The Hero Within (Burned Lands Book 3)

by Bec McMaster

  "And your omega strain?" Cole looked fascinated.

  Johnny stabbed his knife in the dirt, his hand clenching around the hilt so tightly the timber ingrained itself in his palm. Easy. "Project: Omega was the last warg hybrid they managed to create. Don't get me wrong. Your alphas and betas might be more in control than the others, but most of them go warg these days. I imagine it might have been different back when they were created and had the training to resist it. Omegas, however, are the most stable of all wargs, and they give off calming pheromones. Rarely fight, rarely turn warg. If you've got an out-of-control alpha or even a delta, an omega's about the only thing that might be able to rein them in."

  Except for the one time in his life when it had mattered.

  Bitterness churned within him. His mother had always been the aggressive one, but his father.... Hell, his father should have known better than to think anything he could have done would have talked Bartholomew Cane down.

  The second Cane rode onto their small homestead, Johnny's father had been a dead man, and his mother had panicked as her past finally caught up to her.

  "Hide," she'd rasped at Johnny, shoving him toward the small game trail that led into the wilderness behind their cabin. "Whatever you see or hear, don't come back. Don't let my brother see you."

  And his father—the father who'd rarely lifted a hand against anyone—had grimly walked out to meet the lone figure on horseback. It was the last time he’d ever seen him.

  The sound of a gun firing echoed through his head, and Johnny flinched.

  "What's wrong?" Cole asked, as the breeze swirled past them.

  "Bad memories."

  He could almost feel the lingering stroke of Cole's gaze on his face. "You knew someone who was an omega?"

  "My father." And I really don't want to talk about it.

  The warg itched under his skin as if it sensed his anger. Left to brew, it would use that rage to tear its way out of him if he allowed it. Not even he was immune and the lunar tide pulled at him.

  Feel the wind on your skin and remember who you are, his father's voice whispered in his memories. Feel the dirt beneath your feet and use it to rein the monster in.

  Johnny breathed out slowly, letting it all wash out of him. The hate. The rage. The desire to hit something.

  It wouldn't bring his father back or change the past.

  The kid got the message. "So how do you know which strain of warg you are?"

  "Depends who scratched you up." Johnny held his hands up, forcing the shift to stir through him. His fingers ached and began to elongate, sharp claws springing from the tips. The whisper of the night-lure became a little stronger in his veins. Every sense heightened just a fraction, until he could hear the rush of blood through Eden's veins.

  "Holy shit," Cole blurted. "You can partial shift."

  "Yeah. I don't know how the pre-Darkening government created us, but it's like an infection. One bite, one scratch, and you're going to start getting hairy at night. But each infection is specific to the strain of warg who scratched you. Who infected you?"

  "Luc Wade."

  Johnny shot him a startled look. "And you're riding to get a cure for his daughter?"

  Despite the dark, he could scent the sudden flush of emotion coming off the kid. Without thinking, he reached out and rested his hand on Cole's shoulder, feeling that heavy pit of lassitude sweep through him. The calmness flooded his veins the same way adrenaline did, and Cole's shoulders softened the second he smelled it.

  Pheromones.

  An omega's touch.

  A pity it hadn't saved his father's life.

  "Lily's a friend. And I've come to terms with what happened. I have this now." Cole wrapped a hand around the pewter amulet around his neck. "Doesn't make it any easier knowing Wade cut my future short, but with this... I can live a semblance of a life. He gave this to me himself, as reparation."

  Johnny eyed the amulet cynically. If only you knew the truth....

  But he sighed and gave in. No point fucking with the kid's belief system when they were in the middle of the Divide. "I knew an alpha once—his name was Bartholomew Cane. Since he was the one who infected both Adam McClain and Luc Wade, you'll carry the alpha strain."

  "Which means I should be able to control other wargs." Cole sounded out the thought, his words not quite a question. "But the second you commanded me, I went down on one knee like those fucking dogs."

  "Even an alpha can bend. You're young and untrained, and you've been around two wargs since you were in your teens presumably. It's the pack hierarchy mentality. When Wade tells you to do something, I'll bet you do it. Don't even think about it mostly."

  Cole stared out into the night as if he was re-running his interactions with Wade through his mind. "Son of a bitch."

  "Don't beat yourself up. It happens when you get a warg young, and I doubt Wade's doing it consciously. He doesn't know shit about being a warg. It's most likely instinct on both your behalf, and as you get older you'll find it easier to defy him."

  "Could you do that to Wade?"

  He gave a faint, bitter smile. "Considering Wade managed to lock me in a cabin a few years ago and flick a match... Unlikely. It doesn't work on all alphas and depends strongly on the hierarchy. Once they're adults it's virtually impossible to make an alpha yield, especially if they're strong-willed." His smile died. "Unless you break them. Torture. Sleep deprivation. Starvation. That kind of shit." His voice roughened. "You break them down, force them to kneel to your will when you're flooding them with scent. Rinse and repeat. Do it often enough and you can twist even the most hard-core alpha to your will in a way he'll never be able to break. If you get them young, then it works even better. They can't deny you. Can't say no. You can fight it, but you're fighting your own instincts and it hurts like fuck."

  A slight rustle stirred. Eden. Rolling over in her blankets, as she gave a soft sigh.

  Johnny eased out his breath—and the shame that had suddenly filled him. Fuck. Why was he even saying this? His heart was suddenly racing, the moon beginning to whisper through his veins like a drug. He vanished the claws the second he realized he was getting emotional, staring at his all-too-human hands.

  And he realized he'd given far too much away.

  Cole slowly stirred the dirt beneath his heels. "You smell different to McClain and Wade. Now I know what I'm looking for I can pick up the difference. It makes me feel weird. I feel like I should trust you, and I don't know why."

  "It's the omega in me, thanks to my father. My mother was an alpha. She and my father decided to infect me at the same time. She didn't want me to have to fight the rage she always struggled with, but alphas heal better than omegas, so he wanted me to have her strain too. Thought blending the two strains might help me keep my wits, and it seems to have worked."

  "Double whammy."

  "Something like that."

  "So you're an alpha-omega?"

  "Yeah. Only one I've ever met, to be honest."

  "How do you know so much about this?" Cole asked. "I've never come across anyone who knows anything more than how to kill a warg."

  "My father's people kept records." Pushing to his feet, Johnny crossed to the small pit where the last of the night's coals had died down. "He told me about the different strains and a couple of years ago I spent a month in the ruins of Black River Testing Facility, and managed to find some of their sealed records. They were one of the military centers that experimented on wargs."

  "Do you think there’s a cure?"

  Wishful thinking. He kicked dirt over the coals, turning into the breeze. "Doubtful. We don’t have the technology or the—"

  The faintest hint of scent wafted past him.

  Johnny froze.

  He slammed a hand out, beckoning the kid into silence. Every hair on the back of his neck felt like it rose.

  "What is it?" Cole breathed, slowly shifting to his feet.

  Johnny’s nostrils flared. The scent was gone. But it had bee
n there. Musk and iron, and something faintly cat-like. If the wind hadn’t shifted in that precise moment, he doubted he’d have even sensed it.

  He’d smelled that scent before.

  Mierda. Something was downwind, and it was stalking them. Worse. He knew what it was.

  Tension unfurled within him. Where the fuck was his shotgun? His hand settled slowly over the gun at his belt, and his gaze shifted to the knife he’d left buried in the dirt by the log he’d been sitting on. Cole followed his glance and tugged the knife free, tensing in reaction.

  Part omega or not, right now he could feel the kick of his heart and knew his scent would be sharpening.

  "Don’t move suddenly," Johnny said, in a conversational voice that sounded distant to his ears. Eden was still wrapped up in her blankets as snug as a bug, but he caught the glint of moonlight on her eyes. Awake and listening to them, and probably had been for a while. "Eden, can you get up?"

  "What is it?" she breathed.

  "Something’s out there and it’s stalking us." His heartbeat jacked through his ribs, and he tried to hear over its sudden drumming pulse. Except for that brief drift of scent he might not have known. There was no sound. No more scent. Nothing except the fine prickling of the hairs along his forearms and the knowing they weren't alone anymore.

  "A warg?"

  No. "Worse. A shadow cat."

  His mother's people had called them sombra que acecha la noche.

  And if they had any luck it would only be one.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHADOW CATS?" Eden whispered harshly, kicking her blankets aside. "You said they'd be the least of our concerns down here."

  "Don't. Move. Quickly," Colton said, holding his hands out, almost as if to warm them in a nonexistent flame from the quenched coals. His head tilted slowly. Listening maybe. "We want it to think we're not aware of it."

  "It?"

  "Hopefully it. A single shadow cat will go out of its way to avoid a warg, and vice versa. Cole and I have been marking the trails all day, so it will know what we are. Usually that's enough to warn them away." Moving slowly, Colton retrieved her shotgun from her bag and shoved it at her. He reached for his knife and CJ jerkily handed it over. "They're solitary creatures except for mating season, and we're a month too late for that. But if this is an adult female with cubs and we're in her territory, she might be bold enough to attack."

  Shit. Where were her boots? Eden spotted them and dragged them on, moving with slow, cautious movements, even as her heartbeat ran ragged.

  "She might back off if she thinks we're a threat to her cubs," CJ muttered, pumping two rounds into the chambers of his shotgun.

  "Unfortunately not." Colton knelt low beside a boulder, peering over the top of it as he scanned the near dark. The moon was sinking toward the horizon and visibility had dropped. Eden could barely see him; he blended into the nightscape like a shadow himself. "The females are the dangerous ones. They've got poisonous spurs, and they do most of the hunting. They'll kill to protect their territory and if her cubs are almost fully grown then they'll be with her. We want this to be a male, as they tend to be less violent."

  "That's a turnaround from humans," CJ said.

  "You ever broken into a woman's house when she's got kids in there?" Colton murmured distractedly.

  "Neither of us has been in the kidnapping game." Eden couldn't help herself. "So I guess that's a no."

  "Puta madre." Colton held up his hand, gesturing for silence. "Fucking motherfucking fuck. I can see a couple of shapes out there. They're not full-grown, but they're almost adult-sized by the look of them, which makes them just as dangerous." He turned in a slow circle. "I must have caught the scent of one of them. What I don't see is mama. She's the better hunter and she'll be downwind."

  This was an appropriate time for swearing. Eden swallowed her nerves. "What do we do?"

  "You keep your back to the rocks," he told her. "They'll try and pounce on you from behind and crush your neck or suffocate you. Do you know how to use that thing?"

  She swiftly loaded the shotgun like a pro. "Do you think Adam didn't teach me how to shoot?"

  "Only as a last resort," he warned. "Stay out of it if you can. You're more likely to hit CJ or me, than anything else. A combat situation's miles away from popping cans on the range, especially when your target can move faster than you can see in the dark. Use it to defend yourself if we go down."

  She didn't argue. Her face was still bruised from Black Tom's sudden blow. No matter how much Adam had tried to prepare her for this sort of situation, she was rapidly learning how far out of her depth she was.

  And if they went down, she was dead.

  "How many are out there?" CJ's voice pitched high.

  "I've got three on my radar and a mysteriously missing adult female, but I daresay she'll be out there. They don't call them shadow cats for no reason."

  Yeah. Eden swallowed. So named because you never saw them coming. The genetically manipulated creatures had camouflage down to a fine art.

  She pressed her back against the boulder and blinked, trying to adjust her vision to the pale moonlight.

  Colton gave a burst of quick orders to CJ, the pair of them standing guard in front of her. With the rock at her back, the shadow cats could only come at them in a frontal assault—which was probably why Colton had picked this spot to camp.

  "What are they waiting for?" CJ demanded.

  "They're still young," Colton murmured, staring out into the night. "Learning to hunt. I don't think they expected us to sense them coming."

  Something landed on her head. A bug or... no, gravel. It rained down over her shoulders, and she rubbed it out of her hair. What the...? Eden's heart stopped dead in her chest as she heard the faintest shift of sound above her.

  Oh, shit.

  "Colton," she whispered loudly.

  He jerked a hand at her. "Shh. I'm trying to listen."

  "I think I just found the mother," she blurted. "It's on top of the boulder."

  His shoulders stiffened and he slowly turned around, just as Eden tilted her head back. Her heart started kicking again, and a shiver of breathlessness went through her. Directly above her, a patch of pure darkness separated itself from the velvety night skies, and then a high-pitched yowl erupted.

  "Shit!"

  The shadow cat launched itself off the top of the boulder, aiming directly for Colton. He jerked his shotgun up and fired, the sound echoing through the night. Eden was blinded momentarily by the sudden light of the muzzle flash, a scream escaping her and the shot echoing through the night.

  Jesus. She blinked away the afterimage, catching a glimpse of CJ darting in with his knife, trying to get the creature off Colton. The world around her jerked like a vignette of slides running through a projector. Colton was flat on his back on the ground, as if the mama cat had slammed into him. CJ smashed into the cat, as Colton flipped to his feet.

  A high-pitched scream pierced her eardrums, and then Colton was cursing as the shadow swiped its claws at CJ.

  It was moving so bloody fast.

  And worse, the night itself seemed to be rippling with darkness.

  "The kids are joining the party!" she yelled, as CJ grunted and staggered back beneath the mother's sudden assault. "Colton!?"

  Trying to dance in low to hamstring the mama cat.

  Behind him a shadow loomed.

  Adrenaline pumped through her veins. Eden jerked the shotgun up and narrowly avoided pulling the trigger as one of the creatures launched from the boulder above her across the clearing. Colton had been right. Shooting a stationery target when you weren't in a fight for your life was a vastly different beast to trying to aim when your heart was fit to pound out of your chest.

  And she might not have time to reload.

  But....

  It materialized out of the darkness as the glow from the embers in the fireplace lit it. She caught a glimpse of thin fur that seemed to ripple through a dozen di
fferent shades of black and gray, as if its fur absorbed the light. Don't miss. Her heart rabbited in her chest, and Eden focused down the line of the barrel as it launched itself at Colton's unprotected back.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The butt of the shotgun kicked against her shoulder like a mule, and the creature jerked and slammed into Colton's back, screaming in pain.

  Easier now to breathe. Eden reloaded as Colton rolled to his hands and knees, her movements mechanical, even though a fist of nausea bloomed in her throat. The cat she'd shot twitched on the ground, but didn't move, a gaping hole in its ribs.

  "You all right?" she yelled.

  "Fine. Thanks," Colton snapped, and darted forward to drive his knife into one of the cubs. "Stay out of this."

  "Trying to!" If she had the chance. Eden turned, jerking the shotgun around to cover both sides.

  CJ went down with a scream beneath a pair of shadow cats. All she could see was a writhing mass of darkness. Stepping forward, Eden pumped both rounds into the chambers, but she couldn't gauge what was CJ and what was the predator.

  "CJ!" she screamed.

  A shadowy limb lifted and moonlight flashed off the curve of his knife. He plunged it into the mass atop him, and a high-pitched squeal of pain erupted.

  The other cub leaped off him, landing lightly atop the boulder ten feet away from her and Eden turned on it. Don't shoot unless necessary. She hesitated.

  But Colton didn't.

  He pulled the trigger of his own shotgun, and the shadow jerked and tumbled out of view.

  Hell. Gasping for breath, she lowered the shotgun. Had she been too late? Was he moving, or was that just her imagination? "CJ?"

  CJ lifted his head as if to examine his abdomen, then collapsed back on the ground, breathing hard. "Son of a bitch."

  "Got your back covered," Colton snapped, the back of his legs bumping into her as he fired in rapid succession into the darkness. Reloaded. Fired again. "Check him out if you can, angel."

  Another feline scream. And something deeper; a low rumbling of pure fury lifted all the hairs on her arms. Eden had been about to kneel at CJ's side, but her gaze stalked the darkness, and she swallowed as she straightened. No time.