Forged in Ember

by Trish McCallan

  It was an annoying mental voice. One full of condescension and unwelcome truths. One that had been growing stronger by the hour since Jude’s death, since that moment in the kitchen when his life had crashed to a halt, only to take off on a new trajectory.

  An unwelcome trajectory.

  It had taken five hours for the Citation to touch down at Riverton Regional Airport. He was two hours into the four-hour flight returning him to Shadow Mountain. Which added up to too many hours and too much distance. Too much time lost in his own mind, caressing vengeful wishes, exploring the uselessness of if onlys.

  His mother’s haunted face rose in his mind. The way her shoulders had frozen under his hand as his words hit her ears and detonated in her mind. The way her body had sagged from the blow. The sudden dimming of her bright eyes. The dullness of shock and flood of anguish across her face.

  She hadn’t cried. His mother, who wore her emotions as an outer skin, who laughed and cried and screamed without barriers, hadn’t wept or screamed at the death of her hisoh’o. She’d drawn her anguish in close and held it there. The pain was so raw she couldn’t release it.

  Had Jillian even noticed their grief? Their sorrow? Had she questioned his sudden return to base? Had she noticed he was gone? Rage flashed, roared through him with the heat of a thousand suns.

  He tried to tamp it down.

  It was not Jillian the fury clawed at. He knew this. Knew the rage would crest and fall, and he must steer the descent into calmer waters. But it was difficult. Here he sat with too much time to remember and regret.

  If only he hadn’t allowed Mackenzie to convince him of Link’s necessity. There would have been no mission, no ambush. No death.

  Maybe not Jude’s death, that annoying voice inside him chided. But there would have been deaths. At least two. Children’s deaths.

  He scowled at the reminder.

  If only he’d ignored Neniiseti’s directive and refused to take Jillian away. He would have been on base to lead the team. Jude would not have died.

  You would have been banished. Jude would have led the team. He would have still died.

  If only he’d dropped off Jillian at his mother’s house and returned immediately to base. He could have led the mission, and Jude would be alive.

  This time that annoying voice in his brain remained silent.

  He should have returned to base immediately. Jillian wouldn’t have cared. His presence had been for his sake, not hers. She’d paid more attention to the stray dog that had attached itself to her than she’d paid to him.

  While he’d been shepherding a woman who didn’t need him, Jude had died.

  That was the crux of it. The root of his rage.

  Mackenzie was an asshole, but he’d been right. They did need Link. Not just because of Amy Chastain and her doomed children, but because of Faith’s doomsday device. Link was their best shot at running that device down and destroying it before the NRO used it themselves with horrific results.

  The mission had been imperative, but Jude shouldn’t have been leading the Shadow Mountain teams; Wolf should have been.

  Jude was dead because Wolf had let his personal entanglements supersede his Shadow Mountain commitments. His duty to his men. To his people. To Shadow Mountain Command.

  Jude was dead because of him.

  He closed his eyes. He pressed his forehead against the icy glass window and looked out over the cold white clouds the jet was surfing across.

  I should have been there.

  The words rolled through his mind, knocking every other thought aside. That little voice that had been annoying him all day remained silent. Because it knew he was right.

  Jude had died because of him.

  What would have happened if they’d swapped positions was impossible to say. It could have been Wolf who’d died last night and Jude mourning the loss of a son. Or Wolf’s warning beacon could have triggered and warned them of the sharpshooter above in time to take him out before any shots were fired.

  Why it hadn’t gone off anyway was something he didn’t want to examine too closely. Jude’s sense would not have triggered as his was the death foretold. But for Wolf’s not to trigger—such a failing indicated something unforeseen and unchangeable.

  Which played hell with his self-accountability.

  By the time the Citation landed on Shadow Mountain and taxied to its hangar lift, Wolf had locked the rage and grief down tight. He stepped out of the plane to find Neniiseti’ waiting for him.

  The elder carried his sorrow in the slight curve of his shoulders and the trenches carved in his face. Wolf stopped before him, offering the half bow of respect.

  “Was Link worth it?” Wolf asked, his jaw so tight it hurt to open his mouth.

  Neniiseti’ shrugged. “There is no measuring such things. However, the nih’oo3oo knows much.”

  “He’s sharing what he knows?”

  Neniiseti’ nodded before turning. Wolf stepped up to his side. “He knows how to help Amy’s children?”

  “He does not. However, he has opened another path. One we would not have known without his words.”

  Wolf mulled that over. Not the best outcome, but not the worst either. “What of Faith’s machine?”

  “He does not know of its whereabouts, but he has given us names. Many names. One of these names is charged with this device and the alterations they have made to it.”

  Now that sounded much more promising.

  “This, at least, is much more than we had before,” Wolf murmured.

  But Neniiseti’ was right. There was no way to measure what they’d gained from the mission to grab Link against what they had lost. There was no equivalency between the two.

  “The spirit of the eagle runs strong through your clan,” Neniiseti’ said without looking at Wolf. “It is imperative you bring in a lieutenant.”

  Wolf nodded. The elder was right. With Jude gone, they needed to show a second the ways, someone to step in when Wolf was dispatched to the ancestors. If both Jude and Wolf had died at the same time, an Eagle Clan elder from the Southern Arapaho tribe would have been brought in to teach the ceremony to the fledgling chieftain of the Northern Arapaho tribe. And so it had been since the old times.

  It was preferred that the ways be taught from within the clan as there were deviations between the Northern and Southern tribes.

  Within the Eagle Clan, his mother’s family line ran strong. Descendants of the Eaglesbreath family had held the Eagle Clan chiefdom since the old times, but he was the last of the Eaglesbreath warriors. If he produced no sons, his lineage would die with him. It was time to look outside his bloodlines for a lieutenant.

  “I dreamed last night,” Neniiseti’ said. When Wolf stiffened, the elder shook his head. “Not of your woman. I dreamed of two tei’yoonoh’o’. One a girl with hair the color of corn after ripening. The other a boy with hair as black as the blackest among the people.”

  Kait and Aiden? But why dream about them as children?

  “Within the bluest of blue skies rode a shadow. It descended closer and closer to the two on the ground. It landed on a fence post near the tei’yoonoh’o’. So close they could taste the breath of the creator. See the fierce wisdom of Be:he:teiht in his eyes. It held them there for many heartbeats before flying back to the creator and gifting the tei’yoonoh’o’ with two feathers.”

  “They are Eagle Clan,” Wolf said, instantly understanding the meaning of the dream.

  The eagle was sacred among the hinono’eiteen. As the eagle was seen as the mediator between the creator and those who walked the earth, sightings were good luck, something to celebrate. But only Eagle Clan members had close encounters with the spirit bird.

  When the hiinooko3onit had inducted Wolf into the Eagle Clan, he had done so in the same manner as Neniiseti’ had described in his dream. The spirit bird had landed on a fence post next to Wolf’s horse. The spirit of Be:he:teiht had radiated from the bird. Wolf had been lost in the spirit eagle�
�s fierce gaze for heartbeat after heartbeat. And then the spirit had screamed and flown up into the sky, leaving a single tail feather behind.

  The sacred feather.

  His induction into the Eagle Clan.

  He’d been thirteen when the spirit had visited him, and he’d never shared the story of his induction with anyone. Not even Jude. Clan inductions were private, but he’d known what to expect. From Jude, from his mother, from the many grandfathers and grandmothers—of both his lineage and outside—who’d passed the traditions down to him. He’d known what a visit from a spirit animal felt like, what it meant, and what to do with the sacred totem it left behind. His hand closed over the bulk of the totem pouch that rested close to his heart. He was never without it.

  Kait and Aiden had not been so lucky. They’d had no clue they’d been inducted into a clan. Had they kept the feathers? Had they realized there was something special, something sacred in that moment? They had never mentioned the incident to him. Inductions came to children not long after puberty. Perhaps they had forgotten.

  Then the questions arose.

  Clans tended to travel within families. As Neniiseti’ had noted, the Eagle Clan was strong in his mother’s father’s family—within the Eaglesbreath lineage.

  But Kait and Aiden were not Eaglesbreath. They and Wolf shared the same father, but they had different mothers. Eagle Clan had been passed down to him through his mother—his mother’s father, specifically.

  “This explains the strength in Kait’s hands, although an Eagle Clan healer is rare.” And precious, Wolf acknowledged silently. “But like my father, Aiden carries the keeper’s gift.” Precognition—in many forms—was common in the Owl Clan. Aiden carried the gift of fortune; Wolf carried the gift of knowing immediate danger surrounding his friends and family. A gift that had utterly failed him during the night. When the grief spurred rage, he shut down that line of thought, focusing on the conversation at hand. “Kait and Aiden are of my father’s blood. They hold no claim to my mother’s lineage. The Owl Clan, not the Eagle Clan, is strong in my father’s line. Where did this clan claim come from?”

  Neniiseti’ raised a grizzled eyebrow. “You have the foreshadow of the Owl Clan but were claimed by the hiinooko3onit.” Neniiseti’ frowned. “We would do well to map your sire’s bloodline. For the hiinooko3onit to claim all three of his tei’yoonoh’o’, the eagle must have been strong in his blood, and we have need of more Eagle warriors.”

  Wolf nodded. There were more than nine thousand Northern Arapaho on the Wind River reservation. He knew where his fraternal grandparents had resided in Riverton, but he’d had no interest in engaging with them. Or with his various aunts and uncles or cousins. From his mother’s accounts of his father’s childhood and adolescence, he’d had good cause for turning his back on his family, casting aside his heritage, and never looking back. Alcoholics and drug addicts had proliferated among the Little Horse lineage.

  They still did, from what he’d seen.

  “Bring your brother to me. The Eagle Spirit has spoken. He calls his lost children home.”

  “Yeah.” Wolf wiped a hand down his face. “Aiden is not all that enamored with his Arapaho heritage.”

  Neniiseti’ shrugged. “You must change this.”

  Right.

  Wolf sighed. Maybe Jude would have some idea . . . The thought fractured as he remembered Jude would not be advising him of anything anymore.

  For the first time in his life, he was truly alone.

  Mac watched as his suggestion that Kait accompany them into Leonard Embray’s room and heal him there detonated around the table.

  “No way in fucking hell,” Cosky roared, bolting up from the table without pushing his chair back. It crashed to the floor behind him.

  Mac winced, and the pounding in his head jumped from a bongo to a bass drum.

  Well, that had gone over about as well as he’d expected. Grimacing, Mac rubbed at the throbbing behind his temples. Christ, what he wouldn’t give for a few hours of decent sleep . . . or, hell, even some Excedrin.

  It had been a long night, and day, followed by night again.

  “Since our whole damn plan hinges on Kait healing the bastard, we have to bring her,” Mac reminded him, forcibly keeping his tone calm and reasonable. Christ knew there was enough shouting going on; he didn’t need to add his own voice to the mix.

  “Not into the fucking house.” Cosky turned on him with the cold intensity of a viper, pure death glittering in his gray eyes. “She can heal him from the fucking chopper.”

  Rawls turned his chair enough to catch his teammate’s eyes. “See, that’s not gonna work, Cos. If Embray is hooked to a ventilator like Link says, the minute we unhook him he’ll stop breathing. He’ll be dead long before we reach the chopper.”

  “Then bring the fucking machine,” Cosky snapped.

  “Yeah.” Rawls cocked his head, scratching his chin. “They weigh a ton and need electricity. The only way this plays is if Kaity comes in with us.”

  Cosky’s jaw tightened as he set his feet and locked his knees. All go for war. “Not. Gonna. Happen.”

  “We’ll keep her safe.” Mac stepped in for a round of convincing. “Hell, according to Link, there’s no security.” Or at least not much. “We’ll go in first, clear the place out. Make sure we’re good to go, and then we’ll bring in Kait.”

  Cosky bared his teeth at him. “Sure, ’cause that worked so fucking well last night, didn’t it?”

  Not quite the same scenario, but close enough. Fuck, Cosky had a point. Mac sat back again, gazing longingly at the last sliver of amber in the bottle of Jack. The fact he wanted it so badly he could taste the bite on his tongue told him, clear as hell, he needed to let the bottle sit.

  No way was he turning into his old man. He knew when to let the bottle go.

  “If Kait doesn’t come in with us, then this mission doesn’t happen,” Mac said, letting some of his building frustration creep into his voice. “She has to be in that room.”

  Cosky shot him an I-don’t-give-a-shit look. Which nudged Mac’s frustration into the pissed-off zone.

  “I’ll let you explain to Amy why you let her kids die.” A low blow, but the stubborn bastard deserved it.

  “She doesn’t need to heal him in the damn room. She can do it from the chopper.”

  “He’ll be dead by then,” Rawls reminded him.

  “She pulled you back from the dead. Faith back from the dead. She can pull him back too.”

  They’d been over this terrain repeatedly and were getting nowhere. It was too bad they couldn’t enlist Willie or One Bird, but they were flying solo on this mission. The Shadow Mountain crew were up to their collective braids in their tribal traditions, arranging Jude’s funeral.

  All Neniiseti’ had said was the ceremony would take three days, and all the Shadow Mountain warriors would be attending. Upcoming missions were grounded. At least in terms of Shadow Mountain support. They were lucky they’d been given a pilot, although they suspected their new pilot wasn’t entwined in the Shadow Mountain culture.

  There was no way in fuck he was gonna complain, though, not after what happened last time. At least when it was just him and his men, there were a lot fewer men to worry about. Of course if they brought Kait, that would bring with it a whole new headache.

  Fuck . . . they were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.

  “Look,” Zane tried again, his tone reasonable. “If there is more security than we expected, we won’t take her in. If we take fire, any fire at all, we won’t take her in. We’ll cover every possible angle.”

  “No.” Cosky folded tense arms over his chest, his face so hard it looked carved from steel. “Goddamn it. You know as well as I do that we can’t cover every angle.”

  His furious gaze traveled the table, damning them all.

  Mac scowled and slumped in his chair, eyeing the bottle of Jack again. The bastard had that right too. No matter how hard you tried, you could
n’t prepare for everything. It was one of the first things you learned when you joined the team.

  When Rawls opened his mouth to take another run at his teammate, Mac caught his eye and shook his head. There was another way around this roadblock. Cosky would hate him for it, come after him with all barrels blazing, but it would get Kait Winchester in that room.

  The knock that hit his door was a welcome interruption. Tempers needed a chance to cool before more planning could take place. They also needed to get Link back. While they had mapped out most of the retreat where Embray was being held, there had been a couple of questions they hadn’t gotten to before Shadow Command had hauled Link to the war room to question him themselves.

  At least Link’s answers to Neniiseti’ and the other Shadow Mountain interrogators had provided useful information. He’d answered all their questions with the same openness he’d answered theirs. He’d given them names, companies, locations, even clandestine operations conducted by the NRO.

  He’d furthered their understanding of the organization considerably. What James Link hadn’t mentioned to anyone was whether their adaption of Faith’s device had interfaced with any NRO members’ brain patterns and enhanced their mental capabilities.

  A small comfort under the circumstances.

  Still, Shadow Command had seemed pleased with the wealth of information Link had given them. Jude’s sacrifice had likely saved millions of lives.

  Mac shook his head as he reached for the door. He doubted Wolf would see it that way. It was obvious the two men had been close. Wolf was much more likely to react with blame than gratitude next time they encountered each other.

  In fact, he half expected Wolf to be at the door with his fists cocked and ready. Neniiseti’ had said that Wolf would return by early afternoon, and according to the blinking clock on his coffeepot, it was well past that now. When he opened the door, two flat-faced guards, with Link between them, stood before him.

  “We have finished with him for now,” one of the sentries said, giving their captive a light shove forward.

  Mac stepped back to allow Link inside. “Good timing,” he told the men before looking at Link. “We’ve got more questions for you.”