Lilith and Eve

The Rawhide Sisters (Classic Western Women's Adventure)

By: Kaye T. Owen

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The lantern’s flame gave one last, desperate flicker, a dying gasp of orange light that painted grotesque shadows across the jagged mine walls, before surrendering to the dark. The sudden blackness wasn’t merely an absence of light; it was a living thing, thick enough to choke on, pressing against Eve’s eyelids like tar. She tasted it on her tongue, metallic and bitter, indistinguishable from the blood welling from her split lip where someone’s ring had caught her teeth.

Her fingers scrabbled blindly across wet stone until they found the familiar ridges of Lilith’s wrist. The rawhide bindings that had held them both spread-eagled against the mine cart were gone now, discarded carelessly when the men had grown bored, their laughter echoing as they retreated toward the distant glow of their campfire near the entrance. Lilith’s pulse hammered beneath Eve’s fingertips, erratic as a sparrow trapped in a fist. Her skin burned fever-hot even through the layers of grime and drying blood.

“Eve.”

Lilith’s voice wasn’t a sound so much as a wound, a raw scrape of syllables torn from a throat that had screamed itself ragged. Her hands found Eve’s face in the dark, trembling as they pushed back the sweat-soaked tangle of hair stuck to Eve’s forehead. One thumb traced the swell of Eve’s cheekbone with surprising gentleness, coming away wet.

“Can you sit up?”

Eve tried. The moment she shifted her weight, white-hot agony detonated low in her pelvis, radiating outward until even her teeth hurt. Her abdominal muscles clenched violently, as if her body could still expel what those laughing men had forced into her. A thin stream of bile burned its way up her throat, acrid and useless, since her stomach had long since emptied itself. She gagged anyway, shoulders heaving, until Lilith’s arm hooked around her torso, holding her upright with a strength that belied her own injuries.

Against Eve’s back, she could feel the rapid flutter of Lilith’s heartbeat through the tattered remains of their clothing. The mine shaft stank of damp earth and spent gunpowder now, the stale air clinging to their skin like a second layer of filth. Somewhere deeper in the tunnels, water dripped with metronomic regularity.

“They’ll pay.”

Lilith didn’t raise her voice above a whisper, but each word landed like a hammer strike. Not a promise. Not a threat. A simple statement of fact, as immutable as the dawn neither of them expected to see. Her fingers tangled in Eve’s hair, not gently now, tilting her head back until Eve had no choice but to meet her eyes, even in the absolute dark.

“Every last one.”