The Dust Devil had chased her across desert land for weeks now. Bela's bike ran on cactus oil, which was plenty out here in the parched earth, the dry winds, and barren canyons. The issue was stopping to refuel at all. It gave the Dust Devil ample time to spin closer, an angry tower of sand, crackling grit, and abrasive death always on the horizon.

She didn't sleep, she didn't eat—except to take in her dwindling store of Ambrosia. Gold liquid thick as gravy, bled from the ground in secret nooks and dangerous crannies. Protected by the natural maze of desert cliffs and poisonous lizards big as a man that used it to paint their nests. Ambrosia gave her strength, made her uncanny, but it couldn't make her free. Without the weekly purge, she'd die from it soon enough.

A better fate, she thought, than submitting to the hell of howling souls that was the Dust Devil.

The bike sputtered underneath her, a slick machine of beetle-black, non-reflective chrome, and a stealthy engine. Bela loved it like she loved her limbs, but it was failing her and she wasn't far enough. Would never be far enough.

Shadows from the ever-present chalk cliffs poured into the canyon behind her, funneling her toward the small holdfast crouched in a pocket of rocks and tumbleweed. Not an inn, not a bar, but some uneasy combination of both with a penchant for miscreants. The Dust Devil roared along behind her, filling the canyon wall to wall with its intimidation, its monstrous winds and churning sand.

Just as Bela made to pass the holdfast, something popped and a hiss sounded from her back tire.

"Damn." She hit the brakes with a skid, and kicked out the stand, glancing apprehensively over her shoulder. The Dust Devil had grown too big to be too fast, but it was relentless and sometimes used other, less direct, methods of travel to move in unnatural ways and block her path.

Fortunately, places like holdfasts were always entertaining traveling salespeople who might have an extra bike part or two. Sandrunners were common transportation in these parts. Unfortunately, anyone selling might not sell to her. Not if they figured out what she was, what she meant.

Bela switched off the engine, gave her sandrunner bike a pat, swept on her sunglasses, and coughed into her sleeve. Gold flecks spattered the cloth and she cursed. The Ambrosia was eating her up inside. With another surreptitious cough, Bela entered the holdfast.

It was dark, smoky, the air full of clashing flavors—some kind of meaty stew on the stove and midnight dew, a homebrewed soporific for those running ragged on Ambrosia. Those like Bela. The den was small, corner kitchen, spore hearth, circle of threadbare furniture, and a crowded table for lack of a true bar. A staircase hunched crooked in the back corner.

Bela slunk to the ring of poorly cushioned chairs. There was only one man there, the rest of the patrons eating at the table. Bela settled herself down uncomfortably, spine taut, still feeling the raging breath of the Dust Devil on the back of her neck. The man wore a long black duster, a pinch-front broadbrim on his head, and he leaned so far back into his seat that he seemed part of it, his face wreathed in spore smoke.

"I'm looking for runner wheels," Bela said.

"You sure?" said the man, voice like rain on hot rocks. "'Cause I'm thinking you're looking for a way out." He leaned forward then and Bela saw the truth of him—his face a dark mass of whirling sand, featureless but for two bright yellow eyes, just a glow in all that dark.

Bela leaped to her feet, but when the man shifted again, she saw the holster under his arm, knew he could draw what was in it faster than a blink, set her body on fire with a snap, and walk away from her charred corpse without a thought. She wasn't sure things like him had thoughts, at least ones that were their own.

"Settle down, Fugitive lady," he said, tipping his hat a little more forward. "I can't bite if I've got no teeth." He grinned then, though Bela wasn't sure how she knew, something about the writhing sand of his face seemed smug.

He was what was known out here as a Waspwind, or just a Wasp. Usually a frontrunner of the Dust Devil, but also capable of taking—mostly—human form. They often banded together, corralling travelers off of cliffs, but they were just as effective hunters on their own. Hunters and spies. This man didn't need to see Bela's hands beneath her gloves, slowly turning to sand, to know what she was.

Claimed. Staked. Fugitive.

"I'm not going with you," Bela said, holding her arms but really reaching for the coiled whip at her side.

"Wouldn't dream of it." The man put his arms on the rests of his chair and kicked both feet up on a stool by the hearth. "I'm a bit of a solo dancer myself."

Bela stared at him. What was he saying? Wasps couldn't be...couldn't be like her. They weren't taken in like all the poor fools roaming the desert, they were part of the Dust Devil's own breath itself. Or so she'd thought. So everyone thought. Wasps were just the sting before the swarm.

But this one, she couldn't deny, seemed...strange.

"Great," said Bela. "I'll leave you to it, then." She had to find that damn wheel and move on. Before this whole establishment got crushed.

"You sure?" In a motion smooth as sand in an hourglass, the man was suddenly beside her. The only way she could tell his head was cocked sideways was the angle of his hat and those burning yellow eyes. "What about your wheel? Or better yet...your freedom? I have the ability to grant you that. If you want."

He was all too eager to strike a deal. Bela itched at that. "How? And what could you possibly get out of it?"

The Wasp put a gloved hand to her back and steered her out the door. To face down the canyon. To face down the Dust Devil. Slow. Sure. Inevitable. Breaking up rocks in the ravine and throwing them high. Grinding everything dust to dust.

Everything out here in the desert was dust, after all. Nothing mentionable. Nothing worth noting. All of it scraped up and thrown out as the world saw fit. Left to blow loose and scatter far. But never far enough.

"I get," said the Wasp, "the same thing that anyone else ever really wants. The same thing you want. My freedom." He gestured out at the sandstorm. The Devil. Would-be captor to them both.

Bela knew enough not to trust him. That's how she survived out here after all. But she trusted the sound in his voice. That true tone. That longing. That desperation trembling on the edge of existence. Telling her he couldn't live without it. He'd rather be dead dust than owned.

"Okay," she said. "Take my mark from me. Free us both."

The Wasp's yellow eyes flared, the darkness of his un-face buzzed. "I'd be delighted." He removed one glove, a supple leather skin hiding more shifting sand, striations of bronze and red and gold like the heart of the desert under the sun.

Then he took his hand that wasn't a hand and cupped her face, the sand surprisingly gentle on her skin. Soft rather than rough, the grains spread along her cheeks, her forehead, all of her, absorbing the Dust Devil's mark, taking the sand that would claim her and claiming it instead.

At some point, Bela had closed her eyes, and she opened them suddenly when the touch of the sand vanished. She felt...lighter. In the distance, the Dust Devil paused in its destruction of the canyon. And then, with a sound like rocks being ground to gravel, it began a new path of pursuit in a completely different direction.

Bela sighed and it was a release. Tension spilled from her shoulders. The Ambrosia in her system fizzed. She finally felt like she could sleep. Maybe she could purchase a little of that midnight dew from the holdfast. Sleep for days. Weeks. The sleep of the unpursued. Right now she didn't even care that her sandrunner was still missing a wheel. She was so light she could've walked down the road all the way to nowhere and anywhere.

When she turned to thank the Wasp, he was gone. Nothing left of him. Not even a single grain of sand on her skin. That was okay. He'd freed her and only asked for the same in return. In that moment, Bela decided she wouldn't stay at the holdfast after all. She'd take the remaining energy of the Ambrosia in her veins and her broken bike and enjoy the slow road for once. Bela grabbed her sandrunner's handle bars, kicked up the stand, and began to walk.

She didn't get far before she stopped. Something was wrong. There was a new storm brewing on the horizon, not as big as the one that had chased her here, not yet, but growing, spitting dust in ever-widening rings.

Bela's stomach sank like a rabbit in quicksand. "Damn you," she said, because she knew deep down, as sure as the skin on her bones, that there was a new Devil in town, and he had her name.