Forged in Ember

by Trish McCallan

  While Eve was careful to avoid admitting that Benji could still die—even with the antidote—Amy knew that’s exactly what she was implying.

  How do you go about preparing yourself for that? How do you prepare for the death of your child?

  You didn’t. That was the truth of it. There were some things you just couldn’t prepare for.

  The possibility of Benji’s death was one of them.

  “Alpha One down! Alpha One down!” The shout came through Mac’s radio from one of the Shadow Mountain guys.

  Crack . . . crack . . . crack.

  Mac hit the ground and spat out a mouthful of dirt.

  Shit . . . they’d found the security detail. Or the security guards had found them.

  Crack . . . crack.

  The dirt exploded maybe two feet in front of him. The good news—there was only one rifle, only one shooter. The bad news—there was a fucking shooter, and they had no Goddamn clue where the bastard was. He wasn’t after Mac, though; otherwise he’d be dead. Like the rest of his team, he was stuck out in the open, completely vulnerable. Easy pickings.

  He chanced a lift of his head. Link was still down, Zane on top of him, Jude partially covering Zane.

  None of them were moving.

  Fuck.

  Were they dead?

  Even as the question hit, Zane crawled farther up Link’s body until he was covering him completely. Rawls dove on the pair, adding his body to the pile.

  Crouching, their eyes scanning the courtyard and tree line, Alpha Team formed a protective barrier around the four men on the ground.

  Crack . . . crack . . . crack.

  The warrior closest to Zane jolted and went down.

  Fuck.

  The shooter was aiming for Zane and Link . . . and Rawls, since he was on top.

  Mac shoved down the rush of adrenaline and focused. The shots were coming from above and behind. They needed to find and neutralize that damn shooter. Rolling onto his back, he scanned the tree line.

  A flash of light hit the corner of his NVDs, and he swung his head to the right. There, on the pool house roof, light reflected from a rifle barrel.

  Swinging his rifle up, he sighted on the reflection and fired.

  “Hot spot on the pool house roof.” He shouted the location into his mic and took another shot. Then another. A cacophony of gunfire erupted behind him as Alpha Team bombarded the location.

  “Bravo Two down.” Cosky’s calm voice came through Mac’s radio.

  Bravo Two was Zane. Fuck. Zane had been hit? How badly?

  “Bravo One, go . . . go . . . go,” Cosky said.

  Vaulting to his feet, Mac sprinted for the beach and his wounded buddy as Alpha Team laid down fire to cover him. He passed Jude’s still body. One of the healers was hunched over him, but the only glow he saw was the liquid sheen of blood glazed green by his NVDs.

  The healing wasn’t working.

  Christ . . . that looked bad. Really fucking bad.

  For an instant he considered swinging over and—

  But, fuck, there were plenty of Jude’s buddies surrounding him, and Mac’s priority was getting Link and Zane back to Shadow Mountain alive. He caught up with Cosky, who had Zane’s arm over his shoulder and an arm around his waist while his buddy hopped along beside him.

  Relief shoved the air from his lungs. His LC must have caught the bullet in the leg, but at least he was alive—moving and aware. He grabbed Zane’s right arm and anchored it over his shoulders, and then he wrapped his left arm around his LC’s waist. In unison, he and Cosky lifted him and ran for the boats. He searched for Rawls and Link as they closed in on the water and found the pair in the Hurricane.

  Link’s alive.

  Thank fucking Christ.

  Another storm of gunfire rocked the night, still up high but not from the rooftop.

  “Hot spot neutralized,” a calm voice said through his radio. “Alpha Team, go.”

  “Rawls,” Mac said, relaxing at the news that the shooter was dead. He and Cosky slowed, lowering Zane to the sand. “Patch Zane up and then head over and see if you can do anything for Jude. He’s not moving. Didn’t look like their healing was working. Maybe you can help.”

  He doubted it. He suspected nobody could help Jude now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  WOLF KICKED BACK in the rocking chair, bracing one booted foot on the porch railing, letting the soothing darkness of early morning wash over him. The porch was attached to the double-wide modular house his mother still called home. It had been his home once too, back before Jude had shown him a whole new, often violent world.

  He’d fitted right into the life Jude had introduced him to. Took to the lifestyle like he’d been born into it—which he had. Born and bred for war. His ancestors had been warriors for hundreds of years, as far back into the old times as written and spoken accounts allowed.

  Wolf lifted a glass of iced tea to his lips, imagining the endless vista daylight would reveal. The wide-open prairie with knee-high grass that bowed in the hot wind. The flatness of the land was broken by only the distant bulk of cattle, and the clusters of trees and shrubs that were given life by the Little Wind River.

  The hoot of an owl echoed through the darkness, followed by the distant knicker of a horse. The scent of manure, grass, and dust filled his nostrils. The sounds and smells were familiar yet not. Images from a dream or a life lived eons earlier.

  His mother’s father had owned this land, all seventeen hundred acres of it. Back then they’d raised cattle and horses. With his grandfather’s death, the land and house had passed to his mother . . . and to Jude.

  But his nesi had chosen a different life, one inside concrete walls and tunnels instead of endless, wind-scuffed grass. One of adrenaline highs and midnight ambushes instead of long days under a blistering sun.

  The last of the Eaglesbreath cattle had been sold before Wolf left high school. His mother leased the land now, collecting monthly revenue without working the land herself. Between the lease revenue, the monthly checks from the oil companies, plus the money he funneled into her bank account, she got by okay.

  Taking another sip of his tea, he set the rocker gliding. It was still warm on the porch even though it was more night than morning and borderline fall. The scorching, dry wind was gentler in September—known as the tenth moon, or the moon of the drying grass.

  The porch light came on, the light so bright it burned his eyes. At the squeak and flap of the porch door opening and closing, the honey-colored mutt lying beside his rocking chair lifted its head, golden eyes alert.

  “I see you’ve met Molly,” his mother said. “You should be honored. She avoids most people.”

  Wolf dropped a hand and scratched the dog’s ears. “Golden retriever?”

  “Who knows.” With a shrug, his mother dropped into the second rocking chair beside him.

  This he remembered too. The two of them rocking on the porch together.

  It was a memory that pleased him.

  With both sneaker-clad feet braced on the porch floor, she set the rocker moving. The tail of her thick graying braid, which hung over her shoulder and across her breasts, flickered with each push of her feet. “She’s a stray. Found her way here a few months back.”

  Of course she had. His mother’s house was twenty-four klicks from the nearest neighbor and forty-three klicks from Horse Tail, the nearest town. Yet dogs and cats, along with the occasional goat, pig, and horse, constantly found their way to her door.

  “How many strays you taking care of now?” Wolf asked, glancing at the half dozen dogs and cats napping on the porch. The dogs ranged in size from squeak toy to miniature horse. Long and short hair. Solid to mottled colors. The only things they had in common were full bellies and content eyes.

  “Counting the one you just brought me?”

  Wolf turned his head and scanned his mother’s high cheekbones and oval face. Her comment had been a tease, but she wasn’t wrong. Jillian was a stray.r />
  “I knew you would care for her as well as you care for your four-legged children.” He looked around the packed porch, filled with the canine and feline lives she’d saved.

  He could only hope she’d save Jillian as well.

  She laughed, a deep belly laugh, and sent her chair rocking again. His mother never held her emotions in. She loved hard, laughed hard, cried hard, screamed rage when the anger needed releasing. What you saw was what you got.

  Half Eastern Shoshone and half Northern Arapaho, her heritage had combined to forge a beautiful woman. She’d inherited the oval facial features from her Shoshone mother and the high cheekbones from her Arapaho father. The dark, liquid eyes had come from both, as had the thick, gleaming black hair. As a boy he’d recognized her beauty more by the constant stream of admirers than by his own eyes.

  Her hair was streaked with gray now, her face weathered by sun and wind, but she was still a beautiful woman.

  She rarely spoke of Wolf’s father. He’d broken her heart when he’d left her behind. He’d almost broken her spirit when he’d married the white woman—Kait and Aiden’s mother. What he’d learned of his father had come from Jude, Kait, and Aiden.

  She’d never remarried, never bonded with another man. If she’d had sexual relationships with other men, he’d never been aware of it as a boy.

  Had she loved only the once?

  “She will fare well here, this woman of yours.” She shot him a sly and satisfied smile.

  He hadn’t told her what Jillian was to him, but she knew. He’d never brought a woman to his mother before. Never shared his childhood home with an outsider. His mother didn’t care about the color of Jillian’s skin or her heritage. She cared only that the son she’d feared would never gift her with grandchildren had committed to someone.

  Even if that someone was white and locked in the spirit world.

  She’d waited eighteen years for this day, and he could see the joy brimming in her. Feel her expectations.

  Perhaps bringing Jillian here had been a mistake. If they couldn’t tempt her from the half life, his mother would carry the pain alongside him. It had taken him eighteen years to find Jillian. There would be no other woman for him. He knew this. Just as there had been no other man for his mother. Just as there had been no other woman for Jude after his fiancée’s murder.

  Jude’s Rachel had died well before Wolf’s birth, but he’d heard what had happened. The vengeance his nesi had rained down on the drug dealers who’d taken his Rachel was still legend among the hinono’eiteen.

  Those of the Eaglesbreath family loved hard and once.

  There were no second chances.

  His head turned at the squeak of the screen door opening, and Jillian stepped onto the porch. She’d come out to join them on her own! A jab of hope hit him. Until he saw her eyes. Her hollow, lost eyes.

  “She wanted out,” Jillian said, her voice that dead monotone. She waved an absent hand at the furry, golden bundle pressed against her knee.

  The dog, a carbon copy of the one lying beside his chair, had attached itself to Jillian’s side the moment they’d climbed out of the car. You couldn’t even slip a sheet of paper between the two.

  “Come, sit with us.” Wolf got to his feet and led Jillian to his chair, his stomach knotting at the frailty of the bones beneath his fingers.

  She didn’t protest, just sat down with apathy, the cherrywood of the rocker swallowing her slight frame. Folding her hands, she stared out at the cattle in the distance, her expression vacant. Her canine shadow of golden curled into a fluffy ball at her feet.

  “I’ll get you some tea,” he said, forcing the words through his tight throat.

  It’s been only two days. Two days. This is not a failure.

  Except doubt ate at him.

  He’d showed her around Horse Tail, then took her swimming at his boyhood swimming hole out on Little Wind River. He’d introduced her to Billie Two Thorns and Ryan Helmsteader and the other Shadow Mountain warriors who’d left the base when the call of family had grown too strong or their injuries had been too severe to continue serving their teams.

  She’d greeted each new experience, each new person, with complete and utter apathy.

  Silence and darkness closed around him as he stepped through the screen door. He didn’t bother turning on the lights, simply made his way through the house relying on memory and touch. The kitchen hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been here. The middle cupboard, which held the glasses, still wobbled when he opened the door. The tile counters were still chipped but scrubbed spotless. The table tucked against the east window was still ringed by three chairs. His childhood captured in perpetuity.

  He’d just filled two glasses of sun tea and returned the pitcher to the fridge when Jude died.

  He didn’t realize for two . . . three . . . heartbeats that Jude was gone, that the link connecting their minds had ruptured. His nesi—no, father—his best friend was agonizingly absent from his mind. There had been no pain, no fear, no goodbye, nothing to warn him—prepare him—for the greatest loss of his life.

  Just sudden, complete emptiness where the connection to Jude had been.

  His body reacted instinctively. Every muscle clenched. His breath caught. His head swam. His mind screamed in denial.

  No. Damn it. No. Not Jude.

  He frantically searched the emptiness of his mind.

  Nothing.

  Jude was gone.

  Through the mental web that connected the Shadow Mountain warriors’ consciousness, a roar of disbelief built. A howl of grief. A hundred minds mourning a loss that reverberated so deep it diminished them all.

  Eric pulled back Esme’s chair and waited for her to seat herself. It was a simple gesture but one he took great pleasure in performing. Esme deserved the very best of care, and that included small but significant gestures like opening doors for her or seating her at tables.

  “Thank—” She tilted her head to direct an appreciative smile up at him, but her words were drowned by the scream of an airliner overhead. He glanced up with a disgusted shake of his head. The noise pollution these days was out of control. He looked forward to when the sky would be reserved for migrating birds rather than these endless airplanes and military jets.

  As she lowered her head again, he eyed the vulnerable curve of her neck. He smiled. Sometimes good manners came with perks. Bending, he nuzzled the sweet spot at the nape of her neck.

  She shivered, her fingers stilling on the napkin in her lap.

  His smile grew. He knew all her sweet spots, the places that made her shiver or sigh—just as she knew all his. But before he could get creative and show her just how well he knew her, his cell phone buzzed against his hip.

  He knew who it was before reaching for it.

  “That can only be our American friend,” Esme said dryly, echoing his thoughts. “Once again proving his terrible timing.” She sighed and went to work spreading the napkin across her lap. “You might as well take it. It’s for the best, really. I’m famished, and if lunch had continued in the manner it was headed—well, I’d likely perish from malnutrition and overexertion.”

  “Yes.” He leaned over to kiss the hollow just below her left ear. “But what a way to perish.”

  With a laugh she brushed his mouth away, and Eric straightened, dragging the phone from his pocket. Sure enough, Coulson’s phone number was emblazoned across the screen. After punching the Talk button, he lifted the cell to his ear.

  “Coulson.” He shot Esme a conspiratorial smile. “What a surprise.”

  “Do you get the West Coast news channels?” Coulson demanded immediately, not bothering with niceties.

  “The United States’ West Coast?”

  Like most Americans, David Coulson was completely unaware of geography outside his own little neck of the woods. There were dozens of west coasts in the world. America didn’t corner that market by any means—not that you’d know it from listening to its clueless ci
tizens.

  “Yes, the US West Coast. Seattle specifically.” Coulson’s voice rose impatiently, totally missing Eric’s subtle message.

  “Yes, I can get Seattle’s news, but it will take a few minutes to access the channel. Why don’t you just tell me what you want me to hear? It will save us both time.”

  For once his American counterpart didn’t launch into one of his smug, self-aggrandizing sneer campaigns. “Someone broke into Link’s estate last night. Link is missing, his security detail dead.”

  Eric froze, the ramifications of the news racing through his mind. “All of his security is dead?”

  “There were three on duty, correct?” Coulson said, impatience growing thicker.

  “Per shift, yes.”

  “Then they took out the night shift. The news is reporting three security officers dead. And Link missing.”

  Eric swore softly, rubbing at the sudden throb behind his temples. One of those security officers had been his man. He’d installed someone loyal to him on each shift for exactly this scenario. “My man was under strict orders to take out Link if something like this were to occur.”

  He’d also been under strict orders to take the rest of the security team out first, in case they questioned his targeting or agenda. The deaths of the other security guards and Link himself would be shuttled off on the people doing the breaking and entering.

  God knew they couldn’t afford to have Link in enemy hands, not with everything he knew about the NRO, the people involved, and their upcoming agendas. Christ, he even knew the date and location of the next meeting.

  “Well, it looks like your man failed,” Coulson snapped. His tone implied it wasn’t a surprise—that Eric failed so often it was to be expected.

  Eric stiffened, his fingers tightening around the phone. Too bad it wasn’t Coulson’s thick red neck. “We don’t know my guy failed. He could have taken out Link.”

  “Right.” A definite sneer rode the tone. “And they decided to make off with Link’s body. For what exactly? You can’t interrogate the dead. There would be no reason to take him unless he was alive.”