The Hero Within

by Bec McMaster

  "Now you, Colton," Rath said. "Let Lincoln go."

  The second the knife shifted, the warg Colton had been holding hostage jammed an elbow back into Colton's ribs. Lincoln lashed out as Colton jerked the knife away, and slammed a fist into Colton's thigh.

  Shit.

  Mayhem erupted. Rath grabbed her by the throat, just as Eden stabbed the syringe in his side and pumped its contents into him.

  Rath roared, his grip slackening just enough for her to get away. She staggered forward, but Bobbi tackled her. Eden slammed to the ground, her ears ringing, as a fight broke out.

  A knee drove into the back of her thigh and Eden found her face smushed into the dirt, her right hand yanked up behind her back. The syringe fell from nerveless fingers.

  "What did you do to Rath?" Bobbi demanded.

  "What the hell is going on here?" snarled a woman's voice.

  A trio of women melted out of the shadows, but it was the one standing on the rock, her fingers laxly gripping a spear who'd spoken. Her head was shaved, and her skin gleamed like polished ochre in the evening shadows. Gold handprints adorned her brown skin, glimmering in the faint dying light of the tangerine sun. Within moments, Eden suspected the light would fade and the gold handprints would vanish with it.

  All the men stepped back, except for Rath, whose heels were still drumming on the ground as he twisted and screamed.

  "Second." One of them bowed. "Strangers in our territory. Two of them are wargs—"

  "I have a nose," said the woman, leaping off the rock and crossing to Colton. She wore a leather halter top that bared her midriff and a pair of cerulean blue trousers that vanished into her combat boots. "What did you do to Rath?"

  Colton arched a brow. "Nothing."

  Bobbi hauled Eden to her knees.

  "That was all me," Eden said, suddenly the center of attention as Rath's mouth began foaming. "I just shot your friend up with a concoction of colloidal silver. If he doesn't get medical attention shortly, then he's going to have a hell of a night."

  Wargs hated silver. It burned their skin, and her injection would be doing the same—on the inside.

  "If he dies, then so do you," said the woman, striding toward her.

  "He's not going to die." Eden held her hands up. "He just might feel like he is for an hour or two. There's not enough silver in the mix to kill him."

  "Fix him," the woman snarled.

  "I can't. His body will process it eventually. But in the meantime, maybe he'll learn some better manners."

  The newcomer's dark eyes locked on her. A thin gold line curved under both her eyes. "Better manners? He didn't touch you, did he?"

  "His hands got a little loose, Nnedi," Bobbi grumbled. "I warned him."

  "Next time he does something like that, Bobbi, you have my permission to take him down." The newcomer—clearly a leader of some sort—lifted her boot and pressed her weight down on the middle of Rath's chest. He wheezed, froth foaming from his mouth. "I was going to help you get back to the caves, Rath, but now I think you're on your own. You know my rules."

  She pushed away, and the man rolled onto his side, reaching helplessly for her. "Please...."

  "I am Nnedi," the woman tilted her head. "Second of Shadow Rock pack. And the three of you are under my protection. Come. We will take you back to Shadow Rock until the alpha can decide what to do with you."

  Eden only wished that didn't sound quite like Nnedi intended to lock them up and throw away the key.

  Colton remained on his knees, his hands cupped behind his head and blood dripping from his nose. Around him sprawled the slumped bodies of three wargs.

  "You look like trouble," Nnedi said, kneeling in font of him to assess him. "I hope you're not going to be trouble." She jerked her head to the men holding him down. "Let him stand. Take their weapons, but give them room to move. We will not harm you if you do not retaliate. Am I clear?"

  Eden exchanged a look with Colton. What was going on?

  But she trusted Nnedi. The woman's manner was brusque, and she clearly held a lot of respect here, for nobody would meet her eyes.

  "Understood," Colton said, as he was helped to his feet.

  A sudden crash made them all turn sharply.

  CJ hit the ground, not bothering to put his hands out.

  "CJ!" Nothing could stop her from running to his side. "What did you do to him?"

  The man beside him looked shocked. "Nothing. I didn't touch him, I swear. He just collapsed."

  "CJ," she demanded. His skin felt feverishly hot beneath her hand. "CJ?"

  Nnedi knelt at her side, sniffing delicately. "He's been poisoned."

  Eden gasped. "Poisoned?"

  Nnedi hauled up his shirt, displaying the angry red scratch on his side. "Shadow cat poison."

  "But it's just a scratch. I checked it out, it barely even broke the skin. He was fine. Colton was the one who'd been cut up." But CJ had been the first to collapse on the ground when they made camp.

  And the welt was angry and red now.

  She should have been paying more attention.

  Nnedi sank back onto her heels. "Come. The sooner we get home, the sooner he can be treated. He too is going to have a very long night."

  "What do you think they intend to do with us?" Eden whispered as she followed him through the winding canyons the Shadow Rock pack led them to.

  Johnny's nostrils flared. "Don't know. They're all wargs though."

  Which meant nothing good.

  Usually.

  He glanced back at the makeshift stretcher some of the wargs had rigged up. Cole was on it, his hand slumping off the edge as they carried him. Eden saw the direction his gaze traveled in and dropped back to check on her charge. She pressed a gentle hand to Cole's forehead, frowning with concern.

  Mierda.

  One tiny scratch and the kid had gone from laughing and shrugging off the shadow cat attack, to passing out. It hadn't even been a full wound. Merely a scratch. Eden looked guilty, but fuck that, because he hadn't noticed the kid getting sicker either.

  "The boy will be fine," Nnedi said, falling in beside him. "We have healers who can see to him, and they are used to dealing with shadow cat poison. He's lucky we came along when we did."

  Johnny didn't fully understand Nnedi's position in the hierarchy of this pack, but she seemed to hold enough power to make even the most grizzled warg back down. They'd wanted to tie his hands behind him, knowing who the dangerous one was, but she'd countermanded the proposition.

  "They are under my protection," she'd spat instead, "which means they are my guests. And we will treat them as such."

  Then she'd given him a look that clearly said, don't fuck with my trust.

  "So how does this work?" he muttered, examining the narrow canyons that soared above them. Torchlight played over the rose gold of the sandstone, and striations of color lay exposed in the bedrock, revealing years and years of different types of rock layered upon each other. "A group of wargs living together here in the Divide? I'd have expected that to get messy."

  Nnedi strode at his side with a loose-hipped grace. "Not at all. We are not like those scavengers that prowl the plains. We are pack. We are stronger together, and weak links are removed to keep the pack safe."

  Weak links meaning... wargs who had an issue with their inner beast, he guessed. "How long have you been down here?"

  "Since the Darkening, in one way or another. And yourself? What brings you down here to the Divide? It's a place few strangers dare enter, so we're not entirely used to having company. You'll have to forgive my wargs their manners. Life is dangerous."

  How much to reveal? "We're heading for Cortez City. Want to do a little trading there."

  "A dangerous supposition, for the chances of paying the price of your lives is more likely than that of receiving any gains. The Confederacy rarely deals with outsiders." She snorted. "They don't like any outside views corrupting their sheep-like populace. Too hard to keep feeding them lies. And they
don't like wargs."

  "Sounds like you've had some experience with them."

  "Some," she admitted, and her dark eyes shifted toward him. "What are you hoping to trade for?"

  His shoulders stiffened. Nnedi was far from stupid, and she had to scent the doubt swimming off him. He forced himself to breathe slowly, his racing heartbeat slowing to a crawl as he brought his omega side to the fore. Calmness slid through his veins like a drop of oil landing on a pool of water. It could spread across the surface of him, enveloping him in its shielding embrace, but deep inside the furnace burned.

  "Medication," he admitted, watching her eyelids soften as she subconsciously breathed in his pheromones. "There's a virulent disease afflicting the humans in the Wastelands. Eden seems to think the Confederacy have antibiotics that might treat it, perhaps even a vaccine."

  "The Confederacy don't give anything away for free."

  True. "Her people have mining rights the Confederacy wants to get their hands on. She's authorized to grant those rights in exchange for the medication she needs."

  He glanced back toward Eden, just to check on her. Having her so far away made the monster within him flex, shrugging off its shroud of calmness. If something happened he'd never get to her in time....

  "She is your woman?" Nnedi followed his gaze.

  "Yeah." He didn't know how these wargs lived, but he'd seen enough of the Wastelands to know how events usually played out. "She's mine. If anyone touches her, I'll kill them."

  A faint flicker of a smile curled over her lips. "I wasn't asking for her sake—I'd have their heads if they touched her without permission." Dark eyes raked him from head to toe. "But there are a lot of single women in the pack, and you might need her at your side to keep your jeans intact."

  He... wasn't certain how to take that.

  "All that smooth, olive skin, and pretty eyes?" Nnedi smirked. "You're going to be like an oasis in the desert and some of my girls are thirsty. They're going to be disappointed you're taken."

  Heat crawled up his throat. Jesus. Was this what Eden had to put up with all the time?

  "Are you actually blushing? Oh, you are just too cute. Hey, Amara!" she called. "Pretty boy here is blushing. We've got a live one."

  "Ignore her," said a man at his side. "She's just pissing in your bedroll. Nobody's going to touch you either."

  Nnedi laughed, a full-throated sound. "José, you take all the fun out of life. You could have let me make him sweat a bit longer."

  "As long as your men keep their hands off Eden, we won't have a problem." He could handle himself. It was Eden he was worried about.

  "They won't touch her." Nnedi sounded assured. "I'll have their heads if they do."

  "And when the moon rises?" The warg within him was always content to doze the days away, as if sunlight weakened its hold on him, but night always brought the monsters out to play.

  He could control it.

  Mostly.

  But an entire pack of wargs? Maybe they should have taken their chances and made a run for it, but he would never have been able to get both the kid and Eden out of there safely, and the chances of her leaving Cole behind? Slim to none.

  "When the moon rises," Nnedi said coolly, "nothing shall change." She glanced at the amulet he wore around his throat. "We of Shadow Rock control the shift—not the other way around."

  "You do? How?" It was something his parents had been able to do, and Cane had beaten it into him when he finally got his hands on him. But Johnny had never met another warg out there who was in control. Not even Cane. He'd been so desperate to get his hands on the amulet's Johnny's grandfather had made, as if that could stave off his madness.

  "Do you know how wargs were created?"

  "Pre-Darkening, in a lab. Yeah. I know a bit. Just don't know how."

  "Wargs were created with nanotechnology and used to form a special branch of the pre-D government's military that was supposed to be the best of the best. The perfect soldier."

  "Nanotechnology?" he breathed. There was the missing link in the stories his father had told him, and the records he'd found at Black River.

  "Tiny microscopic particles that can warp the DNA of a regular human and manipulate the genome. I don't understand how it all works, though I daresay the Confederacy has better records than we do.

  "Our legends state the subjects who volunteered to become these super-soldiers weren't used to the nature of the beast. They were violent and emotional, overwhelmed by their increased levels of testosterone and lower levels of cortisone and serotonin. But some were able to handle it.

  "Shadow Rock is formed of the descendants of those who survived the Darkening. When the comet hit, it ruptured the walls of one of the compounds where a certain military group was being held. The government was considering whether to terminate the project—and the Alpha-Beta group—when they managed to break free of the facility."

  "Black River," he murmured.

  "You've heard of it?"

  He'd been there. Seen the fallout and the prison cells where more than just wargs had been experimented upon. "Not a nice place, if you ask me."

  "I've never been," Nnedi said, "but I suspect you're correct. My grandmother was one of the test subjects. With the skies turning black from the impact cloud, she and the rest of the alphas found shelter. There was a division among the group, and what was left—thirty-seven men and women—formed Shadow Rock. We've been together ever since.

  "Of those that split from the pack, they wandered through the Wastelands and went it alone. Some forgot their conditioning; some didn't care to remember it. And some were simply broken from what they'd been through during their time in the laboratory. They gave in to the beast and ravaged the Wastelands, killing with abandon and rage. Of their victims, those that survived began to change. It took years before we realized a simple scratch could pass the nanotech on and corrupt the host. The newly formed wargs were not like us. They'd never been taught to control themselves, and when the shift came over them, they gave in to their darker halves.

  "But we are Shadow Rock. We remember our ancestors, and we remember our pact. We are trained to control ourselves from birth. We are not monsters. We are elite. This is why we do not fear the moon. What about you?" Nnedi asked. "I expected you to turn when we had you surrounded."

  "Is that why we're still alive? Because we didn't?"

  "Yes."

  "It didn't seem like a sensible option." If he'd let the monster within him out, he might have killed half of them or more. But there was a fair chance he'd also turn on Eden if she panicked. "I refuse to lose control."

  "It's the only reason you're alive. It's curious to find another skinwalker out here, let alone two. The boy could be excused if he turned this once—his injuries make him weak, but you.... The alpha will be very curious about you."

  His head turned toward her sharply. "Skinwalker?"

  "Warg who walks in a human skin."

  "What if one of your pack loses control?"

  "If we cannot control it, then we are silenced. Forever. We dare not let the rage eat at the heart of the pack. It is a grave sacrifice, but we all understand."

  His thoughts raced. Once upon a time, he'd lived with his mother and father in a small homestead, high in the mountains. They'd all been wargs, and his father had taught him the Way early in life. It was all he knew, until the day Cane knocked on their door, revealing another warg—albeit one who followed a different path.

  Since then he'd seen the mindless monsters that roamed the Wastelands, hunting for prey and fighting each other for spoils.

  But he'd never come across others like him, except for Luc Wade and Adam McClain, who'd managed to trap the warg within them with the amulets.

  He hadn't realized how much he hungered for it. The company. The acceptance. People who wouldn't look at him as if he was a monster.

  He'd tried to be human once before, and look how that turned out.

  The bastards sold him to slavers.
<
br />   But maybe, just maybe, there could be a place for him among other wargs.

  Johnny's gaze raked the canyon ahead. The sand beneath their feet was compressed with dozens of trails. And a faint shape on a ledge far above him resolved into a warg in a pair of khaki pants and vest. Another on the other side of the canyon. They were nearing the heart of the pack's territory, if he wasn't mistaken.

  And for the first time since Cane rode into his life, Johnny actually felt breathless with possibility.

  Eden swallowed her wonder as they strode through the canyons. Each curved wall soared high above them, until it felt as though the light was only a mirage. She couldn’t see the source of it, or where it was coming from, just the aftereffects. It kissed its way down sandstone rock, highlighting the gold shimmer of the paint on the walls. Handprints and finger-drawn suns gave way to a sleek pack of running wolves. Someone had blown clouds of charcoal around the wolves so it seemed as though they were sprinting into pure darkness.

  Beauty.

  Beauty the likes of which she’d never seen.

  And a story.

  As they ducked beneath an overhang, plunging into darker caverns, the charcoal on the walls overtook almost all of the sandstone. Shimmers of gold paint rippled here and there, as their torches grew closer.

  "It’s the Darkening," she whispered, reaching out to trace her fingertips an inch above the paint.

  A warm body shadowed her own. Colton. "Yes. The people here remember the years that followed the meteor impact. It’s a warning to be passed down from elder to child." He pressed ahead, lifting the torch Nnedi had given him higher. Figures began to emerge from the darkness. Men with spears, wearing the headdress of a wolf. "Nnedi said they're all descended from the original warg soldiers who were created by the pre-D government. They escaped the laboratories when the meteor hit, and made their own way in the Darkening."

  Writing etched its way across the next wall, but it wasn't a language she knew.

  "Fear not the dark, fear not the light," he translated, bending lower to track the writing. "Fear dark without light. And light without dark. One consumes, one burns. And both must be mastered to…. I can’t make out this bit."