Hettie’s heart squeezed. Home seemed so far away.
Stubbs went on earnestly, “I can help you find your sister. I’ll dispatch my best men to bring little Abby home. We can help you get a good price for your ranch and start you up somewhere new. Or we can buy the farm back for you, and you can run the place yourself. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Uncle growled, “He’s a lying snake, Hettie. Don’t trust him.”
She licked her lips. “What do you want from me?”
“Relinquish Diablo. It’s bonded to you, and the only way anyone can take it from you is for you to willingly hand it over. That’s all you have to do. Then we can start looking for Abby. Why, I bet you’ll see her before the end of the week.”
Hettie’s hands clenched. “If I hand Diablo over right now, you’ll just kill me.”
“I could have shot you a dozen times over since we started talking. Believe it or not, I’m offering you the easy way out. That gun doesn’t belong to you. You owe your sister the best possible chance of being found. Isn’t that what your parents would’ve wanted?”
“I’ll shoot the girl myself before I let her hand Diablo over to you. Y’hear me, Stubbs?”
Hettie bristled, could almost feel her head centered in Uncle’s cross hairs. What would killing her achieve? Why did everyone want this gun? Too many questions circled her brain, but they were all muddled by the immediate mortal danger she faced.
“He’s just trying to make things difficult,” Stubbs said dismissively. “It’s true. I could just shoot you and take Diablo. But I’d rather not do that. Too many … complications. And I hate it when things don’t go smoothly.”
Hettie chewed her lip. “So I give it to you, and Uncle shoots me. I don’t give it to you, and you shoot me.”
He shrugged. “Seems to me you’ve got a better chance of staying alive if you hand the Devil’s Revolver over now. I’m in a charitable mood.”
Charitable enough to end her life quickly, she was sure. Her eyes flicked to the gun.
“Don’t be stupid. Hand it over. My offer won’t stand forever, and I’m losing patience.”
She met Stubbs’s beady eyes and planted herself firmly. “No.”
He sighed and tugged on his cuffs. “That’s what I thought.” He drew his sidearm and aimed at Cymon.
She didn’t have time to cry out. All she thought was, Stop! and then time thickened and slowed, as if she’d been dunked in molasses.
Stubbs pulled the trigger. The blast from the muzzle of his gun flared bright and loud but slowly, almost like a flower blooming. She dove for Diablo. The moment the grip was in her hand, she twisted and fired.
The bullets hovering inches from Cymon evaporated in a brilliant beam of light.
Her pulse suddenly sped up, and she gasped as the ground became a solid thing beneath her. She scrambled to her feet, weapon pointed at Stubbs.
“You blasted witch—” His face turned a shade of puce. “That gun doesn’t belong to you, y’hear?”
“It doesn’t belong to you, either.” She pulled the hammer down. The other men’s weapons cha-chacked in response.
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with. What that thing can do.”
“Blow off a horse’s head, punch a hole through a man’s chest, and stop bullets midair, from what I’ve seen so far.” Hettie felt as though her insides had turned to liquid, flowing hotly within her. She was calm, but beneath it all, something simmered, making her fingertips tingle. “Wonder what it’ll do at point-blank range?”
Stubbs’s nostrils flared. “You kill me, and you’ll have the full force of the Pinkerton Detecting Agency and the law after you.”
In her mind’s eye, she’d already pulled that trigger, watching a bloody hole expand in the man’s chest. The revolver sagged in her hands as though it had gained ten pounds. She tightened her hold on it with both hands. “Let my dog go.”
A beat, and Stubbs gestured to the man behind her. She didn’t look away until Cymon bumped up against her thigh, panting happily. He was still wearing a muzzle, but he seemed otherwise unharmed.
“Hettie!” Uncle shouted.
“Barney, take the shot!”
That treacly time lag kicked in at the same moment a familiar wave of power slammed into her. Heatless fire washed across her as she fell to her knees, just as the sniper’s bullet bored into the dirt beside her. She rolled away as time sped up once more, bringing Diablo to bear, wrists straining against the weight.
Someone yelled, “Ambush!” just as another wave of fire blew over the group, knocking people to the ground. This time, though, the flames sizzled, heat washing across her cheeks. Hettie smelled singed hair, and dry tinder smoke filled her nostrils.
She scrambled to a half crouch and started running. Cymon bounded at her side.
“Stop her!” Stubbs shouted. Shots rang out, and she ducked and dodged behind a building.
“Go left,” a deep, gruff voice uttered in her ear. “There’s a chestnut mare there. Take her and ride west.”
She didn’t question the order. The horse was within sight and watching her expectantly. Hettie leaped onto her back, and the mare took off as soon as she’d seated herself. The big brown dog loped beside them.
Hettie clung to the reins, but it quickly became apparent that she had no control over her mount. The horse headed west, lithe and straight as an arrow, flying across the rugged land away from Uncle and Stubbs, away from Ling who waited for her with Jezebel outside of town. She tried to stop the horse, but the mare wouldn’t let up no matter how hard Hettie pulled on the reins.
A flash of light dazzled her eyes as it whizzed past her ear, and she glanced over her shoulder. Two of Stubbs’s men were catching up on commandeered horses. She could see from the bloody froth around their mouths and the full whites of their eyes that the poor creatures had been hexed.
Hettie drew Diablo from her pocket. She could barely hold it up.
One of the men had his palms together, speaking some kind of spell. She aimed and pulled the trigger. The syrup feeling came again, and her mind’s eye momentarily soared—
The first rider’s horse screamed as its legs became bloody mist beneath him. The Pinkerton agent sailed through the air and landed in a crumpled heap in the dust.
Hettie ducked as another ball of energy sizzled through the air, just brushing her right shoulder and sending paralyzing pins and needles through her arm.
Indignation blasted through her. She switched hands, twisted around and fired.
Her shot tore through the air and shredded the man’s left arm down to the bone, the greenish light tearing up his shoulder and into his face. His blood-curdling scream was cut off as his horse reared and flung him from the saddle. Hexed and riderless, it streaked away, cursed to run until its heart gave out.
Hettie’s momentary relief was shattered as her whole body seized in another bone-racking spasm of agony. The ground rushed up at her.
The world went black.
The stone floor was cold, the straw even dirtier than before. The cages were fuller, the shadows within whimpering and stirring restlessly. Dirt-crusted fingernails scrabbled at the metal bars. Blood and dark urine ran into a drain in the middle of the floor. The room reeked of fear and desperation.
Hettie…
A wail pierced the air, and Hettie opened her eyes. Slowly, the real world came into focus, the tang of wood smoke replacing the stench of old blood. A coyote’s forlorn howl sent chills down her spine.
Her back was hot, her chest cold. She seemed to be staring at a wall of black beyond the ring of tall dry grass. She heard a short whine, then warm, foul wetness bathed her face. She pushed Cymon off and groaned as every muscle in her body screamed with pins and needles.
“She lives.” The voice was rough, like the crunch of gravel.
She
bolted up to sitting, and her head spun. The orange firelight eventually resolved so she could make out the huge shape looming on the other side.
The man leaned into the light and tipped up his hat. “Miss Alabama.”
Her skin prickled. “Mr. Woodroffe.” She kept one eye on the bounty hunter while scanning her surroundings, seeking the nearest weapon and exit. For all that he’d done for her, she did not trust him and she did not know him. She summoned all her bravado and added, “Or should I call you Camden Cobra?”
“Walker would be fine.”
Cymon’s tail wagged, and he butted his head, now free of its muzzle, against the man’s thigh. The bounty hunter rubbed his ears affectionately. “That was you who told me to get on the horse,” Hettie surmised.
“Lilith would’ve taken you someplace much safer if you’d held on tighter.”
Somewhere in the shadows to their left, the horse nickered her agreement.
Hettie rubbed her hands on her thighs, then suddenly remembered the mage gun. She patted herself down frantically. “Where’s my gun?”
“Diablo, you mean.” His eyes remained steady on her. “You’re bonded with the Devil’s Revolver, aren’t you?”
Hettie didn’t respond at first, but then a pressure began on her tongue and she blurted, “Yes.”
He dusted his fingers over his long black coat. “It’s safe for now. I didn’t want to get shot the minute you woke up.”
“Where’s my uncle?”
“I don’t know.”
“You left him in town with the Pinkertons?”
“‘Left him’ implies we were together to start with.” He glanced up at her. “My only aim was getting you and Diablo away from the town and those men.”
Her throat tightened. She’d abandoned the old man again. She tried to stand, but her whole body ached. Every muscle was stretched taut, and her joints and tendons pulled like old leather stretched across a too-big frame. “What … what’s wrong with me?” She lay back, exhausted.
Walker looked grim. “I suppose no one told you what happens when you use Diablo.”
Apart from that euphoric feeling of riding with the bullet? The gold-syrup quality of time and space that she moved through as gracefully as a swan through a pond?
“The reason you’re in so much pain is that you’ve aged, Miss Alabama.” He sounded perfectly calm. “That’s the price of bonding with Diablo. For every man’s life taken by the Devil’s Revolver, one year is taken off yours.”
Hettie’s stomach turned, and her vision grew hazy. She couldn’t have heard that right. She ran a shaking hand through her hair and stared at her fingers. “My hair’s still short. And my nails, too.”
“The curse doesn’t change time, just age.” Walker stood. “If it had changed time, you’d be dead of starvation.”
“How do I reverse it?”
He fixed his hard gaze on her. “You can’t take back your life any more than you can bring back the men you killed.”
She pressed a fist to her lips, nauseated. She’d killed three men with Diablo. Lost three years of her own life. She touched her face, wondered what three years would have done to her. From seventeen to twenty in days … would she still look the same?
Walker toyed with a talisman on a chain. He spoke a brief incantation and pocketed the charm. “Tell me about your father,” he said. “Or should I call him Elias Blackthorn?”
She kept her lips clamped tightly against the building pressure in her mouth.
“You did know your father, the man called John Alabama, was a notorious gang leader named Elias Blackthorn, didn’t you?”
Hettie swallowed tightly, trying to stem the words threatening to pour from her mouth. Walker peered at her. “You’re putting up quite a fight against my truthtelling spell, Miss Alabama. Bassett must’ve fixed you up with some serious counterspells.” He uttered a single, dismissive word. The pressure on her throat and tongue eased. “Why don’t we do this the old-fashioned way,” he suggested firmly. “I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”
“What if you don’t like my answers?” She was fully aware that she was alone with this man, weakened and unable to fight. And he had very big hands with some very bruised knuckles.
He shrugged his broad shoulders, and the black duster lifted away from his belt. At least three knives, two sidearms, and a set of brass knuckles glinted menacingly from his waist. “I wouldn’t be too concerned about whether I like them or not. All I want is the truth. Tell me about how you came to possess Diablo.”
If he wanted her dead, he wouldn’t be talking to her now, so she took a chance. “You answer a question for me first. You were the one who saved our necks the night I rescued Ling Tsang in Hawksville, weren’t you? You used the same fake fire spell on the Pinks back there.”
He lifted his chin a fraction. “Wasn’t quite so fake this time.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Same reason you stuck your neck out for a Celestial twice now. I don’t abide by mob rule, and I’m not a fan of lynchings. Besides”—his lips lifted a fraction—“I can’t resist helping a damsel in distress.”
She tamped down her irritation and focused. “And that man Teddy—what do you know about him?”
“Theodore Willis’s been on and off wanted signs for everything from petty theft to battery and murder. He’s been running with the Crowes for nearly a decade. When I ended up in Hawksville looking for your father, I found him working for Boss Smythe.”
“Why were you looking for my pa?”
“I’ll be frank, Miss Alabama. I’m here for Diablo. I’d been hunting down members of the Crowe gang to see what they knew about it. In all the stories I’d heard, it was the Elias Blackthorn after Jed Crowe who’d absconded with the legendary gun. And he supposedly dropped off the face of the earth. But there was another story. One about a Division agent named Jeremiah Bassett who’d chased him across the country and then gave up somewhere in Alabama. I was tailing Shadow Frank when I heard of a Jeremiah Bassett living around those parts. Common enough name, and I’ve dead-ended at other doorsteps before. But then I overheard those boys talking to you at the shooting competition. Miss Hettie Alabama, daughter of one John Alabama, a renowned marksman.” He gave her a sideways look. “In my business, there’s no such thing as coincidence. That’s why I joined the shooting competition at the last minute. I wanted to see what you could do, see if you knew about your pa. And then he went and shot Shadow Frank.” He rubbed his neck. “I knew then I had the right man. Once I sorted things out with the marshal and collected my reward, I came out to your ranch. All I’d planned to do was ask some questions. I had no idea Bassett would be protecting your father. I underestimated him, too. He had me riding out of Newhaven faster than you could say wild-goose chase. That sneak’s probably got an influence spell on the ranch somewhere.”
He sat forward. “Now you answer a question for me. What exactly possessed you to bond with Diablo?”
Hettie rubbed her palms over her knees. Her hands were still bloody. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“You sure about that?” He shook his head. “No better way to ensure a magical artifact sticks with you than by bonding. There’re a lot of men willing to kill for that gun.”
“Including you?”
“You have no idea, do you?” When she didn’t answer, he explained, “The reason Stubbs didn’t kill you for that gun right away is that if he had, a gate to hell would’ve opened up. That’s why it’s called the Devil’s Revolver.”
She stared. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“I don’t joke when it comes to dark magic, and that piece is as dark as they get. It’s best if you hand it over to someone who knows how to deal with it.”
“I won’t give Diablo up,” Hettie said staunchly. “The Crowe gang took my sister and killed my parents, and almost kil
led me, too. Teddy told me they headed south to the border. I need Diablo to get her back.”
One dark eyebrow arched up. “You expect to do that how?”
“Butch Crowe wants Diablo. So I’ll offer him a trade.”
Walker cast his gaze down. He stirred the fire with a long stick. “You can’t do that. That revolver doesn’t belong to the Crowe gang. It never even belonged to Elias Blackthorn.” He drew the stick out of the fire, studying the orange ember at the tip as it crumbled to ash. “I was hired to bring Diablo back to its true maker. He’s a sorcerer in Mexico, goes by the name of Javier Punta.”
Hettie was instantly suspicious. “I thought all mage guns were made by the Kukulos using blood magic.”
He didn’t look impressed by her knowledge. “Blood magic has been a part of many cultures’ magical traditions for centuries. The Kukulos want everyone to believe theirs is the purest and most powerful of the magics, but that’s a lie.”
“So why does this Javier Punta want Diablo?”
The logs in the fire pit collapsed, sending a flurry of brilliant sparks into the air. They ascended from their fiery crucible to fade to nothing in the sky. “He forged the weapon when he was young and foolish. Unfortunately, the weapon was stolen from him and used to cause much pain and suffering. Now he refuses to die until it is back in his hands and he can take it out of the world with him.”
“Why should I believe you?”
He glanced up briefly. “Never said you had to.”
“So you want me to just hand it over to you?”
“That would be easiest, yes.” He smiled briefly, menacingly. “But that’s not going to happen, is it?”
She grew hot beneath the blanket and shivered at the same time. But she refused to be intimidated.
He regarded her thoughtfully with those penetrating blue eyes. “Tell me, what makes you think your sister’s still alive? You’ve … sensed something, haven’t you?”
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