by KH LeMoyne
“Which is why I should take him,” she replied, edging forward. He stepped back several paces and gave them all a black look.
“Really?” Callum stood but didn’t advance as Breslin retreated farther. “We’ve made it through an alpha enforcer, missing parents, murdered children, only for you to dare suspect my mate of intending to harm that infant. She prides herself in helping others. She’s also the last person in the world who would ever harm him.” He wound down, glaring at the man. “I didn’t take you for an idiot.”
Gillian waved her hand behind her to halt Callum from moving closer. “Breslin. I trusted you to help my mate. Now I need you to trust me.”
Callum held his breath and crouched again as the boy struggled to rise.
“I don’t smell blood or an abnormal heart rate, but an omega has more advanced needs,” she continued. “Ones I understand. I see you’re worried for him, so I need you to also realize his life is open and raw in a way we never experienced. Please try, for his sake, to relax. He needs a steady open bond. One to comfort him. I know how to give him what he needs.”
The baby whimpered again, and Breslin frowned, sliding his gaze from the infant to her belly and back. “He needs to live. The boy too.”
“I’ll do everything I can for both of them. I give you my word,” she reassured him as she stepped close enough to have Callum’s cat snarling. But she slid her arms beneath Breslin’s and the increasingly fussy baby calmed.
Callum held his breath as Breslin held on for a second longer. Then he stepped back and spun away, only to turn and watch her over his shoulder.
Gillian lifted the infant closer to her face as a tiny fist reached for her. “That’s it, little one. I’m open. Send whatever you need my way and feel safe.” The whimpers dimmed more as the baby’s fist opened and his fingers touched her cheek. “It’s okay, precious.”
Letting lose a chortle, the baby pulled back its hand and stuffed the fist into its mouth with a slurp.
Seemingly satisfied, Gillian gestured without looking toward the shed. “Would you both bring the last of the bodies out here?”
Breslin, with his gaze still affixed to the baby’s movements, nodded, and Callum exhaled with relief. As the man walked back into the shed, Callum stood and pulled his mate into his arms, then pressed his lips to her temple. “Damn, you’re good.”
“No, just sympathetic.” She turned into his embrace and rubbed her cheek against his jaw. “What happened here has cracked your friend’s shell. Go after him and make sure he doesn’t do anything rash.”
“Go after—” Callum glanced back to find Breslin had disappeared into the brush of the woods. “Damn it.”
“Callum. Language,” Gillian murmured, gesturing to the semiconscious boy. “Hurry, that woman Nettie might do something to Breslin.”
Right. Because language was more important than the fact she was sending him off to save the man who could just as easily kill them. Like Breslin needed his help.
“A right ridiculous task you’ve set for me. Saving one killer from another.” Nonetheless his ego swelled with pride. She believed he could handle this. He might have some doubts, but he had to admit, he preferred to save the man with a heart but no conscience rather than the woman missing both. With a growl, he unbuttoned his shirt and toed off his shoes before he strode in Breslin’s direction.
Several paces into the woods, a high-pitched, childlike tune drifted through the trees. Having shifted, Callum scrunched his nose, searching for signs of blood. He had a terrible feeling the worst of today wasn’t over. Not waiting for the next sign of trouble, he tore through the underbrush in the direction of the sound. If he survived this next encounter, he’d have to insist Breslin share how he always managed to shed his clothes and get them back during a shift. It would be darn handy not to be naked in the forest and having to scrounge for something to wear.
He leapt through the remaining trees and broke through onto a high ledge. Hundreds of feet rose above and an equally treacherous hundred fell below with nothing to break the fall.
Nettie stood farther up the ledge, her hat gone, her dark brown curls flapping in the breeze, and her skirt billowing as she swayed and trilled an unrecognizable tune. The eerie pitch of her voice wafted around them, but what made Callum’s blood freeze was the orange-tinged feral madness combined with a predator’s glint in her eyes.
Nettie Morgan, the potentially salvageable shifter, was gone.
Whatever humanity she’d embraced in her lifetime now suffered at the feet of the only disease known to take down his kind. A hereditary quirk in their DNA that skipped generations. Feral madness struck less than one percent of the shifter population, but with the advancing harshness of the disease came a ferocious blood lust driven by a shrewd and cunning mind constantly seeking new kills. The greater the compulsion, the more the mind’s link to its humanity diminished. Remembrance of loved ones and family, connections which tied shifters together more tightly than their human counterparts—gone as if the shifter were born animal.
Feral madness was the bogeyman of shifter children’s tales. Faced with the victim and serial killer before him, Callum knew there was only one way for this to end. From Breslin’s clenched fists and determined stride forward, he had to realize that as well.
Tilting her head, Nettie quieted and glanced between them. Not certain if there was any room for her to escape, Callum paced from one edge of the path to the other in figure eights. Breslin’s cougar stalked forward, but if Breslin didn’t stop her, Callum would try.
Which might end in a draw. If she shifted into her fox, she’d have the advantage of smaller size. He, on the other hand, had speed.
“Nettie.” Breslin stopped ahead of Callum and shifted to human ten feet from Nettie, then held out his hand. “Your family is worried about you.”
Hell. What was the cougar thinking? There was no saving her. The best—the most compassionate option—was to kill her quickly. If they let her go, her alpha would have to hunt her down, but not before she’d killed many more times. By then, she might even twist her kills to a more brutal, painful method.
She waved away his hand in a childlike fashion, though her eyes glazed over for a moment. Then she blinked, and the feral presence was back. “The little angels. Yes.” She swung her skirt again, turning her back on Breslin, heading farther up the slope. “My job is saving them. They don’t belong here.”
Breslin took a step and then another, his fingers flexing as if he planned to grab her.
Which she must have figured out.
Fabric whipped around her as she spun with a screech and lunged toward him, her fingers bent to claw at his face. Breslin sprang back, lost his footing, and landed on his ass. Without thinking, Callum vaulted over the rogue, planting himself before Breslin and closing Nettie’s open path to freedom.
She crouched, knees splayed, fingers still raised, and then her tongue swiped over the spittle on her lips as her eyes darted between the two of them. A spider calculating her next move.
Breslin stood as Callum hissed and readied himself for her next attack. They moved closer, hemming her in. He didn’t expect her to give in, but he worried more about the man at his side. Still, he didn’t take his eyes off Nettie.
She scurried backward, her gaze fever bright, her mouth twisted in a rictus grin, and her arms spread wide. Callum expected another attack. Instead, she stepped backward off the cliff edge in a free fall. Arms flailing, she sang all the way down.
At least he gathered she’d landed at the bottom, because he was too busy pouncing on Breslin as the fool lunged to save the murderess. He managed to keep the rogue from toppling over the side after the crazy woman, but hell if Breslin didn’t shift into his cougar and turn on him, giving him a swipe at his cheek for his efforts.
Callum sprang backward, dived to the side, and sprang to a ridge ten feet above Breslin. Eyes narrowed, he waited for more. The cougar could easily jump and get him, but some semblance of rational tho
ught seemed to seep back into the hard, cold eyes. Breslin shifted back into human form and sank against the same rock, raking his blond hair with his fingers until it stood on end as he stared into the ravine.
He muttered something unintelligible, and Callum crept a bit closer, catching bits and pieces. “Never again. The last job. The last fucking time.”
All right, then. Callum had nothing left to do here. He turned back toward the woods, suddenly desperate to see his mate. Gillian’s comment about his friend picked that time to intrude in his thoughts and Callum glanced over his shoulder. Breslin remained on the rock.
“For what it’s worth,” Callum said. “You couldn’t have saved her.”
Breslin was still, his eyes closed and his head tilted toward the sky. “So why did I bother?”
The answer, as much as it shocked Callum, was obvious. “Because you’re no different from the rest of us who care. We’re all stuck in situations we can’t control, but we try our best to do the honorable thing.”
Breslin exhaled, but Callum wasn’t going to argue with him. He headed back, picking up his clothes and putting them on as he found them on the forest floor.
He was shrugging on his shirt as an unfamiliar wave of mind-numbing power slid over his skin. What the hell now?
“Roger, talk to me. I need you to stay awake.” Gillian walked back to the boy and lifted one closed eyelid again. His pupils were still blown and his breathing was shallower than she’d like. The darn drug held on to him stubbornly.
“My sister.”
“I suspect she is hiding from Nettie. We’ll find her.” She plucked her journal out of her jacket pocket and paced back to the line of bodies. A quick surge of anguish spread through her. A sharp raw pain that speared through her chest and left a strange bitterness behind. She wanted to save people, but there was little she could do here. Kneeling beside the last bundled blanket, she clutched the baby to her bosom and placed her journal on the ground beside her.
“Roger. Tell me about your sister. What are her favorite things?” With her free hand, she checked beneath the eyelids, then made notes: Dilated pupils. Dark blue eyes. Approximately sixty pounds. Leaning closer, she sniffed around the child’s mouth. Then noticed a stain on his overcoat and rubbed it with her thumb. Her finger came away sticky, and gingerly, she touched her tongue to the substance.
“Honey and cinnamon—with the laudanum. She lured them with a sweet treat and drugged them,” she muttered to herself. “Roger.”
“She likes sweets,” Roger mumbled. “Pastries.”
The baby let out a painful mewling sound, and she brushed the top of his head with her cheek. “It’s over now, sweet thing. She can’t hurt them anymore.”
But neither could Gillian help these poor souls. Besides cataloging any identifying marks for family who would be missing them and noting evidence, which would prove how these despicable acts had been perpetrated, there wasn’t much she could do.
The child in her arms whimpered, reminding her that wasn’t quite the case. She cooed to him and slowly jostled him in her arms until he quieted as she surveyed the line of tragic tiny bodies before her.
“How old is your sister, Roger?” she asked as she pulled back the lips of the child on the ground and examined his teeth for his approximate age.
“Mae turned five last week.”
“She was full of energy on the train.”
“Yeah. She’s always pestering.” He grunted in what she took for a laugh, but at least his voice was stronger. “In a good way. But she tags along everywhere.”
“Getting into trouble?”
“Nay. She does what she’s told.” She heard him rustle. “Otherwise I don’t let her stay with me.”
“She may outgrow that.”
“You have a brother?”
At Roger’s question, she looked over at him. He remained as she’d left him, eyes closed, but at least endeavoring to keep up a light chat. “No. I had a sister.”
One of his eyes opened. “Not anymore?”
“Not for a long time, I’m afraid.” She crawled on her knees, baby cradled against her chest, and moved to the next child, not wanting to share her personal grief. It would only upset Roger and make him worry more for his sister. But memories of her little sister were never far from her thoughts. Dana had deserved a life just as these children had, but fate didn’t deal in fairness.
“What does she like to do with you?”
“Fishing mostly,” Roger responded. “She’s good with hooking the worms.”
Consoled that Roger and Mae more than just tolerated each other, Gillian moved from one wrapped blanket to the next.
“Tell me about you. Do you go to school?”
“Half days. I help my pa with the farm the rest of the time.”
“Sounds like you’re a good brother and good son.”
Scribbling her findings, Gillian encouraged Roger with questions and silently cursed the single tear tracing its way down her cheek. It probably hadn’t been very long, but her knees ached and her back twinged from being in the awkward position for so long—yes, that was the reason. Not the evidence of innocent lives cut short. Fortunately, she had only one child left, and he deserved as much of her attention and diligence as the rest. She brushed her cheek with the back of her hand and continued her examination of a roughly eight-year-old boy, carefully checking his eyes and finding broken blood vessels.
Puzzled, she flipped back through her notes from Doc’s journals, but this didn’t conform to anything she’d read. Searching for an answer, she opened his shirt and checked around his collarbone for any sign of strangulation, but no bruises marred the pale skin. She picked up one hand to look for abrasions, signs of what Doc noted as defensive marks. And while his palms were clean and unmarred, all his fingernails were ragged and chipped.
“Roger, I don’t want to upset you, but did Nettie say anything about these other children?”
He hummed out a breath. “Kept saying she was sending angels home. She really wanted my sister.”
“Did she seem preoccupied with you too?”
Roger gave off no vibration of a supernatural, much less a shifter as far as Gillian could detect.
“No.” He blinked a few times, making an effort to continue talking. “The baby, though, she’d handed him to me in the wagon. Then attacked my ma and pa. When she tried to snatch my sister, I used him—to distract her, kind of.”
“Sounds like it worked.”
“Yeah, came after me so Mae got away. My sister’s good at hiding.”
“Mae would also be able to keep warm out here.” Since she was a shifter.
“Yep, she’s special. Got that—” His lips pursed as if he realized he’d told too much, and his eyelids dropped again. Gillian scowled at the waft of shame that permeated the air. A boy who’d saved two children didn’t deserve to feel less than whole, shifter genes or not.
“You did a great job. Your sister got away and the baby would have died without you to keep him warm last night.” He glanced up again, and she continued. “We’ll find your sister.”
“Couldn’t let her go after my sister, but—” He shook his head and blinked for a second, focusing on the baby in her arms. “The lady caught me. Shoved us in there with—”
“She was bigger and stronger,” Gillian added with more force. “There was nothing you could have done, Roger.”
“He’s so little.”
And hungry, Gillian thought as the child brushed his lips against her shirt. She cleaned a finger as best she could and let him gnaw on her knuckle a bit. “You saved him. Always remember that.”
“My parents?” Roger’s voice broke.
“Will be fine in good time.” Deep and heavily accented, the strange voice came from behind Gillian. She twisted around so quickly, she almost fell to one side to avoid the man brushing her skirts as he strode past her to Roger. As she watched, he crouched beside the boy and placed his palm to the boy’s forehead.
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nbsp; Before she could react, Roger sagged and collapsed slowly to the ground. “Just as you will, lad.”
“What did you do to him?” she shouted, clutching the infant closer. Who in tarnation was this person? Nettie’s accomplice?
He glanced at her over his shoulder, one white-blond brow raised in irritation. “He’s only asleep, woman.”
“Wake him immediately. He needs fresh air, not a coma.”
His expression quickly morphed into a scowl as he stood. She considered Callum tall and Breslin large. But this man eclipsed them both, blocking what bit of sun made its way through the trees. Long legs followed to an equally long torso and broad shoulders. The contours of his face were all hard lines and angles, a strong jaw line, high chiseled cheekbones, and eyes flashing silver. A cap of wild hair a shade lighter than his brows framed his face and hung to his shoulders. Doc had once postulated to her that prominence of a large head and face usually indicated people prone to positions of command or dominance.
If that was the case, this man looked the part of an alpha—but acted the part of an overbearing cad. The power rippling around him brushed against her, buffeting her as if trying to break through her walls. She didn’t perceive any harmful intent but scooted backward anyways.
“Nothing will happen to the boy, but you’d do well to use a different tone.”
His eyes glittered momentarily with a distinctive bright amber color. The similarity to the eyes of the shaman on the reservation near home when he was in a trance was too close to ignore—Immortal magic. She gripped the baby with both hands as she debated what to do. Screaming for Callum wouldn’t get him here in time. She also couldn’t outrun this man even if she weren’t carrying an infant.
Heart hammering so loud in her ears she could barely think, she still managed to hear the baby cry. He complained only once, but it was enough to match her rhythm back with his. For some reason, neither the baby in her arms or the one in her womb seemed to fear the stranger, but they weren’t soothed either. Fine, she didn’t fear him either. Determined not to be cowed by this man, she straightened with new purpose. On a slow inhale, she evaluated the stranger again not quite certain she was willing to trust the judgment of an omega infant that they weren’t in danger. “So you found Roger’s parents alive. Did you find anyone else?”