Spellslinger Girls

Read the First Chapter

Caldera Hex didn’t believe in curses. She believed in bad luck, bad whiskey, and bad decisions. Curses were for people who needed an excuse for their own stupidity. She’d never needed one. Her stupidity was her own damn fault, and she’d earned every scar that proved it.

Which is why, when the iron box on the midnight express started screaming, she should have walked away. Any sensible bounty hunter would have. But Caldera had never been sensible, and the box was filled with money. That combination was a one-way ticket to trouble, and she bought first class.

The train hurtled through the desert under a sky fat with stars, the whistle crying out across the empty plains. Caldera sat in the passenger car, boots propped on the seat across from her, hat pulled low over her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping. She was listening. To the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks. To the murmur of conversation from the other passengers. To the faint, almost imperceptible hum coming from the cargo car two compartments ahead.

The hum had started an hour ago. A low vibration that she felt in her teeth, like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks. The other passengers didn’t seem to notice, or if they did, they were smart enough not to mention it. Caldera wasn’t smart. She was curious, and curiosity was the one sin she’d never managed to outrun.

When the first gunshot rang out, she was already on her feet.

The outlaws hit the train like a thunderstorm. Six riders on mechanical horses, their hooves sparking against the steel rails as they pulled alongside. Caldera counted them by muzzle flashes as they opened fire on the windows. Glass shattered. Passengers screamed. She dropped into a crouch and drew her revolver, the grip warm and familiar in her hand.

“Stay down!” she shouted to no one in particular, already moving toward the cargo car.

The door at the end of the car burst open, and a man in a leather duster stepped through, shotgun raised. Caldera’s first shot caught him in the shoulder, spinning him into the wall. Her second took him out of the fight entirely. She stepped over him and kept moving.

The cargo car was a war zone. The iron box sat in the center, its seals glowing with residual hex-light. Someone had already cracked it open, and the contents were scattered across the floor. Not coins. Not bills. Ampules. Glass ampules filled with a liquid that pulsed with its own inner light, like captured lightning.

And in the center of the chaos, a woman was laughing.

She was tall and lean, with silver hair cropped short and eyes that reflected the ampules’ glow like mirrors. Her duster was covered in arcane symbols that writhed and shifted as she moved. One hand held a smoking pistol. The other held an ampule up to the light, examining it like a connoisseur appraising fine wine.

“You must be the bounty hunter,” the woman said, not bothering to turn around. “I’ve heard of you. Caldera Hex. They say you never miss.

“They say a lot of things,” Caldera replied, keeping her revolver trained on the woman’s back. “Put the ampule down. Slowly.

The woman laughed again, a sound like breaking glass. “You don’t even know what this is, do you?

“I know it’s stolen. That’s enough for me.

The woman finally turned, and Caldera saw her face clearly for the first time. Young. Too young to have that kind of hardness in her eyes. “This is evolution,” she said, holding the ampule higher. “This is the next step. And you, bounty hunter, are about to become part of something much bigger than you can imagine.

She threw the ampule at Caldera’s feet.

The glass shattered. The liquid leaped, alive and hungry, and before Caldera could move, it sank into her skin like water into dry earth. The effect was instantaneous and agonizing. Fire raced through her veins, and she felt her body change in ways that defied explanation. She dropped to her knees, gasping, as a new awareness bloomed between her legs.

The woman was gone, but Caldera barely noticed. She was too busy trying to understand what had just happened to her body, and why the world suddenly smelled different. Like ozone. Like magic. Like the moment before a gun goes off.

Caldera Hex didn’t believe in curses. But she was starting to reconsider.

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