The orc ran south after the Shinbone job. He cut loose from his partner—that rat who’d been with him since things went sideways on the train—and gorged on gold and whiskey, dumb enough to think the border would save him.

  Jake found him outside a cantina in Piedras Negras, deep in the sun-burnt edge of the Twilight Territories. The red moon hung swollen and low in the sky, casting a dull, rust-colored glow over the desert like dried blood on old bones. The old moon—the silver moon—was up there too, a waning crescent grinning down at the dusty earth. Jake looked at it, overshadowed by its fat crimson sister, and felt a pang of pity. Whether it was for the moon—or something else—he couldn’t say. He let the feeling pass and pushed through the swinging doors of the cantina.

  The orc was laughing, a human girl perched on his knee, a cigar clamped between his tusks. He flipped a coin through his thick fingers like a magician doing a trick, occasionally stopping to rub the face with his thumb—almost tenderly.

  Jake watched from across the barroom. Seven days of tracking. Seven days through canyon, scrubland, and outlaw trail. This was the end of the line.

  He scanned the smoky room, noting how the patrons avoided his eyes—and the orc’s too. That was good. There was no love for the brute here, and if he took him down, no one would stop him. Hell, they might even help. He walked to the bar, ordered whiskey in Spanish, the words coated in the orange mud of Alabama, then moved to the orc’s table, setting the bottle and two glasses down like old friends reuniting.

  The orc blinked at him, drunk and bleary-eyed. He clutched the coin tighter and shoved the girl off his knee.

  “You lost, partner?”

  Jake poured two drinks. “Thought you could use a drink. You’ve been riding hard.”

  “Ain’t been riding nowhere,” the orc grunted. His voice sounded like a herd of bison—deep, rumbling, something a man could feel in his bones.

  Jake raised his glass. “To Mexico.” He made it both a toast and a question.

  The orc snorted but drank. His laughter was a landslide—low and crumbling. “To Mexico,” he echoed. “And may she be kinder than the Territories.”

  Jake poured another round. “You hear about that train outside Shinbone? Hell of a thing. Seven dead. Lotta gold gone missing.”

  The orc’s eyes narrowed. His grip on the coin turned white-knuckled. He didn’t answer.

  Jake swirled his whiskey. “I heard the bastards used too much dynamite. Tore a conductor clean in half. Blew the safe—and two of their own—sky high.”

  Still, the orc said nothing.

  “And then there was the girl,” Jake added, softly.

  The cantina seemed to grow quieter.

  Jake looked him dead in the eye. “Legs chopped off at the knee. Hauled off like luggage. Raped. Tortured. Dumped over the border after four days.”

  The orc’s chair scraped backward. His hand went to his gun.

  Jake didn’t flinch.

  “You’re a bounty hunter,” the orc said.

  Jake smiled. “Only when I’m sober.”

  The gunfight lasted less than a second.

  Jake’s revolver barked from beneath the table—once. The orc’s left knee exploded. He collapsed in the dirt, howling, his pistol spinning away.

  Jake stood slowly. Smoke curled from his barrel, drifting into the desert heat.

  “You’re worth the same dead or alive,” he said, stepping forward, “but after what you did, it’d be too damn easy to let you die fast.”

  The orc tried to crawl. Jake shot the other knee. The gold coin tumbled from the orc’s grip and skittered across the floor. He reached for it like a drowning man for a rope.

  Jake stepped forward and picked it up.

  Pain spiked behind his eyes—sharp, sudden, like the first pang of a hangover. The coin was warm.

  The barkeep gave a slow nod.

  Jake flipped the coin to him. “Por los da?os.”

  He holstered his gun and walked out to get the horses.

  The orc refused to speak.

  During the day, he sat silent and glaring atop the ugly, stubborn mule that carried him. He was almost too big for the creature; his legs dangled awkwardly, twisted from shattered knees.

  The only satisfaction Jake got was the occasional grunt of pain.

  That night, Jake sat by the fire. The orc was tied up, sitting sullenly, still refusing to speak. Jake didn’t mind the silence—he could live with his thoughts for months—but he didn’t trust the orc.

  He wasn’t going quietly. He was planning something. And even with two broken legs, the big bastard was dangerous.

  The mule bucked at shadows.

  Jake looked up. The mule brayed again and kicked at the air, pulling against the picket line. Jake stood and approached the animal, wondering what had gotten into it.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Whoa now,” he said, raising his hands. The mule flicked its ears but didn’t bolt. Jake reached out, stroked its neck, and began checking the animal, running his hands across its body.

  Nothing obvious.

  Then his nose twitched.

  The acrid stench of burning leather. He turned sharply—afraid his gear had caught fire—but everything by the pit lay untouched. The smell wasn’t coming from the fire.

  It was coming from the mule. Or rather, from the mule’s pack.

  Jake opened the leather pouches strapped across its hindquarters. Inside the right one, nestled like a cursed offering, was a gold coin.

  He didn’t remember putting it there. Didn’t even know where it had come from.

  It was big—about the size of a woman’s palm—and warm to the touch. One side showed a screaming skull impaled with a crown of thorns. The other, a dragon in flight, etched in a style that felt… wrong. Like it hadn’t been carved by human hands.

  Jake reached out and touched it.

  Pain exploded through his skull.

  He collapsed backward, clutching his head, vision swimming with fire and shadows. Behind him, the orc laughed—a low, deep rumble like boulders grinding in the earth.

  “Vazerith,” the orc said.

  And laughed again.

  Jake tightened the orc’s bindings the next morning. Checked the splints.

  His knees were starting to smell, and the orc felt feverish—skin hot to the touch like meat left too long in the sun.

  Jake also checked the mule’s bag. The coin was still there.

  He didn’t like that. Didn’t like the idea of the orc being so close to it. Who knew what he had planned, even half-dead?

  Better the coin stay with him—on his own horse.

  Jake reached in and grabbed it.

  The pain hit again—less shocking this time, more like a muscle you knew would ache. Almost expected. He winced, but didn’t drop it.

  Instead, he turned it in his fingers, rubbing his thumb gently across the raised shape of the dragon on one side.

  They continued on through the desert.

  The orc stayed silent, feverish.

  Jake sat by the fire every night, turning the coin over and over in his hand, watching the way the firelight made the wings seem to move like they were flapping.

  On the seventh day, as dawn broke yellow and orange on the horizon, they heard a sound.

  The orc’s fever had worsened by this point, and his knees were woefully infected, oozing yellowed pus from ragged bullet wounds. He lay shivering by the embers of the fire. Jake had been up for hours by this time. This desert was hard on a man’s dreams—and a nightmare had driven him awake while the blood moon still hung high and nearly full in the eastern sky.

  The sound came rolling across the parched earth. It was a bell—off-tune, off-kilter—but a church bell just the same. It was a hell of a sound in this empty wasteland and set Jake’s nerves on edge.

  He kicked the orc awake.

  The brute came to—bleary-eyed and belligerent—snarling as he snapped at Jake with fiercely sharp teeth. He was becoming more bestial by the day.

  He had mostly refused to speak so far on their journey, though now Jake doubted he even could. Whether it was the pain, the fever, or something else, Jake didn’t know. Didn’t much care. He was being paid for the monster’s body, not his mind.

  What was left of it, anyway.

  The bell tolled out into the desert, and the bounty hunter and his prisoner followed. Jake rode his tall, weary horse; the orc slumped on the half-dead mule, his legs dragging in the sand, leaving behind furrows like a plough.

  They crossed a ridge, and there, alone, surrounded by nothing but sand and sky—stood a small, simple chapel. Built of adobe in the Spanish style, its roof was mostly gone, whether lost to war or some less man-made disaster was unclear. The windows were missing—or perhaps had never been.

  As they crested the ridge and looked down on that pale, broken church, the bell stopped.

  They entered the church. Jake dismounted, taking off his hat as he crossed the threshold, even though the inside was just as much outside as anything else. The orc remained atop the poor, forlorn mule.

  Jake hoped God would forgive him, but figured the Almighty had nothin’ against mules—considering He used them for midwives.

  At the altar, past broken and sun-bleached pews, stood a thin wisp of a man in a priest’s cassock. His eyes were clouded white, blind or close to it, but he stood tall—proud—before his congregation of shades.

  “Dominus vobiscum” he said.

  His voice rang out in the chapel, echoing off walls that had absorbed a thousand sermons. He stood there, smiling, waiting for a reply.

  The wind came.

  It slipped through the broken walls like a thief, and somewhere in it, the chapel whispered:

  “...et cum spiritu tuo.”

  The old priest smiled, beatific.

  The wind kicked up hard, drowning out what came next. Jake raised his hand to shield his eyes as sand swept in like judgment.

  When the wind slowed, he saw the old man open a Bible he carried with him atop the altar. He held out a hand in a sign of benediction, then spoke in a rich voice—less like a Catholic priest and more like a fire-and-brimstone Protestant preacher.

  “Revelation, chapter twelve, verses seven through nine,” he said, pausing as if waiting for his congregation to find their place. “And there was war in heaven... A war! A war in the very streets of our Father’s Kingdom! A war not fought with rifles or revolvers—no sir! Nor with swords and axes. No, this was a war of angels against their own. And such a war made the world shake with its mightiness!”

  He paused and looked down, as if reading.

  “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels—But he prevailed not. Neither was his place found any more in heaven. That great dragon—that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world—He was cast out into the earth, and his angels with him.”

  He lifted his head. His pale eyes were feverish with meaning.

  “Cast down,” he said. “Here... Among us.”

  The orc laughed—a deep rumble. The wind blew. The blind man smiled and spoke again.

  “Friends, join us in worship!”

  He spread his hands in welcome.

  The orc kept laughing.

  “Thank you kindly, Father,” Jake said, “but we’re just passing through.”

  “Aren’t we all, son? This life is not a destination for any of us. Come—enjoy fellowship before you and your friend go back out there amongst the serpents.”

  “Water.”

  The word came unbidden to Jake’s lips, but he did not regret it. He had water, of course—wouldn’t have started the journey without a supply—but it was running low, and measured, rationed sips were starting to drive him crazy.

  Not to mention the orc. His fever was drying him out, and his wide lips were cracked and flaking.

  “We sure could use some water,” Jake said, hat in hand like a beggar.

  The old priest’s smile widened, and he motioned for Jake to follow.

  Jake did so, leaving the orc in the care of that poor old mule—a good enough guard, all things considered, for the running the orc could still do.

  He followed the bent old man behind the altar, toward a door set into the wall to the right. Above it, a faded fresco showed the Lord standing in the river, His arms outstretched as a dove descended from the heavens. Off to the side stood John the Baptist, watching jealously.

  The door opened onto darkness, and Jake’s hand went instinctively to his gun, his palm settling over the smooth wooden handle.

  “Our baptistry,” the priest said. He moved into the darkened room and beckoned Jake to follow.

  A small flight of stairs led into the chamber proper. Though he did not need it, the priest lit a candle to provide Jake light. The air was cool, and the sound of dripping water echoed softly in the dark.

  The chamber’s walls were stone, and Jake realized the stairs had taken him beneath the church itself.

  In the center of the great round cavern stood a small stone font, the water placid and clear.

  Jake’s thirst came upon him sudden and strong. He reached into the basin, slurping up great handfuls before he caught himself.

  He turned toward the blind man, ashamed.

  “Forgive me, Father. I know this water is holy. I just—couldn’t help myself.”

  The priest made a benediction over him and said, “All water is holy in Hell, son. And we are surely there.”

  They stood silently in that dark, cool place.

  “Are you of the flock, my child? Have you been baptized?”

  “Once. Long ago, and far from here.”

  The blind man reached into the water, wetting his fingertips. Jake understood what the priest meant to do and knelt before him. He hadn’t been raised a papist—but in the Twilight Territories, you took God where you could get Him.

  “Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

  The priest’s fingers, cool and wet, traced a cross on Jake’s forehead, between his eyes.

  Jake felt peace.

  That night they slept in the chapel, Jake stretched out on a pew, the orc outside with the mule. The blind priest had insisted, and he didn’t have the heart—or the lack of thirst—to refuse.

  He lay there, watching the stars as they tilted across a sky that was darker and deeper than it had any right to be. The coin was forgotten. The red moon rose late, tinting the heavens with blood and fire.

  Somewhere above him, angels fought a losing war.

  ***

  In the morning, they filled their canteens from the baptistry and left the priest standing in his pulpit blessing his lost flock.

  The little chapel grew smaller still until it was gone, swallowed up by sand and distance.

  The next morning, the orc said a word to Jake. It rumbled like distant thunder in the canyon.

  “Vazerith.”

  Jake reined in his horse and glanced down at the half-conscious brute. “You said that before. What does it mean? Is it a name?”

  He didn’t expect an answer. The orc had been drifting in and out for hours, more dead than alive.

  “Vazerith…”

  “You don’t say.”

  Jake scanned the horizon—just miles of black volcanic rock and burning sand.

  “Water,” he offered. “You tell me what Vazerith is, I’ll give you water.”

  The orc’s eyes found his and held them. That was answer enough.

  Jake swung down from the saddle and unhooked the canteen that hung from the saddle pommel. It was chapel water. Maybe blessed. Maybe not. He took a long, deliberate sip in front of the orc before kneeling beside him.

  He tilted the canteen. A silver stream spilled onto cracked lips. The orc drank greedily, desperately.

  Then he choked. The water burst from him in a violent geyser, spraying the dirt in a shimmering arc.

  “Vazerith,” he gasped. Then he fell silent again.

  That night, for the first time since leaving the chapel, Jake searched for the coin. He couldn’t find it. Not in his packs. Not in his bedroll. Nowhere.

  It was gone.

  Maybe it had been on the mule when it wandered off into the wasteland. Or maybe the damned orc had somehow taken it.

  Jake turned to the shivering, blood-crusted creature lying in the dirt.

  “What did you do with it?” he snapped.

  The orc looked up at him with one eye. “Vazerith,” he said, and gave a slow, deliberate shrug.

  “God damn you.”

  Jake yanked the revolver from his hip and cracked it across the side of the orc’s head. The blow opened a fresh gash. Blood trickled down into the dust.

  The orc looked at him, smiled through broken lips, and said nothing.

  “Is it Elf Speech? What is it?”

  The orc didn’t answer.

  He never spoke again.

  That night, Jake dreamed of fire. Wings that blotted out the sky. Gold teeth grinning in the dark.

  He woke with his hand around the orc’s throat.

  The orc didn’t fight back.

  By the time they reached Moonrail City, what was left of him was a blood-soaked sack tied to Jake’s saddle.

  Jake rode in alone.

  People stared.

  He didn’t care.