“Okay, then. If you insist.” She turned to her friends. “You guys ready to hear a song?” They all assured her that they were.
Maggie felt the energy she’d learned to harness, the power that Raphael called Shen, boiling up within her. She pressed her hands tightly against her ears, like a petulant child trying to block out a reprimand. Emily, Miss Pembrook, and Kate also covered their ears as Dalton opened her mouth and the crystal clear strains of the song from The Good Book rang out clearly. The faces of the outlaws and the townspeople turned toward her, curious at first, then smiling, and then drowsy, and then their eyelids drifted shut. What happened next reminded Maggie of a YouTube video she’d seen of a bunch of goats that fainted whenever they got excited. One by one villagers and outlaws dropped to their knees and then slumped to the ground as they fell fast asleep. It was amazing.
When they’d been enemies, Maggie had felt jealous of Dalton’s pure, perfect voice, but she was thankful for it now as Crawford wavered in his saddle and then fell off his horse, hitting the ground hard.
When the last of them were down and out, Aimee ran out of an alleyway where she’d been hiding, pulling cotton plugs out of her ears. She was carrying a huge picnic basket that she flipped open, revealing ropes, horse tackle, hair ribbons, belts, and scarves—anything that could be used to tie a person up.
“Quick!” Dalton shouted. “The spell doesn’t last forever!”
Miss Pembrook and Aimee’s mom helped Maggie and Kate tie up the outlaws while Aimee collected their guns and threw them into the watering trough. They had restrained most of the bandits by the time a thunder of hooves announced the arrival of the sentries who’d been posted around the outer perimeter of the town.
“More of them?” Miss Pembrook said with a groan.
“Keep going!” Maggie shouted. “I’ll handle them.” She strode confidently into the center of the street, standing her ground, and glaring at the oncoming outlaws, like an old-west gunfighter at high noon.
As they drew nearer, the man in the lead saw that something was wrong and he reached for his gun. Maggie raised her hand and let go with a Shen blast, giving it everything she had. The energy exploded through her body with so much force that for a second she thought it would rip her apart. A pinkish-white cyclone made of pure fire tore down the middle of the road, cutting through the riders like a buzz saw, blasting them off their horses and leaving them stunned.
“They’ve got dynamite!” one of the bandits yelled. “Shoot ’em—shoot ’em all!”
Maggie felt the world waver and she fell to her knees. Never before had so much Shen flowed through her and it left her depleted, barely able to stay upright. Crawford woke up and struggled to his feet, and then he started ominously toward them. Dalton took a deep breath, preparing to sing again but from behind her a gloved hand snaked around and clapped over her mouth. Crawford’s cohorts were also waking up and those that weren’t tied up were moving in quickly, forming a ring around her and the others.
* * *
With an incredible kung fu sweep, Aimee swept the legs out from under one of the bandits and then brought her heel down on his face with a sickening crunch that left him limp. Another man was coming toward her now, already drawing his gun. Reacting purely from instinct, she kicked it out of his hand. He reached for her, and without even thinking about it, she brought her arms up inside his, forming a triangle with her fingertips. She shot her hands toward his face, the movement hard, fast, and stiff, as if her arms were a couple of switchblades, deflecting groping hands as her outstretched fingers jabbed right into his eyes, blinding him. He fell to his knees with a muffled scream, and Aimee grabbed his head and brought her knee up into it. It sounded like a coconut getting hit with a hammer. Reeling, his head flopped back and he fixed his bloodshot eyes on her. With a smooth motion, she brought her elbow up to shoulder level and smashed it into his face. He biffed into the sand facedown. After that, he didn’t move.
Aimee pushed the hair out of her face and looked down at the man she’d just demolished, and then she reached down, rolled him over, and unbuckled his gun belt.
“That’ll be enough!” bellowed the boss, and when they all looked in his direction, they saw that he was holding a gun to Kate’s head. “Crawford—you and Waylon go untie those men,” he ordered. He looked at Maggie, Anne, Dalton, and Aimee. “Get over here—or I’ll spray her brains all over the street.”
When they were all standing in front of him, he lowered his pistol and looked at Aimee. Unflinching, she returned his stare. “Crawford said those other girls came in last night. Where the hell did you come from?” he demanded.
“From your worst nightmare,” she said.
“Oh—that’s how you want to play it?” he asked. “Well, maybe I’ll blow her head off anyway, just to teach you a lesson.”
As he raised his gun again, a shot rang out and he collapsed in a spray of blood. The outlaws looked around wildly, swinging their guns this way and that, searching for the source of the shot. And then they all heard a sound that made them freeze—the shrill whistle of a train in the distance, getting closer and closer.
“Forget about them,” yelled Crawford, taking charge. “The train’s coming. Waylon and John—keep your guns on these people while we grab that payroll. Then we can get the hell out of here!”
The train rolled into the station in the middle of town, and Maggie, Aimee, and the others watched as the outlaws rushed it and clambered aboard. It was the biggest, blackest train Aimee had ever seen.
“Don’t try anything,” warned one of the men covering them. “First one makes a move gets it right between the eyes.”
“Where’d that gunshot come from, John?” asked the other man, Waylon. “The one that got the boss?”
Before he could answer, Crawford and the other men came running off the train. “There’s nobody on board!” Crawford called out as he hurried over to Aimee and the girls. “And there’s no safe and no payroll.” He looked at them suspiciously. “This is some kinda trick, and I reckon you got something to do with it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Aimee.
“Maybe you ought to have our Western Union man send a wire to Topeka and find out what happened to it,” suggested Emily.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” said Crawford. “Somethin’ funny’s going on here. What kind of train rolls into a station without a soul on board?”
“It’s . . . maybe it’s some kinda ghost train,” ventured Waylon.
“So what do we do now?” asked John.
“We do what the boss told us to do as soon as we got what we came for. We line ’em all up and shoot ’em. Then we take whatever they have that’s worth anything and skedaddle—after we set the town on fire.” He pointed at the girls. “And we start with these newcomers. They gotta be behind this.”
Waylon and John held their rifles on the townsfolk, and Crawford pointed his gun at Aimee. “And we’re going to waste this one first,” he said, aiming his six-shooter at her. But by the time he’d leveled it, she was already gone, watching him from twenty feet away, at the far end of the churchyard.
“What in the hell is going on here?” Crawford shouted as he looked around, clearly spooked.
At that moment, the bells in the church tower began ringing, and everyone looked up in that direction. A man with a bandana covering his face stepped out of an arched opening in the bell tower. He was holding a huge rope (the pull for the bells, Aimee guessed), and as she watched, he let it fall down the side of the building. He then used it to rappel, first down the steep pitch of the slate roof, then over the side and down to the street below, moving with incredible grace. He was dressed in the same garb as their enemies, like an old-west cowboy.
“It’s okay!” Crawford yelled. “He’s one of ours.”
The mystery man heade
d toward them through the drifting dust and gun smoke, and suddenly he started shooting with the expertise of a gunslinger. It took a moment for Aimee to realize he was coming toward her. There was something vaguely familiar about his amazing blue-green eyes but before she could figure out what, she felt rough hands grab her from behind.
“Well, we got us a slippery one, didn’t we!” Waylon said triumphantly as he pulled out his gun and pressed it to Aimee’s temple.
“One down, four to go!” John yelled gleefully.
Aimee heard the shot, so close that it was deafening, and for an instant she thought the outlaw’s gun had gone off, and that she would soon be dead. But then she saw that Waylon now lay motionless on the ground several feet away.
Crawford turned his six-shooter on the enigmatic gunslinger. “Stay back!” he shouted.
“No,” the masked man responded simply, and he ran forward with incredible speed. Before Crawford could pull the trigger, the stranger deflected the gun with one hand and shoved it upward, slamming the enemy in the face with his own weapon. Crawford fell to his back, blood drizzling out of his nose, unconscious.
“Thank you,” Aimee said to him, little breathlessly.
The gunslinger’s eyes glinted as he tipped his hat to her and then continued the battle. Two minutes and a few gunshots later, it was all over. A cheer went up from the citizens of Middleburg. Someone ran to the jail to release the sheriff, who the bandits had locked up, and he quickly took control. He ordered several men to round up the surviving outlaws and lock them up.
Aimee and Maggie looked at each other wearily. “Great job, Aimes,” said Maggie.
“You too,” Aimee replied.
Everyone nodded except Dalton, who seemed distracted. She was looking at a tall man coming out of the crowd, and he was looking back at her, too. Slowly, they began to move toward one another. As he approached, Aimee noticed that his skin was the same caramel shade as Dalton’s and his eyes were two different colors—one amber and the other blue, just like Lily Rose’s. He put a gentle hand on Dalton’s shoulder.
“I heard your song, child,” he said. “It was beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Dalton responded softly.
“The world needs songs like that,” he added, his voice resonant and warm. “I hope you’ll keep on singing it.”
“I will,” Dalton promised, gazing up at him in awe.
He smiled brightly, squeezed her shoulder, and pulled a gold watch out of his vest pocket. After glancing at it, he headed off into the crowd, whistling Dalton’s song as he went.
Emily was also smiling. “I think it’s safe to leave now,” she said to Aimee. “You really think you can get us back home?”
“I do,” Aimee replied confidently. “But I wanted to thank him.”
“Who?” Dalton asked.
“The man who came down from the church tower. The . . . gunslinger. He saved us!”
“Then turn around,” Kate said. “He’s right behind you.”
Aimee turned and looked into that awesome pair of beautiful blue-green eyes, staring down at her from beneath the brim of a cowboy hat. As the young man came closer he pulled the bandana down from his face and smiled at her.
She offered him her hand. “We can’t thank you enough,” she said. “My friends and I will be eternally grateful. I’m Aimee.”
His smile faded. “My pleasure, ma’am,” he said quietly. She shook his hand and then went to join her mom and the others.
* * *
Maggie couldn’t believe it. “Raphael?” she said, moving quickly to his side. “How . . . we all thought you were dead. Where have you been all this time?”
“I’ve been traveling,” Raphael told her. And she could see that he had. His face was sunburned, crisscrossed with cuts, and mottled with bruises. There was a scab and a bump on his nose, as if it had been broken. He also looked as if he’d grown an inch or so since she’d last seen him.
Without thinking, she hurled herself into his arms and pressed her face against his chest. After a moment, he gently moved her away and she saw the pain in his eyes.
“She still doesn’t know me,” he said.
Maggie felt a familiar ache of sadness rising within her. So many things had changed, but apparently one thing hadn’t: Raphael was still hung up on Aimee. “You really love her, don’t you?” asked Maggie.
“I really do.”
“Give her time. She’s . . . things are starting to come back to her. Maybe when we get back to our Middleburg—”
But Raphael was shaking his head. There was a hardness in him now that broke her heart.
“I’m not going with you,” he told her. “I’ve got one more stop to make.” He glanced at the other girls and tilted his hat to them and then he turned away and walked quickly to the eerie black train. He didn’t look back as he boarded it.
* * *
In all his years of martial arts training and practice, Zhai had never experienced an assault like this. Li’s fists slipped through his defenses like water through a strainer, and the resulting blows came faster than Zhai could block or counter them. It seemed that by the time one strike ended the next had already begun. With great effort, he managed to jam the ring shard into his pocket and land one glancing strike before Li forced his retreat.
He threw himself backward over his father’s desk and hit the floor behind it with a thud. He rolled away as fast as he could, heading for the window. Li hopped effortlessly onto the desk and looked down at him, calm and amused.
Zhai’s father shouted for them to stop fighting, while Weston backed into a corner and stayed there, his hands clasped nervously together.
Li laughed and kicked a coffee cup off the desktop, toward Zhai, who smashed it with a quick blow that sent the broken pieces exploding across the room. But it was only a distraction, and Li leaped after it, barraging Zhai with an unending series of kicks and punches. Zhai watched her elbows and her knees and managed to block most of her attacks. He was even able to land a blow to her chin that split her lip. She paused and put a finger to her mouth and when it came away bloody, a pouty little-girl look crossed her face. It reminded Zhai of their childhood together, and he almost turned and walked away. Then, with a savage snarl, she was on him again, her assault more furious than before.
Zhai fought on: moving, retreating, circling, getting in a quick punch here or a leg kick there, and then retreating again. Finally, Li got a little too reckless, and he managed to catch her with a kick to the knee. She groaned with pain as her leg buckled beneath her. Instinct took over, and for an instant, the person before Zhai was not his sister, not a girl, just a deadly adversary he had to overcome. He lunged forward and caught her in the side of the head with an elbow. She collapsed to the carpet instantly.
Panting, Zhai looked down at her and passed his hand across his face. He had no idea if he was wiping away sweat or blood, and it didn’t matter. He understood that she had betrayed him and that she was the enemy. He still had the ring shard—that was all that mattered now.
He glanced at his father and then at Weston. Then he headed for the door.
“Zhai, look out!” Weston shouted and pointed behind him.
Zhai turned to find that Li had sprung to her feet and grabbed a wooden chair, and she was charging him with it. He barely managed to throw up a Bong Sau in time to block it and keep from getting his head bashed in. The chair shattered against his arms and pieces of it skittered across the carpet. In each hand, Li still held two jagged pieces of the chair like two deadly vampire-slaying stakes, and she advanced on Zhai.
She stabbed at him with one stake while swinging at his head with the other. He managed to block both strikes at once, and then to block two more after that.
“Leave him alone, you liar!” Weston said, and he shuffled toward Li with all the fero
city of a librarian. She swept his legs out from under him, and he landed on his backside with a thump.
Zhai was about to make use of her distraction when the double doors behind him burst open. What now? he thought. Before he could turn, someone grabbed his arms from behind.
“Get the shard, now!” It was Lotus’s voice, sharp and brittle—and she had a strength he never would have believed. Li rushed forward and thrust her hand into Zhai’s pocket as he struggled to get free.
“Take it to them,” Lotus commanded. “Go! I’ll take care of Zhai.”
Li looked at Zhai, a flicker of concern clouding her eyes for a moment. And then she dashed out the door and down the hall. Weston charged after her.
Zhai bucked, trying to break free of Lotus’s grip.
“And as for you, stepson,” Lotus said softly, “you have been a nuisance for far too long,”
Zhai finally managed to jerk away, and he spun to face her. She had already picked up one of the sharp stakes that Li had discarded. With a wicked gleam in her eye, she advanced on Zhai.
“Lotus—enough!” Cheung shouted, moving toward her. “I will not let you harm my son.”
“Shut up,” she ordered him. “You have quite outlived your usefulness!”
The words seemed to strike Zhai’s father like a slap to the face. He stopped in his tracks as Lotus advanced on Zhai. When Zhai tried to get past her she feigned a sweep, then spun and hit him with a crescent kick to the face. It brought him to his knees and knocked him back against the wall. She advanced, the stake in her hand. He tried to throw up a Bong Sau, but in one deft move she trapped his arms and brought the sharp wooden point up to his throat. Just a little pressure was all it would take to drive it up into Zhai’s brain.
“It’s really too bad,” Lotus whispered. “If you hadn’t been corrupted by Chin you might have made a good Snake—instead of just a mediocre stepson. And now, you must die.”
Zhai lashed out with all his strength, but her arms were as powerful as a pair of constricting pythons. Just as the stake broke the skin of his neck, however, someone pulled Lotus off him.
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