Page 10 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

Dynamite Between Teeth

S unday afternoon, the chapel was as silent as a robbed grave.

Tuesday morning, Safine made spiced cider and joined Cricket across the alley for half the day. Working , they said.

Safine was fickle—she could have been finding the preacher’s weaknesses or he may have been winning her over—but one of them had to keep their mind unbiased. Laughter prodded at the edges of Decker’s mind, but he never moved from his post behind the bar.

Wednesday night, Decker tugged his curtains aside and caught glimpses of the preacher in his room under lamplight. Delicately defined arms. Shoulders scattered with faint freckles from his time in the autumn sun. Chest caving in a heavy sigh.

Saturday morning, a stranger collapsed behind the saloon.

“Decker!” Safine’s shout rang out.

Lucy Goosey hissed at him as he skirted by, ducking out the back where she knelt next to a limp form.

“He barely made it off his horse before he collapsed.”

Slipping his arms under him, Decker hauled him up, laying him on the back table after Safine cleared it with a practiced sweep of her arm. He turned an attentive ear to his pulse. Weak, but alive .

For now.

Decker flipped his wrist over, running light fingers over a weeping rope burn. “Safi.”

She frowned at the wounds and leaned closer, brushing a piece of grey debris from his lips. “What the hell?” Her fingers emerged with a flake of red paper. “Dynamite. He was eating dynamite. Jesus H. Christ .”

“Don’t think he's just starving. Somebody’s got it out for him,” Decker murmured.

The man finally stirred as Safine rubbed salve on the wounds. Eyes slitted open, then blew wide with panic and he lunged against Decker’s quick hands.

“She’s coming for me—” A coughing fit cut his desperate pleas short, blood speckling his lips.

Decker flicked the edge of his shirt back. Fresh bruising mottled his chest and a gash across his stomach fluttered and leaked with each ragged breath.

The man snatched at him and sunk his fingers into Decker’s arms. “Need a priest,” he rasped. “I need a priest—”

Safine pinned down his shoulder. “I’ll handle him, get Laurie if that’s what he wants.”

Decker made it across the alley in seconds. Hinges rattled as he pounded a fist on the planks.

“Mr. Lane!” Goddamnit it all, when he finally needed the little bastard, he wouldn’t open the damn door. “Mr. Lane!”

He whipped the door open, sleep-flattened hair falling in his wide eyes as he yanked a shirt on. “What’s gone wrong? ”

“Stranger got into some trouble. Safine’s doin’ her best, but he asked for a priest,” Decker filled in as they strode through the alleyway.

“I’m not a—”

“You’re the closest thing we got.” Decker turned to him and set his hands on his shoulders. Mr. Lane stiffened instantly. “Give him a couple minutes’ peace and let him think you’re a priest. This is what you’re here for.”

He looked as if another protest was on the tip of his tongue, but he finally ducked his head. “I’ll do my best.”

The man groaned as Safine tipped a jar of brightly colored powder to his lips, blue grains trickling to green as they touched his skin.

Mr. Lane stared for a moment before he swept into action and grasped the man’s trembling hand.

“You came to the right place, my friend. Safine is wonderful, she’ll do everything she can for you,” he murmured, smoothing his other hand over the man’s damp forehead.

“Make your peace with God, and he will make peace with you.”

“Bitch is comin’ for me.” The words gritted like rough boards, and the preacher glanced at Decker. He motioned to keep going and passed Safine a clean cloth. It quickly soaked with scarlet when she pressed it against the wound on his stomach.

“Decker will keep your physical body safe,” he murmured, “and God will tend to your soul. Are there transgressions you need to lay bare before Him?”

The man dragged in a defiant breath. “I ain’t done nothin’.”

“We’ve all sinned, my friend. Some of us just—” he glanced at Decker, “—more than others.”

His words weren’t aimed at him—he knew that. But it was like the preacher thrust his hands in his ribcage, as if he could feel the pulsing need rising with the thick smell of blood.

“Decker, help,” Safine hissed.

Warmth soaked his fingers as he replaced her, pressing down on the wound and blocking out the hunger clenching his gut as the man writhed.

Rotham’s face flashed in his mind. Because of him, this man would likely live.

Decker steadied his breathing as his gaze met with Mr. Lane’s.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me.”

The man’s hand went limp and Safine cursed, bottles cracking as she snatched another one and forced his lips open. His pulse fluttered under Decker’s hand.

“Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” The preacher didn’t take his eyes off Decker. “Thou preparest a table for me, in the presence of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with oil–”

“Shit. We got a problem.” Safine swept hair out of her eyes with a blood-soaked hand and motioned sharply out the window.

Decker ripped his gaze away from Mr. Lane. His voice followed him, soothing, gentle.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell–”

“Hold that thought, preacher.” Decker squinted past fly-specked panes of glass and heat-hazed sand.

Dust billowed from a woman’s footsteps, blending a scarlet red coat into muted brown.

Familiarity preceded her .

Either the dead had finally come to haunt him, or this was one hell of a mirage.

He took Safine’s hand, pressing it to the wound. “Keep him alive and give me two minutes.”

Gun-metal grey eyes met his own under the saloon’s back veranda.

Last he’d seen her was deep in the streets of New Orleans, stolen bride on her arm and a new life ahead of her.

Memory was hazed in time like the rest of them, foggy and incoherent, but Decker knew one thing for certain—she should’ve been in the grave for fifty years by now instead of aiming a loaded flintlock at him.

She sized him up, gaze narrowing. This wasn’t the same woman helping him hide away in the belly of a ship, or fighting next to him until they’d parted ways. The world had sharpened her in her everlasting thirty years. Preserved her.

Here you are, unchanged, right down to your stubbornness.

“Why’d you gut him?”

“A hundred years later and you’re still a fuckin’ bleeding heart. Some things don’t change.” Dusty brown hair snarled across the sharp angles of her face and caught on her bloody, crooked nose.

The first time he’d met her was in the belly of a British schooner bound for the Americas. Two stowaways—one posing as a man and the other posing as a human—made unlikely companions during war. But they’d survived and traveled together for a time, helping each other.

Decker’s lips twitched. “You haven’t changed, somehow.

Neither have I, but I still don’t like violence.

Especially in my saloon, disturbing my morning.

Why’d you do it?” he asked again and propped one shoulder against the door.

He wasn’t about to let a madwoman through the back door unless she had a damn good reason for force-feeding dynamite to the man.

She sneered. “I don’t need to explain myself . ”

Decker cocked his head, waiting.

The woman tapped her fingers against the trigger. When he knew her, she shot first, asked questions later. The British soldier her coat belonged to found that out the hard way.

Decker gambled, but not with his life. Unless she developed a penchant for hunting things like him, her bullets would be ordinary lead. Not silver.

The barrel of the gun finally angled to the ground.

She left a smear of blood across her coat-sleeve as she wiped her nose.

“Stole a girl barely fourteen. Left her family a ransom note and wouldn’t tell them where she was.

Tried to blow his head off but the bastard booted me in the face. Didn’t think he’d make it this far.”

“Lucky he made it here.” He stepped back, a hand on the door as he hesitated. “I go by Decker Belmont now,” he said.

“Your choice of name or others?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “I’m good at cards.”

“Doubtful.” Her sharp face softened to a dull edge. “Willa Brooks.”

He didn’t ask if she’d given herself a new name. If she was here alone, it meant the woman she’d loved long ago was gone, and there was no one else to give her a name.

“After you,” Decker said.

Safine straightened from the stranger as Willa stalked through the door, taking her in for a long, tense second before glancing at Decker. He jerked his head and she hesitantly stepped back from the man’s too-still form .

“What are you doing?” Mr. Lane darted past and pressed his hands, sending a beseeching look at him.

Willa drew her hunting knife from the belt at her side.

“He stole a child, preacher. Let her,” Decker said, taking his place next to Safine.

Mr. Lane’s face went white and he glanced down at his red hands. Slowly, they dropped to his side. He jerked his head away when Willa slid the knife between the man’s ribs, forcing words through his lips in a near-silent whisper.

“Into thy hands, I commend your spirit. May God judge you according to your sins, and comfort the sufferers of your transgressions.”

The steady drip drip drip of blood from the table accompanied the rasp of her knife against her coat.

Decker cleared his throat in the stifling silence. Introductions were in order, despite the body. “Willa, this is Safine, my wife. And the preacher, Mr. Lane.”

The latter looked like he was one breath away from fainting, but he braced one hand on the table and gave her a wavering smile. “The West certainly seems to be safer with you in it, Willa. Your methods may be unorthodox, but your heart is in–”

“You ain’t gotta tell me all that.” A hint of a sneer was still present in her voice. “Save your breath for the sermon tomorrow.”

“S-sermon?”

“It’ll be Sunday.”

He gave an uncertain laugh. “The chapel isn’t near ready—”

“You’re talkin’ just fine. Jesus didn’t need a church to preach in,” Willa said as she wiped away the blood trickling down her lips.

Mr. Lane stammered his assent .

Safine snatched a fresh rag and approached her like one would approach a wild horse. “Let me help. Please.”

Decker cut her a look. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her say please . And never like that. Maybe he should have been more careful about his usage of the title wife in front of his old friend.

Willa had a habit of stealing wives.

She regarded Safine for one moment before she nodded and leaned against the counter. Safine flashed a quick smile that reflected Decker’s soft one.

Mr. Lane’s heart slowed. He eased the man’s limp hand across his still chest—as if the body wasn’t going to sink to the riverbed, forgotten.

“Sorry I got you out of bed to provide last rites to someone undeserving of them,” Decker said wryly as he filled a bowl of water and scrubbed the blood from his hands.

“No one’s undeserving of them. God is meant to judge, not us.

I only try to offer some peace in their last moments.

” Mr. Lane’s brow furrowed as he glanced at him once more.

“I’m not sure I succeeded with him. He seemed like an angry, troubled man.

She’s troubled too,” he said, his gaze flickering to Willa across the room.

Willa’s sharpness softened under Safine’s careful hands and the dirt washed away to reveal tanned freckles and a twisted smile.

The preacher watched them like he was a starving man in the wilderness, longing and desperate. “You have a lovely wife, Decker. Any man would be lucky.”

“I am,” he agreed. The water turned pink and he rubbed his thumb along his knuckles under the surface.

“Safine is very special to me,” Decker murmured.

He should have stopped there. Maybe it was the thick, coppery smell dulling his senses, making him foolish, or maybe Mr. Lane’s peace was muddling his head with a false sense of safety.

“Safine is my wife in name only.”

The preacher’s gaze snapped to him. “I don’t understand.”

Decker smiled faintly. “We both stood to gain benefits. It seemed like the logical thing to do, and we enjoy the companionship.”

“I see,” he said softly, water rippling as he joined Decker on the opposite side of the bowl.

“You hold company with some unique people, Decker Belmont.”

“So did Jesus.”

He smiled. “Everyone seems bent on teaching me my own scripture.”

“Helps to have a reminder, Mr. Lane,” he said.

“When will you call me Laurie?”

Decker’s hands stilled under the water as the preacher’s gentle, chapel-scarred hands brushed against his own. “When I know you.”