Ritual Prayer, a Western by Steve Croy. During the time before the Fifth Sun, the gods Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, and his brother, Tezcatlipoca, god of the night, sacrificed themselves to create the world and the sun. Their blood formed the earth and the sun. The act of creation, the sacrifice of the blood of the gods, placed the people who came from Aztlán in perpetual debt to the gods, a debt which could only be repaid through a blood sacrifice . Seth Nicholson had put his heart into building a ranch—a home for his family in West Texas. Following the war, demand for Texas beef skyrocketed. A cattle ranch had seemed like a good bet for a young, ambitious cowboy. However, this year the market had gone soft. Presidio County, Texas, across the Rio Grande from the Chihuahua Desert, was dry. Of course, it usually was. Only this year was drier than most. The rancher was doing his best to manage the range so the longhorns wouldn’t overgraze the pasture. He prayed for rain since he couldn’t afford to buy cattle feed for his herd. Rustlers, crossing the Rio Grande to raid herds, were a threat, and he could ill afford to lose stock. He needed every head he could bring to market to pay his hands and keep the ranch running. As if the market, Apache, rattlesnakes, rustlers, and drought weren’t enough to worry about, a serial killer was stalking the border. West Texas was as dry and as hot as any place this side of hell, but Nicholson wasn’t going to give up on his ranch, even if it meant tracking a killer across the Rio Grande…