Page 35 of When the Sky Breaks

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“He’s sure!” Neal said, grabbing the reins from my trembling hands and urging both our horses down into the shallow gully.

“Come here,” he said, dismounting quickly and pulling me off beside him—my face against his chest and his arms around my shoulders.

The beast was eerily silent. There was the odd sucking and popping as the tentacles contacted hard patches of rock. But other than that the air was quiet and still.

Neal pressed my face into his chest. But when I heard Ansel yell, I wrenched Neal’s hand away. And so we both watched as Ansel fired at the beast. The bullet hit at the juncture where one of the massive tentacles met the beast’s bulbous head. Bolts of black lightning arced from the point of impact, slowly turning the writhing creature into a pile of dark, smoking dust.

“All clear!” Ansel shouted. He sounded almost excited as he trotted down to meet us in the gully.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Had an Ironmoot smith make it up for me,” Ansel said. “Only got ten or fifteen engraved bullets for it though. So a little high risk, high reward. But it bloody works, doesn’t it!”

“Any reason you waited until we were literally moments from death to tell us about it?” I pressed.

“Didn’t know if it’d work,” Ansel said with a nervous laugh.

“Fantastic, love the improvisation,” Neal sighed, pulling me even closer.

“You alright to ride again?” Ansel asked as he climbed back up the gully’s slope to fetch his horse and encourage the mules around the pile of smoking eldritch dust.

“A little dizzy,” I said, dramatically underreporting the fever I could feel creeping over my skin and the nausea roiling in my belly, “but I’ll be okay.”

Fifteen

Neal

Sorcha grew worse as the afternoon crept toward evening—her first relapse was clearly imminent. To complicate things further, the storm we’d spent the day outrunning was gaining steady and unmistakable speed, and the eldritch abomination had driven us almost two miles off course from our route to the mission. We barely made it to the church’s arched doorway before the first crack of thunder rumbled and the desert grass began to undulate in the oncoming wind.

“This’ll be properly cozy,” Ansel drawled. “Oh and I grabbed some creosote along the way too. It’ll help with the fever.”

I pressed my cheek to Sorcha’s forehead.

“That’s coming back for certain now,” I muttered. “Here, give me your reins. Let’s get inside before you get any worse.”

Sorcha just nodded, cold sweat starting to dew on her skin.

“I don’t feel right,” she whimpered into my chest as I helped her off the horse. Ansel was busy grabbing the rest of our bags, anything that could be ruined in the oncoming deluge. I dragged the door open and stopped dead, hand flying up to cover Sorcha’s eyes. Because there in the middle of the desert scrub and cacti colonizing the rotted, wood-plank floor, lay a dead body. The dead man had pointed Elven ears, a leather satchel, dark hair, and a spike driven clean through his abdomen and into the floor, staking a file of papers to his corpse.

“Ansel, we have a problem,” I called over my shoulder.

“Neal, what’s wrong?” Sorcha asked, scrabbling to get my hand away from her eyes and failing entirely.

“Not entirely sure,” I hedged, dragging her back into the narthex before I finally took my hand from her eyes, strategically situating my body between her and any view of the corpse.

Ansel stopped dead in the chapel entryway, eyes fixing on the body. “Well shit. He’s one of mine.”

“Excuse me, what? Who?” Sorcha snapped. I sighed and finally moved so she could see. I felt her stiffen immediately.

“Go see who did it,” Sorcha instructed, swallowing hard then gesturing vaguely at the body. “See what the notes say.”

Sorcha and I sat in the narthex as the storm blew in while Ansel investigated inside.

“I don’t feel right,” Sorcha repeated. I just stroked her hair and held her closer.

“You’re okay,” I lied. It seemed counterproductive to say she was likely already running a fever that’d leave a human dead in hours. “We knew you’d relapse. And we’ve got everything to keep you safe this time.”