Teven watched the countryside roll by in covert silence. Hot, flat, and harsh. Vast desert-scrub in severe contrast to the cool, low elevation pinyon-juniper of the cattle drive route left behind days ago. Best guess, the journey south took them close to the Mexican border, maybe west Texas, a good six days non-stop ride south at a right angle from the west-to-east cattle drive route through the Zuni Mountains. Further and further from their investments, the vaqueros, and his young brother Christian. The skinwalker steeds made the journey south in fewer days. How many fewer days? He wasn't sure and couldn't know. The unnatural, black mustangs seemed tireless. Though he often lost track of time, the skinwalkers didn't appear to sleep or even stop. No mundane or natural riders or steeds these.

His mount galloped at incredible speed, with deep, steady breathing. It showed no signs of being blown. These diableros were no skinwalkers, but skin riders. Did such creatures haunt the territories beyond the reach of civilization? If he and Van survived, it was a question to ask Nathan and Day Long, as their future cattle drives depended on avoidance of threats of all kinds, natural and unnatural.

Future drives. If they survived. If he survived.

Teven dwelled on the idea of future drives. It wasn't the threat of death and surviving the skinwalkers that troubled him as much as that possible future. The decision to partner with Van and create a cattle empire.

His indecisiveness driven by doubt, he thought of Jessica. He couldn't lay blame at her feet, she'd expressed no disfavor regarding the move from Boston to Chicago. But Teven knew Chicago was too far from St. Maria, in the north west corner of the Colorado Territory, for her to live the life of a journalist. Even so, he couldn't argue with Christian and Van that her opportunities to write about life on the frontier greatly increased her value to the eastern papers. Or perhaps, she'd be made a widow, return to Boston and maybe to her family, living out her life of exotic travel, or remarry. He only hoped she could find happiness and avoid suffering. His selfishness whispered from the same source as his doubts and fears. How dark that place.

With the future unwritten, he knew of one thing, with each lucid period, he felt less of the skinwalker's hold and its fellow diableros seemed to be unaware. If the skinwalkers talked to each other through some arcane connection, they showed no sign of it. None of the creatures reacted to his lucidity. Perhaps it was the same as the spoken word and ears to hear. When speaking through this sixth sense, if the skinwalker within him "spoke", they could hear, but it remained silent and no longer controlled his movements. Worse still, and more troubling, Teven felt sated. The deep hunger of earlier days, gone. Yet the skinwalkers didn't stop to eat. As uneasy as that made him, Teven kept his gaze forward and allowed the black mustang to follow the riders.

*

Van glanced at Aleya and back at the diablero. The beast leaned forward.

"How have you brought us here?" The lower half of its face showed under its black hood, revealing a yellowed grin. "Through your fears we will break you and claim your ancient soul."

Van raised his hand to the skinwalker. "We? I only see the one of you." He flipped his palm up. "I know you and what you are. You're a diablero, a witch, Crus de la Vargos."

The skinwalker twitched, its cloak rippled from the movement as it reacted to its given name.

"Yes, I also know your true name, though not whether it will free me. Somehow I've gained your magics as well as memories, some of them at least, which brought me here." He gestured to Aleya and the land around them. "That's my wife, this is our ranch. I've always been here, but we're not really here." He tapped the side of his head. "This is all in my mind, not quite the spirit plane. Not the Astral. You're trying to control me, and you're failing. You chose to use my fears, and that was your mistake, because she," his finger shot back toward Aleya, "is my escape from it all. My escape and my strength."

The skinwalker pointed with a leathered finger. "That you can fight us is why you are of value. You have a knowledge within that you do not harness. Such mementos to harvest from your soul. Such power."

Van tilted his head, curious. "Knowledge of magic in me? Is magic returning?"

A deep croaking from within the skinwalker confused Van, before he realized the beast laughed at him.

"Magic never left, it is withheld. We live in slavery."

Van pointed at Aleya. "She is my freedom and we are happy to live without magic."

The skinwalker stepped forward. "She is not here, I am. I control your mind and your body and we will harvest your soul."

"She is always with me." Van slapped his hand against his chest. "Here."

The skinwalker edged closer.

Van stepped forward. "You don't control me."

*

Christian sighed as he suffered the snail's pace of the herd. Traveling no more than ten miles a day, they'd covered only sixty miles and not yet reached the relative safety Albuquerque and its military post might provide. Any means of avoiding those loyal to the Gasento Family, and shapeshifting diableros, seemed so close and yet so far. One more day, ten miles and maybe they'd escape the shapeshifters. He rubbed the grit and dust from around his neck, reached with his free hand to his canteen, and eyed the cattle as he had for days now. There was no escape.

The herd plodded past as he sat and sipped the brackish water from his canteen. No time to stop for fresh water at the tributaries of the mighty Rio Grande. He lowered the canteen as the flank riders trotted past. No sign of the damned diableros, unless of course, they hid in plain sight, walking in the skins of man or cattle.

If no diableros hunted the cattle drive or hid among them, then perhaps the scouts, Day Long and Nathan, clashed with the creatures. Not knowing their fate, Christian fastened his canteen and secured it to his saddle. If the threat hid among the cattle, the solution was clear.

*

The black mustangs slowed to a canter as the lead skinwalker raised his hand. Teven missed it at first, as he scanned the plain. Two miles ahead, a figure stood. The riders entered into a trot as they approached and the distance closed. Teven risked glances to his side, found the entranced bodies of Van and Juan Semos mounted to his left on similar black mustangs. He looked forward again, focused on the figure standing among the rabbit brush, not twenty feet away, black with no sheen to his clothing, like the robes of the skinwitches, an absence of reflected light, as if the cloth absorbed the sun, if it was an Earthly fabric. This was no ordinary man. Perhaps no man, as inhuman as the skinwalkers. What light did reflect, glinted off an array of simple blades set in his vest and sheathed along his belt. Knives all. He raised a black, gloved hand and nodded.

Silence hung heavy, the early afternoon sun already edged its way toward the western mountains. The lead skinwalker sat on his black mount, his back to Teven. After one, perhaps two minutes, the shifter dismounted and Teven followed the lead of the other shapeshifters.

The Gasento men stood with great unease ahead of their mounts, while their leader bristled as if ready to attack. Teven looked towards Van from the corner of his eye. Van and Juan Semos stood with the same look of unease as the other diableros. Gripped by a dread that he was alone, cold sweat dampened Teven's clothes and his thoughts turned once more to Jessica.