James Axler – Shadowfall

Straub went and sat at the head of the table, beside Schickel, the two men immediately becoming deeply involved in conversation.

Krysty leaned toward Ryan, her mouth almost touching his ear. “One to watch, lover,” she whispered.

“Yeah. Felt like he was looking inside me.”

“He was. Dean was right. Man’s a seer. And I think he was also trying us all out as subjects for hypnotism.”

“Hypnotism! Never!”

Ryan hadn’t realized that he’d raised his voice until he looked up from his plate to see those dark silvery eyes staring intently at him, the pale lips breaking into a smile.

He lowered his tone. “I know there’s something double weird about Straub.”

“You felt it, lover. I did. We all must’ve done. It’s dangerous not to accept the threat. That way he might be able to gain control over one or more of our minds.”

Ryan helped himself to a pair of ribs from the nearest dish. “All right,” he said softly. “I did feel something happening. You reckon he has that power?”

Krysty nodded, still half turning, her hand over her mouth to conceal what she was saying. “I know it. Straub’s one of the most lethal men I ever met.”

But there was no more threat. The reverse was true, with everyone showing friendliness to the strangers.

The food, despite the poor cooking, put down a layer between backbone and belly, and the nine companions did justice to the meal.

Three of the women stood during the supper and sang together, unaccompanied. It was a song that none of the nine outlanders had heard before, about a sister wishing to visit a ville called Hammond and what happened to her there. The voices blended perfectly, striking pure, crystal harmonies. When it was over they all applauded. “A little something I wrote myself,” Straub said, bowing. “Long ago.”

Mildred leaned over to J.B. “I don’t know, John,” she breathed. “Thought at first that I never heard it, but I’m sure now there was something a tad familiar about it. Bet you a peanut to a candy bar that creepy bastard never wrote it.”

Straub was looking at her, and Mildred felt herself flushing. Almost as if he could hear her words. Or read them out of the center of her mind.

Schickel banged on the table with the hilt of his hunting knife. “Friends, friends. Straub here has been telling me the results of your successful hunting. Some of which has delighted us all tonight.”

Ryan leaned back on the bench, feeling the chill of dusk on his skin, and gazed up into the sable sky. The evening star had been glowing brightly for some time, now accompanied by the first pinpricks of light from countless other stars.

The makeshift camp was like hundreds of others he’d seen over the years. He knew that in the predark days the people who chose to live this way had been called travelers. It was a term that was still used, but now the word had a darker connotation.

Camps like this were often used as hideouts by wolf’s-heads, men and women who lived outside the law, often running with a blood price on their heads.

It had been no surprise to learn that Schickel and his people were planning to usurp power from Baron Weyman. It was a common enough tale, told around a thousand campfires.

“The baron’s weak.”

“His ville’s vulnerable to a few brave men.”

“We can sit where he sits. Rule where he rules. Become powerful as he was powerful.”

The number of times that Ryan had heard of gangs of brushwood people succeeding in toppling a baron in the past twenty years could be counted on the fingers of both hands.

But it did happened.

Could happen.

It depended on what kind of man Weyman was and how he’d organized his sec force. Trader had a saying about a baron being as good as his sec boss, and it was true.

Ryan recalled the infamous ville of Mocsin, the baron, Jordan Teague, who’d once held Doc Tanner prisoner, and his notorious sec boss, Cort Strasser.

There was something about the man Straub that reminded Ryan of Cort Strasser, a chilling coldness and more than a hint of a bitterly ruthless streak, lying buried in a shallow grave beneath the quiet self-possessed exterior.