— The Devil Rode Beside Her

chapter 16

Dawn crawled over the horizon like a wounded animal, bleeding red into the sky. Mara rode hard across the barren plains, her coat snapping behind her like a battle flag. Behind her, the church smoldered, sending up a thin line of smoke—a final gravemarker for the Shepherd.

But death wasn’t done hunting her.

Coyote loped beside the horse, keeping pace with an ease no living creature should have. The ghost’s eyes glowed faintly in the rising light, as if something out there was calling to him.

Something old.

Something wrathful.

The Plains of the Unforgiven stretched endless ahead of them—miles of cracked earth where nothing grew and nothing stayed dead. Here, the wind carried voices not entirely made of air.

Mara could hear them now.

Whispers.

Accusing.

Remembering every sin she tried to bury.

“You think I ain’t listening,” she muttered to the wind. “But I hear all of you.”

A shadow flickered at the corner of her vision. Then another. Shapes rising from the ground—figures carved from dust and memory. Men she’d killed. Men she couldn’t save. Faces she had tried to leave behind.

They stepped onto the trail, blocking her path.

Coyote stopped, fur bristling.

“Not now,” Mara hissed. “I ain’t got time for ghosts unless they got something worth saying.”

One of the dust-figures spoke, voice like stones grinding:

“The Shepherd ain’t dead.”

Mara’s jaw clenched. “I put a bullet through his heart.”

“He had no heart.”

“He had no blood.”

“He had no end.”

The voices rose in a chorus.

She felt it in her bones—

the Shepherd had shed his flesh like a rattlesnake.

What crawled out of that church was something else entirely.

Something coming.

Something following her scent across the plains.

Mara pulled her rifle from her saddle. “Then I’ll kill him again.”

The tallest ghost stepped forward. “You cannot kill what the Plains have claimed.”

“Maybe not,” she said, leveling the rifle, “but I can damn sure try.”

A rumble split the earth—deep, distant, angry. The horizon wavered. Heat shimmered. The ground began to shake under her boots.

Not an earthquake.

Hoofbeats.

A stampede—but not made of flesh.

Shapes burst over the rise: a herd of spectral horses, their bodies smoke and shadow, their eyes burning like coals. And riding at the front—

The Shepherd.

No longer a man.

No longer even a monster.

Something worse.

His outline flickered like a dying candle. His mouth stretched too wide, too thin. His voice rolled out across the plains:

“Mara… come home.”

Coyote howled, a sound torn from the center of the world.

Mara spat into the dust. “Ain’t your home. Ain’t your girl. Ain’t your anything.”

And then she did the one thing the Plains of the Unforgiven had never seen—

She charged toward the nightmare.

Rifle raised.

Heart steady.

Ghost-wolf at her side.

The last ride had begun.

---