James Axler – Demons of Eden

Jak looked around him, and his nostrils detected an odor he hadn’t noticed upon entering. Mixed in with the other aromas of the tavern was a faint but pungent smell. Jak had scented it many times beforethe smell of desperation, of fear. Of confusion. The eyes of the people mirrored it, and it shone there brightly, not in the least dimmed by the liquor they poured down their throats.

Jak understood and sympathized with their confusion. The Amicans were faced with making a decision that could alter, even end their lives. The citizens knew, without really knowing, that if they threw themselves into a fray against the Red Cadre, it would be a far more serious scrape than a backstreet brawl. And they also knew that even if they drank themselves into oblivion, they would still be there when the jugs ran dryto run and live or fight and die.

It was a choice Jak had faced more than once during his short life.

Doc leaned over and said quietly, “My lad, this is not a saloon. It is a waiting room in Hell.”

A young man shouldered in between Doc and Jak. He was dressed rather dapperly in a snakeskin vest over a coarse cotton shirt. His breath was redolent with whiskey fumes. He wasn’t much older than Jak, and he introduced himself as Allen.

Facing Doc, swaying a bit, he said, “So, tell me, sir, will you and your party oppose the tyrant?”

“Do you mean Mr. Autry?” Doc asked, smiling a bit.

Allen shook his head, and his body lurched unsteadily. “Of course not. I mean” he swallowed a belch, “John Hatcher.”

“I believe we already have, sir.”

The youth nodded. “I, too, wish to oppose him.”

“Ah. And do you think that can be accomplished from here?”

Allen started to reply, then favored the older man with a knife-eyed glare. “Are you questioning my courage, sir?”

“Certainly not,” Doc said smoothly. His hands tightened around the lion’s-head pommel of his cane, silently loosening the sheath encasing the blade of Toledo steel. “I’m only requesting information.”

The young man grunted. “Lucky for you that you were not casting aspersions on the fierce fighting men of Amicus. For if you were”

“Oh, shut your pan, boy,” came Eli’s weary voice from the corner table.

Allen looked around unfocusedly for the man who had given him the order, then he complied with it. He lifted the cup to his lips, and the rim clinked against his teeth. For a moment his face was that of an embarrassed little boy.

Doc clapped him on the shoulder and said cheerfully, “Never mind, Master Allen. You are all sand, by the Three Kennedys, else you would not be here. I admire your fortitude.”

The youth’s face flushed, with either pride or drink, and he shuffled away. Jak met Doc’s eye and smirked, shaking his white-maned head. “Stupe,” he muttered.

A gentle hand touched Doc’s shoulder from behind. He turned to see Felicity standing there, her hair pulled back severely from her face.

“Excuse me, Dr. Tanner, but I never heard. Did Mr. Cawdor ask Hatchet Jack about my husband?”

A little jolt of pain went through Doc’s heart when he looked into those blue eyes. For a moment he wrestled with his conscience. He had overheard Hatcher’s response to Ryan’s question about Spotted Hawk, and he knew relaying it might devastate the young woman.

Still, telling her the truth was preferable to allowing her to spend another day wondering and aching.

“I am truly sorry, madam,” Doc said quietly. “Mr. Hatcher was unmoved by the plight of your husband’s remains.”

Felicity blinked, then she nodded. “I expected him to be.”

With a swirl of her doeskin skirt, she spun and left the tavern.

Staring after her, Doc felt the pain within him transform into anger. It was the same anger he felt toward the scientists of Operation Chronos who had wrenched him from his wife, Emily, and two children, Rachel and Jolyon.

His constant pleas to be returned to his own era, to his family, had fallen on uncaring ears. To the scientists he was only a test subject, and his emotional agony meant less than a sparrow’s tears to the success of the time-trawling experiments.