Raising Kane

by Long, Heather

  Also not an option Kid was eager to embrace. “I don’t know if I can make it days without—without finding a woman.” The confession cost him. He’d given up so much, what would a few hours hurt?

  “You can. You just have to learn how. We say I can’t when we don’t know another way. Get on your horse.”

  Left with no choice, Kid stumbled to where his mare waited, patient and maybe a little curious. Barely able to put a foot into the stirrup, he dreaded having to ask for help. It took him a minute, but he managed to drag himself into the saddle. Exhaustion chewed on him, but he turned his back on the town and nudged the horse over to where Wyatt waited.

  The man nodded once and climbed into his saddle, smooth and easy. They said nothing, riding until the sun dipped so low in the west, they couldn’t see anything. Nothing moved in the hard rocky plain around them. It would be another night with a fire, cold wind, and hard tack for food. Kid rode most of the day in a fugue, the world greying around him as the fever in his blood burned.

  He didn’t even notice Wyatt stopped until the man caught his mare’s reins. “Dismount. Eat. I’ll tend the camp.”

  All but falling out of the saddle, Kid limped over to a rock and sat down. It went against the grain to let someone else do all the work, but he didn’t think he could manage to chew much less strip his horse’s tack and tend the animals. The sound of water trickling broke through his misery and Kid glanced around. It was a moonless night, so the only illumination came from the scattering of stars overhead—which meant next to no light.

  “It’s over there.” Wyatt nodded. “A natural crack in the land lets some of the underground river bubble up. I’ve already got water to make coffee. Go bathe. It will help.”

  Blind obedience had never been his thing, but Kid could barely string together the reasons why he should object. He stumbled through the darkness, found the water splashing through the rocks. Surprisingly, green growth and flowers filled the little grotto, hidden away by the thicker yellow slabs of sandstone and hard packed earth. Where the water stroked the stone, he smelled a hint of moss, but it wasn’t like the deeper creeks or watery grottos on the ranch.

  Stripping out of his clothes, Kid plunged into the water. He didn’t care how deep it was, but it barely lapped at his thighs. Ice cold, it shocked his system and cleansed the cobwebs. He didn’t have any soap, so he made do with rinsing off the sweat and dust. Shoving his face into the water and soaking his hair down, he scratched at the beard growth on his face.

  He needed a shave.

  Wood smoke tickled his nose and he glanced over to see Wyatt illuminated against the flickering light of the fire—a darker shadow amongst many. But there was something to the smell of the smoke…meat. Squinting, Kid spotted what looked like rabbit roasting over the flames.

  His stomach let out a loud growl and he rinsed off the rest of the dirt and climbed out into the rapidly cooling night air. Shivers raced over his skin, but he embraced them. The lack of heat seemed to slap more sense into him. Despite the trembling in his hands, the haunting darkness from earlier and the rampant need which rode him hard throughout the day both abated. Using his shirt to dry off, he pulled on his britches and boots and carried the rest back.

  Finding a clean shirt in his packs, he pulled it on and then added his jacket, but he didn’t want to be too warm. In a day or two, he’d trade out the britches and cotton for his buckskin, but that would be the end of fresh clothes. Finger combing his hair, he walked to the fire and studied the meat.

  “When did you catch this?” His throat hurt with the effort and his voice sounded weak and rough.

  “A little while ago.” Wyatt didn’t pause in brushing down his horse. “I take it you’re back now?”

  “Yeah.” Kid nodded even if the man couldn’t see him. “I’m sorry about earlier.” The apology cost him nothing.

  “Accepted. It’ll be ready to eat soon. There’s a pot with chicory there on the right, and it should be ready. There’s also some sugar in the pack. Not a lot, but enough to help you right now.”

  Sugar? Why would that help? Kid liked confections as much as the next man, not that Pa allowed them more than the occasional sweet treat that didn’t come from Miss Annabeth’s baking. Once mentioned, however, he couldn’t stop scenting the brewing chicory coffee. Two metal cups waited and Kid used his discarded shirt to grip the pot and pour some of the coffee for each of them. He found the sugar where Wyatt indicated and added a little to the heavy black brew.

  “Did you want some?” He’d almost put the sugar back before it occurred to him to ask.

  “No. Save what we have for when you need it next.” Wyatt finished with the animals and gave his horse a pat before walking to the fire. As with every other night on this endless trail, no bedding lay out for him—and only Kid’s bedroll waited to be set next to the fire.

  Sipping the coffee, Kid blinked. The sweetness tasted good. It tasted better than good. The hot liquid burned his tongue, but he didn’t care. He drank several sips in quick succession. The heat hit his belly like a counterpoint to the cold in the water.

  Lack of understanding plagued him and he studied Wyatt through the smoke rising from the fire.

  “Extremes feed the senses. Working a gift, particularly one that doesn’t want to be tamed drains the body and the soul. Shocking it can be restorative.” Wyatt leaned forward and turned the rabbit on the makeshift spit. The meat sizzled as the flames heated it.

  “I guess you see this a lot.”

  “I’ve seen my share.” The man didn’t waste unneeded words.

  Dragging his bedroll closer to the fire, Kid took a spot opposite the elder Morning Star. “I have a lot of questions.”

  “I know. Quanto will answer them.” He took another long drink of his coffee, finishing it. If the scalding heat bothered him, he didn’t let on. He refilled his cup and set the tin pot back next to the fire.

  “Can’t you?”

  “His answers will be kinder.” For the barest second, humor flashed around the man’s dour expression.

  “Maybe I don’t want kind.” If they were going to be stuck together, it would be good to know what to expect.

  “When you hit me earlier—that wasn’t kind.” Wyatt lifted his head and Kid felt the full weight of his regard. “Are you sure you don’t want kind?”

  Unease slithered through him.

  “Okay. I’ll shut up and wait.”

  Wyatt smiled and the tension in Kid’s belly fisted. “Wise choice.”

  He considered all the responses he could make and settled for a nod. Maybe Wyatt being quiet wasn’t a bad thing. He stared at the rabbit sizzling on the spit and sipped his sweetened coffee. Yeah—quiet Wyatt was definitely better.

  Chapter 2

  Kid, The Desert

  The pattern repeated for two more days, Wyatt set the pace and Kid plodded after him. Kid could barely see the trail in front of his horse’s hooves any longer. Getting in the saddle each day took every ounce of his energy. Since his mare seemed content to follow Wyatt’s stallion, Kid let her. The pounding headache in his temples drove spikes through his vision. He kept the brim of his hat low to block out the unforgiving sun, but it didn’t help.

  His stomach rebelled and he reined in, slid off the mare, and made it five sweat drenched steps before he threw up. The sour taste of bile burned up his throat. His stomach cramped as he tried to vomit up the contents. Another spasm had him doubling over again and he would have fallen if not for the icy, chilling presence seizing the back of his jacket and dragging him upright.

  Vision reduced to two pinpricks of light, Kid could barely see Wyatt and, thank God, he couldn’t feel him. The world swam sickeningly and then tilted. Some part of his brain registered he was over Wyatt’s shoulder, but he didn’t care. Hours, or maybe it was only a minute or two, later he realized he was in the saddle, his hands bound to the pommel and his feet bouncing against the stirrups.

  Hands coaxed him off the saddle and caught
him when he fell and then it was cold and dark and he slept.

  He roused to someone shaking him and he tried to push them off, but the hands were insistent and dragged him up from the bliss of darkness. A cup pressed to his lips and he drank salty soup. It tasted awful, but it was wet and his parched throat screamed in relief. Heat flushed him, burning his insides until he wanted to weep.

  When he started to choke, the cup was removed and the irritating hands went away and he collapsed again. Maybe he was finally dying. The thought lasted only a few seconds before it flickered out, too.

  Several times he woke and each time choked down more of the soup. He barely registered the flavor. He drank when it was forced on him and fell back into sleep when the hands left him alone. Time seemed fluid and he was sticky with sweat when he finally surfaced from the blanket of misery. Blinking slowly, it took him a moment to identify his surroundings as some kind of cave.

  A fire crackled. Horses stomped. Wyatt sat less than a foot away, a silent sentinel in the shadowy darkness.

  “Water,” the word came out as a croak. His throat hurt like hell and his skin seemed too tight, as though it had been stretched beyond imagining. Needles slivered at his flesh and he thought about sitting up, but he tried and failed, weaker than a newborn foal.

  Wyatt cupped the back of his head and helped him upright. The metallic of a tin mug to his lips, but the water was blissfully cold. He gulped several swallows and scowled when the other man took the cup away.

  “Sips. You’re dehydrated and if you drink too much, too fast, you’re going to vomit. Again.” The emphasis on the last word tugged a memory loose—Wyatt supporting him through more than one bout of illness.

  “What happened?” God, his voice felt thick and dusty with ill use. The dull thud in his head echoed a steady cadence in time with the pound of his heart.

  “Your gift turned on you.” The utter directness of the response acted like a spray of cold water.

  Kid fought to see past the fog obscuring his vision, the hazy edges wavering. “What?” The croak hurt. “More water.”

  “A little more, but sips only.” Wyatt’s caution came out more an order than a request. He helped Kid to sit up more, bracing his back with a saddle. Weak as a kitten, Kid cooperated. His muscles didn’t seem to want to do anything right and his hands trembled. Water sloshed around the rim of the cup and it took both hands to fight to keep it steady.

  Wyatt crouched there, his one blue eye and one green reflecting the firelight licking the darkness and seeming to glow from within. Kid managed a sip, then another pausing only after the third swallow seemed to ease the harsh rawness of his throat.

  “Done?” The other man asked and took the tin cup.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Mind mired in exhaustion, it took Kid a moment to remember what he’d been asking. “What…do you mean my gift turned on me?”

  The other man studied him a moment and then rose. He moved around the fire and when he returned, he passed over some hard tack and dried beef. “Eat slowly. You’ve had no solid food for four days.”

  Was that how long he’d been out? The last time illness tore him apart, he’d been poisoned by Mariska. Even then, he’d not been down for four days. Weaker than a kitten, he took his time about nibbling on the end of the dried beef. The spices on the meat actually burned his lips, but he worked a piece loose and chewed it slowly.

  When he managed to finish a whole bite, swallow it, and start on the next, Wyatt nodded and passed him the cup for another drink. “Our abilities are like beasts in a way. Cody can no more stay human than Scarlett can not burn something. When you lash it down through force of will, a gift will fight back.”

  The explanation didn’t make sense. “Cody doesn’t fight his wolf anymore.” The schism between man and beast had been healed. “And Scarlett’s fine…” His sister-in-law’s tempestuous nature came out in a wide variety of ways, from her passionate love for Kid’s brother Sam to her fierce protectiveness of her children. Both Cody and Scarlett were settled—while not necessarily restive, their emotional spikes didn’t send Kid to his knees.

  Not anymore.

  They were hardly as restive as Micah—Kid’s older brother was so damn steady, he calmed Kid just by being there—but they didn’t tear Kid apart either.

  “They have better control, they’re more grounded, and they have reasons beyond themselves to stay that way.” Wyatt’s gaze was on the fire, but Kid doubted the eldest Morning Star missed anything. “Control over a gift is hard-won, particularly over one that does not want to be leashed. Primal gifts are the most difficult.”

  Primal gifts. Scarlett was a firestarter and could leash even a range fire and extinguish it—or burn a building to ashes to erase it, if necessary. Cody was a wolf and the wolf was Cody, though for too long the schism inside him denoted two separate, yet utterly distinct personalities. That chasm between his two halves healed during a terrific battle in the snowy mountains, and Kid had helped it along—pouring everything he had into Cody and pulling all of his pain into himself.

  It had nearly killed him.

  His mind still sluggish, he forced another bite of the hard tack, this time, and tried to puzzle out Wyatt’s meaning. “Buck’s a dreamwalker…he’s not combative.”

  “No. His gift is addictive, but not wild and unpredictable.” Wyatt added another log to the fire; the heat chased the cold chills racing across Kid’s skin.

  “Jo, she talks to animals.” Jo, Micah’s new wife, was rock steady like her husband. Despite falling ill to spirit fever, she’d recovered and developed a gift for talking to animals. Strange, perhaps, but then what wasn’t odd about most Fevered? “Noah, his gift isn’t dangerous.”

  “Isn’t it?” Wyatt spared a pointed look at the hard tack. “He can no sooner walk away from an injured body than you can an injured soul. He will heal and heal and heal until he collapses. If he doesn’t temper his gift with real medicine, with allowing bodies to heal normal injuries of their own volition, his gift could quite easily kill him.”

  The warning rang inside him and he chewed on that with the hard tack for several minutes. He managed to take the tin cup without sloshing it this time and drank a deeply of the water. Every bite, every sip, seemed to help a little bit more.

  “I don’t get Jimmy’s gift, so I can’t argue that, but I do understand Delilah’s—” He hesitated. The siren’s powerful voice gave him the first true peace he’d experienced. She’d stopped him from killing his own brother, from ripping his family’s heart out and that was a debt he could never repay. “Would you really have killed her?”

  “Yes.” The ruthless response startled him.

  “She did nothing wrong.” Kid frowned. “She was used by a lot of people and, from the moment I sent her back to the ranch, she didn’t hurt anyone. She hurt herself in her efforts to keep her gift leashed.”

  “Yet, she possesses the most dangerous of gifts, the ability to persuade anyone to do anything she wills. In the wrong hands, it can shatter lives.” Wyatt rose, taking the now empty tin cup and a water skin. He disappeared out of the cave entrance. Kid ate another bite and it wasn’t long before Wyatt returned. He held out the cup and Kid took it with a nod.

  “But she didn’t hurt anyone. And you were just going to kill her.”

  “Some gifts are too dangerous and too unpredictable to be allowed the opportunity to fail.” He went to work on his saddle, repairing a portion of torn tack. The lack of real light inside the cave didn’t seem to bother him.

  “And that’s your call?” Exhausted and worn out, Kid had no idea why he pressed the issue, but Wyatt’s arrival at the ranch caused a hell of a battle. No one had been able to take him down, not even their strongest. Wyatt breezed through them and, even though he’d taken care not to hurt his siblings, there was no escaping the bald fact that he could have, easily.

  “When an animal sickens, you have two options. You can treat it and hope it gets better while not infecting the others or you c
an cull it and let it die so it doesn’t harm the herd. Which is the better choice?”

  “You do what you have to do. You need to know why it’s sick and Micah wouldn’t put an animal down unless it was suffering and he couldn’t fix it.” His brother had so much heart where the animals under his care were concerned.

  “What if you know that its illness is pervasive, that you could easily lose most of your herd because you’ve seen the sickness before?” Dread lingered in those words and something far more unexpected—sadness.

  It took every dreg of what few resources Kid had left to not lean in to the promise of the sadness, to not pull it away. He didn’t know what other darker, twisted things would come tangled with it. He did not want to touch Wyatt’s emotions. Repeating that mantra over and over in his brain seemed to quiet the unerring need, but not stifle it.

  He didn’t want to agree with him and it irritated Kid that he saw where Wyatt was going. “Then you put it down.” He pushed on, not giving the man a chance to respond. “But, Delilah isn’t an animal. She’s a person and she has feelings…” And she’d been so damn scared in that saloon at Fort Courage, terror leaked from every pore. She was better at the Flying K, happier and more confident. She was better still with Buck, the dreamwalker having earned her trust and her love.

  A twinge of envy twisted in his gut. Not for what they had, but because he never would. He couldn’t do more than sate his pain in a woman. Binding himself to another person—experiencing their needs, their upsets, their wants, and their hates for all time—would shred him.

  “Feelings can be flawed. People can make mistakes. When those mistakes kill others, you have to balance what is needed against what is desired.” Wyatt shrugged. “You should sleep.”

  Despite the fatigue wearing him down, Kid ignored the suggestion. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Which one?” The bland retort lacked any censure.

  “You said my gift attacked me.”

  Sighing, Wyatt gave him a long look. “Ask Quanto.”