Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

She faded in from the night like a phantasm, clothed in all black save for the flowing cinnabar wrap layered around her neck, riding a pale horse that matched her porcelain-hued high cheeks. She moved at the unhurried pace of someone who had nowhere better to be and knew it. A large black bird rode the figure’s shoulder, its eyes reflecting in cerulean what little light the night sky had left to offer.

She might have beautiful at one time, Harlan thought to himself, but something had changed that — though he knew not if it was the tattoo he could only barely make out from the window that marred her face, or the dour expression she wore as she looked up and down the town’s streets.

Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

The stranger stepped back into the gloaming of the desert and the last of the humid warmth sealed itself behind her. As she stepped over the threshold of the Old One’s ruins, those six sand-chiseled eyes watching her emerge from the shadows.

All six remained frozen in time until the wayward son emerged and they pushed past the stranger to embrace the son and brother they had lost.