by KH LeMoyne
“Karndottir was enough of a reason for me not to shift,” Gillian stated. “My mother found help for me, but it’s done now.”
“Point made.” Breslin shrugged. “Just wanted to know if you had otherworldly blood. It complicates things.”
“Other?” Gillian turned toward him, her brows drawn together.
Breslin met her gaze, then Callum’s. “Just as well you don’t know.” He changed the subject. “See anything matching the images you remember?”
Her eyes closed, and she leaned against Callum’s shoulder. “I remember a bell tolling in the distance, with the church steeple visible over the treetops, several miles away.”
“Like a church bell?” he asked.
“A church mouse,” she muttered, suddenly visualizing an image of a tiny mouse hiding beneath a pew and a child’s muffled laugh. “We must be close.”
“Of course. A church mouse,” Breslin repeated the phrase woodenly without looking at either of them and exhaled. He seemed to be losing faith in Gillian’s approach the farther they got from town. If she didn’t lead them to Nettie, Callum wondered how they would get out of this mess.
“It’s more than just images,” she went on, impervious to Breslin’s lack of confidence in her. “I know this isn’t sounding right to either of you, and if I weren’t the one experiencing it, I’d be skeptical as well. But I can hear the bell ring, and it matches the picture from a book I think Mae—the little girl—was thinking about when Nettie asked her about home. I know we’re going in the right direction, but we’re not there yet.”
She waited for a minute and licked her lips as if searching for the right words. “It’s like putting your hand to the flame with your eyes closed and knowing you’re about to be burned.”
Breslin slid her a quick, worried look. “No offense, but I’m just not comfortable with the idea of you having visions.”
Before Gillian could speak, Callum reached over her and grabbed Breslin’s forearm. “Stop the wagon.” What was that faint rustle? And the smell?
He held up his hand to stall Breslin from asking as he tilted his head to the side and listened. The cougar might be better at smelling, but preternatural hearing was Callum’s forte. It might still be half a mile away, but the rustle and crackle sounded like twigs and leaves. The footsteps were rhythmic but heavy, not matching the weight of either the couple who had offered Nettie a ride, or slender Nettie herself.
Of course, it didn’t rule out a person carrying another person. His gut twisted with more than just a bad case of suspicion. “I hear something a little farther down the road.”
“I smell it now.” Breslin urged the horses into a faster trot.
“Yes.” Unfortunately, Callum could make out the scent of blood clearly now. He tucked Gillian closer into his side, noticing the strained look on her face. “Did you get another image?”
“Nothing specific. Though I sense Mae’s fear the same way I did on the train.” Fear from their baby as well, he gathered. He’d come back last night only to find her still awake. Hating himself for leaving her again and disappointing her, he’d curled around her underneath the covers. Instead of discussing their mating, as he’d expected, she shared what she’d sensed from their baby. They talked at length of the fear she’d picked up from Mae and their unborn child. If not for the fact that his Gillian was a stickler for science of precise facts, he might have considered what she told him an emotional reaction from her pregnancy. He knew better.
Their child might not have the omega ability, but what the baby was transmitting to its mother was equally unusual.
He stared along the roadside, no longer able to hear the previous rustling. The scent of blood, however, was even stronger. “I think we should pull over and look a little deeper into the woods here.”
“There’s a pull off up there,” Breslin gestured toward a break in the trees. As he drew the wagon closer, he slowed the horses to a halt, leaned over the side of the wagon, and stared at the ground. “There were some passing showers late last night, but these wheel ruts look like they were made before the rains and are disappearing now.” He angled the wagon over the mud.
A hundred feet or so down the overgrown trail, the Hunts’ wagon came into view tucked under the canopy of an evergreen tree, their horses tied to the same tree. Breslin stopped the horses and secured them as Callum leapt down and swung Gillian to the ground beside him. She rushed straight to the wagon, clambering up and searching among the straw bales in the back. Sniffing suspiciously toward the corner where Mae had been sitting, she bent down and dug through some stray straw. Then she lifted up the tiny caramel-colored nugget looking suspiciously like a gumdrop.
She raised it to her nose and scowled before holding it away from her. Breslin watched her from one side of the Hunt’s wagon as Callum watched her from the other. She looked between them. “Laudanum. Mae didn’t eat it. If her brother isn’t a shifter or is perhaps latent, it would explain why he might have.”
“Drugging the children doesn’t explain the blood on the brake handle,” Breslin said, motioning to the front of the wagon.
“It’s hard to believe anyone could overpower three adults and two children,” Callum added.
“Yet the blood is where Carrie’s husband was sitting. And I’m certain Anne wouldn’t have given her children a narcotic. Which only leaves Nettie or a complete stranger,” Gillian countered with renewed conviction.
“We don’t know Nettie did this.” Breslin scowled. “Maybe the husband had the candy and the mother attacked him because of it.”
Callum and Gillian both stared at him in shock. “That’s more farfetched than a stranger showing up and causing whatever happened here,” Callum insisted. He wasn’t certain if he was correct, but Nettie had set all sorts of warning bells off inside him as well. From Gillian’s pursed lips, she agreed.
“I can track them while you two drive back to town.” Breslin headed off without waiting on agreement and shifted in the blink of an eye. The swish of his tail was just visible through the bushes as he disappeared to hunt.
“He is not just leaving us here to find them on his own,” Gillian said in a harsh tone, one that surprisingly carried more worry than censure.
“Maybe he doesn’t deserve our help. He did just pry all our secrets from us. Without, I might add, giving up many of his own.”
“We brought him this far,” Gillian insisted. “And based on the blood, someone is injured and will need some medical help.”
She fussed with her skirts and then marched off in Breslin’s wake. Callum kept his long stride shorter as he matched her pace, searching the area around them by scent. What had caused the Hunts to pull off before they reached home? And where were the children and the baby?
He didn’t like any of this. It might not involve enforcers but his cat could sense a threat, and the last thing he wanted was for them to stumble into more danger.
Breslin padded through the underbrush, his cougar listening for any shuffle or twitter to clue him in on the locations of three adults and three children. So far, he’d found nothing. Well, not exactly true. He’d found a veritable skein of trails. Many of them fresh. All of them crisscrossing and circling back around enough it would take him several hours to decipher where the adults had gone.
He brushed against a tree trunk, sniffing toward the base. The faint scent of a young fox shifter teased his nostrils. Likely the little girl Gillian had mentioned. If so, the child might be leaving a trail. One he’d follow later once he located Nettie.
He exited back to the main trail, following in Gillian’s and Callum’s footsteps. The moment the two realized he was behind them, he shifted back into his human form.
“Pretty handy trick being able to shift and keep your clothes,” Gillian said. “How did you learn to do that?”
“It’s an otherworldly gift of sorts.” He’d absorbed the knowledge the same place he’d learned how to stalk and kill without leaving a trail. All better left unsaid
.
They walked into a clearing and, as one, turned toward a ramshackle shed at the opposite edge. He waved the couple to stay where they were and walked forward. The closer he got, the more he realized that the vine-and-moss-covered stones didn’t comprise a shed but the remaining rubble of an old house. One abandoned years ago and fallen into disrepair. The only part standing was the stone cold room for storing meats and other preserved and canned items.
He brushed aside a veil of vines, uncovering a set of thick new double doors with a crossbar sealing them tight.
“Did you find any signs of the Hunt family? Or Nettie and the baby?” Callum asked from behind him. They’d evidently followed him despite his warning to stay away. Unfortunate, given the now-strong odor of decomposing flesh and spent waste, though not the blood he scented from the main road.
“A few fresh trails. But I think we have a complication here.”
Callum had his arm around his wife but released her and strode to Breslin’s side. He must’ve sensed her moving to follow him, because he looked at her and then to Breslin. “Gillian, I think it’s best if you stay there.”
Breslin eyed the heavy beam holding the doors shut and then assessed the total dimension of the storage room of what must have once been a fair-sized cottage. Ten feet wide by twelve feet long, the structure stood only as tall as his shoulder. Likely the flooring was one to two feet below ground level. He easily grasped one end of the beam as Callum grasped the other. The weight would have been a struggle for a human to manage. Hell, Gillian would’ve been able to lift this. Meaning he couldn’t rule out tying any of the shifter adults in the Hunt wagon to the scent of death he detected behind the closed doors.
A ripple of discomfort tightened his muscles as he wondered if Gillian might not have been correct in her concerns. However, nothing prepared him for what he saw when he and Callum swung the doors open wide.
Blanketed bundles lay in a row from the doorway to the opposite edge of the stone room. Bodies. Small bodies. The smell assaulted his nostrils and opened a floodgate in his memories of other children lost to the world. Goddess, no. The impact spiraled his cat out of control, and he clung to the door in a halfhearted effort to remain human. Unable to fight the shift, he gave in, more than willing to leave the horror to his less conflicted and more resolute cat.
He sniffed the first blanket as Callum jumped down to the below-ground-level flooring and gingerly stooped beside him to flip back the wool edge.
The pale face of a girl of perhaps eight or nine was visible, the blanket wrapped around her as if she were the pistil inside a lotus blossom.
Not waiting on Callum’s comment, Breslin moved forward, each paw placement carefully selected to avoid disturbing the bodies. He sniffed each blanket for any sign of life before moving to the next.
“Breslin, maybe I should do this instead,” Callum offered in a strangled tone. “You’re growling.”
Odd. He hadn’t even realized. Yet he was aware the body count had reached five so far and all shifter children if his nostrils detected correctly. With only one more to go, he and his beast wanted to leave and find answers. He almost didn’t care if evidence justified the need for vengeance calling to his blood. Those trails were fresh. He could go back and determine who had blood on their hands.
As he started to turn, a movement caught his attention. The last misshapen body smelled human and appeared to twitch. An unfamiliar emotional wave washed over him. Not despair; he remembered that emotion too well. He nosed at the blanket, then snagged an edge with a tooth and gently flipped it back. A boy of perhaps ten or twelve lay with his eyes closed and eerily still.
Except for one faint slow, rasping inhale.
Shifting in an instant, he knelt by the last blanket. “Callum.” But the bigger surprise, as he reached to check the boy’s pulse and confirm a heartbeat, was the smaller bundle tucked inside the boy’s shirt. “One’s alive. There’s a baby here too.”
9
Callum kept one eye on the cougar shifter padding deeper into the shed emitting an unsettling savage sound while he refolded the blanket over the body at his feet. Eyeing the remaining blankets, he swallowed hard. Gillian could probably handle seeing this. She had an ability to consider wounds, disease, and death in a calm, academic way, a side of her brain set up to treat adversity as a challenge to help others. Still, the tragedy of children’s lives cut short would be hard for her. For him as well.
These children’s lives had ended for some yet undisclosed but horrific reason. His stomach churned, and his last meal threatened to come back up. Gritting his teeth, he continued searching. He didn’t have the luxury of breaking down, because they needed answers. Even without any medical expertise, he could tell these shifter youngsters hadn’t died from natural causes, for there was no blood or immediately obvious reason for their deaths. He hoped they hadn’t suffered.
A hissing rumble built around him, and his bobcat shivered beneath his skin, begging to respond in kind. However, there was no way he wanted to be at odds with the only other shifter in the small space, an efficient killer at that. “Breslin. Tone down the growling.”
The cougar shot a glance back at him and lifted his lip, showing a long eyetooth. Then he turned his attention back, working his way down the line with a sniff here and a surprisingly gentle nudge of his massive paws.
“Callum?” Gillian called from behind him in a low whisper. “Did you find—”
“I don’t see a sign of her.” Callum checked the remaining blanket bundles for Mae, and thankfully, none resembled the diminutive shape of the vibrant little girl on the train. He glanced again toward Breslin’s cat, who had stopped partway to the end of the line. He sniffed, then raised his head as he turned to him and shook his head again.
Well, at least he hadn’t found a girl who matched their descriptions either. These children would have families. Ones who would mourn their loss. But it wasn’t the little girl he’d watched express adoration and enchantment at the sight of a stranger’s baby just twenty-four hours ago he worried about most.
He accepted that made him selfish. Normal shifters bonded with children. Any children. But Mae was a bit of sunshine he’d hate to see gone from the world. For his sake as well as Gillian’s.
“Callum, bring them out,” she said. “Let me check them. I’m not fragile. I’ve helped Doc with more death than you know.” Then she added more gently, “We’ll mourn for them later after we figure out what happened. Then your friend in there can figure out how to stop this from happening again.”
Friend? Friendships didn’t start like this. For smart shifters, there was some unwritten law clearly stating one didn’t befriend a lone mercenary. Not and live.
He lifted the first blanket-covered body in his arms, walked to where Gillian now stood a few yards away, and laid it at her feet. By the time he’d brought her the fourth, she had her journal out, making notes as she checked each body.
How did she manage to be around death with such efficient composure?
“Mann,” Breslin shouted. “One’s alive.”
Callum ducked back into the shed and edged his way past several blankets to the last one.
“There’s a baby here.” Breslin knelt in his trousers and boots, holding a smaller form wrapped in his shirt. A tender, piercing cry split the air. A searing pain followed in its wake. Raw and hurt, the child’s fear dug at him like shards of broken glass. Omega.
In his lifetime, Callum had known of only one other, and now he’d experienced a second one. Two more than most shifters encountered in a lifetime. Where were the infant’s mother and father? What parent would leave their flesh and blood to die out here? “I’ll take him to Gillian. She’ll—”
“You get the older boy. He’s alive as well.”
Glancing back down, he realized he hadn’t gotten a good look at the boy. “Mae’s brother. Thank the Goddess.” Breslin was already shrugging past him to the outside.
After a quick check for a puls
e, he grasped the boy beneath his shoulders and knees and carried him outside. Gillian approached him first, but as she looked between the two of them, her brows knit together as she got a good glimpse at what Breslin had in his arms.
“Check this one first, Gillian. He’s not looking very good.” The last thing he wanted was to aggravate Breslin in his current odd state. Callum doubted he’d do any harm to the baby, but he looked panicked, stricken almost.
“She definitely gave this one laudanum,” Gillian said with a quick nod as she pulled the eyelid back on the boy. “Help me prop him up.”
He helped her lean the boy against a tree and split his attention between her, as she gently tapped the boy on his cheek, and Breslin, as he stood staring at the bundle in his arms, his expression haunted and his lips pinched tight.
“Mmf. Stop,” the boy said.
“Can you understand me?” Gillian rocked forward on her feet, her fingers still over the artery in his neck. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Roger,” he muttered. He opened his eyes, looking around frantically. “Where?” Seeing Breslin holding the baby, he stopped but blinked rapidly. “Who’s he? What’s—mmf—he doing?”
“He’s one of the people who rescued you. He’s just caring for the infant. Try to stay awake, and I’ll be right back with you.” With exaggerated care, Gillian rose to her feet. “Breslin, I’d like to check the baby now.”
“No.”
Callum stiffened but held his place, praying her instincts and those of their child wouldn’t lead her astray in trusting the rogue.
“Breslin,” she continued, her voice calm and so like Doc Johnston’s professional tone that Callum would have smiled if the situation hadn’t gotten very strange. Not missing a beat, Gillian went on. “He might be suffering from exposure. The woman, Nettie, gave the boy who saved the baby laudanum. She might have given the baby something as well.”
“He’s fine.” Breslin leveled a harsh glare in her direction. “You can sense he’s fine, and you know what he is.”