Forged in Ember

by Trish McCallan

  But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Because Neniiseti’ was right.

  Jillian’s hollow face and blank eyes filled his mind. He thought of the brittleness of her bones. The thinness that grew every day. The silent, endless grief. The craving for sleep.

  Neniiseti’ had spoken it, but they both knew it. Jillian couldn’t stay.

  Shadow Mountain was killing her.

  She hadn’t deteriorated until he’d locked her inside this steel-and-concrete prison. In trying to protect her, he was killing her.

  The rage vanished, leaving barrenness in its wake. A spirit-sucking, desolate void spread throughout him.

  He had to let her go.

  “I will lose her.” He could hear the raw ache in his voice.

  “Maybe,” Jude agreed quietly. “Maybe not. You cannot see the future until the future is on you. What is known is that she cannot stay here.” He paused as though to let that sink in before asking again, “Where will you send her?”

  “I don’t know.” The emptiness spread to his heart. He could hear the hollowness in its beat.

  “The reservation, then. We have many there to protect her.” His voice was reassuring. “We will keep her safe.”

  “Safe?” He shook his head, exhaustion crashing through him. “From others? Perhaps. But from herself? Who will make sure she eats? Walks? Showers? Who will show her how to live again?”

  How to love?

  “Do you forget where you come from?” Jude’s tone turned disapproving again. “We have family there. Clan. They will care for her until she returns to you.” He paused, his gaze raking Wolf’s face. “You must have known she couldn’t stay here. Shadow Mountain does not welcome civilians.”

  True enough.

  While the Athabaskan people had lived and hunted in the lands surrounding Denali for thousands of years, the caverns and tunnels within the Great One had existed since the very oldest of the old times. In their prehistory, when ancient migrations were honored by tribal myths and oral histories, the catacombs inside Denali had been held sacred and close to the people’s hearts. So close that the network of caves had never been discovered by the white man.

  Perhaps they would not have been rediscovered by the Northern Arapaho either, if Samuel Oleska, an elder from the Ahtna tribe, had not visited the Wind River reservation in the 1930s and recognized the white symbols of the Northern Arapaho. Similar symbols, he’d said, were painted across the walls and ceiling of the sacred chambers within the Great One.

  Oleska’s words had resonated with Amos Two-Worlds, Neniiseti’s grandfather and one of the Arapaho’s most venerated spirit walkers. Amos had spirit-walked the catacomb of caves that Oleska had described. After multiple vision quests in the sacred chambers of the Great One and mediation with the local Athabascan tribes, Shadow Mountain had been conceived.

  Its purpose remained true even today: a base for the war against the NRO, the ruthless, deadly enemy shown to Amos by Be:he:teiht—the creator. Shadow Mountain was meant to house warriors—and only warriors.

  In the old times, thousands of women and children had been sacrificed to war. The hinono’eiteen had learned to keep their battles and people separate.

  “Your heinoo will welcome your woman. You know this.” Jude’s words rang with certainty.

  His nesi had cause for his certainty. Wolf blew out a beleaguered breath. His mother had been after him for years to take a wife and settle down. To return to Wind River and take a position on the tribal council, as his grandfather had done before him. Of course, as the elder of the Eaglesbreath family, the duty fell to Jude to step into that responsibility. Not that he was any more interested in settling down than Wolf was.

  According to his mother, her son and brother were identical berries on a chokeberry bush. The assessment might even be true. Jude had been his only male influence growing up. It was doubtful Wolf would have survived his turbulent adolescence without his uncle’s influence. Jude had taught him everything a father instilled in his son. He’d forged the warrior Wolf was today. It stood to reason he’d share similar ideologies and goals with the man who’d sculpted him.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Jude asked.

  He meant to the reservation. His uncle had read Wolf’s silence on the subject as affirmation he’d take Jillian there. He wasn’t wrong. While he’d rather stash Jillian closer to base, he didn’t know the local Athabascan tribes well, certainly not well enough to trust Jillian to their safekeeping. Besides, with strangers asking questions about local Indians and military craft, hiding Jillian locally was too dangerous.

  The reservation was his only viable option.

  With that decided, his mind went to work. With their current mission’s urgent time frame, Shadow Mountain could not afford to lose both him and Jude.

  “You will be needed here,” Wolf said, running scenarios through his head.

  Jude simply nodded. While his uncle was semiretired, and Wolf had stepped into his shoes as team leader, Jude still ran the units when necessary.

  “I will return once Jillian is settled.”

  “I would not expect your heinoo to release you before the eleventh moon,” Jude said dryly.

  Wolf grunted in agreement. His uncle knew his sister—Wolf’s mother—well.

  Jude slapped him on the shoulder as they passed through the command center’s door. “Maybe you can invite that half brother of yours down to Wind River. Introduce him to his people. His keeper’s gift would be most welcome.”

  A frown on his face, Wolf kept walking. “Judging by Kait’s account and the money they inherited, John Winchester, their father, was a keeper too.”

  “He was your father as well,” Jude reminded him quietly, easily keeping pace. “Keepers run heavy in your father’s bloodline.”

  Wolf grunted. Although he carried the knowing within him, it did not extend to wealth building. Those with the keeper’s gifts were prized for their ability to amass fortunes. Without their gifts and the income they generated, Shadow Mountain would not exist. Nor would many of the programs that the Arapaho enjoyed.

  But the creator had not bestowed such gifts on the keepers with the intent that they reap the harvest themselves. The gifts had been given to fund the ongoing war against the NRO. Possibly, Aiden understood this at an instinctive level, as Kait said his talent brought him no pleasure.

  “No worries.” Jude slapped Wolf’s shoulder when they reached the bottom of the ramp to headquarters. “I will babysit your teams while you are gone. Give my regards to your mother.”

  Wolf absently watched him walk away. First order of business was to arrange a ride to Wyoming.

  And then he’d tell Jillian.

  It took no time to arrange the flight. With departure set for an hour, he grabbed a motor vehicle and took the direct route to Jillian’s quarters. When she didn’t answer the battery of knocks on her door, he punched the access code into the control panel and let himself inside.

  “Jillian?”

  No answer.

  The interior was pitch-black. He slapped the light switch and waited for his eyes to adjust.

  “Jillian,” he called again.

  Still no answer.

  Hesitant to invade her quarters without an acknowledgment of his presence, he waited near the entry. But when she failed to respond to his third hail, he shed manners in favor of action.

  He found her in bed . . . again. Fragile shoulders curled toward the wall. She looked so damn thin, anorexic even. His chest aching, he sat down on the edge of the bed and gently shook her shoulder. “Jillian.”

  Still she didn’t respond.

  He knew she was alive; at least her body was. He could see the rise and fall of her breasts under the thin sheet.

  “Jillian.” He sharpened his voice and shook her again, harder. “Wake up.”

  She stirred beneath his hand. Lethargically turned over. Her eyes were vague—dark lenses wreathed in emptiness. He could feel her dreams pulling at her, feel her long
ing to return to them. To reunite with her lost children.

  His heart bleeding for her, he pulled the sheet down to her hips and slid an arm around her waist. He lifted her into a sitting position. Worry pierced him. She was far too light against his arm. Her body was limp and fragile. Her spirit was all but gone.

  He should ask Jude to perform the recall prayer again, to try to recall the broken pieces of her spirit. But Jude had already done so twice to no avail. There were far more pieces of her soul drifting than present these days.

  When the spirit broke into a thousand pieces and went wandering, it was all but impossible to call it back.

  “What?” Her voice was slurred. Uninterested.

  “We must leave this place.” He forced the words past his rebellious tongue and helped her off the bed. She wore sweats and a loose T-shirt, both of which stank of too many days of wear against unwashed skin.

  “Why?” There was no interest in her voice, her face, or the empty gaze that drifted past his own.

  “Because we must.” The throb in his chest grew stronger.

  “Okay.”

  Still no interest. Or resistance. But then she could dream anywhere.

  “Take a shower.” After making certain she could stand on her own, he collected underwear, socks, a shirt, and pants from the wardrobe and pressed them into her arms. “Change clothes.”

  “Okay.” She walked to the bathroom like she was sleepwalking, trailing the dark emptiness of grief behind her like the blood of a dying deer.

  He found a gym bag in the closet and packed what few possessions she had, including the knife on the bedside table. The one he’d given her by the river all those weeks ago, when her spirit had been sharp and bent on revenge.

  Long minutes later she came out of the bathroom, clothed but with dripping, tangled hair. He relaxed slightly. He’d almost expected her to return to him naked, her thin, weak body on display. The reluctance to see her like that sank deep. When they crossed that bridge, she would come to him healthy. Glowing with vitality and life.

  Her spirit restored again.

  He’d hold on to that image in the dark days ahead.

  “Where are we going?” she asked in a voice that didn’t care. She sat on the bed and methodically pulled on the shoes Wolf handed her.

  “To Wyoming, the Wind River reservation.”

  “Oh.” Shoes in place, she stood before him, a vacant sign bright in her eyes.

  “I won’t be staying with you,” he told her, struggling against the urge to shake her, wake her up. Bring her back to him. “I must return to Shadow Mountain once you’ve settled in.”

  He waited, urging her to react, to show him that he mattered to her, that she didn’t want to be left alone and undefended in a strange place.

  But her only response was a slow, blank blink and an uninterested “Okay.” And then she turned, wandered away, her steps the uncoordinated shuffle of a dreamer.

  Leaving his heart to shatter all over the cold floor.

  Chapter Eleven

  REDUCE SPEED. WE’RE at one hundred feet.” Zane’s words came quietly through Mac’s radio.

  The Zodiac Hurricane H-733 rolled over a moderate swell, its speed slowing as Cosky pulled back on the throttle. Mac leaned over the side of the skiff, trying to see past Zane’s and Rawls’s broad shoulders and helmet-wrapped heads, but a face full of cold spray as the wind kicked up convinced him to settle back and wait for beaching.

  Taking second position in the Hurricane held advantages and disadvantages. While the guys in front took the brunt of the wind and spray, they also had the best view. A full 180-degree vision of what lurked ahead. Mac, on the other hand, had stayed drier and warmer in the middle, but he could see only to the right and left. Hell, he couldn’t even see their wake. Cosky, the big bastard, blocked that direction.

  Being all but blind lent an uneasy chill to the ride. This was where trust came in. Trust in the men blocking your view, in the training that turned a boatful of individuals into a weaponized, synchronized team.

  It had been a long time since he taken second position in a Hurricane, a long time since he’d had to lock on to that kind of trust. It was both satisfying and frustrating being back in the boat after all these years.

  “Fifty feet.” Zane’s voice drifted through the radio again, and Cosky eased back on the throttle even more.

  In the green glow his NVDs cast, the dark shadow of the second Zodiac rode the swells beside them. Jude’s boat. Jude’s team. There was a third boat somewhere in the darkness behind.

  He shook the unease off. Fuck, it wasn’t like the men accompanying them were total strangers. He’d already fought beside them once. He knew they were professionals, well trained and as disciplined as his own men. But . . . they weren’t his men. Team trust was forged through endless hours of training together, followed by hundreds of missions.

  Still, it almost felt like old times out here on the waves, bobbing under a moonless sky, the wet rubber of the Zodiac beneath his fingers, the oily stench of diesel fuel drifting past his nose, the sting of spray hitting his face and hands. Hell, even the wreathed moon playing peekaboo above was reminiscent of his stint on the teams.

  Of course, there were some major differences. Like the fact that they were inserting within the good ol’ United States of America, alongside teams from another nation. If he remembered his long-ago civics lessons, Indian nations were sovereign nations within the boundaries of the United States. Which meant they were launching an attack within the United States, on a US citizen, accompanied by a foreign power.

  If they got caught . . . fuck, the consequences would make the fallout after the attempted hijacking five months ago look like a light sprinkle next to a category 5 hurricane.

  They’d never see the world beyond the view of bars again, and that was assuming they weren’t summarily executed for treason.

  Wouldn’t hurt to pray you don’t get caught.

  He grimaced, adjusting his weight on the bench seat stretched across the Hurricane as the boat swayed over another swell. If he believed in a higher power—which he didn’t—he’d use all his prayers on the small child engulfed by that huge hospital bed. Those prayers would perform a two-for-one miracle, saving both Benji and the woman worrying herself to death over her little boy.

  “Fifteen feet,” Zane said.

  Cosky cut the engine. The skiff’s velocity along with the waves would push the Zodiac the rest of the way forward.

  They’d been fortunate so far with this mission. The trip down from Shadow Mountain had proved uneventful. The boats had been waiting for them exactly where they were supposed to be when the Eagles had landed. Mac had no clue who Wolf’s stateside support was, but they’d been on the ball. They’d found the perfect little cove—secluded and flat—to land the chopper and ground the boats. Everything had gone according to plan.

  The best time to launch a water insertion was during wind and waves and a shrouded moon. From a distance—say a window or computer monitor—the boat simply looked like a slightly larger swell. Waves and wind created noise too, which drowned out the sound of the boat’s engine. Conditions had been perfect tonight.

  If he’d been a religious man, he might have decided the good Lord was on their side—everything had lined up that tidy. The satellite images placed Link at the Lake Washington beach house. They had pictures of him arriving two days before and nothing of him leaving. Up-to-date imaging indicated he was still there, all tucked away, waiting for them. What the satellite had picked up had been a stroke of almost unbelievable luck. It wasn’t uncommon for the intel on mission prep to take weeks to come together. Hell, sometimes months.

  Based on the worry lines stacking under Eve Zapa’s eyes, Benji didn’t have weeks.

  He eyed the gray, shrouded sky, and tension ballooned. The pressure just kept building and building until it felt like his skin was about to split. He’d like to believe the anxiety was due to the mission, but he knew it wasn’t. He’
d ridden in enough beach boats to recognize the feelings attached—which was a mixture of adrenaline and caution.

  This was different. This was more like helplessness and worry. And it was linked to Amy. His fixation on her had escalated tenfold these past few days. A natural progression thanks to all the time he’d been spending with her lately.

  That off-the-wall request of hers sure as hell hadn’t helped. Fuck, he should be running insertion scenarios through his head. Instead he was running her words through his mind. Had she really asked him to seduce her? Had she really asked for a sexual relationship?

  To show just how fucked up he was these days, he could even understand her point of view. Understand why she’d made the offer, or request, or whatever the hell it had been. Fuck, he wanted to take her up on it too. Spend a couple of hot, heavy hours—

  The boat suddenly stopped—hard—throwing him off his bench. They’d landed.

  “Jesus, Mac,” Cosky snapped from behind him, pure disbelief in his voice. “Have you forgotten how the fuck to hold on?”

  Fuck.

  Mac righted himself and rose to his feet, then settled in a crouch. He could hardly excuse his inattention by explaining where his mind had been. Sex wasn’t an excuse.

  He slid out of the Hurricane and into a foot of icy water. By the time he’d exited the lake, the second and third boats were already disgorging their teams.

  As they joined Zane and Cosky on the beach, Cosky looked him over. “Maybe you should think about babysitting the boats and let us take care of the big boy stuff.”

  Yeah. “Fuck you.” He shot his lieutenant the double finger salute to reinforce his rebuke.

  Zane glanced between him and Cosky before offering a shrug. “Remember,” he said, his voice quiet but clear through the headset. “No shooting unless absolutely necessary. Subdue.”

  Nobody bothered to nod. They were all crystal clear on that salient fact. The inhabitants of the house they were crashing were American citizens. Ironic, really . . . they’d spent a good share of their lifetimes protecting the citizens of the great ol’ USA from foreign nations inserting into their homeland. A lifetime protecting them from terrorists and keeping them safe, comfortable, and alive to carry out their hate rallies and counter-hate rallies.