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A stolen tongue rasped over stolen lips. For three decades he'd kept an eye on the Night Marshal, watching him grow from a rebellious young man into a useful tool and then into a dangerous adversary. And yet, he'd always held out a slim shred of hope they would find themselves once again on the same side of the war.
"Why couldn't you
just follow orders?"
The question got Joe's attention and triggered a cold memory. "Didn't I kill you a while back?"
The possessed body smiled. "Almost all of me. But just almost."
Joe considered the original question. "It's my job to kill the monsters. Somewhere along the line, you forgot that. Turned into one. Weren't no going back after that."
The Long Man sighed. "The war is still out there, Joe. That power you stole won't do you any good if you don't know how to use it. Someone bigger and meaner is going to come along and rip it out of you if you aren't careful.
"Just give it back to me. Let me carry the burden. You're too weak for it."
Joe laughed. He steered the old truck onto the highway. "Wasn't too weak to kill you. Hell, if what I did didn't put an end to you, somethin' tells me you can't kill me with a bullet."
The rifle's barrel dug into Joe's ribs. The monster ground the cold metal against the bone and smiled as the Marshal's features twisted with pain. "Believe me when I tell you it will still hurt."
The Night Marshal shook his head. "Maybe. But I'm not letting you get back in the saddle."
They rolled along in silence for another twenty minutes before they approached an exit. "Get off the highway here. Something I want to show you."
Joe shrugged. "Whatever. I'm running out of patience, though, and you won't like me very much once that happens."
The Long Man knew this was his last desperate stroke. There was a much greater darkness coming, one that would wipe them all out, and he aimed to stop it. Winning this war was his ticket back home, and he wasn't about to let it slip through his fingers. "Don't make me kill you, Joe."
The Night Marshal laughed. "The bonds between our sorry excuses for souls were severed the day I stuck that knife in your withered old heart. There's no way for you to get back what I swiped. You kill me, all the mojo I stole from you goes straight to Hell with me."
"Maybe I don't care. Maybe just seeing you die will be enough."
Joe grinned. "Shit, boss, if that was true, you'da done pulled the trigger on my ass as soon as I opened that door."
Joe's ancient truck rattled down the access road to the rear entrance of a world-famous brewery. Security cameras mounted on tall silver poles swiveled to follow the truck's progress. "Nobody's gonna stop us?"
The Long Man chuckled. "No, the people watching us know who we are. At least, they know who I am."
The Long Man had owned this place for almost two centuries. He'd helped his first servants plant the foundation for the original building, and he'd overseen the first thousand batches of beer himself. This was one of the cornerstones of his kingdom, a part of the network of wealth and power that fueled his plans and guarded him from his enemies. Most of them, anyway.
But how long since he'd last come here? Two decades? Three? Time slipped away from him when he wasn't looking.
They reached a security gate and the Long Man barked out four digits. His enemy, his onetime ally, maybe even his once-a-friend, punched in the numbers. "You can't wield the power you've stolen, Joe. You don't have the knowledge. You don't know what's coming or how to stop it."
More than anything, the Long Man needed Joe to see the truth of this. They'd worked together for a long time, and he'd worked with Joe's father for even longer, to hold back the rising tide of evil. Together they'd killed an army of demons.
Then things changed and new tactics were required to win the battles. The Long Man wanted to keep the world pure and untainted, but he'd had to make compromises. Joe had gone off the path, then, unable or unwilling to adapt to the realities of their fight. The Night Marshal had rebelled, and taken up arms against the Long Man.
The Night Marshal drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. "All I know is when you had this power, you brought evil to Pitchfork. If I hadn't stopped you, the whole place would've gone to shit." Joe turned his attention back to the road and steered the truck deeper into the brewery's guts. "You lost sight of what you were fighting to save, and became the very monster you were fighting to destroy. Maybe you're convinced you did the right thing, but I know evil when I see it."
The Long Man pointed at a tall building and the parking spot in front of it. One way or another, this had to end. He hoped Joe would see reason, but there were other plans if he didn't.
The Long Man stowed the rifle in the gun rack in the truck's rear window. He needed Joe to relax, and pointing a gun at him wasn't going to help ease the tension. He had another surprise stowed away in the back of his belt, just in case, anyway.
"Let's go inside, Joe. There's something you need to see."
The building's guts reeked of yeast and hops. Great kettles of beer bubbled above a profusion of copper tubes that led into a vast refrigerated filtration system. Beyond that, a series of nozzles dispensed the heavy, amber brew into an endless parade of thick-walled brown bottles sliding across a chain of steel rollers. The technology was old, but it worked just fine to keep the beer flowing and the crates of bottles moving out into the world.
The rich, earthy perfume of wild yeast dragged the Long Man back through the years to those early days when he'd run this place himself. "This was the first brewery west of the Mississippi," he said. "And now it's the oldest and the biggest."
