“Nobody is perfect,” Ryan said.
In his mind, Hugh reached out and squeezed Ryan’s neck until the rancher’s face turned red and his head popped.
Maria, Ryan’s wife, came up to the doorway and froze. The young kid held completely still, waiting and watching Hugh’s face.
“I bought him to breed. I thought I would diversify, you know?” Ryan was babbling now. “Had a particular mare in mind, but that deal fell through. He’s a good stallion. Powerful and fast. Bad-tempered. Bit the shit out of me and the stable hands.”
Hugh stared at him.
Sweat broke out on Ryan’s forehead. His hands shook, his words tumbling out too fast.
“You two will get along. He’s like you.”
“How’s that?”
“A big, mean sonovabitch that nobody wants.” Ryan realized what he’d blurted out. His face went white.
A stunned silence claimed the porch.
“I didn’t mean it…” Ryan said.
A cold realization rolled over Hugh, smothering all anger. He would take this horse. He had no choice.
He had no choice.
It felt like he’d fallen off of somewhere high and smashed face-first into the stone ground. A year ago, Ryan would’ve paraded every one of his stallions in front of him and he’d have had his pick.
Hugh rose slowly, walked down the steps into the grass, approached the pasture, and vaulted over the fence. Bucky spun in place and stared at Hugh. A scar crossed the horse’s white head. Someone had taken a blade of some sort to him.
Bucky blew the air out of his nostrils, his amber eyes fixed on Hugh. A dominant stance. Fine.
Hugh stared back.
The stallion bared his teeth.
Hugh showed his own teeth and bit the air.
Bucky hesitated, unsure.
Once a horse decided to bite, there was no stopping it. Sooner or later you would get bitten, especially if the horse was a habitual biter. Some bit because they were jealous; others to show displeasure or get attention. Horses, like dogs and children, followed the principle that any attention, even negative, was still attention and therefore worth the effort.
A war stallion would bite to dominate.
He had to demonstrate that he wouldn’t be dominated. Once the biting started, it was difficult to stop. Yelling, hitting the horse, or biting it back, as one guy he remembered used to do, had no effect. The point was to not get bitten in the first place. You treated a war stallion with respect, and you approached it like you were first among equals.
Bucky stared at him.
“Come on,” Hugh said, his voice calm, reassuring. Words didn’t matter, but the sound of his voice did. When it came to humans, horses relied on their hearing more than their vision.
Bucky pawed the ground.
“You’re just wasting time now. Come on.”
The stallion eyed him again. In his years Hugh had seen all sorts of horses. The Arabians who would rather die than step on a human foot; the strict, mean horses from the Russian steppes that gave all of themselves, but forgave nothing; the German Hanoverians that would just as soon walk through a man as around... With a cross like this he couldn’t tell what the hell he was going to get, but he’d ridden horses since he was ten years old, all those long decades ago.
Their gazes locked. There was a fire inside that horse, and it shone through his eyes. A mean sonovabitch nobody wanted. You will do. You belong with me.
“Come here. I don’t have all day.”
Bucky sighed, raised his ears, and walked over. Hugh patted the warm neck, feeling the tight cords of muscle underneath, dug the sugar cube he’d stolen from Ryan’s kitchen out of his pocket, and let warm lips swipe it off his palm. Bucky crunched the sugar.
“I knew it,” Ryan said from behind the fence. The kid behind him rolled his eyes.
Bucky turned his head and showed Ryan his teeth.
Hugh stroked the stallion’s neck. “How much do you want for him?”
“A favor,” Ryan said.
The man really didn’t know when to stop pushing. “What do you want?”
Ryan nodded at his youngest son. “Take Sam with you.”
What the bloody hell? “I just told you I couldn’t pay you for the horse, and you want me to take your son with me. You know who I am. You know what I do. He’ll be dead in a month.”
“I can’t keep him.” Pain twisted Ryan’s face. “He isn’t right in the head.”
Hugh squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. It was that or he really would strangle the man. He opened his eyes and looked at the kid.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” the kid said, his face flat. His eyes were dull. A liability at best, a pain in the ass at worst.
“What’s your name?”
“Sam.”
“Are you slow?”
“No.”
“I didn’t mean like that.” Ryan grimaced. “He can’t act like normal people. He doesn’t know when to stop. He caught a horse thief last month. Now, you catch a horse thief, you beat the shit out of him. Everyone understands that. That’s how things are done. You don’t get a rope and try to hang the man. If I had found him, that would be one thing. The sheriff saw him getting ready to string the thief up.”
Hugh raised his eyebrows at the boy.
“He stole from us,” Sam said, his voice flat.
“He had the rope over the tree ready to go right there by the damn road. Why hang him by the road, I ask you?”
“A warning is only good if people see it,” Hugh said.
Sam looked up, surprise flashing in his eyes, and looked back down. The kid wasn’t as dim as he pretended.
“He was always like this. He fights and don’t know when to stop. The sheriff told me he would let that one go, but this idiot doesn’t think he did anything wrong.”
“He stole from us.” A harsh note crept into Sam’s voice. “If one person steals and we don’t do anything, they will keep stealing.”
“See?” Ryan reached over and smacked the kid upside the head. Sam’s head jerked from the blow. He righted himself.
“Sheriff says he tries it again, he’ll end up in a cage for the rest of his life, or they’ll string him up instead and save everyone the trouble. He just isn’t made for ranch life. It’s not in him. At least this way he’s got a chance. You take him and Bucky, we’re even.”
Hugh looked at the kid. “You want to die fast?”
Sam shrugged. “Everyone dies.”
The void scoured Hugh’s soul with sharp teeth.
“Get your shit,” Hugh said. “We’re leaving.”
The magic was still down.
The tall, gleaming office towers that once proudly marked Charlotte’s downtown had fallen long ago, reduced to heaps of rubble by magic. The waves would keep worrying at the refuse, grinding it to dust until nothing was left. Magic fought all technology, but it hated large structures the most, bringing them down one by one, as if trying to erase the footprint of the technological civilization off the face of the planet.
With construction equipment functioning barely half of the time and gasoline supplies limited and pricey, clearing thousands of tons of rubble proved an impossible task, and Charlotte did what most cities decided to do in the same situation: it settled. It carved a road roughly following the old Tryon street, with hills of concrete and twisted steel beams bordering it like the walls of a canyon, and called it a day. Stalls had sprung up here and there, clustered where the road widened, selling all the fine luxuries the post-Shift world had to offer: “beef” that smelled like rat meat, old guns that jammed on the first shot, and magical potions, which followed the tried-and-true ancient recipe of ninety-nine parts tap water to one part food coloring. This early in the morning, only half an hour past sunrise, most of the vendors were still setting up. In another half hour, they would start squawking and lunging at the travelers, trying to hawk their wares, but for now, the road was blissfully quiet.
It didn’t matter, because for once Hugh didn’t have a hangover. Yesterday, after they’d left Black Fire behind, they’d spent the night in the open, at an old campground. He’d wanted to drink himself into a stupor, but then he would be no good the next day, so he stayed sober. His mood had soured overnight, and in the morning, when he found Sam waiting with the rest, the irritation heated up to a simmering hate.