Wilder (Birds of a Feather Book 1)

by Lena North

  “I’ll show you,” he replied, got to his feet and took a few steps forward.

  Then he raised his head, looking intently toward the skies. Almost immediately, a huge bird came gliding toward us. Hawker stretched his arms out to the sides and Miller and Mac stepped out from the trees. They nodded at me but stayed a distance away from us, and two more birds came gliding across the sky.

  As I watched, an eagle, a falcon and a red kite landed in front of the men. Then they sat calmly in the clearing.

  “My bird says that you are pretty,” Hawker rumbled quietly.

  “Mine says the same,” Miller said, and then he chuckled. “Says you should go on a date with Kit.”

  The falcon shrieked suddenly, and I heard Mac mumble soft words. Then he turned to my father with a grin.

  “My bird says she’ll shit on Kit’s head if he tries,” he said, and added with a shrug, “She thinks Wilder should go on a date with me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Oh crap, another prophecy

  I sat on my couch and stared at the fireplace. I should start a fire, I thought. Make dinner. Dip my head in a bucket of ice. Something. Instead, I just sat there, completely stunned.

  When Mac announced that his bird thought I should go on a date with him, things went downhill. To hear how the birds were somehow matchmaking and trying to get me into dates was a culmination of a day that could only be classified as intensely weird. I didn’t know what to say, but when I caught sight of my father’s face, I started laughing. Hawker looked like he’d sucked on a lemon for a really, really, long time. He growled a long string of foul words and Miller immediately positioned himself between my father and Mac, though if it was to protect Mac or yell at him, I didn’t know.

  Mac made a sweeping gesture with his arm, and the falcon took off immediately. Hawker and Miller sent their birds away as well and then they all turned to me.

  “What?” I asked, and when they remained silent, I repeated myself, “What?”

  Without a word, Miller came to me, gently pushing me away from the men and back to my house through the forest. He mumbled something about Hawker and Mac having to talk and that I should rest. Then he left me. I stumbled into the cabin and sat down on the couch.

  I wondered what the hell had just happened. My mind was also still reeling from the information Hawker had shared, and the birds I’d seen. They had been beautiful and their connection to the three men obvious. I wondered if the huge bird I’d seen when I found the sick cattle had been mine. It had helped me in a way, but except for admiring its beauty, I hadn’t felt anything special about it, so I didn’t think so.

  The sound of my phone ringing in the silent house startled me. I had no signal in the mountains, so I had not been expecting it, and answered out of reflex, even though I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Wilder?” a deep voice said.

  Crap. Paolo.

  “Hey, Paolo,” I said.

  “Oh good, I got hold of you finally. I have been so worried about you, and your safety. I heard what happened at Double H. How are you doing?” he said.

  His voice was warm and gentle, oozing friendliness and concern.

  “I’m okay,” I replied. I guessed from the silence that ensued that he wanted more details, so I went on, “It was horrible of course, and we lost some of my cattle, but we managed to save most. The police are investigating, and I think that some insurance investigators were supposed to get there today to look into it as well.”

  “You aren’t at Double H?” he asked.

  “No, I’m in Norton,” I replied, and added, “I’m not sure when I’ll come here again, so I figured it would be good to bring some of Willy’s things back to Double H and close up the house.”

  I didn’t want him to know that I was meeting with my father. I also didn’t want him to know that I planned to spend more time in Norton, and had in fact packed several big boxes with things that I wanted to have in my little house. I’d brought some clothes, of course, but also some things from the kitchen and since Willy hadn’t been big on decorating, some paintings and the jewelry box that had been my mother’s. I didn’t know why, but before I closed the boxes, I’d wrapped up my pink mug in a towel and added that.

  “You’re not going to live there?” he asked.

  “No,” I said with a giggle that I hoped didn’t sound as fake as it felt. “My so-called father lives here, remember?”

  Then I giggled again, and this time it sounded even faker than before. Paolo was apparently fooled because he chuckled.

  “If you need to get away from the man, Wilder, just let me know. You can stay in the house in Prosper for a while, or I’ll find a hotel…” he trailed off. When he spoke again, he tried hard to sound as if he came up with a brilliant idea just like that, but it mostly sounded rehearsed.

  “I know! You could come for a visit to Marshes?”

  I straightened because this was unexpected, to say the least.

  “I don’t know,” I said, trying to stall. “It might be –”

  A loud knock on the door cut me off.

  “Paolo, I’m so sorry, I have someone at the door,” I said, glad for a reason to hang up. “Can I think about your generous invitation, and let you know?”

  “Of course, Wilder. Absolutely. Call me anytime, any time at all,” he said.

  I said goodbye at the same time as I opened the door and looked into the eyes of my father. He seemed to have calmed down, which was a relief.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  I moved out of the way, waving my phone in front of him.

  “Did you do something to make this work?”

  “Kit did. The boy’s a geek, can fix anything. Got you hooked up to the local network we have up here.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I absolutely had to introduce Jinx to Kit, they’d hit it off immediately.

  “We need to talk,” Hawker said.

  Then he walked into the kitchen, and started making something I suspected was tea. When he was done, he opened the bottle of whiskey that still stood on the counter where Willy had left it. After pouring a generous helping in his mug, he looked at me with a brow raised. When I nodded, he added a tiny splash to my cup. Then we sat down at the kitchen table.

  “When you were just above a year old, your mother saw you with my bird,” he started abruptly.

  I blinked, but he just continued talking.

  “She had already met the hair-sprayed buffoon, so I’m guessing she was looking for a reason to end our marriage. I would have let her go, she knew that. I would have taken you with me, and she knew that too. For some reason, she wanted to keep you. Maybe it was to look like a perfect mother, which she in no way was. Maybe it was something else, I don’t know.”

  He made a pause and held my gaze. I remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

  “She had seen some things, and I’d told her others, so she had figured out parts of our connection with the birds and how we use it. Then she saw you with the bird. You were just playing, Wilder… but she didn’t get that. You were trying to climb up on the birds back, shouting, “Fly, fly.” She freaked out, started screaming that I was crazy and that you were in danger.

  “We had a huge fight. I got pissed, which was stupid. Your mother got bitchy, which was common. In the end, she threatened to tell the media and just about everyone else about the birds. I argued and pleaded and made all kinds of promises, but she wouldn’t give in. Said the only way she’d remain silent was if I disappeared, immediately, and never contacted you again.”

  Hawker sighed and stretched over the table to put his huge hand on mine.

  “I couldn’t –” He stopped speaking, swallowed and started again, “I couldn’t let her do that, Wilder. I had to let her think that she got what she wanted. So I packed up and left that same afternoon. I honestly thought that she’d calm down, that we’d work something out. Talked to Willy and he
thought so too. She never did. He tried so many times but he never got through to her.”

  “That’s why they were together that day? He met with Mother to persuade her to let me see you?” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Don’t feel bad about that, though. His heart had been bad for years. Didn’t tell you because he didn’t want you to worry, but he knew that he could pass any time, and the doctors said he should have, much sooner. He held on for you, baby.”

  I swallowed.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I don’t get it. She never wanted me. Paolo didn’t either,” I murmured.

  Then a thought hit me.

  “I haven’t told you about Paolo. He's totally weird, and I don’t know why. He’s friendly and syrupy sweet and says that he’s sorry and we should be family and all kinds of shit. He called just now and faked an impromptu invitation to Marshes. He –”

  “Careful, Wilder,” Hawker interrupted. “Paolo Fratinelli might seem like a product using, overly tanned, harmless man. He isn’t.”

  What?

  “How would you know anything about Paolo?” I asked.

  “First of all, my daughter lived in his house. Made it my business to know,” he replied.

  Oh.

  “It also ties into what your mother found out. The birds, Wilder, they’re not just pets. They can also go places we can’t be in. Places where law enforcement can’t go. They have excellent eyesight, and they know enough about humans to understand what’s being said.”

  “Say again?”

  “We are guardians, Wilder. We use our birds to keep the world safe. They find out about drug shipments, smuggling, all kinds of crimes, hostage situations... There isn’t much going on in the mountains that the birds don’t know about. They tell us so we can deal with it, and we do,” he said.

  “Good thing that you’re a police officer then,” I said weakly.

  How much more did he have to share, I wondered. It turned out to be a bit more.

  “Sometimes I use my badge,” he said. “But Wilder… sometimes we have to take measures to stop shit from happening. These measures are necessary, but not always abiding fully with the law.”

  Say what?

  I leaned forward and rested my forehead on the table.

  “Wilder?” he muttered.

  “My head will explode, Dad,” I said. “It’s too much.”

  He chuckled.

  “I’m serious,” I said into the table top, and he chuckled again.

  “Whiskey,” I murmured.

  “Gotcha,” he said and got up to get the bottle.

  I got another minuscule splash in my now empty tea cup, and I thought to myself that I’d fill the cup to the brim and gulp it all down when he left.

  “Can we take a break, just for a little while? Let this all sink in?” I asked. “I want to check in with Mickey, see how things are at Double H.”

  “Things are good at Double H, but yeah, of course, we can.”

  “You’ve talked to them?” I asked.

  “Mac did,” he admitted. When he saw the smile I couldn’t hold back, he kept muttering, “The guy’s a player, Wilder. There has been a parade of girls –”

  “Shut up,” I said sweetly. “It’s my life, and I’m allowed to make my own mistakes.”

  “Fuck,” he said distinctly.

  He looked so dismayed I almost burst out laughing.

  “You should clean up your language,” I chirped and got to my feet. “Break. Phone call. Yeah?”

  Without waiting for an answer I walked over to the couch and called Mickey. He picked up immediately and the noises in the background told me that he was in his car.

  “Hey, Wilder. I’m in the car and I’ve got someone with me, can’t talk now,” he said.

  “Oka –”

  “I’m on my way up the mountain, see you in a bit. We have news for you,” he said and hung up.

  Well, that was weird.

  “That was a short call,” Hawker said as he sat down next to me.

  “How did Willy get hold of this house?” I asked.

  “His mother was from Norton, so he got it from her. Double H came from Willy’s wife, your grandmother.”

  I felt kind of bad not knowing this. Willy had always avoided questions, but to be honest, I’d never pushed for answers. Maybe I should have.

  “It’s probably the oldest houses in the village, will cost you a fortune in heating,” Hawker continued.

  Oldest house in the village. Who would have lived in the oldest house in the village?

  “Was it his house? Vildman’s?” I asked quietly.

  Hawker leaned forward and grabbed my hand.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, and added, “At least that’s what our legends say, but we don’t know for sure.”

  “Are we related to him? Do you know?”

  “You are, for sure. I probably have some of him in me as well, from somewhere in the family tree. I guess almost everyone in the village does.”

  Oh shit. I’d been in a cave in the mountains with a dead ancestor. How many could claim to have that experience?

  I flicked through the images on my phone and was about to turn it toward Hawker when my eyes fell on a pictures of the strange lines the dying man had drawn on the floor.

  OAIII>IIIIAI

  “What are you looking at?”

  I explained the weird letters and lines. He looked at the image and shrugged.

  “Don’t know what that means. Some old word maybe? Could just have been him moving his hand around?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  It had to mean something, I thought. It had seemed deliberately scribbled, and it was very clear, except the A’s that looked really strange. They were kind of small and misplaced, with blurry lines. He’d even missed the line across on one of them.

  “Can I see him?”

  “Of course, sorry,” I said, flicked backward to the images of the man himself, and handed him the phone. “Here he is. He looked different when I was in the cave, though. More…” I thought for a while, and then concluded, “Alive somehow.”

  While Hawker looked through the images, I leaned back and went back to staring at the fireplace. What a day it had been, I thought.

  The wall around the fire place was made from stones that were mostly cut into squares, though they weren’t perfectly even. Would have built the house himself, Vildman? Or had he inherited it? His parents had been mentioned in the stories, so he probably got it from them. Then my eyes fell on the stone closest to the fireplace, partly hidden by the wooden floor.

  There was a half circle on it.

  How odd, I thought, why would they have put some kind of mark like that on it? And a half circle, what did that mean? My eyes swept the wall, and then back to the floor again. When Vildman lived, they would have had different planks I thought. Or perhaps even no planks at all? The stones at the bottom of the walls all seemed to be half hidden so maybe they’d had the dirt floors that were common back then.

  Though, if the stones were half hidden, then it wouldn’t be a half circle. It would be a full circle. Suddenly my blood froze, and I straightened, reaching out to snatch the phone from my father.

  “Shit!” I breathed as I flicked through the images until I got to the signs he’d written.

  “What?” Hawker asked, but I ignored him.

  If the stone was marked with a circle, and the “A” he wrote didn’t have a line through it… Could the “O” be the circle on the stone and the “A” an arrow pointing upward?

  Had he in fact written “O^III>IIII^I”?

  “Shit,” I murmured, letting my eyes glide over the stones. Three stones up, four stones right, one stone up.

  “Wilder, what?” Hawker said impatiently, and I ignored that too.

  I got to my feet, and walked over to the wall, not letting my eyes leave the o
ne stone that the scribbles had seemed to point toward. The stone was positioned just slightly further out from the wall than the ones around it, but not enough that I would ever have noticed it without the guidance from what Vildman had written.

  Then I grabbed it with the tips of my fingers and pulled.

  It moved surprisingly easy and it wasn’t as heavy as I suspected because it wasn’t thicker than an inch or two. Behind it was a small hidey hole and in it there were papers.

  “Shit,” I breathed.

  “Jesus,” my father murmured behind me.

  I stretched in and pulled the papers out, gently to not rip them. Then I looked at Hawker.

  “Vildman’s scribbles, they pointed to this. He wanted someone to find this,” I said.

  Goosebumps were breaking out all over my body, and I shivered.

  “Jesus,” Hawker repeated, but then he collected himself. “Okay. Let’s take a look at them.”

  It was only two sheets. The first one had a short message in old-fashioned handwriting, and Hawker read it out.

  “When you find this, I am gone. My hope is that you are my kin, and that the blood of the fire dragons run strong in your soul. Know that our prophecies are honest and true. Heed the words and honor your heritage. I am Vildman, ruler of the fire dragons in the North. Make me proud.”

  I had stopped breathing, and the cabin was completely silent. With shaking hands, I pulled out the other paper and read the words on it out loud.

  “Turmoil will reign yet again, unless one from the three avails of her father's mark to bring the world back from the brink of destruction. One is the removal of one. Adorning in the legacy of a shadow that passed is two. Wielding the heart of swords forged in fire is three.”

  I stared at the words, reading them again, silently. Then I turned to my father.

  “What in the hell does that mean?”

  He looked shell-shocked but my words startled him and he laughed.

  “Wow,” he said. “No clue what it means, but – wow.”

  “What do we do with them?” I asked.

  “No clue about that either,” he replied.

  Then we heard a car drive up to the house.

  “Put them back behind the stone,” I said as I quickly snapped photos with my phone, not knowing why it felt so important to protect the papers, or the words written on them.