Page 12 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

“The paper. That Silver Star .” Gibson looked as if he wasn’t sure his old friend was to be trusted, if he wasn’t one of them monsters in the article.

“Rumors, Mr. Gibson. The Goose is always open if you and Callie need a drink. Been real quiet since the paper.” Decker smiled, tight-lipped, and tipped his hat before securing the gate behind him.

I got a newspaper stand to visit.

Brittle boards hammered over the deep, fast-flowing river gave way to the wide, dusty street of Ridgewater. Most folks only knew of this side of the town. Meticulously painted white buildings and their two-story facades leered at him as he hid under the shade of the verandas.

A pinch-faced woman dismissively bustled around him. Ridgewater had never been welcoming to others, especially after the article.

He squared his shoulders, yanked his hat snug, and strode past the hotel with expensive cigar smoke clouding his lungs, and the wainwright fitting a smooth leather seat to a Sunday carriage for two, before crossing the street to the squatting steam train depot at the far end of the prim town.

There, in the middle of the milling Sunday-best women and spit-shined men, a waifish boy hawked the newspapers sprawled at his feet. A figure appeared from the trains, a square bundle clasped in his arms. A pocketknife glinted as he cut the twine and the newspapers tilted against the second stack.

Decker’s steps quickened.

Snarled hair drooped low under the man’s battered hat, bought at McKinney’s Mercantile.

Decker dodged a man who choked on his cigar smoke at the flash of movement.

A familiar face twisted harshly under a thick beard as he snapped an order to the child.

Decker broke into a run, his pace agonizingly slowed by the sense to stay hidden.

The man ducked inside the train.

He was here.

The one responsible for the Silver Star.

A friend.

A man he knew intimately.

A man who was once his neighbor.

Decker bounded onto the platform, and a woman clutched at her hat as he darted by. “Nathan—”

The steam whistle screamed.

Lunging for the last train door, his hand scraped across it as Nathan hauled it shut and the train pulled away from the station.

Swearing, Decker shoved past a woman who squawked like a kicked hen as he leapt.

Fingertips caught the iron railing at the back of the train.

The toes of his boot scuffled and hitched on the tracks.

Necessity tightened his grip and he strained every muscle, hauling himself up and over. Decker straightened his vest and settled his hat against the wind as the train picked up speed.

Where have you hid?

Decker stalked through the faded green of the seats, looking for Nathan Griggs.

Once humble barber of Ender’s Ridge, now apparently turned backstabbing journalist.

During the full moon do they chain you to the printing press or in a doghouse out back?

Catching a flash of lanky brown hair with no loyalty behind a woman with a fruit-basket hat, he slammed open the next door.

Nathan snarled as he met his gaze, yellow teeth bared under the coarse strands of his beard. No longer running, he advanced, nails sharpening at his side. The woman shrunk into her seat behind the newspaper. His newspaper.

“What do you want?” His voice grated across Decker’s nerves, low and growled .

Holding up his hands, he said, “I just want to talk.” Decker glanced at the woman and plucked the newspaper from her. She swallowed a thin sound, her fingers trembling as she folded them in her lap. “Somewhere else,” he said.

Pressing him back, muscles drawn tight and heart thudding fast and vicious in Decker’s head, Nathan clicked the door shut to the last train car. “You got one question before I throw you off this fuckin’ train.”

He hadn’t lost the smart mouth that gained him a split face over cards more than once. Decker patched him up those nights, slotted between his legs as he sat on the back table hours after the saloon emptied.

“Why’d you write this?” The newspaper rattled between them, a shovel and grave impersonating smudged ink on paper. “You’re one of us, Nate.” The town hurtled past outside small windows as the train left Ridgewater.

A sneer twisted his lips. “All’a you are gonna die. People are seein’ it, Decker. I’m only helpin’ it along so I can get somethin’ out of it. All them folks see you as you are.”

See you as you are. A bloodsucking bastard who never should have been made? See me as I am, a man who should have died a century ago.

Decker’s teeth sunk into the flesh of his lip. An ache tore at his chest, like fangs slicing through flesh.

“You’re in trouble. They’ll come for all of us,” Decker said.

“I won’t be in danger.” A nasty grin darkened his face.

Decker’s brow furrowed .

Nathan lunged, his shoulder driving into Decker’s stomach and catching him off balance for a split second. Grit coated his hair as the door snapped open and they tumbled onto the platform.

Wind howled around them and snatched Decker’s hat, sending it tumbling across the tracks.

Decker bared his teeth, twisting under Nathan’s grasp as hands clawed at his face, his chest, slicing through skin and wringing a grunt from Decker as nails connected with his shoulder.

Decker’s head slammed over the edge, the sun blinding him and the tracks sparking under him.

The sun had touched him.

Blistering, midday sun.

Decker couldn’t name the feeling that surged in him—thick, white-hot, air catching and dying in his lungs.

He cracked his head against Nathan’s, sending him reeling back.

Decker staggered to his feet, breaths coming short and fast.

Braced himself.

No pain.

No raised blisters from direct sun.

No lightning struck through him, rendering him immobile. It was as if he was never sun-touched.

Nathan heaved a breath, a triumphant snarl on his face. His boot slammed into the middle of Decker’s chest.

Fingertips scraped the edge as Decker fell.

He slammed into the tracks. Rails bit into him like a hundred stakes as he tumbled across the tracks. Curling his arms around his head, he glanced off a rail and into a prickly sagebrush thicket. The train hissed and screamed, ground shaking .

His bones ached and shifted back into place, knitting together until his hands faced the right way and his hips slotted into place.

The musky sage flavored his wounds and a groan slipped from him as he pressed his trembling arms over his head.

A human would have been dead as soon as they hit the ground.

So why, as a blood sucking bastard, did the sun not burn me?