The Caddite commander, bewildered by Vargos' wild expectations, studied the left flank of the crazed Mascogos. With less than a dozen armed troopers, he considered a retreat north and roundabout return to Los Orlos. The mad witch be damned. His men, after the past half hour of dismounted skirmishing, had dwindled to the wounded and the dying—a total rout.

The Mascogos ordered a final mounted charge at the ridge. His chance to retreat denied, the Caddite commander ordered the troopers deployed along the ridge to fire on the charging Mascogos to cover the retreat of his surviving men.

The dismounted Caddites fought as they fell back to their fellows on the ridge. More Mascogos mounted their horses and charged forward over and through the panic-stricken Caddites. The thud of the galloping horses and the cries of the troopers tormented the commander's ears, as his men scattered and tried to save themselves. The Mascogos over-rode the fleeing Caddites, galloping forth to complete the havoc and cut down the fugitives who escaped the initial burst and charges of battle.

*

A darkened sky hung overhead. Van frowned, the sun still blazed with a glow of late evening flame. The darkness was unnatural. The rumble of the past half hour as strong as when the Caddites and Rurales rode into this field of battle. Flecks of sand and small stones hung suspended in the air, mixed with the smoke and dust of the Caddite and Mascogo battle. The binding web cast by Nico shimmered around Van as he continued to roll, tracking Nathan's movements. The blonde scout dragged the unconscious Juan Semos toward a third man, a black Rural Guardsman, who leaned over Day Long. Van couldn't see Teven.

His head dropped to the coarse desert ground. The ever present stench of lime and iron dust, acrid and sharp, mixed with the metallic sour exhaustion of his body and the electric charge in the air. Damn these shapeshifters. Everything he tried so hard to escape from, came to pass here in a forsaken, liminal fastness, with friends, his family, battered and bleeding. All of their dreams, their happiness, ruined.

Aleya. Never to see her again, feel her and breathe in the inspiration of her presence?

His vision blurred with exhaustion and likely some damage from the effects of the arcane crystal blade held tight against him. Aleya was Van's strength, yet he'd not known her during his time in the Andrew. Their meeting came months later and an ocean away. The truth to his survival of the naval battle lay at the heart of his true fear—an acknowledgement even the diablero failed to uncover, a fear that as always, led to anger.

The ground erupted around him, pale yellow tentacles lashed at him as the force threw him into the air in a mass of dirt and rubble.

His muscles tensed with the volcanic rage building within him. His headache unrelenting in the absence of the excruciating pain from the knife-man's arcane weapon. His ears more sensitive to the growing, thunderous din.

The rubble and dirt hovered around Van as he twisted in the air, Vargos' tentacles shot up to encircle him. The first snaked its the way around his legs, the second, his torso and the weapon bound within the binding web. The ground split open in a trench, like the soil before a plow, as Vargos drew Van back. She grinned with smug surety of victory with Nico stood beside her preparing his spellcaster, likely to ensnare Nathan and the others or devastate the black Rurales.

Nico paused, looked up, confusion sculpting his face as it was lit by a purplish light. Van was unable to see what Nico stared at, but the air was already charged with energy, the weapon Van held vibrated to it, the rumble in tune with it. Held so close to him, against his body by both binding and Vargos, the thrum of the crystal weapon resonated in his bones, in the core of him, keyed to the agony within his skull. These sensations had flooded him on the mindscape of his possession. The charged energy in the air familiar and so too the color, full and dark in his faded vision, overwhelmed him.

*

Day Long scratched at his scalp, unused to the week's growth of hair. The air itself bit at his skin and irritated his scalp. Nathan and the kithla knelt over Teven and Juan Semos. Teven's arm reset, and Juan Semos mended from the wounds of battle.

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The kithla turned. "Old man Semos is a great friend to our people. We won't lose him this day."

Day Long grunted.

Nathan was more articulate. "And our friend Teven?"

"His body will heal, but there is no sign of the skinwitch which possessed him."

Nathan frowned.

The kithla raised a hand over Juan Semos and lay the other against Day Long. A doubled, darker image formed over the elder vaquero. "See here? The skinwitch is dead, but Old man Semos must be cleansed."

Nathan watched with curious eyes. "Day Long?"

"There's a sort of…shadow around Juan Semos."

"In his spirit?"

Day Long nodded.

Nathan addressed the kithla. "What's different about Teven?"

"Your friend has a unique aura, and no sign of possession."

Day Long gripped the kithla's shoulder. "Show me."

A luminous, multi-hued glow appeared around Teven as the kithla held his hand over the elder Har brother. The kithla twitched, curling his hand into a fist as Teven's aura reached out and drew similar light, life force, from the Mascogo. Day Long's stomach spasmed and his head swam. Snapping back his arm, Day Long released the kithla and fell over.

Nathan jumped forward. The kithla sat back, breathed heavy and raised his hand to the concerned blonde scout.

Day Long spat as the kithla spoke.

"Soul eater."

*

Van fell back, striking his head against the slick deck of the Stinger. Wraiths tore men from the gunship, but none screamed, taken as they were by the ecstacy of the spectral women's embrace, their souls given willingly and their minds lost.

Vomit on his lips, blood from the deck awash in the rain and seawater of the supernatural storm, Van cast about as he searched for Teven.

His eyes fell upon the shore. British sailors dancing as wraiths swept them off into the dark storm clouds above. Cannon fire belched from the Russian fort while return fire from the naval squadron faltered, ended, as the men of the Royal Navy lost their senses to the siren-like calls of wraith and fierce sea nymph alike. Horrors summoned by the Cossack warrior warlocks among the Russian forces.

Van held his fists to his face, his eyes clenched tight until, with a cry of anguish, he threw his head back. The sheet of heavy rain passed, revealing Teven at the wheel of their gunboat mad men cavorted and gyrated, seized by the sick wills of the wraiths.

The wraiths.

The squadron decimated by the necromantic shades. Death dealt by death.

Teven yelled at Van, but no words reached his ears. Cannon fire rained upon the Stinger, the gunboat maintaining its fatal drive toward the Russian fort, loaded as it was with gunpowder, and the only remaining weapon he and Teven wielded.

Drawn to Van, or perhaps directed from the Russian-held shore, four wraiths swept in and circled him. At the helm, Teven continued to shout, his words snatched away by the thunder of wind and waves and unending siren song.

The wraiths swirled around and caressed Van. Their golden mist enshrouded him and ignited golden, black-tipped flames that formed a blazing mane around his shoulders, neck, and head.

*

Day Long cursed beside Teven and Juan Semos, while Nathan and the Mascogo kithla shared a confused look. Day Long gripped Nathan's shoulder, pointing behind the blonde scout.

"The hell is that thing?"

All eyes followed Day Long's outstretched arm. Blue-black clouds roiled above the battlefield, ignored by the Mascogo and Caddite cavalry. Closer to Van and Señora Vargos, a haze of debris filled the air, while closer to the kithla and scouts, individual rocks and stones clearly hung suspended above the ground.

This time, it was the kithla who cursed in Gullah Creole before standing. "That is a tear in the Veil between this and the Spirit World."

Nathan frowned, but understood the general gist before Day Long clarified. The thunderous roar of the past half hour only growing even as the main Mascogo force pursued the flight of defeated Caddites. The sound originated in the Spirit World.

"They've done torn a hole into the land of the dead."

Nathan shielded his face against a growing wind as he tried to locate Van among the surviving skinwalkers and their shapeshifting leader.

"We've got to get to Van. Can your medicine man friend tend to Teven and Juan Semos?"

Day Long and the kithla nodded.

Nathan patted his body. "Do they have weapons we can fight the shapeshifters with?"

The kithla called out to the approaching rear party of Mascogo women. A tall, mixed race woman galloped in and swept down from her mount, one arm raised to her fellows. Two more rode forward and three others dismounted to lift Teven and Juan Semos.

The towering woman, her skin lighter than the others, handed a wooden war hawk, its axe blade and handle a single polished silvered gray piece, to Day Long. The second two women presented another to their kithla and a third sacred war hawk to Nathan.

Turning the weapon over in his hands, Day Long grinned at Nathan and gestured with his axe. "A war hawk. Matches your belt, Silver Hair."

Nathan glanced at his silver belt buckle. "Let's go get our friend, ‘brethren'."