The night air vibrated with a fathomless rhythm that felt like the buffalo stampede. Keech tried to shuffle backward on his knees, hoping to gain distance from the spirit, but his limbs refused to move. In Wisdom, Edgar Doyle had warned the Lost Causes that Ignatio could mold shadows and manipulate darkness. Now here was a living shade calling itself La Sombra.
Waves of icy gloom poured from the shadow as it spoke. “Where is Red Jeffreys?”
“You won’t get a syllable from me,” Duck said, squirming. “Not till you free Quinn and his aunt.”
La Sombra lifted a finger, a slender shimmer of pitch, and pointed at Quinn. “This one means naught to me. Tell me what I want to know, child, o lo mato. I will kill him.” Vaporous tendrils rose off the shadow body and snaked up into the sky.
“Don’t tell him anything!” Quinn said. “I’d rather die than help these worms.”
A sickening wriggle invaded Keech’s mind. The Reverend was prying into his head again, peeling back his thoughts. He tried to imagine a blank pool, an empty room, a barren field, anything to clear his mind, but Rose’s fingers delved ever deeper.
“Coal’s daughter is bluffing.” The voice from the crow dripped with disdain. “They know nothing of Jeffreys’s location.”
Duck cried out, “That ain’t true! We do know how to find him!”
“You waste time with lies.” The crow tilted its head toward the shadow and added, “Leave one child alive to draw out O’Brien. The sooner we find her, the sooner we find Jeffreys.”
“Sí, Master, as you command.” La Sombra turned to face his thralls. “On your feet, my friends. We have work to attend to.” The dead wagoners stood, gripping their pistols.
Keech strained at his bonds, his wounded arm screaming, but the ropes remained tight. There seemed only one move left. He would have to use the Black Verse, even if the words bought them only a few seconds.
“Which child do we spare?” Black Charlie asked.
Ignatio’s shadow, La Sombra, returned his intangible gaze to the Lost Causes, then leaned toward Duck. “This one I like. I sense her father’s strength.” He turned his empty face toward Keech next. “On the other hand, Isaiah Raines protected this one. Em O’Brien rode with Raines. The two shared a close bond, like familia. Perhaps she would reveal herself to save him.”
Keech clenched his teeth. “Get away from me.”
The toothless gap in Black Charlie’s mouth made him look like a petulant child. “So we keep the boy alive, finish the other two?”
“Do it,” La Sombra hissed.
Not wasting any time, the Frenchman swiveled his Colt toward Quinn, who lifted his chin higher at the sight of the barrel.
“I don’t fear no death,” Quinn said. He peered off to the west, as though reaching for his aunt across the distance. “I’m sorry, Auntie Ruth. I tried to find ya, but I didn’t make it.”
“Au revoir, mon garçon,” Black Charlie said to Quinn.
Suddenly a slender brown object whizzed into the midst of Black Charlie’s company. It stuck with a dull twang into the wood of the nearest wagon. The projectile quivered in the board, mere inches from the jar of nitro Rufus had lifted from one of the crates. Keech saw a fletching of turkey feathers at the stick’s opposite end.
One of Ignatio’s thralls pointed at the stick. “Hey, take a gander at that,” the dead man muttered, his head tilting with curiosity. “It’s an arrow!”
Before Black Charlie or La Sombra could react, a second arrow swished in through the crowd, thudding into the wagon’s rear again, missing the jar by a dog’s hair. Keech felt his breath freeze in his throat. He spun toward Duck and Quinn and bellowed, “Lost Causes, get down!”
Duck and Quinn dropped to the snow as a third arrow zipped in, this time achieving its target and shattering the jar of nitro on the wagon board.
The explosion was louder and more violent than the one before. A terrible flash of orange flared up, a blossoming cloud of heat and force. Fire shredded the wagon’s fabric top, and wood shards sliced through the air. Huge chunks of embers rained down on the neighboring wagon, and flames capered across the bonnet.
“Non! Non! Non!” Black Charlie hollered, shielding his face with his arms.
Their hands still bound behind them, Quinn and Duck rolled away from the detonation as a whoosh of black smoke poured out of the next carriage. A cacophony of amber sparks sprayed out into the snow. From where he lay stretched on the ground, Keech lifted his head. Giant columns of fire spouted out of the next three wagon beds in the caravan. He felt his blood run cold when he realized the rest of the explosive crates were catching fire.
“Little brats brought a friend!” the thrall Rufus screamed.
“’Oo is out there?” Black Charlie growled at Keech. He slammed a boot down on Keech’s back, pinning him to the snow.
Though Keech had no idea, he answered the Frenchman with a mean laugh. “You didn’t think we’d come out here without backup, did ya?”
The Reverend’s crow took to the air with a furious squawk as the burning wagons exploded in a chain of violent fireballs. Splinters ripped like bullets through the night air, riding a tide of heat that washed over Keech like a fiery tornado. Black Charlie’s boot fell away from Keech’s back as the eruption of the nitro crates sent the Frenchman tumbling. Thunder punched at Keech’s ears, a terrible drumroll that left him feeling as if his skull had been stuffed with cotton. The sensation reminded him of their fateful night in Wisdom, when the whistle bomb destroyed the Big Snake Saloon—and Nat Embry along with it.
Though the explosions had pulverized many of their number, Ignatio’s remaining thralls dashed about in the chaos, revolvers aimed at the surrounding hills. A few of them squeezed off, throwing lead at the shadows.
Keech tugged at his bindings, but the strain made his wounded arm sing with agony. He tried to rise but slipped in the snow. Duck appeared by his side, her face covered in mud and grime. Her hands were free. “You’re loose!” he gasped. “How?”
Duck started laboring at his knots. “I dunno. I just yanked.” She tugged at Keech’s bindings, and he felt the ropes drop away. “There. I’m gonna go help Quinn.”
Hopping to his feet, Keech searched for the unseen archer who had shot the nitro jar. Amid the bedlam, he heard the running of a horse in the dark, but he couldn’t see the animal or its rider. He probed the landscape for La Sombra, but the apparition must have retreated back into the night.
Black Charlie bellowed for the bumbling thralls to douse the crates before the final wagon could ignite, but the dead men were too distracted to focus on the carriage. The wagon exploded, shredding a pair of thralls tottering away from the fire. Another wall of heat pressed against Keech, but he kept his feet.
Nearby, Duck had freed Quinn of his bindings. Black Charlie waved his Colt at them. “Stop right there! Arrêtez!”
Hollering with rage, Quinn rushed forward and slammed into Black Charlie. The snarling captain toppled, and his Colt fired. The lead scattered powder between their boots. Quinn threw his elbow, smashing the brute’s face. Black Charlie wiggled his head and growled—a deep, inhuman noise that momentarily froze Quinn’s face with shock. Then the Frenchman tossed Quinn away with a grunt.
Black Charlie stood, shaking dirt and snow out of his matted hair. “Now I ’ave you,” he muttered.
But Quinn kicked out, his bootheel connecting with the outlaw’s knee. Black Charlie stumbled backward in the snow, tripped over a divot of ground, and tumbled into the wreckage of a burning wagon. A wretched howl rose from inside the flames.
Just then, a decomposing thrall appeared beside Keech and reached for his neck with ragged fingernails. “You’ll pay for this!”
A buzzing arrow buried itself into the thing’s shoulder, knocking the dead man back into the snow. Keech spun around, searching for the source of the shot.
Bursting out of the night, a brown pony galloped past him. Keech caught a glimpse of a buffalo robe and a longbow. “It’s one of the Protectors!” he yelled. Then the rider turned, revealing a young face, somber and determined. “Strong Heart!”
The Osage girl who had fought beside them at Bonfire Crossing raised a triumphant fist as she steered her mount toward him. “Keech Blackwood!” she bellowed. “You found trouble again, I see!”
Before he could respond, a sudden crash pulled his attention.
Black Charlie rose from the fiery rubble, bellowing curses. The fellow no longer resembled the mutton-chopped desperado who’d captured them, but rather something out of a nightmare. The single fang that jutted from the captain’s lips had grown, and his face had been charred black. Dusting red-hot cinders off his shoulders, he opened his mouth in a vicious snarl. “Time to die!” he roared.
“Get to the horses!” Keech shouted to his team, but Duck and Quinn were already dashing toward Irving and Lightnin’.
Black Charlie snatched up a blazing piece of wood and launched it at Keech’s head.
Riding in close, Strong Heart whacked the timber out of the air with her war club. Then, in a swift motion, she hooked the club’s curved head around her saddle horn and lifted her longbow again. Her other hand pulled a fresh arrow.
Black Charlie reared back to lob another fiery section of wagon. Strong Heart released her arrow and the shaft struck the monster in his chest, and he dropped back into the fire.
Duck and Quinn rode up on their ponies, gathering around the Protector. “I don’t know where you came from, but thank you!” Duck said to the girl.
“Thank me later,” Strong Heart said. “Many of the thralls are standing back up.”
Sure enough, a handful of the ragged men were rising, scrambling for their pistols, the thirsty look of revenge on their dead faces.
Keech swung up onto Hector and gripped the reins. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Follow me,” Strong Heart told the trio, and with a click of her tongue, her pony snapped back into a gallop.
Frozen winds blew down from the canyon, colliding with the fierce heat that radiated from Black Charlie’s incinerated wagons. As the Lost Causes cleared the vibrant ring of light, reckless gunshots rang out behind them. Keech worried the leftover thralls had salvaged a few long rifles, but the goons were firing pistols, and their slugs flew wide. Among the booms and echoes, Keech thought he heard the bellowing, cursing voice of Black Charlie Gascon—the monster whom the Reverend called a Weaver.
The young riders galloped into the twilight. The darkness felt alive around them, the great lungs of the night breathing frost and death. Only the burning wagons offered a faint light across the land.
After a few moments of hard riding, Quinn said, “We need to slow our pace. I don’t want the horses to break a leg.”
“Soon,” Strong Heart answered. “For now, we need to gain distance.”
Ack! Ack!
The terrible screeching drew Keech’s attention. One of the Reverend’s crows was pacing them, tracking their retreat. The glow from the flaming wagons lit the creature’s warped shape in the sullen sky.
Revulsion coursed through Keech’s veins. He held his breath, once again hoping to find his focus. But when the warm power refused to stir within, he knew what he had to do.
Keech pointed at the crow and yelled the Black Verse from Doyle’s journal: “No-ge-phal ul’-shogg!” The dreaded phrase tasted like ash on his tongue, and yet the words carried a mad intensity that couldn’t be denied.
Above them, the crow ruptured in a feathery flash.
Even as Duck and Quinn looked on with trepidation, a victorious red swarmed across Keech’s vision. “Return to earth, you filthy beast,” he spat. Pearly smoke poured from his fingertips, and he laughed. Keech sensed the feeling was wrong, but for the moment, he couldn’t help relishing the glorious sensation of power.