Heaven's Gate Read Online Free PDF Page A

if I can’t find you, either.”
    “Then we seem to be at an impasse. Tell me how much strength have you already wasted? If I called your bluff and waited for sunrise would you be an old man by then or even just so much dust?”
    “Only one way to find out.” The Pilgrim reaches into a saddlebag and withdraws a bottle of dark liquid. A piece of torn cloth provides a fuse to the primitive explosive, the Pilgrim lights it and tosses it against the wall of the nearest building. The dry timber catches instantly. Under the heat of the smoky flames, the street is bathed in the fierce light of the burning building.
    “You’d have done better to wait for morning, bondling .” The voice growls, all false friendliness gone and dripping with contempt.
    “I had to at least try to help these men.”
    “One more stab at an empty redemption?” The Pilgrim doesn’t answer, merely reaches into his saddlebags again, but before he can withdraw his hand the scene around them ripples.
     
    If Bob had been able to move his arms he would have rubbed his eyes, the burning building was gone or rather it was restored to its original state. No, more than that, it looked brand new. The great drifts of sand had miraculously vanished from the main street and people, or ghosts, they had to be ghosts to just appear like that, roamed the streets, going about their business as if it were mid-afternoon in any god fearing town in the Union. Indeed, the longer Bob watched the scene, the more he seemed to hear the murmur of their talk and begun to smell earthy smells of horses and livestock. Only the shattered remnants of the mirror still reflected the flickering light of the burning building, like some window into the world of the living, which the cartman felt himself quickly leaving. The mirror and the Pilgrim, blood and pain, these are the only things that make Bob sure he has not joined the throng of figures haunting the old town’s street like a dream or a memory.
     
    In the middle of the street, Samuel closes his eyes and tries to resist the assault on his senses. The devil had granted his children various gifts and Rydal is a master of illusions; there is no way he can trust his senses now, all he can do is block out the vision and wait for the unholy creature to get closer. The bloodsucker had been right, far better to have sought him out when the sun was high but he’d enough sins to answer for, without adding the crime of simply leaving the cartmen to their fate. Around him the sounds of city life swell, Samuel does his best to ignore them, the more he allows himself to believe in the reality presented by the cunning vampire, the greater Rydal's grip on his mind will be. Carefully he extends his supernatural perception, trying to register the beast that is even now stalking him, hidden somewhere in the scene that is assaulting his senses.
     
    For his part, Bob Tenant stares helplessly out on an illusion, an illusion which is increasingly becoming a reality for him. The pain and numbness from his many wounds has faded to terrible nausea but he is able to move his fingers again, with agonizing slowness he flicks open his revolver, dropping the spent cartages into the blood stained dirt. Around him the phantoms seem to be oblivious of those dark stains and instead simply step over him complaining loudly about drunks. He had almost come to believe that he was drunk and laid out on the high street of some strange town, when he sees it, a grubby creature, gaunt and twisted, its ragged clothes completely out of place amongst the bright pastels and whites worn by the townsfolk. Somehow it always seemed that there was someone between the hunched monster and the Pilgrim, but apparently it was not bothering to hide itself from Bob. When the thing did spare him a glance Bob did his best to look as awful as he felt, apparently that satisfied it that he was no danger, in fact at one point the grey skinned ghoul spared him a conspiratorial wink and