This is not happening.

She was between his legs, corset sliding down with her tongue wrapped around his thumb and pupils blown out as her hands play at his belt. He’s inches, no, centimeters away from everything he’s ever wanted, her husky ‘yes’ resounding like a hallelujah in his ears. She said yes to him, to them, and she’s still all in for this wicked pervy cowboy routine and it’s everything he prays for yet doesn’t deserve.

Until he’s getting smacked with the cruelest cockblock of all time. One that’s so much more than inconvenient. One that could turn deadly if he doesn’t play his cards right.

The lust in his veins turns sour, the thrum of his pulse fueled with something harsher, more bitter. Kane feels like he’s having a heart attack.

”This is not fucking happening,” he hisses, punctuating his despair with a petulant boot stomp.

“Benders don’t have a say here,” one of the cowboys cackles maniacally, licking his lips as Tovah’s dress slips back off her shoulder. “Specially not a purty unattached woman who don’t know what’s good fer her. But we’ll learn her right up. Learn her so good, she won’t be able to walk no more.” He starts a slow saunter around the maze of tables and three of the group break off to follow suit. Except for the Spaniard who looks conflicted and Black Hat, who keeps his gaze pinned on Kane, studying him from beneath the shadow of his brim.

“Nice that she’s so willing to cooperate,” sneers another one of the ghosts, cocking his head in attempt to eyeball Tovah from where she’s blocked from view.

She’s being incredibly unhelpful and keeps trying to slip out of the cage of his body. Kane shifts to barricade her back in, grabbing a handful of her skirt to try to force her to stay in one place.

“She’s not unattached,” Kane says icily. “She’s with me.”

The group pauses in tandem, looking to their leader for guidance. Black Hat shoots the Spaniard at his arm a raised brow. The smaller man looks guilty as he gives his head a shake, ducking to avoid Kane’s glare.

“Now that’s not quite the way of it, is it?” drawls Black Hat. His hand drops casually down to his pistol, tapping at the shiny metal with a lazy feline grace. The other three desperados snicker and resume closing in.

“How you manage to touch her like that?” asks the man slinking up from the right. The question strikes with a mix of suspicion and awe. His grin however is entirely lecherous. “We’s gonna need to know that trick for later. It’s gonna come in real handy.”

Meanwhile Tovah’s still squirming at Kane’s back, her frustration audible, and he tilts his head, trying to focus on two conversations at once.

“Who are you talking to?”

Kane’s stomach turns, bile rising to burn his throat. He’s reeling, overstimulated from the whiplash of body responses and the sudden wave of information he’s being forced to process.

Benders. How are you touching her. Must be powerful. Who are you talking to?

He may be slow on the uptake for many things,but Kane is not a stupid man. He connects the dots almost immediately. Not a single one of the revelations offer much in the way of encouragement. He runs down a quick list of what the fuck appears to be going on. They’re trapped in a wild west ghost town, completely isolated, and the men about to tackle him and abduct his roommate are all dead. Tovah can’t see them, has no idea that Kane’s currently the only thing standing between her and an eternity of old timey brothel-style servitude to some cowboys who have been dead and alone for a long time and are obviously pissed about it. But not as pissed as Kane is about his gloriously sexy role-play with Tovah being so aggressively interrupted. Also, they’ve got a truthsayer who can see through any lie he might spin to get them out of this mess.

“Fuckityfuckfuckfuck,” he mumbles under his breath.

But the fear in his eyes is visible.

Kane is, for the first time, scared. Not for himself or the violence that might occur should the pack attack. But he’s not a warrior. His brother had done his best to install the basic necessary survival skills, the most rudimentary of hand to hand combat lessons actually sticking and letting him be just scrappy enough in a fight to be hazardous.

Yet they are outnumbered here. Outgunned. Surrounded. Trapped in a strange land where the rules of magic are blurry at best with no obvious way out and no hope of rescue beyond his own devices. And who knows if his death magic works here? How does a man defend himself against things he may not be able to touch?

He’s terrified he won’t be enough. He’s terrified of a repeat of that nightmare on the beach, her skin blue and cold under his hands, the color leaching from her eyes as she fights to draw breath. If he loses her because of his own inadequacy...

“We’re not alone. Stay still. Just stay behind me,” he mutters out of the corner of his mouth.

Of course she doesn’t. She ducks right out from underneath his arm, looks him square in the face and makes some sassy remark that would normally make him laugh or groan or some combination of both.

The ghosts circle closer at her words, sharks smelling blood in the water and about to frenzy. “Oh don’t you worry, sweet thing! We’ll give you all the fucking you need!”

Quick as a snake, one of them lunges at Tovah, makes to grab her wrist, but Kane hauls back and punches him in the face.

Thank his lucky stars some facets of his magic still seem to work.

The man goes ass up over the table, sending chairs to scatter to the floor. In the commotion, the rest of the pack move with outstretched hands for a secondary attack, but Kane is ready. He throws Tovah forcibly back against the bar, making sure he’s directly between her and the grinning ghosts.

“Back up!” he orders, throws a palm up, crouching in a warding position in front of Tovah with teeth bared. “Nobody touches her or Aura help me, I will make each and every one of you wish you’d never set eyes on her.”

The greasy man with yellow teeth snorts, circles closer around to flank them with a leer. A knife snicks into view from somewhere on his belt. “How you intend to do that? We’re already dead.”

Kane herds Tovah down the bar towards the window. He’ll go through it if he has to. He draws his gun, even though it feels like an inadequate toy in his hand. “You think this level of isolation is bad? I’ll make it so much worse,” he promises, dropping his voice to what he hopes passes as a threatening level of deep. “I will leave every one of your sorry souls to rot in the Beyond for eternity, alone and in misery and without salvation until the end of time.”

This gives them pause. The whole tavern goes still and tense, a baited breath before a plunge. Black Hat glances to the truthsayer out of the corner of his eye for confirmation.

The man is watching Kane through narrowed eyes, searching for a chink in his promise, scanning the spaces between his words thoroughly for some semblance of a lie.

Kane lifts his chin, daring him to find one.

The truthsayer nod is subtle, now a bit more wary then before as he confirms Kane means every word. And perhaps a bit more respectful.

Black Hat lifts a hand. The pack of ghosts back down with a chorus of hisses, slinking back to their master with hatred for Kane staining their stares red. Whatever power the tall dark man has over the rest of the group, it’s strong enough to make them retreat without question. Kane wonders if he was once military, seeing similarities in his command he’d rather not.

The cowboy jerks his head and the rest of the group vacates the tavern with huffs and grumbles. But the dark man doesn’t break Kane’s gaze, instead walking backwards to the swinging door, staring at where they cower by the bar thoughtfully.

“Two days, Sheriff,” he says softly.

Kane stiffens, squares his shoulders. “The fuck does that mean?”

Black Hat smiles without showing his teeth. “You say she’s rightfully yours? Alright. I’m not an unreasonable man, and fair is fair. You have two days to prove it. If you can’t, at sunrise on the third day, she comes with us and that’ll be the end of it.”

Kane says nothing, panting as he watches the man slip like a shade out the exit.

“And Sheriff?” the ghost calls in parting. “If your claim ain’t true...we’ll know.”

Kane starts to hyperventilate. He grabs Tovah’s hand and drags her out the back of the bar.

“I’ve got to get you out of here.”