Assassin's Touch, Iron Portal #1

by London, Laurie

  She tried to follow what he was saying. “Magic resides in you? You mean, people with Talents?”

  “Yes. Not all of us have them, but Pacificans breach the portals to take our children, hoping that some of them have the fata blood in their veins.”

  “Fata?”

  “We are an ancient race of people, descended from the Fates, and our world once held a very powerful magic.” He glanced at her quizzically. “Are you sure you don’t know this?”

  She shook her head. It sounded like Celtic lore, not real life.

  “Three brothers, two born with powers and one without, controlled the three kingdoms. A power struggle, stemming from jealousy and greed, where one brother wanted what the other ones had, started the Obsidian Wars. The Fates finally had to step in and create the separate worlds.”

  “And where does the baby snatching come in?”

  “If they take our children who have it inside them, they can use them to their advantage.”

  She had grown up in a world of technology and computers, not magic and kingdoms. And yet…

  Her thoughts spun with all this new— “Oh my God. The hospital ward.”

  “What?”

  “All recruits are required to get mandatory birth control injections in case…in case…”

  “In case what?” he coaxed.

  “In case the barbarians—I’m sorry, Rickert—overtake us in the field.”

  Neyla recalled when she got her first birth control shot as part of her induction into the army. They’d been told that Cascadians were no better than the marauding Vikings had been centuries ago, raping innocent women and fathering bastard children. During orientation, they’d watched a heart-wrenching video about a woman who’d been assaulted by a Cascadian raider. She’d given birth to a child that she gave up for adoption.

  “I was late for my appointment at the women’s health center, and I got lost in the hospital.” The unmarked corridors were so confusing. “Somehow, I ended up in front of a nursery. I peered through the glass to see a half dozen or so swaddled infants. Some were crying. Others were sleeping. All of them had small white cards taped to their clear plastic cribs, with a single number written in black ink, no names. Baby number three, a little boy—well, I assumed he was a boy because he was wrapped in a blue flannel blanket—was sucking his thumb, just staring at me.”

  Something about the place had seemed off, she recalled. Maybe it was the drab, grey tiled room. Or the absence of any smiling parents. Or the heavyset nurse propping bottles in the cribs to feed the babies rather than cradling them in her arms. For some reason, those disturbing images had reminded Neyla of photos she’d seen of Romanian and Chinese orphanages. All those babies and no one to love them.

  “I wondered if they were the bastard children I’d heard about. I felt sorry for baby number three for being the product of—of a violent man and an innocent woman.” She started to falter, but Rickert’s hand covered hers, urging her to continue. “I heard something behind me and turned around.”

  She told him about the two nurses coming out of a door she hadn’t noticed before.

  “Are you an applicant?” the first woman had asked. She wore her hair in two burrito rolls that framed her pinched face. “Because if you are, you’re too early.”

  “Yeah,” the other one said, locking the door behind them. “These foundlings are not being assigned to their families until next month.”

  “Foundlings?” Neyla hadn’t heard that term before. Weren’t they…bastard children?

  The burrito-hair nurse turned beet red, and Neyla had thought she might strike the other nurse. “You know better than that, you idiot.” Turning back to Neyla, she forced a smile. “What she meant was that these unwanted children—bastards, if you will—are going to be ready for adoption next month. Their inoculations and tests will be complete by then, and the first viewings will take place next week. You’ll get a chance to hold each one and make your decision at that time. Then the committee will decide where to place each child.”

  It sounded like the process of adopting a dog from a shelter, not a baby from a hospital. “I’m…I’m…” She hadn’t wanted to tell them that she wasn’t there to adopt, that she’d simply taken a wrong turn and—

  Rickert put his hand on her shoulder, yanking her from her thoughts. “What is it, lass?”

  “At the time, I didn’t understand what she meant, but they had called them foundlings—the babies in the cribs. Foundlings! Oh my God, they weren’t found children or bastard children. They were stolen babies. Stolen from Cascadia.” A cold lick of panic crawled up her spine and settled into her pores. “Wait. How long has this been going on?”

  “The snatching of babies?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. A long time. Why?”

  Her vision became blurry, her voice hiccupped in short gasps as she tried to breathe. “My mother used to… She’d tell me bedtime stories. About faeries. And how they’d brought me to her and my father…when I was an infant.”

  “What are you saying, Neyla?” He held her face in his hands and touched his forehead to hers.

  “They were just stories, or so I thought, but I was adopted, Rickert. Adopted.” It felt like her head might explode. “Both my brother and I were. I was told that my birth mother was too young to keep me, so she gave me up. But I have Talents, so maybe I’m…I’m…”

  Rickert’s strong, warm arms encased her, and she smelled the heatherwood soap on his skin. She only knew she was crying when he gently wiped her cheek with a callused thumb. She could hardly comprehend the enormity of it all. Pacificans coming through the portals, killing innocent people and stealing children.

  Could she have been born in Cascadia and stolen by raiders? Were her real parents brutally killed as Kel’s had been? She felt as if someone had turned her body inside out, upsetting everything she’d once held to be true.

  In the quiet and through her tears, she pieced together what she knew. Rarely were the reports of fighting covered by the non-army news media. Her online friends thought she was paranoid when she talked about the dangers of riding on trains and going to nightclubs and other large gathering places. They’d heard about the train accident, but argued that a derailment had caused the crash, not an explosion by Cascadians. She hadn’t believed them…until now.

  Add to it Maris’s death, babies referred to as foundlings, even the nursery rhyme. It all made perfect sense. The army had lied to her. They’d lied to everyone.

  “I’m sorry…about your sister and little Kel.”

  Rickert stroked her hair and held her close. “Shhh,” he murmured again and again. “It’s okay, lass. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. It’s possible you were a victim, too.”

  Overcome by his concern for her, she couldn’t seem to stop the tears from falling. She knew that she loved him, but feared she didn’t deserve him. She cried for the horrible losses Rickert and Kel had suffered at the hands of those people. And although she hadn’t worked for the army back then, she cried for her part in helping them now.

  * * *

  “Easy, boy,” Rickert said, steadying Duag as he pulled back the bowstring. The arrow flew through the air, only to lodge in the trunk of a sapling on the far side of the clearing. The buck they’d been tracking for almost an hour spun and disappeared into the forest. “Bloody hell.”

  His uncle inclined his head toward the tree. “On account of your woman?” It wasn’t often Rickert missed an easy shot.

  “Aye,” Tierney’s youngest son Willem said. “We heard what happened at the market. That you lifted tables and chairs and you threw some men out of the hookah bar without touching them.”

  “That was unplanned,” Rickert admitted to the boy. He chose to ignore Tierney’s question.

  “You sure gave those McCready boys a new appreciation for the D’Angelus clan indeed,” Tierney said. “Reminds me of the tricks your pa used to pull. Och, he was a rascally bastard.”
r />   “Uncle Carrick was a Talent, too?” Willem asked, wide-eyed.

  “Aye. A Fire-Talent, like Rickert.”

  Rickert snorted. His command over fire was nothing like his father’s had been.

  Tierney continued. “Though I never saw him do anything like what I heard you did in Greenway.”

  Although he was curious about what his uncle had heard, Rickert kept silent, uncomfortable about discussing his Talents just yet. It was too new. Too confusing. And, as he thought about Neyla’s part in the whole thing, it was too damned personal. If dozens of people hadn’t witnessed the incident, he’d have wondered whether it had really happened.

  With a tap of a spur, he cantered Duag to the edge of the forest and retrieved his arrow from the sapling. They continued hunting small game throughout the rest of the afternoon—red-tailed turkeys, rainbow partridges, mountain squirrels—as the deer and wild boar were scarce. Apprehension kept prickling the back of his neck, but he rubbed it away. The forests and glens were usually teeming with bigger game, but not today. Maybe winter was coming earlier this year.

  They stopped when they got to a small clearing and Willem twisted in his saddle. “Can you do it now, Rickert? I want to see you move something.”

  “I can’t. I’ve tried.” And he had. Several times.

  “There’s one now, son,” Tierney said, changing the subject. He pointed to a red-tailed turkey under a large ogappa tree. “See him?”

  “Aye, Papa. I see him.” The tip of the boy’s tongue stuck out between his teeth as he took aim with his slingshot.

  “That’s it. Take a deep breath, then release it.”

  Just as the boy was ready to shoot, his pony pawed at the ground, jostling him in the saddle and destroying his concentration. “Juju, whoa.” When he took aim again, the pony tossed his head. Tears welled up in Willem’s eyes and he quickly turned away so his father wouldn’t see.

  “Here, I’ll hold him steady.” Rickert reached down and grabbed the bridle. “I had a naughty pony when I was your age, so I know how frustrating they can be. He pulled all sorts of nonsense, hoping to get away with it.”

  “You did?”

  “Aye.” He glanced at the cowlick on the pony’s face. “Have you noticed the whirl pattern of Juju’s white star? It’s slightly off-center, no?”

  The boy nodded, moisture glittering from the corners of his eyes.

  “My pony’s star was slightly off-center like that, too. It’s the mark of a horse who thinks he’s smarter than you are and who will pull all sorts of tricks.”

  “Then I need a new pony. A horse this time. Like Duag.”

  “Not so fast,” Rickert said, laughing. “Juju will make you a better rider than if you had a perfect pony. You learn to be prepared for anything—and what to do when things go wrong.”

  Duag started to pin his ears—he did not like another horse this close unless it was a mare in heat—but Rickert gave him a low warning and he stood quietly. The pony didn’t move, either.

  “Okay, little man, I’ve got him. Go ahead and try it again.”

  Fortunately, the turkey was still scratching for bugs at the base of the tree. Willem aimed and took the shot. With a surprised cluck and a flurry of feathers, the bird fell dead.

  “Ho-ye,” Rickert exclaimed. “Looks like we’re having turkey for dinner.”

  “Excellent shot, son,” Tierney said, clapping.

  Grinning from ear to ear, Willem leapt from the saddle and ran to retrieve the turkey.

  Tierney turned to Rickert. “Thank you for that. He really looks up to you.”

  “He’s a good lad.”

  Tierney nodded. “That he is. Just think…in a few more years, Kel will be joining us. And after that, one of your own.”

  Rickert reached down and absently patted Duag’s neck. Years. He didn’t want to think about the passage of time. It reminded him how little of it he had left with Neyla.

  “Listen, Rickert…about your woman.”

  He jerked his head up, his gaze meeting Tierney’s, a surge of pride filling his veins. He liked—loved—that people recognized Neyla as his woman. She was his, and he was hers. At least until she had to leave.

  “What about her?” he asked cautiously, narrowing his eyes. Tierney hadn’t found out who she was, had he? He quickly dismissed the thought. The man wouldn’t be so jovial if he knew how she and Rickert had met. He considered telling Tierney about Neyla’s foundling story, but every time he opened his mouth, he stopped. He didn’t want to risk her being sent to the jail pits to await trial.

  “She’s got you all tore up inside, does she?” Tierney laughed. “Don’t act so surprised. It’s obvious your head’s with her and not on hunting.”

  “I…ah…”

  Tierney shifted the thin stick of ogappa bark to other side of his mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. “She holds the key, doesn’t she?”

  “The key?” Rickert didn’t understand.

  “As someone with abilities, do you sense the fata blood in her? Because strange things can happen when two Talents merge like that. It would explain what happened in the market. A pooling of your magic, if you will. It’s possible she doesn’t know she has it.”

  Rickert cringed inwardly. He didn’t want to get into any of that now. Protection-Talents were so rare Tierney would wonder if and how the Pacificans were using her. He wasn’t ready for his uncle to know he’d deceived him. At least not yet. Not until he had some sort of plan.

  One option he’d briefly considered was for he and Neyla to run away together. Despite the fact that a relationship between them didn’t make sense, he’d fallen in love with her. He couldn’t bear the thought of being apart from her, let alone seeing her punished for something he’d done.

  However, he’d never run from anything in his life. He met challenges head on. And he wasn’t willing to give up the fight against those who came through the portals, either. Until he figured out what to do about Neyla, he wanted to put things off as long as he could. But the court would soon be arriving in town, and then he’d have to come clean. Saffira, his former lover, was a taghta magistrate. You couldn’t exactly lie to a Truth-Seer. He’d tried that before and had learned a hard lesson.

  Maybe he should sneak Neyla back through the portal while he still had time, then come back and face his punishment. She’d been raised on the other side and that was all she knew. Life here was much different than it was in Pacifica. Too different. To assume she’d want to stay with him and give up her life there would be selfish. She had a mother and brother who loved her. He wouldn’t ask that of her.

  “It was a bolt of energy coursing through my system in the market,” Rickert said. “I’ve never felt that before.” He left out the part about tearing off her dress and making wild, ravenous love to her later. It had probably just been residual power from what had happened in Greenway.

  “Anger and passion are two powerful emotions, Rickert. They’re able to stir up all sorts of mischief. Those boys in Greenway were threatening her and you were only—”

  “Papa, look.”

  The two men followed where Willem was pointing.

  Rickert was stunned to see Asher staggering out of the trees. His second in command was limping, his leg covered in blood.

  “The portal’s been breached,” Asher called out, leaning on his big dog for support.

  Breached? Pacifican murderers were back in Cascadia?

  He scanned the forest, but he saw no one else. Where were the rest of his men? He spurred Duag into a gallop. Without slowing, he leaned over and pulled Asher up behind him.

  “What happened? Where is everyone?” He thought about Petra’s younger brother, Fallon. Konal and Toryn, his weapons experts. Grady, Quaid, Oran… He prayed to the Fates that his men were still alive. If they weren’t…

  “They’re on the other side,” Asher choked. “In the northern quadrant, just like we’d planned. The mission was successful, so the men went to celebrate. Before I met up with
them, I doubled back and discovered evidence that one of the Pacifican army units may have found the portal location. There wasn’t time to round everyone up, so I crossed through on my own. And Rickert,” he said, breathing heavily, “they brought guns through the portal.”

  “Bloody bastards.” Rickert absently reached for the locket around his wrist. The raiders who attacked his sister’s village had brought guns through the portal as well, sacrificing some of their own men who carried them. “We must mobilize our—”

  Asher interrupted. “And I found…Fallon…in the antechamber. Dead.”

  It felt as if someone had punched Rickert in the gut, forcing all the air from his lungs. Petra’s brother was young, with his whole life ahead of him.

  “It’s my fault,” Asher choked out. “I knew he wasn’t with the rest of the men, but I assumed he went to hook up with a woman he met earlier.”

  “Dead?” Young Willem asked, as if the news had just sunk in. “Fallon is dead?”

  “Yes,” Asher replied soberly. “From the Iron Death. The army must’ve captured him, then used him to bring the guns through. I managed to kill one of them, but the rest got away.”

  A cold lick of fury ran down Rickert’s spine. He never should’ve stayed on this side as long as he had. Iron sickness be damned.

  “Which way were they headed?” Lord Tierney asked.

  “I lost them after they crossed the river. I…I couldn’t keep up.”

  “If they went across the river, that means they were heading away from Crestenfahl,” Lord Tierney said, the relief evident in his voice.

  But Rickert was far from comforted by this news. His people were still in danger. “Then we need to mobilize the teams back at Crestenfahl and spread out. We’re going to hunt down those bastards and kill them.”

  Chapter Nine

  Neyla had never been more determined in her life. She took the gelding’s reins from the stable boy.

  “Please, ma’am. I’m not supposed to let anyone leave. It’s too dangerous.”