It wasn’t hard to follow the path. Only one way, and it was barely two feet wide and only a hair higher. My head scraped the rocky ceiling. And hey, lucky me, I couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t say the same for Rosa, though.

  Nobody spoke as we trudged through. Granted, only Rosa and I were in a condition to make human noises of any kind—a fact proven by her many groans. It’d been awhile, that feeling of my legs aching from crawling through caves with the Scuttlers. Sometimes, that was the only way to shake the long arm of the law.

  It was dark as a graveyard. With that darkness came thoughts just as grave. Timp… My poor Timperina. I was sure Ace and his motley crew never expected us to escape like a bunch of garden moles, and that would’ve pissed him right off enough to chase after Timp and Mutt. I could only pray their head start was enough.

  Pray. Yeah, right. To who? Who was out there, ready to listen and answer prayers from me?

  As we crawled, the meager light glinted off my inverted cross necklace as it swayed with my movements. If Heaven couldn’t see me, it sure as rain couldn’t answer my supplications.

  “She’ll make it,” Rosa said, as if she was in my mind. Hell, with her strange new powers, maybe she was and didn’t even know it.

  “I know,” I lied. “She’s been through worse.”

  “Like what?”

  I stammered. Honestly, I hadn’t been expecting a follow-up, but I could see what Rosa was doing. Filling the abyss of fear with idle words. Big Davey used to do the same when we were anxious, our crew waiting around on a big score. He ran his mouth like a motor, and only shut it when Ace got hot with him.

  Was that what Rosa and I were now? A crew?

  “Go on,” she said.

  “I’m thinking… Oh, this is good.” I chuckled.

  She did the same. “What?”

  “Well, this one time—way early on—we were a bit further north, outside a town called Van Meter. Nothing special about it, but some sort of half-bat, half-man Nephilim was holed up in a cave and needed dealing with.”

  “Half man.” She gulped. “Half… bat?”

  “Nothing too scary, but that’s beside the point.”

  “I hate bats.”

  “Yeah, well, so did Timp. We trotted on up, ready to do the White Throne’s bidding, and I swear, at least a hundred little fruit bats came zipping out, screeching and flapping.” I laughed. “Wasn’t even the monster, and Timp blazed out of there so fast, I flew off her back. She didn’t even look where she was going and plowed right into a bramble of thorn bushes. I found her on the other side with little prickers all over her snout like she had whiskers. Took hours to pull ’em all out, I…”

  Rosa blurted out a laugh, catching me by surprise.

  “Saddest thing I ever did see,” I said through some more of my own chuckling. “She had her tail all between her legs. Oh, man, it was bad. Never caught that Neph neither. Guess we clued it in and it fled.” My lips straightened and the laughter died. “Shar, though, my angel—she was pissed. Told me to leave the useless horse in that there town. Of course, I didn’t. I think that only made me fonder of her.”

  “I get it,” Rosa said, still catching her breath.

  “Oh, do you now?”

  “Well, no. I barely understand any of what you are or were or whatever, but I get why you kept Timperina around.”

  “Educate me.” I admit, part of me was just trying to keep us going, get her mind on something other than the burning in her legs. Only, now she had me interested.

  “Well, everything about your life is so unordinary except her. No powers. No nothing. Just a horse. Which makes her everything except a horse to you.”

  Well, I’ll be… That was an impressive deduction.

  “How the hell did you get so wise?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “Usually, that’s for the elderly.”

  “Watch it, now.”

  The soft, melodic sound of her giggle was squelched by a dog squealing. Even in this total darkness, my condition allowed me some visibility. Enough to witness a hand shooting through the dirt wall to clutch Rosa by her ankle.

  She shrieked, and I drew my knife to defend her when another hand emerged and clenched my neck, right on the skin. My head lurched back as the unexpected Divining took hold…

  * * *

  I rode bareback atop a horse, only it wasn’t Timp. We moved alongside a caravan of white settlers—myself and at least a dozen other native warriors I didn’t know. Our arrows flew. Their rifles shot back with violent roars.

  Dust swirled as hooves pounded. Everyone fighting over land, even though there was plenty of it to go around. War never changes. Whether the reasons behind it are simple or complex, the result’s the same. Death.

  I looked to my left and saw a woman. My host’s heart fluttered, and I immediately knew they were lovers. My concern for her was so strong, it was damn near overwhelming. As I watched, a bullet tore through her arm, sending her caroming off her steed. I cried out—a word I didn’t know.

  As I pulled the reins to coax my own horse toward her, I felt the impact and then nothing. A stray bullet from the firefight split my host right through the temple…

  * * *

  I exploded back into the present, vision foggy from the aftereffects of being shot in the head. Blindly, I hacked at the arm gripping me, my blade carving through its elbow with unbelievable ease.

  That was when I noticed. The arm and hand were only bone, flecks of flesh and muscle caught in the spaces between. I’d Divined so I could witness the death of this undead being, a power I’d earned from being reborn as a Black Badge and apparently still retained.

  Rosa was too busy with her assailant to notice what happened to me. She kicked at the thing, breaking the hand clean off. This one was fresher, still wet with meat and a tattered sleeve.

  She cursed something awful in Spanish.

  “James, he’s back!” she yelled, fear flooding her tone. “How can he be back?”

  “Who?” I barked.

  “Phelps, James. Phelps! How!”

  She wasn’t Divining like I just had, but her memories were just as bad. Back in Dead Acre all that time ago when we were reunited, we’d faced down a skeleton-raising Necromancer who’d murdered her husband out of his lust for her. Only, I’d sent that bastard straight back to the underworld.

  “It ain’t him,” I shouted.

  “There are more!” She smacked at the hand again.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Ahead of us, more skeletal limbs burst through, grabbing at the skinwalkers, a forest of bony hands closing in all around in a passage tighter than a preacher’s flask. The imp, Beast Boy, Roo… Ace wasn’t lying. There’d been a necromancer hanging out back in Crescent City—another hellish being I’d run into in Tourmaline’s club. I’d thought he was harmless too, just like Beast Boy. He’d been playing games with skeletons, making lovers. Looked like Ace recruited him to get vengeance on me too.

  “Does it matter?” I asked.

  A skull popped through the gap in the wall and screeched like a banshee. Fraying feathers of a traditional native headpiece clung to wisps of gray hair. These were ancestors of Mukwooru and her tribe, roused from beneath the Life Tree to be their undoing.

  “Everyone, go! Fast as you can!” I shouted.

  I gave Rosa a push and kept my hand on her back as we picked up the pace. It’d be tough, but there was no more time for recovering. I’d been buried alive, and that had been a cakewalk compared to this.

  Slashing at random with my knife as we moved, bone chipped and chattered. A dog squealed as it was pulled into a sinkhole by multiple spindly arms, never to be seen again. More and more hands poked through. So many, even I couldn’t see a thing through the jungle of bones. Another dog got dragged back through my legs. It yipped and nipped, but nothing helped. Rosa stopped and tried to save it, but the thing’s paw slipped right through her fingers.

  “It’s too late!” I yelled, forcing her to keep going.

  Dirt and rock shifted as more enemies came through. Eventually, the entire tunnel would collapse. We might’ve been better off making our last stand aboveground at the Life Tree than this. Might be that Timp should’ve been the one worried for me.

  Rosa coughed from inhaling dirt as we fought our way forward. One thing I was willing to thank the Almighty for was my poor sense of smell. The stench of a hundred corpses in various stages of decay with no room for air to flow must’ve reeked something foul.

  Ahead, I could see light. The tunnel was starting to open up. I didn’t even realize at first, but Rosa and I were suddenly running without hunching. Gnarled, twig-like fingers caught Rosa’s hair through the ceiling, causing her to fall backward. I caught her, only for an entire skeleton to fall through with a pile of dirt.

  We both staggered. The bones were getting tangled, and Rosa’s head was jerked left and right while she squirmed to get free. I dragged her out of the dirt—had to chop off a clump of her hair to separate them. The skull hissed at me like a snake guarding eggs, and my boot sent it flying, along with more than a handful of teeth.

  Rosa was hacking up a lung now, her skin so covered in mud and whatnot, it looked like she’d taken a dip in a tar pit.

  “C’mon, Rosa, there’s light ahead!” I got my arm under her shoulder and we moved. Now that we could do so more freely, and the dogs could trot side-by-side, the undead fell behind. I didn’t let Rosa look back as they limped and crawled in pursuit. These sons of bitches hadn’t enough muscle left on them to move fast.

  “There we go. Almost there. Just a little farther.”

  I can’t remember ever being more grateful to see moonlight. Like moths tempted by flame, I helped her along, eager to be free of this. I’d never been afraid of tight quarters until I was buried alive. Some conditions were only suited to varmint. In fact, I was so eager, I didn’t even realize the skinwalkers had all stopped and bunched up until we were at the front of them.

  A tinny cackle echoed. I looked around for the source but saw nothing at all. Then, following the gaze of my canine friends, I spotted it. Standing at the exit, barely two feet tall, Fazar the ice-hued imp grinned ear to ear, holding a bright red stick of dynamite in one hand and snapping his fingers with the other. Little sparks came, so I had to assume he was trying to summon a tiny flame.

  “What the hell is that thing?” Rosa asked.

  “A nuisance.”

  I went to draw, but was out of ammo, and with only my off-hand intact regardless. Releasing Rosa, I stepped ahead.

  “You don’t wanna be doing that,” I called to the imp.

  “I think I do,” he answered.

  “You don’t owe that Black Badge anything! You know how many of your kind Heaven made me kill? He’ll turn on you like that.”

  “Fuck the Black Badge!”

  Huh. Something we could agree on.

  “James, what’s the plan?” Rosa whispered in my ear.

  I didn’t have one, so I didn’t answer. Nor could I ignore the grating and hissing of countless undead slowly closing in behind us.

  “You’re gonna regret this,” I warned.

  “And who gave you a fuckin’ crystal ball?”

  “Just stop and think.” I was trying to buy us a little time, though for what, I wasn’t sure.

  “You fucked it all up!” Fazar yelled. “We didn’t ask for trouble with Heaven at Tourmalines. We ignored Hell, kept to our own, stayed out of things. And you screwed everything up!”

  “You act like your boss wasn’t feeding on innocents,” I said.

  “Could’ve been way worse.” He grinned again, and from him, it looked like a threat.

  “And I could have killed all of you without batting an eye. Things go down the way they go down sometimes, and that’s the truth of it. Now walk away, Fazar. Rebuild. Find a new home. I don’t care. I’ll let you live.”

  He cackled. “Fuck do you think you are? I don’t think I’m gonna let Heaven or Hell have you. I think I’ll just bury you for the maggots!”

  He snapped his fingers again and finally got the result he was looking for. A little flame danced along his frosty fingertip. Wasn’t even sure how that worked.

  His smile widened and he lit the end of dynamite. I heard that telltale sizzle of the fuse before he tossed it into the tunnel and fled, howling in laughter.

  In the split second I knew I had, a million thoughts rushed through my brain. Not the least of them was making a run to cover it with my body and absorb the blast myself. But there wasn’t time for that. So, I did the only thing I could think might work. I pushed Rosa away as hard as I could, and spread my arms wide in front her and the others.

  “James!” Rosa shouted. Instead of retreating, she dashed back to me and pressed close to my chest, arms extended around my sides.

  With my back turned, I didn’t see the explosion. But I heard it. The dynamite blew with a deafening roar, and I closed my eyes. All this fighting, and now I’d see Rosa be burned to a crisp in this hellish warren before being smothered by the earth. Can’t say it wasn’t a fitting end—one I deserved—I just wasn’t ready.

  Only, that fate never came.

  My eyes opened. The explosion illuminated the entire passage down to where the undead marched, but no flame passed my shoulders. Nothing caved in, nothing crushed us.

  Rosa’s face was mere inches from mine, our noses nearly touching. Sweat trickled down her muddy forehead, so close, I could even smell it. Her eyes were clenched as tight as mine had been.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Stretches of my back had been seared from heat, my skin bubbling where clothes had been scorched. But that was all. The flame released by the dynamite swirled through the air, catching bushes aflame and little more. I looked down at Rosa, her hands outstretched.

  I couldn’t process what just happened. Gun to my head, I’d say all that destructive power had been siphoned into her palms. They were glowing, as if she could control the very energy of the explosion itself. The light began to dissipate, and her legs wobbled, but I caught her before she collapsed, and her eyes opened slightly. They weren’t green anymore. Her irises shone like fire itself.

  “I guess I’m really not ordinary anymore,” she rasped.

  “You never were.”

  I tried letting her go, but her legs were like jelly. She exhaled and fumes billowed from her nostrils before she started to shiver and sweat all over. Between bending nature and this, I could imagine she was wiped. I’ve learned that about the supernatural world. Every power has costs. Nothing is infinite.

  Scooping her into my arms, I headed toward the exit. The skinwalker dogs raced ahead of us. By the time I reached the crevice in a labyrinth of rock formations somewhere far west of the Garden, a few of them dragged Fazar toward me by his stubby little legs.

  “Let go of me, you fuckin’ mongrels!” he screamed.

  “You’ve got some nerve calling them that,” I said.

  The dogs flipped him onto his back, right by my feet.

  “Mr. Crowley, I think we got off on the wrong foot.” The foul-mouthed little imp tittered nervously. “Don’t mind me. I’m a fuckin’ idiot. Let’s talk about this.”

  I sat Rosa up against a rock and turned to him without answering. He kept protesting as I yanked his last stick of dynamite from the fat fold under his flabby tit, stowed it, then lifted him up by his pudgy neck fat like a mama cat with her kittens.

  “I’ll tell you everything Ace is up to!” he pled. “He’s got a Necromancer.”

  I turned back to the tunnel where the horde of skeletons neared the exit and carried him toward it.

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “See, I told you!”

  “Ace didn’t tell you shit,” I replied.

  He started to kick and squirm. “Please, I can help you! I’ll do anything. Anything you want.”

  The skeletons were so near to us now, I could see the shreds of flesh trapped in their teeth. Hear the clacking of loose bones.

  “Please!” he cried.

  “What’d you say, ‘leave you for the maggots’?” I asked.

  His imp eyes went wide with fear before I tossed him into the passage, right in the path of the undead. Then I took out the stick of dynamite. I lit the phosphorus tip of the fuse with a strike across the bottom of my boot and tossed it in after him.

  I didn’t wait for it to go off. Just turned around as he screamed and the undead hissed, before a big ol’ boom quieted it all, sealing the exit so nobody could follow.

  Chunks of rock rained around me as I returned to Rosa and the skinwalkers. She was barely conscious, with her head leaning back. The skinwalkers all remained in dog form except for Mukwooru, who didn’t have the decency to stand behind anything and hide her naked body—like mother, like son. I forced myself to focus on her eyes.

  “Your man in white will find our path soon,” she said.

  I nodded. “Tough terrain will help, but we’d better move.”

  “Revelation Springs has not always been kind to my people.”

  “Better to take your chances with them than Ace. You all run, and I’ll be behind you with Rosa. Lucky for me, I don’t get tired.”

  Next thing I knew, her human face was gone as she shrank into a little red dog, and I was left looking out across the badlands. I’d been cooped up in one place long enough. Longer than usual, to be honest. Somewhere out there, Timp was running too. I hoped she was still running free.

  Hope. I used to think it was for children and rubes.

  Now, it was all I could cling to…