After a moment to accept your gran’s assistance in strapping you to my bare chest and tucking you away under my coat again, I was ready. We set about our next task without conference. Your gran retrieved a length of rope the demon had packed away in his mare’s saddlebag while I stood and kept eyes on our prisoner.
Dalton was not dead. He tried to chant, or curse, but his lung was pierced, and the only sound he was capable of producing was a bloody gurgle.
You will not remember this, but you were there. We lashed him to his own cross. Though he had no air, he was still alive, his eyes raging. And with the remaining rope, we hoisted him over the high limb of the tree above the fire from which he had sought to roast us. Your gran and I called the flames to him, and they took root. The only noise then was the crackle of his flesh.
I wanted him to watch me watch him die. His eyes were open, staring down at me. As he writhed, I removed from my boot the knife I had taken from de la Cruz, and I was a moment away from plunging it into his chest when the flickering of fire on metal caught my eye.
Without thought or hesitation, I dropped the knife into the snow, ripped the hatchet from its resting place, and took George Dalton’s head. It felt to me the only way to sever the tie that had bound his line and ours for over two hundred years. It was not the first time I proved myself wrong.
By the time I realized what I had done, I was taking a hard step back, gasping from the impact of something unholy colliding with my breastbone and tunneling beneath it. It made itself right at home.
Memories that did not belong to me pushed aside my own. I saw cloistered men in the catacombs of old churches. I saw the rolling plains of our homeland. And I saw young girls roasting like pigs on cross-like spits, their screams echoing in my mind and throughout my frame. I would have collapsed beneath the weight of it if my body were my own. But it was not. It is not.
The spirit used my body to breathe in deep, and the smell of Death hanging in the air pleased me.
I looked at Dalton’s corpse for the last time, his white teeth gleaming in his charred face. Smiling at me. You began to cry again, the longing in your voice drawing me back to the duty that would force me to leave you.
Your gran asked me what happened.
She called my name, her voice trailing off as I approached Dalton’s white mare, still tied to the burning tree.
The horse reared in the orange glow, flinching at my outstretched hand. My voice Worked to soothe her alarm. I untied her reins and stroked her neck and helped your gran into the saddle. She set her steely-blue eyes on me, but did not ask again what I had seen after killing Dalton.
It was just you and me and your gran then, a hundred miles from the nearest human settlement and with a journey through deep snow and frigid winds ahead of us. But the sun was rising and I did not despair. I slung Hawk’s rifle across my back and began to walk.
Ninety miles we traveled from the bloodstained shores of the lake of the spirits to Davenport, Iowa, where we secured passage downriver to St. Louis. It is from a cabin on the river-boat that I watch you sleep and finish writing this letter to you. I awakened early this morning to find myself on the bow of the boat, holding your swaddled form over the vessel’s churning wake. The spirit that was in George Dalton is ancient and insatiable, and I am afraid of what has taken root in me. More and more each day, there is less and less of me.
When we disembark, your gran will take you to the road-house, where she will raise you up, safe, and you will see me again when I have learned how to banish this spirit that has made its way into my bones.
Your name is Sarah Callahan, and you come from a line of women gifted in a way that scares most folks, and I will let nothing harm you.
LIST OF PATRONS
Adam Gomolin
Ben Luntz
Billy O’Keefe
Jonna M. Terhune
Larry Levitsky
Thad Woodman
Thomas J. Arnold
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