The mausoleum’s stone door was already open. Judas stood right outside under the overhang, fully protected from sunlight. And unlike his mood, the clouds had parted, and the day grew bright and crisp. Heaven to most people. Hell to his kind.

  Sounds of terror continued to ring out across the city. However, I could also hear the sweet notes of a well-played harmonica. Better than that jazz crap. Some cynic was out putting music to the apocalypse.

  “Can you just slow down a damn minute and explain?” I asked.

  “Were you not paying attention?” Judas said.

  “Maybe your mind works as fast as your legs.” I took a breath. “Judas, what is Rosa? You’re saying Chekoketh played us? Talk to me.”

  He ignored the question and shouted to his knights in his language. They hovered on the steps of another mausoleum across the way, killing time however unholy knights did such a thing. I looked left and right. Timp must have moseyed off, chomping on some grass. Impatient as ever.

  “Is he with us or against us?” Chapelwaite asked. He and the others approached in unison, loaded crossbows in hand, ready to defend their leader if need be.

  “The situation has changed, my friend,” Judas said.

  “Yes, it has,” Chapelwaite replied.

  The twang came first. Four bolts flew out of their crossbows without warning, each one piercing Judas’s legs just as they’d done to me in the cathedral. I spun to protect Rosa, though if they’d been aiming at me, she’d already be dead.

  As fast as Judas was, the betrayal caught him completely off guard. Neither of us had noticed the ropes tied to their ammunition, and with the bolts securely in his flesh, they yanked. In an instant, Judas went from the protective cover of shade to dragged out into the open.

  His cloak stretched down and ripped in places. Sunlight hit his skin and affected him no different than it had Tourmaline, despite his power. Maybe even worse.

  He howled, scrambling toward shelter. The knights kept him pinned as best they could while Chapelwaite jumped on his back and wrestled to tear the rest of his cloak off.

  “Get off him!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

  “Killing two birds, so to speak,” someone said.

  The voice didn’t belong to Chapelwaite or any of the knights. It came from around the mausoleum. Spurs jangled, and a shadow stretched out from its corner. And once more, I heard a harmonica playing, only the tune was somehow familiar to me.

  I laid Rosa down. “Guard her,” I told Damballah, and the good snake coiled up on her chest, ready to strike.

  I found cover behind a column, and though I had my pistols, I had no bullets. With my knife turned to sand, only my lasso remained to my name. I gripped one end and prepared myself for anything. Who knows what might have spilled out of the Hellmouth.

  Like an omen of bad things, the harmonica playing stopped. I readied myself to toss. Then my entire body froze. Not supernaturally this time. Just plain old shock.

  It couldn’t be.

  An outlaw stepped toward me, holding the harmonica and wearing the very same patchwork coat Ace Ryker used to. He looked exactly like him even. Dirty beard, sandy hair, same cold blue eyes, same damn boots. A noose was tied around his neck, sliced at the rope so it hung like a necklace.

  I blinked. Was this another goat-man, getting into my head and making me see things? Did some doppelg?nger climb loose from Hell? Ace Ryker was dead. I’d watched him hang with my very own eyes. Though, he’d have said the same about me. In fact, he did.

  He stepped closer, calmly playing another note. His eyes were half-closed—placid—as if we were sitting around a campfire swapping stories in our early Scuttlers days—before I saw his true nature.

  Judas and the others continued to struggle, the sun weakening him enough that he couldn’t kill them all in the snap of a finger. Though killing former friends is never easy.

  I kept my focus on Ace, my mind seizing, seeing him here. I was paralyzed.

  He stopped right in front of me, lifted the brim of his hat, and grinned. That same shit-eating grin that’d been my nightmare for so long.

  “Mahrnin, Crowley,” Ace said.

  He clutched my wrist, flesh on flesh, and my head snapped back as the Divining took hold. Though before it did, his head snapped back too and his eyes glowed pale blue…

  * * *

  “Will you repent and find God’s forgiveness?” spoke the Reverend of Revelation Springs. My eyes darted from side to side—Ace’s eyes. A rope tightened around my neck as I stood on a wooden stage, looking out at a crowd of angry citizens out for blood.

  “Yeah, I’d like to pray,” I said. “If you’ll allow it.”

  The words threw the crowd into an uproar that took the Reverend raising his voice to bring quiet. People do so love their hangings. God forbid anyone gets a word in to slow the proceedings.

  I closed my eyes. This was the end, and Ace Ryker sure as shit wasn’t gonna die like some pansy, talking to a God that don’t exist. Forgiveness for what? Surviving in a dog-eats-dog world? Wolves don’t seek forgiveness after they slaughter the cattle.

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  “Dear God,” I said through Ace’s mouth. My eyes opened, and I stared across the whole crowd, straight at James Crowley—myself. “Fuck James Crowley and the horse he rode in on.”

  The crowd booed. The lever dropped. And in that second before the floor fell out from beneath him, all Ace could do was wonder how the hell James Crowley survived being shot up. And why he hadn’t cut the body to pieces just to make sure he was dead…

  * * *

  I snapped back into my present. Ace’s eyes returned to normal too.

  Unlike most Divined deaths, there was no pain with this one. The way he’d been hung—his neck broke clean. No struggle. No suffocation. Too merciful a death for him.

  But that wasn’t where my mind was. I’d been there in Revelation Springs watching Ace die, which meant this was him. And if this was him and he’d technically died, yet still walked, that meant…

  My gaze fell toward his chest where a breeze blew open his lapel. There I saw it, the blackened, five-pronged scar I’d come to call the Black Badge. The very same marking I bore. The one which indicated that I, James Crowley, was a Hand of God.

  “No…” I whispered.

  His grin stretched wider. If I’d seen his death, that meant he’d just re-experienced mine, when he shot me dead for daring to stop him from raping Rosa and her mother. Unlike me, he seemed to enjoy the heck out of it.

  “I knew I should’ve put you down worse back then for turning on me,” he said. “Burned you to ashes. But the Lord is good and his mercy endureth forever! I do say he’s given me a chance to rectify that grave error.”

  Ace always had been a fast draw. Still was. He pulled his revolver and aimed it right in the center of my chest. Not that there was much to do it about it, unarmed as I was. My eyes darted to my lasso.

  “Try it. I dare you,” he said. “You betrayed the White Throne, Crowley. You’ll find it don’t work so well anymore.”

  I gritted my teeth. I hadn’t fully betrayed my vow to Shar until I let Judas step back outside, yet here was another Black Badge, sent to take me out? It was like she knew I’d fail her before I even did. Hell, maybe she wanted me to.

  “They gave me a tool too,” Ace said. “But you’re the one to thank for it, ain’tcha?” He winked and held up his harmonica. Now up close, I saw it for what it really was. The cursed instrument of a goat creature, its sound able to turn minds. The very same I’d buried in Revelation with him, hoping it’d remain lost forever.

  “Still works,” he said. “Turned those fools on their master easy enough.”

  Judas’s sizzling skin met my ears. More grunts from him struggling with his own followers. Of all the weapons Ace might’ve wound up with… an instrument that could charm him a crew even easier. Get them to do anything he wanted.

  Heaven had to be toying with me. Hell, even. Is that what this was? I’d never left the Hellmouth back in those woods, and this was all in my head?

  A hiss snapped me out of it. Ace and I looked down, and Damballah clung on his ankle with her fangs dug all the way in. He rolled his foot to twist her limber body and get his boot over her so she couldn’t let go.

  “New pet?” he asked. “Fits you better than that ancient horse. A snake for a traitorous snake.” He chuckled. “So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Cursed are you. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and mankind; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’”

  Ace lifted his boot. Damballah flopped to the dirt. Then he stomped down hard on her head with a sickening crunch. The fangs snapped. Brain matter spurted out.

  “Whoops,” he said, kicking her limp body off to the side. “Probably should’ve warned it that I’m as numb as you are now.”

  I growled. “I’m gonna—”

  He slid his gun up under my chin and pushed my mouth shut to silence me. “Do nothing. That’s what. I killed you; you came back. You killed me; I came back. The scales are even now, Crowley. But Heaven wants you gone.”

  “You belong in Hell.”

  “So did you. Yet here we are. You’ve turned your back on another boss and it’s time you were punished.”

  “The great Ace Ryker, a servant. What a joke.” I spat in his face.

  His grin didn’t fade as he wiped it off and flicked it back at me. “Only joke here is you. James Crowley, the righteous outlaw. Yet, here I stand, an agent of Heaven, and you, damned for eternity. Guess it’ll only be me left to take care of your girl.” He licked his lips. “We’ll get properly acquainted soon enough.”

  I clenched my jaw and stared right into his rotten eyes. All those years working with him flashed through my head in an instant like they were only yesterday. Not a man in the entire West had sinned as much as him. None of this seemed right.

  And as I weighed my fate, something came up in my peripherals. Took everything in me not to grin. I kept my best poker face, holding his full attention.

  “So, go on, traitor.” The hammer on Ace’s revolver clicked. “Will you repent and find God’s forgiveness?”

  “Fuck you.” I finally smiled right back at him. “There’s the horse I rode in on.”

  Timperina rammed into Ace’s side at full speed, sending him flying across the dirt. He’d been too focused on his resentment for me to notice her. His gun went off, a silver bullet plunging harmlessly into mausoleum stone.

  “About damn time!” I shouted to Timp.

  I hurried over to Rosa and hefted her onto Timp’s back. She stomped her hooves agitatedly, waiting while I pulled myself up onto her saddle.

  Ace found his footing and fired. I clicked my tongue and Timperina swung around, knocking him back again with her hindquarters. If Ace was made a Black Badge, it was very recently. Which meant he wouldn’t know the extent of how he could push his new, feelingless body yet. Advantage, me.

  I couldn’t kill him, though. Wasn’t sure how to die myself, and I didn’t have the armaments. I just had to get Rosa as far away from him as possible.

  Judas howled in pain. I peered through the dust to see him. One of the knights was injured, his own bolt shoved through his eye. The others still wrestled Judas down, sunlight having scorched his skin so bad, it was all blackened and crusted like an overdone steak.

  Spurring Timp along, I barreled into all of them, knocking the knights away from Judas.

  “They’re bewitched!” I shouted.

  He rolled onto his back. Steam surrounded him, eyes burning with hate.

  “Run, Hamsa!”

  The injured knight recovered first and dived at him. Judas caught his arm, twisted around him, and sank his fangs into his neck.

  Fresh skin formed in patches on his face, the human nectar healing him a bit. Though he didn’t feed long. His teeth tore out in a gruesome spray of red, and he fled around a mausoleum, into the shadows.

  “Go, Timp!” I kicked her sides just as a gunshot barked behind me. The silver zipped over my ear, and Ace emptied his entire barrel as we raced down the cemetery row, bullets cracking off chunks of stone all around us. He never was half the shot as me or Davey.

  “You’re a damned coward, Crowley!” he shouted. “That’s alright. I always enjoyed the hunt! And trust me, Crowley. Heaven’s coming for you, and I’m their goddamn right hand. You can’t hide!”

  I pulled on Timp’s reins to spin her so I could get one last look at the bastard. Ace sneered, with the bewitched knights around him—his newest gang.

  “Keep on coming, then!” I called back. “I’ll be ready.”

  A snap, and Timp and I were away. I didn’t look back again, just kept her hooves pounding the pavement across Crescent City. My hand went to the cross Judas had gifted me. Then I pulled Shar’s mirror. Man, did I have a few choice words for her. Ace’s handler or not—everything she knew about him… How could they bring him back?

  The mirror remained completely black. As promised, I was hidden from Heaven’s gaze. A good thing, considering my circumstances. My list of disloyalties to the White Throne was a lengthy one. Ultimately, I’d failed to kill Judas and I’d chosen Rosa over service.

  Now I was Heaven’s most wanted.

  But sending Ace? They were more vindictive than I’d ever fathomed. Was I that much a threat? No. I stroked Rosa’s hair, longing with all my soul to feel each strand.

  It was her. Always her. Whatever she was, whatever Judas realized back in that crypt, I had to keep her away from Heaven and Hell. Which gave me an idea of exactly where to take her, and who might be able to help bring her back.

  “Stay with me, Rosa,” I whispered. “It’s just you and me now.”