“I’ll take care of it.”
“And when you run,” Quanto murmured. “I will take care of it.”
Pivoting slowly, he met the old man’s gaze evenly. “I consider myself warned.”
“Good. I don’t have much time left for these arguments. You could at least do me the courtesy of staying through a full one.”
“No.” Wyatt shook his head, mouth curved in a smile he didn’t remotely feel. “You don’t get the excuse of closure with me to lay down and die. I know what putting one’s affairs in order looks like. You want to have the fight with me? Live longer and fight it.”
He owed the shaman everything. He’d bled for him, would willing bleed a thousand times over, learned to temper his needs, aided and helped raised child after child—he’d conceded to him nearly everything. But he wouldn’t give him this. “You could live. You could have the strength to see your granddaughter.” It was cruel to use his family against him, but he would not capitulate in this battle.
“You know my answer to that, Wyatt.”
“Then we remain at an impasse.”
Quanto sighed and made his way up the stairs, slow, but steady. Wyatt remained in place, his attention locked on that frail body. If he missed even a single step, Wyatt would catch him. He didn’t and, at the top of the steps, the old man disappeared into the shadows on his way to his room, but his words drifted down. “I will not give up.”
He laughed at the canny attempt at getting the last word, a brief harsh sound then sobered. Neither will I. Giving Quanto a few more minutes to settle, Wyatt climbed the stairs silently and paused outside the old man’s door to rest his fingers on the wood. He was glad Quanto seemed so determined, because Wyatt hadn’t given up either. Satisfied he was safe enough for now, Wyatt continued down the hall and let himself into the room they’d given Kid. The young man sprawled on the bed, sound asleep.
Settling into the deeper shadows of the corner near the window, Wyatt leaned against the wall and let his eyes drift shut. He’d hear Kid, if he tried to leave.
Chapter 6
Kid, The Mountain
He woke an instant before he impacted with the floor. Flipping over onto his back with a groan, Kid found Wyatt staring down at him in the half-light filtering through the window. What time was it?
“You need to go down and clean the kitchen and make breakfast. Quanto will be up soon, if he isn’t already.” Orders delivered in crisp fashion, Wyatt stared at him as if waiting for a response.
“What?” Ignoring the bruise in his shins from hitting the floor, Kid struggled to sit up. The dull throb of yesterday’s headache turned into a sickening ache today. Grit stung his eyes and a foggy shroud muddled his thoughts.
Wyatt repeated the orders. He had, indeed, said what Kid thought he heard.
“You dragged me out of bed for chores?” It wasn’t the first time it happened to him and, if he ever went back to the Flying K, it wouldn’t be the last. If… His unspoken rebellion died without ever making a sound. “I’ll take care of it.”
Climbing to his feet, Kid paused only long enough to make the bed right down to fluffing the pillow. Miss Annabeth taught him to do that when he was five years old; some rules a child learned never to break. Avoiding Wyatt’s unsettling mismatched gaze, Kid dragged his boots on, combed his fingers through his lanky hair, and tucked his shirt in before heading out the door and down the stairs.
A pervasively cold chill made him shiver, so he paused at the stone fireplace to add wood and stir up the flames. Once the hot ash and coals caught on the fresh wood, he closed the grate and turned into the kitchen. The remains of three of the previous days meals and Quanto’s shriveled potato skin lesson awaited him. A creak of the floorboard alerted him to Wyatt’s continued shadow at his back.
“Do you have animals that you give the scraps to?” Just because Kid hadn’t seen any didn’t mean they didn’t have some.
“Pail in the side room.” Which answered that question.
Kid nodded and opened a door he hadn’t seen the day before. Nearly all stone, the room held more than just the pail—in fact, it seemed to be a cold larder filled with stored foods, cans and mason jars. Bags of vegetables and fruits, oats and even rice occupied one corner. The rice puzzled Kid—that was an imported item and not always easy to get. Another door layered into the floor, a trap of some kind, but Kid disregarded it and picked up the pail.
Scraping all the leftover foods, including the brutalized remains signifying Kid’s gift into the pail, he stacked the dishes next to a washtub. He’d need to get rid of the scraps and bring in snow to melt and wash the dishes with later.
“I’ll take the scraps out later when the snow dies down. Just leave it in the cold room to keep.” Wyatt instructed.
“Water?” Kid didn’t waste time arguing; instead he put the pail where Wyatt told him.
“Pump.” The man pointed to the metal contraption nearly hidden by the washtub. Shifting dishes around, Kid flipped the crank up and put his back into it. Water flooded out of the end and into the tub. He didn’t fill it full, since he’d likely have to lift the damn thing to empty it out into the snow.
Unbuttoning his shirtsleeves, he rolled them up and found a hard wire sponge and used that to scrape the food remains off the plates and cleaned them in the icy water. His fingers were damn near numb by the time he finished. It wasn’t until he’d dried the last mug that he realized he hadn’t lit the stove.
Burying the frustration under an avalanche of introspection, he found a heavy glove hung on a peg next to the pot-bellied stove. Shrugging it onto his hand, he pulled open the door and checked for any latent heat. Not even a spark.
Loading fuel inside, he stacked it and then went for tinder from the main fireplace. By the time he got it lit and heated, Kid barely noticed the chill. The main room was warming up and the kitchen would be toasty soon.
Beyond answering the periodic question, Wyatt said nothing. When Quanto shuffled into the room, Kid had hot water ready for the man’s tea and strips of pork sizzling. The trap in the cold room turned out to be a ladder into a basement with meat hanging—including sides of beef. The absolute cold down there preserved it well. Hours of hiding in the kitchen with Lena and Miss Annabeth taught him a fair portion about cooking. He used another pot with hot water to mix up some oatmeal to go with the slabs of meat.
Wanting to prep the teapot, Kid paused to examine the kitchen area.
“Cupboard, top shelf.” Wyatt directed. Turning, Kid eyed the cabinet and opened it up. On the top shelf was a jar with dried leaves in it. Pulling it down he carried the leaves and the teapot of hot water to Quanto. The shaman sat at the table, his expression inscrutable.
“I don’t know how much of this you need in the pot to make it the way you like.” He left both for him and went to finish the food. He dished out two plates worth and served those next before returning to fix a plate for himself. “Do I need to leave food out for the others?”
“No. They will eat at the cabin.” Quanto’s disposition may have been calm, but his voice sounded troubled. Instead of eating, Kid cleaned off the pots and pans he’d used to fix the food and stored the remains on a fourth plate for anyone who wanted more. He left the oatmeal to cool and sealed the lid. It could be reheated with additional water to soften it when it grew too thick.
Instead of joining them at the table, Kid stayed at the sideboard to eat. He didn’t much feel like company. Neither man commented, leaving him to his food. Kid ate without tasting any of it, methodically spooning up every bite of the gritty oatmeal. It didn’t taste like Miss Annabeth’s. The meat was better, though it was cooked tougher on one side than the other.
The silence stretched to an intolerable level behind him, but he kept his focus on the food. He didn’t know why he bothered to eat. Yesterday he’d vomited most of what he’d eaten.
If…
He’d extracted a promise from Wyatt, when they first began their ride for the mountain, to kill h
im if he couldn’t get his gift under control. When he’d agreed, something inside of Kid eased. He wouldn’t be a threat to his family again. He either came back whole from this journey or he didn’t go home.
If…
Yet until the day before, he’d nursed an expectation that he would go home…someday. Not this week, not the next, maybe not for months. But if Cody, Noah, Scarlett and all the others learned to tame their gifts, surely he could do the same. Until yesterday…
If…
Whatever Quanto did to him, the battery of emotions shattered him until he felt the jagged bits of himself bleeding on the inside. If he didn’t hear the scrape of their utensils on the plates or the quiet thunk of the tea cup rising and returning to the table, Kid might have thought he was alone. Completely muffled, a blanket blocking them away like the snow shrouding the landscape beyond.
They controlled it. How were they controlling him? He tried to fit the ragged ends together, but nothing would sew up and the throbbing in his head grew brutal, beating in time to his heart. Blackness surged around the edges of his vision.
Ice locked like a vice around the back of his neck and snapped him back to the room. “Stop.” Wyatt’s voice, hard and unforgiving delivered a verbal slap. “Look.” He didn’t wait for Kid to respond, just yanked him physically around to see Quanto’s face. Harsh lines of fatigue deepened the wrinkles lining his weathered visage.
Shock splintered through him and Kid exhaled a harsh gasp of air. “What happened?”
Wyatt released him as Quanto’s expression eased. “You turned your gift inward again…and then lashed out.”
“No, I didn’t—” Did I? What had he been doing that would have caused that reaction? He didn’t do that to other people. He didn’t attack or hurt them—except Jason. But that was different, I was mad and he kept pushing…
“You’re doing it again,” the threat in Wyatt’s voice was far softer now. “And maybe you don’t know how you’re doing it, but you need to learn how to not do it.”
Kid pivoted to face the eldest Morning Star brother and the teary-eyed little boy screaming in the back of his mind shut up. He snapped. “What do you want from me? You said get up. I got up. You said come to the mountain. I came to the damn mountain. You said learn. I am trying to learn. But neither of you is teaching me a damn thing, all you’re doing is telling me what I’m doing wrong!” By the time he finished, he was shouting and Wyatt actually took a step forward, but Kid didn’t back down. He’d been winding up on the inside, so tight, everything in him physically hurt. “I asked you for two damn things since this nightmare started. You said no to one and you’d wait and see on the other. You don’t like what I’m doing? Kill me now and get it over with. You don’t want to kill me? Then help me.”
He’d had it. He’d had it with everyone demanding something from him and he didn’t know how the hell to give it to them. The temperature in the room seemed to plummet, Wyatt’s expression grew more remote, more forbidding and a flicker of movement to Kid’s left told him Quanto rose from his chair. But Kid didn’t take his eyes off Wyatt—he was the danger in this room. He was the threat.
The rightness of that assessment rang through him with a clarity he hadn’t experienced in months. Wyatt’s uncertainty about him was a benefit. The man didn’t want to kill him. Every instinct in him screamed to do it and do it now, but Wyatt resisted the urge. Instead, the man flexed his fists and fought for calm—worry, grief, and something indefinable leaked around the jagged edges of that calm. For a man used to decisive action, indecision and hesitation were twin tortures rending through him.
His pupil dilation arrested Kid’s attention. The war for patience against reaction raged, but beneath it all a keen understanding that demanded success. Deeper still darkness surged up, cold and filled with twisting regrets and…
Kid blinked slowly. “Oh. Hell.” Swallowing hard, he retreated, palms extended outward. It took everything in him to pull back and he felt it. That piece of himself—stretched out, reaching, grasping, and digging into the dark void around Wyatt—worse, he’d done it. He’d pushed past whatever kept him out and gone beneath to the man inside.
The sense of tension extending out from him withdrew and he grappled with it. He dragged it back inch by inexorable inch and a slam rattled inside of him. The food in his belly turned to rocks and blood trickled out of his nose. Nervous, he shot a look at Wyatt and, although the man’s expression never changed, he nodded.
“Better. You felt it that time.” It wasn’t a question.
Kid didn’t trust himself to speak so he gave a jerky acknowledgement. He gripped the sideboard counter, letting the hard wood dig into his palms.
“Can you feel us now?” Quanto leaned forward, his hands flat on the table. Color infused the haggard cast of his face.
Kid’s heart hammered a rapid beat against his ribs. It hurt to breathe. Sweat dampened his back and his shirt clung to him. His emotions seemed to be locked in a battle between horror and shock, but nothing else assaulted him. Uncertainty assaulted him and he held up his hand. He waited heartbeat to see if he picked up anything from either of them.
Wyatt folded his arms and his shoulders relaxed. “Now?”
Kid shook his head, signaling the negative.
“Well, that’s a first step.” Quanto nodded and rapped his knuckles on the table. “You two will have to work together.”
If he hadn’t been watching him, Kid would have missed the jerk of motion from Wyatt and the half-formed look of consternation that wiped away in an instant. Funny, the man didn’t seem half-as-terrifying as earlier. Coldness filled Wyatt’s expression and Kid almost laughed. Then again, maybe he seemed more dangerous.
“Fine.” Wyatt accepted gracelessly. “You need to bathe, then meet me in the barn.” He caught Quanto’s arm and said something in a lower voice to him. The shaman nodded.
Kid glanced out at the snow, then back at the men. It took a moment, but he found his voice. “Bathe where?”
Wyatt flicked a look at the window.
In the snow? Kid didn’t think so. “No.”
“There’s a bathing house attached to the barn,” Quanto explained. “It’s heated by the forge. Take your things and follow the rope tied to the front of the house and over. The snow is deep, but packed. You can bathe out there, change, then meet Wyatt in the barn.”
That had possibilities, but he still waited for Wyatt to help Quanto out of the room. The old man seemed even older somehow, as though he’d aged in the time it took for them to have breakfast…
…and for Kid’s gift to burst out of control.
All traces of his amusement evaporated. He’d never understood it before, but he’d felt it that time, the part of himself prying into Wyatt’s soul like some kind of rustler, harvesting cattle from a herd in the dead of night. Troubled by the comparison, he hurried out of the kitchen and grabbed his things from his borrowed room. Most of his clothes were dirty, but some less than others. He got out the cleanest he could find and found soap and then set out into the frosted air.
Using the rope to navigate, Kid found the barn and the attached bathing house. It was far different from what he expected. Instead of freestanding tubs, four pools at varying levels, water spilling down from top to bottom, created a constant stream. The air inside was hot and moist, almost too hot. Kid stripped and slid into the pool closest to the floor—the water blessedly warm.
He focused on cleaning, scrubbing away the dirt, sweat, and the clinging sense of awareness he’d filtered through from touching Wyatt. When he didn’t think he could get any cleaner, he climbed out of the dirty water and up to the next pool. It was hotter than the one below. Grateful for the sting, he sank down to sit and to think.
Above him, steam curled into the air. The bath he rested in was comfortable, though hotter than the one he’d bathed in. Each tipped in from the next, the overflow keeping the water flowing constantly. As he watched, the lower pool emptied the dirty water bit by b
it. Soon it would be clean again and it was a revelation.
I need to do that. I need to empty out what doesn’t belong in me…
Evelyn, Lawrence, Kansas
The men escaped. Four of the five men who’d murdered her father and the marshal escaped, including the man from Tennessee. They’d fled the town before anyone came to see what caused the screaming. Debate raged around her, but Evelyn Lang remained numb to it all. The strident clatter of angry voices rose over the hushed murmurs of dismay and nearly drowned out the hissed whispers of fear. Lost in a sea of strangers, Evelyn barely heard any of it.
She couldn’t stop staring at her hand. The back of her left hand was stained with a reddish-brown substance. A similar discoloration spattered the cuff of her sleeve and extended up to the crook of her elbow. Flicking it with a fingernail, the brown flakes turned almost powdery and drifted away. It crusted around her nails and seemed concentrated on the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger. She didn’t remember spilling anything.
“Miss Lang?” A voice intruded on her inspection and manners dictated she at least acknowledge the intrusion, no matter how unwanted it might be.
Lifting her gaze, she found Mrs. Johnson, the tearoom owner, had taken the chair next to hers…where were they? Evelyn glanced around the packed meeting hall—oh, the town hall. She didn’t remember leaving the alley, or coming inside. When had she done that?
“Evelyn, dear?” Mrs. Johnson grasped her hand. The woman’s icy fingers were alien and bony. She didn’t really want to be touched, so she tugged free and Mrs. Johnson released her. “I think you should go lie down. You’re very pale.”
“I’m quite fine, Mrs. Johnson. I need to find my father.” She rose and patted the old woman on the shoulder. The angry voices quieted at Evelyn’s movement and she glanced around. Her father should be here. He was due to hear several cases and then meet her at the tearoom for lunch.
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