She and Travis weren’t officially performing for another hour, so after patting Music and scratching the itchy spot under her mane, Felicity wandered over to the long avenue of traveling merchants. She’d wandered through once yesterday, but there were so many, dozens upon dozens, that she hadn’t had a chance to take it all in.
As she strolled, she felt a tightness in her chest as she passed the empty spot where the fortune teller’s tent had been. Felicity hurried past it, looking for something to distract her. She stepped into the tent of a purveyor of steam and clockwork mechanisms, everything from wind-up rabbits to clock-heart necklaces to steam-powered garden bed waterers.
After that she visited a hat shop and a saddlery and an herbologist. Near the end of the row, down toward the train station, an artist had set up an easel outside her tent. Felicity stopped to watch her work, and realized she was painting an angel. She stiffened, and her thoughts spun. She had the oddest feeling that she was forgetting something. A moment later the sensation passed.
“That’s beautiful,” she murmured.
The woman turned and smiled. She had deep auburn hair put up in a messy bun, and wore paint-splotched denim overalls with a red bandana around her neck. More like a farmer than a painter.
“Thank you. If you like angels, take a peek inside.” And she swept her arm toward the open tent flaps.
Felicity ducked inside the tent. Her eyes widened. All of the paintings depicted angels. Or at first glance it seemed so—they were all beautiful, winged creatures. Wings of gold and wings of white. Gray and pale, pale blue like the first frost of winter. Wings in pastel sunset hues, pink and orange and purple. But when she looked further, she saw there were also beings with red wings, and wings black as night. Wings with storm clouds and universes in their depths. Angels with weapons in their hands, spears and flaming swords and golden bows. Felicity stared at these the longest. They made her heart beat faster, as if she gazed upon something forbidden.
When she finally emerged from the tent, the artist looked up at her. “What did you think?”
“Beautiful work,” Felicity said politely. “Such diversity.”
“They tend to focus on one type of angel in church,” the painter said. “But there are so many.” She paused, swiped a glob of paint across her canvas. “Or so I imagine.”
“Are you much of a churchgoer yourself?” Felicity asked, her cheeks turning pink at the boldness of her question. She didn’t know what kept coming over her lately.
The woman contemplated this a moment. “From time to time,” she said softly. “I’m not much for blind faith. My truth comes from right here.” And she placed her hand over her heart.
Felicity felt a thrill in her blood. And she’d thought her words stretched the boundaries of common courtesy. She realized she liked this woman who spoke her mind, who wasn’t afraid.
“Well, I have to be getting back,” Felicity said. “Thanks for talking to me.”
The woman nodded and waved, paintbrush in hand.
Felicity headed back to the stage, suddenly worried she’d been gone too long. But a quick glance at her pocket watch told her she still had fifteen minutes. The crowd by the arena had nearly doubled since the rodeo had begun, and she had to skirt around the bulk of it to get back to the wagon. As she approached, she heard voices from the other side, though the covered top blocked her line of sight.
“Your son seems awfully friendly with the colored girl,” said a woman’s voice.
Felicity froze, except for her heart, which thrashed like a snared hawk in her chest. She didn’t recognize the voice of the woman who said it. But the next voice she did recognize.
“No, they just play music together,” said Abigail. “That’s all it is.”
“Well, I’d keep an eye on it if I were you. Rumors will fly faster than those race riders if you don’t.”
The preacher’s wife cleared her throat. “No need for concern. She’s a nice girl, and a great musician, but it’s out of the question. Travis is a smart boy. He knows these things. He’ll marry someone… appropriate.”
It shattered then, Felicity’s fragile happiness, like a piece of blown glass. She’d thought she belonged somewhere, finally, found a group that looked past the color of her skin. But they had rejected her, too. Like her mother rejected her. Like Dynah rejected her. And now the preacher’s wife, the one she trusted the most.
The lightning surged inside of her. The magic. That’s what it was, there was no use denying it anymore. The fortune teller had called it by its name. Felicity had no need to sidestep the truth any longer.
Her hands began to glow, and she made no attempt to hide it. She felt… angry. No, far too mild a word. Like comparing a summer rain shower to a typhoon. Enraged. That described how she truly felt. No matter what she did or how perfectly she behaved, it was never good enough, not for anyone.
Felicity’s fury and sorrow ballooned inside of her. And it was in that moment she felt the call. Her call. She recognized it instantly, realized a part of her had been waiting for it, ever since the dust storm.
She strode to Music, swung up into the saddle, and galloped away from the arena.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Dynah
Dynah’s father lifted his shotgun and pointed it at Penelope and Domino.
Everything fractured into milliseconds, each containing a frozen image, a frozen drop of time. Her father’s face, twisted in rage, as he sighted down the length of the gun. Penelope yanking the reins to spin Domino. Their mother, screaming, lunging for his arm.
The gun fired. A blossom of red-orange-gold as the bullet left the barrel. A sound loud enough to tear the sky.
Domino screamed and staggered. A spot of red blossomed on his hindquarters. Dynah thought she’d been grazed by buckshot, too. Everything went vivid red and hazy. Penelope screamed, and Dynah couldn’t tell if it was pain or rage or both.
Her mother hung from her father’s shoulder; it was the only reason he’d missed a direct shot. He elbowed her in the face and she hit the ground hard. An inarticulate sound rose out of him, like a wounded animal. He leveled his weapon and fired again.
This time the shot didn’t go wide. It flew straight and true. And her mother leapt up, directly in front of it.
Dynah’s vision pulsed, a heartbeat, red and bloody.
Her mother’s body lying on the ground…
A stain spreading across her breast, spilling across the ground…
Her father stepping forward, standing over the body, his gun lifting again...
Boom. Boom. Boom. Dynah’s blood pulsed within her. The world pounded around her. Her fury spread its wings, and blackness overcame the red.
Then she was the pulse. A single pulse, a flash of darkness. The power inside of her lashed out, and her father’s body joined her mother’s in the dirt.
And she became the blackness, and it consumed everything. Burned through her, burned everything around her. Raged, a storm without boundaries. Desolated, decimated, drowned, smothered.
Until she brushed up against another force.
Her sister. Or rather, her sister’s pain. Her torment, her fury.
Dynah opened her eyes. Penelope stood a few feet away, trying to stop the blood pouring from Domino’s hindquarters. Tears streamed down her face, but they were black, like runnels of ink. She could feel the power coming off her, that same lightning that had touched them both.
Their eyes met, and they could see each other’s thoughts. Dynah stepped closer and clasped Penelope’s fingers, then they raised their hands together to the sky. The power intensified, as if it had been waiting for this moment, for them to join together. A bolt of lightning shot down and enveloped Domino’s body.
It looked for a moment as if he were melting. Or rather, the shedding of a cloak, a snake releasing its skin. A transformation. The lightning moved into him and became him. And when it ceased a moment later, he stood there, pure white. Lightning incarnate.
“I d
reamed of this,” Penelope murmured.
“So did I,” Dynah said.
They looked at each other, then over to the body of their mother, and Dynah’s father. Nothing much remained of them now. Dynah’s magic had turned everything on the homestead to black ash and rot, as if ten thousand years had passed in a handful of moments.
“Are you sad?” Penelope asked her. Her voice sounded detached, a million miles away.
Dynah didn’t answer for a moment. “I’m not sure what I am anymore.”
The words had barely left her mouth when she felt it, and the way Penelope’s head whipped around, she could tell her sister felt it, too. A call. A call they had to answer.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The world pulsed around her again.
Penelope swung up onto the pure white horse, and Dynah mounted Moon. They rode west.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Willow
The rain had long since washed them clean of the mud, and they’d mounted back up and ridden for the mountains under the light of the moon. With Zane by her side, Willow had one more set of eyes to watch for traps and ambushes. Though they hadn’t seen any other riders in hours.
Around midnight they found a spot to rest near a creek in one of the canyons. No trees overhanging for mountain lions to leap down from, plenty of visibility to see if any of the competition tried to sneak up on them. They made sure the horses drank their fill, then they moved a bit away from the water to avoid incidents with wild animals visiting for a drink in the middle of the night.
Willow picked a place with some grass for Bullet to eat and took off her saddle and bridle. Then she laid down next to her. Zane flopped down beside them and pulled Willow into his arms before dusting her lips with a kiss and beginning to snore. Willow fell fast asleep a few moments later. It had been an arduous day to say the least.
A few hours later, she awoke just before the sun emerged. She’d always woken right before dawn, even as a young child. As if she could feel the light birthing each new day. The earth awakening from darkness, life blinking its eyes, hushed perfection, unbroken by the cruelties that often came later.
She was alone.
Willow blinked and sat up. Bullet stood sleeping a couple feet away from her, her breath deep and sonorous, nostrils flaring in and out slowly. She looked black in the deep gray of first dawn. Jericho wasn’t there, either.
And just as her heart started pounding in her chest, Zane walked up from the creek, leading his horse. “Morning, angel,” he said, and he handed her a single yellow daisy.
She took it from him and smiled. She’d never been given a flower by a boy before. They’d always been too scared to approach her. Guns were more her style, but Willow thought it was a sweet gesture. A strange fluttering filled her chest.
“We should be about ten miles from the northern checkpoint.” She got up and put her hat on, then tucked the daisy inside the pocket on the breast of her shirt.
“That sounds about right,” Zane said.
They shared a breakfast of dried jerky and saddled the horses back up. Then they continued through the canyons toward the checkpoint.
A couple hours later they reached it. Like the first checkpoint, it was just a wagon sitting in the middle of nowhere with two cowboys and a stock of messenger birds. Willow and Zane made sure to ride in a ways apart to make it less obvious they were together. Zane nodded for her to go ahead of him.
“Will Bullet,” said one of the cowboys as he wrote the name down on a piece of paper. He whistled and eyed her up and down, clearly surprised. “You’re still in the lead, kid.”
Willow refrained from making a face at the use of the term kid and simply nodded, suppressing her elation. The other cowboy stuck a piece of paper with her alias on it inside a hawk’s mouth, wound up the clockwork, and sent it flying off into the sky. Willow urged Bullet into a lope and continued on down the mountain pass until she was out of sight, then stopped to wait for Zane.
Just thirty miles left to go. The final stretch.
She heard hoofbeats behind her and quickly realized it was more than one set. More like several. Zane came into view with five other riders behind him. Willow wasn’t sure what to do for a moment. Should she wait for Zane, making it obvious they had an alliance, or should she ride out ahead? After several moments of internal conflict, Bullet prancing and snorting between her, she decided to wait. If she galloped off now, she’d spend a good deal of Bullet’s energy, and she couldn’t sustain that for thirty miles. She just needed to stay within striking distance for the final gallop into Hawk’s Hollow. Plus, she didn’t want Zane to think she was ditching him.
“We caught ‘im, boys!” hollered one of the men to the others.
The group galloped up and surrounded her and Bullet, milling around like hunting dogs sniffing our their prey.
“Thought yuh’d stay in the lead the ‘ole race, eh?” said another, spitting tobacco on the ground.
“Glad to finally have some competition,” Willow said with a smile. “May the best man win.” And she tipped her hat to them.
“The best man,” Zane said. “Or woman.”
Willow froze and looked at him, staring into those river-blue eyes. He ripped his gaze away from her. The other cowboys looked confused.
“Woman?” snorted one of them.
Zane tipped his hat in her direction. Five sets of eyes landed on her face, the bullseye of a shooting target. The blood drained from Willow’s body.
“Yuh sayin’ this here is a woman?” asked one of the men dubiously.
“Dun’t look like no woman,” said another.
“Oh, I assure you she is,” Zane said with a smirk that left no doubt as to his meaning. And this time he did look at her, just for a moment, and his eyes and his smile ripped into her like a rock salt shot.
“Hoo-wee!” yelled a couple of the men.
“You givin’ out more freebies, darlin’?”
“Fast and loose, just like I like ‘em.”
It surged out of her then, the lightning and the rage, so hot it was white. Her fury rolled across them all like a thundercloud. The laughter of the men died, and they all pulled out their guns. A half-moment of tension and confusion shimmered between them as they tried to comprehend what was happening to them. Then bullets flew back and forth, a hail of metal. The storm coming off Willow protected her and her mare. They existed as pure energy now, pure power. Blood spattered, screams flew from lips, men fell from their horses.
And her anger wasn’t spent. Not even close. Willow had an ocean of wrath inside of her and it shot out through the canyon, over the earth, up into the sky. She knew then what had happened to her, to them, that day in the cyclone. The magic told her, showed her their purpose. And a great purpose it was. She issued a call to her sisters, her fellow Riders.
Willow took one last look at Zane’s lifeless body, lying amidst the others, as she plucked the daisy from her pocket, dropped it on his chest. Then she pressed her legs to Bullet’s sides and shot forward to the east.
It had begun.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Death and Pestilence and Famine joined up in the plains like magnets drawn together, then they continued west following War’s call.
When the four Riders met, magic pulsed across the desert. They became something different. Something more. Like moths escaping their chrysalises, they came into their highest forms, they claimed the fullness of their power, they transformed.
A glow surrounded them and it rose into the sky, creating a storm of heat and raw energy. Dark clouds rolled in from all directions, spinning overhead, and a wind rushed in from the north. The ground cracked beneath the hooves of their horses and the screams of demons rent the air.
And then they rode.
East, towards the little town of Hawk’s Hollow, a town of farmers and a town of merchants, a town with a lazy creek meandering through it, a town nestled beneath the shadows of red mountain peaks. The town where it all began. The
town where it all would end.
The Riders galloped, four in a row.
Pestilence on her pure white horse, bleaching the color from the earth and the heavens as she passed.
War on her red horse, flames shooting out behind them into the sky.
Famine on her black horse, leaving a wake of universe behind her, a rip in time and space.
Death on her pale horse, calling forth an army of the dead; men and women and beasts.
Angels and demons alike watched as the apocalypse began. But the townsfolk of Hawk’s Hollow knew not what rode toward them.
On the horizon, the spire of the church came into view.
Chapter Thirty-Five
War
War galloped through the crowds gathered around the arena, and up Main Street through the center of town. Where she passed, people began to argue, to throw punches, to pull weapons.
They had all held her back. The world had held her back. Too opinionated, too brash, too emotional. She’d built a wall against it, a wall to protect her heart, her soul. But still someone had slipped past her defenses. Claimed to care for her while spinning lies. No more. She had been weak before, but now she’d grown strong. She’d show them all. Her place was everywhere and everything she wanted it to be.
After making one loop through Hawk’s Hollow, she pulled her flaming horse to a halt in front of a group of brawling cowboys. They stopped their violence and looked up at her, entranced.
“Ride forth,” War called, “To all corners of the land. Sow your discord, your hatred, your viciousness. Cross the oceans, climb mountains. Do not stop until every inch of the earth knows my message.”
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