PART 5
A NEW DEAL
Nicholas P. Wolfwood grunted and huffed as he struggled to heft his cross punisher up the rocky cliffs. It was slow going, and the twin suns beat down onto him mercilessly. And, of course, the fact that he was quire sure that he was soon going to be dead did not make it any easier.
Actually, he felt surprisingly calm. He had known he would die one day. Although, in all honesty, he had never expected it would come this way. He looked up at the sky to check the position of the suns. They were not quite at their peak yet, not yet noon. He decided he had time to savor one last earthly pleasure.
He sat down on a large rock and felt around in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. As he light up, he allowed his mind to wander a bit. He thought about the past, mostly. First, he thought about that morning, where Merryl and Vash had tried one last time to convince him not to go off to face this demon of his past. Vash had offered to follow him, trailing just far enough so that Alex would not know he was there till the last minute. Merryl offered to come as well. But he had refused them both. This was something he had to do alone. Besides which, he was certain that somehow, Alex would know. He had always somehow known before.
And then his thoughts focused solely Alex, on his demon. Yes, a true demon of his past...
Here now is Nicholas Wolfwood once again, five years younger than the day he first met Vash the Stampede and Merryl and Millie of the Bernardelli Insurance Society. He stood at the doorway to a large room, where two rows of beds alone each wall signified the orphans who slept there. At the other end of the room stood one of those orphans. Behind her stood Alex. He gripped the child by her hair, occasionally giving a hard yank so that she would produce a few tears, to add further effect to his threat. He leveled a knife against her throat, the light bouncing off its blade to reflect in the child's eyes in infinite white dots.
"Let her go, Alex..." he said, one hand raised. The other was at his side, trying desperately to move slowly to the gun he had tucked the waistline of his pants. He tried to make the move as suttle as possible, hoping Alex's attention would be on his eyes, not his hands. "This is between us, don't drag her into it..."
"She became involved in it the moment she met you, Nicholas. And you are only killing her." He pressed the edge of the blade to her neck, eliciting a terrified gasp as she felt its sharp coldness against her skin. Nicholas' hand moved back from the gun. Alex grinned malevolently. "I told you I'd punish you..."
"Alex...please...don't do this..." the helplessness in Nicholas' voice registered in Alex's eyes. He sipped his enemies pain, and found it exquisite.
"Say please, Nicholas. Say it for me...please..."
"Please..."
"Please..."
"Please...let her go..."
"You always were such a bleeding heart." The finality of the statement slashed Nicholas almost as bad as the knife slashed into the girl's throat. Her final horrified whisper was overwhelmed by Nicholas' scream as he whipped his gun from its place and fired off four shots. Two of them tore into Alex's leg, the third slammed into his stomach, and the final ripped into his shoulder. Alex fell back with a shout of pain, shoving the child away. She fell to the floor, moaning and crying as best she could with her windpipe cut. Nicholas wanted to run to her, to hold her in his arms, to try to save her. But his feet remained rooted to the spot. As the tears rolled down his cheeks, he gazed into the eyes of Alex, and saw only darkness.
Alex removed his hand from his leg, where it had been clutching at the wounds the bullets had made. He held his hand up, covered, dripping with blood. His mouth turned up into a deaths head grin as he whispered through the pain, "See? See?"
Nicholas screamed.
Wolfwood jumped up from his seat with a start. He grabbed his cross punisher, ready to activate any of its multiple weapons. His eyes whipped around him, searching for the danger, and found nothing. After a moment, his heartbeat slowed to normal, and he realized he had been dreaming.
He gazed down at his hands. They did not tremble. He finally hauled his cross punisher back up, and resumed his slow ascension up the cliffs.
"I still think we should have gone with him." Merryl was pacing back and forth, her arms crossed over her chest. She stared at the floor, as if she were going to find an answer to their situation between the cracks of those floorboards.
"You heard him. He has to do this himself." Vash was leaning against the window, gazing out at the goings on of the town below them. He was hoping that maybe the sight of life would keep him from thinking about death today.
"If only there were some way to know what's happening" Merryl sighed. She sat down next to the bed where Millie was laying. Her pain was growing worse, it was visible. She trembled like a leaf in the wind, sweat shined on her skin. She occasionally gave whimpers of agony and some small tears stained her face.
"He'll be okay, I'm sure he will. He's taken on lots worse than this guy. He'll be fine." Vash tried to sound as confident as possible with these words. But, in truth, he felt an aching in the pit of his stomach that told him something terrible was going to happen today.
"I don't know...I just don't know..." Merryl held one of Millie's hands in both of hers. She pressed it to her forehead, and offered a brief prayer for both her friends safety. Her concentration was broken when Vash moved for the door. "Where are you going?"
"To get drunk, to play with some kids, to practice shooting, anything is better than sitting around here waiting for something to happen." Merryl wanted to chew him out for saying it so callously, but she could not deny that in her heart, she desired to do the same exact thing. "Vash..." she called, helplessly as he stepped out the door. He turned his head to look at her. "Could you pick up some food while you're out...for when she's better?" Vash smiled warmly at her, and nodded.
Wolfwood froze. He had heard something. It was a soft sort of rustling, the sound of pebbles rolling against dirt. He waited, waited, and eventually heard the sound again. He set the cross punisher down and withdrew one of his pistols from its storage unit. Alex was somewhere close.
He stood, still and silent, waiting for something to happen. After a few moments, there was the definite sound of a footstep behind a large boulder twenty feet ahead of him. He opened fire at the rock, and the moment the first shot pierced the air a cloaked figure darted out from behind it, lunging for a pile of rocks several feet away. But Wolfwood was even faster than that. He yanked the cross punisher from its place in the dirt, swung it around in his arms, and opened fire with its automatic cannon, plastic the stone pile to bits. The figure hiding behind it tried to make another dash, but tripped and fell. In an instant Wolfwood was on top of him. He pressed the muzzle of the gun into his opponents chest, his finger steady on the trigger.
"Wait! I surrender! Please!" shouted a voice that most definitely was not Alex. Wolfwood stood, dumbstruck for a solid two minutes. But realization quickly kicked in. He reached down and tore the hood from the person laying beneath him, to reveal a brown haired young man, not more than 18 years old. "Please mister...I dun wanna die..." he choked between his tears of fear.
"Who the hell are you?" Wolfwood shouted, his outrage clear.
"Some weird guy gave me three hundred double dollars to come up here wearing this thing and wait...he didn't tell me I'd get shot at!"
"Where is he? Where did he go?" Wolfwood demanded, hauling the young man up by his collar.
"He said something about changing the deal. That's all I know, I swear!"
Wolfwood contemplated those words for a moment before realization flooded him.
"Oh God no..."
Vash stepped out into the street, blinking a few times as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight. He took a deep breath, and some of the tension left him. He watched two children playing across the street, and it eased his worries.
Wolfwood would be all right. He would vanquish this monster that haunted him, and his worries would be put to rest. He would come back to them, perhaps a bit bruised, but no worse for the wear, and in time his wounds would heal and they would all be content again.
Vash was so distracted by his thoughts that he did not at all notice the scurrying above him, on the roof of the inn. As he stepped into the street, a hooded figure leapt from the very top of that building, fell through the air and landed with a soft thud behind him. He landed flat on his feet, with a ballet dancers grace. But the sound grabbed Vash's attention. But before the legendary gunman could turn to face the danger, he felt a sharp pain in his back, as if something had bit him.
"Nighty night" the cold voice of Alex whispered behind him.
"Heeeeey" Vash managed to say as his body grew heavy. He collapsed to his knees, wobbled for a moment, and then fell face forward into the dirt. He dozed as if he were a child who had just been tucked into bed.
Alex smiled down at the unconscious form below him. He ignored the attention the brief struggle had drawn from the passersby on the street. He turned and walked into the inn.
Wolfwood panted as he ran past the buildings. His lungs were burning in his chest, threatening to burst. His mouth was dry, choked with the dust of the desert, his shirt completely soaked with sweat. He had left his cross punisher back on the cliff, along with the young man who had posed as Alex. He had told him to watch the cross and protect it as if his life depended on it, because it probably would. He could not afford to carry it around when speed was the thing he needed most.
He allowed himself to slow down as he approached the inn. It all looked calm from the outside. He went at a joggers pace through the doors. The people questioned his messy appearance with their eyes. His own eyes darted around the room, quickly scanning. They settled on the form of Vash, still snoozing, seated on the floor, his back against the wall. Wolfwood darted over and shook his friend's shoulders.
"Vash! Vash, wake up you jerk! What happened? Where are the girls?"
"Hmm..." Vash muttered, his eyes fluttering open lazily.
"Your friend there has been sleeping all day" the innkeeper said from the bar. Wolfwood turned his gaze onto the portly, older man. "Some kids dragged him inside earlier. Said it looked like some strange fellow hit him or something."
"What about the girls? There were two women staying here. Where are they?"
"Well, as far as I know, they're still up in their rooms. Why, something wrong?"
Wolfwood did not answer. He was already up the stairway, down the hall, at the door. He flung it open and beheld the carnage inside. The bed had been overturned, the dressed knocked over on its side. The small mirror that had rested on the wall above the sink was shattered, its shards reflecting the panicked preacher's face all over. The window was also shattered, the glass sparkling from the floor. And nailed onto the inside of the door with a knife was a piece of paper. He tore it off and read:
Dearest Nicholas,
I am sorry I was unable to attend our arranged meeting this afternoon, but I fear that after careful consideration I found the terms of our bargain to not meet my liking. I have undertaken to make arrangements for the new bargain that we now have if you choose to heed this message.
You need not fear for the lives of your pretty pets, they are perfectly well. I administered the anti-venom to the brown haired girl as I promised, fulfilling my end of the old bargain, just as you fulfilled yours by going to the cliffs. She is most lovely, if I might add. Very sensitive. Should you choose not to adhere to the terms of the new bargain, I shall have to see just how sensitive she really is. She and her friend are contained in a very secluded area, where they can make all the sound they wish and not be heard. I could entertain myself with them for days on end, should you leave me in a position to do so.
You need not fear for the life of your other traveling companion either. I merely pumped him with a hefty dose of heavy tranquilizers that should leave him well incapacitated for at least a day. Long enough for him to be kept well out of our mutual affairs, should you choose to concur to the new bargain I have set forth for us.
But, if you do honor the new bargain, as I hope you will, then no harm shall befall either of the lovely young ladies, and your legendary outlaw will also live for the rest of his days with no fear of my shadow ever befalling him again. The terms are simple: as in the original bargain, you are to come alone to a location of my choosing, were we will settle our affairs with each other once and for all. The prize you shall receive for this meeting shall be the lives of your friends, and the possibility of a lifetime without ever having to worry about me again. Although, there is no saying whether we might not meet in dreams, once in a while. I dreamt of you during my imprisonment.
Bring help, and I will know. Come early or late, and I will know. Attempt to pull and tricks, and there will be consequences.
You can honor this arrangement by following these instructions: wait until sundown, and then find some transportation that will take you for fifty miles north out of town. Once you reach the fifty mile mark, walk on foot for an additional mile northeast. There, you shall find yourself in the familiar setting of a church that I myself was surprised to find abandoned out here in the sands. That is where I will be waiting for you.
Until then, dearest Nicholas, I remain, your ever loving companion.
Alexander
P.S. It would be in your best interest to come as fast as possible. I have waited for so long for this final meeting, that my patience may begin to finally wear thin if I have to wait for too much longer.
Wolfwood remained silent for a moment after reading the message. Then his body stiffened with rage. He crumpled the note up into a ball, threw it against the wall, and then kicked the overturned bed.
After a moment, he restrained himself, and then went downstairs to check on Vash. Then he would have to hurry if he was to retrieve his cross punisher and make the meeting by nightfall.
Nicholas P. Wolfwood grunted and huffed as he struggled to heft his cross punisher up the rocky cliffs. It was slow going, and the twin suns beat down onto him mercilessly. And, of course, the fact that he was quire sure that he was soon going to be dead did not make it any easier.
Actually, he felt surprisingly calm. He had known he would die one day. Although, in all honesty, he had never expected it would come this way. He looked up at the sky to check the position of the suns. They were not quite at their peak yet, not yet noon. He decided he had time to savor one last earthly pleasure.
He sat down on a large rock and felt around in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. As he light up, he allowed his mind to wander a bit. He thought about the past, mostly. First, he thought about that morning, where Merryl and Vash had tried one last time to convince him not to go off to face this demon of his past. Vash had offered to follow him, trailing just far enough so that Alex would not know he was there till the last minute. Merryl offered to come as well. But he had refused them both. This was something he had to do alone. Besides which, he was certain that somehow, Alex would know. He had always somehow known before.
And then his thoughts focused solely Alex, on his demon. Yes, a true demon of his past...
Here now is Nicholas Wolfwood once again, five years younger than the day he first met Vash the Stampede and Merryl and Millie of the Bernardelli Insurance Society. He stood at the doorway to a large room, where two rows of beds alone each wall signified the orphans who slept there. At the other end of the room stood one of those orphans. Behind her stood Alex. He gripped the child by her hair, occasionally giving a hard yank so that she would produce a few tears, to add further effect to his threat. He leveled a knife against her throat, the light bouncing off its blade to reflect in the child's eyes in infinite white dots.
"Let her go, Alex..." he said, one hand raised. The other was at his side, trying desperately to move slowly to the gun he had tucked the waistline of his pants. He tried to make the move as suttle as possible, hoping Alex's attention would be on his eyes, not his hands. "This is between us, don't drag her into it..."
"She became involved in it the moment she met you, Nicholas. And you are only killing her." He pressed the edge of the blade to her neck, eliciting a terrified gasp as she felt its sharp coldness against her skin. Nicholas' hand moved back from the gun. Alex grinned malevolently. "I told you I'd punish you..."
"Alex...please...don't do this..." the helplessness in Nicholas' voice registered in Alex's eyes. He sipped his enemies pain, and found it exquisite.
"Say please, Nicholas. Say it for me...please..."
"Please..."
"Please..."
"Please...let her go..."
"You always were such a bleeding heart." The finality of the statement slashed Nicholas almost as bad as the knife slashed into the girl's throat. Her final horrified whisper was overwhelmed by Nicholas' scream as he whipped his gun from its place and fired off four shots. Two of them tore into Alex's leg, the third slammed into his stomach, and the final ripped into his shoulder. Alex fell back with a shout of pain, shoving the child away. She fell to the floor, moaning and crying as best she could with her windpipe cut. Nicholas wanted to run to her, to hold her in his arms, to try to save her. But his feet remained rooted to the spot. As the tears rolled down his cheeks, he gazed into the eyes of Alex, and saw only darkness.
Alex removed his hand from his leg, where it had been clutching at the wounds the bullets had made. He held his hand up, covered, dripping with blood. His mouth turned up into a deaths head grin as he whispered through the pain, "See? See?"
Nicholas screamed.
Wolfwood jumped up from his seat with a start. He grabbed his cross punisher, ready to activate any of its multiple weapons. His eyes whipped around him, searching for the danger, and found nothing. After a moment, his heartbeat slowed to normal, and he realized he had been dreaming.
He gazed down at his hands. They did not tremble. He finally hauled his cross punisher back up, and resumed his slow ascension up the cliffs.
"I still think we should have gone with him." Merryl was pacing back and forth, her arms crossed over her chest. She stared at the floor, as if she were going to find an answer to their situation between the cracks of those floorboards.
"You heard him. He has to do this himself." Vash was leaning against the window, gazing out at the goings on of the town below them. He was hoping that maybe the sight of life would keep him from thinking about death today.
"If only there were some way to know what's happening" Merryl sighed. She sat down next to the bed where Millie was laying. Her pain was growing worse, it was visible. She trembled like a leaf in the wind, sweat shined on her skin. She occasionally gave whimpers of agony and some small tears stained her face.
"He'll be okay, I'm sure he will. He's taken on lots worse than this guy. He'll be fine." Vash tried to sound as confident as possible with these words. But, in truth, he felt an aching in the pit of his stomach that told him something terrible was going to happen today.
"I don't know...I just don't know..." Merryl held one of Millie's hands in both of hers. She pressed it to her forehead, and offered a brief prayer for both her friends safety. Her concentration was broken when Vash moved for the door. "Where are you going?"
"To get drunk, to play with some kids, to practice shooting, anything is better than sitting around here waiting for something to happen." Merryl wanted to chew him out for saying it so callously, but she could not deny that in her heart, she desired to do the same exact thing. "Vash..." she called, helplessly as he stepped out the door. He turned his head to look at her. "Could you pick up some food while you're out...for when she's better?" Vash smiled warmly at her, and nodded.
Wolfwood froze. He had heard something. It was a soft sort of rustling, the sound of pebbles rolling against dirt. He waited, waited, and eventually heard the sound again. He set the cross punisher down and withdrew one of his pistols from its storage unit. Alex was somewhere close.
He stood, still and silent, waiting for something to happen. After a few moments, there was the definite sound of a footstep behind a large boulder twenty feet ahead of him. He opened fire at the rock, and the moment the first shot pierced the air a cloaked figure darted out from behind it, lunging for a pile of rocks several feet away. But Wolfwood was even faster than that. He yanked the cross punisher from its place in the dirt, swung it around in his arms, and opened fire with its automatic cannon, plastic the stone pile to bits. The figure hiding behind it tried to make another dash, but tripped and fell. In an instant Wolfwood was on top of him. He pressed the muzzle of the gun into his opponents chest, his finger steady on the trigger.
"Wait! I surrender! Please!" shouted a voice that most definitely was not Alex. Wolfwood stood, dumbstruck for a solid two minutes. But realization quickly kicked in. He reached down and tore the hood from the person laying beneath him, to reveal a brown haired young man, not more than 18 years old. "Please mister...I dun wanna die..." he choked between his tears of fear.
"Who the hell are you?" Wolfwood shouted, his outrage clear.
"Some weird guy gave me three hundred double dollars to come up here wearing this thing and wait...he didn't tell me I'd get shot at!"
"Where is he? Where did he go?" Wolfwood demanded, hauling the young man up by his collar.
"He said something about changing the deal. That's all I know, I swear!"
Wolfwood contemplated those words for a moment before realization flooded him.
"Oh God no..."
Vash stepped out into the street, blinking a few times as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight. He took a deep breath, and some of the tension left him. He watched two children playing across the street, and it eased his worries.
Wolfwood would be all right. He would vanquish this monster that haunted him, and his worries would be put to rest. He would come back to them, perhaps a bit bruised, but no worse for the wear, and in time his wounds would heal and they would all be content again.
Vash was so distracted by his thoughts that he did not at all notice the scurrying above him, on the roof of the inn. As he stepped into the street, a hooded figure leapt from the very top of that building, fell through the air and landed with a soft thud behind him. He landed flat on his feet, with a ballet dancers grace. But the sound grabbed Vash's attention. But before the legendary gunman could turn to face the danger, he felt a sharp pain in his back, as if something had bit him.
"Nighty night" the cold voice of Alex whispered behind him.
"Heeeeey" Vash managed to say as his body grew heavy. He collapsed to his knees, wobbled for a moment, and then fell face forward into the dirt. He dozed as if he were a child who had just been tucked into bed.
Alex smiled down at the unconscious form below him. He ignored the attention the brief struggle had drawn from the passersby on the street. He turned and walked into the inn.
Wolfwood panted as he ran past the buildings. His lungs were burning in his chest, threatening to burst. His mouth was dry, choked with the dust of the desert, his shirt completely soaked with sweat. He had left his cross punisher back on the cliff, along with the young man who had posed as Alex. He had told him to watch the cross and protect it as if his life depended on it, because it probably would. He could not afford to carry it around when speed was the thing he needed most.
He allowed himself to slow down as he approached the inn. It all looked calm from the outside. He went at a joggers pace through the doors. The people questioned his messy appearance with their eyes. His own eyes darted around the room, quickly scanning. They settled on the form of Vash, still snoozing, seated on the floor, his back against the wall. Wolfwood darted over and shook his friend's shoulders.
"Vash! Vash, wake up you jerk! What happened? Where are the girls?"
"Hmm..." Vash muttered, his eyes fluttering open lazily.
"Your friend there has been sleeping all day" the innkeeper said from the bar. Wolfwood turned his gaze onto the portly, older man. "Some kids dragged him inside earlier. Said it looked like some strange fellow hit him or something."
"What about the girls? There were two women staying here. Where are they?"
"Well, as far as I know, they're still up in their rooms. Why, something wrong?"
Wolfwood did not answer. He was already up the stairway, down the hall, at the door. He flung it open and beheld the carnage inside. The bed had been overturned, the dressed knocked over on its side. The small mirror that had rested on the wall above the sink was shattered, its shards reflecting the panicked preacher's face all over. The window was also shattered, the glass sparkling from the floor. And nailed onto the inside of the door with a knife was a piece of paper. He tore it off and read:
Dearest Nicholas,
I am sorry I was unable to attend our arranged meeting this afternoon, but I fear that after careful consideration I found the terms of our bargain to not meet my liking. I have undertaken to make arrangements for the new bargain that we now have if you choose to heed this message.
You need not fear for the lives of your pretty pets, they are perfectly well. I administered the anti-venom to the brown haired girl as I promised, fulfilling my end of the old bargain, just as you fulfilled yours by going to the cliffs. She is most lovely, if I might add. Very sensitive. Should you choose not to adhere to the terms of the new bargain, I shall have to see just how sensitive she really is. She and her friend are contained in a very secluded area, where they can make all the sound they wish and not be heard. I could entertain myself with them for days on end, should you leave me in a position to do so.
You need not fear for the life of your other traveling companion either. I merely pumped him with a hefty dose of heavy tranquilizers that should leave him well incapacitated for at least a day. Long enough for him to be kept well out of our mutual affairs, should you choose to concur to the new bargain I have set forth for us.
But, if you do honor the new bargain, as I hope you will, then no harm shall befall either of the lovely young ladies, and your legendary outlaw will also live for the rest of his days with no fear of my shadow ever befalling him again. The terms are simple: as in the original bargain, you are to come alone to a location of my choosing, were we will settle our affairs with each other once and for all. The prize you shall receive for this meeting shall be the lives of your friends, and the possibility of a lifetime without ever having to worry about me again. Although, there is no saying whether we might not meet in dreams, once in a while. I dreamt of you during my imprisonment.
Bring help, and I will know. Come early or late, and I will know. Attempt to pull and tricks, and there will be consequences.
You can honor this arrangement by following these instructions: wait until sundown, and then find some transportation that will take you for fifty miles north out of town. Once you reach the fifty mile mark, walk on foot for an additional mile northeast. There, you shall find yourself in the familiar setting of a church that I myself was surprised to find abandoned out here in the sands. That is where I will be waiting for you.
Until then, dearest Nicholas, I remain, your ever loving companion.
Alexander
P.S. It would be in your best interest to come as fast as possible. I have waited for so long for this final meeting, that my patience may begin to finally wear thin if I have to wait for too much longer.
Wolfwood remained silent for a moment after reading the message. Then his body stiffened with rage. He crumpled the note up into a ball, threw it against the wall, and then kicked the overturned bed.
After a moment, he restrained himself, and then went downstairs to check on Vash. Then he would have to hurry if he was to retrieve his cross punisher and make the meeting by nightfall.