Valentina had sent me to the poor side of San Marina. The rickety shack had two rooms, and to get to the upper, you had to step outside on the beach sand and climb a ladder like you would to get up a tree house.

  All the creaking of the floor and reeking of nearby seaweed made me pray I’d heal myself up before a storm blew the place away or disease ate me alive. But what long bow was I a-pulling? Hard to find work and a better living arrangement when your back is in constant pain. My journey had taken its toll.

  I chose the upstairs to dwell. Yes, it hurt my body to climb, but it seemed further from the world. I got up there, shirttail out. Some fishnet hammock awaited. I swung back and forth on it when lying down.

  A block away from the residents was a town plaza, where I got my liquor to nurse my wounds. I ended up staying drunk every day for a week.

  I made conversation with nobody but the owner of the liquor shop. As long as I brought my bottles back, he gave me more booze. The walks to and from weren’t too bad, sand in my toes, too numb to feel the toll of the journey.

  I’d been seeing hills overlooking the beach residencies and plaza, and I’d been astonished, here and there, at the bats fluttering around them.

  One day, I asked the liquor store owner what the deal was.

  The old man, eyes half opened, seemed to be sampling what he was selling. Said, “Oh that? Stay away. It’s the Caverna De Las Brujas, the witches’ cave. The bats have never let anyone in, except I assume.” He hiccupped. “The witches.”

  The grilling out on the beaches of catches of the day enticed me to my only meals. Sometimes, I’d grab a bite when the fish taco bar next to the liquor store was open. Other than that, I was a-drinking myself to death.

  One morning, racket from downstairs woke me up. Had Calamity found me? I got my musket, stumbled into the downstairs room and aimed. I was so drunk that I was seeing quadruple vision. Certainly, there were others in the room with me, though I couldn’t make them out. I clicked the musket. “Stay right there,” I said, nearly tumbling over.

  Valentina froze behind her brother who had arched his golden bow.

  I broke into drunk tears. “I could have shot you.”

  Her laughter ended the intense exchange, and she took the gun. “Somebody’s been drinking too much. Listen, it’s over. You’re sobering up.”

  That night, I sat up in my hammock, ready to hit the booze stand, but Valentina pushed me back down. “You’re done drinking for now.” With the room spinning, I found myself vomiting. I awoke later to her putting a cloth on my head and giving me water to drink.

  The next morning, I awakened to a headache, sickened by the trout smell from whatever was cooking downstairs. I was hungover but sober for the first time in a week and a half, and I think they call it, drunk tremors—hallucinations during a withdraw, but I was experiencing something for sure. Everything appeared blurry, except a figure stood at what I guess you could call a balcony: a foot of oak that jutted out for a view of dirty water.

  Giggles mixed with the ocean’s splashes— I couldn’t make out if the sounds were within me or out of me or both mixing it up. The ghostly echo of laughter emerged from the figure which looked on directly toward the sun. Her back faced me as I creeped up on her. She had dark hair, wore some old cotton frock. I had but one guess, but the clothing looked too poor. I said it anyway. “Valentina?”

  She turned. Big gum smile and belly bump.

  “Bet!” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Heard you laughing.” I smiled. “What’s funny?”

  “I always laughed, Wiley. Yo know me.”

  “You did.”

  “I did, because I never wanted yo to feel the suffering I felt, but I have to ask yo something.”

  My tears tasted saltier than the Pacific. “Go ahead.”

  “Why’d yo let us die?”

  “You’re not Bet,” I whispered, inching back to my hammock.

  She followed me inside and peered down. “It’s not too late. There’s dis entity, Sam Hill. He do things, even the entities on the other side of the war never thought possible. He restore people’s lives with their shadows. He made Calamity Dyer young, again. He heal the sick. You can make up for what yo did. All yo have to do is go get some blood.”

  Heaving breaths, I was staring at thin air where’d the apparition had been. I jumped up and hurried to the ledge where she first appeared. Wood obscured most the view, but I got a peek of that witches’ tower in the distance, and after all I’d been through, I couldn’t help but feel it was a-peeking back.

  “Hey you.”

  I shuddered and turned.

  Valentina was standing there and was a-shaking her head. “What’s the matter with you?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “I-I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

  “You are so hard on yourself.”

  “Yes, so hard that.” I walked in a trance, talking to myself as much as her. “So hard that I haven’t been able to face the truth in a long time. If ever. That witch, who killed your husband—I’ve been battling with her, and good people have been killed. I blamed the sheriff who was leading the mission, but the truth is I opened the door to my own town and let Calamity Dyer in. I missed it, because I was drunk and passive an—”

  “And?” She said.

  “I feel like a weight just a-dropped off my chest.”

  The next day, we were by that ol’ seaweed ocean outside the shack; sobriety never felt that good.

  She talked about the water, it’s cleansing components. I asked her why she married Don in the first place.

  “Money of course.”

  “You know something?” I said.

  “I know plenty.”

  “But you don’t know this, Miss Valentina, because I haven’t confessed it.” I winked. “I’ve been worried about this sick world; how I couldn’t heal it. This entire time, I should have been looking to heal myself. As for you, there’s no way you can be doing as well as you profess, not after Don died so unexpectedly. Don’t keep it in.” I touched her face. “You don’t want to be like that witch or like me, for that matter.”

  A golden arrow pierced the ground next to where I stood. I leaped. “What in dad’s name?” The seven-year-old boy glared from the door, wet hair extending from a furry hat.

  “Julian Duran, the fact you killed that beast does not give you permission to go around shooting at everybody,” Valentina said.

  The boy left prints of his spurred boots in the sand, all the way to the market.

  On our way after him, Valentina said, “That was so embarrassing.”

  “Listen, it’s my fault.”

  She had her arms folded; her brows furrowed. “You’re going to take blame for him almost killing you?”

  “I gave him a bad impression when I pulled the gun on you.”

  ***

  Betwixt the shops that were inside market stalls, Valentina said, “I hope he’s not stealing.”

  “Now why’d you say that?”

  “When I was a kid, and I’d get mad, I’d always come here and steal. We didn’t have much.”

  From the liquor store stall, the man called me over, hiccupping. “You ready for your drinks today, senor.”

  “No.” I chuckled, as I moseyed on over. “We’re looking for a little boy. Some goofy racoon hat, a blue tasseled shirt, and chaps.”

  “Oh. I thought I was hallucinating. Drunk tremors, I think it’s called.”

  “Did you see something?”

  “Two white robed men walked off with him back to the residential area.” The rest of his description gave that of Friedreich and Xochipilli.

  “He’s been kidnapped?” Valentina said from behind me.

  I looked over my shoulder at her. “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you know them?” She said.

  “Kind of. We need to go back to that ol’ shack. They’re a-looking for us, too.”

  ***

  When we got back, we met both of them standing on either side of the front door, in their white judge robes, hands folded over what I assumed would be privates. Two men stood, one blonde and European, one Aztec. I recognized them from meetings at the Light Entity Hub and Rio Grande.

  Valentina more or less let me handle it, at first. “What’s your business with that boy,” I said.

  The European said, “Let us properly introduce ourselves, as we didn’t quite get to do before. My name is Friedreich; this is Xochipilli. Both of us were mortals. Myself, British, him Aztec. We died deaths of the most valor kind, which qualified us to become light entities. How do you do?”

  I gawked at him. “How the hell do you think I do?”

  “It’s alright, bloke, we light entities are—"

  “I don’t need any lessons on your kind. What I need to know is your business with that boy.”

  “Why so distrusting,” Xochipilli said.

  “If you want to go there... Last time I saw you, I was laying on my back about to pay you a blood loan. You let them tie me up.” I wore an angry smile and wide eyes. “So yeah, I’m not fond of the fact you took notice to a seven-year-old.”

  “Understand this, the difference between us and dark entities is we were above reproach mortals; they never were human. They rose, ghoulish and evil, from the sins of your kind.”

  My anger had taken me from a smile to a laugh. “Your wobblin’ jawing is legendary. Whether never human, or so far from your human days that you take blood loans, I’m not interested in any alliance with any of you.”

  Friedreich was the first of the two to break into emotion, grabbed me by the collar. “Sounds like our plan of diplomacy got all cocked up. Let’s get to the meat of it, shall we? There’s a bloody war for the soul of the West, and you need to decide which side you’re on. Bloke, we don’t want your blood. But we’re as bound to the law of blood sacrifices as you are to gravity. They’ve taken blood without discrimination, have gained enough power to grow wings. We have nothing.”

  I was a-choking out my words. “So, what will you do to me? Your evangelist said you can’t kill humans.”

  He let me go. “It’s true we have a law that forbids it. What’s a lie is that that ‘man’ was ‘our evangelist’. He led a sect in our name, and got away with it, because we have not been given enough blood power to refute his claims. He’s no evangelist or mortal or light entity, at all. He is Sam Hill.”

  As he let me go, I dusted off but could not shake the worry from my expression. I replied, “He’s the one who set the posse off to El Sobrenatural? Sam Hill?”

  “Understand this,” Xochipilli replied. “Your posse and that seven-year-old boy are at the edge of fire, at the stairway. Sam Hill has calculated that the boy is the vaquero, who will grow to become his most formidable enemy.”

  “Somebody, please tell me what’s going on,” Valentina complained.

  Xochipilli replied, “We entities, dark and light, have three months every year to be at our most visible in this mortal war. And there’s only three weeks left for Sam Hill and other dark entities to accomplish the rest of their goals.”

  “Okay. I’ll bite,” I said. “What are they trying to accomplish?”

  “It will upset you.”

  Valentina’s voice took a high pitch. “Will you please just fucking tell me what this has to do with my brother?”

  Xochipilli replied, “Your brother is at the edge of fire, because Sam Hill has instructed Calamity Dyer to kill him. She is most desperate to do so to retain her power, especially since she lost Ahote.”

  “So, what are you suggesting?” I said.

  “Sam Hill is not always right in his calculations. He never thought you would survive on the Grand Jose trail, because he never took into account Giant Chief or anyone, for that matter, would make a sacrifice to us.”

  Fredrich finished Xochipilli’s briefing. “Lass, Doc Apollo, what’s for true is, we’ve found a hole in Sam Hill’s plot. He has failed, again, to understand true heroism. It’s not in life this boy will defeat Sam Hill; it’s in giving his life. Where do you think he got the bow and arrow that killed Ana Ahote? From us.”

  I caught a glimpse of the big bottom lipped boy, Julian—I’d come to know his name as. He looked down from the window, unafraid, taking it all in.

  Friedreich said, “If he grows old, he will have an inflated opinion of his accomplishment that will lead to his demise. We gave him the bow. We gave him the ability to slay Ana Ahote; it’s not his own doing. But, if the boy gives his life to the witch out of mercy for the West, we’ll have the currency we need to help you defeat her.”

  I threw my finger up. “Unbelievable. Sandy’s death, Dylan’s death, Giant Chief’s. None of it is enough for you. You want the blood of a seven-year-old boy.”

  Valentina stepped between me and them. “You two sickos get off my property and go straight to hell.”