Mortal Brother

by Teyla Branton

  She answered immediately, which told me she was waiting for news. “Hey, Chris.”

  “We’ve got a problem. I need you to track our captives and Tenika Vasco.”

  A brief pause. “On it. I’m contacting the New York cell now to have them check for Tenika’s codes. What’s up?”

  “Bandits tried to take the plane. They didn’t succeed, but I learned they grabbed Tenika and the guy from the prison compound a few hours ago. The bandits were probably looking for weapons and money, but if they’ve dumped the bodies . . .” I didn’t have to finish. Ava knew better than I did what the Emporium agents were capable of if they recovered before our people did.

  “Okay,” she said, “I can’t locate any of the captives’ signals.” Which had to mean the tracking chips had been deactivated or that they were under cover of the jungle and the overhead satellites couldn’t locate them. I was betting on the trees.

  After a few seconds, Ava added, “They can’t find Tenika’s signal either.” No hiding the worry in her voice. “Marco’s on the line with the prison compound now about Irwin.” Marco was one of our former black ops mortal employees, and we’d left him and two others like him to help Ava protect Stella Davis, her husband, and my children.

  Several seconds of silence and then I asked, “How is Bronson?”

  “Not good.”

  “And Stella?” Stella Davis had paid a huge price at yesterday’s battle—loss of the baby she was carrying. With Bronson on his deathbed, it was a horrible turn of events. We all knew she had wanted their child more than she’d wanted anything in her two centuries of life. If Bronson died, their chances of having another child would be over forever.

  I owed Stella. I would always owe her. She’d made the choice to fight, to save my children. When this was all over, I’d go home to them because of her sacrifice. I was determined to bring her the cure Bronson needed the minute the others tracked down our missing scientists.

  “Okay, we found Irwin’s signal,” Ava said. “Pinpointing now.”

  I’d reached the stairs to the plane and began climbing, opening the door with the combination and my hand on the reader.

  “He’s only a few miles northwest of your position,” Ava said in my ear. “Way too far for Ritter and Erin and the others to get to him, even if I could call them back. You’ll have to go after him and see what happened. Could be the bandits just took the van and weapons and dumped the rest. They could all be nearby.”

  I didn’t blame Ava for wanting the best-case scenario. I hadn’t been on many ops—okay, I really hadn’t been involved at all except for flying. All the fighting was left to the experienced mortals or the semi-immortal Unbounded. When Erin and Jace had been little, I’d taken care of them. Now that they had Changed, the roles were reversed. That took a lot of getting used to on my part because deep down I was still their protective older brother.

  “I’ll get supplies,” I said, sealing the plane door behind me and striding down the aisle to the storage compartments located in the small kitchen at the back left side of the plane.

  “Grab sedatives and extra curequick.” She hesitated before adding, “Better take one of Ritter’s bags.”

  I already had one in my hands. Ritter’s bags contained everything a soldier could need in a battle: an assault rifle, extra ammo, several handguns, radios and earbuds, a change of clothes, and even a few grenades. I was stuffing the curequick into it now, along with food rations that Unbounded wouldn’t need. They could absorb nutrients from the world around them, which I had to admit made me envious at times. A soldier who didn’t need to eat but whose energy was continuously renewed was infinitely better in combat. No need to find or carry water. No worrying about how long a campaign might take.

  But there were no Unbounded here, only me, and I was going after our people.

  “I’m sending the coordinates to your phone,” Ava said. “Let me know the minute you have eyes on them. Go slowly when you get close. The bandits may still be there or could have left a guard.”

  “Will do.”

  Hanging up, I stuffed a second water bladder into the bulging shoulder bag and began shedding my clothes, exchanging my jeans and T-shirt for a bulletproof vest and jungle camouflage. It was muggy here and hot, even in mid-November, at least it would be until night fell, but anything to keep me safe and unnoticed was worth it. The concern in Ava’s voice had me jumpy, but I was glad she hadn’t pointed out the fact that I could be killed. I was already made aware of that every day working with my siblings.

  AS I RESEALED THE PLANE, the blue truck revved and left the building, heading not toward the plane but down the dirt road that bordered part of the runway. César’s sedan followed. So much for my plan of taking the blue truck at least part of the way. The nearly three miles to Irwin’s location wouldn’t take me long to cover on foot, but every second could mean greater problems for Tenika and Irwin. I started toward the road.

  I couldn’t help but think of my children. I joined the Renegades to make a difference, to find justice for my wife, Lorrie, and because only the Renegades understood what happened to rip our lives apart. I believed in this fight and would give all I could to it, but ultimately my children had to be my first priority. It was comforting to know I wasn’t the only one who felt Kathy and Spencer were important. The children weren’t really just mine anymore, but a part of our larger family of Renegades, something they desperately needed after losing their mother.

  A high, whiny sound of a motorbike cut off that vein of thought, and I turned around, grabbing the assault rifle hanging over my shoulder. It was a small bike, the kind that most American men would laugh at and refuse to own. I eased my finger off the trigger when I realized that riding it was the girl from earlier.

  She came to a stop next to me. “You will go after your friends?”

  I nodded.

  “I can take you.”

  “Just give me the bike. I’ll bring it back or pay you for it.”

  She shook her head. “I want to come. They killed my husband.”

  “Don’t you understand? They don’t care about you! You can’t make a difference against them.”

  “We made a difference back there,” she retorted. “And you are only one. Together we are stronger.”

  “Give me the keys.”

  In answer, she turned off the bike and put the keys down the front of her shirt, giving me a compelling glimpse of cleavage.

  I was tempted to throw her off the bike and take the keys, but I wasn’t that kind of man, and I didn’t have time to convince her. Besides, she had helped me back at the building.

  “You can go partway,” I said. “Then you let me go on alone to check on my friends. I can’t have you putting them in danger. Deal?”

  She wanted to protest, but apparently something in my eyes convinced her I wouldn’t bend. Nodding, she scooted back on the bike, fished out the keys, and handed them to me.

  I blinked in surprise, both at her trust and the fact that she would let me drive. Not something the women in my current life would even think about offering willingly. Maybe I’m living in the wrong country, I thought.

  “No, you drive,” I said. “I’ll keep a lookout.”

  Her eyes widened in a way that made me feel strangely protective. She’d been married and was a widow, so maybe she wasn’t as young as I’d first thought. A woman, not a girl. She was certainly beautiful, even if in a way that was completely opposite to my blond-haired, blue-eyed wife.

  Lorrie. I wondered if the pain would always come whenever I thought of her.

  Looping the assault rifle over my head, I pulled out a pistol instead. We were off, the air once again filled with the whiny complaint of the small engine. But it drove well on the dirt road and, if it didn’t alert every bandit in Mexico with the sound, we would get there in minutes.

  I became acutely aware of my left arm draped loosely about the woman’s waist. I didn’t even know her name. She had a pistol tucked into the back of
her tight jeans. No holster.

  “Okay, stop here,” I yelled in her ear a few minutes later. She eased to the side of the road and turned off the engine. The abrupt quiet sounded almost loud.

  “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll come for you when it’s safe. Or you can go back to the house and wait for me.”

  Her mouth pursed in a scowl and her dark eyes narrowed, but she nodded. “I’ll wait here.”

  I hurried away, straight into the woods, when really I needed to go further along the road. I couldn’t have her following me. After a minute, I altered my direction, ran hard for stretch, then began my real approach. Slowly now. Careful. Eyes searching.

  I could hear nothing but the occasional cry of a bird; whatever had happened here had frightened away the animals. My chest felt tight. I checked the GPS. Irwin should be just up ahead a few yards off the road.

  Even more cautiously, I crept forward. I didn’t know what I’d do if the bandits were still there, but if they were, I wasn’t about to leave Irwin with them, Ava’s orders or no.

  The trees were thinning now, and I scanned the area carefully. There, I thought. I could see an arm poking out from under a bush. I circled around, trying to locate any attackers, but no one else seemed to be anywhere near here. Just to be certain, I hunkered down and waited, my heartbeat slowing as I breathed deeply.

  After five minutes, I was convinced the bandits had abandoned Irwin to the animals, which thankfully hadn’t yet appeared. I rose and pushed my way through the brush, looking under the lush greenery to see if I could locate Tenika as well. But there were enough breaks in the trees overhead that if she’d been nearby, Ava would have been able to locate her using the satellite.

  I pulled Irwin from under the bush. The blond man was drenched in fresh blood. He’d been shot in the chest and again in his leg, where shards of bone jutted from his blood-soaked jeans. He had no heartbeat, but already the wounds were beginning to heal, and the curequick in my bag would help him regenerate even faster. I injected the substance around each wound and then sat back on my heels. Nothing left but to report the bad news to Ava.

  She answered before my first ring finished. “Hello?”

  “I found Irwin, but no sign of Tenika yet.”

  “What’s his condition?”

  “Not too bad. He bled out from a chest wound. Heart stopped beating, but they missed hitting it directly at least.”

  “No head wound?”

  “No. But his leg’s pretty badly busted up. I can see bone.”

  “With the curequick he should regain consciousness soon. See if he can tell you anything. How much did you give him?”

  “Two syringes. One near each wound.”

  “Wait five minutes and give him two more. Meanwhile, search the area for clues.”

  “Okay, but they’ve taken everything of value from him—guns, phone, the van. You’ll need to let his people know.”

  “We figured as much. They’re waiting to hear from us.”

  I broke the connection, wondering what she expected me to find. I’d been training with the Renegades for two months now, but we hadn’t covered tracking in a foreign jungle. Or if they had, I’d been taking care of the kids that day.

  I walked around, noting the torn leaves and signs of a struggle. Tire marks showed where they’d been forced off the dirt road. At some point Tenika and Irwin must have left the van. One thing was certain, they hadn’t been defeated easily.

  I followed the tire marks of the van through the jungle foliage, trying to determine where it met back up with the road, if it did at all. Some distance away from Irwin, another smaller road appeared, deep under a canopy of trees. Near this, I found four more bodies, heaped on each other like refuse.

  “Hello,” I said. These were our captives. Or some of them.

  They still had no pulse, but they didn’t look worse than when they’d left our plane. All the blood on them was long dried and their wounds on their way to full healing. The bandits must have thought them dead. But why had they kept the other seven? Maybe because they’d started breathing again. If they had only taken those who were alive, it could mean they kept Tenika as well.

  All our Emporium captives had been heavily drugged, but in another day, or maybe by morning, their bodies would have cleared the drugs from their systems. I needed to find them before then.

  But how?

  A movement in the trees sent me scuttling backward, my gun drawn. Sweat dripped from my hairline down the back of my neck as I wondered if the bandits or one of the less-damaged Emporium agents had returned to consciousness.

  “DON’T SHOOT!” CAME A female voice. “It’s me, Marisa.”

  I had no idea who Marisa was, but the slamming in my chest abated slightly as my heart decided I wasn’t in immediate danger. “Come out!”

  The woman who’d brought me here emerged from the brush onto the small road, her blue tank top contrasting noticeably with the dark green jungle decor. Her pistol was in her hands, though it was pointing at the ground—for the moment.

  Okay, so I did know her, and I wasn’t really that surprised to see her. I stepped out from my tree. “I thought I told you to stay with the bike.”

  One delicate shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I did. It’s just over on the main road. I walked it here.”

  I couldn’t really blame her for disobeying when I’d planned to disregard my own orders and fight the bandits if I had to in order to save Tenika and Irwin, but it unnerved me all the same. If anything happened to her, I’d feel responsible.

  Marisa hesitated several long seconds before taking a few steps and squatting down to stare at the captives. “They’re dead. Who are they? Why do they have that . . .” She struggled to find the word. “Metal bracelet.”

  “Shackles.” I shook my head, knowing she’d never believe how dangerous they still were. “I’ll come back for them later, but first . . .” I delved in my bag for more of the drug that had been especially prepared to sedate Unbounded. I couldn’t kill them with it; in fact, an overdose would only buy me a few more hours. As I injected the drug, the woman stared at me as if I’d left my brain back at the plane, which maybe I had.

  “Come on,” I said roughly.

  She followed me through the brush back to where I’d left Irwin. I knelt down and began giving him another dose of curequick. Afterward, I checked his neck for a pulse, my fingers looking white against his deeply tanned skin. A faint beat awarded my effort. It wouldn’t be long now.

  “He’s dead,” she said, disgust lacing her voice. “Can’t you see that? What did you give him? It’s different than what you gave the others. The needle is bigger.”

  “Since you’re so good at observation, can you tell me what happened here? I’m looking for the woman that was with him.”

  “You mean the black one with all the long braids?”

  “How did you know?” Because Marisa definitely hadn’t been introduced.

  “You’re not the only one who has binoculars.” With another uneasy glance at Irwin, she stood and began looking around, studying the signs of the struggle as I had. After a time, she sighed. “There’s not much to see. They were pushed off the road, and they took cover behind the van. I see many empty shells.”

  “Shells. Right.” I hadn’t even noticed.

  She cocked her head, her voice devoid of emotion. “I’m sure they have her. They always need women, so they’ll want to keep her. She might have a chance to run away after they have their fun.”

  “They’d keep her alive?”

  “For a while at least. If she doesn’t fight too much.” The emotionlessness tone was emphasized by a deadness in her beautiful eyes, and I wondered what else they’d done to her when they killed her husband.

  I forced myself instead to think about Tenika. If she was with the bandits, it might be a good thing. Her talent was hypnosuggestion, which she used in her cover job as a psychologist. If the bandits listened to her, she might be able to convince them to let her go
and to turn over the Emporium captives. The bandits wouldn’t know to muzzle her unless one of the agents somehow regained consciousness.

  “Tell me about the bandits,” I said, settling in the vegetation a couple feet away from Irwin. “What’s their gig?”

  “Gig?”

  “How do they survive?”

  She sank down in the soft grass beside me, on the side away from Irwin. “Stealing, drugs, anything really. Some groups deal in slavery—mostly capturing the native Maya.” She wrinkled her nose as if she’d caught a whiff of something nasty. “They take whole family groups, make them work for them.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  She shrugged. “All of it. I don’t know.”

  The drugs made me feel uneasy, but I didn’t know why it would trigger my alarms more than kidnapping. “Do you know where they live?”

  Marisa frowned, staring at me with a worried crease between her eyebrows. “No.” After a few seconds of hesitation, she added, “My husband found their place, the same bandits who did this. That’s why they killed him.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Two months.” Her flared nostrils and clenched jaw told me that it still felt like yesterday.

  Two months, the same amount of time Lorrie had been gone. “You should go home to your father and brother—or wherever they are.”

  “They can’t protect me. They expect me to stay and cook for them, but I won’t. I have an uncle who owns a ranch outside of Palenque. My mother’s brother. I lived with him and his American wife when I was little after my mother died. I will go to him when this is over.” Her gaze dropped.

  I wanted to ask how old she was, but it wasn’t something I felt I could do. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Who is in the picture? The one you took out of your pocket earlier?”

  I felt for it and passed it to her. “My children, Kathy and Spencer.”