“No… Mutt…” I said softly as I approached. “What did you do?”

  He stood, back to me, cradling the flower in both hands. Snow and wind pelted his naked back. I couldn’t imagine how cold he was; he made no moves that showed it.

  “Timperina is safe below.” The wind carried his gentle voice to me even though he faced away.

  “I ain’t talking about her.”

  He ignored me. Or maybe he didn’t. “I told you not use your gun.”

  Maybe that was a response in itself.

  I stammered. “Did you see that thing? It didn’t give me much of a choice.”

  “The sound led me to you. To Wendigo.”

  “What? You… Mutt… Then you know? What it took from you?”

  No verbal response. Just the slightest nod.

  Seizing him by the shoulders, I spun him to face me. “Why would you do that? Nobody asked you to do that!”

  Mutt seemed no more agitated by the fact that he’d just sold his soul to that nightmare creature—that whatever afterlife his tribe went to or believed in was forfeit—than he did freezing weather. He didn’t seem to give a damn that his future would now be eternal nothingness.

  “My life-debt to you is now paid.”

  I ground my teeth. “It was never owed in the first place, dammit!”

  He extended his palm. The flower’s milky petals fluttered. “Now you save her.”

  I shook my head, unable to accept what had happened. “No. We can find another way.”

  Mutt looked around, behind me, at the empty landscape. “It is too late.”

  “It’s not—”

  The earth quaked forcefully enough to rock us into one another, then throw us to the ground. Snow juddered, each fragment of surface snow-powder bouncing upon the packed whole.

  “I warned this would happen,” he said. “You roused the mountain.”

  “It ain’t alive! It’s just rock.”

  “Taibo never understand. Life is in all things.” He flashed a grim smirk before stuffing the flower into my pocket. Then, in a wink, he transformed back into a dog and took off.

  I didn’t have time to dwell any further on what the kid had done. I didn’t know if I’d truly angered anything, but an avalanche was coming, sure as rain. So, I did the only smart thing and took off after him into the blinding snow as the very earth shifted beneath us. I could see nothing through the hanging fog and snow until he leaped off what I presumed to be a ledge.

  Sliding to a stop, I peered down to see his blurry form skating down rocky crags and slopes—down the very side of the mountain. I tried to keep pace, but being immune to pain and cold didn’t make me a fucking mountain goat. When it comes to some things, four legs beats two.

  “Would you slow down!”

  A chunk of rock broke beneath me and I bounced off a sharp outcrop, then tumbled down to a small landing. Quickly gathering my bearings, I looked up and saw a white ocean barreling toward me. It wasn’t only snow. At first, I thought they were icicles. But no. Giant fangs glistened within the powder, flanked by beady eyes the size of bank vaults.

  As if the Wendigo hadn’t been enough fun for one day, an enormous beast that looked like the result of a catfish procreating with a worm rumbled toward me. At least this time, I knew what I was facing. A Slide-Rock Bolter. Like most, I reckoned the things were just a western myth—a story told to Yankee children at bedtime to give them a fright. It sounded ridiculous. A giant monster that waited atop mountains, ready to slide down in avalanches or rockslides and devour travelers.

  Foolish me. I’d woken the mountain indeed.

  It was nice to still be surprised after all my years. Less so when the surprise was the size of a locomotive and then some. Trees folded over flat in its wake. Rock was carved like butter. I’d never witnessed such raw power of weight and momentum.

  It was all I could manage to spring off the ledge as far as I could. Not far enough. Its great maw closed in around me, teeth passing overhead like cavern stalactites. I lassoed one of them in midair and held on for dear unlife.

  My body pummeled the roof of its mouth hard enough it would have cracked a mortal in two. Rocks and trees and all else slammed into me, all being devoured one and the same. The thing must have had a hell of a digestive tract.

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  I couldn’t hear anything over the sounds of destruction. My body smashed this way and that for who-knew-how-long before the descent leveled out. Through its teeth, I momentarily glimpsed light, then they slammed shut fast, casting me in darkness again. My eyes adjusted quickly, as they do, though it didn’t matter much. There was no going anywhere until I could stop being jounced around long enough to shoot or slice my way free.

  Without the downward force, my lasso slipped from the fang and I plummeted. Muscles within the bolter’s throat undulated, dragging everything caught inside into the fathomless depths of its stomach to be broken down over what might have been centuries. If bolters were so rare that even I thought they were made up, then I could guess the span between feedings would be equally infrequent.

  “Somehow, you always miss the fun, Timp,” I grumbled as I tried to reload my revolver. My fingers were slick with ice and monster spit, and my bullets slipped through them, clattering into the dark. The creature’s throat contracted again, sweeping me onto my ass. Somehow, I’d managed to get one bullet in the cylinder.

  “Sorry about this,” I said as I aimed it at the weird flap of muscle or fat at the back of its throat.

  I fired, taking a chunk of it off. A deep, guttural moan resounded. Then a mix of blood and spittle splattered across my face. I heard a torrent of rushing water first, then a cloudy flood of goo gurgled up from within.

  It’s hard to say what happened next. It regurgitated—that was not up for discussion. One second, I was inside its mouth, then, the world swirled all around me. I rolled across the ground, everything a hazy mess until I came to a stop against a boulder at the bottom of the mountain where snow hadn’t yet touched.

  The bolter’s revolting glop covered me head-to-toe, clinging to my long hair and beard like snot. If I could vomit, I’m positive I would have. It was in my shirt, my boots, my mouth—every-damn-where.

  The seemingly endless monster slithered along through dirt and grass, slashing a deep wound through the ground with its long, segmented body—so deep, in fact, I wouldn’t doubt it would leave a river behind after the spring snowmelt.

  I flicked the slick, viscous fluid off my sleeves and blew more from my nostrils. As I did, I felt a familiar itching in my chest. Deep in the scar that signified me as a Hand of God—a Black Badge.

  Instinctively, I reached for it, and at the same time, saw the glint in the snow a few feet away.

  “Shit,” I swore.

  Judas’ cross necklace lay there—in other words, not securely fastened around my neck. I checked just to be sure.

  I swore again.

  Soft whispers spread through my mind like fire on dry leaves. A familiar, matronly voice that had once been a part of me. “…Crowleyyyyy…”

  She was reaching out. Feeling for her lost weapon. Shargrafein. My angelic once-handler whose loyalty to the White Throne remained in question after everything that went down in Crescent City with Rosa and Judas.

  Of one thing I was certain, however. She had no more love for me.

  I scrambled across the ground like a frightened child.

  “…You cannot hide… Come home… The White Throne demands it…”

  I scooped up the cross and clutched it to my chest. The sensation immediately stopped, though it brought me little peace. I wasn’t sure if she saw me, but the scrutiny of Heaven was nearly boundless. And the gaze of Hell touched everywhere else.

  “That was damned close,” I stammered, holding the crucifix tighter. “Too close.”

  “You made it.”

  I snapped upright, knuckles whitening on the grip of my Peacemaker. I pulled the trigger. The hammer dropped. Thankfully, there was no deadly boom. I’d forgotten I already shot the thing dry, cuz if I hadn’t, this time, a silver bullet would have gone straight through poor Mutt by pure, defensive reflex.

  He hopped down from the tail end of the enormous Slide-Rock Bolter, completely unscathed. His bare feet touched the snow as if he’d calmly stepped off the rail at Revelation Springs Station and not just surfed a monstrous worm-whale down the sheer side of a mountain.

  Ice and dirt kicked up in a cloud as the final segment of the bolter snaked by. Its path led into the base of another mountain, boring a cavernous tunnel through until it was nothing but a distant rumble. Don’t ask me how it’d return to the top.

  “I did not believe I would ever see you again.” Mutt kneeled and tried to help me up, reeling his hand back after feeling the goo.

  “You ain’t that lucky,” I said, though he had no idea how lucky he really was. One more bullet in the cylinder, and he’d have been dead on top of already selling his soul.

  “‘A man must know that wherever a man goes, Death is his companion’,” the Wendigo had said to me. Didn’t need to be some ageless, eternal entity to know that.

  “Do you still have okchaya na pakanli?” he asked.

  I was ashamed to realize I hadn’t even thought of that. Anxiously, I rustled in my pocket. There, beneath, a clump of dirt and goop, the flower’s glowing white petals shimmered.

  I blew some air from my useless lungs, then chuckled. “That’s one way down a mountain, I suppose.”

  “I warned you. You woke the world carver.”

  “No. No, you said I would wake the mountain. Not some overgrown meal worm with teeth like sabers.” I laughed again.

  “All things are one,” Mutt replied. “Mountain and world carver find communion in each other. They protect, just as the Great Spirit protects.”

  World carver. So that’s what his people called the bolters. I’d heard them mention such beings before, and never in my mind had I put two-and-two together. The answer to the myth, right there all along.

  What did that mean? Probably nothing. But maybe that the angels, demons, and the White Throne weren’t the only ones with answers to all the mysteries in the world. That there were things… older.

  I thought again of the Wendigo, claiming to be from a time before Heaven and Hell, and imagined frosty little worms squiggling down my spine.

  “Hey, it was faster, wasn’t it?” I said, trying to clear the thought away. I tapped on the side of my head in a vain attempt to empty my ear of monster goop.

  “Time with you never peaceful, is it?”

  “I only know of one way to make peace,” I answered, waving my empty pistol. “Besides, peace is overrated.” I stood. “I think it’s time to head back and get you some new damn clothes. I’m tired of looking at you like this. Have some self-respect.”

  He looked down at his wet, naked, dirt-covered body, confused.

  “First, where’s my old girl?” I asked, referring to Timperina. “I can’t wait to fill her in on everything she missed.”

  “She is not far,” Mutt said. “We should not have trouble. Though, do not worry. Nothing will want to come close.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I would rather have no clothes than smell as poorly as you.”

  I let out a barking laugh that felt good after everything I’d just been through.

  “Hey now, was that you being fresh?” I patted him on the back. “Well done, kid. I’m still mad as hell at you for what you did up there. But, well done.”