Hunters and Hunted

by Setcheti

Disclaimer: Don’t own the Magnificent Seven or Van Helsing, wish I did.

About the AU: Be warned, there are definite liberties taken here with the timeline – this is an alternate universe for both M7 and Van Helsing. This is also a completely OPEN AU. I have no plans to write any more in it, I didn’t even plan to write as much as I did! So if you want to do something, anything with it, be my guest.

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Elise lay on the bed she had once shared with her husband, under the quilt her mother had made, dying and afraid. But it was not death that she feared.

They would be here soon, she knew, and they would kill her son – because he was here with her, he was ‘contaminated’, not because he was Michael’s son. They might take satisfaction in the boy’s death because of his parentage, though, and Elise thought they had gotten enough satisfaction out of her family already. After all, they had arranged Michael’s death…and her own, even if indirectly. But she wouldn’t let them have Vincent. She was going to make sure he was safe.

He was in the corner of the room now, watching her but not coming close because she’d told him not to. Such a good boy, even at the tender age of five. Elise wished she’d get to see the man he’d become, but they’d taken that away from her, and from him as well. Summoning up a smile, one of the last things she had left to give him, she motioned him to come closer. He did, cautiously, and she knew that he could sense the change in her even though he could not see it and did not know what it meant. He was so much Michael’s son. “Vincent, it’s all right,” she reassured him weakly, holding out her hand. “Please, come closer, it’s all right.”

He came, blue eyes huge in his pale, narrow face. Elise wished she could hug him, pull him into her arms and take that fear away…but it wasn’t possible, wasn’t safe. She contented herself with running a hand through the long strands of his golden hair, even filthy and snarled as it was right now feeling baby soft to her roughening fingers. It would darken, she knew, the gold buried under warm brown and only gleaming its natal color in the sunlight. But at least there would be sunlight, for him. She ruffled the tangled strands, careful not to scratch his scalp with her lengthening, blackening nails. “Mama does love your hair,” she told him, and was rewarded with a sweet little smile. “Vincent, this is very important, so you must listen to Mama and do exactly as she tells you.”

A nod; he would listen, and she knew he would remember. Vincent remembered everything. “Mama is…sick,” she told him. It wasn’t entirely a lie. “And you’re going to have to go away so you don’t get sick too. Remember when Papa took you to see the Nokonis at their camp in the woods? You need to go there, and you need to go right now.”

His blue eyes got even wider, and he tugged at her arm. “You come too, Mama?”

Elise patted the little hand clutching at her torn, stained sleeve. “Mama can’t come, Vincent; Mama’s sick.”

The little boy frowned and tugged again. “White Bear c’n make you better.”

“No, he can’t. I can’t get better from this.” This was so hard; she knew he didn’t understand, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t explain it to him. “I’m going to go be with Papa,” she explained. “I have to go, so I can’t come with you. You’re going to live with White Bear from now on, all right?” This was where it was going to get tricky, and she had so little time…so very little time. She pulled him a little closer, as close as she dared, making sure he was looking her in the eye. “Vincent, you can never, ever tell anyone you lived here with Mama and Papa, understand? And you have to use the new name we talked about, remember that?”

“I ‘member.” His frown deepened, though. “I want my name, an’ to stay here, Mama. What if Papa…” He stopped before finishing that thought, remembering that Papa wasn’t coming back. Mama had said so, and she’d told him that if someone who looked like Papa came back it would be a monster playing a trick. Vincent shuddered; he didn’t like monsters, not one little bit. “Mama, please?”

“I can’t, baby. I wish I could.” Elise shuddered too, but for a different reason. He had to go, he had to go now. She let her hand slide out of his hair and patted his cheek, careful to keep her fingers away from his eyes. “Vincent, you have to remember you’re a Tanner, all right? Remember you’re a Tanner. And now…now you have to run, baby. There’s a monster coming, and I can’t protect you from it. Get to the Nokonis, and don’t let anyone see you until you reach their camp, all right? There are lots of monsters right now, but White Bear and his tribe can keep you safe.” One last caress, and then she pushed him away with a trembling hand, gentle but firm. “Go now, Vincent! Run!”

He ran, out of the room, out of the house, but Elise didn’t relax until she knew he’d had enough time to make it into the woods. It had been so close, too close. Her nails scratched at the quilt that covered her, shredding the worn fabric patches into small strips beneath her cooling palm. She could feel the poison she’d taken working, but she hadn’t been sure it would be fast enough, strong enough, to prevent the change from happening before her son could get away, before the real monsters came to find her with their bullets and burning torches. Elise smiled, a grim, sad smile. They would find her dead, and their torches would light her pyre. There would be nothing left, which was as she wanted it, as it should be, for Vincent’s sake.

Tears glimmered in her dimming blue eyes and left a streak of red down one paling cheek. Her Vincent, their Vincent. He would be safe with White Bear, and these American hunters who were so monstrous and so unlike her noble Michael would not be looking for Vincent Tanner.

Elise died with a smile on her face, satisfied.

*******M7VH*******

Vin Tanner paced away from the rail and back to the chair he couldn’t seem to stay sitting in, throwing himself down in it with a grunt of frustration. He pulled off his battered hat and ran a hand through his long brown hair, blue eyes narrowing at the amused look on his companion’s face. “Ain’t funny, Chris. I’m tellin’ you, somethin’s wrong – or about to be, anyway. I ain’t felt this antsy in years.”

“Haven’t ever seen you quite this strung up, no.” Chris Larabee settled a little more comfortably into his own chair and pushed his hat back. His eyes had a changeable green tinge to their blue depths, and his short hair was blond the way the younger man’s only showed in the right light. “But you bouncing all over the place is gettin’ old. Been three days, Vin, I think your trouble should have been here by now. Maybe you’ve just been cooped up in town too long…”

Vin glowered at him. “Ezra feels it too, Cowboy.”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?” The reprimand was pure repetition, though, with no heat behind it. “And Ezra’s skittish as hell on a good day – which he hasn’t had in a while.” Larabee did not mention the governor’s rally or the disastrous way his plan to draw out the assassin had backfired, but he knew that Vin knew what he was talking about and it didn’t really require rehashing right now.

Soon, though. The wound that those few days had opened had scabbed over, but Chris had a feeling it was festering underneath and pretty soon they were going to have to break it open or it would kill what they had here. Maybe that was what the tracker was feeling…a look shared with Vin told him it wasn’t, and the gunslinger sighed. “Well, so what do we do? Besides let you make everyone crazy, that is?”

The younger man snorted softly, but he did make a visible effort to ‘unstring’ himself, tipping back the chair and stretching out his legs. “I guess we just wait for it to get here,” he answered, closing his eyes and tugging the replaced hat down to shade them. “And hope it ain’t nothin’ too much for us to handle when it does.”

It was Larabee’s turn to snort. “Well, we haven’t seen that yet. Guess it would be somethin’ different, anyway.”

Later that afternoon, a lone rider appeared from the south end of town on a small, spirited black mare that looked almost as intelligent as the man mounted on her back. The man was small too, and dark haired, and his sharp grey eyes scanned the dusty street like a hunter seeking prey. Those eyes hardened, narrowed, when they fell on Vin, and Chris kicked the dozing tracker’s chair to get his attention as he climbed to his own feet and stepped off the boardwalk between the stranger and the tracker. “Somethin’ we can help you with?” he demanded.

The man swung down off his horse without answering, looking the gunslinger up and down with an intense, assessing gaze – mostly looking up, he was shorter even than Ezra and JD. That should have made him appear less threatening, but Chris Larabee had spent half his life reading men and he knew this was no two-bit bounty hunter. When the man finally opened his mouth his words confirmed it. “I came here to find Vincent Tanner,” he said, emphasizing the tracker’s last name in an odd way, his British accent crisp and precise. He pulled a newly-folded paper out of his belt and handed it to Chris. “You must be Mr. Larabee, I was told you were in charge here. You really should be keeping an eye on this, you know – I picked it up just up the road from here in a dusty little village called Riley, that’s far too close.”

Chris unfolded the wanted poster, saw Vin’s face and that it was newly printed and cursed under his breath. Damn, that was too close. The sheriff in Riley was a new man none of the Seven had met, no way of knowing what he was up to. “Thanks,” he said, refolding the poster. “I take it you’re not here to try to collect.”

“No, quite the opposite actually.” Vin had come up beside Chris and was being treated to the same scrutiny the gunslinger had received, although Chris thought there was something different in the man’s face when he looked at the tracker, something almost like…satisfaction? But it was gone before the gunslinger could figure it out and the man turned back to him with an even more intense look. “We need to talk, someplace private where we won’t be overheard or disturbed.”

The gunslinger nodded; this, then, must be the source of Vin’s ‘bad feeling’ of the past three days. And Ezra must have been picking it up from Vin. “We can use the jail,” Chris told him. “Folks in town tend to avoid comin’ in there.”

Surprisingly, a small smile quirked up one corner of the man’s mouth. “Capital,” he said, and went back to his horse to catch up the dangling reins. “Lead on, then.”

Chris shared a look with Vin, who shrugged, and the two of them headed for the jail with the stranger trailing along beside them, leading his horse. Once there he loosely looped the reins over the railing and walked right in behind the other two men, closing the door behind him. Chris raised an eyebrow at him. “Well?”

The man reached into a sturdy leather pouch at his side and extracted another folded paper, this one obviously old. He placed it on the battered desk and started carefully unfolding it until it was laid out flat, and then he stepped back so Chris and Vin could see.

At first Chris thought he was looking at another one of Vin’s wanted posters. The long hair, the hat, even the face staring up at them from the crumbling paper could easily have been a slightly distorted image of the man standing beside him. He pulled the new wanted poster back out of his belt where he’d tucked it for safekeeping and spread it out next to the poster on the table. The resemblance was unmistakable. “Well I’ll be damned. What language is this and where did you get it?” he demanded of the stranger. “And why does it say two thousand instead of five hundred?”

“It’s German, it came from a small village in Europe, and the bounty ceased to be important after those who would have paid it passed on,” the man said. “My grandfather gave this into my father’s keeping, who then gave it into mine – so you see, that isn’t your Mr. Tanner.” The odd inflection again. “It’s his grandfather, Gabriel Van Helsing.”

That didn’t appear to make Vin very happy – with good reason, outlaws in the family tended to make people think the apple wouldn’t fall too far from the tree. Judges, especially. He shook his head. “I don’t know nothin’ about this. I never knew anything about my family, especially not mama’s family.”

“He was your father’s father,” the stranger corrected, his tone strangely gentle. “Vincent, my name is Gerard, my grandfather was your grandfather’s most trusted friend. You have apologies from all the family that we did not hear of the goings on here sooner and come to find you, if you can accept them.”

“You came all the way from Europe?” A nod, and Vin shrugged. “Don’t know how you could have heard anything, then – that’s a long ways for news to travel.”

“Quite, but eventually it does.” Gerard smiled slightly, but it didn’t last. “Vincent, could you please tell me your full name, as you know it?”

The tracker cocked a puzzled eyebrow. The man had ridden into town calling him by name, not to mention it was right there on the wanted poster. “It’s Vincent Michael Tanner, always has been.” But Gerard was shaking his head. “What?”

“Another question before I explain, if you please.” Gerard took a deep breath. “What was the last thing you recall your mother telling you before her…death.”

Vin’s blue eyes widened, but he answered, “She told me to remember I was a Tanner…and then she told me to run, to get to the Nokonis so they could protect me.”

He looked like he wanted to add something else but then thought better of it, and Chris frowned. He’d never heard that last part of the story before. “Vin, what?”

The tracker pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his long hair. “She was sick, Chris, dyin’. And my pa had just been killed about a week before. She was out of her head.”

“She told him the monsters were coming,” Gerard said in a strong voice, and both of the other men started. “She told him that the Nokoni, specifically their shaman White Bear, would protect him from the monsters, would hide him from them.” His gray eyes were intense again. “Vincent, you’d best have a seat. This is going to be disturbing for you.”

Vin traded a look with Chris and then did as he was asked, and the gunslinger pulled up a chair beside him. Gerard perched himself on one corner of the desk, facing them. “Monsters?” Chris asked skeptically. “What do you mean, monsters? If she was sick…”

“It wasn’t the kind of sickness you think – but we’ll get to that in a moment.” Gerard grimaced. “I didn’t realize just how much of a problem we had until I reached America and began investigating the deaths of Elise and Michael, Vincent’s parents. It’s a horrid story, all plots and murder and unfortunate coincidences, and it appears that the only good thing to come of all of it is that their son here is still alive.” He sighed. “I suppose the best way is straight through, as I’m told your grandfather used to say. Vincent, your family name is not Tanner – there was no such family in your bloodline and there never has been. Your mother gave you that name to protect you from your father’s murderers, who at the time were hunting her as well. Your birth name is Vincent Van Helsing, son of Michael and grandson of Gabriel.”

Vin shook his head. “No, Mama said to remember I was a Tanner…”

“She was telling you to remember you were a Tanner – as opposed to a Van Helsing,” Gerard corrected. “You were a child, and had been raised to be proud of your family name and all that it stood for. Poor Elise must have been terrified that you’d introduce yourself to someone without knowing any better, she protected you as best she could.” He sighed again. “She couldn’t know that White Bear would be killed before he could explain things to you, and then you were taken from what was left of the tribe before anyone else could tell you either. But trust me,” he waved a hand at the two wanted posters, “you are a Van Helsing. The last, in fact, and therefore in the most danger.”

Chris traded another look with Vin, this one accompanied by a wry smile. “Well, you did say you had a bad feeling,” he commented.

“I was expectin’ a bounty hunter, maybe a pack of outlaws.” Vin shrugged it off and returned his attention to Gerard. “What kind of danger? I thought you said that old bounty didn’t mean anything?”

The Englishman took a deep breath. This was the part that would be difficult. “You’ve never heard of Gabriel Van Helsing?” Vin shook his head; Chris did too, for good measure. “All right, have you ever heard of a European village called Transylvania?”

Vin hadn’t, but this time Chris frowned. “I have, but it’s just a story.” Even as he said it he wasn’t sure, though. He’d asked Ezra about the book after he’d read it, and the gambler had gotten extremely nervous. And Ezra had shared Vin’s bad feeling… “It’s from a book, about a vampire.”

“Vampire…a manitou?” Vin was addressing Gerard. “Lots of folks in the tribes talk about the manitou and other stuff like that. Never seen one myself, but they believe in them.”

“You’re quite lucky you’ve never seen one,” Gerard told him seriously. “The family resemblance would have been the end of you – word travels faster in their circles than it does in ours. Your grandfather, you see, was a monster hunter.”

The tracker frowned at him. “No such thing as monsters.”

“Your mother didn’t think so.” Gerard didn’t seem upset. “And your father was a monster hunter too. Think back if you can, Vincent. Don’t you remember him teaching you his trade? How to move silently, how to hide from eyes that aren’t limited by darkness, how to slip away when you’re surrounded? And I imagine he would have insisted that you wear a charm of some sort at all times, most likely something silver.”

“I had…somethin’ like that,” Vin admitted. “They took it away when the Army…when they caught me.”

Chris was surprised when Gerard smiled. “I’d guess they had a devil of a time catching you, at that,” he said approvingly. “A few years older and I’ll wager you’d have eluded them completely.”

“Almost did anyway.” Vin was frowning. “So it was…monsters who killed my pa?”

“Monsters were used.” Gerard’s narrow face darkened, and his eyes grew stormy. “He was set up, by the murdering bastards who purport to be hunters here in the colonies. The code they follow is barbaric and uncompromising: anyone who has had contact with something…unnatural is considered just as bad as the monster itself. And anyone who is so ‘contaminated’ must die.”

There was an almost inaudible rustle outside the jail window and Gerard sprang to his feet and drew his weapon, a heavy, well-made pistol which had been holstered at his hip. Chris and Vin had gotten up too, but after Chris looked out he shook his head, chuckling, and reholstered his own gun. “Was just Ezra – looks like eavesdroppin’ got him more than he bargained for this time.”

Gerard didn’t relax. “This ‘Ezra’, what is he?”

“A gambler.” Vin was still poised for action as well, but his defensiveness was directed at Gerard. “Ezra Standish. One of us, a lawman here. And I trust him with my life, so you can just put that fancy gun back where you got it. He ain’t no monster.”

“You’ve known him for some time?” Gerard slid his gun back into its holster when Vin nodded emphatically, but he didn’t sit back down. “Why would he be spying on us?”

“Because he’s curious, and he’s makin’ sure we don’t need backup.” Chris was getting irritated. “Vin’s right, he’s no monster. Man may stay up until all hours and sleep like the dead during the day, but he does go out in the sun.” The gunslinger smiled slightly at the two surprised looks he was getting. “Remember that story pretty well; vampires don’t go out in the sun. Can’t wear silver either, and Ez has silver buttons on half those fancy duds of his. He eats stuff with garlic in it too, and goes in and out of the church whenever he takes the notion.”

Now Gerard relaxed, with an approving nod for Chris. “You remember well, that’s good. But your man still ran, and for Vincent’s sake at least we can’t afford to ignore that. Where would he go?”

Chris got it first. “You think Ezra is a monster hunter? Or working with them?”

“No.” Vin was starting to get angry now. “Dammit, Chris! You heard what this fella said about those guys; Ez could never be ‘barbaric’, he hates stuff like that.” He glared at Gerard. “He took off when you said anyone who’s been contaminated had to die. He’s traveled a lot, could he have gone some place and gotten contaminated? Do those guys track people who have been?”

Gerard nodded slowly. “That is possible, yes – they consider anyone who has spent time in the company of a monster to be contaminated, and those unfortunate souls are hunted down and killed just like the monsters themselves. It’s nonsense, of course,” he hastened to explain. “But that was the reason they would have killed you when they came for your mother, Vincent. And the reason you’re still in danger from them even now.”

Vin put two and two together before Chris did this time. “My mother was…”

“Infected when your father was killed, yes.” Gerard sighed. “Poor Elise. The infection, for whatever reason, took nearly a week to overcome her. She would have merely appeared ill, quite ill, until the change started to manifest physically. Vincent, when she told you to run…do you recall anything odd about her looks or behavior?”

The tracker’s eyes widened. “Her…her hands,” he said at once, seeming surprised himself that he had a ready answer. “Her fingers…the nails were black and long…and sharp. She was bein’ so careful not to scratch me, and she wouldn’t let me hug her. Until right up at the end, she wouldn’t even let me stand beside her. But she’d taken some medicine, and after that she let me get close.”

“Because she was dying.” Gerard crossed himself. “It was poison she took, rather than let the monster have her…or let the hunters find her alive and possibly through her find you. The hunters found her dead in the house, half changed, and they burned the house with her in it. There was no sign of you, and after some searching they assumed that she’d either killed you or that you’d been hiding in the house when it burned. Either way, they wrote Vincent Van Helsing off as dead.”

Vin dropped his head. “Remember I’m a Tanner,” he said softly.

Chris put a hand on his shoulder. “Saved your life,” he reminded his friend. “Your mother must have been some woman, Vin.”

“She was,” Gerard answered him, his slight smile reappearing. “From all accounts, Elise was quite the amazing woman. She’d apparently suspected a trap and followed Michael, but she wasn’t in time to save him. She barely escaped with her life, and after that her only thought was to save their son. She posted a letter to her family before she died, and something else as well.” Gerard fished a small pouch out of one of his pockets and held it out to Vin. “This is your inheritance, from your father and from your grandfather before him – I’d assume it was in retrieving this that your mother was infected. This is the symbol of your legacy, the legacy of the Van Helsings.”

Vin took the pouch and loosed the knotted drawstring, then poured the contents into his hand in a stream of silver. Holding it up, he blinked at it. The chain was heavy but finely wrought, and from it dangled a handful of charms. Some of the symbols were familiar to him, others less so, but he picked out one and fingered it. “White Bear wore somethin’ like this.”

“An addition of your father’s, I believe,” Gerard told him. “Your family has been employed with the task of hunting monsters for generations, just as mine has been with the task of seeing yours had the tools to do it. The Van Helsings work with the blessing of the Church, and of many others besides. Your father himself is well remembered by the Comanche for bringing them aid against that which creeps out of the darkness, and by some of the other tribes as well.”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “So then why did the hunters here want him dead?”

Gerard sighed and shook his head. “We’ll need more time to go over that – as I said before, it’s a long, horrible story. Right now though, we absolutely must find out what your Mr. Standish is afraid of. You don’t understand the urgency yet, but trust me, once you understand the situation we find ourselves in it will make perfect sense to be so cautious.”

The Englishman’s sense of urgency was contagious, and the three of them moved for the door as one man. Vin stopped on the weathered porch, peering out at the town. “Check the saloon first,” Chris began. “Or maybe his room…”

“No.” Vin was already walking again, long strides eating up the dusty street. “The livery. He’s scared, he’s gonna run.”

Chris caught up to him, frowning. “Ezra won’t run…”

“He will.” The tracker shot a look back at Gerard, who had stopped to check his horse. “If he took off like that because he thinks he’s bein’ hunted he’ll be ridin’ for his life, Chris – he ain’t got no reason to think the boys would back him up, remember? Especially not against you and me.”

“Shit.” Chris hadn’t thought of that. Gerard had caught up with him by now, and he shook his head at the smaller man’s questioning look. “We had an…incident just over a month ago. Plan backfired, my plan, and Ezra got a lot of crap dumped on him by the other boys because of it. Sort of strained things between everyone, he’s been skittish as hell ever since.”

“Difficult situation, then, for him to hear you talking about something he has reason to fear,” Gerard observed. He still twitched at the butt of his gun to loosen it in the holster when they reached the livery, though. “I suppose we’ll be finding out for sure in a moment.”

Vin spared him a slightly annoyed glance. “You keep your piece where it is,” he ordered. “You try to draw on him and he’ll beat you to it, he’s near as fast as Chris. Let me handle him.” And with that he stepped into the shadows of the livery, making his way through them to reach the big loose box Ezra kept his mount stabled in. “Ez,” he said quietly. “Goin’ somewhere, pard?”

Ezra froze in the act of adjusting his saddlebags and then turned around slowly. Even in the dim light Vin could see that the gambler’s face was chalk white, his green eyes wide and half-wild with terror. “M-mistah Tannah.”

“Only you would put yourself between your horse and where you think a bullet’s comin’ from instead of the other way around,” Vin observed with a slight smile. “No one here’s gonna hurt you, Ez. But you need to tell us what you’re runnin’ from.” He cocked his head. “Ain’t runnin’ from me, I hope. I’d be more than a mite upset if I thought you were doin’ that.”

“Wouldn’t you run from a man who may find it necessary to torture and murder you, Mistah Tannah?” The gambler stiffened when Gerard and Chris appeared behind Vin. “And look, you brought some friends along to assist you. Now if only Mistah Jackson were with us this sordid little tableau would be complete.”

“We know you’re not a monster, Ez.” Vin pushed back his hat. “Hell, Chris was able to prove it to Gerard here beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

The taught line of Ezra’s mouth took on a bitter twist. “Ah’m surprised he bothered.”

Vin held up a hand to silence the retort he knew Chris was about to make; one of the worst mistakes through that whole damn mess with the money had been how long Chris had waited to tell the other men what was really going on. “He screwed up, we both did,” he told the frightened gambler. God, he’d never thought he’d see Ezra look this scared – Ezra, the man he’d seen stare down the barrel of a gun without missing a shuffle of his cards. “But we’ve got somethin’ more important goin’ on right now. This is Gerard,” he introduced, waving a hand at the small Englishman. “He came all the way here from Europe to find me. Don’t know how much you heard – appreciate you keepin’ an eye out, by the way – but he’s here because of what happened to my folks.” Vin took a cautious step forward. “They were killed, Ez, by these same hunters who’re after you, and if they find out I’m still alive they’ll be on my trail too. So you and I’ve got a problem in common.”

Green eyes stared at him searchingly for a long moment…and then Ezra nodded. “They’re relentless, Vin, and they have sympathizers everywhere. We need to get out of here at once before, before Mr. Jackson realizes what’s goin’ on and sends for them – assumin’ he hasn’t already.”

“Mr. Jackson – another lawman here, correct?” Gerard stepped forward. “I didn’t think they had anyone in your town, or even in the area.”

“Last year, two of them passed through,” Ezra replied, although he took a half step closer to Vin and away from the stranger. “Our Mistah Jackson was quite taken with their company and actively sympathetic to their cause. I remember the conversation well, mainly as I was in such a position that I could not get away from them without callin’ attention to myself and so had no choice but to listen. He told them that he understood sometimes drastic measures were necessary to contain outbreaks of…contagion, and that if he could be of any help to them they had but to ask. They spoke for a time there in the saloon and then withdrew to the clinic to continue their discussion in private, at which time I retreated to my own room and locked myself in for the night. Mr. Jackson saw the two men off the next mornin’ and I heard him advise them that he would send word if he came across anything that might concern them.”

“Shit.” Vin looked back at Chris, who was leaning against the livery wall. “Cowboy?”

The gunslinger shrugged. “We can deal with it. Nathan may be a lot of things, but subtle he ain’t; if he tries anything everyone will know about it.” He straightened. “We should probably take this out of here and back to the jail, ought to get Buck and JD too.” He made a face. “If Nathan’s in on this I’d guess Josiah knows about it too, so we’ll save them for later if we can.”

“Not too much later,” Gerard cautioned. “But by all means, we should return to a more secure location…” He saw the look on Ezra’s face, the return of the panic the gambler had momentarily had under control, and sighed under his breath. Then he stepped right into Ezra’s personal space, leaving him nowhere to retreat. Being slightly shorter than the gambler should have lessened the intimidation factor, but the air of controlled danger about the Englishman was such that only a quick move from Vin kept Ezra from triggering his derringer in attempted self defense. “I understand your fear, better than they do at the moment,” he said, gesturing vaguely to encompass Chris and Vin. “But you need to understand that I am here to protect Vincent until I am convinced he is adequately equipped to protect himself. So if safeguarding you is a priority to him, then therefore it must be to me as well.”

Ezra stared at him. “Why?” he whispered. “I heard you…”

“You heard me talking about the barbaric ways of the men who killed Vincent’s parents,” Gerard told him, keeping his voice low as well. “My grandfather served his grandfather, ages ago, and our loyalty has been passed down through our blood. Now come, we haven’t time to waste; if your Mr. Jackson is indeed working with the hunters here, then this is become more urgent than I had imagined.”

The gambler looked a moment more, and then nodded and turned around, quickly removing his horse’s saddle and throwing the saddlebags over his shoulder. “I apologize for that regrettable display of cowardice, gentlemen. To the jail, then?”

“Where are this Buck and JD to be found?” Gerard wanted to know.

“I’ll go get them,” Chris told him. “You three go along, we’ll be there just as fast as I can get them out of the saloon – Vin needs to stay with you, Gerard, and if anyone but me calls Buck to come he won’t think to come quietly.”

“Right-o.” The smaller man held Vin back and motioned Ezra forward, and the two of them took a quick look at the dusty street before moving forward out of the livery. Chris clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder and then headed the opposite direction on his errand. Gerard didn’t speak again until the jail door had been closed behind Ezra. “You aren’t a coward, Mr. Standish. No man in his right mind would stand his ground alone against the hunters. Where did you first encounter them?”

Vin had taken his seat again, but Ezra ignored the chair Chris had so recently vacated and took up a position by the window. “Just west of the Louisiana border, in Texas,” he said. “The gamblin’ was quite good there, due to a wealthy family visitin’ the area at the time. Mother was quite taken with them, and they with her. She had warned me to stay out of her way, as I was not needed, and so I had taken up with a boy attached to the family who was near my own age and had been similarly warned.”

He fell silent, obviously lost in the memory, and Vin prodded gently, “Friend of yours?”

“The first I’d ever had, actually.” Ezra sighed. “Byron and I…understood each other. We shared a similar unconventional lifestyle that other boys would not have been able to comprehend, we were in fact not boys at all. And we had hope that our relationship would not have to have an end; Byron confided in me that his guardians meant to make Mother one of their group, which meant that I would become a member of the ‘family’ much as he was. I did not understand the full ramifications of that at the time…but later I understood all too well.”

“They were vampires,” Gerard said. It wasn’t a question. “The hunters found them?”

“Yes.” Ezra finally looked away from the window, green eyes blank with remembered horror. “Mother realized the situation before anyone else and extricated herself, she simply disappeared. I assume the hunters had been watching all of us, so she must have changed her appearance to escape their notice.”

Vin sat forward, frowning. He knew without asking that Maude had not taken Ezra with her when she left. “How’d you get away, Ez?”

“Pure dumb luck,” the gambler answered. “Byron had errands to run for the family the next day, and I rose early to accompany him. The hunters came to the house while we were gone and massacred everyone within it, including the servants. The house was afire when we returned, a crowd had gathered…Byron and I split up to try to find out what we could. When he did not return I went in search of him, but I was too late. The hunters had him, around behind the coach house where the crowd would not see them; they had obviously been…using a knife on him, and then they threw him alive into the fire. There was nothing I could do but hide, and as they passed my place of concealment they were discussing where they might start looking for me…as he had refused to reveal my whereabouts no matter how much ‘persuasion’ they applied.”

*******M7VH*******

The jail was frighteningly silent when Chris walked in with Buck and JD at his heels. Ezra was sitting in a chair by the window, his face buried in his hands, and Vin was standing behind him, facing the door, with a look on his face so grim that even JD swallowed whatever question he’d been about to ask. Gerard was back to sitting on the corner of the desk, and at Chris’ questioning look he simply shook his head. “I believe your decision to keep Mr. Jackson away was a wise one,” was all he said about it. “These are the companions you went after?”

Chris frowned, motioning Buck and JD to stay where they were. “Buck Wilmington and JD Dunne – Sheriff Dunne,” he introduced quickly and then stepped past them toward Vin. “Tell me.”

“He best not be workin’ with ‘em,” the tracker said, his voice low and cold. “I best not find out anyone else around here is, either.”

Blue eyes met blue-green, and after a moment Chris nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Ezra?”

“Mr. Larabee.” Ezra lifted his head. His face was perfectly composed, absolutely void of expression or any sign of emotional distress. Only his eyes…it was all Chris could do not to flinch. He’d seen that look before, but not on Ezra and not anywhere he wanted to think about right now. “I see you were able to retrieve our compatriots.”

“Yeah.” Chris flicked another look at Vin, received an almost imperceptible nod and shrug in reply, and then turned his attention to the room’s other three occupants. “Buck, JD, this is Gerard,” he said, gesturing to the small man perched on the desk, who himself nodded in response. “I couldn’t take a chance on tellin’ you what was going on before, couldn’t be sure who might have overheard. Gerard came to find Vin, came all the way from Europe to find out what had happened to him and his family.” Another glance back at the tracker. “Found out they’d been murdered. Gerard was gonna tell us about the killers, looks like they’re after Ezra too.”

“Knew things had been too quiet,” Buck swore softly. “We goin’ after these guys?”

“No.” Gerard didn’t raise his voice, but his tone was sharp enough to have the same effect. “That would be suicide. And they’ll be coming to you, anyway, coming for Vincent and possibly Mr. Standish as well.”

JD suddenly moved; he’d spotted the wanted posters still laid out on the battered desk and went right to them. He made a face at the new poster but scowled at the old one. “Vin, your family’s from Germany?”

That even got Ezra’s attention, and Gerard raised an eyebrow. “You can read that?”

“Oh yeah.” JD shrugged. “Family my mother worked for was German, I can speak it some too but not too well. So who was this, Vin, your dad? It says he was wanted for murder, was he framed?”

“His grandfather,” Gerard answered. “And no, he wasn’t framed, although he also wasn’t guilty of murder either.” He sighed. “You’d best all get comfortable, there’s quite a bit I have to tell you before you can understand the present situation well enough for us to even begin to discuss it.”

It was a long, difficult story. Gabriel Van Helsing had gone to work for the Church as a monster hunter while he was still a relatively young man and had traveled the length and breadth of Europe in their service. Carl, Gerard’s own grandfather, had been a friar working for the same cause who had taken up with Gabriel on his ill-fated mission to Transylvania all those years ago. Going back to the staid confinement of the Vatican after that hadn’t suited Carl at all, so he’d remained with the hunter instead, much to Van Helsing’s dismay at first. “He didn’t want to be responsible for any life but his own,” Gerard told them. “But Grandfather Carl got around him somehow and eventually Gabriel got used to him being there.”

Gabriel Van Helsing had not been an easy man to be around. After the disaster that was Transylvania he’d become harder still, and when the Church began pressuring him to carry on the family line it was almost enough to make him leave their service altogether. Carl, however, kept him from taking such a drastic step, assured their superiors that he would see it done one way or another and then led Van Helsing away on another monster hunt, this time to England to see about a creature which had been sighted on the moors. They had gone up to Scotland from there to chase down a pack of werewolves which had been terrorizing the Highlanders and then come back to London after a thing some were calling Springheel Jack.

It was while they were hunting the Jack, eventually chasing it out of London and pursuing it to Sussex, that Carl met and grew attached to a likely lass whose father and brothers were armorers. He had convinced Gabriel to remain in the area after the Jack had been dispatched, presumably by arguing that its offspring might still be in the area. Gabriel, who had been reluctant to return to the Vatican anyway for fear of finding a marriage waiting for him, had been persuaded to agree and had stayed on. The alleged offspring of the Jack never made an appearance, but there were enough werewolves and the like scattered about the English countryside to keep him occupied, and in the meantime Carl married the armorer’s daughter and started producing offspring of his own. And he waited.

His wait came to an end when Gabriel was injured while hunting a canny old werewolf which had been haunting the woods south of London. He had nothing to fear from the curse of lycanthropy itself, having been rendered immune to it by the serum Dracula had discovered and which his Anna had died delivering to him, but the wounds themselves resulted in a drawn-out convalescence which gave Carl the chance he’d been hoping for. He’d already selected another likely girl, this one a pretty young widow whose husband and father had both been soldiers, and he set her to being the monster hunter’s nursemaid. He had picked her particularly because she would not remind Gabriel of his Anna in either looks or temperament, and as Carl had anticipated the hunter eventually developed a genuine affection for her. Their first and only child, Michael Van Helsing, was born the following spring.

Gabriel began to train Michael as soon as he was old enough to walk – it was, he’d told Carl, his only option as the Van Helsing name alone would draw danger to the child. And as Michael grew, the danger grew along with him; he was a clear copy of his father, the only difference being his brilliant blue eyes. Gabriel was not warm in manner, but he cared for his wife and loved his son as much as his wounded nature would allow. Michael, instructed in the darker aspects of his family’s history by Carl when Gabriel would not or could not speak of them, accepted the distance his father maintained from those around him without apparent resentment.

That distance lessened considerably, however, when it was discovered that along with the family resemblance Michael had also inherited his father’s immunity to lycanthropy. It was not long after this that Gabriel was persuaded to let his son take his place, passing on the chain that bore the symbols of his authority and staying at home while Michael went off to hunt monsters with one of Carl’s sturdy sons by his side.

Michael was nineteen when he met Elise, whose mother had insisted she spend a season with some cousins in Europe to be ‘finished’. He had been alone, tracking something vile through the countryside when he’d come upon her, and had ‘escorted’ her – much against her will – back to the safety of her cousins’ home. Elise had been furious and the cousins scandalized, but on hearing the story the father of the house had at once gone for his gamekeeper and dogs and taken a cart out to the meadow she’d been walking in. He’d returned that night missing two of the dogs but with the young hunter by his side and the dripping burden on the cart covered with a piece of canvas. Elise had watched from an upper window as torches were brought and the two men examined whatever it was by their light, and then straw was thrown on the cart and the torches were used to set the whole thing afire there in the yard. It was while this burning was going on that the young man below suddenly turned and looked up. When he saw who was watching him he smiled and tipped his hat to her, and she’d fled back to her bed.

If she’d thought to escape him so easily, she realized the next morning that it wasn’t to be; the young hunter was at the breakfast table with the rest of the family when she came down, having stayed the night at her uncle’s invitation. Unlike his behavior the previous day, which Elise had realized during her restless night was because he’d been trying to protect her from whatever it was they’d burned in the yard, this morning Michael Van Helsing was soft-spoken and polite and apparently quite capable of educated conversation. He was also not much older than herself and quite handsome besides, and she felt an interest stir to life that all her aunt’s introductions had so far failed to awaken.

And then he left, without a word to her. Her aunt had been patently relieved, but Elise’s uncle had gone through the day with a knowing smile on his face and had caught up with her later in the garden where she had retreated to pout. Michael had asked for permission to come back, specifically to see her, more specifically to court her, and her uncle had said yes. He would deal with her aunt, and her mother if need be, but he was sure her father would approve – a girl raised to ride and shoot on a Texas ranch did not need to marry some city-bred fop, he said, and Michael Van Helsing was anything but.

The young hunter became a regular visitor that summer, dropping by on his way to or from places he refused – politely, but firmly – to name. He brought Elise small gifts when he came, an engraved silver locket on a fine chain, flowers to brighten her room, even an exquisitely crafted rifle once he’d realized she knew how to fire one. And with the gift of the rifle came an end to the mystery of where he went and what he did, and why the Van Helsings were charged with such a duty in a world that barely believed in monsters. Elise didn’t want to believe him at first, but her uncle assured her it was all true; he himself had been saved from a werewolf and its blood-borne curse by the elder Van Helsing years before.

Michael and Elise were married that Christmas and went to live near Gabriel and Carl in Sussex, but it was not to be their home for long. Rumors had begun to cross the wide ocean, stories of a place in the colonies called Utah and the band of shadowy figures that haunted its mountains. The stories had been sensationalized for the unquestioning masses into terror tales of Mormonism and ‘justice’ being meted out by its most faithful, but the powers that be in the Vatican saw kernels of a frightening truth lurking behind the overblown tales and investigated. What they found was a horror spawned not of the Mormon faith but from the dank bowels of Calvinism, a small secret sect which had devoted itself to the extermination of that which it saw as abominations against God.

They were monster hunters. But their beliefs were harsh and uncompromising, and they killed not only the monsters but also the victims and innocent bystanders alike – those true to God, they maintained, would be warned of the unclean presence of an abomination by Him and therefore any found in the close company of someone so contaminated by evil must be themselves contaminated as well. And as the years had gone by and their numbers had grown, the territory they covered had expanded as well. “From Texas to the wilds of Nevada,” Gerard told them when Buck asked. “Possibly they’ve ridden into California, but killings such as theirs set the gold camps on alert against strangers so they aren’t free to roam that area on their hunts.”

“But they come out of Utah?” Chris wanted to know. Gerard nodded. “And no one’s been able to find this hole they hide in? What about the Mormons? I’m surprised they’d tolerate something like that so close.”

“From what I understand they’ve tried to track down the hunters and gave up when the death toll grew too high,” was Gerard’s answer. “It’s believed the sect may have originally grown where it did for the purpose of attacking the Latter Day Saints and driving them out of Utah, but then someone encountered a monster and the focus shifted. It was decided by the council that Michael might come here, to America, and try to rectify part of the problem. They hoped that because of his marriage to an American his arrival in this country might not arouse suspicion. He brought with him the serum that can cure an initial case of lycanthropy…”

“Ly-what?” Buck wanted to know. “I thought we were talkin’ about monsters, not some sort of disease.”

“Lycanthropy is a disease which creates monsters, Mr. Wilmington,” Ezra answered before Gerard could. “It turns a man into a vicious wolflike creature.”

The ladies’ man made a face. “How do you catch it?”

“It is bite-borne, blood-borne,” Gerard reassured him. “Much like aquaphobia – avoid the creature’s teeth and claws and you avoid the curse. Someone who has been cured of lycanthropy is immune to ever contracting it again, and the immunity is apparently passed down to succeeding generations as well.” He gave Vin a speculative look. “I wouldn’t advise testing this theory and I’ve brought some serum with me just in case, but I would guess you’re immune too, Vincent, just like your father and grandfather before you. And I suspect that might have been the reason for the slowed progress of the curse in your mother as well; she carried you within her body, blood mingling with blood, until your birth. Not enough to cure, but enough to delay the inevitable for a short while at least.”

Vin’s eyes narrowed. “Are you about to tell me I need to carry on the family line? ‘Cause a wanted man ain’t got no business startin’ a family.”

The Englishman shrugged. “That didn’t stop Gabriel, or Carl; life goes on, you know. And eventually you will have to give some thought to it, else the Van Helsing family will die out all together. Your grandfather is far too old to sire another child.”

“My grandpa is still alive?!”

The door swung open at that point, cutting off whatever answer Gerard had been about to make. Nathan stepped into the jail with a frown on his face, Josiah right behind him. “Somethin’ goin’ on, guys?”

Ezra’s chair hit the floor with a crash that startled the rest of the men to their feet. The gambler backed himself against the wall and triggered his derringer. Gerard had his revolver drawn and aimed just that quickly, as did Vin. “Mr. Jackson, I presume.”

“That’s him,” Vin confirmed. He gestured with his own gun. “Shuck off those knives, and do it slow.”

“Do as he says, Nathan,” Chris seconded when the healer hesitated. “We’ve got some questions to ask you – was gonna send JD to get you in few minutes, as a matter of fact.”

Nathan still didn’t comply immediately, but when he saw Chris’ bluish-green eyes narrow and his hand twitch toward his holstered gun the healer slowly unbuckled the sheath that held his throwing knives and let it slide to the floor. “Someone want to tell me what’s goin’ on?”

“You first,” Vin growled. “When’s the last time you had words with them friends of yours from Utah?”

The healer looked surprised, but he apparently knew exactly who Vin was talking about. “Ain’t had no need, we ain’t had no contagion around here. And even if we had, I’m pretty sure I’d have had it taken care of before they could get to us.”

The harsh click of Vin’s gun cocking made him step back, almost running into Josiah. Chris held up a warning hand. “Slow down, Vin. Nathan, are you saying you’re working with those hunters?”

“Hunters?” Josiah’s eyes had widened, and he took a step of his own, away from the healer. “Brother…”

Nathan gave him an odd look. “Told them I’d help out if I could, send word if anything started up down here I couldn’t take care of myself. What’s wrong with that?”

“I’d say a hell of a lot,” Chris ground out. “And I’d say you knew it too, or you wouldn’t have kept it to yourself all this time.”

The healer bristled. “Wasn’t no need for anyone else to know, when it comes to this sort of thing it’s best to keep it quiet so folks don’t get into a panic about it.” He threw a hard look at Ezra, who probably would have been through the window already if the bars hadn’t been there to stop him, and then locked eyes with Chris again. “If he’s been contaminated, ain’t no time to waste dealin’ with it. He’ll spread it all over, might even have infected some of us…”

Chris opened his mouth, but Gerard beat him to it. “And what might your method be for dealing with it, Mr. Jackson?” he asked. “Please, enlighten us.”

“Quarantine,” the healer answered promptly. “Jail here would work. Then we figure out what we’re dealin’ with and how we need to stop it spreadin’ any farther.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearin’ this,” Buck said, rolling his eyes. “Nate, you can’t be serious! You’d kill one of us over this fool ‘contamination’ idea?”

“Kill?” Nathan looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “That ain’t what quarantine means, Buck, you should know better than that. It’s just keepin’ the one with the sickness someplace where they can’t contaminate nobody else.” He made a face. “Now I won’t deny there’s some who’d burn out a sick house to stop the plague, but that’s just another reason for keepin’ it quiet.”

“Plague.” Gerard lowered his gun a fraction. “Did they tell you that’s what they were about, then, stopping plague?”

“Had a funny way of talkin’ about it, but yeah.” The healer scowled at him. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

“He came here to find Vin,” Chris answered. “Your hunter friends killed Vin’s folks, and once they realize he’s still alive they’ll be comin’ for him too – and for Ezra, for the same reason.”

Another hard look went the gambler’s way, but Nathan didn’t carry it over to Vin. “Your folks died of plague?”

“My folks were murdered,” the tracker replied in a flat, hard voice. “Didn’t have nothin’ to do with no plague.”

Nathan shook his head. “You were just little then, Vin, I’m sure you didn’t understand what was goin’ on. Those guys must have been tryin’ to help…”

“Helpin’ is not what the hunters do.” Ezra opened his mouth for the first time. “There was no plague, Mistah Jackson. Nor was there plague when they murdered mah best friend aftah killin’ his entire family and their servants. And ah know for a fact that they burned the house themselves, the only mob outside was the one tryin’ to put out the fire.”

“With the kind of people you’d know, it don’t surprise me someone would want them dead,” Nathan shot back defensively. “These are upright men, somethin’ your kind wouldn’t be able to understand. I don’t doubt whatever they did was justified…”

If Vin hadn’t dropped his gun and moved quickly to stop the gambler, Ezra would have had Nathan by the throat. “Justified?” the gambler spat. “Cuttin’ a thirteen year old boy’s eye out to make him talk is justified if he doesn’t live up to your exactin’ moral standards, Mistah Jackson?” He struggled against Vin’s hold a moment more, then gave up with a snort, defiantly facing the shocked looks of the other men. “And you all wondered why ah didn’t want to ride with him.”

Dead silence. JD slowly moved to pick up the dropped sheath of knives, looking at them a moment before holding them up where Nathan could see but not reach. “Anything you want to tell us?”

Nathan swallowed. “I wouldn’t do somethin’ like that.”

“You’ve avowed working with men who would, whether you were mistaken as to their reasons or not.” Gerard’s gun had come back up, and he gestured at the rest of the Seven with his free hand. “These men know you, Mr. Jackson, I don’t. My purpose in coming here was to find and protect Vincent from these same ‘upright men’ you think you know, and at the moment that includes protecting he and anyone under his protection from you.”

“I’d never hurt Vin…” Nathan trailed off when he realized it hadn’t only been the tracker Gerard was talking about. The deadly look in Vin’s eyes confirmed it. “Ezra can take care of himself; if he’s puttin’ Vin in danger he needs to get out of here.”

“No one asked your opinion, and right now it ain’t worth the air it took to spit it out,” Chris snapped at him. The gunslinger turned a frown in Josiah’s direction. “You’ve been awful quiet, Preacher.”

“Just tryin’ to take it all in,” the big man answered. He was leaning against the locked gun cabinet, looking unhappy. “I’ve had an encounter with the hunters, a long time ago when I was still travelin’ the country with my father. It was the first time I’d ever seen him frightened of anything or anyone.” Nathan turned to look at him, wide-eyed, and Josiah nodded. “Those hunters, they’re animals, murderers who ply their hateful trade in the name of God. It isn’t sickness they seek to eradicate, Brother, it’s people they believe to have been ‘contaminated’ by evil.”

“Evil? But the plague…”

“Evil,” Chris confirmed, drawing the healer’s disbelieving gaze back to him. “In a nutshell, your Utah hunters set up Vin’s father to be murdered and got his mother killed along the way, and if they ever find out his real name is Van Helsing and not Tanner they’ll be ridin’ back to Four Corners with drawn guns and lit torches.” He gestured to the wanted posters still on the table. “Take a look yourself, you can’t deny that those two are related.”

Nathan looked, and an expression of surprise and…disgust? crossed his face. “Vin’s family are all outlaws?”

This time it was Ezra who held Vin back, and Gerard rolled his eyes. “Hardly,” he said, holstering his gun and crossing the small space to stand between the two men and the healer. He folded his arms across his chest. “At this point, I shudder to contemplate your reaction when I tell you what the family legacy actually entails, Mr. Jackson.”

“That’s what you were talkin’ about when we came in?” Josiah rumbled. When the others nodded nodded he did too. “One of you can fill us in on the details later, brothers, no need to waste time goin’ over it all again. It sounds like this discussion needs to continue without delay.”

Gerard nodded but didn’t move from where he was standing, and Buck sighed extravagantly. “Nate, I think we’re all waitin’ for you to say whether you’re with us or against us, here.”

“And that does mean all of us,” Chris tacked on.

Nathan took another look at the two wanted posters, then around at the men he’d been working with these two years past. He’d met the men from Utah only once, and they’d played him like a fool; he might not have believed Vin or Ezra at first, but Josiah was a different story. Murderers. Men who would do unspeakable things. “I’m sorry,” he told the other men, and meant it. He locked eyes with Vin. “Don’t matter none who your family was, you’re a good man, Vin Tanner. And Ezra…” Nathan abruptly remembered the man in the saloon two years ago, holding a knife to Ezra’s eye while he, Nathan, stood drinking unconcerned at the bar with his own knives strapped proudly across his back. No wonder the gambler hadn’t wanted to ride with him. And the things he’d just said…they weren’t going to get this straightened out right now. “You and me, we’ll have to talk this over later,” he said awkwardly.

Ezra arched an eyebrow. “Not if I can help it, Mr. Jackson. Gerard, I believe you were about to inform Vin of his grandfather’s state of health?”

The Englishman turned slightly and arched an eyebrow of his own at the gambler, but he gave in to the subject change. “Gabriel is still very much alive, Vincent. Carl passed away when I was still a boy, I’m sorry to say, but in spite of his advanced age your grandfather was doing quite well when I left England.”

Vin nodded. “What about my mama’s family?”

Gerard sighed and shook his head. “Still in Texas – and still mortally afraid of the hunters, so I don’t advise trying to contact them. It was your grandmother who sent on your mother’s letter to Gabriel, but she did so just before she died and much against the wishes of her surviving children. I won’t tell you their name, not yet,” he said, before Vin could ask. “Fear and guilt have exacted their toll from that family in horrible ways, I believe they may have even had something to do with your…difficulties in Texas.”

“Aw shit,” Buck whispered. “Damn, Junior, that’s rough.”

“It sounds as though you and I may have family problems in common as well, then,” Ezra put in, a hint of a smile gracing his face as he squeezed Vin’s arm. “Perhaps we should introduce Mother to your Texas relatives, they would doubtless get along beautifully.”

“Match made in Hell,” Chris commented, rolling his eyes. “They know where Vin is now, Gerard?”

“Obviously not, he’s still alive.” The Englishman shrugged. “Elise’s family is the least of our worries at present, though. My main fear is that the hunters doubtless now know that I am in the country, and it won’t have been difficult for them to guess why – it also won’t be difficult for them to track me right to this town. And there are…others who may have heard and be on the trail as well.”

Vin had seen the flash of guilt in the smaller man’s eyes. “But they’d have come anyway even if you hadn’t, right?” he asked pointedly. “And I wouldn’t have known what was comin’, neither would anyone else until it was too late. And Nate over there would have been helpin’ the hunters thinkin’ he was doin’ the right thing.”

“True.” Gerard went back to the desk and carefully folded up Gabriel’s wanted poster, tucking it back into its pouch, then sat back down on the corner where he’d been before. “First things first, what’s to be done about this?” He waved the new poster from Riley in the air. “We don’t need a flood of bounty hunters added to this mix if it’s at all avoidable.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” JD took the poster from him and rolled it up, then crossed the room and stuffed it into the small stove. “Might not be much, though; anything I say to that new sheriff in Riley could just tip him off and make things worse. If I get the chance to talk to him I could maybe mention that I heard that Tanner guy’d been seen headin’ Mexico way a couple months back.” He winked at Vin. “It’ll be the truth, too; you do patrol south of town every now and again.”

“Good thinkin’, kid.” Buck cuffed the younger man affectionately. “Okay, now what about the other trouble we’ve got to worry about? You gonna describe these monsters to us, Gerard?”

Nathan gasped; Gerard ignored him. “Fully and in great detail,” the Englishman replied. “You can’t know enough about them, any of you. But that is another discussion that will take some time, several days unless I miss my guess, and the subject matter is…best not aired in public. Is there some place we could relocate this discussion which would be more convenient?”

“We can go out to my place,” Chris told him. “It’s a ways out of town, and we’ll know someone’s comin’ before they will. Headin’ out in the morning all right with you?”

Gerard stood back up and stretched. “I wouldn’t say no to a meal, a bed and a bath, no – and it’s best we don’t travel at night, there are…things in it which you are ill equipped to handle yourselves against. I’ve brought extra weaponry, but you’ll have to be taught to use it. It takes an extraordinary weapon to dispatch a creature born of evil.”

“Ain’t never seen anything you couldn’t kill with a gun,” Buck commented. “That’s a right nice one you’ve got, though.”

“You like this?” The Englishman patted the holstered gun with a smile, a twinkle coming into his grey eyes. “She is a beauty, isn’t she? I made her especially for this journey, I’m quite proud of the way she turned out. And I’ve seen plenty of things you couldn’t kill with your gun, Mr. Wilmington, but I guarantee you mine will kill most of them.”

“You’ll find out soon enough, Buck,” Chris cut the ladies’ man off before he could argue. “Right now I want you and JD to do a quick patrol to the north, and I want Josiah and Nathan to run one to the south. I’ll check over things in town, make sure there’s no one new around we might have to worry about. And you heard the man, everyone needs to be back into town before sunset, we aren’t takin’ any chances with this.” He turned to Vin with a look that said he was expecting a fight. “You stick with Gerard and Ezra, I don’t want any of you off on your own. Bathhouse should be empty right now, probably be a good place to hang around and talk family with Gerard until the rest of us get back, then we’ll all go to supper together.”

Vin did look like he was going to protest – possibly violently – but Ezra stepped in before he could. “A splendid idea, Mr. Larabee,” the gambler said, smiling, one hand returning to its former grip on the tracker’s arm. “As we will be in close quarters tomorrow, it would probably be in the best interests of all involved to render ourselves as inoffensive as possible.”

Vin took a deep breath…and then let it out and scowled at Ezra. “If you just said I stink, there’s gonna be consequences.”

“I said no such thing,” Ezra returned smoothly. “And you might find that threat difficult if not impossible to see through to its conclusion in any event. Now shall we go? The sun is lowerin’ while we stand here, it would be best if our compatriots were about their business post-haste.”

Chris waited until everyone had left the jail before leaving himself. JD was ducking a swat from Buck as they made their way to the livery, Josiah and Nathan followed a few steps behind, the big ex-preacher speaking quietly to his friend as they walked and Nathan nodding along with him. Gerard had gathered up his horse and was heading in that direction as well, and Chris smiled when he saw Vin examining a crossbow the Englishman had pulled from a sheath on his saddle while Ezra walked in step with him on the opposite side and added occasional comments about the weapon. The gambler was watching every shadow, though, guarding Vin’s flank whether the tracker realized it or not. Chris shook his head and locked up the jail, then started walking in the opposite direction to start his own patrol of the town. He, too, paid particular attention to the shadows, wondering if they were empty. And knowing that someday, maybe even today, they wouldn’t be.