“You’re saying Rezzor was still Rezzor?” Miranda asked. “That’s… not possible.”
“I say it is,” she said. “Maybe it’s a corrupted form of Rezzor or maybe the son of a bitch just really had it out for me. I can’t say for sure. But the Vipers knew what he knew.”
“Then why didn’t they stop the church from blowing up in the first place?” Miranda asked.
“Oh, they didn’t guess that part. It probably didn’t occur to Rezzor what I was up to until I’d already done it. But once that church blew up, he took a few of his new companions and counterattacked just when we were feeling safe. He knew right where to find us.”
She wasn’t sure this was true. The Vipers had seemed to sense them all inside the church without assistance. But maybe that was less to do with some supernatural sense of their prey and more to do with basic strategy. In a town where everything but the church was made of wood, where else would you go? It was possible Jules had simultaneously given them too much credit and not enough.
“If it’s true that Rezzor was in there, his final message is a clue,” Jules said.
“He told you they were waiting for you,” Luke said.
“He was practically begging me to run away,” Jules said. “Rezzor knows me well. He was taunting me, telling me they knew we were coming. No sane person would think about going there now.”
“You’re saying we’re not sane?” Miranda said.
“No,” Jules said. “We’re not. If they want to keep me away, there’s a good reason why. And my guess is this—they know they’re vulnerable. The map, the keys, me. It’s all connected.”
To her surprise, Luke was nodding.
“You think I’m right?” she asked.
“This has all happened for a reason,” he said.
He appeared ready to say more and then thought better of it.
“I’m grabbing Pete,” Jules said. “If either of you two want out, now’s the time to say so. I won’t blame you. I’ve got enough silver bullets left over to manage a decent assault, but I won’t lie—the odds don’t favor success. I’m going anyway. If they want to keep me away, that means I have a shot. And I mean to take it.”
She grabbed Onyx’s reins and walked off, but was unsurprised when both Luke and Miranda followed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Martha Jane Canary was known for dressing in buckskins and worked as a scout for the U.S. Army in the 1870s. Jane, who became known as Calamity Jane, also claimed to have been secretly married to Bill Hickok, served under General Custer and shot and cussed her way through half of the Dakota Territory.”
— Jessie Berry, “Overlooked Women of History,” 2016
They rode south before noon.
Jules and Luke rode their own mounts, while Conchita carried Miranda and Pete. He hadn’t asked where they were going or why. He’d accepted that he was going with them without question. Jules might have found that funny in other circumstances, but not today.
They followed the trail for a few miles, but it eventually cut back east, which was not the direction they needed to go. Luke directed them to open grassland that continued south. Periodically, Luke would stop and look at something, examining it closely. Jules saw nothing, but knew what he was doing. He would nod at her, mount up and they’d continue on their way. That nod meant they were on Duggett’s trail.
In theory, the tempest coming from the south should have blown away most evidence of Duggett and his men. It was possible that was the case, and Luke’s tracking skills were so great he could find what was left. More likely, Jules suspected, the storm hadn’t acted like a normal tempest. It had held its fire while it crossed the prairie. No rain, no lightning, just a black cloud passing like a great evil bird in the sky. Jules could see no sign of a recent storm.
That meant Duggett was probably still alive, and the keys still in his possession. It also meant he hadn’t been slowed by the storm, which was less positive. He was at least a good day’s ride in front of her.
She drove Onyx hard, hoping to make up some of that time. They barely stopped for a poor supper, eating mostly hardtack and jerky some of the women of Stanton had given them before they left. Jules had been touched by the gesture. She wished the food was better, but nobody complained.
With every step, Jules thought of Will. She’d managed to put him mostly out of her mind for three years—there had been weeks she hadn’t thought of him at all—but now he was back, taking up residence in her head as if he’d never left. She recalled their first meeting, which appeared accidental but was anything but. Their first dance at a military ball, the way the other girls had eyed her jealously. Their first kiss, a chaste affair so quick his mother, acting as chaperone, hadn’t had the time to object.
She remembered it all with an ache in her heart. When she’d fled Chicago, she knew she was leaving Will behind. She’d assumed she’d never see him again. But at least she’d taken comfort in the idea that he was still out there. Now that was gone.
The world takes everything away. Jules understood that better than most. You took what you could find in life and hoped it was enough. But the realization of just what she’d lost was bitter.
And what a man, to have seen what he saw in her. She’d criticized him for his views on women and Indians, but he was just following the popular opinion on both. When it came right down to it, he’d taken her orders willingly enough. And how rare was that? Any other might have spat on the ground and insisted that his way was best. But Will had faith in her, strange considering what she’d done to him.
“Jules? Jules?” Miranda called.
Jules wondered how long her sister had been calling her and she hadn’t heard. She looked up at the starry night around her and noticed it had gotten dark. She’d been riding forward, but only seeing the past.
“We need to stop!” Miranda said.
Jules reined in Onyx. Her sister was right. As eager as she was to press on, she could hardly do so over rough, uneven terrain in the dark. All it would take was for one of the horses to break its leg and their expedition would be doomed.
She jumped off her horse, letting Onyx graze. She’d need to give him extra water and a few carrots she’d found in someone’s garden. She had been willing to pay, but like the other supplies, the town had been in a generous mood after she saved it. Jules wasn’t sure exactly how far they’d traveled today, but they’d been fast and efficient. She couldn’t ask for more from her horses or her companion.
“We make camp quick, we break it even faster,” she said. “I want to be up before first light and on the way. We won’t catch up unless we get moving.”
Miranda grumbled something—she was fairly sure it was about not catching them if the horses died of exhaustion either—but there were no other objections. Luke was his usual calm self, taking the ride in stride, while Pete seemed hardly to know it was happening. She watched him relieve himself against a rock, all the while singing some strange song.
Pete was one more part of the puzzle she couldn’t figure out. Why had the Kid taken him when he hadn’t taken Trent or Luke? Best she could tell from asking Pete questions, he’d never met the Kid before the two had traveled this way two decades earlier. And he seemed to have no memory of why he’d gotten involved.
His earliest recollections were the events in what became the Maelstrom. Jules wished she’d had more time to ask around in town about Pete. Maybe someone there could have told her who he was before he headed to the mountains with the Kid. It was hard to imagine him as a fellow outlaw. But she couldn’t rule it out, either. She had no idea what kind of man he’d been.
They made a fire to keep out the chill of the night. It may have been approaching summer, but it still got cold when the sun was down.
“We’re not going to catch ‘em, are we?” Jules asked Luke as they were turning in.
“Might still,” he replied. “Depends on how long they waited for Rezzor and how hard they’re driving themselves.”
But during the long day after, they caught no sight of Duggett or his men, suggesting they were pushing as hard as she was.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it still came as a shock. She’d hoped he would stop and wait along the way for Rezzor. But it didn’t appear like he was going to halt at all. Maybe he had always thought of double-crossing Rezzor.
She’d also assumed Duggett wasn’t capable of moving this fast. Her impression of him had been that he was sloppy and undisciplined. Certainly, when it came to robbing the town and killing Graves and Garrett, he’d been both.
Yet when it came to this, he was apparently brutally efficient. Luke still caught signs that they were on the right track—and maybe she’d gained a few hours—but Duggett had too large a head start. She wasn’t going to catch him in time.
They caught their first sight of the Maelstrom the following day, their second full ride of the journey. They were traveling through open grassland sprinkled with the occasional rock, when she’d finally caught sight of the Badlands in the distance.
They were a blur at first, but as they rode closer, she could see the sheer cliffs and pinnacles that dominated the landscape. She’d heard plenty about it from travelers, and always assumed it was like other canyons she’d visited. But this might as well have been a whole other world.
A wall of imposing rocks jutted out of the ground, as if thrown up across the flat grassland by some angry God. Some of the rocks were straight up and sheered off at the top by wind and rain, others were in finger-like towers pointing toward the sky. There was a red tinge to the dirt in the mountains, giving it almost an eerie glow. The mountains loomed like a barrier, and Jules understood she’d been right to bring Pete along. Without a map, it would be easy to get lost in those hills.
The Badlands would have been intimidating even under ideal conditions, with the sun brightly shining. But across a huge swath of those hills was the biggest storm cloud Jules had ever seen. It was circular, a mass of clouds that churned in a single direction, swirling like a funnel. It was daylight, but the entire area underneath was dark as night. There were continuous flashes of light in the cloud as bright, electric tendrils of lightning streaked down to assail the ground below without pause. Pounding thunder rolled across the landscape beyond in waves, echoing throughout the hills.
Even miles away, Jules felt a shiver run up her spine. It was the kind of place they should be running away from, not riding toward.
When Pete spotted it, he flew into a panic. He tried to jump off the horse in mid-ride, and nearly succeeded in toppling Miranda with him. The horse reared up, dumping Pete into the dirt. He barely stopped to recover himself, but began fleeing back the way they’d come.
Jules jerked Onyx’s reins and turned around, unhappily aware they were now in the process of losing whatever time they’d gained on Duggett earlier. Onyx galloped forward and cut off Pete, who was running as if his life depended on it. Maybe it did. Jules wasn’t sure if anyone was coming back from this trip.
Pete tried to run around, darting to the left, but Jules jumped off her horse and tackled him to the ground. He looked up at her, wild-eyed.
“Not going there,” he said. “Mustn’t go there. No, no, no, no.”
Jules understood his fear, even felt some sympathy for it, but was in no mood to have it slow her down further. She slapped Pete hard, leaving a red mark on his cheek. Pete appeared stunned by the attack, but he focused on her, at least.
“Now you listen to me,” she said. “Twenty years ago, you guided a man into these hills. Now you’re going to guide me back. You get me to the door with the three keyholes and you have my leave to depart, but not before.”
“You don’t understand,” Pete said, and it came out as a pathetic whine. He sounded like a toddler being denied a sweet.
“Oh, I think I do,” she said. “I have no time for your tomfoolery, Pete. You helped start this. Now, you’re going to help me end it. If you resist, I’ll knock you out and carry you the rest of the way. You understand?”
Pete nodded that he did, his hand still feeling the place where she’d slapped him.
“Now, I’m going to stand up, and you’re going to get back on Miranda’s horse and come with us. No more games.”
He nodded again and Jules got up. Pete stood, brushed himself off, took a half step toward the waiting Miranda and Conchita, and then looked past them to the far-off Maelstrom in the distance. He turned and tried to flee again. Jules was ready when he did, striking him on the back of the head so hard he fell forward, unconscious.
“The hard way it is, then,” she said.
She tied up his hands and feet and slung him across the back of her saddle as if he were a sack of grain. It would be an unpleasant ride, but she didn’t have much choice. He was their only guide.
*****
Pete’s protestations only grew louder as they approached the Maelstrom. By the end of their third day, it was still on the horizon, though a good deal closer than it had been when they first spotted it. Jules found herself staring at the eye of the storm, which huddled somewhere in the middle of the mountains.
When they camped, Luke failed to find any wildlife for supper. He insisted there was none.
Indeed, the more she looked, the more desolate and barren the landscape became. The grasslands usually teemed with life, so long as you knew where to look. But it had vanished.
There were no birds in the sky, no foxes or coyotes nearby. Jules hadn’t even spotted so much as a prairie dog. It was as if everything in the vicinity of this place had had the good sense to up and leave.
That night they slept poorly. Miranda wasn’t having any dreams—a small comfort—but Pete awoke them seemingly every hour to beg, plead, and scream. Jules wanted to knock him out again, but she also didn’t want to permanently damage him. In the end, they just put up with it.
Luke found more signs that Duggett and his men had come this way, though they didn’t spot them. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Given Pete’s protestations, Duggett would have heard Jules coming miles away.
They reached the outer edge of the Maelstrom around mid-afternoon on their fourth day. The storm was even more massive than she’d been told. And as scary as it had been far away, up close was even worse
There was no rain, but the thunder was much louder here. It was like cannons every second a few feet away.
“Please,” Pete yelled from the back of the horse. “Please, no. Do not go in there. Do not take me in there. There’s nothing but death in there!”
Jules ignored him, and spurred her horse into the Maelstrom.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“The future is a dangerous game. Too many times, my efforts to prevent a tragedy have only caused it. I had hoped to help the girl, but instead have set her on a dangerous path. I pray I can rectify my mistake.”
— Attributed to the Lady of Shadows, 1872, excerpted by Terry Jacobsen, “A History of the Supernatural,” 2013
It wasn’t just the storm in front of them that was problematic. They were also staring up at a mountain range with an uncertain destination in mind.
Luke was following Duggett’s path, but by mid-morning, he announced he’d lost it entirely. There was no sign that anything bad had happened, but there’d been rain since they passed, and any tracks had been washed away.
Jules had been expecting this, but she’d hoped maybe they’d get lucky and catch up to Duggett early, or at least be able to follow him all the way in.
She dismounted and went to Pete.
“Pete, we’ve put up with your objections for the past few hours,” she said. “But right about now, I need you to stow those away and help us out.”
Pete started crying again, muttering curses and repeating they were going to die. She grabbed him by the back of his scalp.
“Listen up, Crazy Pete,” she said, taking back her decision not to call him by that nickname any longer. “If you don’t help us, I’m going to ride into the
center of the storm and leave you there for whatever comes to find you. You hear me?”
Pete started shaking his head.
“No, don’t go to the center,” he said. “There’s a door in the center. A door with three locks.”
Jules looked up at Luke in surprise. She clapped Pete on the back.
“Why thank you, Pete,” she said happily. She pointed at the eye of the storm. “To the center it is.”
Luke took the lead. They were well inside the Maelstrom by now, but they saw no signs of Vipers—or anything else. The grasses had all died out. Everything looked withered and dead, which only made sense. There’d been no sunlight here for two decades.
It was a disturbing place. Sometimes it was like being in the eye of a hurricane, the air eerily still. Other times a fierce wind would blow through, and Jules would be pelted by an abrupt torrent of rain and dust. They would have to stop because the storm around them made it hard to see. Then the wind would die down again, just as suddenly as it started.
There was also the constant flash of lightning and boom of thunder. Jules could see the lightning even when she closed her eyes, and the thunder echoed through the mountains around them, amplifying it. Jules wondered if they would all be killed by lightning strikes before they even reached their destination.
When the wind died down, Luke found a crooked path between the two mountains dead ahead of them. The whole area had an oddly heavy feel to it, as if gravity had increased. Though Jules wasn’t climbing anywhere, her ears popped, forcing her to periodically swig water from her canteen.
They didn’t dare stop to eat. Jules ate a ration of jerky and let Pete starve when he refused to do anything but scream. She was going to have to do something about that, but she’d be damned if she knew what. The constant thunder masked the sound much of the time, but they’d still have a devil of a time sneaking up on Duggett or anything else with the racket he was making.
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