Page 1 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

Light in the Dark

D ecker Belmont chose his next kill when a bullet ricocheted off the minute hand of the saloon clock.

Ticking against bent metal, the timepiece never reached ten. Cards spilled into grimy piles and chatter trickled away into stiff silence. Gunsmoke, metallic and bitter, hung heavy between the two men at the center of the saloon.

Decker straightened from where he’d been leaning behind his red chestnut bar. Hot lead seared his fingertips as he found the wayward bullet buried in the shined edge.

Always the gamblers causing a damn problem.

Decker swirled the whiskey in his glass, brushed away expensive splinters, and eyed the shooter across his saloon. “I’d appreciate you not blowing holes in my bar.”

“He cheated.” Smoke wafted from the short barrel of the revolver clutched in the man’s sweat-slick, meaty hands.

“I don’t know where you’ve come from, but ‘round here it’s not acceptable to shoot folks over a faro game,” Decker said in a tone that most would take as pleasantly warning.

Decker’s patience was in short supply after he hadn’t fed for a month, and the locals knew enough not to bother him when he had a hungry, haggard look about him.

His warm brown skin had turned ashen without blood, and the elegant, angled lines of his face were harsh under the wiry black of his trimmed beard.

Decker’s skin itched, and the man who fired the shot would be the bloody, calming, salve.

The stranger jammed his smoking revolver back in its holster and dragged his sleeve across his dripping red nose. A single bone faro token lay in front of him. The rest had scattered across the table when he’d leapt to his feet.

Trouble reared its head more often than Decker would like in his saloon — tonight’s trouble was courtesy of the young outlaw Cricket Conklin.

“This trigger-happy buzzard wanted me to meet the good Lord himself for no reason.” Cricket’s drawl drew attention like a one-penny Sunday paper. “ I won and he knows it.”

The stranger bristled. “You’re a lying cheat.”

“Sit down or get outside,” Decker said more sharply than he intended. “And Cricket don’t usually miss, so better fix your aim if you want a shootout.”

Neither man moved.

Maybe the stranger was trying to figure out how he’d missed a point-blank shot, or maybe he realized aggravating a saloon-familiar local was never a wise decision. His chair shrieked as he yanked it under him and sat down, glowering at the cheerful outlaw.

“I reckon I can let you have this one. Seein’ as I won the last three.” Cricket grinned.

Kid never knows when to keep his damn mouth shut.

If Decker left diplomacy up to Cricket, there’d be a wasted kill in front of the saloon after the stranger inevitably missed the lucky outlaw again and ended up with a ricocheted bullet in his own head.

“I have a cigar in the back room calling your name, kid. Leave him alone and be glad I didn’t have to get Safine.”

She’d cuss you out if she had to patch you up again because of your stupidity.

“She would agree I won.” Cricket bared his teeth in a smile and shook his hair away from his eyes. A few blond strands drifted loose by his ear, neatly clipped by the bullet. He must’ve run into more trouble with the law recently if his ragged, hunting-knife haircut was any indication.

Resuming chatter did nothing to mask the stranger’s thudding heartbeat in Decker’s skull and his irritation with the usual troublemaker.

He caught Cricket by the arm as he rounded the bar. “When are you gonna stop being hard-headed?”

“I got a whole life ahead of me. Not about to spend it doing soft-headed shit.” His grin took on a wicked edge. Cricket had experienced too much of life already with too little to show for it other than a sunburn across his nose and a hard glint to his blue eyes. Cricket yanked away.

Decker let him go.

You waste your luck, kid.

Unlike the creatures in Ender’s Ridge that were made or birthed, Cricket’s uncanny luck pulsed from the amulet hanging around his neck. He swore he’d won it at the age of ten while gambling at the finest saloon in Amaretto .

But no one believed him. They just added it to the list of tall tales he always spun.

Despite Cricket’s knack for exaggeration, he seemed oblivious to the Blessing that cloaked their town and shielded creatures from most humans. Horns turned to hats, forked tongues disregarded as heat exhaustion, disappearances written off as drunken men losing their way in the wastelands.

Decker thought maybe Cricket saw them as they were.

The kid was just too foolish to mind.

Decker drained his whiskey glass to wash away the taste of gunpowder and savor the last dregs of his humanity.

Liquor was one of the few human substances he could still consume without feeling ill, though whiskey couldn’t cushion the ache in his gut and the irritability grinding at his bones with the knowledge that he had to feed soon.

There was no true justice in the West, but Decker tried to pick his kills carefully—choking down thick copper and moving on was easier if the people had been a problem or had no one to miss them.

It was just what he had to tell himself to not go mad.

“A round on the gentleman who disrupted our night!” Decker called out, making his final decision and breaking the seal from a bottle of Northern whiskey he’d special-ordered before the label change.

Authentic, in high demand, and with just the right hint of oak, it was the perfect peace-offering to tear down the man’s defenses.

The man wouldn’t dare say no—not after being allowed to stay and keep his winnings, which were just enough to pay for his soon-to-be remarkable tab .

The woman at the piano plunked out a few more notes with her gnarled fingers. Her gilt-edged cane soon tapped the floor and replaced her pitiful attempt at music as she wove through the tables to meet Decker at the bar.

“Cricket,” he called into the back room and waved away the cigar smoke trailing between the faded maroon curtains. “Be useful and tell Safine we’re fixing to have a busy night.”

Decker rolled up his sleeves and tugged away the loose leather cord from the top section of his hair. Black strands brushed his upper arms before he re-tied his hair tightly at the crown of his head and got to work.

It would have been easier to take the shears to his hair like Cricket, but part of him clung to facets of his old life, of hands working warm oil through the strands after his family sat for a meal together.

Memories ghosted back faintly at times, spices that warmed a human body from the inside out.

Deep red, dandelion-yellow, earthy green.

He’d never been able to find them once he’d come to America from India—not that it mattered anymore.

His life was here. His town, his saloon, his wife.

Safine bounded down the stairs in a sweet, earthy cloud of sagebrush and hackberry. She’d been working on her witching, as she always did when she could catch a free moment from the saloon, and he tossed her a rag to wipe her purple-stained hands.

“Which asshole shot the clock?” She squinted at her warped reflection in the till, wiping away a smudge of lip rouge bleeding into her pale complexion .

Decker nodded towards him. Her mouth twitched in a smile and bottle-green eyes danced up to meet his deep brown ones. “I’m low on supplies.”

“Couldn’t you have made do with herbs for your witching instead of body parts?” he asked under his breath and took the two glasses she poured, sending them down the rail into eager hands.

“Yarrow and cat’s tongue don’t have the same kick that a man’s liquor-addled brain does.

” Safine grinned and poured a third. She smoothed the ruffles of her creamy dress and fished out a tiny oilskin pouch.

The fine, nearly colorless grains of powder dissolved in the whiskey with a quick swirl of the glass.

Safine’s scars on her hands mirrored his own—pale ridges that rippled across their knuckles and trailed up their arms—and the match to his ring graced her slender finger.

The soft metal of both bore the scratches and dents of seven years wrenching the Goose into a functioning saloon after Safine’s late husband let it fall into disrepair.

Their wedding bands were the only part of them that didn’t raise eyebrows—golden collars tethering painted circus animals together to convince the audience of their authenticity.

Their marriage afforded them both a level of normalcy and they found folks cared less about a married couple than they did a stranger and a widow; even Ender’s Ridge wasn’t without antiquated judgement.

Wedding rings were a stifling tradition they took advantage of, and Decker and Safine shamelessly flaunted their immunity.

Safine waited until the powder melted into the whiskey before she waved Cricket over. “Tell your sharpshooter friend this is his last drink because we ain’t letting him back after tonight. ”

“And don’t drink it.” Decker raised an eyebrow at him.

Cricket grinned. “I’d never do such a thing.”

When he wanted to, Cricket could pull charm out of his ass like a damn rabbit from a hat.

A handshake and a wide grin later—bordering on smug, since Cricket always wanted the last word—the stranger accepted the whiskey and Decker caught shreds of information as the men settled into another game of faro, accusations set aside.

Mr. Rotham was hopeful to work in the amorite mines just west of Ender’s Ridge. No children. Wedding ring, but he didn’t mention a wife.

No one will miss you.

Safine piled her curls atop her head, tendrils of copper-red twining with white strands at her right temple as she tied it back with a black velvet ribbon. “What’s your plan this time?”

“The moon’s dark tonight. No one will see him get lost in the hills, and the river’s close,” Decker murmured, watching Rotham take a gulp of the tainted whiskey.