The Witch of the West

By Michael Brian

13 men attacked her and left her for dead.

13 men slaughtered her family.

13 men will have to face justice, Wild West style.

Willa and her brother Diego are the only survivors of a brutal attack on their family. Their only crime? Their race.

When the law fails to help, the sibli

• Language: English
• Publisher: OffBeat Publishing
• Release date: Nov 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781950464050

Book preview

Prologue

Fall 1870

Tucson, Arizona

They came on the night of the October Blood Moon.

They rode in, dicks and guns unholstered. Rape this, shoot that, burn this, rape that. They were so blinded by their excited savagery that one even fucked a sheep. Maybe that was on purpose.

There were thirteen of them. They liked the number. They dressed like white men who didn't actually know how an Indian would dress—headdresses all, war paint, toy bows strapped to their backs. One even had a long calumet in his mouth. Anyone who looked at them for more than a moment could tell they were white men in disguise.

Their fury and spitefulness were real though.

The targets—a family who had moved in the previous spring—consisted of a dad and mom, grandmother, three girls, and four boys.

The war party, as such, attacked without provocation but instead with a misguided cause. The ranch was on prime property, and how a family of half-breed interlopers laid claim to it while the native whites had to watch the shameful takeover was too much for them to bear. They would have the property back, and every last one of the strangers would die. And if they found the hidden cache of gold the family was rumored to have on them, well, that was a bonus.

The grandma was attacked first. She went out onto the porch to curse them, to be the voice of reason, but the men showed no compunction to honor or decency and shot her knees out. As she lay bleeding to death, crying out to an unmerciful Lord, three of the savages raped her.

The father was next. He was lucky—he wasn’t raped until after he had been shot through the head. Then the mother, all three girls, and three of the boys. Mutilation, torture. No act was too depraved.

One of the boys had a hiding spot in a wash that only he knew of, and he was able to get to it before the marauders saw him. The favor of some higher being was bestowed upon this one child that day—his hiding spot shielded him from the sight of the carnage, and perhaps more blessedly, spared him from the cries and the screams.

One of the girls survived, and those same cries and screams echoed in her head nightly and at random moments during the day.

When her brother found her, she was so close to death, he swore he saw the Reaper looking at them with a smirk. Tears streaked the boy’s dirt-covered face, and blood marked the spots where he had touched his face in his sorrow. She knew none of this. She was unconscious for days, fighting to remain alive. Her brain willed her to hang on—it knew what was to come next.

Vengeance.

❖

While her broken body recovered, the law came. They talked to the boy but in the end did nothing. The sheriff rightly figured who it was but publicly placed the blame on rogue Indians. He refused to upset the lives of the men, many of whom had reputations to uphold in the territory. The dead were just half-breeds, Apaches, and a traitor to his race, and the two remaining children were inconsequential.

Shoulda shot ‘em in the head, put ‘em out of their misery, the sheriff said as he rode away.

❖

The boy was called Diego. He was four years younger than his surviving sister, Willa, which made him thirteen at the time of the assault. He was the second oldest boy in the family, and he was trained in the art of living in the West. He knew how to treat wounds and what plants to use, and his care brought his sister back all the way.

Their ranch was decimated, nearly everything burned to cinders as if some angry deity had turned his scorn on their land. The structure of one tiny room remained. This is where the boy acted as nurse when he wasn’t keeping watch. He didn’t think the killers would come back to claim his life and his sister’s, but one never knew what went on in the hearts of such men.

Neither was the livestock spared. Several corpses lay about, but most of the animals were gone, taken or devil knows what. There was no trace of the horses. Diego checked a wash that runaway horses were known to frequent, but he came up empty. The men had taken every last one.

It was just the two humans left.

❖

One of the reprobates who attacked the family fancied himself a tattoo artist of the macabre kind. He went by Ethan and carved words into the children, on some even cutting flesh simply to write his own name. On Willa’s chest he carved Bruja.

When she woke up after a few days, she was bothered by a burning on her chest that wouldn’t go away. She ripped off the bandages and saw what had been done. She screamed and raged for a good hour.

Energy spent, she decided to embrace it. She would be a witch. The most terrifying witch this accursed country had ever seen.

She swore revenge and had a mantra she repeated almost hourly: remember. She abandoned the God she had grown up with and swore allegiance to Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution.

❖

Diego wouldn’t let her get out of bed for several days after she woke up, and she even tried to fight him, hitting him hard in the nose. The movements caused her to experience pain like never before, and even as blood gushed out of his face, she lay on the floor screaming, as if she was the one who had been struck.

In the end, he got his way, for she knew she had to rest.

While she recuperated, she began to make a list of the attackers. Her brother had witnessed next to nothing and was little help. He felt terrible and went into town in disguise to see what was being said. He learned the number of the marauders and heard a couple of names, which he brought to Willa.

Together their list numbered eleven. The monster who had raped Willa was identified only as Ugly Man with Gold Front Teeth.

But she didn’t need to know his name to kill him.

❖

When Willa had recovered well enough to resume activities, she began preparations for what must come next.

They had one gun left, a double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun. It had fallen from its wall mount and remained hidden and safe from the attackers and the inferno. She desired a Colt .45, but the shotgun would work.

Every day she practiced with the shotgun: she tested its range and what happened at certain distances; she handled it like a club and like a baton, so she always knew its feel. The speed with which she mastered the weapon shocked Diego. Not even his older brother had been able to do that.

The shotgun had become as familiar as an appendage to Willa, and she decided it would be her primary weapon.

Digging through the ashes of the ranch, she discovered a hand ax, several knives, a saw, a hammer, and a broken bow. The saw, hammer, and bow she set aside. Her focus was on items she could conceal and easily carry beneath her skirts.

Every day after working with the shotgun, she would handle the ax and the knives, throwing them until her accuracy was impeccable, and stabbing and slashing and chopping a burned-out wall until she mastered grips and techniques.

Willa told Diego to find some weapons of his own to master, but he was mostly uninterested. All he wanted was a nice handgun.

One day he came home with a big smile on his face. It was the first time he had truly smiled since the night of the Blood Moon. He couldn’t even wait to show Willa what he had hidden behind his back. He brought it out and carried it loosely but with a firm grip—it was a beautiful Colt .45. He wouldn’t say where or how he got it, but as far as Willa was concerned, their contract with society was null and void, and they were free to do what they needed to.

❖

The siblings decided to wait till late spring before moving against their enemies. They built up the ruined house enough to shelter them and provide them warmth when the nights chilled. They had a room to sleep in and a kitchen, and that was all that was required.

The girl spent almost all her time planning and training, while the boy prepared rudimentary meals, practiced at least an hour each day with his revolver, and spent his free time scribbling in an old half-burned notebook.

Willa made preparations to become the bruja the attackers had marked her as. Her weaponry expanded with the addition of two sharpened broomsticks. She taught herself how to stab and hit with the sturdy sticks, and she even made herself a scabbard to hold them. When she could force herself to sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, the girl made new clothing for herself. As a rule, she preferred women’s clothing, but she had to consider if it would be better to appear as a man. In the end she decided in the negative. She wanted no confusion about who she was, and a dress could hide all her weapons better: She would strap knives to both legs, the ax on her hip, broomsticks in her scabbard, and shotgun across her chest. At the last minute she made a hidden pocket for her collection of needles, never thinking they would come in handy as weapons.

The girl showed her finished dress and weaponry to the boy, who couldn’t contain his wonder. She was a stygian sight to behold, a mythological spirit come to life.

They were ready to go.

❖

Number one on the list was a man by the name of Duke Seere. From what Willa and Diego could glean from several surreptitious trips into town, most of the men had scattered for one reason or another, but this fool hadn’t wanted to leave his ranch.

They set out with murder in their hearts. Duke would be the first name they crossed off.

The ranch was not dissimilar to their own, or what had been their own, and the siblings planned to burn it to the ground and kill Duke as he fled or tried to extinguish the fire. But nothing went according to plan.

They successfully started a fire in the barn, but when Diego tried to set the main house on fire, Duke’s wife heard the commotion, spied Diego, and shot at him. He was hit in the leg but was able to limp to cover. Willa too ran into complications. As she tried to draw her shotgun to shoot Duke in the heart, her weapon caught in its holster and then in the folds of her dress. She never even got within twenty yards of her intended victim. She fled before the man could draw.

The siblings slunk off to lick their wounds. They dared not return to their ranch on the off chance that Duke had recognized Willa or that he was just generally suspicious.

It would be a year before they tried again.

❖

During that time, Willa pushed herself to every limit she could conceive. She practiced handling her shotgun until her hands bled. She worked until her muscles quivered and her mind begged her to stop.

The girl also more fully embraced her bruja persona and studied herbs and potions with a shaman named Alo who the siblings discovered living in a cave in the foothills. Over the course of that year, Alo taught her what herbs could paralyze a full-grown man, which ones could render a person unconscious for hours, what potions could blind, and what could make a man’s pecker wither and fall off.

Willa also more deeply embraced the character of The Witch. It wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision—she grew in confidence as time passed, and she naturally grew into her new persona. Willa had hardened, and she wanted there to be no doubt who she was as she approached her victim: inevitable retribution, the dark hand of the gods. She would ride as if clothed in eternal darkness —a night-black dress, Stygian hat, dark hair that billowed behind her—and she would unnerve her victims with her banshee scream.

Spring came again, and the Willa that left for Duke’s ranch this year was stronger, faster, smarter, and more determined than ever.

Now began the time of legend.

Chapter 1

Spring 1872

Outside of Tucson, Arizona

When the girl walked up to the ranch, anyone who had reason to fear divine retribution shuddered unwittingly at the birth into this world of this new sable scourge.

It happened as she imagined.

She strode up to the ranch confidently, and a boon from her patron goddess sent a wind to lightly blow her hair and clothing. It was dusk, when she knew Duke would be home, and the setting sun highlighted her perfectly.

She also had dipped her hands in a tincture that made them glow in the semi-darkness, and wiped streaks on her face in the shape of the tear tracks she once had.

She was a vision straight out of mythology.

She carried nothing in her arms, and she had left her shotgun with Diego. The man would presumably think she was just a crazy crone, was not a real threat, and then she would strike with hell’s own fury.

The boy watched from a distance this time. Willa wanted to go it alone unless she needed backup, and he willingly obliged. He preferred to observe every moment so he could document it. But if she needed help, he would be there.

When the girl started screaming as she walked to the house, Diego almost laughed, but then he realized how terrifying that would be to the person or persons on the receiving end.

Duuuuuke! she screamed, drawing out the U for as long as she could sustain the