by Sue Wilder
THE FIRE IN VENGEANCE
A Calata Novel
By
Sue Wilder
THE FIRE IN VENGEANCE
by Sue Wilder
Copyright @ 2018 by Sue Smith
Excerpt from The Danger in Justice by Sue Wilder copyright@ 2018 by Sue Smith
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Damonza.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
PROLOGUE
“If I told you why I did it… what would you say? That I was a monster, driven by my grief? That all I wanted was vengeance? There are times,” the woman said, “I would say you were right. I misused the magic. And now I can’t take it back…”
“Do you know what it’s called?” the man asked from the shadows.
“Inferno, canto.”
Hell, singing.
CHAPTER 1
Eastern Oregon, Wallowa Mountains
The battle was furious and would have been epic if anyone had known about it. The skirmish began after sunset—no one was sure of the exact time, but by seven the conflict was heavily engaged. Eight marked the moment when plates were thrown. The retreat came at nine, when the enforcer was seen stalking toward the pines. Midnight saw lights still blazing in the cabin, although soon they flicked off in sequence as the girl walked through the rooms. Dawn brought hope that a truce had been called, but by late afternoon, hope was abandoned and cold war was in place.
None of this should have been surprising, given who they were, since the combatants had battled over lifetimes and neither had won. Christan was an enforcer, a legend of some repute. Lexi was the blond girl with secrets in her eyes. Her name in this lifetime was Galaxy, although there had been other lifetimes and other names. She described herself as “me, now,” and liked to say it with fire in her eyes, reminding the enforcer of Gaia, the warrior girl she’d been in that first sweet life tending her father’s shaggy goats. There’d been other lives, some brief and uneventful until the lifetime no one talked about, where she’d been Gemma, standing on a moon-shot road while tragedy rolled them toward despair. She didn’t want those memories and neither did he, but more to the point, she didn’t want to be immortal, not if it meant letting him protect her. He thought it did, which went a long way toward explaining why she resorted to throwing the plates.
All of which seemed unlikely one month ago, when they’d arrived late at night and holding on to each other like lovers. For the first week they remained inseparable, cooking alone in their cabin despite the well-equipped lodge and Marge and Robbie, who had also arrived and were looking forward to the company. But by the end of the second week warning signs emerged, all based around a bond filled with old magic and new consequences. Fortune had smiled upon the enforcer, though, since the compound was deep in the Wallowa Mountains and surrounded by the largest wilderness area in Oregon. Isolation allowed their disagreements to remain private, although it wasn’t long before minor issues became major frustrations. No matter what the enforcer said, the girl countered with arguments of her own, and her attitude didn’t soften when he called attention to the flaws in her thinking.
When asked later, the enforcer admitted his lack of finesse. The initial skirmish, he explained, began with an observation, made innocently from his perspective. The girl had responded, calling it underhanded and a betrayal of their peace accords, saying something like “do not call me stupid.” Her finger had been shaking in the air, the enforcer recalled, while she danced backward in a movement he recognized as her opening tactic to full-out war.
Determined to defend himself, he did not hesitate. “Did that word come out of my mouth?” he had demanded, and she’d answered, rather archly he thought, “You said I couldn’t boil water, Christan, and in this century it means you think I’m stupid.”
At that point Christan had crossed his arms, widened his stance and suggested, with some emphasis, that if she paid attention to his instruction, she would be able to boil the water by lighting the stove with her telekinetic abilities, which he was trying to teach her if she bothered to listen. Plates flew, doors slammed, and it was all downhill from there.
“Are you even trying to teach me?” she had demanded, and the accuracy of the accusation forced the first steps in Christan’s retreat. He was Three’s immortal enforcer, a master of war, the goddamned origin myth for the most feared creature in the ancient world. And he was unable to make her understand.
Later, when he described his motives to Marge—the woman who was friend and therapist to Lexi and extended that role to include Christan—he tried not to sound insensitive. His answer had been no, he would not teach Lexi what she really wanted to know because of things he understood but refused to reveal. That was the day Marge had been listening sympathetically to his side of the skirmish. Then she heard the details, and like any true diplomat, she switched sides. Apparently, he could be a royal bastard even when he wasn’t trying, and after noticing Marge’s expression, Christan decided a Calata war would have been preferable.
But what Christan wanted to know and hadn’t discovered was how to reach Lexi when she stopped fighting, something she’d done at the precise moment the momentum shifted to his advantage. Christan had watched, perplexed, as she bent to pick up a piece of shattered crockery from the floor. When she tossed it into the trash, Christan recognized the withdrawal, knew she was hiding behind walls built over a lonely lifetime. He didn’t want her to drift away.
Just before that, Lexi had been accusing him of never listening. He admitted the truth; the weight of command required immediate decisions, judging circumstances and executing—a word he regretted using when he saw her flinch. There was something about crying in a bathroom, he recalled, because a claw was growing out of her hand, and trying to dampen her fears by pointing out how the claw had disappeared on its own. After thanking him for that half-second of sympathy there was definite sarcasm in her tone, and Christan felt his best talents were being wasted; under any other circumstances, he’d have destroyed the opposition and gone on with his life.
Instead he opted for a strategic retreat. He remained silent.
The result had been disastrous.
Christan recalled, now, the exact way Lexi said the words. No asking permission. Just stating her decision to go back to Rock Cove, to the cottage where they’d killed her cat. His heart had been slow and heavy in his throat, the anxiety twisting at a visceral level. What argument could he make—I know your life has changed, and I did that to you? His mind had raced through the options but found no absolution; his sins began with the moment he’d condemned her to the Agreement without asking first. He remembered standing in a shadowed hall with torches throwing orange light against the walls. Three, dressed in white as she always was, explaining what she’d done and what he had to do.
“You have no choice, Enforcer. Your warriors rebelled, and the Calata will kill the girls. This is the only way.”
“I have to ask her.”
“There is no time. Do you swear, Enforcer?”
Christan had dropped to his knees, his head bent, and Three’s voice gentled.
“She will be safe, Christan. She will be alive. Do you swear?”
“Yes,” he’d said, “I swear.”
Christan never considered the ramifications of reincarnation, trying to find love while dragging around baggage from past lives she didn’t remember. And he hadn’t expected the malicious intent of the Calata to disrupt the Agreement. They’d fought so hard and come so far; he wouldn’t throw it away be
cause the blood bond changed her, and she was unhappy with her life.
But Christan had changed, too, and Lexi had done that to him, performing an act of courage and desperation, turning him into not just an apex predator but a creature beyond myth and legend, something he’d never wanted to be. And his changes had also been irrevocable.
Christan’s expression shuttered as his muscles tensed. He might have understood her frustration if they hadn’t been fighting about it. Hell, he dealt with the same frustrations. But there was no going back. Not to Rock Cove where her cottage still cried for the cat. Or the villa in Florence, filled with violence and death, not a place to go back to if that was what she was talking about. Christan didn’t think it was.
He was leaning against the counter, watching as she stood against the wall, never realizing she was preparing to leave the field.
“You could end this fight in a second if you wanted to,” Lexi had said with such finality Christan straightened with a hard push of his hips. There were more attempted explanations. More tears and silent condemnation. That was when the outcome of their battle became seared in his mind. He remembered their conversation, could repeat every word.
“I can’t live this way, Christan,” she had said. “Not anymore.”
“What would you have me do, cara? You have enemies and I cannot change the world back for you.”
“No. We both made choices and live with the consequences.”
“I want you to be happy. I need to protect you. How can that be wrong?”
She had turned, so beautiful it took his breath away. Her hair—a shaft of sunlight in winter—fell in waves to the middle of her back, and her eyes glistened like amber. They were filled with tears.
“It must be so easy for you.”
“How, cara? How is it easy for me?”
“It’s all or nothing with you. You want. You need. Those things have no meaning to me.”
He had swallowed once before he was able to speak. “Do I have meaning to you?”
Lexi had shrugged as if it no longer mattered, and Christan’s gaze drifted to the window where the night outside was black with no stars visible in the sky. Silence filled the small kitchen they’d loved.
“You once told me, Christan, not to look for happy endings with someone as far away from me as you are.”
The floor heaved beneath his feet, heavy with the cold weight of dread. “I am ancient, cara, so you need to spell it out for me. What, exactly, are you trying to say?”
“All I asked was that you teach me how to protect myself. And you have declined.”
He wanted her mouth on his, her body pooling against him as he made love to her on a bed draped in white linen. He pushed forward, thrust a hand through his dark hair as she turned to walk away.
“Cara.”
“No.” She said it out loud, refused to use the telepathy that had become so intimate between them.
“I could make you stay,” he answered, deep in her mind, not even realizing he was speaking in Italian. “I would ask you instead.”
She hesitated, her flawless face turned away as if sensing the battle had been won but needing to fire a final shot.
“Don’t destroy us over this, Christan,” she said without emotion, her back so stiff he thought it might break. “Not this time.”
He wanted to reach out, bury his fingers in her hair and tuck her head beneath his chin. Just hold her in his arms.
But he was feeling a little too dangerous to risk touching her.
And she was too far away.
CHAPTER 2
Two days later, Christan walked into the main lodge, alone. He stomped wet snow from his feet before he tracked it across the pristine kitchen. The lodge was empty since Arsen was in Portland meeting with Phillipe. The academic—an envoy for the immortal Calata member known as Three—had concerns over recent disruptions. The meetings kept Christan’s second-in-command in the city longer than expected, while Robbie and Marge stayed in their own cabin unless it was one of the communal meals Marge liked to arrange. Robbie was a warrior and a gifted healer, and with his bonded mate, Marge, they’d salvaged their relationship, giving hope to others who struggled with past life memories.
It was an old story, and one Christan felt like stones on his heart. Centuries ago, warriors had fallen in love with human mates against the Calata’s wishes, and in retaliation the immortals tried to kill the girls. War became imminent, immortal society disrupted until an offer for peace was made, where warriors demanded the one thing the Calata could not give—immortality for their human lovers. Such magic was beyond the abilities of the alchemists, but then a solution appeared, called the Agreement, a way to manipulate the natural process through reincarnation so lovers could reunite in each lifetime. The warriors had sworn to it without asking permission. There hadn’t been time to ask their human mates, or enough trust, the more cynical might say, and the results hadn’t worked out as expected.
Nothing worked out as expected, and as Christan entered the quiet communications center he ran through the fight again. Lexi was right and he did need to protect her. There were regrets she’d not erased, may never erase from her mind unless he did it for her. She wouldn’t ask him, and he would never consider such an action without her permission. He admired her determination to live with courage—and the enforcer, the myth that once terrified the ancient world, the man who loved her—they would all shield her from this immortal world. Even if she was angry about it.
Christan looked at his hands clenched upon the desk, seeing the stiffness in Lexi’s back when she’d walked away. In that moment, in the shadowed light with her blond hair loose and tumbling, he remembered seeing Gemma doing the same thing. Gemma’s reasons were different but the outcome remained the same. They were in a war she didn’t understand, and the enforcer thought about her resistance calmly, as if this was another battle he needed to win. The confrontation in Zurich last summer had done more than set this war into motion, and no one understood war better than Christan since he’d been fighting his enemies for an eternity.
Christan dragged a heavy hand across his face and settled in a chair. The call from Arsen was scheduled for six that evening and his second was always punctual. Christan hoped Arsen wouldn’t bring up personal matters. Arsen’s sympathies were for his “Slick,” not for his enforcer, to whom Arsen owed an obligation. But their relationship wasn’t based on obligation. It came from friendship and the loyalty between brothers fighting on fields of battle. Christan had no closer confidant than Arsen. They understood each other, had taken blades for each other, and he appreciated Arsen’s protective streak when it came to Lexi. Perhaps, Christan thought, he should mention something about Lexi needing more support, since she wasn’t asking for it on her own.
When the secure phone line chirped, Christan picked up the handset.
“How’s Portland?” he asked after the initial pleasantries.
“The usual chaos in Pioneer Square.”
“Any sign of Calata influence?”
“No. And there’s no sign of Six or Kace.”
“Did Ethan discover anything on our other matter?” Christan was thinking about the laid-back warrior in the San Francisco office who could find anything about anyone. The electronic world of computers and dark webs still amazed Christan, who’d spent the last four hundred years in the Void. The last time he ran a search, he used human spies and more violent means of extracting information.
Arsen’s tone remained neutral as he said “nothing new,” even though the woman who was “the other matter” was his estranged mate, Katerina Varga. Her disappearance six months ago in Italy had ended with the trouble in Zurich, and Christan recalled the dossier he’d read a few weeks later. After Katerina Varga’s parents died in a car accident, the girl had gone to live with her godfather, a scholar based outside London. There was at least one obscure book on ancient European languages the scholar had authored, and a curated private Etruscan collection that added to his repu
tation. Reportedly, the artifacts inspired Katerina’s interest in the origins of the Etruscan language.
The prestigious research grant in Florence, Italy—where she supposedly still was—had first been offered to the godfather. He turned it down due to health concerns. The opportunity passed to Katerina, who, despite her young age, was already building a reputation for Etruscan scholarship. Oddly, the financial backing came through an obscure organization in Australia. There were no other details.
“What does Dante say?” Katerina, they’d discovered, had a long friendship with Dante’s mate, Renata, and the two women shared their struggles with returning past life memories.
“He says they saw her a month ago, but Renata hasn’t heard from Katerina since then.”
“And Katerina hasn’t gone home to London?” asked Christan.
“Ethan can’t find any trace, says if she’s communicating with anyone she isn’t using open systems.”
Christan heard the suspicion in Arsen’s tone. Arsen had never believed Katerina was innocent when, after lifetimes of running from him, she’d been sitting openly at a popular cafe, drawing the enforcer and his second-in-command into the piazza and leading to the attack on Christan and Lexi. Arsen said the girl had been acting as bait, and Christan hadn’t argued. But as an enforcer, he hadn’t come to any conclusions, either, and they needed to find Katerina before Christan knew for certain. He reached automatically for a cup that wasn’t there, since he hadn’t thought to make the coffee, and Marge, who usually took care of the details, wasn’t speaking to him at the moment, so even if she’d been in the large kitchen he’d have been on his own. Christan shifted the conversation, asking about the Calata member known as One and the inquiry she had threatened to unleash after the events at the villa. One considered Christan’s actions as her “problem” she was determined to resolve.