Tornado Joe regrouped with Mickey and Chauncy Higgs in the courtyard. Flames from the storage shed tossed their shadows about in the grass. The smoke rose high in the moonlit night. He could see his breath in the air as he steadied himself.

  “North wing is clear, no more threats.” Joe told Mickey.

  The elder Higgs nodded, “West is still being vacated. Other Guns got it. Where’s Lou?”

  “He went,” Joe was interrupted as Lou Cobb burst forth from the main hall. He tumbled out, catching his feet and backing up further with a Quick-step. “There he is.”

  In a Resolute State, Joe could see bright yellow overtake the other colors in the currents. He watched it leak off the shambling horror as it climbed out of the hole in the wall. Many legs and many arms protruded from the twisted form. It was disfigured beyond description, covered in blackened blood and filth.

  “What the actual fuck…” Chauncy’s jaw nearly dropped, “I knew this would be a shit job, I could smell it!”

  “Back up!” Lou shouted, “It’s tough, back up and circle it! Lotus Rounds!”

  The Guns all sprang into action, each one focusing their intentionality to remain neutral. They circled their writhing prey like a pack of lions. Wrists flicked, shell casings flashed in the firelight, and new rounds were slotted into pistols.

  The Critical Moments came unexpectedly as more of the horrid creatures poured from the main hall. They darted between the bodies and met the Guns. Joe stopped one with his Delta manipulation, firing off three rounds into it. He could hear another crash as Mickey was thrown into the barracks building nearby. Chauncy sat there on the ground, trying to process what had just happened.

  One of the Sullied Ones had thrown itself at him and he braced himself for impact, but his father had tackled him to the ground. Looking now to the hole in the barracks building, he could see that his father had been picked up and tossed.

  Joe steadied himself and killed the creature nearest to Lou Cobb with another three shots. He slapped six more rounds into his pistol. The sounds of fighting and killing within the buildings around him put him into emergency mode. It felt as if his control over the situation was loosening. More of these creatures were loose in the buildings, slaughtering the remaining cultists and confronting the other Guns further on.

  “Lou!” He called out.

  “On it!”

  Lou made the proper hand signs, his Resolve burning bright green against the yellow. In a cloud of smoke, a massive avian Familiar appeared over Lou’s form. The wind gusted with it’s arrival, blowing Lou’s poncho around. This bird dwarfed it’s master, brilliant white feathers shining in the moonlight. Its thick talons, each a large scythe, chewed up the earth underneath it. The broad pointed beak took on an almost metallic glimmering. Joe couldn’t place the species, it had to be a chimeric Familiar.

  “Audubon!” Lou’s voice thundered through the cacophony of battle, deep as any war horn, “Kill.”

  Tornado Joe had to bend his knees to strain against the sheer force of Audubon’s great wings flapping. The bird took flight, soaring straight up. When it reached its apex, it unfurled its wings. Joe could only witness the majesty of its spread, silhouetted in the light of the full moon. Audubon then dove. With speed and energy it punched through the roof and into the fight below. The Sullied Ones were torn to pieces by its massive talons as soon as it found them. Each one of them fell to the bird as it crashed and careened through the Bastion, demolishing it completely in its wake. Joe had never seen such awe-inspiring work before.

  Blood trickled from Lou’s nose as he approached Joe, “Come on, I think I know where to look.”

  Two sets of boots crunched through the debris in the main hall; past the foul stench of the open cellar where Willy lay broken and half-eaten, and through the door Lou had seen the priest go into. The sight which greeted Tornado Joe made his heart sink.

  A massive cage had been set up in the far wall of the Sanctum, its iron bars spanning the length of the room. Within, he did not see the weary eyes of captive children ready to be rescued, as he had expected. Joe did not hear their breathing, their sniffles, or cries. The room was still and silent, except for the forlorn priest who stood, head bowed in prayer, with an automatic pistol smoking in his hand.

  “You’re too late, Gradymen. I’m sorry.” The words of the priest weighed heavily on Joe’s chest.

  “Too late?” Joe’s emotions started to run away from him as he processed what he was looking at, “Too late? Too late! Too late for what, huh?”

  He drew his pistol in a flash. He was quick, the Viper committed to muscle memory, but Lou Cobb was quicker. He held his hand over Joe’s gun.

  “Easy. We need this man.” His eyes flashed with an intensity Joe hadn’t seen before, “Alive.”

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  Joe could tell from his Resolve that Lou was smoldering with anger. Like him, it had built up from his core, a roaring flame of disgust. Unlike him, Lou had bit it back, broken it like a horse. Such was the true strength of those dominated by Hearts-type Resolve.

  A smell hit Joe as heavily as the sight laid out before him. It was gasoline, that distinct, pungent scent had reached his nose. His mind began to piece the scene together. Books and papers were strewn about on the floor and the desks, soaked in what he could only assume was gas.

  “If you had not come here, those children would’ve been given a chance at glory.” The priest brought Joe’s attention back up.

  His voice was low, pregnant with the acceptance of death. He flicked open a cigarette lighter. A steady flame rippled out from the mechanism.

  “Stop.” Lou hissed, “It doesn’t have to be this way, and you know it.”

  Joe could tell Cobb was searching for an angle. His veteran Hearts mind was winding through the corners of a maze trying to recover something from the overwhelming failure laid out before them.

  “You seem disappointed, sorcerer.” A grin made its way onto the priest’s face, “Defeated even.”

  Lou’s gaze darkened as he took in the words of the priest holding the lighter.

  “You have no idea how much joy that brings to a servant of the King.” He dropped the lighter onto the gasoline-soaked book at his feet.

  In an instant the book lit up. The blaze raced across the ground, enveloping everything it touched in flames. Papers, books, even the robes of the priest himself ignited. Flames crawled over the lifeless little slumps in the cage.

  “May you get nothing from this Bastion!” The priest cackled as he burned, “May you never find peace again!”

  Lou turned away without a word, leaving Joe to watch their entire mission burn away to ash.

  ^^^

  Joe stepped out of the main hall, letting the fire overtake it. He found Lou standing in the courtyard stroking Audubon’s feathers. The massive bird had taken out the last of the Sullied. Its duty complete, Lou dismissed it with a hand sign.

  “At least it’s done.” Joe stepped over, “Place is toast.”

  Lou said nothing. He had no words to give.

  “Louey!” A cry came from the crumbling barracks, catching the attention of both guns. “Louey please!”

  The barracks lay in ruin, making it difficult for Joe to gauge where to step. The body of a green-eyed cultist woman lay next to the husk of a Sullied abomination. Chauncy Higgs was crouched near the door, where Mickey sat up against a cracked cot. Dark blood puddled around the old Gun.

  “Lou, we gotta help him!” Chauncy’s eyes pleaded, “We gotta get him some healing magic.”

  “Witches aren’t here, Chaunce…” Mickey turned his head slowly. His throat had been torn open in a long gash trailing down his chest to his belly. Mickey’s eyes had dulled and his skin had lost its color.

  “It’s… it’s ok, Chauncy.” He wheezed, “I don’t gotta live forever, bud…”

  Lou and Joe stepped over to him, standing quietly as father addressed son.

  “Chaunce, I need… I need you to know something.” Mickey’s words were labored.

  Chauncy gripped his hand, tears welling up, “What is it, dad?”

  “You are… a stupendous Six-Gun. And I know you will continue to be one. You impress me every day, boy. But I want you to remember what our job is.”

  “Our job, yeah.” Chauncy wiped his eyes with his sleeve, “We help people.”

  “We stop the violence. Even when it doesn’t feel like it, Chaunce. Like here. We are stopping the violence.” He sluggishly turned to Lou, “Did we… did we save the kids, Cobb?”

  Lou watched the life draining quickly from his friend. The Resolve of the veteran Six-Gun, which had for decades burned as brightly as the fires outside, simmered lowly against the Yellow on the currents now. Lou did not have the heart to let him go out a failure.

  “Yes. We saved them.”

  Joe’s blue eyes glowed in the darkness, watching the old Guns in silence.

  “Good.” Mickey’s eyelids dropped heavily over his eyes, “Maybe we can… fix Baird’s kid too…”

  Lou let him die in peace, taking the failure onto himself. He had not managed to learn anything from the Bastion. A sinking feeling came over him, that his leads were all burned up like the children in the main hall.

  Another of the Guns joined them, one from the Smoky Mountain Sanctuary around Chauncy’s age. Heinrich Stoyer, the German-born immigrant turned gunslinger, studied the scene with almond brown eyes. He whispered a prayer in Hebrew for his fallen brother.

  “It’s all clear in the West and South wings,” His accent slipped through practiced English, “Wanted to report, we set fire to the buildings. I see things are not all well…”

  “No.” Chauncy wiped at his eyes, unable to stifle his own grief with Suggestion, “Not all well.”

  “What now, Lou?” Joe raised an eyebrow.

  Louey bent down to the body of his friend, tipping Mickey’s hat brim down to cover his face.

  “I don’t know.”

  Tornado Joe watched on from outside the bastion, after they took Mickey from the wreck. The Guns were packing up in the light of the flames. Barnhart’s bastion of the Yellow Cult burned to the ground in front of Joe. He let the roar of the rising fire drown out his thoughts for just a moment.

  Turning to his friend, he studied Lou. Those eyes of his were dark, uncharacteristic for the sunny gunslinger. Joe could tell the event had profoundly impacted him. Such was the way with Hearts like Lou; they were masters of their emotions, but they definitely felt things on some greater level than Diamonds like Joe. Standing there, Joe wondered if Lou Cobb could continue their investigation.

  “Hey, Joe…” Lou spoke, surety returning to his voice.

  “Yup?”

  “I don’t think I can clear Calvin’s mark.”

  The two looked at one another in silence for a moment, letting the crumbling of the burning buildings overtake their conversation.

  “Gonna do what I can for him back home,” Continued the older of the two, “I have to focus on running defense. It’s very likely the Posse will want him destroyed. We are running out of time.”

  The grim nature of the statement wasn’t lost on Tornado Joe. He lit up a fortified cigarillo and took in the herbal smoke. The Posse didn’t take many chances, not in the decades following the events in 1919. The fact that Calvin was alive at all was a surprise to him, though he understood that Lou Cobb had considerable pull in the Smokies. He suspected, however, that the real reason Calvin Baird was still breathing in the Smoky Mountain Sanctuary was his father’s legacy. The very same legacy Joe himself wore on his poncho. Perhaps old fuzzy mustache Rand had reservations about executing the Southpaw’s son.

  Finally, he spoke, “I’ll keep rooting out leads in the meantime. We have to do what we can.”

  Lou’s gaze lifted a bit. “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s what Mickey would have wanted.” Tornado Joe shrugged.

  “Right.” Sighed Lou, “It is.”