James Axler – Way of the Wolf

Doc thrust the Le Mat at two men running from the back door of the manor house, then pulled the trigger. The shotgun blast drove them backward.

Mildred’s borrowed blaster cracked harshly, dropping another man shooting from a second-story window toward the back of the house.

Doc managed the manipulations that moved the barrel holding the cylinder of .44 rounds into play.

He fired at targets, not really hoping to hit any of them, but wanting them thinking he was armed.

“Which way?” Mildred asked.

Doc kicked his horse into greater speed. Kirkland’s hostile blasters faded quickly behind him. “This way.” He led her back through the rutted roads of Hazard.

“Got company,” Mildred yelled up.

Twisting, Doc glanced back behind them, spotting five riders traveling along in their wake. A bullet ripped through the air above his head. “Then we have no choice but to make haste.”

POUNDING HOOVES caught Ryan’s attention. He came to a halt beside the hotel, getting ready to clamber up to his room, then turned and glanced back down the street.

Two riders rode hard for the hotel, followed by a handful of others. Moonlight glinted from Doc’s silvery mane and from some of the lighter beads worked into Mildred’s hair.

“Krysty!” Ryan called, raising his voice.

“I see them, lover.”

Ryan pulled the Steyr to his shoulder, putting himself against the hotel. He centered the sights over the lead rider of the five pursuers, putting the crosshairs on the man’s face. He guessed that Doc and Mildred were still seventy yards out, and the men following them were about another twenty after that.

Detonations cracked, and Ryan saw Doc’s horse stagger slightly before recovering itself. Changing his mind, Ryan put the crosshairs on the lead rider’s horse. He let out half a breath and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet sped true, crashing through the animal’s forehead and spewing the contents of its brainpan over the rider. Reflexes gone, the horse tumbled in the street, throwing the rider in one direction while it fell in another. The falling horse took out another rider and mount, and became a hazard for the rest.

Then a barrage of fire chopped into the riders chasing Doc and Mildred. Ryan recognized Krysty’s and Jak’s blasters, then the high-pitched report of Dean’s 9 mm Browning joined in.

The line of riders wilted at once. But more gunmen joined them from the gaudy house down the street.

Fifteen yards out, Doc’s horse was shot out from under him. The old man and the dead animal went down together, tumbling across the rutted street.

Ryan lifted the Steyr and blasted two men who tried to urge their mounts over the downed riders. Two horses with empty saddles ducked into the nearest side street.

Amazingly Doc scrambled to his feet and ran toward Ryan, looking none the worse for wear. “By the Three Kennedys!” the old man yelled. “I thought the next thing these old ears would be hearing was sweet refrains from Saint Gabriel’s horn.”

“Get to the hotel, Doc,” Ryan ordered. He kept covering fire going, but the return blasterfire was building, as well. Bullets thudded into the wall nearby.

Mildred rode her horse onto the wooden boardwalk, then abandoned it in front of the doors. She tried the doorknob, but it didn’t open. Before she could move, though, Jak was there, opening the door and letting her in. Doc thumped across the boardwalk, as well, keeping his head low.

“Ryan,” Jak called.

Wheeling, Ryan sprinted to the door and pushed through. The albino teenager fired past him at Kirkland’s sec team.

Inside the foyer, Ryan spotted one of the dead deputies sprawled across a sofa in the waiting room. His throat had been slit from ear to ear, and the blood patterns across the cream-colored antimacassar suggested that he’d been held in place while he died.

“Mildred,” Dean called from the second-floor landing.

The woman glanced up in time to catch the big blaster Dean tossed down, then she caught the box of shells that followed. With grim efficiency, she broke the pistol open and checked the loads. Then she snapped the ZKR 551’s cylinder. “Thanks, Dean. Where did you find it?”