Locks rattle, a door breaks, and two silhouettes spill down. Sweat. Pants. Gasps. Crumpling atop one another, they struggle against the unseen until a stirring gas lamp reveals a pair of faces swollen with stress. Donovan and Stephens. Hearts roar. Panic strangles all emotion. The men cling to each other and stare at sabertooth hallucinations hanging in the air. Both men lie collapsed inside the sheriff's office. They can only cower. They cannot talk, move, nor think.

Finally commanding his shivering lips, the sheriff makes a sound.

"We need more light..." Donovan whispers. Righting himself, leaving a pool of perspiration in his shape, he hobbles to the room's other lamps and paints the walls a patchwork of reds, oranges, and yellows. He makes day. Light and heat swirling, Donovan has the courage to trek again across the floor, this time to the door. He assures all the locks are tight and drags a chair against this gateway. A barricade. Next, above Deputy Stephens, he extends his hand. Stephens takes it.

"We need to talk about this..." Stephens breathes. Feeling a sensation a distant cousin to safe, he's able to summon words to his lips.

"No," Donovan disagrees. He's now moved to his desk, and his hands rummage beneath it. They return with a bottle of bourbon. Donovan takes a long swig straight from the bottle before pouring two glasses.

"No?" Stephens asks. "Sir, I've seen things today! I've seen nightmares! I've seen... I don't want to say..." The man, holding his head, tries to make sense of his own journey inside the undertaker's.

"Don't," Donovan responds. "Come here and drink with me."

"Sheriff... The gossip... The rumors..." The deputy gasps.

"All true," Donovan offers. "They've always been true. Just because you believe them now, don't let it change how you lead your life. Actually, no, let it be a lesson. There are things out there much more dangerous than bandits and bank robbers." The sheriff holds his heart for a moment. "If you don't want to die, don't get involved."

The deputy sits across from Donovan. He slings back his drink.

"What about the people here?" Stephens asks. "There are families... Children..."

"They choose to live here. They choose to die here," Donovan responds. "They could have kept their lives in New York, Washington, or Boston, or they could have kept their feet moving all the way to California, but they decided to call this patch of sand home. They knew the risks. Wolves, redskins, outlaws, and vampires... They knew the risks." The man's hand trembles. Ripples riddle his drink and cast thin waves of elixir over his glass's edge. "And honestly most of them will succumb to disease or heat stroke instead of being eaten by demons." Donovan downs all of his bourbon. "It's none of your concern."

"It is," Stephens makes himself say. He points to the star on his chest. "I'm here to protect this town. So are you."

"Protect?" Donovan laughs. "Why then were you racing me back instead of laying a bullet into whatever you saw at the undertaker's?"

"I... I..." Stephens breathes.

"Don't worry about it," Donovan sighs. He pours himself another drink and fills his partner's glass to the top. "Do what you want with cattle thieves, but when it comes to the nightmares in your head, this office doesn't get involved. Turn a blind eye, and you'll stay alive." Stephens sniffs his bourbon. "Besides, your pistol wouldn't have put the things in the undertaker's to sleep."

And with that, the deputy is on his feet. Pushing his alcohol away, he marches to the nearest crate. A rifle finds its way into his left hand. A shotgun into his right.

"My badge means something," Stephens speaks. The man's eyes and the star on his chest both reflect the same fire. The light from the room's lamps beam through the deputy, but this resolve does little to sway the sheriff.

"It means you're stupid!" The sheriff shouts. "You think either of those guns will so much as slow a monster? Come back here and finish your drink before that badge makes you a corpse. Or worse." Donovan picks up the deputy's bourbon and sloshes it about. The room's lights twinkle through the tonic.

Stephens spits. He throws his guns back at the crate and instead hoists a number of sharpened sticks. Relics from previous deputies and sheriffs. Instruments he presumed were kept only to appease the superstitious and insane. Stephens fits the stakes into his belt, pockets, and saddlebag.

"Really? Am I really going to have to bury you, too?" Donovan laughs and cries. Hot tears sting the wrinkles beside his eyes. "Put those toys away. All you need is this!" The broken-down man shakes his bottle. Pausing for a moment, Stephens nods. Dropping his saddlebag, now a porcupine bristling with wooden knives, he crosses to the sheriff and snaps up his bourbon.

"You're right," Stephens agrees. He pulls a rag from a pocket and stuffs it into the bottle's neck. Checking another, the deputy produces a matchbox. "This will do nicely to deal with the undertaker's."

His back to Sheriff Donovan, the deputy's feet move with all righteousness toward the world outside. He kicks the chair propped against the door away. His fingers start on the locks.

"Go!" Donovan yells. "Go! That's an order!" Donovan slams his hand over his desk. "Get out of this office, but don't you dare go looking for trouble! Leave here and go home! Lock yourself in and don't leave until the sun burns down your neck!" The sheriff sends his boot into the floor. "Do you hear me, Deputy? I'm giving you an order!"

"You're drunk," Stephens breathes, his hands still at work on the office's deadbolts.

"That doesn't change the fact I'm your sheriff," Donovan counters. "Now, figure out you should be scared shitless and run home!"

"Sheriff, do you think I'm not scared? Do you honestly believe I'm not petrified?" Stephens screams. A river of sweat glistens on his skin. "But here's the difference between you and me..." His hands rattle the last lock. "I care! I care about this town! I care about its people! I have to take a stand!"

"You don't think I care?" Donovan snaps.

"No," Stephens replies. "Don't tell me you care. Prove it." He steps through the door. Looking back for just a moment, he spies Donovan again holding his heart. No, he holds something atop it. Donovan pleads with Stephens through a wall of scars and quiet tears. Rage, memory, and melancholy choke his vision. The phantom sounds of peddlers, carts, and a dog howling at the moon.

"Wait..." The sheriff stutters.

Stephens keeps walking.

Donovan's hands still hold the something over his heart. He undoes the buttons of his shirt and plucks a locket from his chest. Donovan throws it to the ground beyond Stephens. A chime. It stops the deputy.

"What's this?" Stephens asks.

"Lisbeth Donovan..." Sheriff Donovan speaks. "My wife..."

Stephens opens the locket.

Distant eyes greet him from long ago.

"I didn't know you were..." The deputy breathes. He looks over the faded image, the small metal prayer book that's kept it safe, and the well-worn gold chain still wet with today's panic that's stitched it to Thomas's heart. A chime. The deputy's eyes shift. A ring hangs from the chain, too. A wedding ring.

"I don't speak about Lisbeth much," Donovan breathes. "At least, not much with other people." Donovan's eyes caress the wedding ring. "My wife was murdered in front of me. She was tortured and consumed by a vampire. I looked into her eyes in her last moment of life. And do you know what word, in the final beat of her heart, escaped her lips?" Donovan wipes his sodden eyes. He reaches into his desk for a bottle of gin before continuing. "My Lisbeth's very last message was Live."

Stephens stands at the gateway between night's heavy shroud and this flame-induced outpost of day. His eyes refuse to leave the eyes of the woman no longer drawing breath.

"I was ready to die with Lisbeth," Donovan tells. "My hands were wrapped so tightly around a broken pipe they bled, and my feet knew only the direction of the beast devouring my beloved. I knew I couldn't defeat it, but I wasn't going to let Lisbeth die alone. I was ready to fight, struggle, and get slaughtered beside her. Lisbeth, though, with her terminal breath, told me to run away. Live. She didn't want me to die with her. Live. No, she wanted me to continue on, and I have. Live! I've been running and living since that terrible, terrible night. It's what brought me West. It's what led me to take this job. And it's what keeps me inside on nights like this. I will keep Lisbeth alive by living."

Deputy Stephens shuts the locket, paces to the sheriff, and places the man's wife back in his hands.

"My sympathies," Stephens speaks with a dirge of a voice. "I can't pretend to feel what you do. I can't pretend to share even a shallow measure of your sorrow. But, forgive me for this, running away and retreating into a bottle is not life."

Red eyes tighten. Donovan shakes.

"You're letting your wife die every time you don't take a stand," Stephens spits. "Go on and live a hundred years inside a coffin of gin if you think it appeases the ghost of Lisbeth Donovan, but the important part of you is already buried."

Deputy Stephens waits for a reaction from his master now that the air is stained with words that can never be unsaid. Stephens's jaw is locked. His eyes are fixed. His left hand is held back, still gripping the bourdon made into a bomb. His right hand's fingers are spread wide, waiting, quivering, and deciding whether to turn into a fist, go for a stake, or wrap around his holstered gun.

Foam spills from Donovan's lips. Wrinkles gnarl Donovan's brow. Veins drown Donovan's eyes. The man sits in silence, letting Stephens's words seep through his skeleton. Resonating down to his boots, the sheriff absorbs his deputy's statement. His left hand curls around his liquor. His right hand curls around the locket containing his wife. And then he speaks.

"Maybe you're right," Donovan issues with a deflated breath.

There's no shouting, nor any punches thrown. Chairs aren't broken. Guns remain civilly at each man's side. No fight comes. Instead, accepting his deputy's words, the sheriff simply nods his head and pours himself a drink. He lifts the poison to his troubled lips. He finishes his glass. He finishes his bottle.