Graham Rowat

The spell cast over the rest of the bar broke.

and they began to scream, knocking tables and chairs over in their dash for the single door.

By this time, Slake and Slaughter each held two revolvers and took deadly aim with them.

Before the first people even made it out of the swinging doors, Slake and Slaughter had fired, and three more men lay on the floor.

The brothers of Black and Green did not miss their shots.

Everyone else stampeded for the door, and when they came out, the brothers of red and white, twins with their smiles and mustaches and knives, were there to greet them.

The first cut down was a wealthy woman.

Coming out of the door, she had tripped over her long, ruffled skirts and fallen to the ground.

A savage descended upon a half-blind old man.

His boot came down upon the woman's head with the sound of an eggshell crunching.

Savage and Sully were most efficient in their work.

As Slaughter and Slake flushed them out of the bar, the beasts in red and white cut them down with knives, aiming for the hearts, heads, and throats.

Most went down in one or two cuts.

Savage and Sully only let one man slip past, half a boy and scared like one.

Instead of running out of the doors like all else, he had crashed out the windows.

Bloodied, but mostly unhurt from the glass, he began to sprint away.

Ten minutes later, after Slake, Slaughter, Savage and Sully had finished with their charity in the bar, the boy had made it almost three miles, running in a horrified frenzy.

He never stood a chance.

He thought he was heading to the closest town, a small lakeside village called Mulland.

The only place he was going was into the open desert.