The moment he entered the woods, Keech knew the forest felt wrong. A terrible pressure filled his head, as if someone had crammed his ears with sawdust, and a dull, relentless murmur tainted the air, too low to be a whistle, but too high to be thunder. It reminded Keech of a bumblebee stuck on a windowpane.
He stopped to clear his head and catch his bearings. But then Whiskey’s thralls appeared less than ten yards away, muttering to each other at the wood’s edge. The blustery sky silhouetted their ragged clothes and raised revolvers. Keech dived behind a tree. He waited, motionless, and realized he was no longer holding his hat. He looked around frantically and spotted it lying in the wet leaves a couple of yards away, in plain sight.
The dead men shambled closer, inspecting the wooded border, kicking around the riverbank grass. So far they made no attempt to cross Floodwood’s threshold.
“He’s close,” murmured Scurvy, his frock coat rippling in the hard wind. “I can feel the amulet shard. Strange, though. My skin feels pulled in two directions.”
Inside Keech’s shirt, the silver began to seep its uncanny chill.
“I feel it, too,” said Bull, his voice dark, cavernous.
Scurvy sniffed at the rain and cocked his speckled white head. “What’s this?” He pointed to a dollop of dark red liquid on a grass blade.
Keech hadn’t noticed a moment ago, but now he realized his right arm was stinging just above the elbow. He touched the injured spot and winced. Wet crimson returned on his fingertip.
The lead ball at the river had not merely nicked his coat.
He had been shot.
Scurvy dabbed at the blood drop. “I knew I hit ’im!” he crowed. “He’s powerful close.” The thrall started toward the tree line, but his partner hesitated, as if scared to enter Floodwood.
“Master said to stay outta the woods till we kilt the Blackwood boy.”
“How we gonna kill ’im if we don’t go in?” Scurvy said. He stretched a rotting black finger to Bull’s face, snatched the gold nose ring, and yanked the thrall forward. Bull yelped in surprise, but followed Scurvy across the boundary.
Pa Abner had once said fear was the most binding of all emotions. Keech appreciated those words all too well now. He tried to remember Pa’s training, the lesson of the rattlesnake in his bed—Stay in the moment, accept the danger, doubt sparks panic, panic sparks death—but a blinding fear padlocked every muscle in his body.
There was nowhere to run.
He took a deep breath. To stay in the moment you had to take in your surroundings, find anything useful for survival. A piece of black locust bark lay between his boots. It wouldn’t serve as a weapon, but the bark was tough and heavy, perhaps a fine distraction.
He stooped and grabbed the bark. Angling the chunk to fly south, Keech flicked his wrist. The pain from the gunshot wound was sharp, but he managed not to make a noise. The bark snickered through the woods. Over the pounding rain, the sound of the bark splashing in a puddle was enough to grab the monsters’ attention.
“Over yonder!” Scurvy yelped. The creatures lumbered south.
Keech ran as hard as he could. He counted every yard he traveled—a habit taken from Pa Abner’s lessons. Soon he lost sight of the thralls.
Before long, Keech’s eyes began to fall upon perplexing land markers in the forest, and he found himself too distracted to remember his yards. The first curious thing he saw was a twisted willow tree, standing out nearly sideways on a steep hill. The drooping leaves of the willow were a strange color, neither green nor brown, but a dull gray, like a wilted dandelion. Keech stopped to investigate. He went to pull one of the leaves toward his eyes but stopped, and yanked his hand back.
The leaves were covered in silvery prickles. Tiny spikes that seemed to be alive, moving as if blown by a wind that did not disturb the leaves themselves.
Keech backed away. He had never seen a tree like this before. It was like the willow belonged to another world.
He pressed on. Farther north, he stumbled through a patch of black locust trees and up to a small clearing. He pushed back a few branches and found himself at a muddy gray beach. A tiny pond lay a few feet away, its water so black it could have been wagon grease. He stepped across the beach to the water’s edge. The pool was still; no bubbling foam at the edges, no ripples or waves, not even a splashing fish. A terrible odor wafted off the water, a smell like burned gunpowder. He suspected it was nothing but poison, and that if he walked into it he would not come out the other side alive.
Keech’s boots shifted in the mud. He realized he’d sunk all the way to his ankles. The beach was dragging him toward the smelly water. He struggled backward, almost losing his balance. He tugged his feet up enough to spin around and took three lumbering steps over the beach. He lunged back for the wood line.
Poison ponds and tainted willows? Floodwood truly was cursed.
He had to push on, especially if he hoped to find a safe shelter before the evening’s last light snuffed out.
He continued north till his trek brought him to another peculiar landmark, this time a steep embankment where a tall stone outcropping stood at the top, a red mountain of rock that climbed as high as Floodwood’s trees.
Keech stopped and stared at the mountain. Something seemed familiar about it. He couldn’t put his finger on what, but the red stones, the embankment, the outcropping gave him a dark, lonely feeling.
He groaned at the thought of climbing that long slope. But a high vantage point would offer a good lookout. The rock afforded a meager overhang, as well, so he could rest up there and tend his wound.
His arm cradled, he started up the embankment. The climb was perilous, a slope of loose mud that offered few footholds, just the occasional tree whose roots threatened to trip him and send him tumbling back down. By the time he reached the stone outcropping, he was smeared in muck and his arm felt like it was covered in biting ants.
Huddling under the rock wall’s overhang, he pulled off his coat and examined the wound. The lead ball had sheared away a good amount of hide, drawing enough blood to soak his elbow, but thankfully the ball hadn’t touched muscle or bone. Tearing a piece of cloth from his shirttail, Keech wrapped the wound and tied off the bandage with a reef knot. Then he tugged his coat back on, rested against the rock, and closed his eyes.
Floodwood’s eerie droning engulfed his tired ears and mind. He shrugged it off as best he could, and suddenly wished for Little Eugena’s bugle. Just one more time. Keech was sorry he had ever found it terrible. He would have given anything to hear its delightful noise again.
He was asleep in less than a minute.
* * *
When he awoke, the woods had slipped toward dusk. The rain was still pouring and ropes of lightning charged across the sky.
He sat upright and silently cursed. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep at a vulnerable location. He had been foolish and lowered his guard.
Time to move.
Stepping out from the rock, Keech looked for signs of the dead men. When he turned his gaze to the outcropping, he noticed something. A dark smudge on the stone just above where he’d been resting.
Keech leaned in close to the smudge. It was no mere blemish. Scrawled on the stone was a series of numbers. The digits were black as if drawn in charcoal, but when he ran his hand over them, he discovered it was black paint, so old it chipped when touched.
The numbers read:
40 7:7
Astonishment raced over Keech’s mind. These numbers had been drawn by Pa Abner’s hand! But that wasn’t the only revelation. He now understood why the red outcropping had been so familiar.
It was the mountain from Pa’s portrait. The one in the study, painted over the old page of the Daily Missouri Republican.
Keech looked at the numbers on the rock again and realized he was seeing another Bible verse, just like the ones in Pa’s telegram.
The number 40 was Matthew. Pa’s letter to Noah Embry had included Matthew 24:42, the secret warning that Bad Whiskey was on the prowl.
But what did 7:7 say?
Cold shimmered upon his chest. Keech was so focused on the numbers, he barely noticed.
Behind him, a slimy voice crooned, “Look, it’s our chickabiddy!”
Keech wheeled around. As he did, a flash of lightning lit up the entire woodland. Scurvy and Bull stood ten feet away. Bull was wearing Keech’s bowler hat, and both of them were aiming their revolvers at him.
Keech didn’t let himself think—he acted.
Using one leg to launch himself off the rock wall, he sprang straight for the smaller of the creatures. He crashed into Scurvy’s midsection and they went tumbling down the embankment. Flimsy brush cracked beneath their weight. Keech bowled over a flat stone, the impact driving out his breath. Above them, Bull roared.
For a dead man, Scurvy’s grip was astounding. The second Keech had tackled him, Scurvy had thrown his arms around Keech’s waist and squeezed. As they plummeted together down the slope, Keech thought he would split open under the strength of those skeletal arms.
“Yer mine,” Scurvy hissed.
“I don’t think so,” Keech said. To force the thrall to release him, he did the only thing he knew to do: he head-butted the creature. A white-hot spike of pain shot through his forehead and he heard a crack. The thrall’s arms loosened.
They stopped rolling at the foot of the embankment and Keech shoved himself away.
“You cracked my noggin!” Scurvy yelled, throwing a hand over a jagged dent in his skull.
Keech tackled him again, this time throwing fists. The skinny thrall screamed as Keech’s coat parted and Pa’s pendant spilled out of his shirt. It dangled by its cord, brightly shimmering. Without fully meaning to, Keech dipped his body and dropped the silver so it rested against Scurvy’s cheek.
The squeal that poured from the fiend was too much to bear, but Keech didn’t have to endure it for long. As the pendant radiated its violent cold, black veins pulsed and bubbled along Scurvy’s flesh. He shuddered, flopped once like a fish, then went limp. The charm had returned him back to the dead.
“That’s for Sheriff Turner!” Keech shouted.
But it wasn’t time yet to celebrate. Bull was on his way. The brute was stampeding down the slope with breakneck momentum. “Yer mine, runt!”
Midway down the hill, Bull squeezed the trigger of his revolver, but the gun clicked empty. The thrall bellowed in fury and tossed away the gun.
There would be no wrestling or punching this opponent. There would be no holding him down and touching him with the pendant. Bull was too powerful.
Keech had to run. Only this time, he wouldn’t be running to escape. The time for fleeing like a rabbit was over. Pa Abner had taught him a hundred ways to overcome an enemy. It was time to put those lessons to work.
It was time to be the Wolf.