Wolfwalker book cover.
The Way of the Spirit: Book 3

WOLFWALKER

This is more than a hunt for a killer.

It’s a war.

Sheriff Sam Bridges has seen plenty of evil, but when a woman is found brutally mauled in Amity’s gold mine, Sam finds himself facing an enemy unlike any he’s ever known. Some say it’s a wolf. Others call it a demon. Sam isn’t sure what to believe-until the creature takes the one person he can’t bear to lose.

This is the stunning conclusion to The Way of the Spirit trilogy.

Available In: Hardback, Paperback, eBook, Audiobook

Read some sample chapters

PROLOGUE

An iron rail, black, hard, and cold, lay bolted to rocky ground.

A thin, barely visible vein of gold sparkled in the iron — a golden hairline fracture. In fact, it was a hair. A golden hair. A mass of the stuff lay on the black rail, like filament poured from Rumpelstiltskin’s spinning wheel.

Under the tousled golden hair, there were a pair of closed feminine eyes.

Beneath them, a button nose.

Beneath it, a mouth cruelly cut by a gag — a dirty old cloth tied too tight at the back of the neck — there was hair in the knot — biting into the cheeks and forcing the jaw down, the mouth open.

The lungs drew in a shuddering breath. The heavy exhale disturbed the dust.

The beautiful eyes rolled, opened, took in their surroundings — there was no sky, only an impenetrable black vault above. But there was the iron rail, cold at her temple — and another digging into her hip. At the point on the horizon where the two streaks of metal converged, there was faint moonlight.

A tunnel.

The young woman writhed but found herself bound — hands behind her back, wrists tied flesh-white tight, even a rope around her biceps, twisting her elbows together cruelly. Her strong thighs were bound too, as were her ankles.

She moved like a maggot on the rails, trying to get free, but it was useless. So, she stopped and concentrated on her wrists, moving them slowly, trying to get a feel for the ropes, feeling like a blind person for the knots. Could they be undone?

A chain clinked behind her.

Just once.

She rolled over, a difficult and painful proposition under the circumstances, and squinted into the darkness.

Silence…

Clink — there it was again!

‘Hurrow?’ The gag turned her question to mush.

Clink

This time she saw it move — in the faint moonlight from the distant tunnel entrance, she could see the chain as it swung toward her out of the darkness. It was mounted to the tunnel ceiling. There were hundreds of chains hanging from the ceiling, used by the miners for she didn’t know what.

She turned and tried to crawl away, pushing with her bare toes against the wooden ties, scraping her chest against the gravel.

Clink

She looked over her shoulder and saw… she didn’t know what she saw. It was low to the ground, an area of darkness deeper than the darkness around it, stalking its way toward her.

An animal?

She crawled faster then, heedless of the scraping gravel and pinching ropes, sucking the dusty air around the damp gag, filling her lungs to bursting.

Clink

She crawled. The gag sucked up her tears as they came and smeared mucus around her button nose.

Clink

The front of her white shift turned red with blood as she scraped through the gravel.

Clink

Her toenails broke on the ties.

Clink

Suddenly, she stopped, turned, and kicked into the darkness — the thing had touched her!

She shouted uselessly at it as she kicked, helped for the first time by the ropes which bound both her legs together into a piston.

It went away! Or at least there wasn’t anything there for her to kick anymore.

She crawled again, more desperately than before.

Then, the pain came.

She arched high and screamed, but the gag ensured her scream was never heard.

Something hairy slammed her face into the gravel.

She tried crawling, but the animal was on her, and it was heavy. Very heavy. She couldn’t breathe. Pain came again, biting and brutal.

Finally, there was only darkness…

 

Chapter 1

Sam sat alone at his kitchen table, which was set for two. He could tell by looking at the whitening bacon and soggy eggs that breakfast was cold.

He tried the coffee and winced.

His leg bounced.

He looked at the empty plate across from him.

And the empty chair…

He stopped his leg bouncing.

He straightened his knife, making it line up with the blue gingham tablecloth.

He looked at the clock. Just past 8.

He stood, passed the three empty jail cells, took his coat off the nail by the door, and pulled it on as he went outside.

Sniffing in the cold, he locked the jailhouse door then hopped off the porch. He paid no attention to the fog or the noise of his boots crunching on the gravel. His eyes were on the ground, his thoughts on himself and the cold, uneaten breakfast, and most of all, the empty chair…

‘Samuel.’

Sam looked up, and around, but he was alone.

He trudged on…

‘Samuel.’

‘Hello?’

There was no one, but the voice had sounded close, in his ear. It had been smoky, like Redskin’s, but that was impossible.

‘Samuel.’

‘Who’s there?’ Sam spun, putting his hand on Pap’s Pistol, but there was no one behind him. Wait… he saw a figure coming out of the fog. ‘Who’s there?’ he repeated.

‘Creepy, this fog,’ a bow-legged old-timer muttered as he trundled out of the mist. ‘Gives me liver shivers.’ And he shivered from head to toe to prove it.

‘Yeah,’ Sam said, taking his hand off his pistol. He shook his head and trudged on.

He stepped over the train tracks, casting a sidelong glance at The Powder Keg, where a light glowed yellow in an upstairs window.

Ahead of him, lights glowed in the windows of The Mission. He could even hear voices and laughter inside.

He stepped onto the porch, making the boards creak; before he could knock, the door flew open.

‘Sammy!’ A young woman named Homily hollered loudly enough to announce his arrival to all the women in The Mission and send them into a frenzy of activity. Then she leaned in, a little too close, and asked conspiratorially, ‘How was breakfast?’

Since Sam hadn’t had any, he couldn’t say.

‘You know,’ she whispered, tracing the outline of his sheriff’s badge with her index finger, ‘Unlike some people, I always make my engagements.’ She blinked her doe eyes up at him.

She was trying to be very coy.

From inside The Mission came Easter’s sharp voice: ‘You harpies leave that poor child alone. He suffers enough harassment from-’ but the rest of her admonition was cut off by the young women exploding out of The Mission and into Sam’s face.

They pawed and clawed at him, trying to get their hooks into him — in every sense of the phrase. They begged him to walk with them, to sit with them, to let them wear his badge, to let them shoot his pistol, one even volunteered to cut his hair.

He’d have run away if he hadn’t been trapped against the railing.

‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ Easter cried as she beat them off the porch with her bonnet. ‘Run along. Shoo!’

Groaning, the women walked off into the fog.

Easter counted them while Sam straightened his clothes.

In the distance, the church bell began to ring.

Easter put her head back into The Mission and called, ‘Eden, Susan, this train’s bound for glory!’ Then she pulled on her bonnet and walked off the porch.

Sam stood there alone, listening to the distant church bell…

Easter had left The Mission door open.

He leaned so he could peep inside.

Eden had her back to him. She was pulling a shawl around her shoulders. As she turned toward him, he straightened, hoping she hadn’t seen him.

The floor creaking ahead of her, she came out — she went right past him. She’d have walked right through him if she could have. She didn’t even acknowledge his holding the door open for her.

‘Susan coming?’ he asked, glancing into The Mission.

‘Easter must have missed her.’ Eden was already merging with the fog.

Sam shut the door on the empty Mission and hurried after her.

 

Chapter 2

Eden walked fast — trying to catch up to the others, or trying to leave Sam behind?

‘If you eat as fast as you walk, we might be able to get breakfast in before church after all,’ Sam observed as he caught up with her.

‘I was detained.’

‘I noticed.’ He puffed along beside her, trying to think of something to say. All he could come up with was, ‘Pretty foggy.’

Eden pulled her shawl tight.

Sam gave up talking and just walked — trotted, really. He put up his collar against the cold, both Eden’s and the weather’s.

Soon they encountered others coming out of their homes, including a pair of shabby little boys with unlit candles on their hats, blue jeans on their legs, and dirt on their faces.

‘Church is this way,’ Sam said, grabbing their wiry little arms.

‘We ain’t goin,’ one insisted.

‘A man’s gotta eat,’ the other cried.

Sam glanced at Eden, who had stopped, but reluctantly, and was keeping her eyes on the fog-shrouded church. The boys were mighty skinny under their baggy clothes. Sam tried to whisper so Eden wouldn’t hear, ‘There’s breakfast in the jailhouse. You can wolf it down and still make your shift on time?’

They nodded their heads eagerly.

‘Good,’ he winked at them then released their arms.

They shot into the fog.

Sam and Eden continued toward the church.

A passing woman greeted Eden warmly, ‘Good morning, Eden.’

‘Good morning,’ Eden replied, beaming.

Sam shook his head. Didn’t that beat all.

Then inspiration struck him. ‘I could heat everything up after church. We could make a brunch out of it.’

‘You just fed it to those boys,’ Eden said, going up the church steps and, again, leaving him out in the cold.

Sam blew out a breath, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and climbed the steps, trying to work out the mysteries of the female sex.

He walked right into an ambush.

‘Hey, Sheriff!’ A farmer cried, making a beeline for him. ‘I got another sinkhole — right in the middle of my pigs! Nearly swallered my sow. Now, I been tellin you these boys are too close to the surface. They gotta go down.’

Kit, in his fancy suit, materialized at the farmer’s elbow. ‘We only dig where there’s gold. We do our best to timber as we go-’

‘Yer best ain’t worth a bucket of pig spit!’

‘Accidents-’

‘Accidents! What if it’d been my kids or my wife swallered up like them sons’a Korah!’

‘The Company would make renumeration-’

‘Wut?’

‘Money,’ Sam interjected.

Kit explained, ‘We’d repay you any damages suffered.’

The farmer cogitated, then asked, ‘How much money you reckon my wife’s worth — if’n she was to fall inta one’a yer pits?’

‘Oh, no,’ Kit said, catching the farmer’s drift. ‘That’s not how it works.’

Sam extracted himself from the conversation only to find he’d turned right toward General, who was coming in with Tishie. ‘Sonny!’ General called, and put his arm around Sam’s shoulders. ‘How many deputies you hired?’

‘None.’

‘C’mon, man! You gotta git a move on, or I’ll have to bring an ord’nance gainst you — one badge ain’t enough for this town no more.’

Sam agreed, so General pushed him away playfully… right into an Old Hag who produced from her big brown bag a bottle, which she forced upon him. ‘How’d you like to make a buck or two?’ she asked.

Sam looked at the bottle. “S. Bridges’s Snake Oil Liniment” it proclaimed; beneath was a woodcut of Sam wrestling a snake. This fantastic illustration made him look stronger than Laocoon.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘A tonic, a remedy, an elixir, an eclectic ointment for external and internal use. Cures common sore throat, muscle soreness, superficial burns, abrasions, and who knows what other maladies — try it to find out. Maybe it’ll cure the common cold — or baldness! — or maybe even a broken heart.’

‘Why’s it got me on it?’

‘So people will buy it!’

He rolled his eyes. ‘No thanks.’

He worked his way through the press, trying to get into a pew. Finally, he broke through into open space and slid down an empty pew in the middle of the church. He went all the way down to the end by the window. Still foggy outside. He looked around for Eden. There she was at the front, gathered with a bunch of others. The gossip that held the little group together and the hymn books clasped in their hands betrayed them for what they were: the church choir. Sam slid back down the pew so he was near the center aisle. That way Eden could sit with him.

‘Sheriff,’ a voice hissed in his ear.

Sam turned to see a filthy old miner — Sourdough was his affectionate soubriquet — leaning into his ear from the pew behind. ‘Sheriff, theer’s Tommyknockers in the mine.’

‘What?’

‘Tommyknockers — ghosts, demons, bad beasties, whatchamacallems — rattlin round the mine. Neeth our very toes.’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m tellin the truth. Now, I done told Pastor bout em-’

‘What’d he say?’ Sam interrupted.

‘Said to lay off the likker.’

‘Good advice.’

‘I ain’t drinkin when I heard em, Sheriff! Point is: Pastor won’t do nothin bout em, despite the preternatural bein his jurrsdiction.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Whatever you can!’

‘I don’t see as that’s very much-’

‘Dang it, man, you got to try fore someone- somebody- some anybody gits hisself kilt.’

Pastor announced, ‘Please stand for the call to worship.’

There was much scuffling as the tardy and the chatty found their pews.

‘Soon’s we get outta here,’ Sourdough hissed in Sam’s ear, ‘I’ll take you.’

‘Let us pray.’

The congregation recited the Lord’s Prayer with Pastor.

‘Our reading this morning is from Hebrews 12 verses 1 and 2.’

Onionskin pages fluttered as the zealous sought the passage.

‘“Wherefore,”’ Pastor read, ‘“seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”’ He looked up from his Bible and announced, ‘This is the Word of the Lord.’

‘Thanks be to God,’ the congregation, including Sam, mumbled as they sat.

Then there was an awkward moment — awkward, at least, to anyone who had not been in regular attendance at Amity’s church — as Pastor’s sister — a very old maid — rattled his chair out of the aisle and off to the side. Pastor was an old man, and his legs had been amputated as a result of some misfortune. Now, everywhere he went, he went in his wheelchair with his sister serving as his pilot.

The choir launched into its first song:

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;

Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:

For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and pow’r are great, and, armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.

Sam watched Eden sing. He thought he could pick her voice out of the choir. He concentrated on it…

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing,

Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:

Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

Yes, it was as if all the rest had gone silent — they were just moving their mouths — and she and she alone were singing for him.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us;

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.

Something outside caught Sam’s attention: the pair of shabby little boys he’d fed breakfast running through the fog toward the church. He turned to watch them, but they disappeared from his view.

That word above all earthly pow’rs, no thanks to them, abideth;

The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth;

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;

The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,

His kingdom is forever.

As the choir sat, Pastor’s sister rattled him behind the short, custom-made podium.

Sam tore himself from the window and tried to get Eden’s attention before she sat, but it was too late. She’d taken a seat in the first pew with the rest of the choir and left him alone.

In the rustling quiet of everyone getting situated, Sam heard the church door open.

It was one of the shabby little boys.

The boy stood in the back, panting and craning his neck at the congregation, who were all twisted around to see him.

‘Take off your hat,’ Pastor suggested.

The shabby little boy obeyed.

‘What is it?’ Pastor asked.

‘Kit, sir. We need him.’

This announcement set the congregation to whispering.

‘Here,’ Kit said, putting his arm in the air from his place in the second pew.

The boy padded to him. The walk seemed a long one with all the eyes on him. When he was almost there, the Old Hag asked loudly and with an edge of panic, ‘Cave in?!’

‘You’d hear the whistle if there was a cave in, ma’am,’ Kit answered calmly.

Unconvinced, she took a drink of her snake oil.

Kit gave his ear to the shabby boy who whispered into it. Kit stood suddenly, pointed at Sam, and headed for the door. Sam followed as the congregation gossiped. Sourdough followed too.