by MJ Compton
“I’ll send Luke to Wal-Mart,” Restin said.
Outside, a distant helicopter chopped the air, and Joseph continued arguing with Ethan. “Why do I need a bath? It ain’t Saturday night.”
“Because,” Ethan replied, “you smell so bad, General Butler could follow your scent right to this motel, and that wouldn’t be a good thing.”
“Why would he follow me?” Joseph asked. “He threw me away.”
Stoker winced, and glanced over his shoulder at Lucy, who remained oblivious to the conversation taking place outside the window. The open window. Thank the Ancient Ones her hearing wasn’t very good.
She leafed through a magazine, sunlight edging her cheek and brow, adding a shimmer to her natural luminescence. The breeze ruffled her hair.
“Good,” she said to Restin. “I wouldn’t have a clue what to buy a little boy. So what are you going to do with him tomorrow morning?”
“We could leave him alone,” Restin said.
“Uh, no,” Lucy said.
Even Stoker knew that was a bad idea.
“First of all, what if something happened, like a fire? A kid shouldn’t be left alone in a motel room,” she explained.
“He’s bonded with Ethan,” Stoker said, glancing out the window again. “After his father let the General sacrifice him, he doesn’t need his trust violated.”
Lucy looked up from her magazine and smiled at him, warming him and sending tingles right down to his toes.
Maybe she’d forgiven him. Maybe, if they could get Restin out of the room, he could talk her out of her clothes.
“Right,” she said. “If Joseph trusts anyone, it’s Ethan.”
“The boy lived in New Sinai for who knows how long,” Restin said to Lucy. “You can’t assume he’ll react in a normal, child-like manner.”
“New Sinai isn’t that old,” she argued. “Joseph probably lived a fairly normal life until a year or two ago.”
Restin glared at Lucy, as if he resented a mere female explaining the situation to him. “How normal could the life of a child whose parents fell in with the likes of Randy Butler be? According to the information the ATF sent, most of Butler’s followers were unsuccessful misfits in their communities—under employed, if they held jobs at all, extremely religious.”
“Poverty and religious devotion aren’t disabilities,” Lucy snapped. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t believe everything the ATF told me. They didn’t tell you about Bill Danby, did they?”
“We’ve never verified that Danby–”
“Has the ATF heard anything more from inside the compound?”
Restin didn’t speak, didn’t react in any way.
“There ya go,” Lucy said. “Now, I worked with Joseph’s mother for a week. We might not have been real friendly, but women do tend to chat over a hot stove. I know she home-schooled her kids and didn’t let them watch a lot of television.”
“So they were isolated from mainstream society even before they came to New Sinai,” Restin said.
Lucy scowled.
Restin was right. There was no giant leap from normal to cult in Joseph’s life. It seemed almost as if the changes in his life were a natural progression, such as going from grade to grade in school—at least until Butler tossed him over the fence.
“Lucy should stay here with him,” Restin said.
“No.” Stoker and Lucy spoke at the same time. “Lucy stays with me,” Stoker added.
Lucy didn’t add anything, which surprised Stoker.
“I don’t know what to do about him,” Restin admitted. He looked at Lucy as if she were some kind of maternal oracle or something.
“You could call Child Protective Services or drop him off at the local cops and tell them that Ethan found him wandering around in the woods,” she said.
“And risk the local authorities poking around New Sinai?” Restin scowled. “That’s a terrible idea.”
Lucy shrugged. “Hey, I’m delta. You get what I’ve got.”
Stoker’s tingling shimmered up several notches. If Restin didn’t leave soon, he might find himself falling out the window.
“You shouldn’t eat so fast,” Parker said to Joseph. “It’ll make you puke.”
“He’s a growing boy,” Ethan said to Parker.
“He won’t grow if he’s vomiting,” Parker argued.
Stoker smiled. He’d just identified Restin’s solution.
Lucy watched Stoker close the door behind The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave, otherwise known as Restin. Stoker stood with his back pressed against the door. He’d opened the window when they returned to their room that morning. He was being very careful about her space.
She still felt funny about having told him the secret behind her claustrophobia. No one else, not even her sister, knew the whole story. Michelle had been too young to understand when the accident happened, and Lucy never talked about it. Ever.
The fact that she’d shared something so deeply personal with a virtual stranger—even though they were married, Stoker was still a stranger—must mean something.
She never would have told Charles-the-Fink. And, she’d learned the hard way that if she wasn’t in the mood for Charles, he simply took his mood elsewhere, whereas Stoker . . . stuck.
For life. The whole for-better-or-worse, till-death-do-us-part words weren’t up for negotiation or even discussion. A werewolf met a woman, got his first erection and that was that.
She wondered how many mates killed each other just to free themselves from bad matches. She’d have to ask Stoker, but later, when things weren’t so tense. There was a lot of later ahead of them.
Right now, he was looking at her with a familiar gleam in his eyes, and today, it warmed her.
Maybe because he was so sensitive to Joseph’s situation–he’d actually gotten sick when he’d heard what had happened. For all his snapping, growling, yelling, and other habits which would have labeled him an alpha male in her world, he was a pretty sensitive guy.
Actually, he was the most aware individual she’d ever met–human male or human female. Everything in his world was a potential melody, from the color of her eyes to a child’s terror.
The breeze from the open window ruffled her hair, reminding her that he heard her, that he still listened. Her instincts insisted he would listen to her until her final breath.
She tossed her magazine to the floor and held out her arms.
Chapter 19
“We’re prepared,” Reuel said, satisfaction shading his words. He stood in front of Randy’s desk, looking as if he hadn’t slept in days, a circumstance plaguing most of New Sinai’s citizens. “I have a plan for dealing with the wolves.”
Randy scooped bland, overcooked rice into his mouth and chewed. And chewed. The new cook–daughter of the former cook–had mixed the new rice with some old beans she’d found in the cookhouse, and the result was mush combined with shoe leather. It filled the belly, but nothing more.
“Did you relocate Lieutenant Danby?” Randy asked.
The sergeant shook his head. The salt-and-pepper bristle covering the lower half of his face didn’t hide the pasty tinge of his flesh.
The rice and beans could use some salt and pepper. Some flavor, some seasoning. The girl would learn.
“We opened the door,” Reuel said, “but we couldn’t get past the stink.”
Randy spat the food from his mouth. Bitter acid roiled into his throat, and he fought an urge to retch.
“Just so you know, I ain’t happy you tossed my wife in with him,” Reuel said. “She ain’t dead. I could hear her moaning. And who’s gonna take care of my girl if her mama is locked up?”
How dare Reuel snivel about petty concerns when Randy had more important issues on his mind, such as finding his own son?
He’d personally searched every inch of New Sinai, and although he couldn’t explain how she’d done it—unless she’d uncovered the secret of the Tabernacle—he conceded Michelle had vanished.
Besides, there were plenty of ways to take care of the sergeant’s daughter. Maybe a virgin sacrifice was in order.
“Dismissed,” Randy said between clenched teeth.
“Don’t you wanna hear my plan to scare off the wolves?” Reuel asked.
“No,” Randy replied. “I want your sorry ass out of my office and back on guard duty. If the wolves show up in the morning, we’ll shoot the damned things.”
“Can’t shoot what you can’t see,” Reuel muttered.
Randy’s trigger finger itched. Dealing with Danby’s insubordination had been satisfying. Now Reuel was practically begging for the same punishment. If every able-bodied male weren’t needed to man the guns, Reuel would join his wife and Danby in the root cellar.
“What do you mean, I have to stay with the kid?” Parker stood outside the bus, glaring at Restin, who blocked the steps.
Restin suppressed his urge to lunge at Parker, because the medic wasn’t just another roadie. Day four of Operation Jericho meant tempers were hairy, existing on exhaustion and the pull of the waxing moon.
“Let Lucy babysit,” Parker suggested. “Tending offspring is a female’s job, not mine.”
“Stoker volunteered to help with Operation Jericho only if Lucy is protected, which means she stays on the bus with Dakota.” Restin growled the explanation between clenched teeth.
Tokarz wouldn’t have explained, but then no one would have the balls to question one of his decisions.
“Joseph thinks I’m a ghost,” Lucy said from the back of the bus.
Parker ignored her. “So get a sigma or a tau to do the grunt work.” His tone was bitter, and his resentment at doing female work created a stench to which only Lucy could remain oblivious. “He’d be more comfortable with Ethan.”
“Ethan is a male of stature, one of the priests of the Jericho story,” Restin said.
“Compared to Lucy, so am I,” Parker continued to argue.
“Lucy doesn’t figure into anything,” Restin said.
Stoker leapt from his seat as if someone had insulted his wife, and he needed to defend her.
She clasped his arm, calming him. Something had changed between the two of them. Even their scents didn’t collide the way they had only days earlier.
Well, there was nothing like a good fight to clear the air. Luke had overheard Lucy screaming at Stoker the other day and shared what he’d learned with the rest of the band. Her secret had stunned them. If her father weren’t already dead, there would have been a posse of werewolves en route to Boulder to deal with him, the same way they were going to deal with Butler for what he’d done to Joseph.
That’s when Lucy could tend to Joseph.
“What if you need my services?” Parker asked.
“The chance of something happening to one of us is slim,” Restin replied.
“Butler could always start shooting,” Parker said.
“He hasn’t yet.”
“He’s unstable. Unpredictable.”
“Every single one of his actions since we’ve been here has been completely logical,” Restin said.
Just because he’d misread Butler’s cues didn’t mean the man was unstable. He exhibited a cunning Restin reluctantly admired.
Parker opened his mouth to contradict Restin again, but Hank walked up behind him and cuffed him upside the head. “Quit arguing with your alpha.”
“You’re late,” Restin said, gratefully shifting his focus from one sorry werewolf to another.
“Yeah? So fire me.” Hank nudged Parker out of his way so he could board the bus. “Let’s get this show on the road. I want to go home.”
Randy roused himself from his solitary bed and made his way to New Sinai’s central yard. Most of his citizens were already gathered, their faces ghostly in the pre-dawn light.
Absolute quiet blanketed their world. Not one bird twittered, although the racket of birdsong usually filled the moments before sunrise. Not this morning. He couldn’t recall if it had been so yesterday or the day before.
Damn, he wished he could think. His allergies and hunger were taking their toll, making him stupid. Weak. Unworthy of leadership.
If the wolves started their howling this morning, he didn’t care how much ammo they wasted shooting into the woods.
Enough was enough.
“We cleared the brush, just like you said,” Sergeant Reuel greeted Randy as he stepped onto the observation platform. “Damn wolves won’t have any place to hide now.”
Randy peered over the fence. It was dark, but not that dark. “Why does it look as if there’s more brush than there was yesterday?” he asked.
“We saved it,” Reuel replied. “There’s gonna be a big-ass watch fire all along the border.”
Wariness prickled through Randy. “Watch fire?”
“Bonfire, like in the olden days, when pioneers built fires to keep the critters at bay.” Reuel hawked and spat over the side of the fence.
His words made sense on some level.
“Isn’t the bracken too wet to burn?” Randy asked.
It was spring, not the end of a long, dry summer. Branches and twigs would be supple, not dry and brittle, cracking at the least pressure.
“Siphoned a little gasoline from the truck,” Reuel said. “Besides, green wood burns nice and smoky. Smoke’ll choke ‘em.”
“What about us?” Randy asked, not bothering to hide his contempt for his sergeant’s idiocy.
“Us? We’re inside the fence. Smoke can’t get us.”
“Smoke rises, you fool,” Randy said. “You said the brush is all around the fence?”
“Except the ravine.”
The ravine. Where the wolves had already burrowed under the fence. The one spot where New Sinai needed extra protection remained vulnerable.
Something broke the silence, faint at first then building until the words were distinct.
“Joshua fought the battle of Jericho,” Lucy’s ghost sang, her voice eerie, echoing, mournful.
Randy searched the darkness outside the stockade. The song seemed to come from several directions, surrounding the compound. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Unfortunately, the singing never lasted long enough to send out search parties to locate the source.
It bothered him that both Lucy and the boy had vanished without a trace. There were no footprints to follow, wolf or human; the only physical evidence that the beasts actually existed was the dung they left around the fence.
As the song faded away, the final word sighing into nothingness, the first wolf responded. Every hair on Randy’s body rose in response.
The citizens of New Sinai remained clustered, like cancer cells, looking to him for answers, which he didn’t have.
“This is New Sinai,” he announced, “not Jericho.”
Several wolves yowled as if to argue, their voices like sirens in the chilly morning air.
He swore. “Don’t start the fire,” he said to Reuel.
Reuel dragged the toe of his boot along the splintered log floor and spat again. “Too late. The men were ordered to start the fire as soon as they heard the ghost.”
Fury lashed through Randy. He could not believe the utter stupidity of that order. “There are soldiers outside?”
“Don’t see no other way to start the fire,” Reuel replied.
A wolf yipped. A human scream punctuated Reuel’s words.
“Damn it all, man,” Randy said, not bothering to weigh his words. “You sacrificed my soldiers when there are children who contribute nothing, but drain our resources?”
&nbs
p; Reuel stilled. “Soldiers have a fighting chance. Kids don’t. Besides, kids shouldn’t play with matches.” He stared at Randy as the first tendril of smoke drifted skyward.
“What are we going to do if the fence catches on fire?” Randy asked.
Reuel looked startled, as if the idea had never occurred to him. It probably hadn’t.