There was absolutely nothing anyone in the camp could do to stop the blinking battle. Both of the woman were obviously experts in their abilities, turning a simple brawl in a duel across the camp as they teleported around, trying to get grabs and keep them.
Everyone just watched in a moment of dazed silence. The two best fighters in the camp were women who didn’t play games or toy around. They were going for blood.
“No,” Vincent sighed. He knew who to get. “Quinn. Camp. We have a fight that needs breaking up.”
He felt the earth shake. Then, the moment Sawyer and Petrov were stopped for a second to throw punches, he watched the ground open up underneath them and pull them down by their ankles. And close up. The land smoothed as if they had never been there.
“Are they dead?” Fischer sounded horrified.
“No,” Quinn answered, walking into camp. “They can continue their fight down there or stop. I’ll let them up when they are done.”
“Do they have air?” Vincent asked cautiously. He’d never seen Quinn do something like that.
“Yes.” He didn’t look angry, just annoyed. “Why was there a fight?”
“I’ll explain by our tents,” Vincent told him quickly. He didn’t need Quinn losing his temper at that moment. Not in front of the tense soldiers.
“Everyone, get back to work,” Fischer roared, causing soldiers to jump to action and move away. “Except you three.” He pointed to the few young men that had tried to fight Sawyer, one of whom had been the one messing with Jasper. “You’ll report to my tent immediately. Move it.”
Vincent watched the crowd disperse and walked with Quinn and Zander to their area. Jasper was rubbing his wrist, his leg off so Elijah could look it over.
“Any damage?” Vincent asked immediately.
“No. Thank God.” Elijah was short with him, and Vincent knew the entire team was riding short tempers.
“What do I not know?” Quinn asked, sitting down next to the cowboy.
“One of the soldiers was yanking around on Jasper’s prosthetic, causing him to stumble and then fall.” Vincent sighed heavily and looked back to the spot where Petrov and Sawyer were buried beneath the earth.
“They are fine. They stopped fighting. Was she one of them?” Quinn’s question was innocently asked. Vincent knew it wasn’t an innocent question. He was asking if he needed to kill the woman underneath with Sawyer.
“No. She had reprimanded the soldier already for it,” Vincent explained. “Let them out soon.”
“Well, he was pretty pissed for getting in trouble, because he yanked me down fucking hard and I landed bad. Zander had to heal my wrist.”
The earth rumbled. Vincent took a deep, shaky breath. He’d known Quinn would be pissed off.
He didn’t have the energy for this.
“He’s still alive?”
“Yes, Quinn, the guy who did this is still alive. We can’t have Sawyer killing people. She would hate herself for it, and the WMC would take her from us no matter what.” Vincent rubbed his temples and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. He lit one and took a long inhale. “I’m assuming Petrov jumped in since Sawyer pulled the dagger.” He pointed at Zander. “Next time I give an order, I don’t fucking care what you think, you follow it. Do you understand me? I’m not the leader of this team without a reason. I actually think about how our actions will impact our jobs and Sawyer’s future. Don’t disobey me again.”
“Fine,” Zander growled, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.
Vincent shook his head slowly. He started to walk away from the team, needing a moment to be alone and breath. This was a disaster of a mission.
He made it thirty feet from camp before Kaar landed on him. “Hey, Kaar,” he whispered to his raven. He felt a wave of concern and love from the raven and chuckled. “Thanks. We’ll make it out of this and go home soon.”
The raven ruffled, shaking a couple of loose feathers out, and snapped at his hair. Vincent waved a hand, trying to get Kaar to stop. The humor coming off the bird as he messed around made him chuckle more.
“Stop that, you shit,” he ordered. Kaar hopped and made him sway to the side. “You’re getting fat out here. How does that happen? You’re flying around all day and you’re still getting fat.”
Indignant anger coursed through him and Kaar cawed loudly in his ear.
“Asshole,” he mumbled. “I’m just saying, lay off the snacks. What have you been doing? You are supposed to be keeping an eye out for us and staying out of trouble. Are you eating all the time?”
Kaar sent an image to Vincent that made him frown. He’d followed Shade and Scout somewhere during the day. They had been following a trail far from the group, searching the rainforest for something.
They had found it.
Vincent couldn’t identify the object, but Shade and Scout hadn’t been aggressive towards it, and Kaar seemed happy about the find but didn’t offer more information. He didn’t understand the undercurrents of emotion from the raven.
He took a drag on his cigarette.
What was Quinn having his wolves do? He understood the messages he got from them better than Vincent and Kaar. Vincent had a typical relationship with his animal bond. They were partners, but Vincent didn’t speak bird, just like Sawyer probably couldn’t understand the nuances she must have gotten from Midnight.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He groaned at the question and looked back at Quinn. “Because I trust you with our lives, but I need you focused on the important stuff, not the petty drama between our team and the soldiers.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it? You won’t get mad at me?” He took another drag on his cigarette.
“No. I trust your judgement. You’re right. If I had known, I would have been focusing on the group and not what’s out there.” Quinn pointed out to the darkness of the rainforest.
“What did Shade and Scout find?” Vincent asked carefully.
“Something I hadn’t been expecting. But she’s not ready yet.”
“What?” He coughed as he tried to exhale. Quinn was getting cryptic on him again. Vincent knew how people worked. He knew how Quinn worked on the surface. But sometimes, Quinn threw him for a loop. He went somewhere that Vincent couldn’t follow. He knew that the mind of his wild teammate and friend was full of things he couldn’t begin to understand. Quinn just showed him a tiny piece and he couldn’t unravel it. He could at least cross off a Druid. Quinn wouldn’t have been calm if it was one of those.
“You’ll see. I’m going back on patrol. I’ve let the females out.” A pause. “Women. I let Sawyer and the other woman out.”
“Make sure you get some sleep tonight,” Vincent told him, hoping he listened. He had no idea when the last time Quinn had slept was. A couple of days?
“I will,” he answered, and Vincent heard a creeping note of exhaustion in his voice. “It took too much energy to pull them both down like that. Energy I didn’t want to expend.” With that, Quinn disappeared into the night.
This mission was going to drive him mad. Hazing, fights, Druids in the night, Quinn with secrets. The heat, the rain. Vincent just wanted it over with. He wanted to go back to a place where he had any sort of control over the situation. He didn’t in the Amazon. He didn’t have a single shred of control.
It terrified him.
20
Sawyer
The earth was dark and cold. Sawyer hit it hard, ignoring the pale blonde in the hole with her. She was pissed. She couldn’t believe Quinn would toss her down here and lock her up. Couldn’t fucking believe it.
“Quinn!” she roared. “Let me out, you ass!”
She knew he could hear her. She knew he was keeping an eye on them. He wouldn’t throw them in a hole without knowing exactly what was going on in it. She wasn’t stupid enough to try and phase out. He would just pull her back in if she could, and she didn’t know how deep they were, so she probably couldn’t.
; “Does he always do this?” Petrov asked, wrapping her arms around herself.
“No. I’ve never seen this before.” Sawyer growled. She looked over to the sergeant and noted she had really done a number on the woman’s face. There was just enough light to see her. Sawyer looked down and saw that Petrov had a small flashlight.
“I’m not sorry for any of that.” She pointed at the woman’s face as she spoke.
Sawyer was still riding her temper from the fight. Well, the temper from Jasper getting hurt. That little fucking prick of a soldier thought he could fuck with her team. He got Jasper hurt, that motherfucker. The need to hurt him back was like the need to breath for her at that moment.
“It’s fine. We have healers, and I jumped in knowing it would be a hard fight.” Sawyer noted the healthy amount of respect in the soldier’s voice. “I wasn’t planning to break up the fight,” Petrov told her. Sawyer raised an eyebrow. “I had reprimanded him. Told him to knock it off, and that if he did it again and you caught him, I wasn’t going to save him. Hazing is against the IMAS Code. He knew better. He knew I would bust his ass back a rank if it kept up.”
“But?” Sawyer crossed her own arms and leaned against an earthy wall of their tomb. She wanted to know why this bitch jumped into her fight.
“You pulled a dagger. He fucked with you and I expected you to fuck with him. I wasn’t going to let you kill him. He’s one of my soldiers, and I take that seriously.”
Sawyer nodded slowly. The temper drained. The anger faded, only a little, but it left just enough for her to really consider what she had been about to do.
She couldn’t kill a guy for that. It would get her taken away from the team.
“Thank you,” she told the blonde.
“What?” Petrov sounded confused and wary.
“Thanks. For stopping me.” Sawyer shrugged, looking away. She ran a hand over her face and could feel the hot blood trickling out of her nose. The chick had done a number on her too. Her nose and one of her cheeks ached with a pulsing pain that told Sawyer something might be fractured. “I…I don’t like killing people.”
“Then why did you?” Petrov sounded purely curious. No disdain. No disgust. Just professional curiosity. It made Sawyer curious in return, and her anger faded a little more. It hadn’t been a reaction she expected.
“That’s a long story,” Sawyer said. “This time? I lost my temper. I needed to beat on him for fucking with Jasper. Jasper lost that leg for me. I won’t…I won’t have someone consider him less than perfect because of it. He got hurt for me. That set me off pretty hard.”
“I’m sorry. I had hoped you would be wrong about them getting retaliation. That my men would listen to me without finding it insulting - but I overestimated their respect for the rank on my arm.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m a woman in IMAS.” Petrov laughed bitterly. “It’s a man’s world. No matter how high I climb or how hard I fight, I’ll always be not good enough. I should have known they would take being reprimanded by me as an insult. I laid into him hard for hazing your agent when we were making camp.”
“I had no idea it was like that,” Sawyer replied. “I was told something about you passing the trials or something? I thought that meant something.”
“It does. I’ve passed the trials every six months for three years to join Spec Ops. Our version of Special Agents, I guess. Advanced, highly trained teams. Missions in hostile countries, or against hostile organizations. Basically, you, the IMPO, finds the bad guy, but Spec Ops is normally called in to clean up, with backup teams of Cavalry and general foot soldiers.”
“Good to know. Why aren’t you Spec Ops? Why in Cavalry?”
“I’m a woman,” Petrov bitterly answered.
Sawyer frowned. There was a surety to the answer that made her a little pissed off. “Seriously?” She furrowed her brow.
“Yes.”
“Wow.” Sawyer huffed and slid down to sit in their hole. “So, Petrov, any other cool things I should know?”
“My name is Varya,” she answered. “Use that. Nothing cool about me. I joined the IMAS at eighteen.”
“Why not the IMPO? From what I’ve seen, women aren’t hated on. Well, I am, but I’m also the very thing they want to catch.”
“The IMAS took me out of Russia,” Varya answered softly. Sawyer knew the importance of that. Russia was a bad place to be a Magi. “I idolized them. Joined the moment I could, then got a reality check. But I am good at my job and I follow the rules. They have no reason to force me out, but they have no reason to help me advance into better positions either. They just rank me up when they are required to, because they can’t argue against it.” Varya sighed, shaking her head. “How does an assassin join the organization that would see her hang?”
“Just say it. How does an assassin become an imp?” Sawyer chuckled. “Long story. There’s a lot of dead people in it. It’s a mess and it’s complicated, but here I am. In the fucking rainforest with a team I would die for.”
“That doesn’t explain anything,” Varya replied. “How does a criminal turn into a good guy?”
Sawyer thought about that, watching Varya sit opposite of her. They maintained eye contact.
“I never wanted to be the bad guy,” Sawyer admitted to her. “I never wanted to be the monster.”
“How did it happen?” Varya’s curiosity should have pissed her off, but down in the dark hole that Quinn dropped them in, Sawyer couldn’t summon the energy to get angry. There was no reason to not tell Varya.
“I fell in love with a madman.”
“So you survived by killing for him until you could get out,” Varya guessed.
“You are nearly entirely right. I couldn’t save those I killed for, not really. He blackmailed me into it by threatening the lives of my animal bond…then his own son.”
“You have an animal bond? I haven’t…”
“I don’t have an animal bond anymore.”
“Oh.” Varya paled in the dark. Sawyer knew where the soldier’s mind went. She was imagining losing her bear. The big thing called Anya. “You must be strong to have survived the loss of that bond.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
“We’re both survivors then. I’m sorry for disliking you,” Varya whispered in the dark. She flicked the flashlight off. “I want to conserve the battery.”
“What did you survive?” Sawyer was getting curious in return.
“Russia.”
“The burnings or the labs?” Sawyer had heard what Russia was like. The WMC didn’t have political relations with them. Some countries would never accept Magi. Most of their kind were pulled out, protected in other countries, but there were always some that couldn’t be saved. Some places, like Iran, only burned them. Other places, like Russia, worked with awful companies and scientists to study them. Sawyer didn’t know much past that.
“The labs. I survived the labs from age five to age ten. I lived the longest of any of the children there. Spec Ops raided one night and took me out. Spent the rest of my youth in America, under the watchful eye of an adoptive family. Learned English and joined the IMAS as fast as I could.”
“You know what? I’m sorry for disliking you too,” Sawyer told her. She leaned over and extended a hand to the blonde. Varya looked down at it and nodded slowly. They shook. “You need someone dead, come find me.”
“You need someone to put you in your place, likewise,” Varya responded. It caused them both to laugh until Varya groaned. “Oh, my face hurts.”
“Sorry. Mine kind of does too.” Sawyer gently touched her nose and winced. Yeah, that might be broken. “Thank god for healers.”
“Are we good?”
“We’re good. Well, you know, we were never bad. You just rub me the wrong way. You’re a stick in the mud that is always throwing the rulebook at people.”
“And you have no respect for authority or the rulebook, which I’m sure you would set on fire,” Varya re
torted.
“I’ll give you that.” Sawyer couldn’t find a way to argue with it. “We’ll just stay out of each other’s ways.”
“Good plan.”
Sawyer still didn’t want to like the blonde, but she respected her now. Understood her a little more.
As if on cue, the earth above them opened and they were pushed to the surface.
“That ass,” Sawyer groaned.
“What?” Varya frowned at her.
“Nothing,” she mumbled. Quinn had let her out because she and Varya had worked things out and cooled off. He had been listening.
Sawyer stood up slowly and growled at soldiers staring, wide-eyed, at her and Varya. Most went back to what they were doing, and those that didn’t got yelled at by the Russian. Sawyer even got a chuckle out of it. She limped back to her guys, where most of them were huddled in chairs, talking.
“She did a number on you,” Zander pointed out immediately. Jasper and Elijah were both staring at her as well, but were smart enough not to say anything.
“Fix it, please,” Sawyer pleaded, sitting next to him. She pulled out a cigarette but didn’t light it as Zander gently took her face in his hands. She felt them grow hot and hissed in pain as everything healed. Bones were moving. That wasn’t comfortable.
“Done. You’ll have some light bruising. I can’t fix everything, but that should make sure you have no permanent damage.” Zander pulled his hands away. “Does she need someone?”
“She’d going to their healers,” Sawyer informed him, standing back up. “Vincent is…”
“That way, having a cigarette too,” Elijah told her, pointing off into the dark jungle.
“Thanks,” she said quietly, walking off to go apologize. She had to. He’d wanted to take care of things, and while he probably thought she was justified in the fight with the soldiers, she’d heard him screaming to not kill the guy. She’d been about to anyway.
“Vincent?” she called out, walking further out. She saw his back and sighed. “Vin-”
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 89