Revival: Tales of the Avernine, #3

By M.S. Hund

Neither the wicked nor the innocent can rest in the demon-haunted Avernine…

When a desperate rescue attempt goes awry, Ezra finds himself hunted by the woman he was trying to help. But she isn't the only one on his trail. Religious fanatics, a demented doctor, and an ancient witch all have designs on the young gunslinger, though his own doubts and the demon gun he carries may prove his undoing first. Plagued by guilt, Ezra struggles to come to terms with his nature and his actions before they lead him to an early grave.

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Revival is the third book in Tales of the Avernine, a dark fantasy western series featuring demons, witches, mutants, and possessed guns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jebesyl Press
• Release date: Feb 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393098362

Book preview

1

Sometimes when the ghosts in his head fought their empty battles, Ezra wondered if he was at war with himself or if he was the battlefield. Or maybe he was a library, dusty and decaying, home to stories he couldn’t change, even if he wanted to.

Pain pulsed in the knot of scar tissue behind his bottom lip. His teeth clamped hard enough around it to hurt, but not to draw blood. Strange that he couldn’t remember when he’d gotten the scar. It was like the ghosts and the memories. Too many, spread too thin.

Ezra’s eyes narrowed. A dark spot grew on the horizon, shivering in the heat haze and growing larger.

A rider.

The gun warmed Ezra’s palm, and he stared at it, not realizing he’d drawn the weapon. Had instinct prompted him, or was this a symptom of his reliance on Keren?

On violence as the automatic answer?

Shut up, he growled at the first notes of Keren’s song, his fingers tingling and twitching, pleased to touch the iron, to feel the comforting weight in his hand.

Had Xabiera suffered like this, her need at war with her guilt, second-guessing her instincts and reactions?

Ezra fumbled in the frayed bag on the rock beside him, his eyes never leaving the rider as his fingers found a narrow, ward-marked tube and fished it free. He put the tube to one eye and closed the other, waiting for the swimming image to resolve. Demons whispered in the glass, prompting memories of where he’d found it.

Smoldering wreck of a wagon a week’s ride out from Blue Gulch. Shredded and bloody fabric on the ground, but no bodies. The spyglass hadn’t helped them avoid whatever had come for them. Maybe it had even called the demons to them.

Whoever the fools had been.

Ezra tried not to think about the doll he’d found in the wagon’s wreckage, its face torn and dress dotted with blood. What desperation would drive a family to risk the night, to ride through the unwarded dark? Had they been running away from something? Towards someone?

Someone like the inquisitor-turned-preacher?

What was it the revivalists called Father Tommaso now? Brother Tom?

Ezra’s cheeks burned. He focused his attention on the image in the glass as it became two riders, then three. They were riding hard, but the dust rising behind them was too large for three horses.

Wagons. There had to be wagons. But moving at that speed, they’d risk not only the horses but the wagons themselves. There were no good roads in the Avernine, particularly this far north and west where the towns were few and sparsely populated.

Ezra shifted the glass, puzzled by their haste. Dusk was still hours away. What could—?

Breath hissed through his teeth when he spotted the dark clouds boiling behind the riders, clouds that hadn’t been there moments ago. They were moving at an unnatural clip, devouring the scrub. A witch-storm, coming hard and fast.

Ezra lowered the glass and snuck a glance at the revival camp behind the rocky bluff that sheltered him. One massive tent was surrounded by wagons and a ring of smaller tents. The central tent had been white once, but it blended with the scrub that surrounded it now. He watched the weathered fabric ripple as the first harbinger breezes of the storm caressed it.

The wagons’ race against the storm would be a close-run thing.

An opportunity.

At long last.

Lack of sleep gummed Minerva’s eyes. She stared at her fingers, clenched in a claw, and tried to make them relax, willing away the ache in her joints. Everything hurt. The dull knot in her belly. The cold fog lurking behind her eyes. Even breathing the stale air of the tent was a chore.

She quashed the temptation to flee, to escape the tent, saddle a horse, and ride off to…

Where?

Back to the smithy?

To Ezra?

Minerva shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs of fatigue and doubt. Her eyes slid over her father’s body, still trapped in its frozen war with the demon. He looked small beneath the sheets. Was that because she’d removed his rune-stitched clothing or because he was wasting away? Her fingers strayed to the lattice of warded sticks she’d erected around him. They bore variants of the wards woven into his garments, allowing her to remove his clothes and study his work, hoping to find some solution she’d missed. How long would the stasis hold? How long until the demon found a weakness in her cage?

Did a solution even exist?

She’d been studying her father and the ward-marked girl for weeks now. Weeks of failed trials and frustration. Or was it months? Minerva had lost track of the days and only knew a new week had arrived when the big tent heaved with songs and shouting in manifold tongues.

Her lips parted around teeth pressed together hard enough to hurt. She thought of the preacher’s hungry eyes fixed upon the warded girl. Hungry not for her flesh, but for the marks her flesh bore. The old crone claimed the girl was a weapon, designed to destroy demons and the portals that granted them access to this world.

A weapon Minerva couldn’t figure out how to use.

She groaned, resisting the urge to spit sourness from her mouth.

That wasn’t quite the truth. She had worked out most of the girl’s markings. She could trigger the wards, but she couldn’t control them. There was more than enough power in the girl to drive a single demon from her father, but Minerva doubted he would survive the process.

And the girl? Would she survive?

The crone they called Mama Araña had been miserly with her secrets, exchanging fragments of what she knew about the girl and her scars for Minerva’s aid in translating old books and repairing minor wards. She wasn’t getting the better of the old woman in the bargain. The crone was too sharp, too obviously pleased with herself.

Why did the preacher tolerate her and that blind monster that drove her cart?

Minerva let her gaze fall on her father once more, then sighed and turned away, pushing through the canvas flap and out into the revival camp. She ignored the sidelong stares of Brother Tom’s minions, the fingers that curled in reflexive signs of protection. A sneer tried to creep across her lips, but she fought it down. Let them be fools, let them enjoy the protections her work on their warding posts brought. Let them see her as a witch for her knowledge.

Knowledge that kept them safe.

Any progress?

Minerva stiffened, biting back bitter words as she turned to Theo. He sat on a bench beside the flap to her father’s tent, his eyes fixed on the playing cards he was attempting to shuffle with one hand and one stump. He’d left the ruined flesh of his right forearm exposed. Minerva doubted the wound would ever heal properly, not after being plunged through a portal to the demon realm, the angry maw devouring—

Damn it all! The cards scattered, and Theo smacked the scarred stump into the ground beside him, face contorting in pain.

Minerva stared at the stump, at the swirls of ruined flesh. Were there patterns there?

Theo glanced up at her, his eyes fever-bright, and caught her staring. He grimaced and hid the stump beneath his good arm. Gone was the infectious humor that had made him such a good, if unreliable, salesman. There was poison in the twisted smile he gave her now. Not tired of staring at scars yet? Where is your little red-headed toy, anyway?

The crone keeps her close.

Theo spat in the dust, eyes drawn to the only other tent in the camp not huddled near the main tent. Do we need her, need any of them?

He pointed at the big tent with his chin, keeping the stump tucked away. Funny that he didn’t hide it from others. Only from her…

Theo’s eyes returned to her, and something softened around them. What had he read on her face? Why was he so good at that?

Sorry, Minnie. I know—

Don’t call me that.

His lip curled, a shadow of his old