Page 63 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

N ORA TOSSED ASIDE the flute and ran over to Skip.

He had passed out. The cable holding him suspended was hooked to a ring in the ground.

She knelt beside it, grasped the cable in both hands, lifted it with a grunt of effort, and freed it from the hook.

She lowered it gently, easing Skip’s hanging body down sideways and away from the pile of wood.

Once he was on the ground, she cut away the hobbles from his ankles, freed his hands, then quickly inspected the cuts on his back.

She felt overwhelming relief when she saw they were superficial—long strokes that had bled freely, but nothing deep.

The cultists had been interrupted by the creature before they could begin work in earnest.

Her brother lay on the ground and gave a loud groan, gasping for air.

“Skip?”

His eyes fluttered open.

“Thank God.” She hugged him.

“You’re safe now.”

His mouth worked silently for a moment before whispered words emerged.

“They were going to… skin me alive.”

“They’re gone.”

Skip’s eyes opened wider, as if in disbelief.

“What—”

“Mass suicide. They all went off the cliff.”

He tried to lift his head and look around.

“Oh my God.” He laid his head down again.

“They were chanting. I could feel the knife…”

Gently, Nora put a hand on his shoulder.

“They’re gone. All of them.”

Skip’s breathing eased, his body relaxed, and he closed his eyes and lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Assured he’d be all right, Nora rose and rushed over to Corrie, trussed and lying on the ground in a drug-induced haze of her own.

As Nora cut off her bonds, rousing her in the process, Corrie gasped, her eyes pinpoints.

With a shriek, she flailed out at Nora, her face a mask of fear.

“No!” she cried. “ No…! ”

“Easy.” Nora grasped her wrists, holding them and gently calming Corrie’s struggles.

“Easy now. It’s me, Nora. We’re okay. We’re okay now.”

Corrie stopped fighting, trying to focus.

“Nora… Oh my God…

What—what was that thing ? Jesus, I saw it rise from the smoke and flame… I was sure it was going to kill us all…”

So she’d seen it, too.

The rational part of Nora had hoped she hadn’t.

“It was the drugs,” Nora said, disbelieving her own words even as she spoke them.

“Just the drugs.”

Corrie lay back, eyes wild and confused.

“Drugs? But… it was so real .”

“Just the drugs,” Nora murmured again.

The mesa top was quiet now; the wind was at long last dying away; and the fire under the first tripod had burned down into a heap of smoldering coals.

Nothing was left of Nash’s body—just a meat hook dangling from the cable.

Nora’s blood froze as she heard a sound from the edge of the mesa—a rough scrabbling in the loose rocks.

Someone was laboring clumsily up the slope.

Shit . Could one of the cultists have survived the fall and was now making their way back up the mesa?

The gun—she needed the gun.

Where was it? The only light now came from the glowing heap of coals.

She rose to her feet and scrambled to the spot where Bromley had dropped it.

There it was.

She seized it.

It was heavy as hell, a big stupid revolver.

She held it up to the reddish light and could see two rounds left in its five chambers.

Grasping it in both hands, she took a deep breath, braced herself, and raised it, aiming toward the sound of grunting and scrabble of footsteps just below the mesa rim.

A head appeared, obscured in shadow.

“I’ve got a gun!” Nora cried out.

“Don’t fucking move!”

Sudden silence.

“Put your hands in the air!” she shouted, her own voice strange in her ears.

“Step forward into the light—slowly—so I can see you!”

Jesus, the head .

Black against black, it was strangely oblong, with wings, inhuman.

Nora’s heart accelerated again.

“Easy now,” came a familiar voice.

“It’s just me, Homer. Sheriff Watts.”

Nora, astonished, squinted into the darkness.

As he rose to his full height and came forward into the faint glow of the coals, she realized that what she’d taken for a head was really just Watts’s cowboy hat—dented and badly dinged.

The man himself appeared dinged up, sooty and ragged, as if he’d been in a fire.

“Homer?” Nora lowered the gun.

“What in the world—”

He turned slowly, his eyes wide, taking in Corrie and Skip stretched out on the ground, the tripods and the remains of bonfires, the masks and other detritus littering the top of the mesa.

He holstered his gun.

“Well, I was expecting to be the cavalry, come to rescue you all. But I can see you’ve done all right on your own.”

Now Nora heard another sound—the distant thudding of rotor blades.

Watts gestured toward it.

“Here come the rest of them.” Even in the faint light, Nora could see Watts was struggling to contain his shock.

Nevertheless, he spoke to them calmly.

“Those choppers will have you out of here before you know it. We’ll get you back to Santa Fe and medical attention. You must have been through hell up here. But they’ll get you patched up, and it’ll all be good.” He went over and knelt by Corrie, who lay on the ground wide-eyed and silent, still in profound shock.

He took her hand and murmured, “Corrie, you’re safe now. Everything will soon be normal again.”

They might be safe, Nora thought.

But nothing would ever be quite normal. Never again.