“Walk with me.” Quanto nodded toward the lake. Even though snow still held sway on the landscape, it had melted down to a hard crust covering rather than a deep wade. Leaving the wagon at the manure pile, Kid trailed after the shaman. Interestingly enough, Wyatt didn’t follow. Glancing back at the barn, Kid felt a twinge for leaving Evelyn to work, but if he could master this, he’d definitely be able to help her better.
Wyatt wouldn’t hurt her.
Well, he was pretty sure Wyatt wouldn’t.
Evelyn, The Barn
No matter how she tried to balance the damn shovel she continued to spread more of the straw on the floor outside of the stall. William had moved the hand wagon closer, but she missed more often than she hit and frustration welled up in her. He’d long since finished and she still had three-quarters of a stall to strip. The smell was horrendous and her eyes watered. She blamed the burn on the heavy odor and blinked furiously.
Leaning out of the stall, she glanced back into the quiet shadows of the barn. William hadn’t come back. Chewing the inside of her lip, she considered his earlier words. He was done and she’d barely begun. The first day they’d been sent down here, he’d understood her utter lack of knowledge where ‘chores’ were concerned. She understood books, debate, law, and academic discourse—not the shoveling of manure or the stripping of stalls.
As it turned out, she was rather miserable at these tasks, nearly as miserable as she’d been at hauling water and cleaning dishes. Her father hadn’t kept a house in years; they’d traveled from town to town and often stayed in inns or hotels—and once at a very lovely boarding house.
“Are you waiting for it to clean itself?” The soft question startled her and Evelyn spun to find Wyatt standing on the other side of the hand wagon, his expression hard and his arms folded.
“No.” Reluctant and more than a little sore, she fumbled the shovel and went back to clearing the floor. Scooping as much as she could manage, she dumped nearly all of it into the wagon and dared another glance at stern, implacable visage cast half in shadow cast by his hat. “Have you set William to another task?”
“Does it matter?”
“Answering a question with another question is considered rude in some circles.” Actually, it implied the Socratic method, but she doubted they discussed Greek philosophy on the mountain. No, these were rough men who lived a bare few steps above the primitive. It seemed almost impossible that her father had once lived here, yet he’d been the one to tell her of the shaman and his brethren. Brothers, he called them. Odd that he never mentioned any sisters. Of course, only one other woman seemed to have been there before as far as she could tell.
“Is it?” Amusement punched beneath the chill tone of his voice and a shiver skated up her spine. A primal warning, because unlike William, this man would only allow her to push him so far. When he’d found her sitting on a hay bale peppering William with questions while the man tackled the tasks they’d been assigned—the frost in his gaze coupled with the stinging verbal reprimand he’d delivered cowed the younger man and, if she were perfectly fair, her as well.
“I am unsuited to these tasks.” It did not prick her pride to admit her own failure in this area. Clearly William understood all that was needed. He’d already finished, hadn’t he? He also hadn’t seemed to mind tackling all the tasks and, for a few minutes earlier, she’d gotten the impression he wanted to offer to help her. But he didn’t and he told me to get to work and took the time to show me what he was doing. Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of pride to admit her lack, but she didn’t particularly care for the low plea in her voice or the feeling she couldn’t do something.
“Clearly hard work is not something Edward encouraged in you.” The cool dismissal added sting to the harsh appraisal. “Surprising, really. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty or doing his part.”
Grief doused her, an avalanche of stone against her heart. She took a step toward him “My father had a tremendous work ethic. He believed in training my mind. I was not a stable hand, nor a cook, or any of these other things you keep asking me to do and he never planned for that to change. I did not come here to learn menial labor. I came to train my gift.”
“For vengeance.” A shrug. “What makes you think you can even handle what you can do? You can’t handle a shovel. That shovel is a tool and only as useful as the person wielding it. Vengeance takes time and it takes patience and it takes the application of skill. So far, I have seen none of these qualities in you.” The words cut and she bled.
Did he really think her that weak? Hadn’t he seen the dog she summoned? Or understood how far she’d traveled—alone—across hostile territory? She’d survived by her wits, with or without the ability to clean a damn stall. Heat blazed in her mind and the shackled channel flamed wide open. A half-dozen low growls vibrated with menace and filled the air. Wolves, deep and dark as midnight, bled out of the shadows . They were the night and the anger and the hate and they hungered for blood.
Danger throbbed, as real and present as the animals she’d summoned. Maybe the demonstration on the porch hadn’t imparted the real threat she could provide. “I know my father doesn’t—didn’t—mean anything to you, but he had to have meant something to your father. He told me of a man named Wyatt, always in hushed tones, always with respect—” The musky scent of the animals flooded the dusty barn air around them and their near sub-vocal noise offered the promise of violence. Her target remained exactly where he was, his expression so utterly impassive he may as well have been carved from stone.
The strength in him had to be phenomenal. If he would merely take her side in the argument, she knew she could learn. She would have the tools she needed and she could hunt down the men who murdered her father. Red hazed her vision. Maybe a real demonstration of what she could do, of what her father could have done had he allowed his ability to defend him…
…or her, if she’d only stepped out of that damn alley a moment sooner. Black grief wound around her so tightly, she staggered at the choking hold. Her father died because of her indecision in that alley, because she’d let him down. A choking sound, low and dark and so very alone, rent the air and she barely recognized it as coming from her throat. She’d failed him, hiding in that alley, arguing the merits of stepping out versus staying out of sight rather than taking action. The logic, the cool practicality of it, offered no surcease from her faulty choices.
Her father was dead.
If any blame were to be delivered, any true justice, she had to exact it on herself as well as the others. Falling to her knees, a hot whisper of breath warned her of the wolf lunging in front of her. She stared at it, almost blind to the white teeth snapping so close to her face.
But teeth and claws never landed. The animals flung away from her and slammed into the walls with a sickening crunch of shattered bone, a momentary reprieve. They would rise again. Her gift didn’t depend on life or death. More wolves lunged and were repelled. She would die, shredded as physically as she was emotionally, and her failure would be complete.
Blood slicked her arm. With dull eyes, she considered the injury. Had they reached her? Would she watch them tear her apart? Another series of thuds and twisted bone and the phantom beasts screamed in fury and frustration. They would come for her. They had to come for her.
The wagon standing between her and the coldest man she’d ever met slid away and a slap struck her. Hard hands jerked her to her feet and her head snapped back. “Focus. Send them away or I’ll just keep killing them.”
Kill him? Raw fury blazed at the threat. They’d killed him and she’d done nothing. Nothing, and she could do so much. Even this man in front of her had to be afraid of something. Everyone was. Before the thought completed, the shadows writhed and reshaped. Movement behind Wyatt captured her attention and she started to laugh.
It made a certain amount of twisted sense. Of course he’s afraid of himself… So many men were. She lifted her chin and stared up at the cold man with utter
defiance. Maybe if he tasted real fear, he’d understand.
“Sorry, sweetheart, I’m a bigger bite than you could ever hope to take.” It was all the warning he gave her. The blow struck and the world went black.
* * *
Light flickered behind her closed eyelids and it took serious effort to force her eyes open. The barn and Wyatt were both gone. Instead, she sat on a small hill above a glassy lake. Lifting her head, she drank in the warmth of the sunshine and let the cool wind caress her face. Relief unfurled its wings and fluttered within her breast. Maybe she’d died…Guilt curled around her heart at the second flutter of relief. Death meant she’d failed completely to avenge her father’s death, but it also offered a certain amount of freedom.
The sound of footsteps told her she wasn’t alone and she twisted to find Quanto walking up the small path to join her on the hill. He moved with more ease than she’d seen since she arrived. Gone was the shuffling step and the faint hunch to his shoulders. Here, he stood with his back erect and his chin up. Long, silvery hair framed his face and added a distinguished kiss to his near primal air.
He was far more powerful than she’d credited him for being.
An amused smile curved his lips as his gaze met hers. Had he heard her thoughts?
“Did I die?” She hadn’t meant to ask the question, but it slipped out.
“No.” He shook his head. “You’re dreaming.”
“Oh.” Curious. Her dreams never seemed this clear cut or so utterly defined.
“And you’re disappointed in the answer.” He took a seat next to her, his legs folding into a criss-cross pattern with ease. She could easily imagine him as a younger man, tall and proud, with a regal bearing. Life had not been kind to this man. It had marched across his visage and left a torrid path of scars and wrinkles in its wake.
“A little, perhaps.” It was a dream, why shouldn’t she be honest? “If I am dead, then I failed my father, but there is no way to survive death, so I can rest.” And she was so very tired. She hadn’t allowed herself real rest since she’d begun her mad flight south and existed on a diet of pure, visceral need. “At the same time, I am glad I am not. My father deserves so much better.”
“All a father wishes for his child is peace, happiness, and security. No parent ever wishes bloodshed or a hunger for violence.” Quanto, she remembered, had raised children of his own.
“No, my father would not have wished this for me.” Edward Lang had always been a very patient and practical man. He believed in the law and in true justice. But what had it earned him? A bloody death in the streets with no one to mourn him. No one to acknowledge the beauty of a light that had been forever extinguished.
“You mourn him, Evelyn. You need to mourn him. Though seeking violence to repay violence will only earn you more violence.”
She shrugged. “Once I have paid back my father’s death on those who killed him, it won’t matter.”
“Does your own life mean so little to you?”
A life without purpose wasn’t a life. She had only one purpose, now. “It means I can deliver justice. Once that has been done, I don’t know what I’ll do. And I don’t suppose I care.” Odd how honest she could be in this nebulous place, but why shouldn’t she be? It was her dream, after all.
“When Edward came to the mountain…” Quanto looked out across the lake. “He was younger than you. Such a bright young man, extremely intelligent even then. He understood what it was he did, but not the how of it. He also recognized that powerful passion was his weakness, so he disciplined his mind to focus only on the coldest of facts. To make hard logic his greatest weapon. We counseled him that cutting off his heart could prove an even greater flaw, but he was determined.”
The story of her father as a young man engaged her as no other words might have. She’d never known her father to be anything but what she’d always known—a fair and reasonable man with a penchant for seeing both sides of an argument and the ability to weigh the merits. He never let his feelings color his judgment…save for when it came to her.
“When I was little, he told me stories about you.” The old Indian had given her a glimpse at her father. She thought it only fair to repay the knowledge. “Of how you taught him and helped him build the structure he caged his gift with.”
A shrug, fluid and easy. “He wanted it caged. He was never comfortable with what he could do, but he accepted it and then divorced his own emotions, dampened his heart, until it could feel only the most placid of things. A friendship, but not a bonded one. A love, but not an all consuming need. I suspect you were his greatest challenge.”
“Me?” Evelyn twisted on the rock and sat up straighter.
“A parent’s love is a hard thing to diminish. We would fight for our children, kill for them—die for them.”
A reminder. Her father had died. But not for her—for his principles and for the greed of five men in a cold, lonely town. Her jaw tightened.
“Evelyn, I have no doubt in my heart that Edward loved you. He taught you to cage your own gift because his frightened him so badly. He also gave you the tools to find us and to train your gift. What you do with the knowledge is in your hands.”
“Why was he so afraid of it?” She’d never seen fear in his eyes when they discussed it, his words always rational, always calm.
“You were born of your father’s seed and so you inherited his ability. Do you know the story of how he developed his?”
She considered a moment and finally shook her head. “No. He never spoke of that. Honestly, he rarely spoke of his life before he became a judge. Only now and then…usually late at night after a long or wearying day.” And then most often in the deepest of winters, when they were completely alone and there was no chance any one would overhear.
“For most the Spirit Fever comes as virulent plague. It is indiscriminate in who it takes and it will fell even the most able-bodied man or woman. Oddly, children are the most resistant to it, or perhaps they are merely the most flexible and able to adapt to the ravages of the sickness.” Another shrug. “It is a matter that I have considered many times, but I have rarely found any absolutes.”
He fell silent and instead of urging him on, she waited. Something in his eyes spoke of a sadness, profound and deep, and she was loathe to disturb him.
“When your father was five years old, the fever came to the town he lived in. It was a small place, deep in the eastern mountains. They had few adults to begin with and fewer children, yet all fell to the fever within days. As far as I have ever known, most died that first night, with a small handful surviving into the second. By the third, only your father was alive.”
Horror crept into her heart. Five years old and everyone around him had died? How had he survived? Quanto touched his hand to hers, the dry, leather of his skin a comfort.
“Children, as I have said, are very adaptable. It would be nearly five years before your father realized everyone was dead.”
“How is that even possible?” The very concept boggled her. He would have been too young to hunt or to grow things—how had he possibly survived?
But an idea burst to life inside of her, so insane, so—oh Lord.
“Because he created his people again. He conjured them. He needed his parents. He needed his town. Unchecked and unseen, his imagination conjured the very people who could protect and succor him.”
Bile rose in her throat and grief wrenched her sideways. She didn’t want to ask, but she had to know. “How did he learn the truth?” It was a ragged whisper.
“A band of rogues, thieves, who descended on the small town in a raid. They butchered his parents and even raped some of the women before killing them. They—like the fever before them—were indiscriminate in their destruction.”
Evelyn stuffed a hand against her mouth.
“Terrified, Edward hid in the trees. He loved to climb them as a boy and he’d been playing hide and seek with a few of his friends when the attack began. His people didn’t fi
ght back…”
“…because as a little boy, he wouldn’t have known how.” She understood that truth deep inside, because she’d been a trapped little girl in that alleyway—uncertain of what to do—and she was years older than ten when her father had been killed in front of her.
“No.” Sadness lingered in that one word. “After the rogues left, he climbed down from the tree and went to find his parents. He sat by their bodies for hours and he cried and then the strangest thing happened…”
Her heart sank. “Everyone got back up again.”
A single nod. “It was as though the attack never happened. His parents called him to supper, the town folk went about their business, and his friends rushed past him.”
Evelyn wanted to cry for the little boy her father had been and her soul shattered.
“He lived that way another year before I found him, a happenstance as it were, I’d had to go back east for another matter entirely, but something about the area called to me. Though the town seemed thriving and filled with happiness, there sat Edward in his tree—all hell in his eyes.”
“That’s why he never wanted me to use it.” Understanding crystalized. Her father had lived in the heart of a lie told by his own gift and he’d paid a steep price for it.
“I believe that to be the case. Even I didn’t understand exactly what he’d done, but I knew he was special. I knew he was one of mine. I stayed in that town a week and I couldn’t figure out what it was that was off. So I took a risk and I visited his dreams as I am visiting yours.”
Surprise rippled through her, but she accepted the knowledge far more easily than she might have normally. In this Quanto gave her a gift—information about a father she realized she’d not known.
“And his dreams told you the truth?”
Another nod. “He confessed it all in broken sobs and showed me what he remembered. In the morning when I woke, the town was empty. Not a single soul remained, save for Edward.”
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