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  Michael looked up at the stars, eyes flitting from one to the next wondering which one she might be fighting around right now. “Oh, I might have misplaced her for a while, but I haven’t lost her.”

  Michael was leaning against that same post the next morning when Sarah Jennifer came out of the house. She eyed him, then set her shoulders and stepped off the porch, heading in his direction.

  He raised an eyebrow at her in question.

  “Firewood,” she told him. “We need some. You willing?”

  “Of course,” Michael answered. “Which direction are you clearing?”

  “Huh, hadn’t expected you to know that.” she turned and pointed to Michael’s right. “About half a mile that way. You’ll find a small hut with the tools in it. I’ll send a lunch and one of the guys about noon to grab what you got so far.” She turned back to him. “Be back here by dark. I think I know Jack Childers well enough to know he likes using the dark to ramp up the fear.”

  “I’ll be here in time,” he promised, then started walking in the direction she had indicated.

  “You did WHAT?” Jeremiah, usually pretty quiet, hissed in anger at Sarah Jennifer.

  The two of them were in her office, and it was late afternoon. Dirk and Todd had come back with two loads of firewood. More than they would need for days.

  “I told him Jack wouldn’t be here until dark,” she replied, only slightly annoyed with him for getting angry at her.

  “Help me understand, SJ,” he said, his false calm evident. “Why you sent our one seriously badass guy away? He’s going to get caught outside of the fight and not be able to help us. If he was to do anything, they’ll just track his ass down and kill him.”

  “Look, I don’t expect you to understand,” she replied. “But there were a few stories that the FDG whispered, and they all came from Terry Henry.”

  “God!” Jeremiah burst out. “That man was not a god! Not everything that came from his mouth was Gospel!”

  She leaned across her desk, finger pointed, eyes angry. “Then you tell me how many times you’ve heard ‘Nacht’ as a name before?”

  “WHAAAT?” Jeremiah said, not following her logic at all. Typical female argument tactic. “The hell does Nacht have anything to do with this?”

  She leaned back with a thump. “Because TH always said that if you should ever, ever meet someone that seemed too good to be true, with the last name Nacht, to leave them the fuck alone.”

  “We ARE leaving him alone!” Jeremiah argued. Then he pointed back towards the north. “The PLAN is we’re not going to tell Childers to leave him alone!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she replied, her voice growing tired. “He’s gone. He can’t get back.”

  He shook his head in frustration. “You just screwed our best chance of living through this, SJ.” Jeremiah stood up, pushing the chair back. He eyed her, the anger that wasn’t in his voice clearly in his eyes. “The best chance for a savior of this colossal fuck up and you just pissed him away.”

  “He’s no savior, no messiah, Jeremiah,” she whispered to the empty room—he had already left her office fuming. She looked out, seeing the darkness coming in the sky, the shakes taking her.

  “He’s a dark messiah,” she finished pronouncing to an empty house.

  Chapter Five

  Michael had used the axe for his morning of wood chopping, enjoying the use of his muscles for an action he hadn’t done for hundreds of years.

  His skill was coming back like an old friend.

  Todd and Dirk had joined him at noon, just like Sarah Jennifer had promised. They had been shocked at the amount of wood he had cut.

  He had tried to be slow, but even going slow, it was obvious he was more than normal. So be it, some things he just didn’t care if they figured out.

  He had read her mind this morning. He knew she had intended to keep him out of the fight. But, in her own mind, it was honorable. She expected him to leave once he heard the gunshots, not come running in. No matter what she believed, she wasn’t going to try and kill him.

  Or let him die for her.

  After Todd and Dirk had left, Michael started working on bringing back some skills. Namely the ability to create a thin micro-sized, incredibly sharp, Etheric edge along his arms. He practiced by cutting wood.

  After a couple hours of practice, he looked around and rolled his eyes. He had over twenty trees all chopped up, with pristine cuts across every one of them. It was such a joy to use a skill that had been a part of him for so long and actually have it work, that he hadn’t considered the results.

  Well, Bethany Anne had taken over the responsibility for the strictures from him. If she was going to be upset, she could come down here and spank him…

  Oh yes, he smiled, she could sure try. Then, he lost his smile. Without his Myst ability, was he still up to taking her?

  “Oh… shit.” he murmured, realizing he needed to get back into fighting form damned fast. His luck, she would show up and immediately decide she wanted a sparring partner.

  Then, she would hand him his ass.

  He turned towards the camp and started walking. “Time to get back into fighting shape.”

  “Todd,” Sarah Jennifer nodded to the first man inside the door. “Dirk, Jeremiah.” She shut the door, locked it and then Dirk and Jeremiah lifted the hardwood protection and placed it next to the door. Using a bar, they wedged it into place. All afternoon, they had prepared as best they could.

  They had food, water, ammunition, and a shit-ton of wood. They used the extra to put against a couple of windows for more weight.

  “Hell,” Sarah Jennifer had said, when the guys got back with the wood. “I’d almost ask him back just to cut the wood for us.”

  Jeremiah eyed her, annoyance written plainly on his face. Dirk and Todd took the news that Michael was being left out of this fight without too much comment. A shrug from each.

  It took about three more hours, an hour after sunset, for the first call to be heard.

  “Go on,” Jack pointed towards the house. “You wanted to join us, Buddy, so go do what I’m telling you.”

  The man nodded and kicked his horse a little to get it moving. The horse, knowing this was home, gladly headed towards the back of the house.

  He paused outside of the main buildings. He suspected they were all in the house, but that Todd could be a sneaky ass. He shifted in the saddle, and shouted, “Sarah! Sarah Jennifer!” He waited a couple of moments. “The boss is ready to hear your reply. Are you going to give up your land and take his hand or…”

  BAM!

  Jack and Russell both snickered when Buddy’s head exploded from a gunshot.

  Russell leaned over his horse and spit out on the ground. Leaning back up he said, “I guess we got her answer.”

  Jack turned in his saddle. “Okay boys, circle the house. It’s three nights in Denver on me for the one who kills her.” There was a lot of whoops and yelling when he told them of this reward. When they died down, he added, “But... it’s TEN nights if you bring her to me alive!”

  In the trees a quarter way around the house, Michael watched the beginning of the altercation and smiled with the simplicity of the response Sarah Jennifer made. Michael had noticed how the horse only spooked a little when the body fell off. Then it walked into the barn.

  Nice to know Sarah Jennifer didn’t have much of a problem dealing with the riffraff.

  “I figured Buddy might be one of the few that went to the other side,” she said, ejecting the spent cartridge from the rifle. “I never could get him out of his selfish focus.”

  “You can’t save everyone,” Jeremiah commented from a room away.

  Jack waited patiently as the fight started. He hoped they didn’t have to set fire to her place. It was a nice home, well built and had a field of fire cleared for a hundred paces all the way around, offering the occupants a really good defensive position.

  The pistol and rifle shots started cracking faster as the men found suitable locations to hide.

  “I think we’re going to have to burn her out,” Russell said.

  “You got the dynamite?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, but it’ll be a bitch to get close enough to get it in place without getting shot.”

  “That’s why I’m paying for nights in Denver. They have a couple o’ good places for the men to get laid and taken care of. They won’t remember a damned thing, but I’m sure they’ll have fun.”

  “Speaking of Denver,” Russell started.

  “Give me time, Russell,” Jack stopped him cold. “That’s a bit of a bigger nut to crack. My people inside the city are making a few alliances to let us take over the West side if we move Kraven out. Once he’s out of the way, we have West Denver and the Fallen Lands out this way.”

  “Well,” Russell replied. “What I think is…”

  He never finished his comment when the first scream came from the left of the house somewhere. It stopped... abruptly.

  “The hell?” Russell stood up in his stirrups to look around and then sat back down again. “Can’t see shit,” he said.

  “One of those assholes must be outside. Well, that’s why…”

  Then, a second and a third cry were heard. The guns slowed their fire at the house as those outside realized someone, or something, was hunting them.

  That was when their horses started acting spooked.

  “So,” Jeremiah said. He stroked the trigger of the rifle Sarah Jennifer lent him. The butt of the gun kicked him in the shoulder. “Damn, only made him duck.”

  “Did you guys hear a scream?” Dirk called out from the front of the house.

  “No!” Sarah Jennifer replied, trying to find a new target. Her last one was either dead or had moved position when s
he got too close.

  Moments later, she did hear a scream in the night. Then another. The bullets hitting the house slowed down.

  The next, blood curdling, soul-shredding scream caused bumps to form on her arm.

  “What… the… hell… is… that?” Todd asked.

  “He’s here,” she whispered.

  “Who’s here?” Dirk asked as he walked into the room.

  Jeremiah yelled, “Get back to your room, Dirk! If they think being in here is the safest, we can’t let any make it in here!”

  Dirk’s eyes got big, and he turned, darting out the door, his feet clopping down the hallway back to his assigned location.

  “Jack,” Russell had turned his horse around, so the two were side-by-side but looking opposite directions. “That’s the fifteenth scream.”

  “Tell me,” Jack grated under his breath, “something I don’t know! I can count past twenty, Russell.”

  “Well, we can’t run afraid back to our town until our guys are all dead, or we have to kill them on the way back to town.”

  “Another unnecessary observation, Russell,” Jack said.

  Then, both turned their heads toward the east when a man yelled, “No… NO!… Oh God NOOOOoooooo!” his voice stopped as if someone had cut off his head.

  “Sixteen,” Jeremiah said inside the house.

  The butt of Sarah Jennifer’s rifle touched the floor. She turned and walked to the couch she had moved over from Denver herself to help furnish the place.

  “The hell?” Jeremiah, sticking his head into her room, giving her a funny look.

  She glanced at him. “Don’t worry, you got your wish,” she said.

  “What wish is that?” he asked, wondering if he should call Dirk to take her position.

  “The Dark Messiah,” she pointed at the location of the last scream.

  “He’s here.”

  Michael was enjoying himself. He heard a total of forty-seven heartbeats he could send to hell with a good conscience tonight.

  Provided they all stayed put.

  This sixteenth one must have caught sight of his glowing red eyes.

  He could hear five heartbeats, running about as fast as they could without exploding to his left. Tonight was a very good night for killing.

  “Twenty-one,” Dirk said. The four of them were in the same room as Sarah Jennifer now. There were random shots fired, but none in the direction of the house.

  “You don’t think they’re going to get here, do you,” Jeremiah asked, and she shook her head.

  “No,” she exhaled loudly. “A lot of the stories coming from TH, I thought, were bullshit. But in all the years I knew him, he never, ever joked about that. Now...” she stopped as Dirk interrupted.

  “Twenty-two.”

  She continued, “Now we know why.”

  That was when the fear hit.

  Michael got clipped by a bullet, grazing his skull. He lost his amusement at the situation and fear exploded out of him, horses bolted, men dropped and scrunched up in fetal positions and others cried.

  His eyes were blazing red in the night. He went from location to location, killing any he could still find in the vicinity.

  He looked towards the north, still able to hear multiple horses rushing in that direction. He looked towards the house and dipped his head before turning towards the north and starting to jog.

  The fear receded.

  “Is it,” Dirk gasped out, his hands covering his ears, “is it over?”

  Sarah Jennifer leaned against Jeremiah who had sat down beside her, allowing her to squeeze his hand in her fear.

  Now, he was busy shaking it, trying to get the feeling back, out of her sight.

  She nodded. “Yeah.” Her voice squeaked. She cleared her throat and worked to get her sense of leadership back. “Yes, it’s over. All except the burying.”

  “You think he got everybody?” Todd asked, walking towards the viewing hole.

  Jeremiah answered, “No, I heard horses spook. I bet some are heading back to their town.”

  Sarah Jennifer, her eyes not focused, said aloud what all of them were thinking. “Wrong move, assholes.”

  In the morning, the woman and three men ventured out, finding thirty-three dead men. Two had their hearts ripped out of their chests, two more, their heads cut clean from their bodies. Multiple corpses had slashes from a sword. Probably what caused the screaming before he killed them.

  Jeremiah was looking down at the second man he had seen with his heart punched out of his body. He looked up when Sarah Jennifer came out of the trees and stood next to him, looking down at the corpse.

  “Dark Messiah, indeed,” he said, his voice low. “You were right.”

  “And so were you,” she said, looking down at the body. “He was our savior.” She turned and snapped her fingers in front of Jeremiah’s face to get his attention. “I’ve already apologized to Dirk and Todd for being a stupid bitch to all of you, trying to throw around my ability to fight.”

  Jeremiah was about to speak when she put two fingers on his mouth. “Shh, please. I’m not done yet, Jeremiah.” Surprised by her touch, he nodded his head.

  She blushed and looked down for a second, before looking back up. “Jeremiah, you’ve been my rock, and I’ve known it for three years. I knew, no matter what happened, you would be there for me. I never allowed myself to appreciate you for being you. I was too busy being full of myself.”

  She looked down another time before looking off to the right and then back into his face.

  “Sometimes it takes something like staring death in the face to realize what a fool one can be. I know this is horrible from the standpoint of tradition,” she said, then reached out and took his hand in hers. His eyes were captured by the emotions she was displaying. He had never, ever, expected to see something like this from her.

  “Jeremiah Kaye, would you take Sarah Jennifer Walton to be your wife? Will you marry me?” she asked, tears streaming down her face.

  Boss Childers’ Town, West of Denver, Colorado (United States Post-Apoc)

  Jacqueline put the next plate up on the drying rack, her hands all shriveled up from being in the water all night.

  The men, partying earlier in their excitement to undertake the great attack on Sarah Jennifer’s house, had made a mess. It took the slaves who had been tasked with cleaning the mess room over an hour to get it cleaned up.

  The only one still working was her. The other two women who were responsible for cleaning the kitchen were a little looser with their nighttime activities and weren’t required to stay late.

  They had other tasks.

  Jacqueline didn’t care. As far as she could tell, it was by choice, not force. That it caused her more work was a byproduct. It kept her busy, and tired, but it gave her some level of exercise.

  So, she was up when she heard the clang-clang-clang of the gate’s bell. Then, the sound of men getting up, some cursing freely. They were either waking up or having to stop their own physical activities. This bell meant serious business. It was rarely ever rung, and only for practice in Jacqueline’s experience.

  They were under attack.

  Jacqueline grabbed the rag and dried off her hands. She confirmed her knife’s location and caught up a six foot stick she had been practicing with. Her hearing was good enough that if someone came for her, she had a chance to fend for herself.

  If she could see, she would have already been heading for the town’s walls to see if she could get over and get lost before anyone noticed.

  The screams and the fear hit at almost the same time. She stumbled back, hitting the cupboard hard enough that some of the dishes crashed to the floor.

  She put her hands over her ears. The screams coming out of the night caused her blood to run cold. She knew that men she would have gleefully killed moments ago were dying out there, but it brought her no happiness.

  Then there was a pause in the screaming, and the fear receded. She listened, her Were senses straining to hear anything, to give her any sort of information on the outcome.