by MJ Compton
“And make every mother’s nightmare come true?” Restin shook his head. “We leave them there.”
Restin should have been impressed with the suggestion, even if it had come from a delta, instead of dismissing it without thinking it through. “The kids can be reunited with their mamas as soon as we put New Sinai out of business.”
"What would we do with them until then?" Restin asked.
Heat filled Stoker's face. Deltas should know better than to think. Lucy's bad habits were rubbing off on him.
"Besides," Restin continued, "no parent is going to let anything happen to their child."
“Maybe not the mothers,” Lucy interjected. She sat on the room’s only chair, an uncomfortable-looking piece of furniture. “But I wouldn’t put it past some of the fathers to override their wives’ objections. Most of those women wouldn’t even be there if their men weren’t completely brainwashed by Randy.”
“Especially if the alpha—that would be Butler—gives orders,” Stoker added.
“You’re not dealing with another pack of werewolves here,” Lucy interrupted again. Her voice trembled, and Stoker smelled a burst of fear. “You’re dealing with a bunch of ignorant fanatics who don’t understand the concept of honor.”
There wasn’t much Restin–or anyone–could say to that. Lucy not only understood her own species better than they did, she’d lived in New Sinai with Randy Butler.
“She’s right,” Hank said.
“I can’t imagine anyone intentionally harming their own child,” Restin said.
“They can’t imagine werewolves not eating babies,” Lucy snapped. “What rock have you been living under? Or don’t werewolves watch television or read newspapers? Some of my kind get their kicks by exploiting the defenseless.”
Hopefully she was exaggerating, but she was making her point, which reinforced his: the women and children of New Sinai were vulnerable because of Operation Jericho.
"We leave everyone there and continue as planned." Restin's tone was soft, but even Lucy seemed to realize further discussion was futile.
When Michelle awoke from her nap, she sat on her bed and prayed for redemption. Intervention. A sign. Anything.
Light-headed from hunger, she left her room and made her way to the cookhouse, where she found Mattie, her face red and chapped, her eyes swollen, as if she’d been crying.
The usual bustle of meal preparation was absent.
“He took my kids,” Mattie said in a hoarse voice. “You told me to trust him, and he took my babies away from me.”
“He probably sent them to the Children’s Center,” Michelle said. Most children spent a significant portion of their days being indoctrinated to the glory of Randy’s magnificence—when they weren’t being used as slave labor.
She crossed the narrow space and lifted a lid from a pot. An empty pot. Her stomach growled.
“There’s nothing to cook,” Mattie said. “I can’t get to the root cellar since the General turned it into a prison. Unless somebody goes in and gets me some food, goes hunting, or the General lets me out so I can gather some greens from the woods, we’re all going to starve.”
Michelle’s stomach cramped. She’d have to be starving before she’d eat something from the root cellar. Bill smelled really bad. On the other hand, she wouldn’t be surprised if Randy ordered Mattie to turn Bill into stew.
At this point, anything was possible.
She grabbed the edge of the splintered work table to steady herself as vertigo and nausea rippled through her.
“All these so-called men with their guns,” Mattie continued, “and not one of them can shoot a rabbit or a deer so I can cook a decent meal. It’s ridiculous.” She picked up a large knife and started sharpening it, as if preparing to gut something–or someone. “But they know how to terrorize little kids and their mamas with those guns.”
Michelle wondered what Mattie expected from her. “I’ll speak to the General,” she said, for all the good it would do.
“You do that,” Mattie said, plunging the knife into the table. The shaft vibrated from the impact. “I want my kids.”
“Wolves,” Randy declared to the group congregated near the gate, “are nocturnal animals. The women will be perfectly safe going out during the day. After all, gathering is their genetic heritage.”
Right, Michelle thought. Our DNA will protect us.
“I don’t like it,” Reuel said. He’d been arguing against his wife leaving the protection of the stockade.
Maybe he was afraid Mattie would run away even if their children were Randy’s hostages.
“I’ll prove to you that it’s safe–that it is God’s will for the women to be in the woods gathering foodstuff—by sending my own woman with the others.”
Michelle thought she would pass out. Dull pain crept up her spine and oozed down her legs. How was she supposed to forage for food–if there even was any this early in the year—when she could barely stand?
“If I didn’t think the woods were safe,” Randy continued, “would I risk my son?”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” one of the women said, stopping to wipe the sweat from her forehead. The leaves overhead weren't mature enough to provide adequate shade. “Are you sure this stuff isn’t poisonous?”
Michelle didn’t know who spoke. She’d never bothered to learn most of the other women’s names. They were all pale, washed-out looking creatures with sad little lives, who had nothing in common with her. Nothing. Except this moment, standing in the woods with baskets containing wild plants Mattie claimed were edible.
Michelle edged away from the group. She smelled awful, but the others smelled worse. Every face shone with perspiration. Harvesting was damned hard work.
“I know my plants,” Mattie snapped.
Insects buzzed around Michelle’s head, ignoring her feeble shooing motions. She shifted her basket from her left hand to her right, and tried to be bigger than the ache in the small of her back. “Don’t we have enough?”
She’d been digging what Mattie claimed was wild garlic. After the bland carrot and rice soup of the past week, the thought of something with flavor was enough motivation even without the baby clamoring for sustenance.
“I think we have enough to make soup tomorrow night,” Mattie said, hefting her own basket, which was filled with wild parsnips. “But since I don’t know if the General will let us out again, we need to gather as much as we can, while we can.”
Michelle’s stomach grumbled. “What about tonight?”
“Tonight,” Mattie said, “we’re going to claim the last of the food your sister brought for her reception.”
Michelle’s mouth watered. Lucy’s cooking was probably the thing she missed most about her sister. “I thought the soldiers commandeered all of it.”
“One cooler was set aside,” Mattie said. “And if the soldiers want to eat tomorrow, they have to share tonight.”
Michelle set her basket on the ground, placed her hands on her back, just above her fanny, and tried to work the kinks out of her spine. The baby didn’t like this outing at all. Her clothes clung to her body, pasted by the sweat leaking out of her. She was so hot, her skin prickled. Her toes and the calves of her legs cramped from the unaccustomed exercise. What she wouldn’t give for a cool shower with scented soap and real shampoo. A real bed would be nice, too.
She had to stop thinking about the luxuries she missed, the little things she’d taken for granted before Randy turned her into a pioneer woman.
That’s what he’d told her: they would be pioneers in the wilderness, like the people who’d crossed the continent in covered wagons a century and a half before.
It had sounded so good. So pure.
She stumbled over an exposed root as she mused on how she wasn’t
the only one who’d been fooled by Randy’s rhetoric.
Behind her, a woman screamed.
“What?” several of the others asked.
“A snake!”
Michelle pressed her fist against her galloping heart, trying to keep it in her chest. “You just scared ten years off my life,” she muttered.
“It’s an omen,” the screamer sobbed.
What was with these women and their seeing signs in every stupid little thing that happened? First Mattie, and now what’s-her-name. Hadn’t she, the General’s very own woman, prayed–begged even–for acknowledgement from God and been answered with silence?
“The serpent showed itself to warn us about leaving New Sinai. We have to return,” the woman continued.
“Wolves and snakes are the natural inhabitants of these mountains, not couriers from God,” Michelle said. She kept her fear that God had abandoned them to herself.
Several of the others snickered.
“You’re not funny,” the woman said, drawing herself up with righteous—what other kind was there—indignation. “You think because you carry the General’s son that you are above the rest of us.”
“Really?” Michelle kept her tone as polite as possible, while trying to ignore the waves of dizziness crashing against her skull. “Then why am I out here grubbing for food with the rest of you instead of lounging in the air-conditioned comfort of my estate?”
“So our men would let us leave the safety of the compound.” The woman had an answer for everything. In this particular instance, she was almost right.
Michelle pointedly looked at the woman’s basket, which wasn’t nearly as full as her own. “I’m a citizen of New Sinai, same as you. I’ve always pulled my own weight.”
Sweat trickled down the sides of her face, between her breasts, and down her thighs. The landscape shimmered, the effect she thought, of sunlight filtering through the shifting green-gold leaves, even though no breeze stirred the foliage.
“Michelle's worked as hard as you have, Emma,” Mattie said.
Thank goodness Mattie was defending her. She didn’t have the strength to stand up by herself, much less for herself.
“You okay?” another woman asked.
Michelle nodded then stooped to retrieve her basket. A mistake. “I think I need to sit for a minute,” she admitted.
Someone grabbed her basket before she spilled her precious cargo; someone else caught her under her arms and helped lower her to the ground.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Emma whispered. “You shouldn’t have mocked God’s messengers.”
Michelle stared at her bare, blood-covered feet.
General Butler stood atop the first of the completed observation platforms and surveyed his nation. True, he’d intended the decks as lookout points for guards to watch for wolves, but he never realized how enjoyable viewing New Sinai from a lofty vantage point would be.
The warehouses storing his arsenal were sturdy, fine-looking structures. Someday, the barracks and other buildings would equal the quality of the armories, but until then, he needed to protect his assets.
He could find fools on any street corner; the guns were what mattered.
“Help!”
The first cry was so faint, he wasn’t sure he’d heard it. His allergies not only stuffed his sinuses, they played havoc with his ears. That was the problem with the going back to the land: not everyone could survive nature. His eyes itched, post-nasal drip irritated his throat, and he sniffed as often as a cocaine addict.
“Help! General!”
He scanned the compound to see who called to him.
“General! It’s your wife.”
Randy turned to face the forest. Two women ran toward the gate, stumbling over rocks, sticks, and their long skirts.
Wolves, he thought, as he pulled the two-way radio from his belt and ordered the men at the gate to admit the women. Wolves had gotten his son.
By the time he worked his way to the gate, the women were inside and interrupting each other with shrill voices.
Not wolves, he learned, but Michelle was bleeding in the forest, just the same.
Stupid woman. If not for his son, he would have left her there as wolf bait. Now two soldiers had to leave their posts and fetch her back to New Sinai, men who had more important things to do than fuss over a female.
Stoker shook Lucy awake far too early. “Leave me alone,” she mumbled, and buried her face deeper in her pillow.
“Never gonna happen,” Stoker said, then started nipping his way down her spine, nape to buttocks.
“All right,” she grumbled. Her flesh tingled. “You have my attention.”
“It’s time to meet the bus and go howl at New Sinai.” He didn’t sound any happier than she felt.
Who'd have figured a guy with a perpetual scowl would be so sensitive about hurting people? “I’m so sorry," she said. “I never meant–”
“It’s not your place to think things through. Restin should have realized there are others beside Butler and his soldiers living in New Sinai. He thinks he’s some kind of hot-shot alpha-stand in since Tokarz mated last fall, but no matter how hard he tries, he’ll never be more than a glorified beta.”
The smugness in his tone surprised her. “You don’t sound too upset by that.”
He shrugged. “Restin needs to be taken down a notch, or at least pick on someone his own size.”
Lucy rolled over and sat up. “Soldiers aren't the only ones going to die if you attack New Sinai with standard weaponry.”
Stoker’s face folded into its habitual grimace, and he shot to his feet. “You’re the only one who thinks we’re planning an attack.”
“Why else would you be camped out in this half-a-horse town? There has to be better recording studios closer to your home.”
“Reconnaissance,” Stoker said, as he rummaged through a bureau drawer. “Didn’t you hear what Restin said? He didn’t know the ATF already had someone inside New Sinai. We don’t–didn’t–know anything.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked.
“I’m here because I was ordered here,” he said, sounding exasperated. “I’m a delta. I don’t question, I just do—a lesson you should take to heart.” He dropped her sweatsuit on the bed. “Now get dressed so we can go make the kids cry again.”
The night sky cringed around the edges of the window blind, fading to a pewter gray. It was almost morning. Michelle lay very still, afraid even to blink. If she could stop breathing without dying, she would. Randy snored, drooling more than a little, and shifted on the lumpy mattress.
She hated him. Hated what he’d done to her sister, hated what he’d done to her. What she’d let him do to her.
Randy was with her, not out of any true concern for her, but because it was good press, even if the only ones to impress with a bedside vigil were the people he’d already hoodwinked into moving to New Sinai in the first place. But no, he had to make a grand show of being a faith healer now, saving the life of his son. Only he would dare to claim that sprawling next her, sound asleep, was a vigil, but that was only one more of Randy’s dirty little secrets he expected her to keep.
Her back still pulsed with a gnawing sort of ache, but Mattie had given her some sort of herbal concoction to drink, which stopped the bleeding.
Randy continued to insist that his son needed no medical interference to be born. He’d backhanded her when she asked if his son needed help gestating, informing her that if she couldn’t stop channeling her sister’s spirit, he’d be more than happy to perform a rite of exorcism.
Michelle shut up and let Mattie fuss over her. Of course, Mattie had her own agenda.
And because Mattie was tending Michelle, Randy had no choice but to share the food Lucy had brought wit
h her to celebrate her marriage to the piano player.
Who was probably going to come back tomorrow–no, today–and again the day after and the day after that until Randy either killed him or recruited him. He must really love Lucy to invite Randy’s wrath on a daily basis.
Michelle needed to find a way to slip Lucy’s ring to him.