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October 31, 1903; Ranchos de los Brujos, New Mexico Territory

Evelyn practically kicked down the door of the inn. No one was inside to witness her entrance save for a few tired drunks who didn't really care, but she still wanted to get her point across. She and Chaytan sauntered up to the counter of the bar, leaning over it to see if Nacho was hiding behind it like the snake he was.

But he wasn't there, and that made Evelyn scowl. She used her Eagle Vision, taking a quick sweep around the room to see if she could catch a glimpse of him through the walls. But she saw nothing. No golden hue. She cursed. The coward had fled.

“Damn the man!” she said, stomping her foot. “Sends us to do his dirty work then flees like a spineless worm!”

“We will hunt him down for what he has done,” Chaytan assured her. “We just need to find a lead…”

Evelyn put a finger to her chin, pondering their options. Then suddenly, she heard a faint snoring. A snoring she recognized from earlier. Her eyes darted over to the other end of the room, to one of the few drunkards that kept this place from being completely dead. She remembered him. The sheriff. The one that cursed Nacho earlier before Evelyn had the context to understand. The sight of him with his face halfway buried in his mug brought a smile to her face. There was their lead.

She walked over and tapped the man on the shoulder. She didn't get much of a response at first. Just a slight moan.

“Excuse me, sheriff,” she said, tapping him again and putting her hands on her hips.

“Go away,” the sheriff growled. “I'm busy.”

“Yes I can see you're quite hard at work.”

The sheriff slowly pulled his head out of his mug, and fixed Evelyn with a glare. Or at least the closest thing to a glare that he could muster given the huge amount of alcohol in his system.

“You lookin’ to pick a fight, little missy?” he hiccuped.

“On the contrary, sheriff,” Evelyn told him. “I'm here to seek your partnership.”

“I already owe enough people money.”

“That's not what I meant, sheriff. I want your help finding dirt on Nacho Archuleta.”

The sheriff suddenly seemed to sober up very fast. He looked Evelyn suspiciously in the eye. Chaytan came up to join at her side, and he crossed his arms.

“And what do you want with that demonic scumbag, pray tell?” the sheriff asked.

“To kill him,” Chaytan answered.

The sheriff looked like he wanted to smile or laugh, but his body wouldn't allow for either. He simply eyed the two of them, thoughts sloshing around his brain just like the alcohol. He looked cautiously over his shoulder, and then leaned in to whisper.

“It ain't safe to talk here,” he said, standing up slowly and motioning for the Assassins to follow him. The two of them nodded, and promptly followed him as he wobbled out the door.

He sobered up surprisingly quickly by the time he had brought them to the front door of his office at the local prison, an extremely empty place. He brought them inside, and locked the door, closing all the blinds. Then he sat down in his desk chair, kicked his feet up, and took a deep breath to promptly sigh out.

“I'm surprised you two managed to get your horses back,” he said to the Assassins once they were sat down. “No one has ever managed to wrangle back their steeds from the Archuleta brothers before.”

“We've had a bit of a history with getting back stolen goods,” Evelyn told him.

The sheriff nodded passively. “So. Did you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?” Evelyn pondered.

“Kill Pedro. The only way that man would ever allow someone to escape his den would be if his team was slaughtered to a man.”

“Well, they were. Pedro and all of his… monsters.”

The sheriff gave another slow nod. “Well. That's one less pain in the ass I need to worry about. I owe you two my thanks.”

“You can thank us by telling us what the hell is going on in this town,” Chaytan told him. “Who are these Archuleta brothers really? And what is this power they hold?”

The sheriff was quiet for a little bit, collecting his thoughts as the past few years pressed down hard on his shoulders.

“Them boys were the first ones on this plot of land,” he said, speaking low and slow. “Been here some ten, eleven years now. They were lowlifes. Cattle thieves and horse wranglers with eyes plated over with the need for gold. They set up this little ranch town here, built to lure in passersby and settlers looking to stop and get some supplies. Then once their backs were turned, the brothers snatched up all they owned. And left them stranded here.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Evelyn asked.

The sheriff didn't reply. He simply continued. “Been after those boys ever since I got here. Nothing I hate more than people like them. But they were always too quick.”

“Why did you not just bring Nacho in or kill him while he was in the inn earlier?” Chaytan asked.

“Because even I'm afraid of what the brothers have up their sleeve for those who put up an actual fight against them…”

Evelyn took in what he was saying, then reached into her bag when realization hit her. She pulled out the golden stone, holding it up for the sheriff to see as it glowed softly in her palms.

“You mean this?” she asked.

The sheriff stared at the object, eyes wide and fearful, but still somehow resolved by seeing it in someone's hands other than an Archuleta. “You actually managed to swipe it away from Pedro… hot damn,” he said.

“You know what this is?”

“Some cornerstone from the pits of Hell. The thing they use to summon their band of demon spirits to terrorize this town with.”

“How long have the Archuletas had this artifact?” Chaytan asked. “How did they even get a hold of it?”

“Your guess is as good as mine on that second question. As for the first, they've had it a few years now. I still remember the first day they walked out of the desert with it… Their eyes were darker than ever. They had a score to settle with one of the folks in town, and they had that… thing with them when they came to collect the debt. The shine was something terrible. The noises it made as these beasts just formed in the air around them, floating in like mists from the desert. They ripped the man's bodyguards open limb from limb. Then they took the man himself and dragged him off into the desert. As the first meal for Vivaron…”

Evelyn thought back to the beast trapped in the obelisk. The massive monster that snatched up an entire horse and gutted it like it was a cat eating a rat.

“Then it just continued,” the sheriff went on. “Every day, they became more and more obsessed with the spirits they controlled. More and more insane about sacrificing to that hideous thing out in the desert. And anyone who dared to try to stop them became the next sacrifice.”

“That's terrible…” Evelyn said.

The sheriff nodded. “But now one of them is dead. Something I never thought possible. And if you folks managed to kill one…”

“We’ll drag Nacho down to join his brother in the pits of Hell, sheriff. We promise. As long as you stand beside us, and point our blades in the right direction, then they will not see tomorrow's sunrise.”

A small smile began to creep onto the sheriff's face. Not much of one, but enough to be noticeable. “Maybe your coming is a sign from above that it's high time we kick those bastards off our land,” he said. “Alright then. You track down Nacho, and I'll spread the word that it's time for this town to get it's revenge.”

Evelyn and Chaytan smiled, standing from their chairs.

“Sounds like just my kind of plan,” she said.

“Do you have any ideas of where we should start looking?” Chaytan asked.

“If it were me, I'd start looking at his house in the center of town, right in front of the hanging tree. If he's not there, Pedro’s wife and children will be at least. Those poor souls don't have much elsewhere to go.”

“We’ll check it out,” Evelyn nodded. “Thank you.”

“No ma'am, thank you. You've given this bag of old bones a bit of hope. May God guide your blade.”

Evelyn nodded, and pulled up her hood. The three of them shook hands in a silent goodbye, then she and Chaytan wasted no time making their way out the door, and walking down the muddy road towards the hanging tree.

------------

The house was a run down little hunk of adobe. Evelyn wasn't sure what else she would've expected. The hanging tree stood outside the cracked walls of the house, and a fair share of corpses hung from its finger-like branches like flies caught in a spider web. It made Evelyn grimace a little. It was one thing to bring harm upon the innocent. It was another to enact such cruelty like this. Nacho had to die tonight. This had to end.

She and Chaytan crept as quietly as they could up to the outer walls of the house, crouching low in the shrubs whose thirst was being quenched by the rain for the first time in God knows how long. They kept their eyes peeled for any signs of Nacho or his thugs.

But it was their ears that caught the first sign that the man was inside. A woman's scream, and pleas to stop rattled the rainy night from within the adobe walls.

“No stop leave us alone dammit!” Evelyn and Chaytan heard the woman shriek. They quickly scurried up to a nearby window to get a peak at whatever the hell was going on inside. They spotted the woman, her face dirty with her tangled hair being matted down by the blood and tears staining her cheeks. She had two girls clutched desperately in her arms. One of them was only a baby, and the other couldn't have been more than four years old. The baby cried, while her toddler sister shared in their mother's terrified look.

Nacho stood in front of them, his back to the window, a wicked sort of knife clutched in his hand. He was standing tall over the woman, but his posture was still hunched. Ghostly.

“Don't you raise your voice at me!” he snapped through his rotten teeth. “I've given you a life here and I can easily take it away! Now tell me where the hell it is!”

“I don't know!” the woman pleaded. “I'm telling you I don't know!”

Suddenly Nacho's arm shot forward, and his wormy hands snatched at the crying baby in her arms. The woman shrieked in defiance and clutched the child tighter, trying to keep it out of the evil man's hands. “No! Leave her alone! Leave her alone!” she begged.

“If you don't tell me where the hell it is by tomorrow morning, then I'll just have to use that little meat bag as the next sacrifice to Vivaron!”

“I don't know where it is! Don't touch her dammit! Leave her alone!”

“You have until sunrise!”

Nacho spit on the floor in front of her, then he turned on his heels and stomped furiously out the door.

Evelyn and Chaytan waited a few minutes for his footsteps to disappear down the road, and then they quickly hopped in through the window. The woman didn't seem to notice them at first. She was too busy crying in the corner, clutching her daughters as if the world depended on it. The toddler was the first to notice them, and she gasped, tapping her mother on the shoulder. The women slowly looked up, her vision most likely blurred by tears, and she stared fearfully at the intruders, but hardly as fearful as she was with Nacho.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice hoarse. “More of that fat bastard’s goons come to kick us around more?”

“My name is Evelyn Arlie, ma'am,” Evelyn told her softly, crouching down to meet her eye level. “I'm no goon. I came to help.”

The woman laughed. “That's rich,” she said. “No one can help us, ma'am. Pedro and Nacho control everything here…”

“Pedro is dead. By my own blade.”

The woman's eyes widened. “I… what?” she gasped in disbelief.

Evelyn nodded. “My husband and I do not tolerate the likes of men like him. We're not leaving this town until he and his brother are gone from this world.”

The woman was at a loss for words. She looked down at the floor, not knowing what to say. She simply clutched her daughters.

“What's your name?” Evelyn asked her.

“Cresencia,” the woman replied. “Cresencia Archuleta… Pedro was my husband, much as I hate to say it.”

“I take it the aggressive abuse ran in his family?”

Cresencia nodded. “I can't take this anymore…” she sobbed. “I can't, Mrs. Arlie, I can't! And neither can my daughters! Especially if what Nacho said is true! He wants to feed them to that monster he summons and worships! He wants to murder my baby!”

“I won't let that happen, Cresencia, I promise. Pedro will die tonight and your daughter will be safe.”

“What was he even after?” Chaytan inquired. “Why was he attacking you?”

“He never needed a reason to attack us… He just did when he pleased. But this time, he thought I knew the location of that damned rock that my husband had. He said he was going to collect it from Pedro but never found it. He thought I would know what happened to it, but I don't, Mrs. Arlie. I don't know and he's going to feed my baby to the demon for it!”

“That's not going to happen, Cresencia, I promise,” Evelyn assured her. “Please, you must try to breathe.” She put a reassuring hand on Cresencia’s shoulder.

“I don't want to live in this place anymore, Mrs. Arlie…” she cried. “I don't want my daughters to grow up in this godforsaken town.”

“Do you have anywhere else to go?”

“I have family that lives in El Rito. I would gladly go stay with them if I could be free from this place.”

Evelyn suddenly stood, and reached a hand out for her new friend to take. “Then we’ll escort you out of this town,” she said. “We got our horses back from Pedro during our little skirmish with the man. We can make sure you get far far away from here.”

“Y… you'd really do that? For us?”

Evelyn smiled. “Absolutely.”

Cresencia looked up at Evelyn's hand. Evelyn saw the gears creaking in her mind as she struggled back and forth with the risks of all her options. Then she closed her eyes, wiped the hair out of her face.

And then she took Evelyn's hand.

------------

It was a long trek. Not in distance, but in time. They stopped around every corner, keeping their eyes on the lookout for any signs of Nacho and his leftover goons. They used the night’s shadows as their cover, and used the rain to hide their footsteps. Until finally, they made it to the outer gate of the town, the creaking wooden structure adorned with the cattle skull up top. Their horses were waiting there, gently stomping their feet in the mud. Equally ready to get out of this place. Evelyn and Chaytan helped Cresencia and her daughters into one of the saddles, and then they hopped into the other. The group rode as fast as they could away from the town, until it was just a light source on the horizon. Enough distance to finally breathe a sigh of relief.

“Do you know your way to El Rito from here?” Evelyn asked Cresencia.

“For the most part, yes,” Cresencia nodded. “I should be able to get there by sunrise if I ride fast enough.”

“Then godspeed to you, my friend.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Arlie. For everything… How can I ever repay you for what you've done tonight?”

“By staying safe,” Evelyn smiled.

Cresencia simply worked up a smile, and nodded to the Assassins. Then she gave her daughter a quick hug in the saddle for good luck, and yanked on the reins, kicking their horse into full gear, and disappearing over the rainy horizon. Evelyn watched them go, and sighed. She thought about Winona. She longed to be back with her own daughter. To give her a hug like that. But it would have to wait. There was still a life that needed to be taken at the Sorcerer's Ranch.

And as if the call to arms heard her thoughts, she suddenly heard the light clopping of hooves coming their way. The Assassins turned around, and they spotted the sheriff coming up the road to meet them, with three other men on horseback by his side. Three men with guns. Evelyn smiled.

“This your posse then, sheriff?” she asked.

“I found the best men with the biggest grudges against the Archuletas,” the sheriff smiled back. “They all want that bastard dead tonight as much as you do.”

“That's good to hear. We're going to need all the help we can get.”

“Now it's simply a matter of tracking the man down,” Chaytan said.

“Aye. But where do you think he would have go-?”

Then suddenly there was the noise.

That deafening noise that reverberated across the sky from the depths of the desert.

That distinctive, loud, bassy, crocodilian roar.

And Evelyn's heart sank.

She looked at the sheriff's posse, a look of horror washing over her face. She yanked on the reins of her horse, and started bolting back towards town. The posse didn't waste any time following her. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

And Evelyn prayed to God that it wasn't what she thought it was.

Description
October 31, 1903; Ranchos de los Brujos, New Mexico Territory

Evelyn practically kicked down the door of the inn. No one was inside to witness her entrance save for a few tired drunks who didn't really care, but she still wanted to get her point across. She and Chaytan sauntered up to the counter of the bar, leaning over it to see if Nacho was hiding behind it like the snake he was.

But he wasn't there, and that made Evelyn scowl. She used her Eagle Vision, taking a quick sweep around the room to see if she could catch a glimpse of him through the walls. But she saw nothing. No golden hue. She cursed. The coward had fled.

“Damn the man!” she said, stomping her foot. “Sends us to do his dirty work then flees like a spineless worm!”

“We will hunt him down for what he has done,” Chaytan assured her. “We just need to find a lead…”

Evelyn put a finger to her chin, pondering their options. Then suddenly, she heard a faint snoring. A snoring she recognized from earlier. Her eyes darted over to the other end of the room, to one of the few drunkards that kept this place from being completely dead. She remembered him. The sheriff. The one that cursed Nacho earlier before Evelyn had the context to understand. The sight of him with his face halfway buried in his mug brought a smile to her face. There was their lead.

She walked over and tapped the man on the shoulder. She didn't get much of a response at first. Just a slight moan.

“Excuse me, sheriff,” she said, tapping him again and putting her hands on her hips.

“Go away,” the sheriff growled. “I'm busy.”

“Yes I can see you're quite hard at work.”

The sheriff slowly pulled his head out of his mug, and fixed Evelyn with a glare. Or at least the closest thing to a glare that he could muster given the huge amount of alcohol in his system.

“You lookin’ to pick a fight, little missy?” he hiccuped.

“On the contrary, sheriff,” Evelyn told him. “I'm here to seek your partnership.”

“I already owe enough people money.”

“That's not what I meant, sheriff. I want your help finding dirt on Nacho Archuleta.”

The sheriff suddenly seemed to sober up very fast. He looked Evelyn suspiciously in the eye. Chaytan came up to join at her side, and he crossed his arms.

“And what do you want with that demonic scumbag, pray tell?” the sheriff asked.

“To kill him,” Chaytan answered.

The sheriff looked like he wanted to smile or laugh, but his body wouldn't allow for either. He simply eyed the two of them, thoughts sloshing around his brain just like the alcohol. He looked cautiously over his shoulder, and then leaned in to whisper.

“It ain't safe to talk here,” he said, standing up slowly and motioning for the Assassins to follow him. The two of them nodded, and promptly followed him as he wobbled out the door.

He sobered up surprisingly quickly by the time he had brought them to the front door of his office at the local prison, an extremely empty place. He brought them inside, and locked the door, closing all the blinds. Then he sat down in his desk chair, kicked his feet up, and took a deep breath to promptly sigh out.

“I'm surprised you two managed to get your horses back,” he said to the Assassins once they were sat down. “No one has ever managed to wrangle back their steeds from the Archuleta brothers before.”

“We've had a bit of a history with getting back stolen goods,” Evelyn told him.

The sheriff nodded passively. “So. Did you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?” Evelyn pondered.

“Kill Pedro. The only way that man would ever allow someone to escape his den would be if his team was slaughtered to a man.”

“Well, they were. Pedro and all of his… monsters.”

The sheriff gave another slow nod. “Well. That's one less pain in the ass I need to worry about. I owe you two my thanks.”

“You can thank us by telling us what the hell is going on in this town,” Chaytan told him. “Who are these Archuleta brothers really? And what is this power they hold?”

The sheriff was quiet for a little bit, collecting his thoughts as the past few years pressed down hard on his shoulders.

“Them boys were the first ones on this plot of land,” he said, speaking low and slow. “Been here some ten, eleven years now. They were lowlifes. Cattle thieves and horse wranglers with eyes plated over with the need for gold. They set up this little ranch town here, built to lure in passersby and settlers looking to stop and get some supplies. Then once their backs were turned, the brothers snatched up all they owned. And left them stranded here.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Evelyn asked.

The sheriff didn't reply. He simply continued. “Been after those boys ever since I got here. Nothing I hate more than people like them. But they were always too quick.”

“Why did you not just bring Nacho in or kill him while he was in the inn earlier?” Chaytan asked.

“Because even I'm afraid of what the brothers have up their sleeve for those who put up an actual fight against them…”

Evelyn took in what he was saying, then reached into her bag when realization hit her. She pulled out the golden stone, holding it up for the sheriff to see as it glowed softly in her palms.

“You mean this?” she asked.

The sheriff stared at the object, eyes wide and fearful, but still somehow resolved by seeing it in someone's hands other than an Archuleta. “You actually managed to swipe it away from Pedro… hot damn,” he said.

“You know what this is?”

“Some cornerstone from the pits of Hell. The thing they use to summon their band of demon spirits to terrorize this town with.”

“How long have the Archuletas had this artifact?” Chaytan asked. “How did they even get a hold of it?”

“Your guess is as good as mine on that second question. As for the first, they've had it a few years now. I still remember the first day they walked out of the desert with it… Their eyes were darker than ever. They had a score to settle with one of the folks in town, and they had that… thing with them when they came to collect the debt. The shine was something terrible. The noises it made as these beasts just formed in the air around them, floating in like mists from the desert. They ripped the man's bodyguards open limb from limb. Then they took the man himself and dragged him off into the desert. As the first meal for Vivaron…”

Evelyn thought back to the beast trapped in the obelisk. The massive monster that snatched up an entire horse and gutted it like it was a cat eating a rat.

“Then it just continued,” the sheriff went on. “Every day, they became more and more obsessed with the spirits they controlled. More and more insane about sacrificing to that hideous thing out in the desert. And anyone who dared to try to stop them became the next sacrifice.”

“That's terrible…” Evelyn said.

The sheriff nodded. “But now one of them is dead. Something I never thought possible. And if you folks managed to kill one…”

“We’ll drag Nacho down to join his brother in the pits of Hell, sheriff. We promise. As long as you stand beside us, and point our blades in the right direction, then they will not see tomorrow's sunrise.”

A small smile began to creep onto the sheriff's face. Not much of one, but enough to be noticeable. “Maybe your coming is a sign from above that it's high time we kick those bastards off our land,” he said. “Alright then. You track down Nacho, and I'll spread the word that it's time for this town to get it's revenge.”

Evelyn and Chaytan smiled, standing from their chairs.

“Sounds like just my kind of plan,” she said.

“Do you have any ideas of where we should start looking?” Chaytan asked.

“If it were me, I'd start looking at his house in the center of town, right in front of the hanging tree. If he's not there, Pedro’s wife and children will be at least. Those poor souls don't have much elsewhere to go.”

“We’ll check it out,” Evelyn nodded. “Thank you.”

“No ma'am, thank you. You've given this bag of old bones a bit of hope. May God guide your blade.”

Evelyn nodded, and pulled up her hood. The three of them shook hands in a silent goodbye, then she and Chaytan wasted no time making their way out the door, and walking down the muddy road towards the hanging tree.

------------

The house was a run down little hunk of adobe. Evelyn wasn't sure what else she would've expected. The hanging tree stood outside the cracked walls of the house, and a fair share of corpses hung from its finger-like branches like flies caught in a spider web. It made Evelyn grimace a little. It was one thing to bring harm upon the innocent. It was another to enact such cruelty like this. Nacho had to die tonight. This had to end.

She and Chaytan crept as quietly as they could up to the outer walls of the house, crouching low in the shrubs whose thirst was being quenched by the rain for the first time in God knows how long. They kept their eyes peeled for any signs of Nacho or his thugs.

But it was their ears that caught the first sign that the man was inside. A woman's scream, and pleas to stop rattled the rainy night from within the adobe walls.

“No stop leave us alone dammit!” Evelyn and Chaytan heard the woman shriek. They quickly scurried up to a nearby window to get a peak at whatever the hell was going on inside. They spotted the woman, her face dirty with her tangled hair being matted down by the blood and tears staining her cheeks. She had two girls clutched desperately in her arms. One of them was only a baby, and the other couldn't have been more than four years old. The baby cried, while her toddler sister shared in their mother's terrified look.

Nacho stood in front of them, his back to the window, a wicked sort of knife clutched in his hand. He was standing tall over the woman, but his posture was still hunched. Ghostly.

“Don't you raise your voice at me!” he snapped through his rotten teeth. “I've given you a life here and I can easily take it away! Now tell me where the hell it is!”

“I don't know!” the woman pleaded. “I'm telling you I don't know!”

Suddenly Nacho's arm shot forward, and his wormy hands snatched at the crying baby in her arms. The woman shrieked in defiance and clutched the child tighter, trying to keep it out of the evil man's hands. “No! Leave her alone! Leave her alone!” she begged.

“If you don't tell me where the hell it is by tomorrow morning, then I'll just have to use that little meat bag as the next sacrifice to Vivaron!”

“I don't know where it is! Don't touch her dammit! Leave her alone!”

“You have until sunrise!”

Nacho spit on the floor in front of her, then he turned on his heels and stomped furiously out the door.

Evelyn and Chaytan waited a few minutes for his footsteps to disappear down the road, and then they quickly hopped in through the window. The woman didn't seem to notice them at first. She was too busy crying in the corner, clutching her daughters as if the world depended on it. The toddler was the first to notice them, and she gasped, tapping her mother on the shoulder. The women slowly looked up, her vision most likely blurred by tears, and she stared fearfully at the intruders, but hardly as fearful as she was with Nacho.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice hoarse. “More of that fat bastard’s goons come to kick us around more?”

“My name is Evelyn Arlie, ma'am,” Evelyn told her softly, crouching down to meet her eye level. “I'm no goon. I came to help.”

The woman laughed. “That's rich,” she said. “No one can help us, ma'am. Pedro and Nacho control everything here…”

“Pedro is dead. By my own blade.”

The woman's eyes widened. “I… what?” she gasped in disbelief.

Evelyn nodded. “My husband and I do not tolerate the likes of men like him. We're not leaving this town until he and his brother are gone from this world.”

The woman was at a loss for words. She looked down at the floor, not knowing what to say. She simply clutched her daughters.

“What's your name?” Evelyn asked her.

“Cresencia,” the woman replied. “Cresencia Archuleta… Pedro was my husband, much as I hate to say it.”

“I take it the aggressive abuse ran in his family?”

Cresencia nodded. “I can't take this anymore…” she sobbed. “I can't, Mrs. Arlie, I can't! And neither can my daughters! Especially if what Nacho said is true! He wants to feed them to that monster he summons and worships! He wants to murder my baby!”

“I won't let that happen, Cresencia, I promise. Pedro will die tonight and your daughter will be safe.”

“What was he even after?” Chaytan inquired. “Why was he attacking you?”

“He never needed a reason to attack us… He just did when he pleased. But this time, he thought I knew the location of that damned rock that my husband had. He said he was going to collect it from Pedro but never found it. He thought I would know what happened to it, but I don't, Mrs. Arlie. I don't know and he's going to feed my baby to the demon for it!”

“That's not going to happen, Cresencia, I promise,” Evelyn assured her. “Please, you must try to breathe.” She put a reassuring hand on Cresencia’s shoulder.

“I don't want to live in this place anymore, Mrs. Arlie…” she cried. “I don't want my daughters to grow up in this godforsaken town.”

“Do you have anywhere else to go?”

“I have family that lives in El Rito. I would gladly go stay with them if I could be free from this place.”

Evelyn suddenly stood, and reached a hand out for her new friend to take. “Then we’ll escort you out of this town,” she said. “We got our horses back from Pedro during our little skirmish with the man. We can make sure you get far far away from here.”

“Y… you'd really do that? For us?”

Evelyn smiled. “Absolutely.”

Cresencia looked up at Evelyn's hand. Evelyn saw the gears creaking in her mind as she struggled back and forth with the risks of all her options. Then she closed her eyes, wiped the hair out of her face.

And then she took Evelyn's hand.

------------

It was a long trek. Not in distance, but in time. They stopped around every corner, keeping their eyes on the lookout for any signs of Nacho and his leftover goons. They used the night’s shadows as their cover, and used the rain to hide their footsteps. Until finally, they made it to the outer gate of the town, the creaking wooden structure adorned with the cattle skull up top. Their horses were waiting there, gently stomping their feet in the mud. Equally ready to get out of this place. Evelyn and Chaytan helped Cresencia and her daughters into one of the saddles, and then they hopped into the other. The group rode as fast as they could away from the town, until it was just a light source on the horizon. Enough distance to finally breathe a sigh of relief.

“Do you know your way to El Rito from here?” Evelyn asked Cresencia.

“For the most part, yes,” Cresencia nodded. “I should be able to get there by sunrise if I ride fast enough.”

“Then godspeed to you, my friend.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Arlie. For everything… How can I ever repay you for what you've done tonight?”

“By staying safe,” Evelyn smiled.

Cresencia simply worked up a smile, and nodded to the Assassins. Then she gave her daughter a quick hug in the saddle for good luck, and yanked on the reins, kicking their horse into full gear, and disappearing over the rainy horizon. Evelyn watched them go, and sighed. She thought about Winona. She longed to be back with her own daughter. To give her a hug like that. But it would have to wait. There was still a life that needed to be taken at the Sorcerer's Ranch.

And as if the call to arms heard her thoughts, she suddenly heard the light clopping of hooves coming their way. The Assassins turned around, and they spotted the sheriff coming up the road to meet them, with three other men on horseback by his side. Three men with guns. Evelyn smiled.

“This your posse then, sheriff?” she asked.

“I found the best men with the biggest grudges against the Archuletas,” the sheriff smiled back. “They all want that bastard dead tonight as much as you do.”

“That's good to hear. We're going to need all the help we can get.”

“Now it's simply a matter of tracking the man down,” Chaytan said.

“Aye. But where do you think he would have go-?”

Then suddenly there was the noise.

That deafening noise that reverberated across the sky from the depths of the desert.

That distinctive, loud, bassy, crocodilian roar.

And Evelyn's heart sank.

She looked at the sheriff's posse, a look of horror washing over her face. She yanked on the reins of her horse, and started bolting back towards town. The posse didn't waste any time following her. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

And Evelyn prayed to God that it wasn't what she thought it was.