Riders on the Storm

by Rob Blackwell

  There was a roar in the tunnels, the sound of hundreds of feet in pursuit. The Vipers had finished mourning their Queen and were now giving pursuit.

  Jules found she could run on her own.

  “I’m all right,” she said, breaking away from Luke, who had his own load to carry. She had an idea where they were running, given that her father was in the lead.

  She felt strangely good, like her body had been doused in cold water, putting out the flames and leaving her feeling refreshed. Her prior exhaustion was wiped away. She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, but she had an inkling.

  The tattoo.

  Luke had said the symbol meant it was a “guard against demons.” Somehow it had turned back the poison in her veins. The fire had reached all the way to that spot—and then backed off. As strange an explanation as it was, it was the only one that made sense. Somehow it had saved her.

  The tunnel ended at a high door carved directly into the rock. It was massive, illuminated by two torches nearby.

  “The keys!” Trent shouted.

  “A bit busy here, old man,” Duggett yelled back, and there was the sound of several gunshots.

  Jules pushed past Miranda and Luke, and reached out her hand to Duggett.

  He and Jacob had taken the rear, assisted by their last three men, firing at the rapidly-approaching red eyes emerging from the dark tunnel. Luke took up a position beside them, firing his rifle at the approaching Vipers. Miranda dropped the pouch of silver bullets at their feet, making sure they knew it was there. There were still a few dozen bullets in the bag, but it seemed depressingly light.

  For the first time, Jules saw Pete was also there. She hadn’t noticed him with everything else going on, but he stood beside Miranda, gazing down the tunnel in fear.

  Duggett pressed a pouch into Jules’ hand and she ran it forward to her father. She opened the pouch and hurriedly dumped out its contents, finding gold, silver and iron keys. She picked them up and held them out to Trent.

  “We need to turn them together!” Trent yelled, and his voice echoed around the cavern.

  It was easier said than done. The door in front of them was huge, with the key holes spaced evenly apart. Jules had no idea how Pete and her mother had managed to reach them on their own, though Elizabeth was clearly a resourceful person. Her father took the gold key and moved to the far right.

  “Miranda!” Jules yelled.

  Miranda ran up as more gunshots rang out behind them. Jules tried to put them out of her mind.

  “Take this and turn it on Father’s signal,” she said.

  Miranda took the silver key and moved to the middle lock, while Jules went to the far left.

  “On three. One, two, three!” Trent shouted.

  The three of them turned at the same time. The door began to swing open, first agonizingly slowly and then with more urgency.

  It opened into a brightly lit chamber. She had no idea how torches could remain lit when presumably nobody had entered it in twenty years. But she’d long since given up trying to figure out the mystery of this place.

  In the center of the chamber was a giant urn, far bigger than the simple vase she was expecting. It was tall, rising to the height of Jules’ chest, and wide enough that a person could crawl inside. The lid to it lay fallen in the dirt beside it, covered in dust.

  The vase practically glowed. It was covered in jewels laid out in elaborate designs. There were diamonds, emeralds, rubies and other gems Jules had never seen before. The rumors that the vase was worth a fortune were true. But she didn’t think they were there to steal it anymore.

  The three of them entered the chamber.

  “Get in here!” Jules yelled to the others.

  Duggett, Luke, Jacob, Pete and two other men—apparently one had been killed in the fighting—rushed into the chamber. All of them kept their guns trained on the tunnel behind them, firing. Luke clutched the bag of ammunition in his hand, but it was nearly empty.

  Jules spared a glance down the tunnel and saw a horde of Vipers coming, their shrieks echoing loudly.

  Miranda pressed a gun into Jules’ hand, and she didn’t wait. She shot three Vipers headed their direction, killing one that was just inches from Duggett.

  But Trent shook his head at her. “That’s not your job,” he said, and pointed at the vase. “That’s what you need to handle.”

  She looked back down the tunnel to see more Vipers coming at them. There weren’t enough bullets to last much longer. She killed two more, leaving a single bullet in the chamber.

  “Luke!” Trent said. “Give Jules the package.”

  Luke opened the sack to reveal the “gift of men” the Queen had referred to earlier. It was a half dozen sticks of dynamite held together by rope. A long fuse was attached on top.

  “Good God,” Miranda said.

  Jules took the dynamite from the sack and looked at her father questioningly, though she had an idea what he wanted to do. Luke returned to the front of the chamber and continued firing into the tunnels.

  “Jules, you need to approach it and put it into that vase,” Trent said.

  “Why me?”

  “Look there,” Trent said, pointing.

  There was a ring of white chalk circling the vase, roughly eight feet in diameter. She hadn’t noticed it earlier in the pandemonium.

  “Nobody else can walk through that line,” Trent said to all of them, “except Jules.”

  Duggett visibly started at the conversation. He shook his head vigorously.

  “Are you crazy?” Duggett yelled. “That thing’s priceless. It’s the whole reason we’re here. I didn’t bring the dynamite to blow it up. That was in case the keys didn’t work or we could find the Vipers’ hideout.”

  Trent glared at him. He was a skeleton on legs, but Duggett seemed to shrink back under his stare.

  “That thing is evil,” Trent said. “And we have no time to debate it. Drop it in.”

  Duggett aimed away from the door and pointed his gun at Trent.

  “No way, old man,” he said. “We take the vase. That’s final.”

  Jules quickly aimed her weapon at Duggett. She could have shot the gun out of his hands, but it was her final bullet. If she did that, there would be nothing left if the Vipers entered the chamber. She’d been saving the last one so she could kill herself before they tore her apart.

  Jacob, still at the chamber door and firing at the approaching Vipers, turned back.

  “Are you insane, Duggett? We don’t have time for this!”

  “I’m not walking away from this empty-handed,” Duggett said.

  His jaw was set, and Jules knew they were in trouble. Even if she disarmed or killed him, it was possible Jacob and the two others would turn on her and her father.

  But Trent surprised her again. He raised his hands in surrender.

  “Have it your way, but you’ve got to haul it out of here,” he said. “Jules, stand down and guard the door. We’ll let him do the dirty work if he wants.”

  “Glad to,” Duggett snarled as Jules lowered her weapon. She wasn’t sure what her father was up to, but she understood he had some kind of plan.

  “Hurry then,” Jules said.

  Apparently Duggett had no intention of following her father’s warning about the chalk. He holstered his gun and strolled toward the vase in obvious triumph, his hands reaching out greedily to seize it.

  As soon as he crossed over, however, a black mist emerged from the vase. Duggett didn’t appear to notice it at first. He was too busy eying the many gems covering it. By the time he saw it, it was already choking him.

  Jacob turned back from the door to watch the mist as it surrounded his companion.

  “What the hell?” he asked.

  “I warned him,” Trent said. “This thing is evil. Ain’t nobody taking it from here.”

  Duggett fell to his knees, his skin already turning into the black scales of the Vipers. This was what had happened to the Kid too. Duggett shoul
d have paid more attention to her story.

  “Now, Jules!” her father yelled.

  Jules glanced at her father. “You sure I can get in there?” she asked. She had no desire to die as Duggett was doing. He was kneeling on the ground now.

  “You’re the only one who can,” he said.

  Jules holstered her gun, grabbed a torch off the wall, and stepped across the line with the dynamite in her hand. She waited for something to happen, but there was nothing, just a slight tingle in her feet.

  She kicked the Viper formerly known as Duggett, knocking him outside the circle, and Luke shot him a moment later before he could hurt anyone. Neither Jacob nor the other two men made any objection.

  Jules walked to the edge of the vase. There was a strange beauty to it, almost mesmerizing. She worried if she looked at it for very long, she wouldn’t be able to destroy it.

  She lit the fuse and dropped the dynamite into the vase. She turned to run out and saw Luke and her father were at the front, blasting everything in sight. She had a brief vision of them as much younger men, doing the same in a firefight.

  Somehow they were able to push forward despite the crush of Vipers coming at them, dropping several as they made their way to the door.

  When they reached it, Trent stopped firing and started to shut the vault door. Jules and Miranda rushed to help him. They received unexpected help as the door began to swing shut on its own.

  Just as they closed it, there was a loud explosion, and the tunnel floor beneath them shook.

  Jules turned to see more Vipers coming, too many. There was no way to shoot their way through this mess.

  But as they reached them, the Vipers began to literally fall apart. The flesh fell off the one in front, seemingly sliding off its body. It turned from black to gray and Jules caught sight of bone beneath—and then it turned to dust. The same thing happened to the other Vipers.

  The way down the tunnel abruptly cleared as another rumble rocked the tunnel.

  “Run!” Trent yelled.

  Nobody needed to be told twice. They raced through the cavern as rock began to fall around them.

  When they reached the Greek temple, it had already collapsed into ruins. There was no sign of the Queen, or any Vipers. It was as if they’d never been there at all. The houses in the cavern began to fall apart, crumbling in place.

  Jules found herself in the lead as they raced into the tunnel through which they’d initially come. It was hard to keep her footing as a massive earthquake rumbled underneath them, but she pressed on, occasionally reaching out to the sides to steady herself.

  She tripped over one of the dead bodies still in the tunnel, but scrambled to her feet and kept going. She pushed as hard as she could, racing through the place until she spotted daylight beyond.

  Just as she was about to reach it, a solitary figure dropped down from the ceiling, blocking the way. It was the Queen, black blood dripping from her neck and eye. Her flesh, too, was sliding off, just like had happened to the other Vipers. She held up a hand as if to stop them, but Jules had her gun out. She fired the last bullet from her revolver directly between the Queen’s eyes. By the time Jules reached her, the remains of what had once been her mother had already fallen into dust.

  They raced into the outside world as the mountain collapsed behind them.

  Epilogue

  “And finally, there is the strange case of Jules Castle. The daughter of an outlaw, Jules ran her own gang in the early 1880s throughout the Dakota Territory. Some stories portray her as a villain, stealing anything in sight, even killing women and children on a train.

  And yet other tales describe her as a kind of renegade hero. There’s one that says she saved the town of Stanton from what appeared to be a rival gang. But sometime in the middle part of the decade, Jules up and disappears from history. Despite my best efforts, I can find no trace of what happened to her.”

  — Jessie Berry, “Overlooked Women of History,” 2016

  People talked about that day for years.

  It was the day the Maelstrom vanished, its massive cloud dissipating as if it had never been there at all. Few knew what had happened.

  What mattered was that the storms stopped coming, and the Vipers ceased their attacks. Within two years, they would be little more than a ghost story told to naughty children.

  “Be careful or the Vipers will get you and take you away.”

  Still, there were some who heard rumors of a young woman and her gang who had come riding out of the mountains that day.

  And they were her gang now.

  Jacob and Duggett’s remaining men—George and Killian— had opted to stay with Jules. Pete also stayed, though he was a different man since leaving the Maelstrom. Crazy Pete no longer appeared to live up to his nickname. Jules might have renamed him Quiet Pete. No more rambling, no more singing. One of the few things he’d said was that the voices in his head no longer spoke to him.

  They arrived back at Stanton, intending to scrape together more supplies. Jules had little money, but it turned out that the town continued to be grateful for its rescue. They provided free food and board. Even Rita was nice to Jules.

  While the others rested, Jules stopped by Will’s grave. She still intended to get a proper marker for him, but she needed funds first. She stood before the makeshift cross, wanting to say something meaningful. But no words came. She was interrupted by a sound behind her.

  Jules turned to find her father, who looked less pale, but still gaunt.

  “Miranda told me what happened,” Trent said, nodding toward the cross. “I’m sorry about the boy.”

  Jules looked at the blue, cloudless sky above.

  “Me, too.”

  Trent put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

  “He was a good man,” he said quietly.

  “You used to say there were no good men in this world.”

  “Seems I was wrong.”

  “First time for everything, it appears,” she said.

  Trent gave her a wan smile. Trent had filled her in on what had happened after he left her three years ago, how he’d found Graves and headed off to the Maelstrom once he heard Elizabeth might be there. He hadn’t wanted to involve Jules because he feared her mother was already dead. He also knew he was taking a foolish risk.

  Once he was captured, the Vipers had kept him in a cage, exactly as Miranda had dreamed. They fed him food they stole from their victims. The Queen had made Trent a pet of sorts, even using him to track down wayward travelers who sought out the Maelstrom. Trent had memorized the underground passageways, including hidden ones that he’d used to kill Duggett’s men. He’d tried to escape dozens of times, but the Vipers always dragged him back.

  “You did well in the cave,” Trent said, surprising her. It wasn’t in her father’s nature to offer compliments. Or apologize, for that matter. It seemed his ordeal had affected him.

  “I only did what you taught me,” Jules said.

  He grunted. “It takes guts to use the sacrifice play. That’s one I never managed. Your mother never did either. We never cared enough about other people, I don’t think.”

  His words stirred something that had been bothering her, thinking of why the Kid had gone to the Maelstrom. She turned from the grave and looked at her father.

  “We’ve been played,” she said, with quiet ferocity.

  She thought her father might protest or be confused. Instead, he nodded at her, the same fury in his eyes.

  “Seems we have.”

  The more Jules had learned about what happened, the angrier she’d become. She’d had a sense before, but it was clearer now—they were pieces on a chess board, and someone had been moving them about.

  Her mother had been manipulated, given a prophecy about her daughter and sent after a mysterious vase in the middle of the Badlands that she believed would help prevent the prophecy from coming true. Jules wasn’t sure how her mother had learned of the vase. It might have been the Lady of Shadows
or someone else entirely.

  Whomever had told her, though, was no friend. They must have known the “power” the legends spoke of was evil. There was also the question of how the vase had ended up in the Dakota Territory in the first place. Had it been placed there for safekeeping, or was it a trap that her mother had inadvertently sprung? Had someone even sent her mother to the Badlands with the intent of springing it?

  “You going to talk to him?” Trent asked.

  Jules didn’t need to ask who he was talking about. There was one man who knew far more than he’d said already. If there was a clue to who was behind all this, he would have it. Crazy Pete.

  “Come on,” she said, giving one last look at Will’s grave.

  She didn’t have to go far to find him. Pete was in the stables again. This time he wasn’t cowering in the corner, but calmly brushing down the horses and cleaning out the stalls. He looked up when they approached. It was still strange to see intelligence in his eyes, instead of the usual madness. He nervously fidgeted, but otherwise he appeared almost normal.

  “Figured you’d come asking questions,” he said. “Surprised you didn’t do it earlier.”

  “Thought you could use some time after what you’ve been through,” Jules said, though she was lying. In fact, she’d been studying Pete since leaving the Badlands. She’d wanted to gauge his state of mind—and whether he felt any guilt over what happened. She’d half wondered if he would flee, though she knew she could track him down.

  “I don’t have all the answers,” Pete said.

  “We’ll start with some,” Trent said coolly. “From what Elizabeth said, you were a professor?”

  Pete nodded his head.

  “There’s a bit more to it,” he said. “I taught classical history at Harvard. I had a particular specialty in mythologies, including Greek.”

  Jules wanted to laugh at his language and diction now. She almost missed the crazy version of him.

  “Not long into my fourth year as a professor, I joined a secret society,” Pete continued. Jules immediately perked up. This was what she was here to know.

  “The Sanctum,” Pete continued, meeting her gaze. “I thought it was a bit of fun at first. A place where academics could drink, that kind of thing. But it was deadly serious. The leaders claimed the world wasn’t what we thought. They spoke of demons and monsters, and hidden artifacts of the old world.”