Silver Shells
A Werewolf Gunslinger Tale

M.T. Murphy
http://www.luciferaspet.com
©2010 by M.T. Murphy
All rights reserved.

“Now there’s a feller who’s down on his luck.”
As deputies went, Sam wasn’t the best. He also was about as smart as a wild turkey. 
Sure enough, a lone figure was walking the dusty trail a quarter-mile off to the dying light of the setting sun. It was a hell of a trek without a horse from the next town.
“That ain’t a feller, Sam.”
“What do you mean that ain’t a feller, Sheriff? You seen him with your own two eyes.”
“That there is a lady. A tall one, but a lady nonetheless.”
“How do you know?”
“Her shoulders for one thing. They are just a touch narrower than a feller that tall would have. And look at how she’s walking. Even in that dry prairie mud her hips sway a little more than a man’s would.”
Sam stood and walked to the edge of the porch, squinting his eyes and shaking his head.
“Since when does a lady wear britches and carry six-shooters strapped to her side?”
I finished loading my freshly-cleaned Peacemaker and slid it back into the holster. It never hurt to be prepared.
“This is 1877, Sam. You ought to keep up with the times. Ain’t you heard about Calamity Jane over in Deadwood?”
Sam shrugged his shoulders and squinted his eyes harder at the woman. She was now about a hundred yards away.
“Say, look at the size of them guns, Sheriff.”
“Ain’t that a sight? Those are Walker Colt’s. I ain’t never seen a man carry one that wasn’t in a saddle holster. They’re too damn big and they kick like a mule.”
The woman was covered in the thin layer of dust that comes from a long day of traveling a rough trail, but she didn’t have that weary look about her that most folks get. In fact, there was a smile on her face when she finally made it to us.
“Afternoon, lads. Lovely day for walk, ain’t it?”
I know a dozen men who would have envied the confidence that came through in her voice. This was no ordinary woman. And she definitely wasn’t from around here.
“That it is, miss. But given my druthers, I druther ride a horse than walk these trails any day.”
She pushed back the brim of her old leather hat revealing her eyes for the first time. She couldn’t have been a day over twenty-three, but her eyes held all the weariness that her body didn’t show. They were brown with a hint of red. I have never seen a color like that before or since.
Still she smiled. And those tiny lines around her eyes meant that the smile was genuine. 
“I’m Lily Farrell.”
I stood and accepted her outstretched hand. I was careful not to squeeze too hard, but she had no such inhibition. It was like shaking hands with a bear trap. 
“Jim Hickok. No relation to the other Hickok you may have heard of. I am the sheriff here and this is Sam Wesley, my deputy.”
I rested my bruised hand on my belt. Sam shook her hand and didn’t seem to notice the unnerving strength of her grasp. I must have bumped my hand on the door earlier and only just noticed it. That had to be it. 
“Miss Farrell, I can’t help but notice the delightful way you talk. I’m guessing you ain’t from South Dakota?”
“Call me Lily, Sheriff. I was born in Ireland, but I have been spending some time out here. I was riding here from Deadwood when outlaws killed me horse about ten miles up the trail.”
Sam was flabbergasted. 
“Outlaws? They killed your mount and not you? How’d you manage that?”
“I guess they figured a woman was easy pickings. They figured wrong. I’m pretty sure I wounded ‘em, but they won’t be bothering anybody again soon.”
This was an unusual woman, indeed. Unusual isn’t always a bad thing, but unusual has a way of upsetting the status quo. I couldn’t afford to let that happen.
“So what brings you to Dusty Fork, Lily?”
“Just passing through, Sheriff. I sure could use a pint, a hot meal, and a place to sleep.”
 “You’re in luck. Sheila’s Saloon is the only place in town for all your food, drink, entertainment, and lodging needs. Come on, Sam. Let’s go grab a bite with our guest.”
“Hrumph,” was Sam’s universal reply. 
We left the porch of the tiny sheriff’s office and walked along the dirt street, passing the boarded-up general store, the deserted barber shop, and the only other shop in town that was still open, the gunsmith. The saloon was the last building on the single row of structures by the road. It was also the biggest.
A dozen horses waited on their owners outside the front door. They didn’t seem bothered by the raucous mix of piano music, shouting, and singing coming from inside. Darkness was falling and the crowd was settling in for a long night of debauchery. 
I opened the door for Lily and waited for she and Sam to step inside. 
Sheila’s face lit up when she saw me but her smile faded when she saw my guest. Sheila didn’t care for the term “madam.” If you asked her about her profession, she’d tell you she was an “entertainment and hospitality entrepreneur.” No matter what folks called her she knew how to run a saloon. A day didn’t go by when the place wasn’t packed with miners, outlaws, or gamblers, all parting with their money one way or another.
Our meal started off pleasant enough. Sheila herself took our orders and brought us the house special: buffalo steak and bread. Sheila brought mine and Sam’s out as we liked them, well done. Lily’s came as she requested, just this side of raw. 
“Miss Sheila,” Lily said between bloody bites of half chewed meat, “this is a nice place you got here.”
“It ain’t much but it’s my piece of the pie, sugar.” Sheila flipped her yellow hair and flashed the smile that had broken at least a thousand frontiersmen’s hearts—including mine. 
“I can’t help but notice,” the young woman choked down another massive bite then pointed to the wall near the bar, “the two help wanted signs over there. This seems like a right prosperous business and you strike me as a fair woman. Seems like you’d have no trouble finding help.”
“It used to be like that. Seems that every week I wake up to find a note saying that one of the girls has decided to move back in with her parents or head back east or some such nonsense. As soon as I hire one, another disappears.”
Sheila grabbed Lily’s hat off her head and brushed a strand of dark brown hair out of the girl’s face. “If you can clean that layer of dust off and tidy up those table manners, you are a right pretty girl, sugar. You looking for work?”
Lily smiled and downed a full glass of homemade South Dakota firewater in one gulp. 
“You are very kind Miss Sheila, but I’m just passing through.”
“Suit yourself, sugar. Stop by any time.” Sheila turned her gaze to me and then to Sam. “And that goes double for my two favorite lawmen.”
Sam turned beet red. “Hrumph.”
I nodded with a smile. Sheila placed the hat back on Lily’s head and went behind the bar to serve the next group of dust-covered miners that had just walked in.
Lily finished the last bite of steak and bread, and then turned her attention to me. 
“So what do blokes do around here for a living, sheriff?”
“Until a few months back, this town was full of miners trying to find themselves a hunk of gold. When the mines dried up, people moved on. What you see here are the few miners, farmers, traders, and wanderers left in these parts. If not for our local benefactor, Grigore Tanase, this place would have fallen off the map.” 
“Tanase? What did he do?”
“He reopened all the mines and hired anybody who wanted work.”
She narrowed her eyes and poured herself another glass of booze. 
“If there was no more gold, what is he mining for I wonder?”
“I dunno. Why don’t you ask him yourself if you’re so curious? He’s the right over there playing cards.”
“Where? All I see is four grown men playing cards with a little boy.”
Grigore was sitting with his back to the wall on the opposite side of the round table. The four men around the table were already down to their last few dollars judging by the pile of money in front of him.
“He’s the one with all the cash.”
“That’s a ten year old boy, Sheriff.”
“Ma’am, I think you need to get your eyes checked. Grigore is a head taller than me or you. He’s the one with the long black hair and the beard. Right over there.”
She stared at the man I was pointing to, narrowing her eyes and sniffing the air like a Bloodhound.
“Ah.” The word had an air of finality to it. She stood and patted me on the shoulder. “My mistake, sheriff. I am going to go say hello to your noble citizen over there.”
She had caught me mid-drink on my whisky. By the time I gulped it down, she was halfway across the floor and standing in front of his table.
“I’m looking for Grigore Tanase.” 
Damn it. That didn’t sound like a friendly greeting. All eyes focused on the woman.
Grigore replied in his deep baritone, “I am Grigore Tanase.”
A luminous smile burst across Lily’s face.
“Fantastic!”
She pulled both Walker Colts from her holsters, pointed them, and fired both barrels. The exploding gunpowder sent people scrambling under tables. Two slugs hit Grigore square in the chest where he sat. The force knocked him over backwards in his chair and to the floor.
The shooter held her arms out beside her with the two hand cannons dangling from her trigger fingers. 
“I surrender. I don’t want no trouble, Sheriff.”
I was on my feet and dragging Sam behind me. I snatched the guns out of her hands and stuffed them into my coat pockets. 
“No trouble? Sam, cover her. If she moves, put a bullet in her head.” He looked stunned, but he obliged, drawing his pistol and pressing it against the back of her head.
The four gamblers stood around the table staring at the woman. I brushed past them and knelt down by Grigore. A Walker Colt is a damn powerful gun and he just took two shots to the chest at point blank range. It was about what I expected. 
The holes were bloody and right over each lung. Either one would likely have been a kill shot. Two removed all doubt. 
The status quo just got shot to all kinds of hell.
 His eyes were already closed but I brushed my hand over the lids just to make sure. He was already getting cold. 
I expected to see the entire population of Dusty Forks, which just so happened to be in the saloon at the time, all turn and take target practice on the woman who just killed our local savior. Instead, everybody was standing there, not moving, not talking, not crying, not shooting, not anything. They were a bunch of damn statues.
At the time, I reckoned I would take statues over a lynch mob any day, but there was no telling how long the shock would last. A well-liked man didn’t go down like that without his friends trying to get some quick justice. And Tanase had a lot of friends, me included.
“Sam, tend to Grigore’s corpse. I am taking the prisoner to the lock up.”
My Peacemaker was pointed at her mouth when I cocked the hammer back. 
“Walk, Miss Farrell. You know the way back to the jailhouse.”
There was no smile on her face, but there wasn’t a drop of remorse in her eyes either. She had done what she came to do.
I followed her out of the saloon, keeping my sights drawn on the back of her head. She kept a slow pace, retracing the steps that took us here to start with.
“Sheriff?”
“With all due respect, Miss Farrell, I ain’t inclined to listen to a cold blooded murderer. You just thank your lucky stars that this badge still means something to me.”
Neither of us spoke again until she stepped inside the cell. I slammed the door shut and holstered my weapon. I placed her six-shooters down on my desk and grabbed the bottle of whisky from my bottom drawer. I was saving it for a special occasion, but I would have to settle for a friend’s death.
“What are they mining for, Sheriff?”
“Again, Miss Farrell, with all due respect, shut the hell up.”
She leaned against the bars looking too damn calm to have just killed a man.
“You said it yourself, Sheriff. The gold ran out. I counted twenty three men in that saloon that were dirty enough to have just walked in out of a mine. There’s gold to be had in other places now that they ran the Lakota out of the Black Hills. Why go digging at dead mines?”
I stepped in front of her at the bars with one hand on my sidearm and the other holding the half full bottle of whisky. 
“It don’t matter now, does it? He kept this town alive and you went and killed him. With him, you might as well have killed all of us, too.”
Sam opened the front door and stepped inside, leaving the door wide open. He plodded along in a trancelike state, not blinking or speaking, until he stood next to me in front of the cell.
“What the hell is the matter with you, Sam? You raised in a barn? Shut the damn door.”
He drew his pistol faster than lightning and jabbed the barrel into my ribs.
“Sam?”
My old friend took the Colt out of my holster and tossed it neatly on my desk. 
“Don’t be too hard on him, Sheriff. He knows not what he does. None of them do.” A deep voice boomed inside the tiny building from the front door. 
I knew that voice, but it couldn’t be him. I turned around to find Grigore Tanase standing at the threshold. 
“Grigore? How?”
“Evening, Jim. I have had a hell of a day.” He nodded towards the cell. “Samuel, if you will be so kind.”
The barrel dug harder into my ribs, forcing me to take a step away from the cell. Sam unlocked and opened the door, shoving me inside before closing and locking it back in place.
Grigore strolled over to my desk and picked up my gun. 
“That thing in the cell with you is a beast, Sheriff. Pure and simple. Observe.”
He aimed the gun at me and fired before I could move. Pain shot through my right forearm. It was just a graze, but blood ran out in a spurt covering my overcoat and pants. 
“Damn it!” We kept a rolled up blanket in the corner of the cell for rowdy drunks to sleep off their liquor. I grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around my arm to stop the bleeding.
“That’s a dirty trick, little boy.” Lily’s voice was raspy and hoarse. 
“And shooting me in the middle of my town wasn’t?” Grigore laughed and put my gun back on the desk.
I turned to face my cell mate. Her chest was rising and falling with each labored breath. She took off her jacket and began unbuttoning her shirt.
“What the hell are you doing girl?” She had to be crazy. Maybe we all were. I couldn’t be sure anymore.
“I don’t want to ruin me clothes.” Her words came through grinding teeth. 
“Relax Sheriff. Enjoy the show. You are in for a treat. Actually, you are the treat since she’ll probably kill you in a moment.” Grigore sat down in my desk chair. “Samuel. Step back.” Sam did as he was told, plodding over to silently stand by the front door.
Under other circumstances I would have been mighty thrilled to see a woman who looked like her tearing off her clothes in my presence. She may not have been a murderer, but the way she was flailing around made me think she may have escaped from the loony bin. When she finished hastily removing the last of her clothes I no longer knew what to think. I pushed myself back against the wall as far away from her as I could get. 
She threw her pants and undergarments to the side and trembled. Muscles quivered under her tan skin. She convulsed, moving in time to unnatural popping and ripping noises. I thought she was having some sort of attack. Her shoulders jerked and dislocated. Her hips and ankles broke on their own, sending her to the floor. 
At first, her moans were like the wails of a tortured soul. The truth was far more frightening. I realized soon enough, she wasn’t moaning. She was humming. 
Her back was to me and I was thankful that I couldn’t see what became of her face. Her skin stretched and rippled with the sounds of breaking and resetting bones. A dark shadow spread down her shoulders and arms. But it wasn’t a shadow at all. It was hair. What started as a thin layer grew as thick as a grizzly’s fur. 
The humming stopped. It was replaced by a growl.
The huge dark thing that used to be Lily stood up on its hind legs. The ceiling was eight feet high and its head was only a couple inches shy of that. 
I pushed myself further back into the corner. I wanted to slip through the cracks. If I had my gun at that instant, I would have shot myself just to end the horror that I couldn’t stop myself from unfolding before my eyes.
“There we are. Go ahead. Eat the man. Think of him as a gift.” I felt like I was alone with the monster until Grigore spoke. Maybe it wasn’t the only beast in the room.
It turned its monstrous head back to look at me. All the light from those oil lamps seemed to be sucked out of the room by its black fur. Even though I saw it, my mind wouldn’t let me completely comprehend what I saw. The only things that I truly remember are those glowing red eyes. 
It looked back to Grigore and grasped the bars. 
“No. Not me type,” it snarled with the timbre of a Kodiak. The unnatural sight of the monster was not as bad as guttural growling that passed for a voice.
 It jerked on the bars with massive hands. The building trembled as beams overhead creaked from the force. A piece of the ceiling landed in front of me, but the cell bars remained in place.
“A werewolf. I haven’t seen one of your kind since my days in the pit under London. I lost track of how many of you dogs we watched die.” The dead man leaned back in my chair. Even then, his presence calmed me somehow. 
I shook off the thought. The bastard had thrown me in the cell to die. He was no friend to me, yet he still held some strange power over me. I dragged myself up onto my elbows and knees.
The beast pulled again. The bars moved a half a foot, ripping part of the wall along with them. 
“Any luck finding the tomb?” The monster’s growling voice sent me back to the floor.
“You know about the tomb?” Grigore was visibly startled. His cool demeanor faltered as he leaned forward. “If you know of such things then you know that, if I had found it, you’d be dead already along with all these puppets.” 
He waved a hand towards the front window. Just outside, a score of torches flickered in the darkness.
“Go ahead and try to break out of that cell, beast. You cannot kill me. There are fifty-three humans outside, all armed to the teeth. You may be resilient, but you have your weaknesses. They will shoot you and you will fall. While you heal, I’ll have one of them hack off your limbs one by one with an axe. I will remove your head myself and mount your dog skull over the bar of the saloon.”
He stared at it with a wrinkled brow and tapped a finger against his chin. 
“You know, it’s funny. The werewolves we used to kill in the pit all had golden eyes. Yours are red. Why is that?”
The monster heaved a final time, ripping the cell door and bars free from the rest of the building. The roof caved in near my feet, leaving a hole in the ceiling. The stars shone in brightly from the South Dakota sky through the new opening. 
“’Cause I ain’t any old average werewolf.”
The beast pushed the loose metal bar and door section forward. It fell with a crash in front of where Grigore still sat just inches from my desk. If he were alarmed in any way, it didn’t show in his scowl.
“One chance, monster. Return to your more pleasing human shape, kneel before me and swear your allegiance to me. We could accomplish so much together. You may be strong, but you know I am faster than you are. My minions will storm this place on my mental command.”
Two steps brought the monster in front of my desk. It let out a growl, then fell to a knee. The fur on its shoulders and back quivered, then receded. Its massive proportions likewise trembled before shrinking. The change from monster back to woman was far smoother than the first transformation.
I stared, jaw agape, at Lily kneeling with her head down in front of Grigore. The human flesh from her neck to her feet was as perfect as it was before this nightmare began.
“Lovely. I had hoped you would see it my way, werewolf.”
Lily rose to her feet and grabbed her guns from my desk, swinging them up to point at Grigore’s chest. He moved in a blur, flying backwards towards the door. She pulled both triggers at the same time. She cocked and fired both guns three more times in quick succession. 
Grigore stopped his retreat at the door and looked down at his chest. He surveyed the eight bullet wounds, then looked back at her with a smile.
“That didn’t work before. Why did you think it would work this time? Your kind is so incredibly thick headed.”
“Silver shells,” she said. 
“What?”
“Silver shells. Well, silver forged with a healthy dose of sand to be exact. The first shell in each pistol is lead. That’s why they didn’t bother you at the saloon. The other five are silver.”
Grigore rubbed the holes in his chest. 
“Silver with sand?” 
“Sand from a Navajo sand painting ritual to be precise. I asked them if I could keep some when they were done and they let me. They are an interesting lot. They aren’t keen on what they call ‘skinwalkers,’ but they do consider it bad luck to piss one off when they meet one. Being a good Catholic werewolf, I wondered if the sand they use to ask the spirits for healing would have the same effect on a vampire as holy water.”
She pointed at his chest.
“I see I got me answer.”
Grigore scratched at his shirt and slumped against the wall. Smoke wafted up from his torso. He coughed, spitting blood out onto the floor. The smoke thickened and eight glowing sparks ignited his body. Each of the spots where he was shot burned with a tiny orange flame. 
He took a wobbly step, then fell onto his back. The flames went out, but smoke kept flowing from his chest.
Sam dropped his gun and fell flat on the floor. 
Lily stood there with her guns by her naked sides. The smoke from freshly ignited gunpowder drifted up towards the ceiling from each barrel. 
I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Her holding the guns and me trying to make sense of what just happened. 
“You going to throw me my clothes or keep staring at me bare arse, Sheriff?”
I looked over at Sam. I thought I saw his chest moving, but I couldn’t be sure.
“You going to kill me, too?”
“Depends.” 
“On what?” I asked.
“If you don’t throw me them clothes, I will.”
“Oh yeah.” I stood on trembling legs. I don’t know if it was the gunshot or sheer absurdity of what just happened that took my strength. I was thankful that I wasn’t talking to walking nightmare the girl had been before. 
That was the problem, though. Lily may have looked normal, but she was still that thing.
Despite my reservations, it was just rude to make her stand there naked, so I gathered up her clothes and stepped over the chunk of ceiling in the corner. I stood there with the bundle in my arms. After a minute, it occurred to me that if she were going to kill me, she would have done it already. I placed the clothes on the desk and nodded towards Sam.
“Is he dead?”
“Nope,” she hastily dressed without looking in my direction. “I can hear his heartbeat.”
“Hear his heartbeat,” I muttered. 
Grigore’s form was still lying by the door. I walked over and looked down at the man I had known for what felt like an eternity. 
Something wasn’t right. Instead of the tall, bearded, man I had come to know. The form lying by the door was tiny. Childlike. 
No. Not childlike. It was a child. 
The corpse of a boy with no hair and dull yellow eyes stared up at me. The eight wounds were there right where she had shot him. I looked at Lily and pointed down at the body.
“I know,” she snapped before I could say anything. She finished dressing and slipped the two pistols back into her holsters. “Vampires. Nasty lot.”
A sharp pain hit my head. I felt a fog lift. It was coming back to me. This man had arrived only three weeks earlier and placed us all under a spell. 
“He must have started with the people at the Sheila’s and spread out from there. I have seen them play mind games with folks before, but never a whole town. I guess you were the strongest willed of everybody here. Like you said, that badge means something to you. Maybe that is what kept him out of your head.”
She walked out the front door and pointed towards the saloon.
“Which one of those horses belonged to Tanase?”
Still burning torches littered the streets. My friends and neighbors were lying unconscious with their weapons in their hands. The nightmare still wasn’t over.
I pointed to the largest horse in the group.“The black one.”
“Alright. I’ll be taking that one then.”
She started walking.
“Wait … Lily.”
She stopped but did not look back at me.
“What about them?” I waved a hand at the men and women lying all around.
“They’ll wake up in the morning and wonder what happened. Otherwise, I guess they’ll be alright.”
“You guess?”
“Not my problem.”
“Like hell it’s not your problem! What if I tell folks about you? What if I tell folks about that tomb you mentioned?”
She looked back at me, then. Her eyes met mine from underneath her old hat. They were glowing red.
“Tell them whatever you want but I have some advice for you. Take that little bullet-ridden vampire carcass out and burn it before these folks wake up. Knowing that monsters are real don’t sit well with most people. Forget about me, forget what I said about a tomb, and hope you never see me again.”
She hopped on the back of Tanase’s big, black mare and rode away in the night.
***
“What are you reading, Preacher Jim?”
The little boy looked up at the grizzled pastor. The old man patted the boy’s head and folded the tattered papers before placing them back in his Bible.
“Something I wrote a lifetime ago. Come on, now. Church starts in a few minutes. Did you put the fresh flowers out like I asked?”
The little boy nodded his head.
“Yes sir. But ain’t these flowers supposed to be for funerals? Why do we have to use the exact same kind every time?”
The worship hall was filled with white lilies just like it was every Sunday at Pastor Jim Hickok’s church in Dusty Forks, South Dakota.
“Simple boy, a long time ago, a Lily once saved my life.”
~End

Dear Reader,
Thanks for taking the time to read this eBook. This is not the first time gunslinging werewolf Lily Farrell has appeared in print, but it is the first time she has seen this much action. She got her start in the pages of my novel, Lucifera’s Pet. Stay tuned for more stories about the werewolves, vampires, and boogey-men and women that populate the landscape in my demented head.
Do everyone a favor and go punch a goblin.
Howlingly yours,
M.T. Murphy
authormikemurphy@gmail.com
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About the Author

M.T. Murphy prefers his vampires evil, his werewolves feral, his facial hair excessive, and thinks that shades of gray are far more interesting than black and white. He lives in a den deep in the woods of Alabama with his beautiful and patient wife, their two ridiculously adorable children, and a were-Schnauzer named Logan.