stray bullets striking him square in the bitters.

Culyn eventually willed himself to pull the scope away from his eye and held the elaric rifle in one hand as he stood, patting his borrowed bronc on the side before he remounted. Clicking his tongue, he spurred the animal into motion down the rocky cliff side.

Jamethin would see him coming if he wasn’t too sauced up, but if Jamethin was going to kill the family he would have by now. This was no cold-blooded murderer, just a rancher fallen on hard times, maybe.

He’d be liable to shoot a hunter coming after him though, but Culyn didn’t care about that. The truth was he didn’t care about much these days. If he ended up getting shot, it wouldn’t be any skin off his back. Well, it might be at first, but after the briefest of moments whatever flesh and blood a bullet tore away would be replaced as if it never happened, an equal mirror of a wound appearing on whoever bore his Marking presently—the last person he touched. In this case, a child killing bastard who very much deserved it, his last bounty locked up back in New Luminster and fixing to be hanged.

A last faint red vestige of the setting sun faded over the mountain ridges as the first pricks of starlight started shimmering among a blanket of lavender and deep blue-black, casting the distant mesas in ghostly light.

Too pretty a night for bloodshed.

Then he supposed there never was a right time for that sort of thing—only times when it was necessary.

As he closed in on the small stead, a shabby wooden paddock off to the side and an equally rickety but large barn, he heard a commotion from inside the house.

Culyn clasped a hand on the nineloader pistol on his hip wondering if the man would burst through the door and start firing.

Culyn dismounted and walked a few paces toward the steading.

“No closer!” The man’s voice cracked and rang out in the quiet of the dimming evening.

“Alright. Here I am.” Culyn said. “Staying put."

“Keep it that way.”, the man called back. “In fact, you best be getting to turning tail and running off.”

“Why’s that, now?” Culyn called back. “I just want to talk about what happened back in Kazita. That’s all.”

“Who sent you?”

“No one." Culyn said. A technical truth. He took on the bounty of his own will.

“A hunter then?”

“I hunt. Some for food and some for men. All for a living.”, Culyn said. “Point is I’m here to talk and see if we can’t work this out the right way.”

A fleeting glint off the Jamethin's black sixgun, and his head appeared in the window. By faint glow of a lantern swaying on the porch in a whistling breeze, Culyn could make out his worn face and wild eyes. Maybe he was a duster after all—or else just driven to a feral kind of rage like a cornered pyretooth. His gun pointing out, but Culyn figured the man couldn’t hit the broadside of a bloated sandhydra with all the whiskey Jamethin had been partaking in.

“Ain’t no right way in all this mess.”, called Jamethin, speech slurred and voice a rasp.

He had a point there. These things usually didn’t go any way a man could objectively look upon and say it was all on the straight and narrow.

“I believe there’s a better way at least.” Culyn said, hand returning to rest on the butt of his own holstered piece.

“I got what I came for and I’m sorry those folks back there had to die, but my boy needed help. They should have just let me leave like I asked.” Jamethin’s voice was cracking every few words, his throat sounding haggard and hoarse. “Couldn’t leave my boy to turn."

Culyn felt a cold shiver run down his spine. “Turn to what, friend?” He had some bad inclination as to the answer, and desperately didn’t want to be right.

“Never you mind. He’s going to be fine now.”

“I’m afraid it’s my job to mind. Gotta be sure that you won’t be causing further trouble for any other folks around Early Prairie or anywhere else for that matter.”

“What are you some kind of big time Sheriff? Thought you said you was a hunter.”

“I'm no Sheriff. But I’m a man who’d rather not see people die without necessary and just cause. So let’s say we avoid that, Jamethin.” Culyn drew a breath of the night air that was turning colder. “Why don’t we start by having you let those folks out of the house, and then we can talk some more.”

Silence. Just a whispering howl of wind and distant night calls of some wulvens out on a night prowl somewhere on the ridges overhead.

The door of the homestead flew open and two figures walked out. Jamethin was wild-eyed skin glistening with sweat, eyes wide, face dirtied, and he clutched the blonde haired girl in the blue dusty dress by the arm and swung her round in front him to block Culyn from getting a shot in.

Things hadn't degraded to that point just yet, but Culyn liked to know his options. He drank in the details.

“What’s your name?” Culyn asked.

The girl whimpered, chest heaving with Jamethin arm still clasped around her dress sleeve like a vice and iron pointing at her slender neck.

“Jane.”, she said.

“Jane, my name’s Culyn. You’re gonna be alright. Ain’t she Jamethin?”

Jamethin glowered and spat. “I’ll let the girl walk over to you.”, he said. “Then you walk away.”

“How many others are in there?”

The girl whimpered and from behind the man wrenched her arm tighter and press the dark iron of the barrel up against her neck.

Culyn didn’t think he’d shoot her. The shooting he’d done in town was the work of a man terrified and desperate. Terrified of what Culyn was still trying to figure, but he a decent inclination. Something about his boy. Culyn needed to know what that something was for beyond just a reckoning.

“Just her.”, the Jamethin said. Jane shook her head surreptitiously, telling Culyn there were more, which he’d already figured as much.

“Alright, I believe you.”, Culyn lied. “Send her on over.”

“If I do then you turn away and get on out of here.”

Culyn nodded.

He pushed the girl off the porch, and she stumbled forward, falling then getting back on her feet, and Culyn stepped out a couple paces to meet her. Jamethin slid back inside and shut the door.

When she reached out her hand he recoiled. He always did, even when he wore the patchwork armor and muslin wraps to cover inch of exposed skin, save for his face, and even then he sometimes wore his bandana up over his nose, sometimes the Berathin vishelm he’d found near the border of Scorchfire Desert, a little worse for the wear looking to have been chewed on and maybe belched up at one point by a wyrm of some kind.

She clasped his arm, no skin contact. Good. He didn’t want to put the Marking on this girl with an accidental touch and her end up hurt or dead on his watch. When the girl started breathing in and out like mad and whimpering hysterics, Culyn offered a safe, gloved on the shoulder of her dress.

“You’re alright.” Culyn said. “How many others are in there?”

“Just my Ma and brother. He killed Pa." She shook her head, staring wide eyed and downward as if she couldn't believe the ground still there. "Bit into him and wouldn’t get off, wouldn’t stop. I tried, I did. I couldn’t do anything.”

“You’re alright.” Culyn repeated. “Just slow down. He bit into your Pa?”, Culyn said, gesturing toward the porch and the creaky screen door swinging still on its hinges.

“Not him. His boy… that thing. Chained up in the cellar.”

Culyn was starting to get a clear picture that confirmed his fears as a familiar piercing shriek echoed from somewhere nearby but muffled, punctuating the reality of what he was about to face. The girl jumped and whimpered.

“I know you’ve been through a lot of awful.” Culyn said. The girl’s haunted wide eyes were locked on the dust of the ground, like it was something surprising and had no right being there. “I just need you to be brave a bit longer, stay here and I’ll go and get your Ma and your brother.”

She protested his leaving her at first, but he shouldered his way past her, drew his bronze plated longknife and clasped the nineshot pistol from it’s holster in the other.

He’d only hunted and killed one Duskblud before, and it nearly took a sizable chunk of his flesh with it’s fangs, hungry red eyes gleaming and tattered wings flapping with sharp ended pinions promising ripping and tearing for anything in their frantic wake.

Culyn had seen this kind of hysteria before—someone wanting to cure a loved one from the bite of a bludwyrm. But there was no stopping it. It turned what was once a living breathing person into a draconic blood sucking monster, muscles and bone ripping and tearing to meet the demands of a wyvern form in the shape of man. The transformation only took hold at dusk every nine moonrises.

Culyn supposed it was just his lucky night.

Another blood curdling shriek rang out from what Culyn assumed was the cellar.

He shouldered open the door and pointed his pistol at the first thing that moved. A little boy who clutched a firepoker with both hands looking near as wild eyed as his sister.

“Where’s your mama?” Culyn said.

“He just took her down below. Said he’s gonna kill her if I follow.”, the boy’s eyes glistened but had a hardness to them that Culyn knew all too well.

“Go on out with your sister and wait.” Culyn said. He moved ahead out the back door and turned to the cellar doors.

“I’m coming down.” Culyn called.

“You stay the helfyre away!,” Jamethin called up from the dark dank below. “He just needs some time is all. He’s gonna get better. You’ll see.”

Culyn flung open the cellar doors and was met with the musty smell of freshly disturbed still air and dust, along with the sharp sour sweet smell of sweat and urine.

Culyn pulled open his pouch and removed a golden prisari sprinkled with the smallest bit of elarium dust. Rubbing it between his fingers he pulled it up to his mouth, breathed on it and threw it threw the air as it lit up emitting a soft golden light interlaced with blue iridescence from the eight-sided oblong diamond shape.

A sharp hiss rang out from the far side of the room along with the clang of chains, where Culyn could just now make out the shape and silhouette of a writhing figure with too long arms, arched back and the breadth of tattered wings. The Duskblud flashed red eyes in the dark. then turned away again from the light of the prisari, glowing on the floor.

Revealed by the light Jamethin held a gun to the widow's jaw like he had with Jane just before. She didn’t look terrified as her daughter had though.

Nostrils flaring, face wet, dark hair hanging down in front her eyes wide from the frantic desperation of that accompanied watching a loved one die. Rage written all over her face like wrath ridden words. Culyn didn't blame her. Jamethin had killed her husband, at least indirectly. The wretched sad thing in the corner had, the thing that used to be the man’s son, had done the biting and tearing.

“He likes it dark!”, Jamethin shouted. “You’re gonna agitate him.” He shuffled forward carrying the widow with him, gun end firm against her jaw as if to kick the prisari away.

Culyn raised his rimfyre nineshot, clicked back the hammer.

"Time for you to stay put."

Jamethin stopped where he stood, looking back at the shadowed creature then back at Culyn with a defiance and sorrow fidgeting across blue cast countenance.

Culyn swallowed feeling the impossibility of it all. No way out of this without someone losing, especially since the people involved had already lost a whole lot.

“Alright now Jamethin. Enough of this. Lay your arms down, let her go and I promise you I’ll stay right here with your son till he gets better.” Jamethin’s eyes flickered down to the empty bottles and vials of tonics and remedies.

“Might be a while.”, Jamethin said, through something of a manic yet sad laugh. “I tried. It ain’t working.” Rivulets of liquid highlighted by the dim light the golden blue prisari provided trailed down his cheeks his eyes.

“It may not.” Culyn said, knowing full well Jamethin was only becoming more unhinged by the moment and liable for his trigger finger to do something he wasn’t meaning for it to do.

The hard-faced woman, in a moment that very much caught Culyn off guard spun out of Jamethin’s shaking grip and throttled him, tackling him the ground.

A deafening crack went off and then another, his piece emanating bright muzzle flashes.

Culyn jumped forward, pulled the woman off Jamethin, and grabbed up his gun before he could snatch it back.

“Go on up to your children.” Culyn said to the woman. “I’ll take care of him.”

He had to hold her back from jumping back on top of Jamethin, screaming a guttural rage and she spat on the man.

She sniffed and ran up the staircase and into the star peppered night, calling for her children through a anger and grief shaken gravel.

Culyn looked up and saw that the prisari had been kicked off to the side and the light from it was fading—they only lasted so long.

In the darkening cellar Culyn reached down and helped Jamethin up, saw his lip was bleeding something good. She’d gotten a fair hit in.

“I shouldn’t be after all you’ve wrought you but I really am sorry about your boy." Culyn said. "Best thing anyone can do is put him down now.”

“No.” Jamethin hissed, wrenching himself away pacing toward the writhing shape at the end of the cellar, the thing’s breath heaving up and down, still veiled in the shadow of the far end of the cellar away from the moonlight lancing in from the stairwell, the blue gold glow of the pris now out.

Culyn caught a glimpse of gleaming red eyes looking straight on now and heard a flutter of two large wings that made his skin crawl.

Jamethin turned and paced toward the Duskblud. His boy.

“Stay back.” Culyn warned.

“It’s me, Jon.” Jamethin said, walking closer. “You know your Pa.”

Culyn pulled the hammer back on his nineshot. All nine, even well placed would not be likely to take down the scaled hide of a fully turned Duskblud. Wouldn't be time to reload either.

“My boy just needs me.” Jamethin said, a hoarse whisper. He knelt and stepped closer in, reaching out a hand. “That’s all. He’ll be alright… you’ll see. You’re alright Jon.”

There was a moment when Culyn thought maybe things would be alright.

They weren’t.

A ferocious growl was followed by a series of cracking snaps like the sound of timber falling in a windstorm. Culyn reached in his pouch for a handful of prisari this time, knowing he’d need the light to sess the situation, shoot and to hopefully blind the Duskblud for a moment. They didn’t like the light, especially the sort of light that came from elarium and pris.

He rolled them in his fingers, took them to his mouth and blew, and threw them toward the direction of Jamethin who was screaming like a shot basilroost, the stump of an arm showing a font of dark blood pouring forth from jagged edges of broken arm bone just as the red eyed gaunt scaled faced of what used to be this man’s son bit down into his neck, large wings connected by a whisper thin sinew and long pinions coming to a sharp taloned edge at the bottom.

Jamethin was a dead man and part of Culyn wanted to end his misery now but he just shot aiming four rounds at the wings—hoping to high hel he’d take them out of commission.

The Duskblud shrieked and turned his attention from feasting on his father toward Culyn himself.

Damn the Seraph…

Culyn bolted for the stairwell as a bone shaking screech rang out behind him along with the metallic groan and snap of shattering chains.

He made it to the second stair when he felt claws rip into his back and push him the rest of the way out of the cellar doors and he landed and rolled in the dirt.

His vision blurry from both burning pain of the puncture wounds in his and the stinging of dust his fall kicked up, Culyn saw the black scaled figure and its wide wingspan diving down upon him.

He felt the burn of the claw wounds on his back already healing, surely giving the child murderer back in his cell at Luminster a fitful waking.

Culyn reflexively held up his left arm before the beast but down, reinforced with an iron armlet to protect his neck from getting tore out, and with his right pulled clasped up the longknife just off to his side and jutted it upward.

The blade glanced off stubborn dark scales that had fully formed around its chest and neck and most of face, now a stretched snout with flattened nostrils breathing out hot putrid air that smelled of sulphur and the iron tang of blood, of which some presently glistened dark in the moon’s early light.

The beast’s maw snapped, and the chaos of flapping wings tore at his muslin wrappings and the pinions like spiked breaking Culyn’s skin. It was like being tossed into the cyclone of a glintstorm while inside a chest of razor blades.

Then came the raging report of his elarium barreled rifle, Felfyre, that Culyn knew anywhere.

The Duskblud was blown over and off to the side, its frantic strength releasing him from being pressed into the ground and the tumult of fang claw and wing dissipated.

The widow lowered the rifle, blue smoke rising from the barrel, her eyes painted with crimson vengeance.

Culyn coughed and stood to his feet, fighting against the searing pain of the cuts in his arms, realizing as they started to heal the Marking would have transferred over the Duskblud now.

Seeing as how it was dead, he was back to square and even, no marking on anyone. First time in a while. A welcome feeling to not have anyone else’s pain on his consciousness or their life for that matter. Though he hadn’t minded marking a man who deserved it.

He turned and walked over to the woman, Jane and her little brother behind her, and held out a hand for Felfyre.

“Everyone alright?”

“Can’t say as alright sums it.”, she said, handing him the rifle. “But we’re alive.”

Culyn sniffed, thinking of the body of her husband still inside. No one was ok after something like this. Not for a long time. Culyn knew that all too well and pushed thoughts of a little girl’s bullet wound ridden body from his mind.

A wretched snorting and sudden shriek prompted Culyn to pivot and turn. The Duskblud was up and moving damn it all, and it leapt in the air wings spreading preparing to careen down into them.

The boy up and ran at the sight of the thing, tripping on a tumblebrush and the Duskblud veered off for him instead. Jane screamed out the kid’s name, Bo, and the mother started running after him but Culyn held out a firm arm stopping her.

The Duskblud had the Marking now, and Culyn knew what he had to do. He ran off to get between Bo and the Duskblud.

“Stay back.”, Culyn said to the widow. “Just help me up afterward.”

Culyn took his ninegun, chambered the last remaining bullet, and ran to get between Bo and the Duskblud. He put the barrel to his chin and pulled the trigger.

------

Culyn woke with one hel of headache and a heft of black scaled body on top of him. A hole smoked in the bottom of the Duskblud’s maw.

He wrenched his neck over and saw the widow standing there slacked jawed, the daughter retching and the son looking on with a strange sort of fascination.

Culyn shoved off the corpse of the beast—it was best to think of a Duskblud as no vestige of what had been. That was Jamethin’s mistake. His son had been gone a long while, Culyn reckoned.

He accepted the hand of the widow and stood to is feet. "Sorry you all had to see that."

"I don't know what you are," she said, "but I know you should be dead."

"Not sure what I am sometimes myself anymore." Culyn said.

Then he shook himself off, leaned down and took out his longknife, digging into the maw of the Duskblud, and took four of the long wyvern fangs.

Culyn told the widow the beast would need burned as to not attract any wyvern kin, and he walked stiff down to the cellar, carried the body of the husband up to the family for them to bury.

Then he went back down and pulled Jamethin by his legs from the dark of the cellar into the spot where moonlight shone in from the doors, enough to take his piece, his hat and buckle. Some identifiers for the bounty.

He slung the man over his shoulders and dropped him next to the Duskblud that used to be his son.

“He ought to be burned too.”

The widow stepped away from comforting her son. Jane sat on the porch, rocking and staring off into the moonlit valley.

“Him I’ll feed to the vultures. And watch while they tear him up.”

Culyn understood the sentimenet. Jamethin got her husband killed by bringing his bit boy here.

Still, as Culyn walked back to his bronc and strapped Fyrefel to the saddle, he knew full well that Jamethin’s mistake hadn’t been far from one of his own, the pain of which never left and scars it left that never healed.

There had been a whole lot of good in Jamethin to do what he did. A whole lot more than Culyn thought was left in him. Bad men wreak havoc and all manner of ill. Not much could be after a man tears his own family apart.

At least Jamethin got to die trying to save his.

As it was, Culyn could only linger without.