The West isn’t often associated with cold. Yet, it’s the cold that claims the most lives out here. When that bitter winter chill sets in, it’s enough to turn your skin to frost. Enough to freeze bone marrow. Enough to sense Hell’s teeth biting and shredding your body from the inside out.

  So many nights, I recall hiding out in places, shivering where no sane man would seek shelter. If there’s one thing I’m grateful for—being undead and all—it’s the numbness. Numb to feeling, numb to pain, numb to the cold—at least the natural kind.

  Presently, Timperina and I carved a path through snow that rose to her belly in a thin, bare-boughed forest high up in the Rockies, where winter seemed eternal. Up here, only the hardiest survived.

  Brown tree trunks were loosely packed like Confederate soldiers in formation. Thick sheets of white covered the branches, ready to snap ’em in two. All still standing, having borne the test of time, centuries old.

  A delicate balance of life and death.

  The sky looked like blood, sunset visible through the naked canopy above—a view of icy peaks jutting and sinking through a foggy veil. For a moment, I was taken by its majesty, and as the sun descended behind the snowy tips, all the verglas stuck to bark was painted in its reddish glow.

  Stillness, quiet, and stark beauty all sounds wonderful until you realize scant many things can live in such places. Some misguided deer, scared stupid by the threat of something bigger. Birds too foolish to spread their wings for warmer plains. And scurrying rodents—all food for wolves… and worse.

  At the moment, my concerns were squarely on the worse.

  Mysterious things endured all across this great nation, but as railways and carriages pushed west, the supernatural had been swept into seclusion. Rumor has it, back east, they’re all but gone.

  Sure, to most monsters and Nephilim, humans were naught but ants to be ground beneath a heel. Thing is, numbers matter for something, and if humanity’s proficient at anything, it’s breeding like rabbits, spreading like plagues, and building like beavers.

  The untouched country is where the greatest horrors lurk. Things that’ve been here since God spoke those famous words and created Heaven and Earth, or so it goes. Monsters that even most monsters fear. You see, there’s a reason that, so high up in these mountains, where ghosts won’t haunt—werewolves don’t even hunt.

  A twig snapped.

  I spun Timp clockwise a quarter-turn, Peacemaker up, cocked, and ready to blow a hole in anything that moved. A mangey-looking dog stood atop a split tree stump—an old tree, long succumbed to the weight of snow. Dangling from snarling fangs, the carcass of a squirrel hung limp.

  “I told you to bark first,” I said.

  In the span between blinks, the dog was there and gone. Perched upon the tree’s remains was a young native man, rodent still in his now-human teeth. His hair was so matted with dirt, it could’ve been any color.

  My barrel hadn’t lowered, reminding me of the first time Mutt—then a mere boy—had ever frightened me with his sudden apparition back in Dead Acre. He dropped the dead thing from his mouth into one of his outstretched hands and smirked apologetically.

  Mutt had grown strong over the years, and had an older look to him since last I’d been by his side. Late teens, he was now, with a chiseled jaw and rough, pockmarked skin. And there he stood, buck naked after shape-shifting.

  I turned my gaze away on reflex, and even Timperina gave a little whinny.

  “I wish you’d do that behind the damned tree.”

  “Do I offend your taibo sensibilities?” Mutt said playfully.

  That was more emotion than he usually afforded himself. Being away from his tribe must have done him some good. Every young pup needs to learn to stretch and run free.

  “You offend a lot more than that.” I reached behind me into Timp’s saddle bag, pulled out the boy’s tunic, and tossed it over. “Put it on. Wouldn’t want you freezing your pecker off without fur.” I gave him privacy, facing the crimson sun, now almost completely set. “And for God’s sake, what did I tell you about sneaking up on me?”

  Mutt responded, but I missed it, distracted by my own turn of phrase.

  God’s sake. The words dribbled from my lips like water from a duck’s back feathers. It happened in the same way a living man breathes without thinking. There were times I forgot I was now an enemy of the White Throne—a target, being hunted by specters of the past… literally.

  I couldn’t feel the pendant bequeathed to me by Judas Iscariot himself, but it hung from my neck all the same—an inverted silver cross bearing a portion of his vampiric heart to shield me from Heaven’s sight. Despite that absent sensation, I grew ever more aware of its presence. Its weight tugged on my psyche, even if my skin and muscles could ignore it.

  “Like I say, old man ears.” Mutt’s voice stirred me back from grim thoughts.

  “I hear just fine. You just ain’t that interesting.” Swinging my leg over the saddle, I hopped off and fastened Timp’s reins to the nearest trunk. I had no fear of her bolting, mind you. We had an understanding, me and the old girl. Just call it second nature. Call it clinging on to what little I had left in this unlife.

  “I traveled to Faegan’s Pass,” Mutt said, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

  “I told you not to go that far alone.”

  “I am the guide here, not you.”

  “It’s called respecting your elders.”

  He started to respond, when a deep chill gave him a visible shiver. Mutt was resilient—one of the toughest kids I’d ever come across even—but without the benefit of his doggy coat, he was severely underdressed for the weather.

  “Sidle up to Timp and keep warm, would you?”

  Mutt crossed his arms defiantly and conjured a tough expression. Though sometimes tough and stupid are bedfellows. His people could claim to be one with nature and all that mumbo jumbo to their heart’s content—cold like this has no mercy for any man with blood flowing through his veins.

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  “Come on.” I snatched his arm and gave a little tug. He protested, and Timp snorted as I shoved him against her side. “Oh, quiet down and be good.” I gave him another push, lighter this time. “Go on, get nice and friendly. Give her a hug. She won’t bite.”

  Mutt put one arm up over her mane and whispered something in his language. It drew out a neigh and a cordial nuzzle of Timp’s head. And I won’t lie, it made me a little jealous.

  “Not that friendly,” I said. “You may have four legs sometimes, but that’s a sin if I ever heard of one.”

  Mutt ignored me and said something else, causing Timp to tap her front right hoof.

  “Yes. You are right about him.” Mutt smiled.

  “What’s that now?”

  Another snort.

  Mutt whispered a third time, then actually chuckled. Not sure I’d heard that sound in all the years we’d known each other. Like I said, I’ve rarely seen any emotion from the kid. Anger, maybe. Fear, definitely.

  Not long after that fateful day in a graveyard of some shithole town that turned out to be a pivotal point in my unlife, I saved him from a pack of werewolves who thought it’d be fun to keep him on a leash like their pet. Found him wearing a spiked collar, just sized so if he were to transform back into a boy, it would have impaled him.

  Imagine my surprise when I’d taken down the pack on Shargrafein’s behalf and freed the same whimpering hound, only for his human body to go scurrying out, naked as the day he was born, tears streaking his dirty cheeks. He’d come a long way since that particular form of torture. Maybe his scars were healing.

  For me, I should’ve known the White Throne and I were destined for a falling out. Wouldn’t you know it—though I hadn’t been sent there to rescue Mutt or the other prisoners being reserved by the werewolves as a midnight snack—it was the second time I’d been dispatched by Heaven, only to run into him. Like fate.

  I can’t recall the real reason exactly—something about a relic the hairy bastards had stolen. Something too close to God to be in their grubby paws. Irrelevant now.

  Though I do keenly recall Shar’s words: “Fret not over those held captive; focus only on the task at hand.”

  As if anything else should’ve mattered.

  I’m not a good man. I’ve done things that should’ve had me in a train car straight to Hell. There’s just some evils even I can’t oblige.

  “Quiet, you two,” I said.

  Mutt clicked his tongue. “Green does not look good against white skin.”

  “You ain’t so fine-looking yourself. Now, c’mon, let’s get you near a fire or something.”

  “No fire.” Mutt shook his head adamantly.

  “If I let you die, no way Mukwooru lets me back in.”

  “No. Fire.” His dark eyes narrowed. “Down below, we are hunter. Here, we are prey.”

  If there’s one thing I’d learned about Mutt and his tribe, when they were serious about something, it was for good reason. “Alright, no fire. Wish you’d have told me we were climbing this high. I’d have brought you a blanket.”

  “Worry less for me. We all come here as children. We leave as men.” He pressed a firm fist to his chest.

  “Whatever you say.” I shook my head.

  He stroked Timp’s mane and muttered. Wouldn’t you know it, my girl lay down in the snow. Her arthritic joints cracked and popped like firecrackers, but she found a way to relax like she was in a bathhouse, legs splayed out to the side.

  I eyed her with a fair share of suspicion. “Now you’re just showing off.”

  I heard a plop, drawing my attention back to Mutt. He’d dropped the squirrel by his feet and sat cross-legged against the broad side of Timp’s belly, tucked in all comfy between her legs. He reached up, and from her saddlebags, pulled a small leather pouch and dumped its contents—some manner of herbs—into his palm.

  He worked them like a mortar and pestle, crushing the brittle leaves with his knuckles. Once they were fine as ash, he cupped them into his mouth, closed his eyes and exhaled. The muscles of his throat tensed. For a second, I thought he was gonna vomit, but he never allowed his lips to part. Not even so much as a burp. Bringing his hands to his chest, he breathed deeply again.

  “We leave worry to your kind,” Mutt said, eyes remaining closed in concentration. Gone was the shiver from his voice or the chattering of teeth. “The Great Spirit provides.”

  “Back in the old days, I’d have murdered for whatever that stuff is,” I said, taking a seat on the stump. “When I could feel anything.”

  “You would toss it on road like garbage, taibo.”

  “Wish I had you on my leash then.”

  He unconsciously flinched.

  “Sorry,” I cut in before he could say anything to make me feel worse. “That was beneath me.”

  Mutt shook his head. “All is forgiven. I know your heart, James Crowley. Even if your mouth often betrays it.”

  “I just…” I slapped my thigh in a rare moment of frustration. “How long are we meant to be out here? I know Mukwooru said they’re rare, but it’s been days.”

  “The okchaya na pakanli does not reveal itself until it is ready.”

  That was for damn sure. “Well, it better shed some shyness, cuz if we get any higher or it gets any colder, soon there won’t be a damn thing left for you to eat.”

  “The Great Spirit always provides,” he said again. “There always is something.”

  “Not in the places I’ve been.”

  That got his eyes open. His brow knitted.

  “You don’t wanna know,” I said. What could I tell him, that I’d been through the portal and into the jaws of Hell itself? That in that very place, a powerful demon named Chekoketh tried to claim Rosa and cast her into some sort of sopor?

  Mutt and the skinwalkers had some awareness of what I was, if only because they’d been out here on the frontier dealing with things beyond the natural for long enough to know some legends have teeth. Real ones too. They just didn’t know the extent of my nature or that I had no feeling in my bones. Why I couldn’t taste much or enjoy a romp in the hay.

  Heck, I barely knew. And after Crescent City, who knew if any of it was even true. After everything Judas said, Shar and the other angels didn’t seem so angelic anymore. And appointing Ace-fucking-Ryker to serve the White Throne and hunt me? That was as devilish as devil-things go.

  Screw ’em all. Only thing that mattered was finding this supposedly rare flower Mutt’s people called okchaya na pakanli and bring it back so Mukwooru might be able to return Rosa to the realm of the living.

  “We will find one,” Mutt said, voice filled with assurance. “It is as Mukwooru say: snows are thick. We rarely climb in heart of winter. You should have waited.”

  “Rosa can’t wait,” I argued a bit more forcefully than I’d intended.

  “She is steady, taibo. Just in deep slumber.”

  “I can’t wait.” Now that was the truth of it, spilled like vinegar.

  Ace and the angels were coming. Chekoketh and the demons wanted her badly too. The blush of Heaven is the pride of Hell. Both parties would love to have her, and there ain’t no doubt in me they’d use her wiles for expressly different purposes.

  In short, I couldn’t hide forever. Whatever Rosa was—whatever Judas had seen in her to make an ageless vampire who’d witnessed the likes of demons roaming Earth flinch—I had to know. She could be the key to getting out of this mess. To saving both our hides from eternal damnation… or worse.

  “Then we never find it,” Mutt said. “A man old as you should know patience, James Crowley.”

  “You really like leaning on the old thing.”

  “I do not mean offense. Life is but a whisper. You will not find okchaya na pakanli unless you listen.”

  It was always funny to me how people from different backgrounds all had similar sayings. “Life is but a whisper.” Not much different from words I’d heard Father Osgood preach as a child. Except that was all they were to me, just sayings.

  “Or until you freeze to death,” I spat back.

  His shoulders rolled as he once again closed his eyes and exhaled. Then, calm as night, he said, “Then it was not meant to be found.”

  “Sorry, kid, that ain’t an option for me. Now get some rest.”

  As he yawned, he transformed again into a mangey dog, small enough to curl up inside that dirty tunic like it was a nap sack. He stretched his neck to reach the squirrel and brought it closer so he could eat it raw. Quite a perk, out here in the wild, to be able to eat like a feral beast. Disgusting as it may have been, I was envious.

  I rose and moved to the ledge, staring out across the foggy abyss. Gone was the sun, replaced by a haggard old moon rising toward a wash of clouds, soon to cast us in utter darkness.

  “‘Listen,’” I scoffed to myself, repeating the boy’s advice. Like a fool, I did it anyway, closing my eyes and tuning everything out.

  Nothing. Even the breeze had stopped rattling branches. The still, silent calmness was worse than any storm ever had been.

  “Be patient,” the boy had said.

  I preferred facing my fights head-on, with blood and iron.

  Why couldn’t I just follow orders?

  Why did I have to go and wind up caring for anyone?