The suns rode high in the sky, and Jonah leaned his hat forward to keep the glare from his eyes. Tommy traded in his empty threats for cries of mercy, but the Peacemaker paid him no mind, treading onward down the roads of Dayton with a ringing of spurs. Folk moved through the roads, going about their business slow and lethargic in the noon heat. The town never really came alive until the evening cooled the land.

       After a time, Tommy fell silent completely, and awhile after that, a young boy called out to Jonah. “Excuse me! I have a question!”

       The Peacemaker looked to the boy, maybe ten years old, clothes crisp and clean. He stood with a yellow-haired girl about his age in a blue dress beneath the awning of the general store. Jonah leaned his head back, brow ruffled. “Ain’t you two supposed to be in school?”

       The girl spoke. “We’re not from here.”

       “Yeah?” He asked. “Where you from, then?”

       “We’re going to Oak Creek,” the boy answered, some excitement on his voice.

       “You and everybody else,” Jonah laughed, keeping his grip on Tommy’s chains. “Go on, ask your question. It’s quick, I hope.”

       “Why do vultures fly in circles?” The girl asked.

       Jonah looked her right in the eyes and told her, “Well, that’s easy. They start out flyin’ in a straight line, see, each one of ‘em chasin’ the other. Problem is, they got a bad sense of direction. One of ‘em starts goin’ crooked, they go ‘round in circles until one of ‘em wises up.”

       Frowning, the girl looked to the boy, then back to Jonah. “That sounds like something daddy says when he ain’t got a real answer.”

       “Smart girl!” Jonah laughed again, his smile touching his eyes. “You got any better ideas?”

       “I told her,” the boy spoke up, derision in his words, “that they circle over what they wanna eat.”

       She stomped her foot. “And I told him that makes no sense! Vultures eat dead stuff, why they gotta circle over it? It ain’t going anywhere, just eat it!”

       Jonah pointed at the girl. “You almost got it. Vultures eat the dead. So why would they circle around, watchin’ it for awhile?”

       She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

       “Come on, Jonah,” Tommy whined pitifully. “If you’re puttin’ me in a cell, can we get it over with? It’s hotter than the devil’s asshole out here.”

       Jonah thumped the chained man on the head with the back of his hand. “Tommy, you don’t talk like that in front of a lady. I’m tryin’ to teach the girl somethin’, mind yourself.”

       The Peacemaker looked to the girl again. “Your daddy hunt?”

       “Yeah,” the boy answered for her.

       “Good. Say your daddy shot a bear.”

       “Daddy never shot a bear,” the girl said.

       “Say he did,” Jonah repeated. “He put a bullet right in some big ol’ bear. It stops movin’ around, ain’t makin’ any noise, but you don’t wanna run right up to it. It might not be dead after all. It might sit up and knock your head off your shoulders.”

       The girl jumped back in. “So you watch it awhile and make sure it ain’t breathing. Right?”

       “Could shoot it again for good measure,” the boy shrugged.

       The Peacemaker laughed. “Boy, you ever seen a bird with a gun? What they gonna shoot it with?”

       “Then how’d they shoot the bear in the first place?”

       “Vultures don’t kill nothin’ on their own,” Jonah answered. “They let the desert do it for ‘em, but sometimes the desert don’t get the job done. Those vultures see a bobcat layin’ in the desert, they don’t know if it’s dead or just thirsty unless they watch it for awhile. If they don’t wait and that bobcat ain’t dead, it’s liable to eat the bird instead of the other way around.”

       “That makes sense,” the girl said, “but why would they fly circles around a town? We looked around for awhile, we couldn’t find any dead things here.”

       Jonah looked skyward, peering past the brim of his hat. Far above, dozens of creatures flew in slow, lazy circles on wings long and black against the glare of the suns, but the Peacemaker didn’t think they looked much like birds. Birds are supposed cast shadows.

       Tommy looked up, too.

       Tommy went pale.

       Jonah looked back to the children, speaking in a voice too calm. “You two know where the Peacemaker building is in this town?”

       The boy nodded, eyes becoming saucers. “What’s wrong?”

       As they spoke, Tommy began to whimper, his voice cracking with panic. “Those ain’t vultures, Jonah. Those ain’t vultures! Give me my gun! Oh God, Jonah, give me my gun or I’m gonna die!”

       “It’ll be alright,” Jonah assured the boy, words coming more rapidly. “I need you to run to the Peacemakers, quick as you can. Tell ‘em Jonah needs rifles in the sky. Young lady, you know what a crier does?”

       She nodded. “Cries, I think.”

       “You’re gonna be my crier, alright?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Run up and back, tell folk to get inside with their heads down or devils take ‘em. You understand that?”

       Both nodded their heads a second time in stunned silence.

       Jonah looked skyward again. The creatures flew faster, their circle descending with every revolution, drawing their wings in as if about to dive. Steel in his voice, the Peacemaker shouted at the children. “Get goin’!”

       The children ran, one in either direction, the girl screaming about devils, the boy in silence. Jonah grabbed Tommy by the collar, spinning the whimpering man around to face him. “You listen to me, Tommy. I can’t shoot when I’m holdin’ you, can I? I’m gonna let go of you, and you’re gonna sit down right here and you ain’t gonna move. You hear me?”

       “Yeah,” Tommy answered, frightened and breathless.

       “If you try to run, I’m gonna shoot you, and don’t think I won’t. Understand?”

       “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.”

       Jonah let go of the man. Tommy ran. Jonah pulled his revolver and shot Tommy in the leg.

       Tommy screamed. Tommy fell.

       “I told you I was gonna! Now you’re wasting my damn time!” Jonah shouted. He grabbed Tommy’s collar, dragged him through the dirt, opened the door to the general store, and threw him inside. Jonah called to the man behind the counter, “You got a gun?”

       The fellow and his teenage boy beside him gawked at the scene for a moment, a Peacemaker throwing a bleeding man through his door, but gathered his wits and answered. “Yeah. I got guns.”

       “You ever kill a man?”

       “No,” he said, “but I shot a man what tried to rob me once.”

       Outside, the creatures screamed murder, a sound that made blood run cold.

       “Good,” Jonah said. “If he tries to run, shoot him in the other leg.”

       The Peacemaker stepped back out, closing the door behind. The creatures had abandoned their circle, tucking their wings and diving like stones.

       They screamed again. Though the devils had wings, they were no birds. Their bald heads had faces not too unlike men, lips thin and noses squashed, pointed ears pinned against the sides of their round heads. As they neared the ground, they spread their wings wide, slowing their descent and setting themselves upright again. At the end of powerful legs, talons long and sharp spread wide, reaching to tear Jonah apart, and it seemed they didn’t care much for anything but Jonah himself.

       The Peacemaker shot the one closest through the heart. His second shot tore up the wing of a second devil. His third shot took one through the eye.

       If the little girl’s cry of devils hadn’t set the townsfolk alight, Jonah’s gunfire and the devils themselves sure did. The folk in the road scattered, some running for the hills, others ducking into whichever door was closest, regardless of whether they belonged there or not.

       Jonah fired the two rounds left in his revolver, one shot taking a devil in the belly, the other flying wide and kissing clouds. Though their dead fell limp to the ground, the devils kept coming. The Peacemaker popped the cylinder on his gun, tossed empty shells to the ground, grabbed a handful of rounds from his pocket and began reloading. The creatures were getting closer.

       He slammed the cylinder in place, rose his hand to take a shot, but a devil’s sharp talons grabbed him around his right arm. It beat its wings, dragging him up onto his toes. It threatened to lift the bigger man right up into the sky, but he grabbed Tommy’s gun from his belt with his left, a sand-beaten snub-nosed thing, and blew the devil’s brains onto the road.

       The creature flowed around Jonah like water, their numbers too much for just one man, but they didn’t try to kill him. Some of them grabbed and pulled and pushed, but most went right by, flying for the door and windows of the general store.

       One round after the other, Jonah emptied Tommy’s gun to make himself some space, taking great care not to put bullets into folks’ houses, firing into the devils’ boney chests. When the chamber ran empty, he threw it to the ground. The devils clawed and screamed at the general store, no hands to work the knob or shutters, but their talons were sharp and strong enough that they’d make short work of the wood and glass alike if left to it.

       The shop shutters opened on either side of the door, the noses of a pair of shotguns peeked out, and the shopkeep and his son blew a couple devils to the grace. Just as quick as they opened, the shutters slammed shut again.

       The creatures all screamed in frenzy, and they winged back into the sky to regroup.

       Jonah grabbed one of the devils by the leg as it passed, dragged it to the ground, and gave its head a new hole. He laughed as the rest of them flew on. “You’d think even dumb animals can understand a man bein’ a little territorial!”

       Jonah fired skyward and killed another. Dozens remained, and half their number wheeled back, flying right for the Peacemaker with talons wide. One grabbed his hat and tore it from his head. He shot it through the heart, caught his hat before it hit the ground, and set it right back on his head. Talons from another raked his shoulder, tearing a line right through his duster, drawing blood. Jonah pulled away, put a bullet through its skull, and kept moving to keep the flock chasing, running low and quick.

       Gunfire erupted further up the road, each shot followed by the click of a working lever in the hands of a pair of Peacemakers, their badges glinting in the sunlight. Devils fell out of the sky with each blast.

       Jonah emptied the last round from his revolver. A devil had grabbed his arm again, making the shot go wild. His free hand grabbed the knife he had strapped to his leg and stuck the bird in the belly. Still it tried to drag him into the sky, so Jonah pulled down hard on that knife, tearing through the devil’s gut until its wings stopped beating and its talons fell away, the creature falling to the ground with wails of agony. Another devil grabbed the tail of Jonah’s duster. It died just the same.

       ”Jonah,” a woman called out between gunfire, “you alright?”

       ”Clean as a candlewick.”

       ”Sweetheart, I don’t even know what that means.”

       ”Good,” he laughed. “Keep shootin’.”

       The devils, seeing their demise, abandoned their rally. All of them turned with a cry and flew as hard as their wings could go.

       Jonah flipped open the cylinder of his six iron, dumped the still-hot brass into his hand, and popped one into his mouth. He threw the rest to the ground, grabbed a pinch of powder from the pouch at his waist, and tossed that in his mouth, too. He rolled the stuff around his tongue, mixing powder and the residue of sulfur and niter from the shell with spit, then swallowed it down, holding the brass between his teeth so it wouldn’t go down with the rest.

       The devils had begun to disappear into the suns’ radiance as Jonah reloaded his revolver, slow and methodical. Slamming the cylinder home, he raised the gun and fired six times, one round right after the next. The shots sounded wrong, muffled and warped, and the fire spouting from the chamber seeming to move half as quick as it should.

       As the bullets flew, they left a rippled trail in the air like a boat down a river. Though Jonah aimed at nothing in particular, each round chose it owns path, and though the devils were little more than black spots on the horizon, six of them dropped dead out of the sky.

       The woman stepped up beside Jonah, the smoking barrel of her repeater leaned up against her shoulder. Hair red and boots tall, she wore a duster that matched his own. “You always were a show-off. They were leavin’ on their own, you know.”

       ”Six less if they decide to come back.”

       ”Looks like they got your shoulder.”

       ”Sure did.”

       ”It hurt?”

       ”Little bit. Ain’t bad.” Jonah holstered his gun, turning back to the general store. “Come on, I got a friend you should meet.”

       She eyed him, brow narrow. “I don’t much like your friends.”

       ”Neither do I. That’s half the fun.”

I haven’t decided what I want to work on in the meantime. I might move on to drafting the next book in that series, or I might take a break from it and put more work into that Peacemaker concept.

One thing I do need to keep in mind is the fact that if I go the self-publishing route, I need to commission cover art. If you know any artists that do that kind of work, do let me know. I’m not looking to hire someone right now, but I am shopping around well in advance.

Enjoy it, or don’t! There isn’t much plot here, just me jamming on an idea and seeing if I have the chops to take on such a setting.

—

    A man sat at the bar alone, drinking blackberry brandy. He tapped a cigarette clean in the ashtray beside his wide-brimmed hat, and old smoke yellowed his mustache. Bearback Shuffle played on the piano, while folk of all sorts played cards over drinks and the saloon’s free lunch of okra and chicken sausages. Only a cool breeze passing through it swinging doors and window shutters, the hot summer sun having the decency to keep itself outside.

    “You addin’ another mile to your tab tonight, Jonah?”

    The man took a leather pouch from inside his duster, setting it on the bar. “No, ma’am.”

    “Oh, come on,” the barkeep frowned. “You’re gonna make me weigh powder again?”

    “I had to do it.” Jonah took a drink. “Only fair you got to.”

    “I’d argue with you,” she replied, “but I’ll take the powder over nothing. How about I skim a little extra for my time?”

    Laughing, Jonah shook his head. “I’m gonna say no on account of those shakes you get ‘round powder. Seems you always find a little extra on floor anyway.”

    The barkeep laid a hand over her heart, shock on her face. “Are you accusing me of being a thief, Jonah?”

    “Truths ain’t accusations, Honey.” He waved his glass in the woman’s direction. “Get weighin’ or that powder and I are gonna walk.”

    Snatching the satchel, the barkeep walked to her scales. Another, shorter man sat down on the stool beside Jonah, he had a broad face and smelled of sweat and fire. “Been awhile.”

    Jonah looked at him out of the corner of his eye and sighed. “You’re not supposed to be here, Tommy. What do you want? And take your damn hat off.”

    “I like my hat right where it is.” Tommy looked Jonah up and down, chuckles rolling from his throat. “Damn, Jonah. You used to be pretty.”

    “You used to be ugly.” Jonah took the man’s hat from his head, setting it on the bar. “Ugly now, too.”

    The man shrugged, leaning one arm on the bar. “I got a job for you”

    “I ain’t that kind of man anymore, Tommy.”

    “A man don’t change overnight.”

    “Been a lot more than a night.”

    “Ain’t been that long.”

    “Long enough.”

    ”Alright,” Tommy laughed. “You ain’t that kind of man. What kind of man does that make you, then?”

    Jonah took a drink. “Righteous.”

    Tommy laughed harder. “Listen to you! Don’t tell me you found God, brother.”

    Then Jonah laughed, too. “Not that righteous.”

    Honey walked back to the bar, setting Jonah’s pouch of powder in his hand. “This fellow giving you trouble, Jonah?”

    “He’s giving me trouble alright,” he nodded, “but not the sort of trouble callin’ for gutshot. He’s a friend of sorts. He’ll take a whisky on me. Make it a tall one, ma’am.”

    “Sure thing,” she answered, pulling a glass from beneath the bar before walking to the back still.

    “Buying me a drink? That mean you want the job?” Tommy asked.

    “Nope.”

    “Then what’s the drink for?”

    “Can’t a man be friendly?”

    Tommy shrugged. “I just mean it’s a little suspicious, is all. Turning down a job, then buyin’ a man a drink. Who says you ain’t havin’ her poison me?”

    “Nobody poisons nobody,” Jonah said, eyeing the other man weirdly. “That kind of thing doesn’t happen, Tommy. Easier to put a bullet in you if I wanted you dead. That’s the problem with these jobs. Makes you crazy. Speakin’ of crazy, I read a crazy thing the other day.”

    “Yeah? What’s that?”

    “Telegram came down from Janesville,” Jonah explained. “Some folk living out at Cripple Canyon turned up dead. Word is the Bootknives had somethin’ to do with it. The Peacemakers are offering two hundred bearbacks to anybody with a little information.”

    Honey set Tommy’s whisky on the bar.

    Tommy didn’t touch it. He leaned forward, speaking quietly to Jonah, eyes narrowed. “So what? You gonna turn me in?”

    “Ain’t sayin’ I’m gonna turn you in.”

    “Then what are you saying?”

    Jonah opened his coat, and Tommy’s eyes went to the revolver strapped to the man’s side. Quieter still, Tommy asked, “You’re gonna shoot me?”

    “Look a little higher, Tommy.”

    Tommy looked up, gaze settling on the silver badge pinned to Jonah’s chest: an angel holding a revolver in her right hand, an olive branch in the left. He read the writing inscribed upon it and his eyes went wide.

Peacemaker
#176
J. Trapper

    Jonah took Tommy’s whisky, smashing the glass over the man’s head. He jumped to his feet, kicked Tommy’s stool out from under him, and Tommy fell straight down, his head cracking against the wooden bartop. The saloon burst into screaming, the piano’s sweet music ending with a discordant twang.

    “Don’t anybody worry,” Jonah called out, pinning Tommy to the ground with a knee set in the man’s spine, locking irons around his wrists. “Peacemaker business, you understand. Get back to your drinks.”

    Tommy struggled, blood rolling from a slice under his right eye. “Jonah, you son of a bitch! You can’t do this to me!”

    “Seems I can.”

    “We’ve got your wife!” Tommy shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. “You hear that? We got your wife! Shoulda taken the job, Jonah!”

    “You ain’t got my wife.”

    “Yeah?” Tommy laughed, manic. “You think we don’t?”

    Jonah stood, pulling up on the chains that held the other man, heaving him to his feet. “I know you don’t.”

    “What makes you say that, huh?” Tommy yelled. “You don’t know shit.”

    “I know you don’t,” Jonah said, “because I’ve seen my wife’s shootin’.”

    Twisting Tommy’s arms high against his back, Jonah took his hat off the bar, set it on his head, and began to escort the man out of the saloon. Honey called him back. “I expect you to pay for that drink, Jonah. The glass, too.”

    “Check the floor, ma’am.”

      I heard its voice, screaming in my head.

      I AM HUNGRY, MORTAL THING. I WILL TEAR THE FLESH FROM YOUR BONES. I WILL FEAST ON YOUR MEAT. I WILL BATHE IN YOUR RED, RED BLOOD. COME CLOSER. I CAN SMELL YOU.

      COME CLOSER.

      COME CLOSER.

      The hound lived, no matter how much I wished otherwise. The row of spines along its back twitched with fury, each of them oozing venom. Taut muscles writhed beneath coarsely furred skin. Wound wire held its maw shut. Heavy iron chains bound its legs. It couldn’t rise. It couldn’t hurt me anymore. I still feared it with all of my heart.

      I SMELL IT. I WANT IT. UNBIND ME.

      COME CLOSER.

      My master stood behind me. I could not look at him as he spoke, too terrified of the demon to look away from it. His voice rolled like thunder. “This is your last chance, Varin. I won’t give you another.”

      I tried to answer or even offer a nod of my head. I couldn’t do either. My words were caught in my throat. The muscles in my neck were too tense. I wanted to reach for the knife on my belt, to do what I needed to do, but I couldn’t. My fingers trembled and I could not stop them.

      FREE ME. GIVE ME WHAT IS MINE.

      My master moved beside me and stooped next to my ear. I knew he spoke softly, but his words were as clear as if he were shouting. “Do it, Varin, or I will abandon you here and now. Do it and you will have the power to live, to save, to protect. If you do not, you will be a gutter rat again, no better than you ever were. Do it.”

      I gripped the handle of my knife.

      My master rose again. He commanded me, “Do it!”

      I inched toward the hound. Its writhing grew more furious, its spines undulating in a nightmarish rhythm.

      I WANT YOUR BLOOD. YOUR BLOOD IS MINE.

      “No,” I breathed. “Yours is mine.”

      The hound thrashed, but not long. I drew my knife and slit its narrow throat in one quick, brutal motion. Black arterial blood poured forth. It tried to howl through the bindings, but it could not. Its howling breaths just boiled out of the fresh wound.

      “Good.” My master approved. “Now finish it.”

      I wiped the blood from my knife in the hound’s matted coat and replaced it upon my belt. The beast’s movements were slowing. I cupped my hands beneath its gaping throat, letting its black blood pool in my hands.

      MY BROTHERS WILL COME FOR YOU, MORTAL THING. YOU WILL DIE. YOU WILL BE MEAT FOR THE UNENDING FEAST. THEY WANT YOUR EYES, PITIFUL ELF.

      YOUR EYES ARE OURS.

      I brought my hands to my lips. The blood smelled rancid. My limbs began trembling again.

      “Don’t think about it,” my master barked. “Just do it. Now.”

      I squeezed my eyes shut. I took a deep, calming breath. I drank.

      YOU ARE… you are…

      The hound’s voice faded. Thousands took its place. The wordless, mindless screams of the damned. Pain and anger and sorrow and hunger and everything base and wrong. I could not speak. I could not think. Every thought I formed in my mind was washed down the river of voices.

      MINE. One screamed. Then another echoed it. And then another. HE IS MINE.

      BLOOD FOR BLOOD. MINE BY RIGHT.

      One gibbering voice screamed above the others. FEAST. FEAST ON THE FLESH. SNAP THE BONES AND DRINK THE MARROW. BATHE IN BLOOD.

      Then that voice was drowned by the screaming masses again. It was a physical weight on my body, clawing at my skin and pulling me under. The voices wrapped themselves around my limbs and throat. They dragged me down with rough, vicious brutality.

      Help me, I tried to scream to my master. Help me! The words didn’t come. They echoed in my mind, joined the din, and washed downriver like every other thought.

      Then I felt a pair of small, soft hands on one of mine. A woman whispered in my ear, sweet and kind. “You aren’t lost yet, but you will be if you aren’t careful. Don’t think about them. Hold onto me.”

      As warm and as delicate as her fingers felt on mine, she began lifting me away from the pull of the damned and out of their reach. The clawed limbs at my throat fell away, but they held fast around my waist and legs.

      “Hold onto me,” she repeated. “I can help you, but not if you give yourself to them.”

      I clasped my other hand over hers, and we were one. She lifted me from the current. The voices left me. The woman released my hands and took me in her arms. I fell against her. I wept, sobbing the words, “I thought I was going to die. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

      She laid her head against mine as I buried my face in her shoulder. She stroked my hair and whispered, “It is not over yet. Your master has inflicted a terrible pain upon you. I have to leave you now, but when the pain becomes too much for you to bear, I will come for you again.”

      “No,” I gasped, my words rolling out as my body was wracked with sobs. I begged, small and pitiful. “Stay with me. Please. I need you. They’ll kill me. Please.”

      She took my face in her hands and tilted my head up to look at her. Long, golden hair like rays of sunlight framed a slender face with bright blue eyes. I met her warm gaze and could not look away. I could see all the stars of the night sky in the blacks of her eyes. Love, the purest love I’d ever felt in my life, welled in my heart. She must have been a goddess. No one else could have been as wonderful as the woman that held me then.

      “You are very strong, Varin.” The most wondrous smile I’d ever seen appeared, full of genuine pride and joy. “You will not need me again for a very long time. But when the time comes that you do, just call my name. I will be there.”

      She began to fade, floating away like motes of dust on the wind. I threw myself against her and held her tight. It did no good. She fell away from my arms and was gone.

      “I don’t know your name,” I sobbed. “How do I call you? I don’t know your name!”

      Her voice rang in my mind. You will when it’s time. Be strong, Varin. You will change, now.

      And then I heard the hound again. Not as a voice, but as a memory.

      YOUR EYES ARE OURS.

      Pain. Pain wracked my body. My head felt like someone had worked a wedge into my skull. It hammered through bone, inch by agonizing inch. My entire body tensed and I fell to the ground, arms and legs curling beneath me as if the stiffness of death had taken hold. My eyes burned with fire and they throbbed within their sockets, threatening to burst with every beat of my heart.

      The physical pain tore me out of the depths of my mind long enough to think of looking to my master for help. I opened my eyes to seek him out.

      I saw nothing. Empty, gray darkness. I felt thick moisture rolling down my cheeks. The wind blew. I felt raw pain inside of the sockets where my eyes should have been.

      I screamed my throat hoarse and collapsed to the earth again, my limbs refusing to obey my demands to claw at my face and check for my eyes. I could feel nothing but pain and raw, uncontrollable terror. My body convulsed. My gut heaved, and I emptied it into the dirt beneath me.

      Then the pain stopped. My screams stopped. Everything stopped. Blackness, body and mind.

      Gone.

      The moon still hung heavy in the sky when I awoke. I could see it above. The demon hadn’t taken my eyes. It hadn’t blinded me. I blinked a few times, just to be sure.

      I tasted wood and steel on my tongue. I looked down from the sky, and my master withdrew the handle of his boot knife from my mouth. My face twisted, confused.

      “You had a seizure,” he explained. He slid the knife away and spoke as if nothing unusual at all had happened. “You just woke from it. You weren’t out long.”

      “I couldn’t see.” I laughed. The delirious sort of laugh, where your mind isn’t sure what else to do. “The hound told me it would take my eyes. I thought it did.”

      My master made a motion with his head. I followed his gaze. It led me to the hound.

      Its eyes were gone. Mine sat in their place.

      My master looked between me and the hound. His voice filled with a calming patience, but it only worked so well. His words were always hard and coarse no matter how hard he tried otherwise. Even when he tried to be kind, barely restrained raged boiled somewhere behind his words. He said to me, “Don’t be surprised. You’ve seen my eyes. How did you think I got them?”

      I tore my gaze from the hound, from my eyes in its head, and looked to my master. He had the amber eyes of a beast, too, wolfish and piercing. The realization did make me feel foolish. Every time I looked at him, and every time he looked at me, I should have seen the change that would come. I still felt like I’d been misled, like he could have told me what to expect.

     “You didn’t tell me what would happen. Why didn’t you warn me?”

      Even as we conversed, my master was a man at work. He took a leather pouch from his belt. He loosened the strings that held it closed and stepped to stand over the dead demon. He turned the pouch over. A thick cloud of silver dust cascaded forth from its mouth. The powder drifted down to the demon, unaffected by the night wind, and spread across its corpse in an unnatural uniformity, clinging to its furred flesh without a single mote falling astray to the earth below.

     My master continued on, his tone even and measured. “It is an unexplainable experience. There are no words to describe becoming, in an instant, aware of every demon that lives and them becoming aware of you in turn. It isn’t a thing meant for mortals and so our minds make of it what it will. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes it is terrible. Sometimes it is both. Nothing I could say about it would prepare you for what you would experience. Nothing I could say could do the awakening justice.”

     “It felt like I was drowning,” I explained. Every muscle in my body trembled as I said it. A creeping fear in the back of my head made me wonder if speaking it aloud would invoke the dream again, but the river of souls didn’t return. “Will they come again?”

     “Mine felt like an open grave, welcoming me into the earth’s embrace. Terrifying, yes, but not unpleasant. My master explained his to me as an encroaching avalanche, a slow but inevitable death. His was, perhaps, the most accurate.”

     He tethered the empty pouch to his belt. He dipped his fingers into a pocket. He withdrew a gray-black stone and a small loop of dull steel. He struck them together in a sharp, backhand motion of his fist. A spray of sparks lit up the night and rained down onto the hound.

     The silvered dust leaped to life, igniting in a slow, rolling fire. Though it burned white hot, bright enough to sear my new vision if I looked directly at it, tongues of flame did not lash and leap at the air like a campfire would. The steady fire burned the demon away, layer by layer, inch by inch, eroding it like sugar in water. The powder burned bright, but it did not burn away. It clung to charred flesh, even as it all fell to ash.

     My master watched the pyre. He spoke over the crackles and pops of flame. “When the blood was fresh, you heard them more loudly than you ever will again. But the blood is a part of you now. The demons are your kin. You hear them right now, but as irrelevant murmurings in the back of your mind, no more meaningful than a cricket’s chittering. As you grow older, the blood will grow stronger. They will grow louder.”

     The burning corpse looked more beautiful than it had any right, white purity smothering black corruption. Slowly, one inch at a time, I rose to my feet. I felt weak and unsteady, but laying in the dirt a few short feet from where I’d emptied my gut didn’t hold much appeal.

     He continued. “One day the demon’s blood in your veins will grow too strong. The cries of the abyss will grow too loud. Whoever you name your apprentice in the coming years will kill you before you fall, before you condemn your soul to them. As you will one day do for me.”

      I suddenly wished I hadn’t bothered to stand. I knew how the demon hunters worked. I knew apprentices killed their masters. It was mercy, not murder, just one more protection against a lurking darkness. I knew that. The slaying was a tradition as old as the awakening. I knew it and accepted it long before I drank the blood, but hearing my master explain it again just then, so soon after my initiation, unsettled me more than it ever had before.

      “Master,” I started to protest. The older man cut me off.

      “You are minari now, Varin.” He turned away from the corpse, now burnt to mere cinders. With nothing left to cling to, the powder tumbled to the earth, ceased its burning, and lost its silver sheen, its power waning. Inert and boring and entirely absent of magic, nothing more than the dust that gathered on an untended mantle. My master placed his hand on my shoulder and gripped it. “We are blood kin now. Brothers. Equals. I’m not your master anymore. You call me by name. To you, I am Tullius.”

      “Tullius.” I said the name out loud, testing how it felt upon my tongue. It felt wrong, like waking one morning and deciding to call your mother and father by their true names. You didn’t do it. It wasn’t right. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, it was unlikely that my master would allow me to do any different. So I said the name again. “Alright. Tullius.”

      “Let’s go.” He spoke the words as an order. He didn’t want me to address him as master anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t my superior. He still expected me to obey him regardless of name or title. He walked away and motioned for me to follow. “The guard will be waiting.”

      We left what little remained of the smoldering demon behind and made our way out of the forest. Tullius tried to maintain a quick pace, but it turned into an erratic stop-and-go each time he realized I could not keep up, feeling as I did. I struggled to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I managed it, even across the moist, uneven earth beneath me, but it took more effort than I ever imagined walking would require.

      The new sights in my eyes didn’t help matters, either. Everything looked the same as it always had, but I seemed to notice more of it. Every flitting nightfly stood out against the darkness. I saw the moon glinting in the eyes of owls overhead. The night didn’t obscure my sight nearly as much as it had earlier that same night.

      Even the stars, as I glimpsed them through the gaps in the forest canopy, were brighter and more alive than I’d ever known them. I had lived under the same stretch of sky my entire life, and I had seen the same constellations and heavenly formations over and over again. Never as I saw them now. They were no longer pretty decorations hanging overhead. The stars radiated strength and heat. The fires of creation and destruction boiled over one another within them, spinning with unimaginable power, primal and unstoppable. The sky itself seemed closer to me, as if just barely out of arm’s reach. My heart screamed for me to try and touch them. To reach out, take the stars in hand, and wield the power of creation to my own ends.

      “Keep up.” Tullius growled the words. They shattered my fixation. The intended effect, I was sure.

      Before too much longer, the forest parted. We stepped out onto a thin strip of springy green grass bordering a road paved with white bricks. The city guard stood there in force. A row of men, crossbows cocked and raised, knelt in the road before us. A second row of men stood behind them, torches held high in one hand and long, hooked spears held in the other.

      “Peace.” Tullius raised his arms, holding his hands aloft to display them as empty. Even to the city guard, he spoke in a commanding tone, as if it was their duty to obey him. I didn’t think he knew how to speak any other way. “Lower your weapons.”

      The guards shifted, uncertain, but they did not do as he commanded.

     They wore the armor typical of any city guard. Sandals protected their feet, attached to plates of hardened leather that extended up their shins and calves. A skirt of leather scales and gray-blue chain protected their thighs. A similarly crafted cuirass guarded their chests and bellies but left their arms bare to the open air. A length of blue silk pooled around their neck and shoulders and cascaded down their backs, blowing in the night wind. Each of them wore a blue metal helm, complete with nose and earguards that framed their faces, that swooped up and away in the back like a jaybird’s crest.

     It wasn’t armor fit for a battlefield, but Neva Cora hadn’t been one for thousands of years.

      Tullius shouted again. Louder. Harder. “The demon is dead. We are well. Lower your weapons.”

      “You heard the man.” The guard captain shouted from the center of the crowd. The only way you could tell the difference between him and his men was the larger crest upon his helm. In my exhaustion, I wondered if the crest ever gave him a sore neck. He stepped out of the guard formation. “Weapons down! Don’t stick each other in the legs this time, ‘ey? Fine job as usual, minari. We heard the boy screaming and thought the worst.”

      “He awakened,” Tullius explained. It was a poor explanation. I didn’t know what the awakening was before I went through it. Someone outside the minari certainly wouldn’t know.

      The guard looked down at me, puzzled. Then he looked to Tullius. “He’s got the eyes now. Lots of blood ‘round there. He became a man or whatever it is your sort do?”

      “Something like that.” My master nodded his head. He redirected conversation quickly, perhaps hoping to avoid further elaboration. He motioned the guard captain toward the woods. Tullius spoke with words both quick and clear. “The demon is dead, but the place of death needs to be purified. Set a watch of three men over the ashes. Choose the guards by drawing sticks or rolling stones, as we always do. Then, at sunrise, a priestess of Indora and a priest of Barthan need to clean and consecrate the earth. Exactly like that. Very specific. Do you understand?”

      The guard shook his head. “Last time it was the other way ‘round. A priest of Indora and a priestess of Barthan.”

      “That was last time. This is this time.” Tullius punctuated the point with a down-pointed finger. “A priestess of Indora. A priest of Barthan. If you get it wrong, the corruption will seep into the ground. That demon’s death will open a gate for its brothers to come and go as they please. If that happens, you’ll need more than a minari or two to take care of that problem. Do you understand?”

      “Right, yes.” The captain nodded his head. “Three men, chosen by a game of chance. At dawn, a priestess of Indora and priest of Barthan. I understand.”

      “Good.” Tullius inclined his head. “Good hunting.”

      “Aye, good hunting.” Then the captain added, “Make sure that boy gets cleaned up. Looks like death.”

      My master grunted his acquiescence and we were off, stepping past the guards with their freshly-stowed weapons. Into the streets of Neva Cora.

      My awakening aside, our hunt that night hadn’t been anything special. It had been entirely mundane, in fact. We didn’t trek deep into any dark, mysterious forest. The hound was not all that powerful or terrifying as far as demons go. Except for the pyre, we hadn’t used any sort of magic at all. We bound it with perfectly normal, unenchanted wire and chain that we bought at market for a few brass coins just before sunset. You can’t do that sort of thing with the truly dangerous demons.

      The demon’s territory had not been large. It hadn’t been running loose in a true forest, working chaos across the countryside. Rather, it had been running loose in the wooded park in the Imperial city of Neva Cora. The Imperium knew the value of grass and trees and flowers and every other beautiful thing the Mother blessed us with, unlike our neighbors to the east. While they pushed everything green and natural as far from their cities as possible, we preserved at least a little of it.

      At night with the moon and the stars above, the city slept, still and silent. Tullius and I walked in near perfect darkness, only the shifting torchlight of the guard patrols kept the night at bay. When the sun rose, however, the city would spur to life. The forum, the true beating heart of the city, especially so. That’s where we were headed.

      The forum served as host to all manner of communal activities: trade, games, politics, worship, festivals, and whatever other thing brought people together on any given day. It was not far from the park at all, and my trembling legs thanked the gods for that. Every step I took felt like the last I could ever take, but I managed to keep putting one foot on front of the other, somehow continuing to draw from a reservoir of energy that had long gone dry. Though the walk felt longer than reality and I was sure, absolutely sure, that I would not make it, we came upon the forum without any trouble at all.

     We passed the temple of the merchant god Truscus, a stout and square building of white marble inlaid with gold and silver filigree all across its length like creeping vines, a simple form in elegant clothing. Vendor stalls had been built right into the walls, carved of hewn stone rather than the lumber-and-nails stalls in the streets. In true mercantile fashion, the city tradesmen bought, sold and traded the rights to the temple stalls each season.

     We passed the temple of Khalin, god of war, laying in. Not true ruins, but ruins crafted by hand, evoking a conqueror’s strength, with shattered weapons carved of stone worked into a false, ordered chaos. Old warriors often left weapons and armor as offerings for their patron there, but the guard always removed them before nightfall.

     We passed the temple of the twin gods of Sun and Moon, a grand dais with no roof above it, surrounded by a set of fourteen grand pillars set in a ring. Dials and charts were worked into its surface in such grand detail that a man could go mad trying to decipher them without guidance.

     Then we came to the temple of Indora, goddess of the hunt. We ascended the steps to its arched entryway, the entire structure styled as a summer hunting lodge, longer than it was wide and open on all sides to the night air, its roof held aloft by thick pillars. Offerings to She of the Hunt lay heaped upon the altar within: buckskins, boar’s teeth, the antlers of stags, bear paws, the scales of great lizards, and every other imaginable trophy a huntsman might consider precious.

     A set of stairs leading underground lay at the back of the temple. I wanted nothing more than to go down below and collapse in my waiting bed, to flush the exhaustion from my mind and body. It would need to wait at least a few moments longer. An attendant of Indora rose from her vigil near the altar to greet us.

     “Varin!” She exclaimed with a wild smile, baring teeth. “The goddess told me tonight would be the night. I would hug you, but I think I’d rather wait until you’ve had a bath.”

     She was Seruwen, Indora’s chosen of Neva Cora, a fierce woman even by the standards of the minari. She wore one long, unending length of white silk embroidered with styled green leaves, wrapped around her body from just above her breasts to just below her thighs. A length of ivy tied the cloth in place across her bust. A tail of excess fabric was meant to trail behind her and lay against the backs of her legs, but she always tucked it out of the way. Upon one arm she wore a leather falconry glove. More a sleeve than a glove, really. It covered the full length of her arm, wrapping up and over her shoulder. She was all sinuous muscle beneath a dark complexion, tanned from countless hours in the sun. She did not have the eyes of the minari and the blood of demons did not flow in her veins, but that did not stop her from joining the black hunt from time to time.

     “Yes,” I agreed. I wasn’t sure why I agreed or what I agreed with in the first place. I was too tired to make much sense of what she’d said. It seemed like the right thing to say.

     Seruwen threw her head back in a rich laugh. Tullius made a mildly amused sound from the back of his throat.

     “Come, Varin.” He said. “Wash so you can rest.”

     Seruwen stepped aside and allowed us to pass. We went below the temple. I washed. I slept. If I dreamt, I do not remember it. When the sun rose, so did I.

     Tullius and I broke fast together, sitting on a bench outside Indora’s temple. My master looked to me and said, “We have a hunt today.”

     We spent nearly a century that way. Waking, hunting, sleeping, and then repeating the process. The life of a minari. A life of service to the mortal realm.

     After that, things became more complex.