It wasn’t the headache blooming in my temples nor the pangs of hunger that woke me at last; it was the bark of testosterone-laced voices shouting in the distance.
My eyes blinked open to a pale white canopy of mosquito netting near my face. Muscles ached as I turned onto my back, brain struggling to wake even as my body moved. I stifled a yawn and drew myself up, looking around. The other cots were empty, Laurel and Dawson both missing.
I’d slept in the clothes I’d changed into the night before so I was decent as I kicked off the sheets and swung my feet to touch the dirt ground. I hadn’t time to pause long enough to rub sleep from my eyes when the shouting drew my attention again and I launched forward, batting away the mosquito netting and stumbling across the tent. Sand skidded under my bare, sleep-numb feet, my hair bound in a loose ponytail swishing across my back and shoulders. Chill morning air met me, icing the skin my tank top left exposed, and I blinked against the daylight, eyes adjusting to take stock of the camp.
A handful of figures stood outside the tent on the other side of the fire pit from mine—a tent I struggled and failed, with my sleep-deprived brain, to remember who had been occupying. I recognized Laurel and Dawson hanging back, one on either side of the tent and both looking at me as I stalked forward.
“What the hell is going on?” I didn’t wait for an answer, instead jerking open the tent flap even as Laurel started to argue.
The tent must’ve been the mercenaries’—Brandon, wounded but still alive, lay on a cot to the side. His left arm was a stump now, tied and bandaged just below the elbow; the gauze was soaked dark red, almost black with blood. His pants were cut over the right leg and his thigh tied off as well, but veins ran black under his skin, whatever venom the drakones carried doing its work. His flesh was soaked with sweat, sheet over the mattress beneath him dark with it as well, and his skin had gone scarily pale.
I had no love for the mercenary with the situation he’d put me in the night before, but the sight of his poisoning made me flinch in empathy—numerous times, I’d been close enough to those fangs to be bitten, and I could all but feel the creature on me last night as I fought to avoid its mouth. Pain flashed in my thigh again where its nails had dug in.
I blinked and took in everything else; the space was full to capacity. Mr. Rolph stood near the cot, angling himself between people with his arms out and hands splayed in a supplicating gesture. To the right was Tucker, face so red his hair was pure white in contrast, and Curtis at his side pointing a gun past Mr. Rolph; to the left was West at the end of the cot, deadly calm, head tilted down and eyes glowing blue under black brows.
He also had a SIG Combat pistol.
Aimed at Brandon.
The air in the tent was thick and tense, stinking of blood and antiseptic, and the sick-sweet scent of approaching death. I braced, reaching for my hip to realize I wasn’t armed, and glanced between them all again as my heart beat hard. Brandon’s head thrashed to the side, unfocused eyes blinking in the low light. Whether he knew the gun was on him or not, I wasn’t sure.
I dropped my voice as I repeated my previous inquiry. “What the hell is going on?”
No one spoke for seconds that stretched into a full minute.
It was Tucker, to my surprise, who broke the silence. “He came in here about to shoot Brandon.”
A flash of movement caught my eye, Curtis tightening her fingers on the Glock in her hands, muscles in her arms going taut.
I swallowed dryly. “Okay—”
“See,” West interrupted smoothly, not taking his focus from the near-incapacitated man on the cot instead of worrying about the very real, pissed off threat holding a gun on him, “there’s this rule Ashford has, which includes not threatening his employees and putting a job at risk. Instead, Mr. Kelso here made a reckless decision that resulted not only in his current predicament, but me being down a team member, and we had to collapse the nest room to ensure we could leave without being followed, which was our path through the cave. I’m not in a very good mood about that.”
He was just so fucking calm, a chill rolled through me and my feet fought to inch backward. His gaze was as steady as the gun in his hand and I had absolutely no doubt he could shoot everyone in the tent and not blink an eye.
“Put your fucking gun down,” Curtis warned, her voice like sandpaper scratching the tense air around us.
Rolph shifted uneasily, his dark eyes tracking back and forth between the people on either side of him. “Let’s all keep calm—”
“We’re not keeping calm while he’s threatening to shoot one of our own,” Tucker spat.
I strongly suspected he wasn’t threatening so much as about to demonstrate. “Okay, Brandon sucks over what he did, but he’s also about to die of drakon poisoning so this seems kinda pointless.”
“There’s a lesson to be learned here,” West said simply.
Despite the fact he was about to put out of his misery the person who damn near got me killed—which would’ve left my kid motherless—a sick feeling wormed in my gut at the idea of things going down the way it appeared they were about to. “A lesson he can’t appreciate, what with being dead and all. Now, he’s dying. I’m going to guess here and say there’s no antivenin. You want to let someone put a bullet in his head and end it now out of mercy, I’m on board with that. But he’s beyond revenge or warnings being useful at this point, don’t you think?”
“Not a lesson for him. But I would like Mr. Tucker and Ms. McKay to pay very close attention right now as I’m going to say this exactly once.” His voice was as dark as the shadows in the tent, and just as deadly, perhaps, as the weapon in his hand. “They are here as backup. The chain of command from now on starts and ends with me. They are not to threaten anyone nor make decisions. If I suspect one of them is about to step out of line, he or she gets a bullet in their skull. If one of them succeeds in stepping out of line, both will be wishing for a bullet though I assure everyone present I’m adept at making pain last indefinitely.”
More silence and I was at a loss of what to say, my stomach churning and clenching, ready to evict its contents if I’d actually eaten anything recently. My gaze darted from person to person, watching the realization sink in.
They weren’t saving their friend from this.
Curtis straightened her arms, jaw set and eyes narrowing. “We protect our own and you aren’t killing him.”
“Think, McKay. Think about what you’ve been told. Do you really want to test my reflexes at the moment?”
The mercenary didn’t move but for her square jaw working, teeth grinding. No one dared breathe but Brandon, who flinched and gasped with pain, still unable to focus on anyone.
“Put down the gun and step out,” West warned.
Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. My arms grew tired just thinking of how long they’d all been standing like that, holding firearms.
A full ninety seconds later, Curtis turned and stalked from the tent, jarring my arm as she pushed passed me. The fabric flap snapped in her wake before settling again.
My chest ached, like I still couldn’t breathe as I looked back at the nearly-dead man on the cot.
“Look,” I bit out, “I am the one he fucked with. I get ending his suffering, but surely there’s a better way—”
“Step outside, Ms. Talbot.” He pronounced my name carefully, nearly monotone, and still didn’t take his gaze from Brandon.
Blood drained from my face and I went lightheaded, like my legs might give out and drop me on my ass. “West—”
His voice turned colder. “Leave, Olivia.”
My gaze darted again to Brandon. Before I could speak again, Mr. Rolph was crowding my space, urging me to step back. My spine hit the tent flap and it gave, my bare feet stumbling on the dirt as I ended up outside. I stared, still, as the flap closed again, a tangle of emotion twisting in me—something horrified and sick even if part of me thought the mercenaries were getting what was coming to them. Still, I would’
ve fired them, perhaps, not kept them around with threats—no, promises—of violence.
But you’re not the enforcer for a very wealthy—and apparently very dangerous—man, now are you?
Even worse, I was starting to wonder if Ashford truly was the dangerous one.
I swallowed, my throat parched and aching, and blinked against the rising sun. Laurel stepped away from the tent, avoiding my gaze, and Dawson’s face had gone sickly pallid as he approached me.
“He stayed up all night watching the video.”
I blinked again, shaking myself from my reverie, and met his eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“The recording from the cave—yours. He sat up reviewing it all night I think—was there this morning still. Got to the end fifteen minutes ago, picked up a gun from his tent, and went in there and everyone started shouting.”
Jesus. I shivered and turned, unable to even look in the direction anymore, feeling ill like I’d failed—somehow—in leaving Brandon to his fate in there. I started walking back to my tent.
I hadn’t taken more than three steps when a single gunshot cracked the peaceful air.
19
Return to Kadhim
The atmosphere around camp was solemn and silent.
I cleaned my hair with waterless shampoo, dressed for the caves, then restocked my bag and sheathed my backup knife at my belt. I didn’t feel like eating but forced myself to consume some fruit and an energy bar, and downed a lot of water. Dawson had a new cave radio for me, but I knew this time that if we had to call for help, it wouldn’t do any good. I took my phone from him once more and tried to call Martin but it went straight to voicemail; I left my cell again with Dawson, the heavy sense of just in case weighing on me.
Laurel wasn’t coming. I didn’t argue or even ask when I saw her sitting by Dawson’s table, making herself useful typing up something on his laptop. Glasses were perched on the bridge of her nose but couldn’t hide the hollows under her cheeks. She gave me a brief nod when she saw me, then went back to work.
It would not surprise me if she happened to be typing her letter of resignation already.
While the others were preparing their gear in silence, I saw Mr. Rolph head for the Jeep first, his large backpack slung over his shoulder. I latched onto my backpack and jogged after him, putting distance between West, his team, the mercs, and myself for a few moments of conversation.
Mr. Rolph’s steps slowed for me to catch up when we were a ways from the camp.
“Now that we know the creatures are Drakones Aithiopes, I’d wondered if you’d recovered anything else regarding them that might be of use?”
He shook his head. “Mentioned only vaguely in Greek texts from about two thousand years ago, when they allegedly existed above ground. They’re capable of eating elephants and are among the longest-lived animals.”
I didn’t think he referred to parrots or sea turtles. “They existed pre-Pulse?”
“Could’ve.”
When he offered nothing more, I pressed. “They can’t be just four years old.”
“There are...some things that basically went dormant, activated during the Pulse. They tend to be referred to as Pulse-born. Shamans you would’ve encountered are like that—the Pulse woke genes that makes them capable of certain things now.”
“But the drakones can’t be...snakes or something with dormant genes that turned them into dragons?”
He shrugged, and wasn’t looking at me, which I found no comfort in. “It’s a possibility. I don’t know the how or the why. It’s a new world, Ms. Talbot.”
That was true. Much like stepping into a rainforest and discovering a hundred brand-new different species, post-Pulse there was so much to seek and document and understand.
After this trip, though, I was looking forward to limiting my discovery to what dust bunnies were hiding under my sofa cushions.
“Is that what West is, then?” I asked, remembering Dawson had supposed something similar last night. “Pulse-born?”
“West is something else entirely.”
I waited, but he didn’t continue, and honestly the thought of pressing for more information regarding Ashford’s enforcer just did not appeal to me at all, so I said nothing. If he wasn’t Pulse-born...what the hell did that even make him?
Mr. Rolph sighed after a few more minutes of walking in silence. “That was an ugly thing you had to witness this morning, and I’m sorry for it.”
I clasped the strap of my bag and hunched my shoulders as we walked. “I probably seem silly, caring that much about someone who drew a gun on us and was only going to die anyway.”
“It’s unexpected,” he conceded, still staring straight ahead. We neared the Jeep and both eased our packs into the back. He leaned against the hood, watching and waiting for my explanation.
“My very first job was three years ago.” I avoided his steady gaze and looked for a moment instead at the rising sun on the horizon. “My brother was searching for this sword in southern Scotland. One of my friends from school had married into the family who owned the land the sword was allegedly hidden on and Martin—my brother—offered me a modest sum just to worm my way in as her friend and get his team permission to search the location.”
“Dyrnwyn,” he said, and I met his gaze immediately. “Or ‘White-Hilt.’ I’ve read your file. You were the one who found it, too.”
I nodded and came to lean on the side of the Jeep next to him, staring over the field at the others moving in the distance toward us. “Yeah. Bitten by the treasure hunting bug first time out. But what’s probably not in my file is how we had someone on the team who double crossed us and I nearly lost that sword. Another team member died. And there was constant fighting and bickering, and all it took was that one job to teach me something.”
“What’s that?”
“Not to sound cliché, but there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’, Mr. Rolph. Things fell apart for us because we weren’t working together. I may not like the people I have to work with sometimes and more than once I considered shooting Brandon myself. But the only way anyone comes out of jobs like these alive is if we have one another’s backs. That is why no one gets left behind and why I have a problem with West deciding to shoot an unarmed man as a lesson for others.”
Silence stretched and I sensed my companion readying a reply I might not like.
“West,” he began at last, “has the same goal. But he reaches it by making examples and insisting people follow the chain of command.”
Which now begins and ends with him. I clearly saw him now, the other team members flanking him as they walked toward us, and I avoided his stare as, even fifty yards away, I felt it weighing on me. “Am I now obsolete in this mission?”
“To the contrary,” Mr. Rolph said. “This is still your show.”
“Even with a cat prancing around on stage?” I dropped my voice some, as I had little doubt West’s unique abilities included better-than-human hearing.
Mr. Rolph’s mouth fought a grin. “He’ll mark his territory and back down when he’s sure everyone’s sufficiently scared of him.”
“I should’ve brought catnip.”
The closer the others came, the more restless I was, chest tightening with anxiety.
“He’ll have your back,” Mr. Rolph spoke up after a few minutes.
I glanced at him but his gaze was focused on West, still walking toward us. He seemed awfully familiar with West, which was odd as I was under the impression Mr. Rolph didn’t know Ashford prior to being hired for this excursion. “Do you?”
“Do I...?”
“Have my back.”
He gave me a sideways look and a faint smile. “Absolutely.”
Call me crazy, but I believed him.
❇
Tucker was still coming with us, for some reason, despite the broken hand which he had properly set now, along with Curtis. Three of West’s remaining team members were there, as well as Buttons himself. He was dressed head to toe in his black
tactical gear with a knapsack slung over one shoulder. He handed me a new helmet, which I accepted without a word, avoiding his eyes.
The fact that he’d killed a man in cold blood that morning would not leave my mind, despite Mr. Rolph’s assurances.
Eight people did not fit in the Jeep all that well. One of West’s men drove, West in the passenger seat, and the other six of us crammed into the back, Curtis and myself tucked on the floor. The Jeep jostled me and items in my bag dug into my back for the duration of the trip; they pulled to a stop near the spot where we’d climbed out of previously.
In daylight, I saw the digging equipment off to the side under a camo tarp held down by rocks; floodlights on tripods were aimed at the hole, hooked to a small generator, though turned off. I climbed from the back of the Jeep and stretched my legs, still aching all over. The more I moved, the sooner I’d hopefully stop feeling like someone had scooped out my muscles, dumped sand in my limbs, then sewed them shut again.
I paced while I waited for the others to unload and check their gear, nervous energy running through me. We were, at least, very near the pitch we’d come out of. It wouldn’t take long to get back to where we’d left. They’d collapsed the room with the drakones, yes, but perhaps there would be another somewhere nearby. Either that or we’d be hauling around a whole lot of rocks.
I didn’t help West and Mr. Rolph set up new ropes to lower us below. While they did that, I slipped on a new harness I’d been provided with, over my gun harness which I would not be going without now. My guns were reloaded and ready, fresh mags and one in the chamber, back up ammo sealed in my pack. It was an awkward set up over my spare coveralls, but those and the shorts/tank top combo were all I had with my undersuit scraped up to the point of uselessness.
Once they had things ready, West directed Tucker and a man from his own team—the one who had remained with us the previous night—to stay behind with the Jeep. The injured merc and other man were to escort us out no matter the circumstances. Worry crept over me—even more, that is—and I strongly suspected West thought this was going to end with us running for our lives. It wasn’t expected to be another three or four day trip; we were going down and getting that ring before the Ethiopian government figured out what we were doing, otherwise leaving would be quite difficult.
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