Billowing flames lit up the night sky, throwing an otherwise sleepy Texas town into a sickly orange glow. The homes of this little town in the Lone Star State had all been broken into and ransacked, the glass shattered and the inhabitants forced out. They were set ablaze, one by one, casting the scene in horrid stage lights.

  All the musicians took their places, men with yellow sacks over their heads brandishing automatic firearms, standing in the streets and yards. They sang songs of praise and devotion to their king, and played their instruments with gusto as they began to slaughter the town. The rhythm of rounds popping off, tearing through the flesh of the townspeople in the street, echoed off the burning buildings and into the night.

  The people cried out in fear. They pleaded as they were dragged out of their homes and into the firing lines and wailed in agony as the bullets took their lives. Men screamed and tried to fight it only to be peppered with bullets. Women shouted and begged as they held their children close in their final moments. The children hardly had time to speak at all before they joined their parents.

  Crunching of gun butts on heads, laughter of the cultists in hoods, crashing of crumbling structures as their supports gave out; all of these served to accompany the orchestral suite of suffering and misery in this town.

  The man with the front row ticket stood watch, his eyes like burning yellow coals. Black dust blew off of the Coal Man as the wind kicked up around him. He took it all in, breathed in the agony of the night’s program. The sounds were lovely, resonating through his mind in the way a demon soldier of the Yellow King might enjoy the most. He held out his hands, clapping for the performances of the players before him.

  He could see the way it all infected the currents of magic in the world. Yellow stains drifted through the sky, as if they had poured dye into a rushing river. It was exactly as his King had intended. The souls of all those sacrificed invigorated him. He soaked up their energy like a sponge, the mark on his arm burning bright yellow with glee as he drank the souls up.

  “Life is just amazing, isn’t it Kelly?” He breathed in deeply.

  A woman stood next to him, wearing a sensible dress and thick travel boots. The conductor of this sickening symphony. She had one of the automatic guns slung around her back and a notebook in her hand. The cult branch officer Kelly Giallo adjusted the frames of her glasses as she studied the destruction. This was an enforcer of the Cult, one of few who had been trusted enough to interface directly with an entity such as the Coal Man. She was not, like some others, a rabid priest. She was an administrator with cold calculation behind her glasses.

  “Yes, Lord.” She nodded, counting corpses with the pen in her hand as a pointer, “That’s one hundred and eighty-one sacrifices to our King tonight. No law enforcement yet. Perhaps it will bump the number up if they show.” Her New Jersey accent was out of place among the cultists in Texas.

  “Lotta tickets getting punched tonight! That’s everyone?” He raised an eyebrow, looking to her with amusement.

  She took another look at her notebook, flipping through a few pages. “Well, er, not yet Lord. The 1930 Census had the town of Short Stop at just over two hundred and seventy inhabitants. Give or take births and economic migration, you know cause of the hardship and all, our estimates say there are about two hundred today. We may have to round up some stragglers.”

  The Coal Man placed his hands on his hips, a wide grin across his face, “I gotta say, Kelly. You are an amazing woman. A true servant of our King. It’s a terrible thing for everyone else.” He snickered.

  Nothing interested him more than cold devotion to the Yellow King. He had given himself over in many ways. But this loyal human was just as effective a servant as him, without any magic at all.

  “I’d say the same for you, my Lord.” She adjusted her glasses again, “Er, minus the woman part, sir.”

  “So tell me.” He started off through the street of murdered people, stepping over their corpses as he went, “Do you know what happened to the Bastion?”

  “We… don’t talk about it.” She lowered her eyes in frustration, “It was a horrible day, terrible I’m telling you. We lost all of our work on cultivating the Aspects. That really set us back, well, King only knows how many years of research. Besides the Tawny Princess, thank the King, our progress there was lost.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Not ALL our work is lost, though.” He stopped, looking to her for a reaction.

  She shot him a curious look. “You know something we don’t.”

  “Why do you think I was brought back, darlin’?”

  She looked back down for a moment, tapping the pen to her cheek. “Are you allowed to tell us?”

  “Yes.” His grin grew wider, “For you, sweet stuff, I can tell all!”

  Kelly nodded to the men for a moment as they passed. Each of them bowed a bit to the Coal Man, a revered Lord among them. The looks in their eyes, visible through holes cut in their head sacks, told of awe and admiration. Kelly flipped to a new page in her notebook, looking back up to him.

  He noted only tactical curiosity on her eyes, not the same blind loyalty the others had. The Coal Man could see she was a long-time servant in the Cult, a true agent of the King. For this humble human, and a woman at that, it was impressive to him. He found a little admiration on his eyes instead. Underneath the admiration, just a little of that carnal attraction the Yellow King had fostered in his cursed soul.

  “Alright. There is one other thought lost to us, who’s Resolve we discovered only months ago.” He grinned.

  “Resolve?” She tilted her head, “Who are you talking about?”

  “The son of a Posse member. Calvin Baird. That ring any bells?”

  She tapped her chin again, recalling the ledgers she had seen. Kelly had a methodical way about her, she never fully lost any information. Her mind wasn’t exactly a steel trap, but she could recall just about anything with enough time. After a moment she blinked.

  “Yes. The son of the Six-Gun Billy Baird, the Interloper himself. We tracked Calvin to Florida, lost contact with the team we sent to perform the ritual. This was before what happened at the Bastion. We assumed Baird had killed them. Is that not the case?”

  He let out a long low humming sound, “Nope.”

  His delivery was deliberate, relishing the information. It was well received with Kelly. She perked up, the flames dancing in the lenses of her glasses. The smoke had tossed a little ash into her black hair, tinting the edges with grey. She wore it in a tactical bun, as it was far too long to let loose in a situation like this.

  “No, they DID manage to imbue him with a mark.” The Coal Man continued, “The Posse picked him up, though. Stupid assholes didn’t have him killed. No, they actually did the opposite. Calvin is currently a Six-Gun, like me, with Resolve and all. They really did a lot of the work for us, you know? Morons…”

  “Our King told you all this?” Kelly asked, still taking down the information in her notebook.

  “Didn’t have to. I can see it in his dreams. I visit him, look through him a bit. He’s primed perfectly for us, he’s lonely and angry. His father doesn’t even talk to him. Get a load of that? Perfect for our designs.”

  The Coal Man threw up a hand and let out a guttural laugh, “It’s as if they want him to take his place here with us! Truly the best scenario. That’s why I’m up and walkin’ around.”

  “So what’s the plan?” She looked back to him, “What do you need us to do?”

  Taking in the smell of the smoking homes, the Coal Man sighed, “Well, we have to be careful with our approach.”

  Kelly tapped her pen to her cheek, listening carefully.

  “We can’t just go and take him. Much as it seems the Interloper doesn’t care about his son, Baird is actually back in the Smokies right now. Also, he knows about the Princess. Our Prophet confronted him, didn’t go as well has One-Eye must’ve hoped. Baird wants to play ball, and it looks like he wont let us waltz into the Smokies to get Calvin.”

  “That’s… something.” Mused Kelly, “He stood before the Prophet, and still remained defiant?”

  “The Interloper isn’t made of the same stuff as everyone else.”

  The thought aggravated Kelly, who believed in the surety of the King’s emissary. “He’s overconfident. He won’t outlast us.”

  “Oh yeah, he won’t.” Chuckled the Coal Man, “But he can outgun me. So I’m gonna be smart. I’m gonna grab Calvin during the All Hallows Eve Exam.”

  “Okay… what is that?” the lady cultist shot him a quizzical look, “What do we need to do?”

  “The All Hallows Eve Exam is a testing event the Posse puts on to evaluate young Guns. They set aside an area where teams of Six-Guns compete to slay the most fiends or ghoulies or whatever they can find and capture. They also have to confront each other.”

  “How’s that help us?”

  Fires danced high into the night as the cultists cleaned up their operation. The sacrifice tally climbed higher, Kelly making note as she conversed with the Coal Man. She was capable of multi-tasking.

  “Well, in order to keep things fair they block off this area with a barrier preventing Guns from entering to intervene, with a few exceptions.”

  “I see… So you can take him during this exam event without Billy Baird getting in the way.”

  “That’s the plan. There’s two ways a Six-Gun can enter the Blue Type barrier they throw up. Translation Hex, which requires a reference object, or Reverse Summoning.”

  It all started to click to her, her eyes widening. “So smart… You’re going to seed their exam area by offering up a summon as a creature for them to use, then Reverse Summon into the area!”

  “And then Reverse Summon back out.” Grinned the Coal Man.

  “Well, that sounds like the perfect plan!” She bounced a bit on each foot, “Take him right under their noses.”

  “Yup. I’m almost ready. I just have one little bit of business to take care of.” The Coal Man flicked a coin up into the air. It was black, shimmering in the light of flames. The V across it, inlaid in gold, appeared clearly to Kelly as the Coal Man caught the coin and showed it to her.

  “That’s… a pretty coin. I don’t understand what it means.” She raised an eyebrow.

  Grinning beyond human proportions, the Coal Man let the symphony of violence yet again overtake him, “It’s payback for the Bastion.”

  In 1938, the Cult operates nationwide. They are responsible for much of the woes in the Great Depression, many of which the reader has seen secondhand through the eyes of Tornado Joe.