Ellen's Arc

Chapter 24 of 45

Ellen came down the stairs slow. Cade sat on the floor by the cold hearth. Dracula stood over him, coat black against the gray wall. Eleven years of hunting had brought this man here, into her hotel. He had helped her hold the door against Brennan. Now he wanted his payment. He wanted Cade broken and dead, and he expected Ellen to stand aside and let it happen inside her walls. Dracula's red eyes found her on the last step. "This is not yours to watch," he said. "It's my floor," Ellen said. "He listens. Then what?" "Then I finish it." Dracula did not raise his voice. "You agreed to the price." She had. She'd promised Cade to him to buy the door held. But Cade was the only real gun she had left. Six women slept upstairs behind walls she could not defend alone. Kill Cade, and she lost her strongest ally the same hour she gained her home. Cade spoke without looking up. "I never touched your girl." "Every man says that." "The man who split from Brennan early," Cade said. "Tracks went cold on the salt beds. He wore a black coat too." He lifted his head. "Wasn't me you've been chasing all these years. Was him." Dracula went still. The words landed hard and quiet, the way pain always hit him. "You lie to live." A shape dropped past the shattered window. Boots hit the road. The front bar rattled, then held. Stark's voice came flat through the wood. "Open it." Ellen lifted the bar. Stark stepped in, armor dark, one hand clamped on a man's collar. He shoved the prisoner to the floor. Brennan's last gunman, the one Stark had carried off weeks back. The man wore a black coat, torn at the shoulder. "Been holding this one," Stark said. "He talked. Burned a town eleven years ago. Took a girl on the way out." He looked at Dracula. "That's your man. Not the gunslinger." The gunman's face said the rest. He didn't deny it. He tried to crawl back, and found the wall. Dracula crossed the lobby in three steps. He lifted the man by the throat with one hand. "Say her name," he said, very soft. The gunman said it. Dracula's face broke, then closed. He carried the man out the door into the dark. The door swung shut behind them. Stark set a heavy metal case by the desk. Inside sat a mounted grenade gun, belt coiled beside it. "For the walls," he said. "You'll need it." He lifted off before Ellen could answer. Cade stood and picked up his rifle. "Debt's paid," he said. Ellen looked at the sealed door, the sleeping floors above, the gun Stark had left. Her ally still stood beside her. The hotel was hers, defended, and hers to hold. But she had just watched vengeance walk out onto her plain, and it knew exactly where she lived.