Strong Heart shifted her longbow and pointed the waiting arrow at Black Charlie. “Go back to the shadows!” she snapped.
Seeing the Frenchman before them, Keech felt a stab of guilt. Black Charlie’s presence on the mountain surely meant that O’Brien had perished at the cabin. Keech had accidentally wounded her when he used the Black Verse. If she’d been commanding her full strength, she would have destroyed the monster with ease. Her death rested on Keech’s shoulders.
Black Charlie dragged one heavy boot through the snow, clearly suffering wounds of his own. “Weavers are mighty difficult to kill, comme vous le savez,” he said.
Strong Heart took a step closer, the tip of her arrow never wavering. She surprised everyone by speaking French to the Weaver. “On vous arrêtera de toute façon.”
Black Charlie’s arrogant smirk faltered. “Such big talk for a child.”
Stepping away from the adit, Doyle joined the Lost Causes on the path. “You should have scampered back to Lost Tucker, Charlie. Coming here will be your end.”
Though he never took his eyes off Strong Heart, Black Charlie said to Doyle, “Maybe you ’ave what it takes, ami, maybe you don’t.”
“I feel good about my chances,” Doyle said. Then to Keech: “We ain’t done here, Mr. Blackwood. For now, get your team back.”
“Ranger, we can take him,” Quinn said, glaring at Black Charlie. “That pond scum ain’t so tough.”
The Weaver loosed a taunting laugh. “Don’t be fooled by your lucky strike before, Oscar. I was not fully awake then.” Lifting a hand, he wiggled the black barb on his thumb.
Quinn’s face quivered with fury. “I told you never to call me that again.”
Keech realized he could incapacitate the Frenchman without harming any of his trailmates. At O’Brien’s cabin, he’d lashed out at Doyle without proper aim. But here in the open, Keech could attack Black Charlie without danger of a rebound.
Stepping ahead of Strong Heart, Keech pointed at Black Charlie.
The frigid world went blank in his mind as he thought back to an entry in Doyle’s journal, a lesson dated 22 January 1833. Behind him, Duck shouted, “No, Keech! Don’t!” but he blocked out her warning. He visualized the incantation, then called back, “Quinn, riddle me this. The more you have of me, the less you see. What am I?”
“Keech, this ain’t no time for riddles,” Quinn said.
“Darkness,” Keech answered, then he bellowed the curse of blindness from the Ranger’s journal: “N’ghaf-l’-yon’!”
Once again the words tasted as bitter as ash on his tongue. Then a staggering force exploded from Keech’s fingers. Black Charlie tumbled back as if a lightning bolt had struck the center of his chest. He thrashed in the snow and swiped at his face. “My eyes!”
A feeling of fiery vengeance burst forth, and Keech cackled at the blinded Weaver.
Duck grabbed at Keech’s arm. “Stop using the words!”
Keech yanked away from her hand only to feel Strong Heart seize his other wrist. The Protector wrenched his arm back, causing his boots to slip in the snow. He tumbled off his feet and landed painfully on his side. But even as he fell, he couldn’t stop feeling an exalted kind of victory over Black Charlie, over the Reverend Rose, over everything that stood in his path. Sam had told him the Lost Causes wouldn’t believe, and even now they doubted his newfound power. But the Black Verse could save them all!
He struggled back up to his feet, preparing to proclaim that he would finish Black Charlie for good—when he noticed something in Strong Heart’s hand.
The Protector was gripping a bone dagger, a determined scowl on her face.
Keech patted his waist. The Fang of Barachiel was no longer tucked in his belt. Strong Heart had taken the blade while pulling his arm.
Feeling a nearly unbearable swell of rage, Keech labored to calm his mind and body. He brushed snow off his side and adjusted his bowler hat, taking large breaths to ebb the flow of his anger. “Strong Heart, there’s no need to fret,” he said. “If you give the Fang back, I’ll prove to you I’m worthy.” He held out his hand, palm up. “See? Steady as a rock. Just give me the Fang.”
Strong Heart flinched away from his palm. “You have lost yourself, Keech. You have let the darkness take hold.”
“She’s right; you don’t even recognize what’s true anymore!” Duck shouted.
Quinn’s voice joined the storm of castigations. “You have to stand down, Keech. You’ve gone too far this time. Tell him, Ranger Doyle. Tell him!”
Doyle said nothing, only stared at Keech with a stupor that suggested dismay. Holding his injured wrist, he stepped closer, examining Keech as a hunter might approach a trapped cougar.
Before Keech could speak again, Black Charlie cried out once more. “Blackwood!” The Frenchman’s cursed eyes probed the trail, passing over Doyle, then the young riders, but never seeing them. “You will pay for what you’ve done! I don’t need to see to destroy you all.”
Staggering to one knee, Black Charlie stabbed his long black thumb-claw into the snow and dragged a gash across the snowy ground. To Keech’s surprise, the motion left a foot-long stretch of darkness carved into the ground before him.
Quinn looked horrified. “Ranger, what’s he doing?”
His eyes frenzied, Doyle shouted, “You kids need to get outta here!”
“What in blazes?” said Duck, pointing at the impossible gash in the ground.
Leaning closer to the curious gap, Black Charlie murmured, “Come out, mes enfants. Time to play!” His mouth continued to move, but the whipping gusts blowing down from Skeleton Peak snatched away the rest of his words. Whatever the fiend was chanting, the vile exhilaration on his face warned that danger was imminent.
Something moved inside the gaping slash in the snow.
“Back, kids!” Doyle shouted. “They’re coming!”
A black substance erupted out of the small rift.
At first, Keech thought he saw coal smoke billow out, but then the dark seepage spilled onto the snow and skittered across the ground. Under the moon’s pearly light and the glow of the lantern, the writhing mass crawled and twitched, and Keech saw a swarming clutter of black legs and hard-shell backs.
Spiders.
But not ordinary spiders. These critters were the size of healthy rats, and they scurried toward the group in a chattering, chomping frenzy.
“The Weaver’s released his horde! Get back!” Doyle shrieked. He began spinning his good hand in quick circles. Wailing winds crashed into the oncoming swarm, plucked dozens of the spider-things from the ground, and hurled them into the night, but the majority of the mass kept scuttling out of the impossible gash. “I have no way to close the rip,” Doyle said through gritted teeth. “I’ll hold ’em off, but I don’t know for how long. They’ll just keep pouring through.”
Snatching up the lantern, Quinn pulled at Lightnin’s reins and shouted at the young riders. “Lost Causes, we best go!” He stamped through the snow toward the yawning adit.
“We can still help,” Keech insisted.
Duck gritted her teeth. “I think you’ve done enough. Come on!”
Biting back an angry retort, Keech followed. “Fine.”
Doyle continued to spin his hand, weaving magic, chanting under his breath. He guided the winds to create a barrier between the Lost Causes and the spider horde. But his cyclone sputtered over the ground, and many of the creatures wriggled past.
“They are coming for you, Jeffreys! They will eat you right up!” Black Charlie yelled, his blank stare turned to the sky.
Strong Heart stepped toward the mine, then hesitated. She studied the Fang of Barachiel in her hand.
His face rigid with concentration, Doyle ignored the Weaver’s taunts. “I can’t hold them back much longer,” he muttered to Strong Heart. “You need to run.”
Instead of fleeing, Strong Heart stabbed the Fang into Doyle’s wounded arm. He cried out in surprise, but when she withdrew the magical dagger, his injured wrist locked back into place, as healthy as it had been before Keech’s Black Verse attack.
Stepping back with the Fang, Strong Heart said, “Now you can stop the Weaver.”
Doyle slipped his hand out of the sling and wiggled it with delight. He seemed at a loss for words, so he simply nodded his appreciation.
Opening her buffalo robe, Strong Heart tucked the Fang into a cinch around her buckskin dress. “Don’t betray us again,” she said. Then she grabbed Flower Hunter’s reins and led the pony into the mine after Duck, Quinn, and Achilles.
Pulling Hector by the bridle, Keech quickened his pace to the adit. He didn’t get two steps before he heard Doyle cry out.
Dozens of black spiders had skittered past the Ranger’s whirlwinds and were swarming around the man’s boots. A sea of black creatures washed over him, drowning him in twitching legs and chomping fangs. He fell back onto the snowy ground, buried beneath the horrible tide. The protective twisters swirling around the trail died. Without the winds to hold back the spiders, the creatures surged onward.
Holding his hands out in front of him, Black Charlie laughed with terrible glee. He strolled toward the mine shaft, his chin lifted high and his blind eyes pointed at the moon. His swarm of spidery creatures poured toward the young riders.
Doyle pushed himself up, somehow still alive. Joggling spiders from his arms, he cried out, “No!” then pointed at the mountain. He bellowed a string of dark words, uncanny tones like those held in the Black Verse, but a spell unlike any Keech had ever seen in the journal. The Ranger was aiming at a space just above Skeleton Peak’s entrance.
Waves of power surged from Doyle’s fingers. The spell’s invisible force smashed into the snow-covered mountainside. The granite above the shaft ruptured.
The last thing Keech saw was Doyle lunge with a fierce grimace and lock his hands around Black Charlie’s head. There was a loud snapping sound, and the blind Weaver tumbled to the ground, limp. All around them, the scrambling spiders melted into black goo in the snow.
Then a curtain of rock poured over the shaft’s opening, cutting off any further glimpse of Doyle or the mountain trail, and leaving Keech in dismal darkness.