Wild Wild Hex, page 1
Wild Wild Hex
Jordan L. Hawk
Wild Wild Hex © 2017 Jordan L. Hawk
ISBN: 978-1-941230-27-5
All rights reserved.
Cover art © 2017 Jordan L. Hawk
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Edited by Annetta Ribken Graney
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to Patreon contributors Antonia A. and Emilia A. for their suggestions of town names, and Anthony C. for his title suggestion. You’re the best!
I.
“Looking for me, lawman?”
The click of a gun cocking accompanied the question. Enoch froze, hands out to either side.
He crouched over the dry, rocky soil, where a faint print had caught his eye. He’d dismounted, hoping for some clue that would lead him to the outlaw he’d been sent to track down.
And now someone had gotten the drop on him.
Where the devil the man had come from, Enoch couldn’t guess. The land here was open, nothing but rock and scrub brush for miles. Nowhere to hide, or so Enoch had thought.
He hesitated, but there didn’t seem much point in dissembling. The fellow had pegged him as a lawman, even though Enoch dressed like a simple cowboy for disguise.
“That depends,” Enoch said. “You the fellow who robbed the blackleg hexes off the stagecoach outside of El Paso? The Gentleman Bandit?”
He was rewarded by a wry chuckle. “So they call me. Stand up and turn around—slowly. I want to see the face of the man who’s after me.”
Enoch’s heart thudded against his ribs. He weighed his chances of getting to his gun before the outlaw could pull the trigger and found he didn’t like them. So he put one hand on the ground to lever himself up, scooping a bit of sand into his palm as he did so. Turning around, he faced the bandit.
The wanted posters hadn’t done the Gentleman Bandit justice. Warm coppery skin glowed in the sunlight. Thick black hair framed a devilishly handsome face. Denim encased long legs and hinted at a body that might turn a man’s head, given half the chance.
But it was his eyes that really caught Enoch’s attention. At first glance, they were a rusty brown, but the more he looked, the more he was convinced they were a little too orange for an ordinary human.
“You’re a familiar?” he asked, startled. That part wasn’t on the wanted posters.
Not to mention it didn’t make sense. The hexes the bandit stole were already primed by magic, ready to be used by ordinary folk.
Of course, most of what the Gentleman Bandit had done didn’t make sense. The stagecoach robbery had brought him to the attention of the magical division of the federal marshals, but he’d already been wanted for a string of more mundane hold ups. They tracked down the hexes, but—as with most of the money and more ordinary goods the bandit took—he’d neither kept nor sold them. Instead, he’d distributed them among a group of hardscrabble ranchers suffering an outbreak of blackleg among their herds.
The Gentleman Bandit took his time answering. Though the gun in his hand didn’t waver, he ran his gaze slowly up and down Enoch, taking in the worn boots, travel-stained shirt, brown skin, and tightly curled black hair. “Good eye,” he said eventually. “You’re a Hexas Ranger, I take it?”
Enoch winced at the name. “Technically, I’m a deputy in the US Federal Marshals, Magical Law Enforcement Division.” But that was a mouthful, so some wit had come up with the nickname Hexas Rangers, as they operated out of San Antonio. Dumb, but it had stuck.
“Deputy. So unbonded.” The familiar tilted his head to the side curiously. “They wouldn’t let an unbonded witch chase law breakers like me through the wilderness on his own. Where’s your posse?”
Twenty miles back, sick from bad food, not that Enoch was going to let on. “They’re close by. So I suggest you turn yourself in, Mr…?”
The outlaw laughed. “You can call me Rafael. And good try, but there’s no one within ten miles of here. You’re on your own, brujo.” He cocked his head, a lock of black hair tumbling over one burnt umber eye. “Which is why I stopped by to give you some advice.”
Enoch’s mind raced. If the Gentleman Bandit—Rafael—was a familiar, that could explain some of his more mysterious escapes. What sort of animal did he turn into? And, more importantly, did he have a witch partner waiting to cause trouble should he be arrested?
“You in the habit of offering advice to lawmen?” Enoch asked.
Rafael gave him another once-over, and this time Enoch felt heat rise to his cheeks. He’d learned the subtle cues and small signs that indicated a man was interested. To be looked at so blatantly—and by someone so damned handsome—put him off his stride. And sent a rush of blood south to his cock, but he was trying to ignore that.
“Not usually,” Rafael allowed. “But there are some bad men in the area, far worse than my poor self. And you’re too handsome to end up feeding the vultures. Go home.”
“Not without you,” Enoch said, and flung the handful of sand he’d scooped up at Rafael’s face.
Somehow, Rafael was ready for him. He danced back and shot Enoch a grin. “Surely you wouldn’t arrest your own familiar, now would you brujo?”
Enoch froze in shock. Which was no doubt what Rafael had intended, because seconds later, the rufous and brown feathers of a Harris’s Hawk replaced his human form. He soared off, vanishing into the harsh blue sky.
Enoch stared dumbly after him. “My familiar?”
II.
This was a disaster.
To be fair, the trip had been a disaster from the moment the marshals set out on the trail of the so-called Gentleman Bandit. The group had consisted of the witch and familiar in charge, the camp cook, and Enoch as the posseman. Posses were usually bigger, but they were only after a lone man, and one not likely to give them too much trouble.
First off, the camp wagon broke its axle a day out. Ordinarily, they would’ve waited for it to be fixed, if for no other reason than any prisoners collected were routinely chained to its back. But this time, with only a single man to arrest, the witch in charge decided to press on. Easier to leave the cook and wagon behind, and subsist on rations or whatever they could buy at towns or from homesteaders.
Which had led directly to the second problem, when both witch and familiar came down sick from eating tainted pork. Enoch didn’t touch the stuff, which meant he’d ended up the only one not casting up his accounts the next morning.
Enoch petitioned to go on ahead while they recovered. The Gentleman Bandit had a reputation for vanishing into the desert; his trail would be long cold if they waited, and they weren’t likely to pick it up again. Eventually, the witch agreed to let him go, though with the growled warning not to lose the trail—or get himself killed.
There weren’t many opportunities for unbonded witches to distinguish themselves in the Hexas Rangers, so Enoch eagerly struck out on his own. Only to be confronted with a whole new set of problems. Namely, that no one wanted to turn in the bandit.
Outlaws were violent; they robbed and murdered their way across the territories. Their families might give them shelter, but most folks didn’t care to have their kind in the area. After all, easier to steal a neighbor’s horse than go out looking for one half a territory away. Finding someone willing to point a marshal in the right direction wasn’t usually very hard.
Not this time. Oh, everyone wanted to talk about the Gentleman Bandit. It was just that no one wanted the bandit to actually get caught. Not the young widow who’d received a fine apology and a sack of coins when he stopped the stage coach she was on. Not the struggling homesteader who discovered a stack of hexes left to cure his small herd of cattle, and didn’t care if the hexes had been bound for larger ranches run by richer men. Certainly not the old woman who’s tax debt was settled through a trick of Rafael’s, by “loaning” her the money, then robbing it—and far more—back from the tax collector the second the man was off her property.
Banks, debt collectors, and taxmen hated the Gentleman Bandit with a passion, and would be happy to see him hang. Ordinary folks…less so.
The problem was, a crime was a crime, and it was Enoch’s duty to bring Rafael to justice. No matter how good-looking he might be. Even if those hexes he’d stolen had probably kept more than one small rancher from losing everything.
And now this.
Maybe Rafael had lied, hoping to keep Enoch off his trail. Or just to startle him long enough for Rafael to escape. If the latter, it had worked. If the former…
In theory, a witch like Enoch could bond with any familiar and channel their magic into a hex. From the familiar’s side of things, though, there was one witch they could bond with whose potential was the most compatible with their magic. The hexes they made together would be much stronger than with any other witch.
He’d not spent much time thinking about that aspect of things. There were always more people with witch potential than familiars; the prospect of being perfectly suited to one of them struck him as unlikely. He’d figured he’d bond with one of the familiars in the marshals eventually, and they’d go on to do perfectly adequate magic together.
And now an outlaw—one he was duty bound to arrest—claimed Enoch as his witch?
Enoch groaned and pressed his fingers into his eyes. He’d worked so hard to prove himself. He couldn’t bond with a criminal.
“I ought to turn around and head back to find the rest of the posse,” Enoch told his horse. It flicked an ear at him. “Turn the warrant over to them. Go back to San Antonio, find a nice familiar who doesn’t care how compatible our magic is, and bond before I do something I regret.”
That would be the smart thing to do. Enoch hadn’t survived outlaws and blizzards and stampeding cattle by being stupid. He needed to walk away from this.
With a sigh, he swung back into the saddle. “He flew off north. So north is where we’ll go.”
III.
Not long before sundown, Enoch came across signs of multiple riders making for the northeast.
After first scanning the sky for any sign of a hawk, he dismounted and inspected the tracks. Six distinct horses, no indication of a camp wagon or any other sort of conveyance with them. He sat back on his heels and considered.
There’d been no reports of Rafael working with anyone else. But Enoch had lived most of his life in Texas and the rest in the territories, and knew a bit about Harris’s Hawks. Unlike most raptors, they hunted in packs. He’d seen them driving jackrabbits out into the open, where the rest of the group waited, or perching one on top of the other to get a better vantage in the treeless desert.
Rafael was a familiar, not a hawk. But most familiars had some of the traits of the animals they shifted into. Hell, maybe he’d lied about Enoch being his witch, figuring it would make Enoch more reckless in his pursuit, and less likely to notice an ambush waiting. Just like a jackrabbit.
“There are some bad men in the area, far worse than my poor self.” That had been a warning, not a lure.
An outlaw had no reason to tell a lawman the truth. Even so, Enoch found himself wanting to believe Rafael. Because of all the stories of his cleverness, because kindness was a rare quality among even honest men, because…
Because of the way the worn denim had shaped Rafael’s thighs. Because of the boldness of his burnt umber gaze, which at another time might have been an invitation.
Curse it. Enoch straightened his hat, disgusted with himself. He couldn’t let an outlaw turn his head, no matter how handsome.
The trail led to one of the shallow canyons dotting the area. A line of green suggested a creek ran through it; the riders probably meant to camp there. Enoch dismounted well back, looping the reins over a bit of struggling scrub brush. Then he checked his gun and cautiously made his way toward what appeared to be the highest point of the canyon wall. With any luck, anyone below wouldn’t think to look up, and he could observe them for a while without being spotted. Enoch hadn’t heard rumors about any gangs operating in the area, but the territories were vast, and experienced outlaws could vanish into the wilderness for months at a time, only to pop up in unexpected places.
He crawled the last few yards on his belly, before cautiously peering over the edge, careful not to dislodge any sand or stones. As he’d guessed, a stream glinted in the center of the canyon. Thirsty trees lined the banks, offering cool shade to the group of people and horses gathered there. He counted three men and two women, a dog, and six horses. They seemed to be in heated discussion, while their horses drank from the stream. Hats blocked the faces of three, but two others had taken theirs off to fan themselves. They both looked familiar, though it took Enoch a moment to place them.
Hell. He’d seen them on wanted posters plastered all over the Magical Law Enforcement headquarters in San Antonio. Mason Bone, that was the name of the blond on the left. Leader of the notorious Bone Gang, six desperadoes who’d used magic to rob a bank vault, then killed a teller who had apparently been in league with them.
A marshal found their hideout, but somehow they’d gotten the jump on her. They gunned her down, along with her familiar and another member of her posse. Supposedly they’d fled into Mexico to escape justice afterward…and yet here they were.
Curse it.
Enoch’s fingers tightened. These bastards had killed fellow marshals. He couldn’t just let them get away.
But there were six of them, and one of him. Terrible odds.
Wait. He’d only seen five members of the gang below. And he hadn’t seen any sign of paw prints while tracking them.
Damned familiars.
Before he could move, the dog raised her head, nostrils flaring as she scented the wind. Enoch started to crawl back rapidly, but it was already too late. Shouts of alarm sounded from the canyon below, accompanied by angry barks. He’d been found out.
IV.
Enoch dashed for his horse as angry shouts rang out behind him. A quick glance over his shoulder showed the dog had outpaced her companions and already reached the lip of the canyon. As soon as she had him in sight, she stopped, took on human form, and drew her gun.
Cursing himself, Enoch ducked behind the nearest boulder. The rest of the gang would be mounted up and on their way in a matter of minutes. He couldn’t afford to be still on foot when they arrived.
Offering up a quick prayer, he broke cover, firing blindly in the direction of the familiar. It kept her out of the way long enough for him to reach his horse and swing into the saddle.
More bullets bit the earth around them. Two of the gang had made it out of the canyon already, riding past the familiar and firing. Enoch brought his horse around, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger again.
One of the men jerked and fell from the saddle. His foot tangled in a stirrup, and he flailed and screamed as the horse dragged him. His compatriot let out a curse and slowed to help. The familiar raised her gun and fired at Enoch.
A sharp burst of pain in Enoch’s upper arm warned he’d been hit. His fingers still worked, so he didn’t so much as look at the wound. Instead, he spun his mount and leaned low over its neck, urging it into a gallop. A glance behind showed the last three members of the gang had emerged and were in pursuit.
Damn it. He had to stay ahead of them. If he could just get out of sight, he could activate the stealth hexes on his horse’s shoes. Otherwise, the gang would run him to ground. And if that happened, his life was likely to become very short, not to mention extremely unpleasant while it lasted.
Clinging to his horse with his knees, he unbuckled one of the saddle bags and thrust his hand inside. Pain burned through his wound, but he ignored it while he groped through the saddle bag. Where was the damned thing?
His fingers met a cool, metallic surface. Enoch drew out a small silver disk, imbued with a light spell. The things were expensive, and he’d likely have its cost taken out of his pay.
But at least he might live to collect said pay.
The federal hexmen kept the activation phrase short and simple. “Distract!” he ordered, then tossed the disk behind him.
Nothing seemed to happen…at least, not until the other riders were almost on top of the disk. Then light burst forth from it, brief but blinding even in the sun.
The horses shied violently, and the outlaws’ shouts echoed across the landscape. Enoch put his heels to his own steed, taking advantage of the seconds that slipped past as the gang wrestled with their spooked mounts.
The landscape rose into low, broken hills, interrupted by arroyos which could go from bone dry to flooded without warning. Enoch guided his horse into one of the narrow canyons. “Conceal my tracks from all who follow me,” he said. Glancing back, he saw his horse’s prints come to an abrupt end.
The stealth hexes would only last five minutes at most before they were spent. He urged his horse on, taking random turnings in the maze of narrow ravines. With any luck, his pursuers would choose the wrong direction and end up lost.
Of course, Enoch was lost himself.
He let the horse slow, casting around uncertainly. The wound on his arm burned, and flies began to buzz around him, attracted by the blood. He swatted them away irritably. The injury needed binding if nothing else, which meant a place to stop and take out his medical supplies. Ideally, he’d find somewhere to hole up for the night in at least a semblance of safety.
