Highland Son (Highland Sorcery: A New Dawn)

by Clover Autrey

  “Alexanderrrr!”

  Everything stilled inside him at Ethan’s anguished cry. He jerked his gaze forward…and the world fell out from underneath him.

  Alexander slumped against the tall chain link backstop, his arms stretched and bound with rope high above his head. His head that slumped forward as two Sifts fought over his torso, gouging out the young man’s stomach. Blood covered him, covered them. Their rubbery brown flesh was slick with it.

  Bile rushed to his throat. Alexander, no, gods no. He couldn’t still be alive, not torn apart like that...

  Ignoring the hammering in his head, Dez surged to his feet, fighting to remain conscious long enough to get those damn monsters off of his friend. He made it several feet when a body slammed into his back, taking him back to the ground.

  Sheppard’s hot breath washed close to his ear. “Watch, hero. See what happens to those tainted with magic.”

  A meaty fist clamped in his hair and wrenched his head back so his line of sight was directly toward the monsters. His brain sloshed inside his scalp and he blinked to right his vision.

  Dez tried to shake his head out of Sheppard’s grip. His vision wavered in and out, cloudy. Ethan’s cries echoed as though across a great chasm. Everything was darkening at the edges. Dez’s ragged breathing coated the air in heavy loud strokes.

  Before the world closed on him he saw Alexander again as if a mist parted around him, around the backstop. The monsters had him, oh gods the monsters had Alexander. They fought over him, what was left of him, pulling Alexander from the chain link and dragging his body off into the darkness.

  Dez screamed, screamed, screamed at the darkness.

  The same darkness that crept across the field and claimed him.

  ~~~

  Dez jerked awake. Horrifying images skittered across the dark edges of his consciousness. Alexander dead. Alexander being ripped apart and…shit. Alexander…

  Needles of ice dug into his scalp when he lifted his head from the freezing floor. He was lying on cracked bathroom tile, arms bound behind him. Ankles were lashed together as well. The room was cold, the chill seeping into his side from lying on the floor. Looked like a public restroom in the motel that had been left unused by the new inhabitants. If they were even once again in the motel Sheppard’s group occupied. All the urinals were missing from the wall. One of the stall’s doors hung crookedly from one hinge.

  He twisted his head for a better look at his surroundings and it felt like a screw twisted straight into his forehead, momentarily blinding him. He stilled, breathing hard through his nostrils until his sight returned.

  The first thing he focused on through his returning blurry vision was Ethan. His friend sat slumped beside him, hands tied behind his back around the pipes of an old sink. His thigh was roughly bandaged with a scrap of someone’s torn sleeve. Dried blood had hardened the material.

  His eyes were closed, skin flushed with the onset of fever, but Ethan was at least breathing, if shallowly. That was clear from the steady rise and fall of his chest. A ragged bruise darkened the side of his face, swelling the skin around his eye. Dez stiffened, wanting to get a crack at whoever had gone at him. Maybe Ethan was a full grown twenty-something man in his own right, who’d survived worse than the Sifts—monsters weren’t always non-human—but Dez still felt responsible for him. He’d always be that scrawny kid he’d found in the sewers, facing down a hungry wolf with little better than a rock, that kid who startled so easily, jerking away whenever Dez happened to unintentionally come up behind him.

  He’d been just a kid himself, only a few years older, but at that age in those circumstances, it seemed like he’d been decades older. Plain and simple, Ethan was his to protect and he’d done a piss-poor job of it, getting himself bashed on the head. Someone was going to pay.

  Ethan was his family. The only family he’d had until another scrawny youth had plopped into their lives—Dez jerked, scratching the ropes around his wrists tighter. His head pounded. Alexander. Panic clawed at his chest. And he saw it all again, bright and distorted. The stale coppery taste of fear flooded his mouth.

  He saw…

  He saw… Alexander…his stomach…shredded to mincemeat.

  He felt Sheppard’s fists in his hair, forcing him to watch…

  And saw…the Sifts dead, bodies crumpled at Alexander’s feet. A young man was at the backstop, sawing a blade through the ropes, his light hair moving with each swipe of his knife. Alexander…his stomach…not…not being torn apart by slashing brown claws.

  Dez blinked, his vision wavering. But he saw… What the hell had he seen?

  Others were there too, at the backstop, alert, watching for more monsters, watching them from across the field, faces anxious.

  And Jewel. Jewel stood facing outward toward the field and Sheppard, eyes closed in concentration, her arm stretched outward, palm up. The air wavered around them all.

  And the other vision was back. Monsters fighting over Alexander’s innards as he sloughed forward.

  Dez tried to shake his head in Sheppard’s grip. No, not in Sheppard’s grip. He was on the floor in a cold dirty bathroom, two opposing memories dragging through his head.

  Which was real? What was he seeing? What had he seen? He’d seen Alexander die. He knew he had. Ethan’s cries echoed as though across a great chasm. Real? Part of memory? Everything was darkening at the edges. Dez’s ragged breathing coated the air in heavy loud strokes.

  Before the world closed on him he saw Jewel again. And Alexander…was whole. Whole but unconscious. The light haired youth had him free and was bending him over his shoulder.

  And just like that they were gone and the monsters were back in the field, pulling Alexander from the chain link and dragging his body off into the darkness.

  ~~~

  Dez rocked his forehead against the tile, struggling to pull a breath into his labored lungs, the heaviness of the memories he’d recalled pulling him down into the floor.

  He’d seen… He squinted, trying to recall exactly what he’d seen. Alexander ripped apart by the beasts, yet not… He’d seen him saved. By the girl Jewel…and others he didn’t recognize. He twisted his wrists more forcefully against the rope, pulse flaring. He didn’t know what he’d seen. What to believe.

  He had to get out of here. Get Ethan out of here. Find out if Alexander was… He tamped that fear down. No, he couldn’t be. Alexander was dead. He’d seen it. The other scenario was just his shocked mind trying to protect itself from the horrible reality of it. Yet…he wasn’t one to shy away from reality, no matter how horrific. You couldn’t survive what he had that way.

  What if Alexander wasn’t dead? The kid was all right. He had to be.

  A breath stuttered in his chest. “Alexander’s not dead,” he whispered as though saying it out loud made it fact. “He’s not dead.” He wouldn’t allow him to be.

  That settled with himself, he shifted into survival mode.

  Determined to do what had to be done, Dez pushed all emotion down to the hollow of his gut and went to work. He squeezed his eyes closed and allowed himself a moment to get it under control, get his pulse rate quieted and think about what he could do, not on what he had no control over.

  Right now what he could do was get himself and Ethan out of here.

  They were both bound by rope. By someone who knew what he was doing by the feel and non-giving of the knots. All right. No weakening the bonds out of this one. But Ethan still had his hidden knife, gods love the guy and his adoration for all weapons shiny, large or small.

  Sheppard’s men hadn’t found the thin blade Ethan hid within the outside seam of his pants. Easy reach for him, undetectable for his enemies. It was barely the size of a nail, albeit sharp as any razor. Alexander had teased him mercilessly about the smallness of the blade, but Ethan had just shrugged it off with good humor, a waggle of his dark brows and a crack about not needing to compensate for anything. For a guy like Ethan, the thinnest blade, hidden, always
on him, could offer the most security. It wouldn’t do much against the flesh of a Sift, but it wasn’t any Sift that still plagued Ethan’s nightmares.

  And right now, if it was still there, it would get them out of this jam.

  Priority: Get Ethan’s hidden toy of a knife.

  Easy as pie.

  Lying on his side, Dez scooted along the dirty floor. No easy task with his arms and legs bound, but at least he wasn’t secured to a pipe the same way Ethan was. He moved quiet and cautious, not sure if there was anyone outside the door who might hear any noise and come in to investigate.

  He got his forehead mashed up against Ethan’s thigh, right above the bloody encrusted bandage where Sheppard had stabbed him. He squelched the new flash of anger boiling up in him—he’d deal with Sheppard later—and set his teeth against the bandage. The thin blade should be hidden just below it, that is if Sheppard’s men hadn’t found it when they tended to Ethan’s wound. However, by the look of it, they hadn’t done more than slap a swath of somebody’s old sleeve around it to stop the bleeding. Dez clenched his jaw in anger around the material.

  The cloth was stiff and tasted of dirt and blood as he used his teeth to tug it down. It tore away from Ethan’s skin, reopening the wound. Ethan moaned, sagging farther forward, pulling his arms tight behind him. Dez paused, the material still in his teeth, waiting for Ethan to wake up, but he quieted into unconsciousness once again.

  How long had he been out? He should have woken up before now.

  He spit out the cloth. “Ethan? Come on, come around, buddy. I need you awake, man.”

  Nothing. “Lazy arse, make me do everything.”

  Grimacing against his own pounding skull, Dez tried to work the little blade free of the seam. It shouldn’t be this difficult. Ethan usually drew it out with one finger pressing the knife against his thigh for leveraging pressure.

  Dez drew back and puffed out a breath. Trying to get at the knife with only his teeth wasn’t working.

  Footfalls echoed outside the bathroom door. Dez lay his cheek on the tile, feigning unconsciousness. Shadowed steps moved beneath the edge of the door.

  Dez braced for whoever might come in. Ethan’s breaths seemed to grow louder in the stillness.

  Finally the shadow moved on and the footfalls retreated. Dez counted off a good ten minutes before moving again.

  This wasn’t working.

  He rolled onto his other side, his back to Ethan now.

  If one thing failed, try another. That sentiment had gotten him and Ethan, and then later Alexander, out of more gone-to-hell situations than he cared to remember.

  Scooting back against Ethan’s thigh, he got back to it. Working blind with his arms in an uncomfortable position, he twisted his bound wrists one way and then another, trying to find the best angle to retrieve the blasted thing.

  He dug his shoulder hard into the floor to get his forefinger on top of the blade.

  Ah. There. Just a little more–the ball of his shoulder protested. The throbbing in his skull intensified. Sweat sluiced down his face into the curve of his agonized collarbone.

  He got it.

  The almost non-existent hilt of the knife slid along the callous of his finger. He hooked it with the edge of his fingernail and oh-so-carefully dragged it along the rough seam.

  The footfalls from outside the door returned. Dez clenched his jaw, sliding the blade out. He had enough of it out that he felt the smooth metal on his warm skin down to the first knuckle.

  Shadows moved beneath the door. More than one man this time. He worked the blade up another inch. He had it between his thumb and forefinger now. Hushed voices carried through the wood. The door swung inward.

  Dez pulled the rest of the blade out, ripping through the last inch of Ethan’s seam, curled his fingers around the knife and rolled onto his stomach.

  Hopefully with his hands exposed and still obviously bound, they wouldn’t give much notice to them. Steps reverberated through the tile as the men entered and walked around them.

  “Huh. This one’s been squirming around on the floor like a silverfish.” Hank grabbed Dez by the arms and shoved him over onto his back.

  The shock of landing on his bound arms radiated through his shoulders.

  “Are you a silverfish, then?” Hank’s light eyes glittered. Sadistic brute was enjoying this.

  Dez ignored him and snarled at Sheppard. “What’d you do with Alexander?”

  The big guy frowned, uncrossing his arms. “You saw. I did nothing. Leave the vermin to their own.” He sighed and crouched down to hover over Dez’s vulnerable position. Hank and Richards stood just behind him. “I’m sorry for your loss. I understand you cared for…the boy…but you and your friend must realize we’ll never truly be rid of monsters as long as there are any abominations of magic about.

  “They brought this upon us. We’ll never be free until we’re rid of them all.”

  Dez stared into the man’s features, a cold dread sinking into his gut. Sheppard believed that. He believed every sick filthy word he was spouting. What’s more, he believed Alexander was dead. It hadn’t been some sort of trick.

  Not a trick of Sheppard’s doing at any rate.

  Dez wasn’t sure what to believe himself, but until he saw evidence otherwise, he wasn’t giving up on the kid.

  Alexander was a sorcerer, descended of sorcerers of the highest order—whatever the hell that meant—so had a few tricks of his own. No way would he simply let filthy murderous scum like Sheppard get the better of him. No way.

  Except Sheppard had threatened him and Ethan, the voice of doubt whispered his fear. Alexander would sacrifice himself to give them a chance. Stupid little idiot.

  Dez tried to push up but his own arms trapped beneath him halted any motion. He lifted his head off the floor. “So what now? Going to feed Ethan and I to your pet monsters? Going to make a show of it for your sick little community?”

  A muscle in Sheppard’s jaw jumped. His eyes narrowed into hard slits. “It’s not like that. We don’t serve humans up to monsters.”

  “So what then? A respectful bullet to the skull? He knew he was pushing it, but he was angry. Who did this self-important SOB think he was?

  Sheppard sighed, placing his large palms over his knees. “I would have recruited you to our cause, men such as yourselves. I can tell you are good men, have good hearts, protectors of innocents… That’s all I’m trying to achieve here. Protect innocent humans.

  Hank’s grin turned primal behind Sheppard.

  Sheppard shook his head sadly. “But I can see by your devotion to…” he dipped his head. “…Alexander.” He must have pulled something to say his name. “You’ll never come to terms with the vision I have for humanity. Such a downright waste.”

  Fire boiled in Dez’s belly, hot enough to burn them all. If only he did have magic, Sheppard would be soot where he crouched. “So why bring us back here at all?”

  “To give you an opportunity.”

  “To live?”

  Hank snorted.

  Dez’s gaze jerked to him. “Find this amusing?” he snarled.

  Hank’s eyes flared. “What I find amusing is you acting all tough from flat on your backside. You don’t get to live.”

  “That’s enough, Hank.” Sheppard warned, frowning. “I’m sorry. Truly I am. You don’t deserve this.”

  “To die, you mean? That’s your plan, right? So what are you talking about an opportunity?”

  “A chance to go out easy. Honorably. Or hard.” Sheppard didn’t flinch.

  Dez looked from him to Hank and then to the other guy—Richards. There was no give in any of them. No mercy, hesitation, or sorrow. Only his and Ethan’s death reflected back to him in their expressions. So what did they want? And Dez suddenly knew the answer before he had to play their game and ask. “No.”

  Sheppard’s brows shot up. “I don’t need your cooperation, although any information you can provide will be of a great help.”

 
; “No.” Dez flexed his arms. His hands curled around the little blade, most likely drawing blood he was too furious to feel.

  Sheppard shrugged, unconcerned. “We’ll find it anyway. We already know they’re somewhere on the Californian coast.”

  “California’s a big place.” Gods, the lighthouse home base would welcome a band of women and children such as Sheppard’s with open arms, unsuspecting they’d be bringing a shark within their ranks. A shark who would very craftily get rid of any of the few magic wielders on the ships.

  Hopefully Doc Thomas and the others would see through Sheppard’s dark veneer. Yet Dez hadn’t. Damn it. They were going to let them walk right in.

  Sheppard rose to his feet. “I suspected you’d need some encouragement. Get him up.”

  Fully expecting Hank and Richards to grab him, fear of a different kind stroked through his gut when Hank pulled out a wicked looking knife and went to Ethan.

  Dez rolled to his side to push up to his knees.

  They cut Ethan’s ropes and dragged him up. He sagged unresponsive between Hank and Richards, the ropes around each wrist cut and dangling. Richards scowled. “Told you you gave him too much.”

  “Well this ought to wake him.” Hank slammed an uppercut into Ethan’s stomach, curling him over with a groan.

  Dez lunged forward only to be hauled back by Sheppard.

  “See.” Hank pulled Ethan’s head back to look into his red-rimmed eyes. “He’s coming around. Wakey, wakey.”

  Ethan, indeed, was coming to, way too groggily.

  “What the hell did you give him?”

  Sheppard released him, shoving Dez back to the floor. “Relax. Just a sedative. He was a little overwrought when we brought you back here. Couldn’t have his commotion waking up the others.”

  It dawned on Dez that maybe the entire group didn’t know what Sheppard had been up to in the name of their survival.

  Ethan’s head rocked back with another punch.

  “Hey!” Dez shouted.

  Richards shrugged. “He’s too far out of it to feel it. Come on, hero, wake up and take your hits like a good little punching bag.”