High shrieks of mounting fury rained down, filled the lake. “Why doesn’t it just kill us!” whimpered the youth.

Cassidy leaned against a pile of bone, “I reckon it’s protecting its territory, fighting over food.” The boy frowned. “They’re fighting over us,” he added, and felt light headed.

Deeper they moved into the maze with only the center’s spire to guide them. Splash of feet lingered in the walls of bone. Exhausted, the bounty hunter pressed on, but despite Bryn’s pleas to leave him, he refused to abandon the boy. At least the walls of skeletons were too high for the umbral blot to swoop down. It would have to land, pursue on hoof, if it wanted them enough. No matter how old or tough the beast, swore the bounty hunter, enough bullets could fell the most dangerous of predators.

The spire grew and grew before them. It was the largest pile of bones, totem against any interlopers. A mere beast was incapable of such, a dark voice whispered to Cassidy, who shook his head. Denial was better than accepting any form of intellect in the creature. Bryn slid down from his back to let him rest, but still leaned on him. At the base of the spire was powdered bone, ground fine by it immense bulk, where it slept.

“Young Master Cox,” a surprised voice pondered, and palms struck Cassidy in the back. Power of the blow sent him to the powdery earth. “It seems you’ve gotten your hero killed,” beamed Huck in good cheer, “such an encumbrance has surely slowed him. Elusion would’ve been conceivable, if the bounty hunter had beaten us here.”

Cassidy rolled over; gray crept into the edges of his vision, “Leave the boy alone!”

“OR,” his eyebrows raised, and he held the youth before him, “you’ll…do…nothing.” He snickered, and the doctors sneered, “Mister Bullock, the lower classes, such as yourself, are just so,” he tapped his chin, “ignorant. You don’t know what is best for you, and that is to do as you’re told. We wanted to guide you. We desired to bring the high low, and the low high!” He shook Bryn, “BUT, your plight is of your creation!” Eyes drifted away, “I know what it is to be slave to the powerful.”

“Lady Nuit will kill you,” Cassidy’s smile was pitiless, wolfish, “I don’t know her, but everyone knows she is merciless.”

The fiends jerked, and all their eyes went to Tiberiu Badescu. Huck smiled, brushed his mustache, “I was going to kill you two fast, for such things are barbaric. But, we have a long way to go, and we’re famished.” He smelled Bryn, who was still. “Oh, this one is next to dead anyways,” the Snake Oil salesman threw the boy to the ground.

“Bryn,” called Cassidy, as he saw the face of his son Bart on the boy. He drew the revolver, but a doctor kicked the gun from his hand.

Fueled only by his fury, Cassidy tried to stand. The doctors beat him back, but he kept trying to rise. Every time he was knocked down, the bounty hunter would curse, and tried to push his way through. Long fangs in broad smiles surrounded him. Huck laughed at his dogged persistence.

Cassidy tried to crawl among them, though they battered him. Past leaped up to devour his mind. In the muck of the Confederate ad-hoc prison, a young Union Soldier had died. At a casual glance one would think him asleep, the bounty hunter recalled in a vivid horror. Phantom flies buzzed. Memories hid among the dark cloud that threaded through the listless gray. Days in that muddy perdition went on forever. It was so easy to give up, let despair gobble you up, but he clung on. The young man could’ve been his son, when manhood began to take hold. Bryn was just as pale, but that Private had cut his wrists to escape, bled until Death saved him.

Memory led to memory, and the body of Bartholomew Bullock was before him. Parson’s Raiders had gunned him down like a common animal. Huck’s discard of the boy burned in his mind. Remembrances bled together. Was he in the burned out hulk of his home, or moldering in a Confederate pit? Am I dead? The queries of life were answered by another jolt of pain, which is the curse and blessing of those above the grave. Eyes, blue as the coming dawn, caught wings spread to incredible length.

Hiss of geysers rebounded through walls of bone, yet the heavy hooves landed in silence. Broad agile wings gathered about the bulky, yet feminine body; around a delicate neck, black fur was thick. Large eyes opened wide, fangs long in a broad mouth. A savage intelligence lived in the gaze, and in its regard, the bounty hunter shuddered. To the fiends, its wrath fell; wings unfurled in agitation. Its gut bulged, for it had gorged this day.

Huck turned as darkness loomed. A cloven hand reached for him, but threw a doctor into its clutches. With a high pitch squeal, Tiberiu ran away, and left the others to deal with the ancient beast. Despite a bulbous gut, the huckstering former head of Thorncrown was nimble. Cassidy scrambled for the lad, grabbed the gun and turned. Two shots blew out Huck’s knees, and to the powdery earth he toppled. The bounty hunter heard his scream of surprised pain, and thought of a piglet caught by a wolf.

All of the fiends that remained of the hospital staff rushed the beast, except Huck. Cassidy lifted Bryn up onto his back, though the boy was limp. Around the center spire of bones they rushed, as the beast of Devil’s Lake fought the former staff. An opening formed in the mist before them. Before the bounty hunter could let out a miserable laugh of relief, a half mad chuckle slithered out of the mist. Huck ran to the same exit, and Cassidy swallowed his laugh with his disbelief.

At this dark miracle he bared a flinty grin of an old wolf. “To the devil with you, COWARD!” he bellowed, dropped low to keep Bryn on, and then fanned the hammer on his revolver. Again, two bullets struck Huck’s knees, but the other two hit his hips.

Tiberiu fell to his knees, and then collapsed back on his heels. Up into the fog choked air an unearthly piggish squeal tore. At the bounty hunter he bared fangs, “You have no idea!” About Huck’s neck a cloven hand squeezed, broad leather wings encircled him.

Cassidy turned away, as another high pitch whine escaped the cowardly fiend. No matter the demonic sounds, which arose behind him, he kept the spire at his back, and refused to slow. The maze of bone surrounded them, and the bounty hunter was thankful. Huck had kept the strongest with him. Their fierceness would buy him and Bryn more time. Gray, once again, crept into his vision, but it was joined by threads of black. Eventually, skeletons of the ancient beast’s victims opened, and before him was a split in the rim of the mountain. A path cut through the mountain’s rim. It went down to the other side.

“BRYN,” called Cassidy, and set him down. He shook the boy, nothing. “How Am I supposed to have an adventure without you?” he smiled, but the lad was very pale. “Don’t quit,” commanded the bounty hunter, “I’ll get you help!” He pulled out his knife, held it under Bryn’s nose. A prayer passed his lips; he shook his head to dispel the tears, and pleaded to see the steel fog with youth’s exhalation.

A fresh dawn arose to cast its light across the heavens. Thin whispers of clouds were a conflagration of reds, oranges, and yellows. Cassidy held hands up to the fire’s warmth to dispel the cold that lingered in his joints. Coffee set off to one side, and it was better to start with a clear mind, certainly this day. Chickens clucked, a rooster crowed, and a dog, a nondescript mongrel, yipped and barked in joy. To this his eyes lingered, allowed a smile.

The bounty hunter had tracked down Bryn’s mother. Before this, he found his Pa. Fate robbed Cassidy of the joy of breaking the man’s jaw would bring. Mister Cox, who was a worthless cur in Cassidy’s opinion, died like a dog in the street, face down in vomit. Misses Cox had run from her husband, and then changed her name. He found the boy’s Ma. Away from any town with her sister he had found the lad’s mother.

The knock was brisk, though the hand trembled. Misses Cox sighed. She had taken many odd jobs, so she could return to Thorncrown Hospital. “More jobs, more money,” she marched across the house, chin high, “and I’ll have my beautiful little Bryn!” She opened the door, yet the visage before her struck her knees weak, and had to hold onto the frame.

“Ma,” he said, and held her up, “it’s me!”

She touched his face, tears welled, but away she dashed them to see him better. “How,” she breathed, “are you…you’re here!”

“I escaped,” grinned the boy, “Huck was making me sick. Those maniacs were making everyone sick.

“I know that man with the fancy words was up to something,” she said, and had cursed herself every day since.

“Cassidy Bullock saved me!”

“Sure he did,” she squeezed him and laughed. The only escape her son had for years was the tales of Cassidy Bullock.

Cassidy listened, smile broad, heart a little lighter. When he’d been rescued from the Confederate Prison, he’d thought it was angels sent to bring him to those celestial shores. Nightmares bled into the days and then back into the nights. Things at the edges of the world and the mind threatened madness, guaranteed horror. Through it he forged. “I guess a man can go through Hell,” grinned the bounty hunter, “and come out a little closer to Heaven.”