The upper decks of the HMS Golden Fox blazed under an inferno. Sailors jumped from gunports of the lower decks, while more unfortunate men hurled themselves into the sea to extinguish their burning bodies. Even so, there was no escape within the frigid sea. Savage water nymphs pulled the still burning men below the waves. On shore, wraiths tore the men of the landing parties apart while singing a haunting call.

Racked by a pain that hammered within his skull, Van watched from the shattered deck of the gunboat Stinger. The call of the wraiths, siren like, heightened the agony. Men danced on the shore beneath the cratered walls of the Russian fort in the grip of the siren call.

With the command officers lost to bombardment from the shore batteries atop the Russian fort, Van and Teven drove the Stinger through the storm waves raised by the wraiths.

The siren song drew the men into the ocean and waiting nymphs, while flying wraiths swept sailors and soldiers alike from land and decks into the mist and sleet driven by the storm winds.

Van hollered commands. His throat raw from yelling orders lost on men bewitched by the siren cries, Van turned to and fro, overcome and lost. What good were their deck guns or rifled barrels against the hunger of ghosts? Fierce beings known equally for forcing companionship and seeking vengeance, dancing the men to death until they ripped the souls from each—not unlike the Norse Valkyries and Greco-Roman Keres Van read about as a child. Their voices so powerful that a few notes summoned the fierce storm winds raging around him and caused the earth to shake from the very force of their magic.

*

Seeing without looking, Teven saw through his own eyes, unable to choose where he looked. He saw what his body saw, what the skinwalker saw. It commanded his body. He tried to look left or right, any movement, large or small. To breathe in. To swallow. To blink.

Teven's body was no longer his to control.

Panic and anxiety took hold and faded just as quick, for the familiar reinforcing reactions of the body did not follow. No nausea. No constriction of his chest. No butterflies, sweats, or flashes. He felt disembodied, floating, without senses, and disjointed. The skinwalker controlled his body, with Teven conscious and aware, unable to prevent it or to guide his own actions. The skinwalker galloped a large, black mustang, looking ahead at three other riders, one of them the leader of the diableros, each rode a similar beast. Teven gathered a vague lay of the land. The sun setting to his right meant the group rode south. He couldn't see Van, but understood the diableros intended to deliver both he and Van to some larger group and unknown purpose.

A helpless flood of imagery washed over him. Again that moment of fear and panic. Walking, unable to focus his eyes through a haze of vision. Leaden legs and utter exhaustion such that even his eyelids weighed more than he could bear.

Lucid moments came and went and the hours stretched into days. With each loss of awareness, Teven eased into a deeper level of surrender and peace, lost track of time, forgot where he was, and felt a hunger grow.

*

Christian sat, uncomfortable, on his mount, watching the herd pass by. Dust rose into the pale blue sky. He raised and drank from his canteen, frustrated and angry.

"Damned skinwalkers and magic. Ain't right. Ain't natural."

His horse snorted from the dust as cloud rolled over the hundred feet between them and the cattle. He dragged his hand across his lips and nose, paused as his knuckles hit his second nostril. Why did the skinwalkers attack? And why disguise themselves as Van and his brother? The water settled uneasy in his stomach. The canteen secured to the saddle, Christian kicked his horse forward.

At the head of the herd Christian called out to Marcos. "We're being followed."

Marcos watched Christian in silence, emotionless.

Christian yelled through both hands held to his mouth. "Followed."

The lead Semos vaquero maintained a trot. No reaction. Not to Christian's satisfaction. The left swing rider watched with an amused curiosity.

"Diablero?" Christian raised both hands and shrugged. An eyebrow raised.

Marcos bobbed his chin.

Christian sagged in his saddle. Abandoned. Surrounded. For the briefest of moments, he played with the horrific thought that the vaqueros were skinwalkers. Whether from the start, or on some dark night since. He fingered the handle of his brother's pistol, recovered and returned to him by Nathan. He rubbed his forehead with the same hand.

Did the vaqueros understand English? He thought Marcos spoke English. "Followed," he said to himself. "Hell is it in Spanish? Hunted. Pursued. Chased, chasse?" He mumbled. "Damn it."

With the herd at a steady trot, straight across the broad plain, he directed the left swing rider away from the herd and slowed to await the remuda. The swing rider Orlin, a Semos cousin, sat in the usual Semos silence.

Christian turned to Orlin. "What's ‘hunt' in Spanish?"

Orlin tipped his hat back and wiped a handkerchief across his forehead and through his thick black hair, while his horse looked at the frustrated younger Har brother.

A second cloud of dust rose to the north of the cattle herd, the first sign of the remuda. Sende at the head of the herd of spare horses. Impatient, Christian spurred his mount and closed the gap.

Sende reined up seven feet from Christian and Orlin.

"Is something the matter, Señor Har?"

Christian nodded. "We're being followed and I want to alert your cousins."

"Followed? Diableros?"

"I don't know if your cousins are having one on me, but I believe the skinwalkers are hunting us."

Sende shifted uneasy on her mount. "My cousins don't speak English. Marcos knows numbers, but my brother, Juan and I do speak English." She looked west along the length of the herd. "Why do you think the diableros follow us? Señor Long and Señor Drake fought and killed them."

Christian shook his hand. "Yeah, but Day Long says they were meant to capture him an' Nathan."

Sende translated for Orlin and added an instruction to ride to the rear of the herd and alert the tail riders. "I've sent him to tell my cousins. The Gasento Family must want the cattle, but as you saw, Señor Van branded each one, and none carried a brand before."

"Don't mean nothin' if those Gasentos believe the beeves belong to them. In a way, I guess they do. These lot probably started from the Gasento stock."

Sende watched the remuda. Keen to follow the wrangler, the spare horses gathered behind her, while the outer geldings scanned the brush and sparse grasses for fodder.

"Are we stopping?"

"No, we should find our way to the nearest town. I figure they won't likely try anthin' that brings too much attention to ‘em."

Sende nodded and trotted forward. Christian watched her go, his eyes trailing over the remuda before settling on the cattle in their lethargic crawl across the arid plain.

The herd followed Red, the lead steer. Skinwalkers, shapeshifters, the diableros had but to assume the skins of cattle, take the form of Red or possess the steer and lead the herd wherever they wanted. Christian shook himself from such paranoid thoughts. Still, he found himself eyeing the cattle with a newborn suspicion.

*

The chaotic din of the cold winter's battle continued as the Golden Fox burned and the shore batteries assaulted its hull. Closer to shore, the gunboat Stinger steamed toward the coastal fort, its deck guns silenced by the screams of men torn from the ship by wraiths seeking their souls.

Van cursed. "I will never escape. Never be free. Death follows me like some damned shadow." He gripped his head, his eyes clenched tight. The song of the wraiths and the roar of the wind and waves filled his ears, drowned out all else until all became an endless droning buzz.

The wraiths swirled around the gunboat as the constant buzz narrowed to a wavering tone, up and down ahead of him. Through strained vision, Van tracked the source, astounded by what he saw—a honeybee. It twisted not four feet in front of him, heedless of the wind and sleet.

The chaos rampant around him, Van followed the bee, and for the first time, he felt his body again, his tongue tingled at the thought of honey. The bee spun round as he watched and his eyes refocused on the shore. There, among the torn and soulless bodies of the landing party stood a woman with golden hair not unlike the wraiths. In striking contrast against the stark, near winter, grey-blues, her green dress called to Van with a stronger draw than any siren's song. A calmness overcame him, perhaps there was an escape from a life of pain and horror.

The woman stared back at him, her eyes locked on his across the miles between the gunboat and the blood-soaked shore. Her gaze hit him like the hard impact of a fist.

*

Teven rode south across a broad, flat plane. Van must have been there too, but Teven could not see him. He looked out through eyes no longer his own. Ahead, three skinwalkers and their leader galloped on large, black mustangs at a breakneck speed. Teven navigated the haze of memory, and didn't recall any stops, nor did he remember much through the brief spells of lucidity of what must've been days. This moment too began to fade.

Teven drifted at the edge of his subconscious, sensed a connection with a power within and accessible through him. Some result of possession?

The tales of possessions told across Europe and within the Bible came back to him. Of demons cast into swine and the mania which gripped those who did the Devil's bidding. How the possessed saw everything done with their body without the means to stop the demon. Why then, was he drifting in and out of consciousness? Why this sense of power within his reach? Perhaps the connection to his body usurped by the skinwalker? Why then the deep hunger?

*

Van rocked back on his heels, steadied himself and rubbed his eyes. He lowered his hand, assaulted by new sensations, by absolute silence and a vast panorama. He recognized it immediately. The high mountain air, the undulating skyline, the corral and outbuildings, the ranch house.

Home. Aleya.

More than the sharp mountain air, a specific scent, unmistakable and gentler than the pine and cedar, animals and feed. The pleasant, scented oils Aleya wore reacting with the heat of her skin. He looked down, reached out, needed only to lean forward, Aleya not two feet in front of him, stooped and working on a corral post. A great sense of calm overtook him.

Was this real? He hesitated, his chest tight, he found it hard to breathe. He fought to draw air in, his throat constricted. Confused, he stopped, was he breathing? Where was he really? Dead? Is this what possession meant, what happened when a demonic force took hold of your body, replaced your spirit? Time enough, then, to see Aleya a final time before the skinwalker gained his soul.

A voice sounded behind him, rasping and guttural. "How are you doing this?"

Van turned. The skinwalker stood in its black robes, faceless under its dark hood. Van understood. Spanish or English, the skinwitch spoke within him, in his mind. This was no simple possession, something was wrong, and even the skinwalker knew it.

Van was awakening.