Tibia shifted around, her bony hip grinding into my back. "Ow, jeez, watch it."
"It's a horse, not a station wagon!" she said, trying to find a comfortable spot. We were following a dirt road that ran alongside a cliff wall, as we headed back to Dallas. The two of us were riding in a saddle made for one.
"I don't see why you couldn't have ridden in the motorcycle with Rip and Wallace."
"Have you ever tried to share a seat with a 400-pound bear?"
Far down the road, a plume of dust flew up from the back of Rip's motorcycle. Bitter tossed her head, giving a hard sneeze. We'd been riding through Rip's backwash for the past two hours. My handkerchief was tied up like a bandit, covering my mouth and nose. But it didn't do much for the eyes. Tibia didn't mind so much. The stuff went right through her.
"Watch out for snakes," Rip had said before we left. I didn't think the "watching" part would be much of a problem, considering the train-sized one I'd seen just after landing here. As for Kelly, she had gone on ahead of us. It only took her a few monster jumps before her thin grasshopper body disappeared over the horizon.
We were heading out to talk to the Otter. Apparently, she was the big wig in charge of this operation. She had set up a meeting so Dad could meet one of her important backers, a guy named Gideon. I guess between the Otter and Gideon, they'd "know what to do." I just wondered how she'd feel when I showed up instead of Dad. But no one would say anything else about it. The Otter had sworn them all to secrecy, "Don't tell him anything he doesn't need to know."
The landscape was barren. Only a few mesquite trees twisted up out from the hard ground. The short, wind-worn cliffsides rose to our left, exposing a rainbow of yellows, warm reds, and deep browns. It looked nothing like the gently rolling grasslands and oak tree forests that surrounded Dallas over in the land of the living. "It's just what people think Texas looks like," Tibia had said, "And that's what counts."
A million questions rolled through my head. Questions no one was willing to answer. Like who is the Red Skull Man? Kelly had called him "Red Wave." And what did he want with my dad? And what kind of operation is this Otter person running? But all I got was zilch.
Tibia shifted again, her ribs digging into my back. "Ow!" I said. "Watch it with those bones." She tried to scoot back but just made everything worse. "So why aren't you with your skeleton buddies?"
"They're not my buddies," she said, crossing her arms, her elbow hitting me in the side.
"Could have fooled me. Y'all look the same, have the same paint job, and then there's the no skin thing."
"You Fleshies are all the same, so hung up on skin."
"But you had skin back in my world."
"That was my disguise."
"What was wrong with that? In fact, It was way better than most girls I've…" I stopped dead, feeling like I was about to give her a compliment.
She may have smiled at that, just a little. She straightened up in the saddle. "Well, this is how I am, and you're just going to have to deal with it." She said it with a touch of false bravado.
I tried to hide my smile too. "So what? You defected from all the other evil skeletons?"
"No, it's the other way around. That was Red Wave and his gang. They call themselves the Santos. They're the ones who defected. It's like Rip said, 'We're the good guys.'"
A big plume of dust kicked off the back of Rip's motorcycle. Bitter shook her head. I squinted, trying to keep it out of my eyes. "In my world, skeletons always play the bad guys."
"We're called Marrow."
"Marrow?"
"People usually think we're dead, but really we were never alive. We're not human like you. But without us, your world would fall apart."
"How's that?"
"Um…" She thought about it for a sec. "I think you Fleshies have a word for us. It's… Grim Reaper."
"What!" I stood up, pulling hard on the reins. Bitter came to a screeching halt. I jumped out of the saddle like she had the plague. "Grim Reaper! You mean you kill people?"
"Wait, it's not like that," she said, waving her hands.
"Not like what? That's what Grim Reapers do." A thought flashed through my head. I was Mom in the hospital, all those tubes and monitors, a skeleton leering over her.
"We don't kill anyone. That's not our job. But when it's time… we help them pass into this world. It's called Passing."
I furrowed my brow. "Well, it sounds super cozy when you put it that way."
"It's dignity. That's what it is." She crossed her arms, high up in the saddle. "Being old isn't exactly Spring Break. Time does a real number on you humans. Imagine your world, overrun with people hundreds of years old, sick, infirm, not being able to move on."
"Not everybody dies when they're old." I turned to look down the road. Rip, his motorcycle, and his plume of dust were disappearing over the next hill.
"No they don't, but we don't decide. He does," she said, pointing up at the sky.
I pursed my lips and crossed my arms.
"Anyway, I've never even passed someone."
"Never even… So you're telling me you're not even any good at grim reaping?"
"It's Marrow. We're called Marrow. And no, I haven't. There's a very thorough training program before they let you pass someone. Obviously, they don't want you to mess something like that up. In fact, that's the only reason why I'm doing any of this. It's supposed to be part of my 'initiation'," she said with air quotes.
"Yeah, makes sense. Have you kidnap someone before you move on to murdering them."
"You're just too dense to see when someone's trying to help you."
"Big help you've been. We were just fine before you came along."
"Oh yeah, drifting from town to town, no friends or family, leaching off other people's hard-earned money."
"Leaching? We never forced anyone into a game." I kicked a rock. It skittered through Bitter's legs. She jerked.
Tibia grabbed the pommel. "Not only that, but your dad's been targeted for a long time. Bad spirits. We were just trying to get you first."
"What, you mean that Red Wave guy?"
"Helping you wasn't even part of it. I'm really here for him. The Otter said if I helped her get to your dad, then she'd help me get to Red Wave."
"What'd he do to you?"
"He did it to all of us." She looked off at the horizon. A gust of glittering, sparkling dirt blew past. Her bony face twisted up. "He took something."
"What?"
"A pipe, a sacred pipe. It's my uncle's. He's the chief of the Marrow around here. That pipe gives him the authority to rule, but Red Wave took it. Without the pipe, my uncle can't be a true chief. He's just a stand-in."
"Jeez," I said.
Suddenly, there was a deep rumble. I could feel my boots slipping and grinding across the road. Rocks spilled down the cliffside. Tibia gasped, her eye sockets darting here and there. "Quick, get back on!"
I looked around. Then, like a whale, cresting the surface, we saw it, a black and tan diamond pattern, slithering across the top of a hill. A coatl! The cliffside shook as it moved through the rocks and trees. Then a giant eye peered at us from behind the scrub brush.
No one made a move, not even Bitter.
"Get up. Get up," Tibia said in a whisper.
I made a step towards Bitter, slow as I could. Snakes—they feel your every move. I'm sure this one could feel all the way down to Australia. I looked down the road. Rip's motorcycle was gone. We were on our own. I slipped my boot into the stirrup, soft as a kitten in cotton.
Then it moved. From behind the ravine, it slipped out, the size of a prehistoric monster. Nostrils flared, sniffing for something it could swallow whole.
Tibia whispered through gritted teeth, "If we don't move, it won't see us."
I tried to nod without moving. My leg was starting to burn. I had one foot stuck up in the stirrup. The other foot was doing its best flamingo impersonation. I had no idea how long I could keep this up. The head scanned from side to side, like it was checking both ways. Maybe it just wanted to cross the road.
Then Bitter shifted, her body pulled to one side. My foot dragged across the dirt. I'd never been good at doing the splits, but I was about to get a serious lesson. I clenched my teeth, trying to hold it together. The big reptile's eyes moved in our direction. I was up on my toe now. I could feel the gravel slide. The giant tongue flicked. I could almost feel the wind from it. Then my balance gave way. I pushed off, making a hop. My boot hit the ground with a solid KERR-UNCH!
The coatl snapped to, looking right at us.
It reared up, twenty feet into the air. Its jaw unhinged, showing forklift-sized fangs. And let out a jet-wash of a hiss.
"It sees us!" I yelled. Tibia ducked as I swung my leg up and over, landing in the saddle. "YAHH!" I yahhed, wheeling Bitter around, and giving her a sharp kick in the flank.
She shot down the road like a bottle rocket. Wallace had given me a long boring lecture on Nightmares. He said they were some of the fastest things this side of a coffin. But nuthin' prepared me for this.
The landscape zoomed by. Rocks, cliffs, dirt; they all merged into a blur. I gripped the reins. Tibia pulled her arms tight around me. Bitter moved like a day trader on Red Bull. I looked back. The coatl was hauling after us. Its slithering churned up a storm of dust and gravel. One of its coils hit the side of a cliff, and it crumbled like a week-old sandcastle.
"We gotta go faster!" Tibia yelled.
I saw a tight turn up ahead. At this speed, we'd wipe out for sure. "Whoa, Bitter, whoa," I yelled. But she didn't slow for a second. Behind us, more rocks came tumbling down. I could hear the grinding of the coatl's scales against the road. We were only twenty yards from the bend. "Whoa! Whoa!"
The coatl made a strike. Its head flashed out like lightning. But Bitter took the corner at full speed. Her hooves gripped the gravel like railroad spikes. She leaned in so far I could have licked the ground. I felt a bump as the coatl grazed us, but Bitter kept her footing.
The snake careened off the road and into the brush, tumbling over, letting out a high-powered hiss. It writhed in the dust like a lamprey. "Yeah! We made it!" I said, turning back to Tibia. She was gone!
I turned in the saddle. She was in a heap in the middle of the road. The coatl must have knocked her off. She struggled to get up. I pulled the reins hard. "Bitter, we gotta go back." Bitter let out a harsh neigh but skidded to a stop. Tibia crawled to her feet. The coatl righted itself, locking onto her. "Come on, we gotta get her." I whipped the reins, and Bitter bolted.
Tibia was running at us, but she wouldn't make ten yards against the coatl. It came at her, open-mouthed, ready to gulp her down. Bitter's hooves pounded the dirt. We weren't going to make it. If I only had my old reata, I could rope her and bring her in.
Then, bam, right in my hand was my rope. The same one smoothed down from hours of practice. The same one that'd won me the Jr. Roping Championship.
No time to question how it got there. The coatl made a lunge for her. She dove sideways, somersaulting out of the way. It missed, ramming its head into a rock. I set my loop and circled the reata overhead. The coatl shook itself, taking a bead on Tibs. I aimed for Tibia, casting the reata. The rope sailed through the air. The loop was perfect. It would come down right over her shoulders. I twisted the other end around my wrist. No time to tie it down.
The coatl made another strike. Tibia dodged. The rope missed but didn't come up empty-handed. It snagged the open mouth of the snake, pulling tight around its upper jaw. I looked down, seeing the rope looped multiple times around my wrist. There are reasons why you don't do that. It jerked violently, and the rope bit hard into my wrist. It felt like my shoulder was going to pop out of its socket, as I was yanked out of the saddle. I gritted my teeth against the pain as I sailed through the air. The coatl thrashed its head, trying to get loose of the reata. The rope whipped like mad, pulling me toward the beast.
I prayed not to hit any of the pointy parts. I spread my hands and feet, getting ready for impact. The thing twisted my way, jaws open, tongue flashing. I stared right into its open mouth, each fang as big as me. I closed my eyes. Some things you just don't want to see. Then—FWAP, I was on its back. It thrashed, trying to get free. But I jerked and bounced, sticking hard.
Quickly, I unwrapped the rope from my wrist, and pulled in the extra slack. I yanked back hard on the coatl's head. It let out a screech. I reached, tossing the slack end of the reata down and around its body, creating a makeshift tie-down. The snake bucked and twisted, but I was tied in good, keeping myself upright, like a Class A bull rider.
When I was little, Dad would put me in the mutton-busting events. I hated riding those grimy sheep through the mud. But it paid off now. And I was going to have to stay on way longer than eight seconds.
The coatl bucked hard, thrashing side to side. My grip held. I yanked back hard, kicking him in the sides. It twirled, trying to get at me. I shifted my weight. It went high, then dove straight down. On the descent, I kicked my feet out. And when it reared back up, I pinched tight. I was getting the hang of it. Then it stopped like it was thinking about its next move. Its eyes turned to Tibia and remembered why it was here in the first place. Lunch. Ignoring me, it lunged at her.
She dove, and I yanked on the rope, pulling it off to the side. It careened into the side of a cliff. Rocks and dust poured down on us. I looked around for Bitter. Tibia was running all out, and the coatl gave a loud hiss, racing after her. She ran into a field, ducking through the mesquite trees, her bones blending with the branches. But the coatl was keener than that.
I pulled on the makeshift rein, left and right, throwing it off balance. As long as I kept it up, it couldn't strike. lt lunged forward. I pulled hard, but it was getting wise, countering my moves. "Run, Tibs!" I yelled. She turned her head and hit her foot on a rock, clattering to the ground. The coatl seized the opportunity. It opened its jaws, ready to strike. Its head shot forward. Tibia put her hands up. The fangs reached out, ready to engulf her.
Then there was a sound, a machine gun of hoof beats. The coatl was knocked sideways. I gripped tight to keep from toppling off. I looked for Tibia, but there stood Bitter, between Tibs and the giant snake. She'd rammed it head-on. "Good girl!" I yelled.
Tibia snatched the harness and jumped into the saddle. The coatl righted itself. I yanked hard on the reata, but it shook its head and tore after them.
Up the road, I could see a dust cloud. Rip and Wallace were coming back! "Get to the road!" I yelled. Bitter raced towards the oncoming dust cloud, the coatl and me hot on her hooves. I could feel the massive thing undulating beneath me. The motorcycle was coming into view. I could even make out Wallace loading up his rifle.
The coatl gained on Tibia. It made a strike, pulling the rope fast through my palms. It burned, but I yanked hard on it anyway. It veered, but not by enough. "Tibs!" She'd been snatched by its jaws. The top half of her body was hanging out of its mouth, her legs tangled in the teeth.
"Coffee!" she yelled. She flailed. I reached for her hand. Our fingers touched. The coatl reared up, trying to swallow her. Our hands missed as I was pulled backward. I reeled in the reata, righting myself, and gagging the giant snake. It opened its mouth. Tibia started to slide down its throat. She screamed. I lunged forward, snatching her hand. I pulled, but the coatl chomped down, pinning her legs.
"Get me outta here!" she yelled.
I quickly untied my bull rider's wrap, tossing it to her. "Grab the rope." She took it, knotting it around her pencil thin waist.
"Hey, kid!" It was Rip, riding alongside us, holding a stick of dynamite. "You gotta get this in its mouth!"
"How the heck am I supposed to do that!" I yelled back.
He lit the fuse. "Catch," he said, throwing the dynamite at me.
I made a half-hearted grab. We are talking about live dynamite here. It sailed over my head and landed on top of the cliff wall. It exploded, sending a shower of rocks over us. The concussion blew me off the side of the coatl. Tibia grabbed my wrist. Her bones bit into my flesh. Now, we were both dangling, twenty feet in the air, hanging out of the mouth of the coatl. It twisted its head, trying to find a way to swallow us both.
"Catch it," Rip yelled.
"Are you crazy?"
He lit another stick, throwing it at me. The dynamite tumbled end over end. Time to go all-in. I reached out, drawing a bead on the angry sparkler, and snatched it out of the air. The fuse was burning down fast.
"Get it in its mouth," yelled Rip.
"I can't—."
"Do it when it tries to eat you!" he yelled.
"WHAT?"
"You'll see."
The coatl made an angry jerk, tossing us up into the air. We floated there for a moment. Besides the feeling of imminent doom, it was almost… peaceful. Our hands held tight, me and Tibs. Below us, the coatl opened its giant mouth. I could see all the way down its pitch-black throat. The fuse had just about burned down. I tossed it in. It slipped down the snake's throat, bouncing off the sides like a pinball. Then it disappeared.
With a gag, it snapped its mouth shut. We landed hard on top of its nose. I was staring right into a giant eyeball. Tibia crashed on top of me. "Get the rope!" she yelled. I grabbed the loop. The coatl coughed, like trying to up-chuck a hairball.
"Get out of there!" Rip yelled.
Tibs put her arms around my neck. I grabbed the rope with my raw hands, and double-fried 'em as we slid down. Just as we hit the ground, there was a muffled boom. The coatl's neck swelled like a beach ball.
Small flashes of lightning erupted all over its body. Purple smoke poured from between its scales. It was breaking apart, cracking up like old leather. Soon, the whole thing was engulfed in a thick cloud of vapor. Then it just… blew away.
Rip and Wallace ran up. "Nice job, kid," Rip said.
I held out my hands. They were red, bloody, and raw. The skin had been sheared right off.
"Ooo, jeez, let me see that." Tibia took my hands in hers. "Wal," she said, turning to him, "you got any of the good stuff left?"
Wallace reached into his satchel and handed Tibia a bottle. The label said Placebo. She poured the liquid over my beef-red hands. It glowed light blue and came on cool. It soaked in fast, and in a few seconds, my hands were back to normal.
"That was crazy," I said. And I didn't just mean the healing ointment. This whole thing: sanke rodeos, and shootouts, hanging with Nightmares, and fairy tales. If I ever got out of this mess, I'd have one free pass to the loony bin.
"Now do you trust me when I say we want to help you?" Tibs said with a smile.
"Are you talking about the time where I almost got eaten by a giant snake?" I said with a smirk.
"Awe, just almost?" said Rip. "We ain't even gotten to Dallas yet. I'm sure you'll get another chance to check that one off your bucket list."