Devil's Vortex. James Axler
wish I had more to offer you. And the others. But the best I’ve got is, if we don’t survive the next minute, the next hour doesn’t matter a spent shell casing. When you’re on the last train west, all bets are off.”
For a moment they sat in silence. Something about their manner kept the rest of the gaudy-house staff and patrons steering well clear of them. Even the freckle-faced boy who’d brought them their now-neglected drinks.
She reached out and patted his hand.
“I know you do your best, lover,” she said. “And no one else could do half as well. Just promise me that we’re looking for something better.”
His winter-sky eye fixed unwaveringly on hers.
“You know I can’t promise happily-ever-after, Krysty.”
“You can’t promise a comet won’t land on top of us either. Promise me that we’re still looking.”
He sighed again.
“There’s got to be more than this, Krysty, something better that’s staying just out of reach. If it comes our way, I wouldn’t say no.”
“Why are you really so reluctant to let her come along with us, lover?”
Ryan rubbed his chin. Even over the tinkling piano and loud gaudy joviality, she could hear the bristles rasp.
“I can’t really put my finger on it,” he said. “There’s just something...weird about her, you know?”
For a moment she gazed at him with her emerald eyes. She knew what kind of a bewitching effect they had on him.
She gave her hair another twitch. Ever so slightly.
He laughed. “Point taken. I should know better than to try to get one past you, Krysty.”
“You know,” she said, sipping her beer, “you really should.”
Ryan looked around. Their friends seemed occupied and as safe here and now as they ever were anywhere.
“You know,” he said, “with what we got paid for that job from Hamarville, and what Baron Dugan’s giving us for this next gig, we could spring for a private room, just for you and me. What do you say we go check it out?”
A third of her beer remained in her mug. She tossed it back in a single swallow. Then she wiped her mouth, smiled and set the mug down with a decisive thump.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said, rising to her feet.
The companions hadn’t traveled more than half a mile down the road that led east from Duganville, between broad fields with workers steering mule-drawn plows, before Krysty stopped dead and said, “Something very bad is about to begin.”
The words sent a jolt of alarm blasting through Ryan’s guts and tingling down the nerves of his arms and legs. None of his people were prone to crying wolf; Krysty had an advantage.
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