Page 44 of Hell and Halos

I light the rag, and the bottle breaks clean next to my cut on the floor, and the flames eat it up, and climb the walls drenched in accelerant like they've been waitin' for permission.

Like they've been patient and now they're not.

The whole place is roarin' now. Heat pressin' against my back like a hand shovin' me forward. Smoke thick enough to chew. So I move quick, coverin' my mouth, eyes waterin', pick up that last bottle from the bar where it's sittin' all alone like the last man at a funeral, light it, and throw it on my way out.

Don't even aim. Don't need to. The place wants to go. I can feel it in the way the timbers groan. The way the floor shudders under my boots. Buildin's been dyin' for years. I'm just signin' the paperwork.

I don't close the door behind me.

Just walk to my truck, boots crunchin' on gravel, heat at my shoulders, and climb in. Turn the key and the engine catches low and steady. I back up slow, one arm over the seat, eyes on the mirror, and it's only here, only when I stop, and put it in drive, and actually fuckin' look back, that it hits me.

The whole compound is lit up. Orange and black against that big empty Montana sky. The flames climbin' outta the roof now, punchin' through where the corrugated patches used to hold. Sparks risin' like backwards rain, spinnin' up into the dark and dyin' before they reach the stars. The red cliffs behind it glowin' the way they always did at sunset, only this time it isn't the sun.

It's me. It's what I did.

And my hands are steady on the wheel. That's the part that gets me. They're steady.

Badlands was a place I wanted so bad as a kid. Wanted it the way you want water when you're dyin' of thirst—not because it's good, just because it's there and you're empty.

This compound was gonna be my family. That was the deal I made with myself after I got over Savannah. After I told myself I was over Savannah. After I lied to myself so many fuckin' times about bein' over Savannah that the lie started feelin' like furniture—just somethin' that was always in the room.

This place was supposed to fill that hole.

It didn't.

Nothin' did.

But Eleanor knew. Probably from the day I was born, probably from the first time she pointed that camera at a blond-haired kid in the dirt and saw whatever the hell she saw—she knew it wasn't ever gonna work out.

Knew I'd never belong to Badlands because I was too good for them.

And the more I think about that—about her, about Eleanor and her darkroom, and her locked safes, and her photographs, and her fuckin' prophecies disguised as coffee table books—the less I understand about what actually happened to us.

To me. To Savannah. To Cash, and Wyatt, and Colt.

All of us raised in the same dust, breathin' the same dry air, and every one of us bent by that woman's hands. Shaped by what she showed the world and what she kept locked underground.

We're not sure yet. Not about any of it. But those answers are comin'. I can feel 'em the way you smell rain before it's wet.

And they got nothin' to do with this place at all.

Not a goddamn thing.

I hit the gas and pull away, and I don't look in the mirror again.

The fire can have what's left.

The demons are dead.

CHAPTER 13

I knew Mike would be waitin' for me at the old abandoned gas station even though I didn't even check his last ten messages, let alone answer him.

It's the only logical place for him to be. He can't move without Badlands, not right now. And his options only get worse from here.

So he needs me. I know this.

Still, I'm not gonna lie. The little armada of blacked-out SUVs sittin' out front do give me pause. How many men does he have with him? Six? Eight? More?