Gunlaw

Gunlaw 8

The desert wind blew cold against her skin. Blood trickled warm from the hex-mark scored above her eyes.

"Come." Her voice rang hollow and the wind took the word.

"Lookee here, a hex-witch all on her lonesome." The speaker stood behind her. "What you doin' out here among the rocks and dust, little girl?"

"Summoning you, Sykes Bannon." Jenna's natural voice returned, with a slight tremble at the edge.

"You think so, huh?" Bannon stepped closer. She could smell the rot. The sunset's afterglow picked out the rough lines of his face and the glitter of eyes beneath the wide hat. "I fancied me a stroll is all. T'aint no summoning about it."

"You're fighting Mikeos Jones at sun-up," she said.

"Yeah, but I never had much use for beauty sleep." Bannon grinned and dug at his teeth with a black nail. "None at all since I died."

"You're going to lose."

"My money's on the dead man." Sykes rubbed at his neck, a dry sound.

"He knows where your heart is," Jenna said.

The rubbing stopped. "How?"

"A hex-witch told him."

"So why are we talking?" Bannon made a blacker space against the desert gloom.

"I can help you," Jenna said. She could feel Kyle's ghost at her shoulder, her brother's silent reproach and the memory of missed years strung between them.

"Why would you do that, little miss?" Bannon tilted his head to the side, bones creaking. "Corpsers ain't the kind that gets charity."

Jenna felt the old anger rising in her, burning at her fingertips, hex-fire aching for release.

"Maybe I want some of that death-magic for myself. Corpsers keep too many secrets. It's about time you shared, Bannon."

"You don't want this." Bannon held a hand up. "None of us asked for it. The pain don't stop when you die you know? It hurts to rot. It hurts to dry. Ain't no place to run from it. Stew in pain long enough and every good thing will leach out of a man. It doesn't take long before you're stealing skin just to have a part of you that feels alive, if only for a week or a day."

"So let Mikeos Jones gun you down." Part of her longed to see it.

"If he shoots my heart, I'll break, I won't die. I'll lie there broken, staring at the sun. Maybe they'll burn me up, and I'll be dust howling on the wind, but we can't die, we got no place to go."

"So let me help you," Jenna said.

Bannon came close, leaning in, sniffing the air. "I remember you. Been a while." Another sniff, deeper this time. "Back in the Five-oh-Seven, with the Old One, the Sister. I make a point of setting down memories of the Old One, scratching 'em on a bone so's I can return to 'em. Lilliana has a habit of slipping my mind. You're the little girl with something about her . . ."

"You killed—" Jenna bit the words off, cursing herself.

". . . your brother?" Bannon wheezed, the dry noise of broken bellows. She almost didn't recognise it as laughter. "No. I just saw the cancer in him. It's a talent. Every corpser has an eye for death."

"His skin went black where you touched him." She struggled to keep her voice level, to keep the magic wrapped around her bones.

"I could make a black handprint on that lilly white arm of yours too. Evil stains. It's the way of the world." He laughed again. "For a woman who wants to know death-magic you seem to know squat about corpsers."