McCurdy obliged the dog for a moment and then looked at the Texan, squinting a bit in the sunlight.  He pulled his hat off his head and took his coat off in the heat, draping it over his arm.  Then he turned back to the man.  “Does a body have time for a cup of coffee afore he's gotta leave again?”  He smiled crookedly and tapped a Camel from his pack, slipping it between his lips, and struck a match.

“Who's this passenger?  You?”

"Me," came another voice, a slightly nasal one from within the general store.  A lean young man stepped out onto the sunlight porch, the sun rendering the white collar of his black shirt brilliantly.  Keen grey eyes met Curdy's in a direct gaze, over a hooked Roman nose.  The hair was cut short, and was a sun-bleached brown. The rest of the outfit didn't seem to look like a clergyman's rig; khaki trousers and high leather boots, laced to the knee, but a rosary and crucifix hung off his belt.  "I can pay you in cash."

"Yes, yes, I have some coffee; I also have a fountain, if you want,"  the little Oriental man said, with a smile.  The dog grunted as McCurdy left off the belly-rub, yawned, and settled down into a snooze.

Inside the general store was cool and well-appointed; the Oriental man moved behind the counter and set up a sparkling white mug with coffee for McCurdy.  The young man in the mixed clothes had a soda; it looked like a malted.

Mccurdy sipped of his coffee and smiled his thanks at the chinaman.  He thought about sitting down to a spot of lunch and wondered aloud if they had any pie by chance.  He grinned crookedly at the chinaman again, and then looked at the boy needing the ride.  He was a fashion store with every deparment walking the runway.  He must have been raised an orphan because somebody sure didn't teach him what color went with what.  Should have stuck to grey.

Not one for saying too much about his own business if it wasn't needed, McCurdy sort of turned toward the boy and said, “Where ya goin' and how much of a hurry are ya in ta get there?”

The boy, barely 17 but with an older air about him, surveyed McCurdy for a few seconds before responding.  "I'm going South,"  he said, and McCurdy picked up a crispness to the words that implied English origin, or good elocution lessons.  "And I'm in a great hurry indeed.  Will you accept gold ?  Or emeralds ?"  He went to pick up a canvas vest, sewn with plenty of pockets and even gun-holsters...four of them... and began to rifle in one of the pockets.

The Chinaman was quietly polishing glasses that didn't really need polishing, and McCurdy could smell a very delicious roasting aroma creeping from the back room, where a slight rustling could be heard, as if someone was cooking back there.

McCurdy eyed the vest – and the holsters – with a cocked eyebrow, and then flicked that eye at the boy.  “If yur in that much of a hurry, I reckon you'll need to find another plane passin' through.  Or wait a bit.”  He eyed the rosary on the boys belt again and added, “You like emeralds do ya?”

The steely grey eyes did not flicker.  "Emeralds have their uses," the young man replied, in that crisp accent. "I can wait a while, but not for too long.  Time is not at my advantage, today.  Chang -" this was addressed rather briskly to the smiling Oriental man "-my supplies, if you will."  He had pulled a leather bag from the vest and was rummaging in it, and pulled out a selection of odd-looking coins - most were not really round, and looked mashed more than minted, but they were all rich yellow gold.  These he set on the counter with dull plunks, as the Oriental placed a canvas sack on the counter.

McCurdy shook his head at the boy's attitude as if silently chuckling, and turned back to the man he heard called Chang.  “Father Dean?  Know where I can find him?”

The oriental man, addressed as Chang, nodded, with the merry smile.  "Go down the road about a half-mile, you'll see the steeple.  He's probably out in the garden."

The boy seemed unmoved by McCurdy's response to his arrogance, and sipped the malted, sliding onto a stool at the soda fountain with a patient air.

McCurdy set out at an easy pace, the day being pleasant, and soon saw a church down the road.  There was indeed a steeple, and around the back, a garden, where a balding man in coveralls was tending to a plot of peas.  He straightened up, with a grimace and a hand on his back, as he got to the end of a row, and leaned on the hoe he had been using.  "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there." he said, with a twangy Boston accent.  "How may I help you ?  I'm Father Dean."    Then the watery eyes took in the appearance of McCurdy.

"Oh," the priest said, "You must be Jack McCurdy.  How was the trip down ?"

McCurdy smiled and held out his hand for a shake.  “Long and noisy,” he said.  “But I didn't lack for anything thanks to your friends.  Y'all really know how to take care of a person.  Much obliged.”  He took off his hat and ran his hand through his short hair, then kept the Fedora in his hands.  “Did ya get a look at the young kid in town?  The one with the mismatched outfit and the hunter's vest?”

A shadow seemed to pass over the watery blue eyes, but the priest had a good poker face.  "Mmmmhmmm..." was the noncommital reply. "I daresay he wants to go south.  Look, I do want to tell you about the fellow who has the Lupino Cross...he's a preacher.  He's got Faith, but I'm very concerned that he might not be able to deal with the problems he'll soon be facing.  The Cross must not fall into the wrong hands."  The grubby hands tightened on the hoe handle, showing white about the knuckles.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:05, Tue 03 May 2005.

McCurdy just stared at the man.  "So where's the preacher and who's got the wrong hands?  That fella goin' south?"

"That man has no interest in the Cross," the priest said, which was odd, for the fellow was just a boy to look at him.  "There's a lot more to the story, but I don't know if I can explain it to...you..."  the man's face went pale, and he gripped his chest, suddenly unable to speak...

...and fell down at McCurdy's feet, gasping for air, and a rooster crowed.  Up on the church, by the cross, a black rooster was flapping its wings.

McCurdy reacted by reflex, reaching out and catching the priest before he completely hit the ground, easing him onto his back.  he loosened the collar of his shirt and quickly checked the heartbeat in his neck.

Heart attack?  If it was, maybe he had a heart condition.  If he did, maybe he had nitro for it.  "What's got ya?" he said quickly.  "You takin' any pills or anything?"  He patted his coveralls and pockets looking for a pill box or something....

McCurdy rushed to help the priest, looking in the pockets for a vial of nitroglycerine pills or anything else.  The priest, his face mottled red and white, now clutched his throat, and fell limp in McCurdy's grasp, his pale eyes staring.  A shadow fell over them, a huge shadow, though there was nothing to cast it but that infernal noisy rooster and the sun was at the wrong angle besides.  McCurdy had the sense of being stalked, the feeling raising alarms in his thoughts and the hair on the back of his neck.

McCurdy whipped his head around.  Something had raised that shadow, yet there was nothing there to have done it.  He could see nothing flying across the path of the sun, no clouds to obscure it for even that brief moment.  He looked at the priest in his arms again and sighed.  He knew death when he saw it.  He had seen enough of it to never forget.  McCurdy felt an involuntary chill.

So sudden ... so mysterious.  He reached up and eased Father Dean's staring eyes closed.  “Hope you find peace in your next life, padre.”  He eased him the rest of the way to the ground and looked around for a vehicle of some sort he could get him to town with.  He stood above the fallen preacher, looking at him and wondering what he had gotten himself into.  Whatever it was, he was in it for the long haul now.  And it was time to start doing his job.

McCurdy's square jaw set in a solid line and his mind started to work.  First thing to do was check the dead man's pockets for anything that might help.

Next would be his house and chapel....

McCurdy became aware of two things - the temperature dropping like a stone, and the sound of feet moving very quickly down the road that led from Perfection to the church and beyond.  The shadow was now falling across him as he bent over Father Dean, rifling the man's pockets for clues; but he looked up in the darkening haze to see the boy from Chang's running, pulling two pistols from his strangely made canvas vest, and firing them at the black rooster...

...which was growing, seething as if full of snakes, and changing its form to something utterly alien and horrible, full of fangs, glowing eyes and viciousness.

The bullets ripped into the flesh of the monster, splattering a sizzling green gore onto the steeple of the church.  The monstrosity swelled and suddenly burst, splashing the building with foul ichor and sending a smell of carrion and brimstone into the air.

"Time to go,"  the boy snapped, handguns smoking in his hands, "You can't do anything for the priest, and the demons know about you now !"

McCurdy had snapped upright like a spring-loaded trap at the sight of the monstrosity, and if he'd had a cigarette between his lips at that moment it would have fallen to the ground in a burst of fiery ash.  Needless to say, his face was as ashen as the cigarette would have been.

“What the hell was that?” he breathed, rising from his knees, still staring at the carnage on the steeple – the carnage of something that wasn't a rooster!  He turned to look at the boy and saw the fire and urgency in his eyes, the fire of someone that did not seem surprised by what he had just seen.  Father Dean had been right -- this was no boy.

“And what the hell are you talking about?”  He was quickly recovering from the initial shock.  His years in the war left little in the world that surprised him, but something told him this wasn't part of his world.  Still, old habits died hard.

McCurdy started moving toward the boy.  His grey eyes were hard.  His hands balled into fists, powerful fists, fists used to hitting jaws of stone and muscles of thick leather.

It was beginning to settle in: Father Dean's death....

The boy sidestepped, moving adroitly, eyes narrowed.  If this was a 17 year old, he had seen a lot of hard schooling.   "I could have taken your flying machine, but I thought we were on the same side,"  he snapped, still holding the pistols but unwilling - at the moment - to aim them at McCurdy.  "It's time to go - it will be back.  They always come back !"

“And if you were still wonderin' about that I reckon you'd be firin' them pistols again and takin' my plane anyway,” McCurdy said flatly, the words dropping like rocks from a tin bucket, but he relaxed just the same, getting hold of himself.  “It ain't goin' nowhere without petrol anyhow.”

McCurdy picked up the hat he'd dropped and slapped the dust from it as if he hadn't a care in the world – as if a seething, fanged monster hadn't appeared atop a church steeple not twenty steps from where he stood.  He had gotten his senses back and regained his usually calm demeanor.  He looked at the boy from beneath the brim of his hat and squinted.  Nothing was going to phase him again.  Not after what he'd just seen.

“Help me with the padre,” he said bending over to heft the old man.  “I ain't leavin him behind.  I don't leave nobody behind no more....”

The boy, if he could be called that, assumed a nonplussed expression and stood there for a moment as if considering the wellbeing of a corpse was something he didn't really comprehend.  Then he went to pick up the priest's feet, to help McCurdy carry him into the Church.  "I -do- mean it," he said, with that crisp accent. "They come back.  You are travelling on stranger tides, Yankee.  The old rules do not apply." The lad smirked then, as if he was speaking of some private joke.

McCurdy glanced sideways at the gun-toting kid, wondering if he was talking to him or just talking to hear himself.  It seemed his jokes were for someone else too.

"Let'em come," McCurdy said as they carried the priest inside.  McCurdy said something about the altar and they put him there, the shamus setting the old man's hands on his chest and generally making him comfortable even though he couldn't feel anything any longer.  He knew it was a time for words, but he didn't have any words.  He just turned from the priest and looked at the boy.

"Are they here yet?"

McCurdy glanced sideways at the gun-toting kid, wondering if he was talking to him or just talking to hear himself.  It seemed his jokes were for someone else too.

"Let'em come," McCurdy said as they carried the priest inside.  McCurdy said something about the altar and they put him there, the shamus setting the old man's hands on his chest and generally making him comfortable even though he couldn't feel anything any longer.  He knew it was a time for words, but he didn't have any words.  He just turned from the priest and looked at the boy.

"Are they here yet?"

The strange youth gave him a steely look.  "You'll know when something tries to rip off your head, Yankee," he said.  "Shall we go ?  I only have so much shot." It was an odd thing to call bullets.   And a dead priest didn't have any bearing on the matter, it seemed.

“You know, you sure are liberal with that word: Yankee,” McCurdy said as he started to walk from the chapel.  “Haven’t heard that since the war.  And it came from the mouth of a friend of mine.  Yank, he used to call me.  He was English.  British English.”  McCurdy looked at the lad sideways, his curiosity beginning to get the better of him.

Jack McCurdy wasn’t an idiot; there were even those that would boast that he could put two and two together and come up with something besides four — and it would be right.  And he was beginning to put something together now.

“Of course, there are those from north of the Dixie line that are real liberal with that word too.  But you don’t quite fit their tone...”  His tone indicated that he was really asking a question.

The lad smirked again, eyes much too hard for his age narrowing down.  Surprisingly, he gave a slight bow.  "My name is Sebastian Hawksmoore.  I am English."  And that was all the boy was going to say, it seemed, besides, "Shall we go now ?"  He trotted to the door and looked around, a handgun already in his grip, and then out of the church, looking around with the handgun ready to fire at anything. The coast seemed to be clear, at the moment.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:08, Sun 22 May 2005.