Keech watched in dazed silence as all across Bone Ridge the victims of the Withers burst from their graves. Their wails and snarls filled the air, a nightmarish symphony. Bad Whiskey had not raised a gang to protect him—he had raised an army.
The creatures rising weren’t fresh-bodied thralls like the ones who’d ridden with Bad Whiskey before. These were rotted monstrosities of bone and sinew, held together by the thinnest magic. Some of them wore tattered bonnets, while others shambled in ragged pinafores or torn leather buckskins. The corpse of Abraham Nell hauled itself to the surface, dressed in a threadbare waistcoat.
The rising Tsi’noo groaned, surprised by their sudden return to life. Unspeakable faces lifted to the sky and muttered a single word in unison: “Master!”
Keech shivered as Bad Whiskey laughed. The resurrection had drained him. His body appeared to be wasting like a rotted tree succumbing to a hard wind. However, his laughter spoke not of pain and demise, but of victory and pleasure.
Pa Abner staggered back into the circle of torchlight. His face twisted with strain. He lurched toward Keech, opening his mouth to scream, but the sound caught in his throat. The dark power that had brought Pa back to life had corrupted his body, his mind, perhaps his very soul. The spark that had made Abner his father and protector was being snuffed out, replaced by Bad Whiskey’s will.
Tears welled up in Keech’s eyes. “You’re strong, Pa. The strongest man I’ve ever known. Fight him.”
“I can’t!” Pa cried, and shook his head. “Run!”
Keech heard the sound of thralls scraping their way out of open graves. Abraham Nell staggered in a circle, fussing at the moon. Other thralls crawled toward him, gnashing rotten teeth, crying their damnation.
But Keech could focus only on Pa, who moved with a graceless stagger, his wide eyes hollow and deadly. Keech dug into the dirt and leaped away.
“Come on, you stupid rope!” Duck yelled.
Keech turned and saw the girl struggling against her binds on the back of Bad Whiskey’s horse.
The amulet shard. The silver pendant stowed in her coat could send Bad Whiskey back to whatever dark pit he’d risen from.
A stumbling monster with no arms snapped at Keech’s neck. Keech knocked the corpse back into another thrall, sending both tumbling into a deep, dark hole. A sharp hissing noise arose behind him. Keech spun to find a creature with its mouth gaped open and black teeth chomping. He twisted away and sprinted toward Duck.
Dozens of rotting thralls approached the bound girl as she struggled. Keech was only a few steps away but didn’t know how he could untie her before the horde dug their claws into her.
His dreadful chant complete, Bad Whiskey bounded to his feet. “Where do ya think yer goin’?” he said, stepping into Keech’s path.
Screaming in fury, Keech slammed into Whiskey with all his might.
Bad Whiskey grabbed at Keech’s coat, but couldn’t secure his hold. He crashed to the ground. His hat tumbled away and his mangy head whacked into a wooden grave marker, snapping the plank in half.
Keech stumbled over Whiskey and crossed the final few feet to Duck.
“We gotta help Nat,” Duck cried. “He could be dying out there!”
Keech moved to grab the girl around the waist and haul her from the horse, but Duck was already tumbling down. She rolled sideways off the stallion, and landed on her feet in the broomsedge. Her hands still bound, Duck rotated quickly and came face-to-face with an approaching thrall. The creature was small, perhaps a woman once the size of Granny Nell. Duck swerved around the thing’s fumbling arms.
Panicked by the commotion, Bad Whiskey’s horse bucked. Its hooves struck the short thrall in the head, knocking the skull clean off its shoulders. The stallion rotated its angry hind toward Keech. He flung himself out of the way just as the animal’s leg punted the air beside his nose.
“Let’s go!” Duck called.
They took off running toward the area where Pa Abner had tackled Nat, dodging and shoving Whiskey’s wretched dead along the way. The fresh thralls were weak, ill-formed, their bodies putrid with time, but Whiskey’s curse had wrapped them in sinew and meat enough that they continued to creep forward.
Under the red moonlight, Keech scanned the ground for any sign of the rancher. “I don’t see Nat.”
“Keep looking,” Duck panted, holding her tethered hands in front of her.
Somewhere behind them, Bad Whiskey’s desperate voice split the night. “Bring ’em to me!”
Keech spotted a tall figure near the stone wall to the south. “I think I see him!” he gasped. “He’s alive, by the wall.”
A swarm of thralls had clustered at the wall’s base and were crowding the rancher, who was throwing wild punches, knocking monsters off their feet. But the numbers were too great. The boy was being overwhelmed.
Duck shouted, “We have to save him!”
Keech threw a glance behind them. At least two dozen thralls were in pursuit.
“The second we can stop, I’ll untie you. Then you can fetch your shard,” he said—then they both ran into a solid wall. The impact sent them tumbling back with startled grunts.
Keech shook his head, dazed. A second later Keech’s vision settled enough for him to see what they had crashed into.
It was no wall.
They had been stopped by Pa Abner.
Shambling creatures crept in on all sides. Duck lay on the ground, moaning. Not fifty yards away, Keech could see the cluster of thralls around Nat closing in. Frightened cries rose into the air as the boy fell beneath a sea of gristle and bone.
A pair of black boots stepped into Keech’s view, spurs clattering like nails on glass. Bad Whiskey stood over him, clutching his hat. The remains of his black hair had fallen out of his scalp, leaving him bald. Even his daggerlike goatee was losing strands, exposing a pitted chin beneath.
“Nice effort, Jim Bowie.” The outlaw kicked his boot into Keech’s gut, driving the breath out of his lungs. “Seize ’im,” Bad Whiskey ordered. A pair of large hands grabbed Keech’s shoulders and hauled him to his feet. It was Pa Abner.
“Duck!” Keech yelled, but the girl was no longer lying where they had tumbled. Only the ropes that had bound her remained.
Bad Whiskey turned to see what Keech had noticed.
Cutter leaped out from behind a nearby statue of a weeping woman. “Die, El Ojo!” he bellowed, and buried his long blade into Bad Whiskey’s chest.
Bad Whiskey barely flinched. He looked down at the knife, as though intrigued, and snickered. He shoved the boy backward. Cutter fell onto his backside, disbelief etched across his face. “It should have worked. This blade should have killed you!”
The desperado yanked the knife out of his chest and pointed the blade at Cutter’s face. “This ol’ thing?” Bad Whiskey turned it over in his hand and examined the intricately carved bone grip. He ran a thumb across the engraving at the base. “Did you think this pigsticker was magic, Herrera?” He laughed.
“I—I don’t understand,” Cutter cried.
Keech noticed movement near the statue of the woman. Duck was crouching nearby, close enough to end this. “Duck, the charm!” he yelled. He couldn’t understand why she hadn’t already pulled her shard.
Duck didn’t move, and Keech realized that by calling out, he had betrayed her meager hiding spot. A fool’s mistake.
Bad Whiskey spotted the girl and jabbed Cutter’s knife at her. “You! You have a shard?”
Tucked behind the statue, Duck shook her head. Thralls surrounded her, holding their positions till their master gave his next command.
“Come to me, child,” Bad Whiskey ordered.
Duck held her ground, her face desperate for a path.
“Don’t make me tell ya again.”
“Use the charm!” Keech repeated. “Take him down!”
“Throw it to me! I’ll finish him,” Cutter called.
“Quiet!” Bad Whiskey kicked at Cutter’s chin. The boy’s head snapped back and he slumped, dazed. The outlaw’s glazed eye darted back to Duck. “A second shard of the amulet?” He raised his eye to the dark sky, where the crows were circling. “Hear that, boss! A second shard!” His eye dropped back to Duck. “I knew I felt somethin’ strange. Hand it over. My Tsi’noo will tear you apart if ya don’t.”
Around the boneyard, the thralls hissed. The ones surrounding Duck crept closer toward her, awaiting the order to rip and tear.
“I’ll never do what you want!” Duck shouted.
Bad Whiskey drew a long breath. “Pity.”
“Look out!” Keech hollered, but it was too late. A grinning pair of thralls lunged at Duck. One of them was Granny Nell’s dead husband. Before Duck could move, the monsters seized her arms. She screamed and pulled, but she was too small to break free.
Bad Whiskey motioned for the corpses to bring her closer. The thralls yanked her across the yard.
“Give me the shard. Now,” he said.
“I don’t have it!”
Before Keech could register what she’d said, the thrall on her left side juddered and collapsed. A second later Abraham Nell followed, tumbling back to silent death.
John Wesley stood behind Duck. He held up his right hand. A warm golden light glowed in his palm. He smiled.
“I do.”
Keech felt a roar of triumph in his soul as John Wesley stepped forward, the radiant charm tied to his hand by a thin cord. With each step he took, Bad Whiskey retreated, gritting his teeth in rage. The surrounding thralls inched closer, but the large boy wheeled the charm wildly, brandishing its otherworldly light.
“Tell them to back off!” he shouted.
The outlaw flung his arm skyward, more a gesture of panic than surrender. “Stop, you worms, stop!” he squealed to his army. “Come no closer!”
Every thrall in Bone Ridge turned to regard their master.
“Tell them to go back to their holes,” John Wesley demanded.
Bad Whiskey hesitated, his good eye sizing up his opponent. Slowly, he dropped his arm. “You ain’t gonna kill me. Wanna know why?”
John Wesley wavered, uncertain.
“Let me show ya.”
Keech felt his boots leave the earth. The graveyard tilted in his vision; then he found himself flying through the air. Pa had picked him up and heaved him at John Wesley. Keech flailed, hoping somehow to change his course, but Pa’s toss had been dead-on. He smashed into the large boy and they toppled to the ground.
Keech struggled to untangle himself, and when he rolled aside, he saw that John Wesley had taken a mean blow to the head and been knocked unconscious. He looked up to see Bad Whiskey bending to retrieve his Dragoon. Stepping almost gingerly toward Duck, the outlaw once again positioned the massive revolver.
“This fight is over,” he said.
“Don’t you hurt her,” came Nat’s voice.
A pair of thralls had dragged the rancher, bleeding and bruised, into the torchlight. The battered boy dropped to the ground, his furious eyes locked on Whiskey.
“Don’t you hurt my sister.”
Duck smiled at her brother. “Don’t worry, Nathaniel, I ain’t afraid to die.”
Bad Whiskey pursed his lips. “You should be, little’un. The other side is pain and torment.”
“For the likes of you,” Duck spat.
Snickering, Bad Whiskey cocked the Dragoon’s hammer. He looked at John Wesley, who was groaning back to a dizzy sort of consciousness. “Toss away the shard, hero. You’ve got till the count of three.”
Even in his daze, John Wesley recognized the danger. He pulled the glowing charm free from his palm, looked at it once, then threw it aside.
“Good boy. Now all of ya, on yer feet. I’ve decided not to kill ya after all.”
From where he lay in the dirt, Keech had a perfect view of the hunter’s moon over the surrounding black locust trees. Riding across the moon’s face were dozens of crows. The terrible flock cut sharp arcs across the sky, observing the struggle but making no move to intervene.
They hate to be close to the amulets, Keech thought. A thrall could bear the amulets as long as the silver didn’t touch flesh, but perhaps the birds were more sensitive. He remembered the monstrous crow that had landed on Bad Whiskey’s shoulder at the Home. The way Whiskey had taken five steps back after Pa revealed the shard. Maybe the steps hadn’t been for Whiskey. Maybe they had been a precaution for the crow.
A series of screeches fell from their beaks. Something was upsetting them. “The crows seem anxious, Bad,” Keech said. “What happens when your clock is up?”
“You should worry about what’ll happen when yers is up,” Bad Whiskey muttered. He peered at the cobalt sky. A hint of fear spread across his face. “To yer feet,” he said to Keech, his tone desperate. “Wake Herrera.”
The Tsi’noo approached, surrounding the young riders. Keech winced at the sight of Pa Abner, his eyes hollow and full of nothingness, standing beside Whiskey.
Kneeling at his side, Keech lightly slapped at Cutter’s cheek. The boy’s eyes fluttered. He gazed around, confused. “Did we win?”
Keech shook his head.
His hand safely gloved, Bad Whiskey scooped Duck’s shard from the dirt and tucked it into a pocket inside his tattered overcoat. “We got some work to do,” he said. “Raines, the code.”
Pa Abner ambled over, extended his hand, and thrust the crumpled telegram back into Keech’s palm. Keech tried to look the thrall in the eye, but Pa refused to gaze back.
“Crack the cipher,” Bad Whiskey said. “Time to find my Stone.”
“And what happens if we do?” Keech asked.
“Then, little pilgrim, we do us some real magic.”