PRIMAL SCREAM! BLOGFEST

Because of my late shift as blood courier, I am posting my entry for the PRIMAL SCREAM! blogfest a bit early :

Today is Raquel Brynes' PRIMAL SCREAM! blogfest http://nitewriter6.blogspot.com/

My entry goes back to the moment that shaped my epic undead hero, Samuel McCord, into the driven person he has become. We go back in time to when he was but 15 years old in the deadly plains of west Texas in 1815. Elu, the mystic Apache shaman, has been hunting with him in the form of an enormous golden eagle -- something that Sam is just young enough to accept with youth's ability to grasp the impossible.

It is from my short story, "My Father's Gun" :

The eagle spoke to me. I wish I could say I was dreaming. I wasn’t. I wish I could say it was for the first time. It wasn’t. I wish I could say I was crazy. I ... hell, that was a maybe.

He was staring at me with those piercing eyes of his, the desert sun making his feathers seem burning gold. Because of him I never came home without having bagged game of some sort. His sky-eye spotted even the most well-hidden deer or rabbit. Father was thinking me something of a wonder. He had taken to giving me only two bullets out of our scarce supply.

One for the game. One for me should the Comanches corner me. Finally I had his respect. I took no pride in it. It hadn’t been earned.

Perched on the Joshua tree, the eagle fluffed out his huge wings. And he spoke. Not in actual words, mind you. I heard them in my mind. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Me being crazy wasn’t a maybe.

"Dyami, (he had taken to calling me Eagle in Apache, after all if I was going to take credit for an eagle’s kill, shouldn’t I go by that name?)

"What, Elu?" (That was what he said his name was; Apache for full of grace - most times he was full of something else, which explained why his eyes were so brown.)

"I have done something terrible"

"We all do sooner of later."

He soared from the tree and landed on my left shoulder, sinking his talons deep into my flesh. I fought to keep from crying out in pain. Elu didn’t take signs of weakness well. He was a lot like my father in that.

"To you, thick of skull. To you."

"You meant to?"

"Of course not! We are fr -- hunting companions."

"Then you’re forgiven."

He sank his talons in deeper. "You do not even know what it is that I have done."

I shrugged. A real feat with Elu digging his claws into my shoulder. "Don’t need to. I have your word that you didn’t mean to. Friends forgive friends. Hell, Elu, if my friends have to live with my mistakes, why should I get all bent out of shape about living with theirs?"

This time I did cry out as his talons dug deep. "Do not be so quick with your forgiveness. It has cost you deeply."

"I’m still alive."

"No. You are a dead man walking."

I looked deep into those piercing eyes. Damn, he meant it. I grew all cold inside. The Comanches. Oh, God, the Comanches. Somehow Elu had gotten them on my trail. I hefted my father’s Hawkins rifle, its weight reassuring in my hands. The small white-tailed deer over my right shoulder had been bagged with just one shot. I still had the other bullet. I let out a long, slow sigh, feeling as if my life was leaving me with it.

Hell, Elu hadn’t meant to kill me. I looked up into the harsh blue sky for a long moment. Maybe in the afterlife my spirit would soar next to his.

He looked deeper into my eyes. His next words proved what I had always suspected. He could read my mind.

"Your thoughts are older than your fifteen years. And I am shamed."

I felt a flicker of resentment. "I’m not my father, Elu. You don’t have to feel shame just ‘cause you made a mistake."

"Your father is hard on you."

"A bit. I’d have hated to have been one of his pupils in Harvard."

"Is this Harvard far from my mountains?"

"I'd say Texas is about as far as you can get from it and still be on dry land."

"Then why did he come?"

"He had consump -- ah, had a sickness in his lungs. He hoped the desert heat would help."

Elu’s glittering eyes bored deep into mine. "He is hard on you to make you hard. Hard enough to survive my mountains long enough to be all that you can be."

I sighed, "Yeah that’s what mother says. But Rachel, my sister, says that some men are born to be poets not soldiers."

He bobbed his head as if in an agreeing nod. "You could become a Far-Seeing One."

His eyes seemed to look inward and not like what they saw. "You love your mother and sister, do you not?"

"With all my heart."

"And your father?"

"I -- respect him, fear him. I -- I don’t know about love."

"You love him. Just not in the same way as your mother and sister. And -- and ...."

My throat got tight. "And what?"

He ducked his head. "And I have brought those you call Comanches to their nest."

"What? I’ve got to get there!"

"No! Wait. It is too late. If you go now, you will only see terrible things."

I tossed the deer from my right shoulder and started off in a mile-eating lope. "Then I’ll see terrible things!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elu land on the deer I dropped. My heart sank. He wasn’t coming with me. He was mad at me. I ground my teeth. Let him. Rachel, Mother, and Father were in danger. I had to get to them in time. I just had to.

I ran measured and steady, the water in my nearly full canteen sloshing with each bootfall. The distance was eaten up in easy strides. My daily hunts had built strength in my legs. I was all gristle and muscle.

Elu had taught me how to leave not a trace behind as I walked, though I still left too much sign when I ran. As I was running now. Let the Comanches follow me, just so long as I got to my family in time.

I ran for hours it seemed. Time lost its meaning. But not fear. Fear was all too real as it coiled tight and cold inside my chest. I looked up at the rise ahead of me. Just beyond it lay my home. I slowed. No sense in me getting killed by a Comanche brave before I got to --

Two gunshots. A scream hoarse and shrill. I smiled grim. Father knew all the nerve clusters in the human body. A bullet placed in them, he had told me, would make even the fiercest Comanche scream. And something like that would make the other braves think twice about showing themselves.

I got on my belly and carefully edged up the rise. I swiped off my hat, hoping my shock of brown hair wouldn’t attract notice. Slow and sure I made it up the rise. I sneaked a look over the rock and gravel.

No. Damn it, no. It was bad. Real bad.

Rachel, Mother, and Father. All three of them were trapped out by the well. Damn that Rachel. She must have been daydreaming about those fancy balls Mother had told her about from her time in London.

Rachel never minded her surroundings. Never. She had been caught flatfooted out by the well. Lucky for her that Father knew that Comanches and Apaches liked to catch whites out by their wells. He had built a three wall affair around ours, with slits in the stone for rifle barrels to stick out of.

I gnawed my lip. I had his best rifle. He still had Death and Taxes, the single-shot pistols the Hawkins brothers had made for him. And he had the five shot pistol Mother had bought him in London.

Somehow Mother and Father had made it out to the well. Mother was all right. Father’s right shoulder had a bloody bandage around it.

I watched with sinking heart as a Comanche brave purposedly showed himself then ducked back down behind a boulder. Father had just glared at the brave and hadn’t even tried to take the easy shot.

I tried to swallow and couldn’t. That meant only one thing. They were down to just three bullets. One for each of them.

What was I going to do now? I had only one bullet myself. I had to make that one count for the most. But just what could I do with only one bullet?

My heart became a rock as I saw Mother motion to Rachel. Her face was pale. Her lips were quivering. But still Rachel moved with the grace of a born dancer as she crabbed on her knees to her.

Mother softly stroked my sister’s long blonde hair and hugged her fierce. Before I could take another breath, I heard the shot. Rachel stiffened, then slumped like a sack of flour to the dust.

No. No! Not Rachel. Not her.

We had been so fully one that I hadn’t thought we could die apart. We would always be together. Always. I couldn’t seem to move. Mother looked over to Father.

Though I shouldn’t have been able to, I still heard her. "Oh, John, what have I done? What in God’s name have I done?"

"What you had to, Ruth."

He reached out for her. They clung to each other as if trying to melt into one another. He kissed her like I had never seen him do before. He pulled his head back.

"I love you so, Ruth, I ache with it."

She stroked his drawn cheek. "Who could blame yo--"

The shot rang out like a thunderclap. I jerked as if the bullet had burned into me. And worse yet, Father bellowed as if his chest couldn’t hold all the grief and pain. He stood up.

"Come and get me, you bastards!"

The Comanches yelled their rage at his robbing them of their rape and torture. He smiled and aimed his pistol carefully at the closest of the charinging braves.

No. Don’t do it, Father. That bullet’s for you. Don’t!

He fired. And the brave clutched his chest and reeled silent to the ground. The rest screamed, half in anger, half in anticipation of long, bloody hours of torture on this hated white man.

I sprang to my feet. "Father!"

He looked up, his eyes locking onto mine and yelled, "Sam? Oh, god, you saw. You saw! I - I love you, Sam. Now, run. Run!"

Like Hell.

I swung up his rifle. I sucked in a breath and let it out slow. I heard him in my mind from years back :

"Betsy is a sensitive beauty, Sam. You have to treat her gentle. Caress her trigger, pull it back as if you were brushing back a lock of Rachel’s hair. Nice and easy. She wants you to hit the target, Sam. She really does. Treat her right, and she’ll hit it for you every time."

I saw the Comanche to my left aim his bow straight at me. Let him. I had all the time in the world. All the time in Father's world. Father’s jaw firmed. He nodded.

"I love you, Sa--"

I caressed Betsy’s trigger. She slammed hard into my right shoulder. Father’s head seemed to explode like a melon hit by a hammer. The Comanche let his arrow fly.

A blur of golden feathers streaked down from the sky. Elu. Impossibly he caught the arrow, snapping it in two. He swept across to the brave, ripping out the Indian’s throat in a red spurt of gushing blood.

"Run, Dyami. Run! I will slow them down."

I hesitated. "Would you have their deaths be for nothing? Run!"

I ran.

They wanted me? Well, they damn sure would have to work for their bloody fun. I took off towards the mountains to my right. The mountains that the Comanches feared.

The mountains that Elu said belonged to his mother, Estanatlehi, The Turquoise Woman. She whose shadow it was death to step upon.
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The title to my short story comes from the song "My Father's Gun" by Elton John. And here it is :