Legacy of Lost Souls [Spirit of Sage 1] (Siren Publishing Classic ManLove)

by Jools Louise

  “Can I go with you, though?” Scotty begged, his green eyes pleading, swimming with tears as he tugged at a lock of dirty blond hair in agitation.

  “Of course you can, Scotty. As long as you don’t mind a bit of a squeeze in the back of the truck,” Joe said, smiling.

  “I have my own vehicle,” Scotty said eagerly. “It’s pretty old, but it’ll do the job.” He scurried away, returning a few minutes later with his jacket and a set of car keys, plus a small backpack.

  “Do you need to get any clothes?” Cody asked, thinking maybe he would ride with the kid, talk to him on the way back. Scotty shook his head at the question, and everyone got up, ready to head out.

  “Here, Scotty,” the manager said, rushing over to the counter, handing over a brown envelope that contained some cash. “This is your wages for the last few days’ work, plus a bonus.” She hugged the man, kissing his cheek gently. “Call me to let me know how you get on,” she said.

  “I will,” he promised, then followed the group of men outside into the parking lot. An old pickup truck, paintwork rusty and one fender dented, took up one other spot. “There’s my ride,” he said.

  “Do you mind if I ride with you?” Cody asked, and Scotty shook his head.

  “How about we both ride with Scotty,” Murphy suggested. “Then we can talk about what happened with his brother. Anything he can tell us will help, too,” he said.

  Scotty agreed, and they parted company with the others, getting into the older truck and waiting to follow Joe home. A brief stop at a gas station and they were on their way. Cody felt a sense of accomplishment finally after their failure earlier, thinking that at least they could reunite Scotty with his brother.

  Chapter Eight:

  Homecoming

  Ethan awoke to blissful warmth all around him and the sound of feet shuffling on a hard floor. It was probably his brother, come to bring him more sunshine. He drifted for a while, enjoying the cocoon that enveloped his tired body, feeling better than he had in months, probably years. His body felt weak still, but he felt as though he may just be on the mend. He recalled waking briefly and wondered if he’d dreamed seeing the father he’d thought was lost to him forever. He thought about the kid who looked sixteen years old, but who had been born only three years after he was, making him about twenty-one years old. He smiled. Douglas was a pistol. He’d visited every day since Ethan had been rescued with the others he’d been interred with in the living tomb. Reading to Ethan from the newspaper or novels or comic books. He’d brought Ethan water and more importantly, had sometimes just sat there, holding Ethan’s hand, keeping him calm.

  Ethan’s eyes had adjusted to the brightness of being topside, and he didn’t get searing pain in his head, wearing dark shades to protect his eyes from the fluorescent lights. The problem was, he was still blind, his retinas damaged from the months trapped in the depths of that hell. He’d read once that miners in the olden days had worn goggles when coming from a long stint in their mines, because the sudden adjustment from dark to light could permanently blind them, even after a few hours. He had a hunch the lack of any light, in addition to virtually no nutrition or water, hadn’t helped matters.

  His ears picked up the shuffle of feet again, and he turned his head to sniff, knowing Douglas’s scent by now and wondering why his brother had not spoken yet. The odor that hit his nostrils had him flinching. It was his guards from the tunnels, shifters who could turn into wolverines and had taken delight tormenting him in the early years of his incarceration. In those first set of tunnels, and the ranch, and the place in Idaho, they had mocked him, prodding at him with sharp claws, threatening to assault him or force themselves on him sexually if he disobeyed and tried to escape. They’d sneered and laughed, and he’d responded in kind, insulting them and threatening right back. But he remembered being afraid.

  Fear clutched at him, and he rolled away from the scent of his tormenters. He hadn’t let them bother him in the first stages after he was abandoned by his mother, had given as good as he got. After a while, he began to believe their taunts and those of his mother. He believed that he would die without ever finding his father. He didn’t want to hear the guards’ nasty comments again. He was not in the tunnel. They couldn’t hurt him now. People would come if he made enough noise to attract attention.

  His mouth opened, and for the first time he was able to scream—loudly and to good effect. The shuffling feet scuttled away and he heard the pounding of boots outside in the corridor, then his dad’s familiar scent as well as the doctor, Lex, who had taken care of him so effectively. The man deserved a medal as far as Ethan was concerned.

  “Ethan, honey, what’s wrong? Are you okay? It’s okay, son, it’s okay,” Cody repeated again and again. Ethan felt big, strong arms surround him, felt smaller ones on the other side, and inhaled the soothing scent of their skin. Douglas had come. His dad had come. He wasn’t down in those tunnels.

  Ethan broke down, sobbing into his father’s broad chest, feeling gentle kisses on the top of his head and a strong hand smoothing down his thin back. He relaxed into the gentle embrace and felt Douglas cuddle close on the other side.

  “It’s okay, Ethan,” Douglas kept saying. “They can’t hurt you anymore. The cultists are all dead. It’s okay.”

  After a while, Ethan’s sobs shuddered to a halt, and he rested exhaustedly against his dad, savoring the warmth that surrounded him.

  “I heard their footsteps, smelled them,” Ethan said brokenly, hitching in a shaky breath.

  “Who did you smell?” Cody asked quietly, soothing fingers stroking damp hair from Ethan’s cheek.

  “The guards. The wolverine shifters. They were mean and nasty when they first began to take care of me.” He trembled violently. “I don’t want them here. I don’t want to smell them again. Please don’t let them near me again.”

  “What did they do to you?” his dad asked in a voice Ethan had heard once before, directed at the bitch who had left him to die. It was the voice of someone on the verge of terrible anger, but Ethan was not afraid. He knew Cody was not angry at him, but whoever had frightened him.

  “They told me what they would do to me, that they would hurt me if I tried to escape. I don’t really remember when they first started guarding me. I think it was at a ranch somewhere. Or maybe the big place with the cots everywhere and small windows and men with syringes and mean faces. Then I was moved to somewhere else, underground, and they followed. Each time I was moved, the wolverines came as well, telling me I was a loser and that I would never get away. They had sharp sticks they used to prod at me, then their claws. They were mean and nasty bullies. When we were put in the last tunnel to die, they left us in the room, only letting us eat tiny amounts.” Ethan cuddled closer to his father, shaking like a leaf. “I tried not to let them get to me, but they just kept on and on and on, like a dripping tap. I couldn’t stand to hear them, so I tuned them out and went inside my head where they couldn’t get to me.”

  “Ethan, there was no food. We had to give you what we could,” a voice said, one he recognized from the tunnel. Lash. Ethan went into his head again in self-defense, a reflex action that had kept him from going completely insane in the tunnel, petrified with fear, not screaming this time, going almost catatonic in his terrified state.

  “You’d better leave here right now, or I’ll forget you were down in that hellhole, too, and rip your fucking throat out, you fucking bastard,” Cody snarled, holding Ethan close.

  “We helped him,” Lash protested, almost whining. “We didn’t want any of them to die, we didn’t hurt him. We did what we were told to do, we stopped him from escaping.”

  Another snarl rent the room, and Ethan felt Douglas’s anger ripple through the charged atmosphere. “You fucking bastards. You stupid fucking morons,” Douglas screamed at the wolverine who couldn’t understand what he and his moronic friends had done. “You don’t need to beat somebody to a pulp to hurt them. You terrorized my brother for month
s on end, for years, over and over again telling him you would hurt him, flashing your fangs and claws and poking at him for fun.” Douglas flung himself off the bed, and Ethan’s imagination gave him a picture of his kid brother confronting the shifter guard, unafraid and getting right into the bastard’s face. The fear faded and he felt proud of his brother.

  “We were doing our job,” Lash said again, then a yelp filled the air.

  “Get the fuck out of here, you fucking dickhead,” Douglas said in a guttural, vicious snarl. “Or I’ll do what my dad doesn’t want to do and rip your fucking head off. Go away, and think about how you would feel if somebody told you over and over, while you were strapped to a fucking bed, or in a fucking cage, that you were worthless and stupid and nobody loved you enough to come and rescue you. Go and think about the fact that you and your fucking fuck buddy friends are a bunch of fucking stupid short-legged creeps who have no fucking brains.” The next snarl was that of a feline predator. Claws scraped the hard floor, and a roar rent the room. Lash gave a yelp, and then Ethan heard the wolverine leave at last.

  “Your brother went a little postal on that guy,” Cody said in a whisper, amusement in his voice—and pride. “Maybe he won’t need those self-defense classes after all—I think maybe he’s got balls of steel already. Wolverines are known to be fierce, and Douglas had that guy running for cover.”

  Ethan felt a large body leap onto his bed, soft fur pressing against his arm, and a cold, wet nose nuzzle his cheek. He laughed softly, reaching out and stroking through the thick fur of his brother’s feline coat, hearing the rumbling purr as the cat settled down.

  “He’s a jaguar, like me,” Cody said. “I don’t know if you’re a shifter, but it’s okay if you aren’t.”

  “I have shifter in me,” Ethan confessed, nearly crying with sadness. “But I haven’t felt my cat in a long time. The others are the same, too afraid to shift because the scientists wanted to hurt my cat, wanted to cut it out of me, or so they said. I don’t know whether all the trauma has killed him.”

  He felt Cody tense, felt the rage in his dad again, and a snarl came from Douglas, who licked him gently, the rasp of his rough tongue tickling Ethan’s skin.

  “They won’t be cutting anyone ever again,” Cody replied, kissing Ethan’s cheek.

  Footsteps were heard outside the ward, and Ethan tensed, but relaxed when Cody laughed.

  “Scotty, I’m sorry I jumped out of the truck, buddy, I heard the scream and had to come see if my boy was okay. I’ll show you Sammy’s bed.”

  “Scotty?” Ethan asked. “Sammy’s brother’s here?”

  “Yes, love, we went to a place called Landers to take care of some business, and on the way back we found Sammy’s brother at a Wendy’s of all places”

  Ethan felt pleased for his friend Sammy. The man was a year younger than Ethan, and they and the other boys had bonded over time, clinging together as things went from bad to really shitty.

  “Sammy talked about you all the time,” Ethan said, scenting the newcomer, a similar scent to his friend, with subtle differences. There was an odor of fried onions and vegetable oil coming from him.

  “Is he okay?” the newcomer asked.

  “He woke up earlier,” Ethan replied, smiling. “He’s in the bed next to mine.”

  “I’m awake now,” came a dry, raspy voice, the tone wry. “All that kerfuffle and screaming would have woken me from a coma.”

  Scotty squealed excitedly, and Ethan heard his feet scurrying closer, then the sounds of kissing and hugging and crying as the brothers reunited. He felt his own tears of relief on his cheeks and was happy for his friend. Then he relaxed back into healing slumber again, knowing he was finally safe. He just needed to coax his jaguar out…the thing must be so terrified it was hiding from him.

  He felt the soothing warmth of his family comforting him and realized he was finally home.

  * * * *

  Cody watched Ethan sleep, his son’s gaunt face peaceful now. Then he turned his attention to the next bed, where Scotty was chattering nonstop to his brother Sammy. The younger man was smiling, letting his brother’s words roll over him, looking happy.

  He looked at the other beds, seeing some awake and alert, smiling for Sammy. Three were still very sick and hadn’t woken up yet, their bodies shutting out the world until they were ready to deal with it. He couldn’t imagine anything more frightening than being incarcerated for many years, then abandoned down a sixty-foot shaft, a hundred feet below street level, probably knowing help was within reach but unable to get anyone to hear their cries. The mental torture must have been immense, and it was a testament to these men and their spirit that they had made it this far. When they were stronger, Murphy and Rafe would carefully find out more about that tunnel. It had been blocked off from the other end, which meant there was a possibility of another section they hadn’t found yet. They were getting specialist equipment from some friends who were geologists and could send some kind of electronic waves or radio waves down to determine different strata in rock. Maybe they’d find the lost tunnel system. So far, the workers had not unearthed anything.

  He got to his feet, leaving Douglas in jaguar form to guard Ethan, and went off to find the wolverine that had terrified his son for so long.

  He quietly entered the ward where the wolverines were in residence and saw them all in human form, talking quietly to each other. Lash, the first shifter, sat on one of the other beds, looking downcast, his face streaked with tears. His friends surrounded him, kissing him lovingly, stroking his face and back and arms gently. They obviously cared for the man, but Cody was more interested in their reasons for what they’d done to his son.

  He let out a soft snarl, dropping his canines, seeing them flinch as they saw him. They were half his size and, in their undernourished state, no match for his jaguar. He blinked in surprise when they all snarled back, fearful yet not too frightened to fight back. Their growls were impressively fierce.

  “You hurt my son,” Cody snarled, glaring at them just as fiercely. “Your words will linger far longer than whatever else those bastards did to him. If I see you near him again, if I hear him cry again because of you, or if I smell you anywhere near that room, I’ll rip your fucking hearts out through your asses and grill them for my dinner.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lash said, slumping, sounding tearful now, not fierce.

  Cody tilted his head warily, eyeing the man suspiciously.

  “We’ve never been good at too much. We were hired in the first place because we have a reputation for being nasty.” Lash looked up, amber eyes swimming. “We didn’t realize he was so scared of us. He was always sassy, never let us get away with being mean. Then he just seemed to shut down, like he’d given up or something. We just thought he was giving us the silent treatment, sulking you know.”

  “We actually care about him a lot,” another of the men said. Cody thought his name was Slug. “He’s fierce when he needs to be, has a will of iron and he took none of our bullshit.” He sighed heavily. “We didn’t realize we were bullying, it’s just our way, how we interact with each other.”

  A third shifter spoke up, his name was Charm. “Ethan was always the one to keep us away from the others. They were placed together in the Idaho bunker and have been together ever since, never parted. Ethan kept them from giving up, he kept telling them that his dad would come and get them, that his dad was in the military and would kick our asses.”

  Cody couldn’t help the brief smile at his son’s strength and knew he would have spat on these four idiots as soon as look at them. His smile faded.

  “When did he stop talking?” he asked sadly.

  “When they put us in that hole in the ground and blocked us in. He seemed to just fade away, as though it was all too much for him. We did feed all of those boys and fed ourselves, of course we did,” the fourth wolverine, Rage replied. “We realized what the cult and their scientists were up to and didn’t want to just leave the boys to their
fate. I think that’s why we ended up in that tunnel. The cult probably suspected our change of heart and decided we were no use to them.”

  Cody processed what they’d told him, then frowned thoughtfully.

  “Did you say they were in a bunker in Idaho? Not in the main buildings?”

  Lash looked at him and nodded. “They were in the main building at first, then there was a bunker built later on, a little like the one under Sage. It was lit, though, and had air from outside. The one under Sage had air piped through from the building above. The lighting went off about a year ago, when the town exploded, but we got air from above somehow—I think because the tunnel above collapsed and cracked an air hole.”

  Cody thought feverishly. He’d had no reports that the Idaho facility had any kind of bunker and felt his heart sink at the implications. “How many people were in that bunker in Idaho? Were the boys the only ones?”

  Charm shook his head slowly. “No, there were about twenty more down there when we left. I don’t know what happened to the others.”

  Cody ripped his cell phone from his pocket and called a man who could be relied upon to get things done, and quickly.

  “Ryder,” he said, when the man answered. “This is Cody. I have four wolverine shifters here who used to be guards at the Idaho facility. They say there was a bunker below the main complex. Has anything been found yet? I have reason to believe there may still be people in there.” His frown deepened and he felt sick. Ryder’s reply was not what he had been hoping to hear. He listened, nodded, then confirmed to Ryder. “Yes, I’ll put Lash on the phone, he can explain.”

  He handed the phone to Lash, who grabbed it as he came over, and began to talk, telling Ryder exactly where the bunker was buried. Within seconds, he’d hung up and looked worriedly at Cody.

  “The man said he was getting a team together and asked for you and your crew to go speak to people at the ranch, get a list of possible names of those who are still missing. He said it might be helpful, if they find anyone.”