chapter 17
650 Words
The world didn’t break all at once.
It cracked slow—like old glass under too much weight.
First came the silence.
The kind that made the back of Mara’s neck prickle.
The kind that always showed up when something unholy wanted to be noticed.
Coyote stopped dead, tail low, growl rumbling like distant thunder.
The spectral herd slowed too, their smoke-bodies twisting in the bleeding sunrise. The Shepherd… or whatever hollow-eyed horror he had become… tilted his head like he was listening to something only he could hear.
Then Mara felt it.
A presence.
A pressure.
A cold weight settling into the saddle beside her—even though no one had climbed up.
The horse’s reins stiffened in her grip.
“Mara,” a voice murmured. “You called.”
Her blood iced.
She hadn’t spoken his name.
She hadn’t prayed for him.
But the Plains had ways of hearing a soul’s cracking point.
The Devil did not appear with brimstone and fire.
He simply… arrived.
A shape coalesced beside her—shadow first, then outline, then something almost like a man. His coat fluttered without wind. His hat brim carved a perfect crescent of darkness across his face.
He rode a horse made of night—legs long, ragged, smoke drifting off its ribs. No hoofbeats. No breath. No mercy.
“You took your time,” Mara said, because fear never had been enough to shut her up.
His smile curved like a blade.
“Hell’s patient with its favorites.”
She ignored that. Or tried.
Ahead, the Shepherd’s monstrous form flickered again—torso splitting, reforming, jaw stretching open far past human limits. His herd screamed like a furnace breathing.
Mara lifted her rifle, muscles steady, breath iron-flat.
“You comin’ to help,” she asked the Devil, “or you just here to watch me die?”
He leaned in, voice velvet and ruin.
“Little tracker… I came to watch you finish what the world started.”
The earth shuddered as the Shepherd charged.
Mara kicked her horse hard.
“Then quit whisperin’ in my ear,” she snapped, “and ride.”
Oh, he rode.
The Devil snapped the reins of his nightmare-steed, and the ground beneath them blackened as they thundered forward. Coyote streaked ahead, ghost-fur blazing white in the rising sun. The spectral herd shrieked, shadows warping like torn banners in a storm.
Mara aimed for the Shepherd’s heart—
even though he didn’t have one.
Her first shot cracked the sky open.
The bullet slammed into the Shepherd’s chest, exploding in a burst of light that tore smoke and shadow apart. He reeled back, but didn’t fall.
Didn’t bleed.
Didn’t stop.
“Mara!” the Devil barked.
She ducked just before a ghost-horse barreled past, its flaming eyes inches from her face.
“You said he had no end!” she shouted over the roar of the stampede.
The Devil’s laugh was low, hungry.
“I said he had no heart. Endings are optional.”
Another shot. Another burst of searing light.
The Shepherd howled—a sound that blistered the air.
His spectral herd wheeled around him like a storm tightening its noose.
The Devil raised his hand.
Shadows curled from his fingers like smoke from a burning Bible.
“Mara,” he said softly, “you ride with me now.”
“Like hell I do.”
“Exactly.”
Light met darkness.
Rifle met damnation.
Ghost-wolf met the dead.
And the Plains of the Unforgiven trembled under the weight of what came next.
Mara lowered her gaze, jaw set.
“Let’s finish this.”
The Devil nodded once, eyes burning like the first spark of creation.
They rode—
side by side—
straight into the maw of the nightmare.
And for the first time since the beginning of her long, blood-soaked hunt…
Mara wasn’t riding alone.
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