The Angel's Fire

by Holley Trent

  Down the street, he could see a cowboy hitching his horse in front of the doctor’s house, but that was all. Too hot for people to be outside unless they had to be. He stepped onto the raised stoop of the saloon and noted the sign posted to the right of the recently replaced window. Drawn in flowery script in black paint was:

  Coming Soon:

  Nickerson’s Dry Goods

  -The Largest Department Store in the Rockies!-

  Tarik furrowed his brow. They couldn’t make that claim unless—

  A few steps forward, and he answered his own question. That building was closed, too, and the one beside it.

  Gnashing his teeth, he had pointed his gaze on the jail wondering if the sheriff were there, but he wasn’t going to storm over with his sword brandished to make a scene when he didn’t have enough information.

  The newspaper office still seemed to be intact, so Tarik went there.

  Oscar let out a yelp of fright when Tarik yanked the door open.

  “For God’s sake, crank down the power a little when you walk into a shifter’s space.”

  Tarik grimaced. He’d forgotten that Oscar was a Wolf. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever standing near enough to the man to have a conversation with him. Likely, one of the Cougars had informed him what Tarik was. He always appreciated when introductions were made for him in advance.

  Feeling as on edge as he was, pulling his energy in was a difficult feat, but somehow, he managed to stop it from flaring.

  “I’ve been away,” he told the Wolf. “What has happened?”

  Oscar let his breath out in a sputter and fidgeted his ink-stained cuffs. “Well. Half the damn town has cleared out. Sick of all the commotion. I don’t blame them one bit. I’m leaving after I do the last mail run. Moving up to Colorado Springs.”

  The office did seem particularly sparsely furnished, but Tarik hadn’t thought anything of it upon entering. He’d never been inside before and had no frame of reference. Other than the tables and the printing press, there was very little inside the space to catch the eye.

  “The sheriff was successful, then.”

  Oscar rolled his eyes. “Sheriff. Mayor. King of the world. Whatever you want to call him. The doe in the woods routine that bride of his got old real fast. She came here acting like she didn’t know anything, but that squealing banshee is just as cutthroat and dishonest as he is. She’s just prettier at it. They’re acting like this is a game. A little dollhouse and the town around it for her to play with. Made Sophie so mad a few weeks ago that she tossed paint on her.”

  “Sophie?” Tarik balked. That name didn’t seem to belong anywhere near a conversation about Maria. “Sophie who?”

  “Oh.” Oscar held up his coffee pot in offering.

  Tarik shook his head. He was too anxious to eat or drink.

  “Maybe you haven’t met her. Got off a boat in Baltimore and came out here looking for Lola, I guess. Some kind of aristocrat.”

  “Sophie?” Tarik repeated. He eased around the counter and bent to Oscar’s height. The last time Tarik had checked on her, she was settling into her house in Bermuda and her maid was making a grand list of things they needed to purchase.

  “Yep.” Oscar gave Tarik a wary sideways look. “That’s her name. Why?”

  “Delacroix?”

  “Sounds about right. Something I sure as hell can’t spell.”

  “What on earth is she doing here?”

  “You know her?”

  Tarik grunted.

  “Oh, okay. Shouldn’t surprise you to hear that she’s a raving lunatic, then.”

  Fuck. You didn’t, Sophie.

  If she’d slipped back into her for former addiction, he didn’t know if there was any hope for her.

  “In the best possible way, I suppose,” Oscar said into his tin coffee mug. “Most Cougars are little tetchy anyway.”

  “Most what?” Angels were supposed to have superior intelligence over humans, but Tarik’s brain seemed to be processing on a frightening delay.

  “Cougars.” Oscar shrugged. “She wanted it. Elizabeth said okay, so she did it. Gave her a good scratch across the back, is what I heard. Said it gives her an excuse to never have to wear a corset again.”

  What the hell else happened?

  Tarik dragged his hand down his face and then shook his head. “And why did Sophie toss paint on the bitch?”

  “Because she felt like it.” Oscar grinned at that, but Tarik had always thought his sense of humor was rather peculiar. “Came into town to send a telegram and I guess she was in a certain kind of mood. Workers know better than to leave the paint out now. I think the only reason Sheriff didn’t toss her into jail was because Sophie was too damn fast. The lady can run and, as you might have noticed, the sheriff isn’t the finest physical specimen to be found on this side of the Mississippi. I never did find out if she got that telegram sent out.”

  “Where are the Cougars now? And Lola?”

  “Out at the Foyes’ ranch, maybe? Lots of the Cougars have been bunking out there since the thugs came into town. Trying to figure out a plan. Hard to organize since they don’t really have a cat in charge, and nobody knows who’s coming and who’s going.” He frowned. “Too many women.”

  Tarik’s glare must have been telling because Oscar threw up his free hand and took a big step back from Tarik.

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong,” the Wolf said, “but that’s just how they are. Female Cats. They wait too long to act sometimes. They’re damn fine hunters, but if they’re not hungry enough…” He shrugged.

  “They wait,” Tarik finished for him.

  That indeed sounded like Lola’s modus operandi—to not interfere until she was personally assaulted.

  Tarik straightened up and fidgeted the hilt of his sword behind his back.

  He could clean up the town in a matter of hours, the risk was greatest with the stragglers—of the people who got away and couldn’t hold their tongues about what they saw. Maria would quickly become a Western hellscape if he wasn’t careful.

  But there were things he could do without being seen…

  Rubbing his beard, he turned toward the door.

  Oscar jogged around and caught up to him. “What are you thinking? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go find my woman, and then…” He flung the door open and took ground-eating strides toward the nearest dark alleyway. “Then, I’m going to decide how many different ways I can make a human look like they’ve died of natural causes.” He glanced at Oscar behind him. “I think Maria needs a good outbreak of something.”

  “I hear cholera looks pretty nasty.”

  “Indeed.” Tarik began to vanish to port himself discreetly to the ranch, but Oscar grabbed his arm.

  “May as well go with you and see what’s happening out there,” the Wolf said.

  Nodding, Tarik vanished them both.

  ___

  “Where the hell are they?” Oscar dug his fingers into his messy salt-and-pepper hair and gave his scalp a scratch. He turned three hundred and sixty degrees, taking in the full view of the Double B ranch.

  The place was eerily still and quiet. The cattle in the distance seemed to be untended. The houses dotting the countryside were abandoned. It was as though whoever’d been there had quit their claim on the place without bothering to pack up.

  That didn’t make sense to Tarik. People who had very little wouldn’t leave behind what they had.

  “What’s that big crater over there by the road?” Oscar asked.

  Tarik flew them over to it and touched down at the rim. He knelt and swiped his fingers through the char on the surface. “Lightning, perhaps.” He clapped his hands clean and at the sound of bare feet padding up from behind, pulled his sword.

  The creature on approach stopped just short of the tip and put his hands up. His yellowish eyes lowered to the angel-forged steel and then up to Tarik. He swallowed hard. “Just trying to check on my woman and my boy. That’s a
ll.”

  “At ease,” Oscar muttered to Tarik. “That’s Rachel’s throwaway Cougar.”

  “To hell with you, Oscar,” the Cougar said, taking backward steps. He was dressed in a loose-fitting, unbuttoned shirt and rough denim pants, and was carrying a canvas bag over his shoulder.

  “To hell with you, too, Silvio. If you hadn’t gotten her pregnant and then ran off like a scared little prairie dog, she wouldn’t have gotten herself into even half the messes she’s been in for the past ten years. If her daddy wasn’t dead, he would have hunted you down and beat the hell out of you for what you did. I thought Cougars were supposed to stick to their mates.”

  “They do.”

  “And?”

  Silvio shrugged and adjusted his bag. “If your mate was a woman like Rachel, you might think you’d never measure up, either.”

  Oscar’s shoulders fell. “Pretty sure my mate is a woman like Rachel, but with a worse temper and a wearying desperation for English tea.”

  Tarik lifted a brow.

  Oscar waved a dismissive hand at him. “Nothing’s going to come of it. I’m going to Colorado Springs and joining up with the Wolves there.”

  “How cowardly,” Silvio said with a smirk.

  “Even if it works, it’s not going to work,” Oscar said with exasperation. “I’m a Wolf. She’s a Cougar. Mate attachments don’t always go both ways, and I’m not gonna set myself up for failure.”

  “Afraid to have babes that aren’t Wolves?” Silvio’s grin was positively goading.

  “I couldn’t give a damn about that!” Oscar exclaimed. “I’m not an alpha so it doesn’t matter what my kids are, if I even have any. Not getting any younger.”

  Tarik turned on his heel, plotting his course. He was going to leave the men to their bickering, but they quickly caught up.

  “Where are you going?” Silvio asked.

  “You go find your woman. I’ll go find mine.”

  “But what if they’re in the same place?”

  “Then perhaps we’ll arrive there at the same time.”

  Silvio scoffed. “Nah, I’m gonna stick with you, friend. I think you can move around in ways I can’t.”

  “I don’t have energy to spare.”

  “I do,” both men said.

  Tarik stopped, considering the offer.

  They hadn’t lied. The men weren’t weak shifters. They could spare a little of the spark that made their auras so large and dominant in a room. Tarik would have never dreamed of drawing energy off Lola or one of her Cougars in such a way, but for those two fools, he wouldn’t feel even a smidgen of guilt.

  He grabbed the backs of their shirts and flung them straight to the Yucatán where the whole saga had started.

  It seemed as good a place as any to start looking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “They’re gone,” Rachel murmured.

  Lola let out a wailing breath and tightened her fingers around the arms of the spindly chair. She needed to walk. The pressure was so great in her body that she thought it’d split her in two. She felt like heavy lead was trying to make its way out of her body, tearing through all her soft parts.

  When Tarik had appeared with that Cougar and Wolf in tow, Lola thought they’d been discovered. She’d been in a rush to get the last of the magic buried, and she might have been sloppy with a few of the holes.

  Her brain was such a muddle of anxiety, anticipation, and fear that she couldn’t think, much less be proactive. There’d been no warning of her labor. Just a pop, a splash of fluids, and Rachel’s wide-eyed stare as Lola’s dress went sodden.

  “They…may return,” Lola said breathlessly.

  She’d thought walking was a good idea, but she was wrong. Walking hurt. There was too much pressure between her legs. Instead, she stood with her feet shoulder-width apart, gripping Rachel’s forearms for purchase.

  “It’s all right,” Rachel cooed. “You’re not gonna hurt me. I think of the two of us right now, I’ve got more of your magic.”

  She was probably right. Lola hadn’t held anything back and had even wished she had a little more to bury, just to buy them a few extra days. She didn’t know how long it’d take for her magic to seep back to her once she’d freed it. The last time she’d attempted anything similar, she hadn’t been so conscious of how time worked for humans.

  A gripping, stabbing contraction prompted another wail, and she screamed, “What did he do to me?”

  Rachel helped her squat and waved away Elizabeth in the doorway. “It’s all right. Tell them it’s all right.”

  Elizabeth—red-cheeked and watery-eyed behind her spectacles—blinked. “Anything I can do?”

  Rachel adhered a cool wet cloth to Lola’s forehead and grimaced at Lola’s renewed squeezing of her arms. “Ow. That was a bad one, huh?” To Elizabeth, she said, “See if you can find something clean to cut the cord with, assuming there’ll be one. And get some blankets.”

  “Everyone’s taking bets,” a distressed-sounding Sophie said from outside the house. “Boy or girl. And how heavy.”

  “It’ll be a girl. Smells like a girl. I guess you wouldn’t know the difference yet, but you will.” Rachel shoved a bit of disc-shaped nub of firewood between Lola’s teeth and murmured for Lola to bite hard.

  She did, right as another surge of cramps tightened around her midsection and stole her air. She didn’t know how much more of the pressure she could take. If a pin came anywhere near her, she would pop, or at least she thought.

  No, your body is made for this. You did it once before, she told herself. The pain might have seemed more significant with this surprise child, but the process was the same.

  She could do it. She needed to hold her head up and do it with as much grace as she could. Cougars didn’t have the luxury of being weak.

  “Any guesses as to how heavy?” Sophie asked after a while.

  Rachel rolled her eyes and yanked Lola’s dress up to her hips.

  “Feels like nine pounds,” Lola muttered around the nasty stick in her mouth.

  “Nine pounds, three ounces,” Rachel called out. “How much is at stake?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  Rachel whistled low. “You could buy a lot of tea with ten dollars. Better go place your bet.”

  “Be right back!”

  Lola watched the woman streak past the door, holding up the hem of her floral-print skirt.

  Lola smiled in spite of herself and rested her heavy head on Rachel’s shoulders. She had no doubt that entangling herself so tightly in the lives of the creatures she provided patronage to would come back and haunt her one day, but in that moment, she wasn’t going to berate herself. She was tired of being outside of everything. Tired of suppressing anything that resembled an emotion or a desire or…a hope.

  And she was tired of dwelling on a pedestal she hadn’t asked to be on.

  She was going to forge her own way and accept any battles that came to her as a result of it.

  What good was being alive if she wasn’t living?

  “At…” she started but couldn’t get the words out. No breath. Too much pressure, and she had to bear down to let it out.

  Hearing her gasp, Elizabeth hurried over and knelt beside them. “Tell me,” she projected. “I’ll tell her.”

  Closing her eyes tight and trying to keep her body open so the painful spasms could do their job, she swallowed. “At this point with Yaotl…”

  Elizabeth relayed the words to Rachel out loud.

  “I drew off some of the magic that was due to him and held it in store. It is for him to grow into and I will return it to him when the time comes.”

  Elizabeth caught Rachel up.

  “That is all I have left for now. Do you understand? What I have now is his.”

  “Yes,” they both said.

  And there was nothing for Lola to pull off the babe. Nothing she could reach. Whatever the baby was, the energy he or she held was a mystery to Lola.

  Lola le
t her mind drift to a quiet place and tried not to get in the way of her body’s work. Vaguely, she made out Rachel’s murmured encouragements and Elizabeth’s more panicked queries. Everything else was on pain and progress. She couldn’t have one without the other.

  There was a deflating cramp in her midsection, and she bit the wood in half. Tears she didn’t know she possessed streamed down her cheeks, swiped away by Elizabeth’s thumbs.

  “All right. All right, give her some room,” Rachel said.

  And Lola was set down gently on her rear amid the din of a tiny cry.

  “Told ya. That’s a girl.” Rachel laughed with triumph. “There isn’t a Cougar for miles with a nose as good as mine.”

  Lola’s eyes opened as Elizabeth handed the used knife to Rachel.

  Rachel scrubbed and wrapped the baby, tilting her head toward Elizabeth in silent command. “Get her dress buttons in the back, will ya?”

  Elizabeth freed the pips and let down the bodice.

  There was no place for modesty in such events. Once upon a time, Lola had been a brazen thing who had no cares of whether or not she was being watched. Her adornments and coverings hadn’t mattered.

  Times had changed, though, and so had she.

  Rachel put the whimpering baby against Lola’s chest and wrapped a blanket around both of them. “You sit there and get your head back on. I’ll clean up.” She laughed and said to Elizabeth. “Go ask my ma if we can borrow the scale.”

  “But I want to know what the baby’s name is first,” Elizabeth said, huffing. “I can’t go over there saying we need to get a weight and a witness for it without telling them the baby’s name.”

  “Well, give the woman some time to think of something. You can’t just slap any old name onto a kid and expect that—”

  “Angela,” Lola said softly and the women both turned to her.

  It was predictable and trite. Obvious, perhaps. But looking down at the silent little lump curled against her, seeking her warmth and kneading at her flesh, it seemed right. “I did the same for Yaotl,” she said absently, smoothing down a swath of slick black hair. “You name a child after what they are. I called him Yaotl because he had a warrior’s spirit. And this one…”