The Redemption Saga Box Set

by Kristen Banet

  “To keep my family together?” Sawyer chuckled darkly. She’d done it before and failed. “Always.”

  Sombra brushed against her mind, reminding her of the last time she’d failed. It should have been Midnight, but Sawyer was growing used to her new jaguar. She wanted a lifetime with her new cat, and her men.

  This time, she wouldn’t fail.

  They must have been going much faster than Sawyer originally had. Yasmin raised her hand on the evening of the second day to stop them.

  “We’ll reach the disputed area between Camila and I by nightfall. It’s not that we fight over it, but our magic intermingles. It’s about two miles that belong to both of us. It’s a natural overlap, really.”

  “Where did you find me and Quinn?” Sawyer crossed her arms, leaning on a tree to relax.

  “We passed that already. You made it through this area somehow. Sombra brought you into my territory. Camila was too injured herself to chase until you were in my space. She wouldn’t dare cross into my home to do it.”

  “Why did we stop here?” Sawyer felt like she was out of the loop. Quinn wasn’t saying anything and didn’t seem confused in the slightest.

  “Camila can reasonably begin attacking us once we enter the overlap,” Yasmin answered. “She would wait until we enter her territory fully, if she was smart, but I think she’s too angry for that. She’s in the middle of the overlap, waiting.”

  Sawyer couldn’t see this overlap. It all just looked like jungle to her. “You can feel her,” she said plainly.

  “Of course. The magic in the world might be too much for you, Quinn, and Tez, but we Druids are strong enough to know where our kind is, especially so close.”

  “So we stopped why?”

  “Yasmin wants us to make sure we’re ready for this. She’ll be fighting with Camila for control of the jungle. Any of us could die.”

  “She knows Tez is a healer,” Yasmin whispered into the wind. Sawyer watched her hold her husband’s hand. “She’ll have her target once she knows that we’re in the fight and she probably already assumes we are. Are you ready?”

  “You all need to stop asking me that.” Sawyer huffed. “Let’s do this.”

  She started walking again.

  The Druid Camila stood between her and her home, her men, her new family. Sawyer could only do what she did best now. Kill her for it.

  “I guess we’re doing this now,” Yasmin said with a sigh. “Well.”

  “I’m not sure if Sawyer has ever backed down from a fight,” Quinn commented, following her.

  Together they walked as the sun began to set. With each minute, the lowering of the sun brought out something in Sawyer she’d long put away. When the mission had started, she’d been cranky, distracted by politics, the consequences of everything she did.

  Now, with no soldiers, and only one objective, she focused.

  She hadn’t felt like this in a very long time.

  It was a clarity of sorts. The last few fights she’d been in had been hurried, fights for her life or the lives of others.

  This one was like every assassination she’d ever done. It was a hunt, and it brought her a focus. To fail would mean the deaths of others in an abstract way; she had the time to be patient and consider her options.

  Like every assassination, she thought of objective wins and losses possible. To lose, any or all of her group would need to be dead and Camila would still be alive. The only win condition that included a death was if she died, but so did Camila. Sawyer didn’t acknowledge the idea of the deaths of others. She would need to kill Camila fast enough to keep herself the largest threat and Tez, Quinn, and Yasmin as secondary threats.

  She could use her sublimation to avoid dangers. Phasing was too risky with how fast things would be moving. She couldn’t risk having a vine or snake in her body if she accidentally screwed up, or the chance of losing a limb.

  Blinking would get her close to the Druid and do it quickly. If she got line of sight, or Sombra did and gave her a clear image, Sawyer could get on top of the Druid before she knew how to defend herself.

  For the first time in her life, and probably the only time she ever would, she sent a private thanks to Axel Castello for making her the monster. It was proving to be her strongest skill, her ability to detach and analyze.

  Night was falling, the sun nearly gone, when Yasmin whispered they were entering the overlap. None of them responded to her as they came upon Camila.

  Sawyer was glad for the night, the darkness of the jungle. Now, focused, it didn’t hold surprises for her. It was just her domain.

  “Camila,” Yasmin called out in Spanish. “You wanted to see my new charges?”

  “They invaded my territory and attacked me, Yasmin!” Camila screeched. “Hand them over and walk away.”

  “They were doing their jobs, Camila. I warned you that attacking, thinking you could eradicate humans, only brought trouble. We’re Magi and we answer to the W-”

  “I answer to nobody!” Camila screamed. “This is my territory! I rule! No one is as powerful as me, and it will be run my way!”

  “Camila, they just want to go home, and you are between them and their home,” Yasmin continued to try. “I am going to go with them and talk to the WMC.”

  Sawyer didn’t know this was part of the plan, but she could imagine Yasmin wanted to find any way for this to work that didn’t result in her husband getting killed.

  “I don’t care about the WMC. What can they do to me?” Camila gave a shrill, nearly maniacal laugh.

  “Send more soldiers until they put you down, trample your home.” Yasmin was trying so hard.

  Sawyer felt a breeze and nearly sublimated to let it take her into the darkness but refrained. She needed other things to be happening, a distraction before she moved in on the Druid in front of her.

  “They’ve tried that. After dealing with those two, I need to go clear out a secondary infestation. I’ll kill anyone they send here.” Camila’s face was filled with nothing but contempt. “A plague, that’s all humans are. I won’t let them poison my home any longer.”

  “You are human,” Yasmin told her. “Camila, you are-”

  “I am much more than a human,” Camila snapped. “My time alone here has shown me that I am so much more. The animals bow to my will. Trees grow when I snap my fingers. I’m a Goddess and my bonds are my family.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Yasmin whispered.

  “Hand them over, Yasmin.”

  “No.” Sawyer watched the chin of her new friend go higher. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you kill more people.”

  “You know they were sent here to kill me!” Camila screeched, turning to glare at Quinn. “They even sent Rogue Wolf to do it.”

  “We were sent to investigate the reason you were acting like a bitch,” Sawyer called out. “And kill you if we had to. I would say slaughtering innocent people in their homes and then attacking us in the middle of the night is reason enough to kill you.”

  “Yasmin! Hand them over!” Camila screamed one more time. “Don’t make me go through you.”

  “No. They’re right,” Yasmin answered.

  Sawyer felt power ripple out from each Druid and the rainforest sprang into life. Sawyer took her chance and blinked forward focused on Camila.

  “Not this time,” Camila snarled. Sawyer was nearly done pulling her dagger when the jaguar jumped her.

  She was knocked to the earth and sublimated the moment she could, ignoring the ripping sensation of claws in her skin again. She was used to that pain now; it didn’t surprise her like it had before.

  As she drifted from the jaguar, Sombra pounced on it. Sawyer reformed, smiling at her Sombra. Good girl, she pushed through the bond as her jaguar tumbled into the underbrush with the other one. Sombra outweighed the other, and Sawyer was confident in her cat.

  “TEZ!” Yasmin’s scream shook through the rainforest and a wave of power blasted. Sawyer watched Tez get pulled up and saw Camila alr
eady hiding in her defensive layer of vines.

  It would take too long to kill Camila now. She sublimated and pushed up to Tez, who was trying to pull the vine from around his neck as it pulled him higher. She reformed and grabbed the vine before she could fall back down.

  “Be ready for a hard landing,” she yelled to him in Spanish. She hoped he got it.

  Vines once again tried to grab her, but she held on to the rope with Tez. She phased her wrist through a vine that grabbed it. She’d always been hard to hold down, and now she was putting it to the test, sublimating to get through the ones around her torso.

  She finished cutting through the rope and grabbed Tez’s shoulder. Holding him, she focused on the earth and blinked, the fall turning from thirty feet to only five.

  It still knocked the air out of her. Tez put his hand on her and a flash of burning from his hands made her dazed. Only for a second. She blinked, and he nodded to her, before running back to Yasmin. She looked around to see Quinn pulling up a wall of earth, only for roots of the trees to bust through.

  Sawyer blinked to him. “Where is she?”

  “Hiding. She pulled her cocoon up into the trees. Yasmin can’t bring her down, only keep stuff off me. Tez needs to stay by her, though. He got grabbed trying to heal me.”

  “Make me a jump,” she ordered.

  He nodded, and she felt the earth beneath her rumble. She shot up on a pillar at a speed she had not expected. She would need to remember how he was for the next fight. She was beginning to realize there would also be more fights.

  She was reaching the canopy when the pillar started to crumble instead of growing. A glance down told her roots and vines were tearing into it. She jumped for a branch and pulled herself into the trees.

  She sublimated when something tried to grab her, ignoring what it was. A snake lunged for her when she reformed higher in the trees. She cut its head off after it missed its strike. She climbed higher, trying to keep her eyes open for where Camila would be hiding.

  “Come out, you bitch,” Sawyer snarled out into the trees. “Fucking coward.”

  She sublimated when an animal hit her back, letting it fall through her and down. She reformed, squatting on a thick branch, and glared at the monkey - then her eyes went wide.

  Monkeys lived in family groups. She looked up slowly. There were dozens of them and she was smack dab in the middle.

  “Fuck me.” She growled and sublimated again as more dove for her. They were fucking screaming, but thankfully, the world sounded slightly quieter in her smoke. She flew through the trees, wasting magic and getting away from the damn monkeys, screaming as they jumped around and through her.

  Sawyer needed to find the damn Druid.

  She reformed for only a second and screamed. “COWARD!”

  She sublimated again before the monkeys jumped on her. She took a second to see Quinn pulling earth around the group down below. They were counting on her to find this bitch. Yasmin was overwhelmed, fighting her side of the jungle versus Camila’s. Tez was only a healer and Quinn…

  Beautiful Quinn looked ready to die in a blaze of glory, trying to defend them if they needed it.

  Vines were beginning to wrap around them, but they didn’t seem scared. Sawyer wondered if Yasmin was going to block attacks like Camila was.

  Sawyer went higher in the trees. She was going to run out of magic soon. She got to a branch she could stop on, sheathed her twelve-inch dagger and pull out her kukri. She hacked at the monkeys as they jumped on her. She swung blindly, pulling them off her back when she needed to. She got bit and scratched.

  Eventually, there weren’t any more, but Sawyer looked at her arms and wondered if it was worth the cost to stop and deal with them. They had bit holes in her. She swayed and continued her search.

  She climbed higher. She had a feeling that Camila would have gone as high as she could, letting anything she could stand in the way.

  “COWARD!” Sawyer screamed again. This bitch.

  At nearly the top of a nearby tree was a mass of vines. They were protecting Camila. Sawyer blinked closer, and gasped as she realized that was nearly it. She had nothing left. In the course of the fight, she went from full to empty, and being injured wasn’t helping. If she needed magic now, she’d need to pull directly from her life force, something Sawyer had refused to do since the night she died. It was the thing that had saved her that night.

  “Camila! You little bitch. Show yourself!” Sawyer roared at the Druid in her cocoon.

  Vines came for Sawyer and she had one option. Holding her kukri in one hand, she ran for the cocoon. She jumped and landed on it. The vines grabbed on to her and tried to pull her away.

  She drove the kukri in and pulled it back out, angry when she didn’t see blood. She touched her life force and pulled it for magic, sublimating to get free of the vines trying to pull her away.

  It felt like ten years came off her life in a split second.

  She moved to the other side and stabbed inside again. This one got a scream from inside, muffled and scared. She didn’t pull it out, but instead, she yanked it down, ripping open vines to reveal a bleeding Camila.

  “Don’t kill me,” Camila begged, a bloody wound on her side. “I’ll let you leave! Please!”

  Sawyer considered it for one second. The vine creeping over her shoulder and around her neck made the decision though.

  “There are no gods,” Sawyer snapped, sinking her kukri into the Druid’s chest before the vine could tighten further. It went limp.

  All of it went limp and Sawyer, Camila’s body, and her cocoon dropped like a stone through the air. Sawyer got her kill, and now she needed to not die when she hit the ground. They were nearly two hundred feet in the air. It was a long fall and Sawyer slammed into a branch. Pain bloomed through her body again. She knew there would be more if she didn’t try her magic again.

  She reached inside herself and pulled from her life force again and felt the drag of her lifespan decreasing at a rapid rate again. She sublimated and slowed. The vines of Camila’s cocoon were dragging down things with them, branches and the like. Sawyer moved out of the way and reformed on a safe branch. She sat down slowly on it. She still had a long climb down; watching Camila’s body make the fall towards the group felt like ages. She groaned.

  It was over.

  They just needed to make the trek to the camp now, and hopefully not find the bodies of the people they cared about. She and Quinn couldn’t do it without their team. They were both tied with a need to the other men. She needed them for her freedom and her heart. He needed them for his peace of mind and his heart. They were pack.

  She slid off the branch onto the one below her. She could climb down just fine. No rush. She needed to make sure she didn’t slip and she wasn’t going to call her magic just to make the trip faster unnecessarily.

  When she reached the bottom branch, she jumped and rolled to soften the fall. She didn’t stand up immediately. She rested on her knees until Quinn walked over to her and pulled her up.

  He touched her cheeks gently and pulled her into a kiss that felt like home. Really, it felt like their swimming hole. The woods. His fire pit and lean-to.

  “Well, the assassin once called Shadow,” Yasmin sounded impressed, a little hysterical, and tired. “You are now…the second person on earth to kill a Druid…that isn’t a Druid.”

  “Quinn being the first?” she asked, pulling away from her feral lover. Lover. Such a good word in her mind.

  “Yes, but you are most special. You beat her in combat.” Yasmin sighed, smiling wearily.

  “Oh, good for me,” Sawyer replied with a healthy bit of sarcasm. She was only happy about one thing. She’d won so she could go home.

  There was still so much to do though.

  “We need to get to the campsite and see…” Quinn trailed off.

  “Now’s your chance to decide, Yasmin. Follow us and go back to New York…or turn around and go home.”

  “After that
…I’m coming with you. Tez will stay with our children. I will take some of my animal bonds. They are already on their way. They will catch up before dawn.” The Druid reached out to her and Sawyer closed the distance. She was surprised by Yasmin touching her cheek but was too tired to react in any real way.

  “I see why Sombra waited so long for you,” she whispered. “You are a fierce warrior, Sawyer Matthews.”

  “I try,” Sawyer chuckled in exhaustion. “I’ll be damned if some fucking bitch out in the woods stops me from going home.”

  “Of course,” Yasmin said, smiling sadly. “Thank you, for being so brave and doing this.”

  “I didn’t do it alone,” she reminded the Druid, waving around at all of them. Then she swayed on her feet. Quinn caught her and held her up. Tez jogged to her and Sawyer watched the monkey bites form into tiny scars as his burning hot hands grabbed her forearms.

  “Small. Easy to heal. Scars fade quickly,” Tez said in that broken Portuguese.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, tired.

  “He can’t replace your magic, of course. You will need to take things very easy for quite some time. You’ve completely burned out,” Yasmin told her gently.

  “Yeah. I pulled from my life force there at the end,” she explained. “I know I’m burned out now.”

  “That was foolish,” Quinn murmured in her ear, still holding her to his body.

  “It was the right thing to do,” she retorted, leaning on him. She wasn’t bleeding anymore, but she still ached. Sombra, Shade, and Scout walked into view. Other animals did as well. “I killed a Druid,” she giggled.

  “I would recommend never going into any forests, jungles, or national parks for the rest of your life,” Yasmin said pragmatically. “You might not be welcome.”

  “Can I visit you here?” She probably never would, but Sawyer felt the need to ask. Maybe one day she would revisit that waterfall with Quinn.

  “Yes. If you come back to see us, I would always welcome you.”

  “Then let’s get the fuck out of here,” Sawyer ordered and began to walk, dragging Quinn with her.