by Angela White
Marc understood something had to be stopping them from leaving. “Your people know the government survived. They fear being hunted if they leave these lands.”
Natoli’s voice was thick with anger. “This time we will die out. They have no right to keep us here!”
“No. They never did.” Marc’s eyes flashed.
This time, the warrior wasn’t intimidated. “We’ve seen others like you. They will fight at your side?’
Marc nodded, thinking of how many magic users were currently in Safe Haven. “With the help of tribesmen or alone, we will stand for oppression no longer.”
The rest of the night passed in a thick, thoughtful silence that said plans were being formed and shored up. This group was making their choice.
7
Marc’s obnoxious alarm jerked Jax and Paul into upright positions with their guns in hand.
The Indians around them snickered. They’d observed Marc placing it between the heads of his two men and waited for the entertainment. They liked the Ghost, these twenty scouts. Most of them wanted to go along for his ride, but that choice would be made by their chief and they would honor it.
“Where’s Brady?” Paul asked, yawning.
Jax slowly put away his gun. He was the more leery of the two. “His horse is here. He’s around.”
“Your leader is bathing away the other world, the corrupt one. He will return when he is finished.”
Both Eagles were instantly uneasy, not sure if that meant Marc had gone willingly or been taken.
Paul snorted. “Marc taken and we didn’t hear it? Yeah. That’ll happen.”
Jax agreed, chuckling at their worry. If Marc were in trouble, they would have been woken by those brutal Colts.
“Do we need to stay away from him until he’s done?”
“You are free to watch,” Thaddeus invited.
As soon as they’d taken care of themselves and given their horses a drink, the two Eagles went toward the small crowd of braves on the nearby hill. The men were pointing, betting, and neither Paul nor Jax liked the images that were forming. Bathing away a corrupt world couldn’t possibly be as simple as getting clean.
They joined the warriors without showing any signs of fear. It helped that there was only a worried anger. There wasn’t anything to scent and trigger a problem, and the braves let them through.
“What the hell…” Paul trailed off as Marc, naked except for his boxers, dove into the creek below. They had a view from fifty feet above the crystal clear water that was beautiful, inviting, and full of wildlife.
“What’s he doing?!” Jax swore. “Things come out…”
Marc broke the surface with an enormous grin that instantly made both men feel left out.
Paul narrowed in on the shapes under the water. It wasn’t the snake-like things he’d expected, but hundreds of fish.
Paul turned to the closest man. “Are they still safe to eat?”
Thaddeus pointed downstream, where a group of braves was wading up with nets. As they struggled against the current, the water rose to their waists, then chests, but Marc’s antics upstream kept pushing the fish into their waiting arms.
“He is a good hunter. You will learn much from him,” the warrior stated. “If you survive.”
Paul and Jax exchanged a glance, but didn’t comment further. Instead, they returned to the campsite and helped the other men prepare an area for their coming fish fry.
8
Their breakfast of fish and onion burritos inside smoked leaves was interrupted by the arrival of three new warriors. These men rode into the center of the camp with an attitude that said they were important.
“Ah, braves have come from the Chickasaw. We shall find out if the Ghost goes from here with them,” Thaddeus stated.
Marc waited patiently, as if he held no concern for the glares of the new men.
The Chickasaw warriors talked to Thaddeus and Natoli in low tones. Their words didn’t carry, but the incredulous expressions of the new arrivals were clear.
“What happens now?” Jax asked, cleaning up his mess and swallowing a belch.
“They’ll kill us or take us where we want to go,” Marc answered. “Same as with the Choctaws. You’ve both done great. Don’t stop now. Be what you are.”
That clue came a second before the three new warriors moved their way, drawing knives.
Paul was the first one up, hand on his holster. “I was told not to kill anything on your lands. If you attack my leader, I will break that rule.”
Jax rose to his feet, voice deceptively casual. “Paul’s the best gun on our team after Marc. He won’t miss. Neither will I.”
Marc flashed a sarcastic look of sympathy. “My men are very loyal.”
Instead of the fight Paul and Jax were bracing for, Natoli’s confidently arrogant tones rang across camp.
“I believe that is my knife in your hand, Atolius.”
Atolius scowled, but obligingly tossed the knife to Natoli. “They don’t look that hard!”
Marc waited for the new men to come closer, and offered the smokes he’d rolled. All of the braves accepted, using sticks from the fire for lights.
Marc blew smoke toward the sky, feeling more alive than he had in a while. “Thank you for the bath. I needed it.”
He hadn’t been sure what to expect when he’d woken to find most of their escorts on the bank, but he’d recognized the opportunity when he’d spotted all the fish around the bathing Indians.
“We will go with you, to the lands of the desert.”
Marc waited for Atolius to continue.
“When we arrive, I will view the enemy. If the threat will reach our people, then we will stand with the Ghost.”
Marc extended his arm. “My thanks.”
The Indian clasped his around the forearm and gave a firm shake. “Our honor.”
Not about to miss another opportunity, when the demon spoke, so did Marc.
“I feel your unrest. The drive to take your people home is one that will never give you peace. It must be accomplished to be banished.”
Atolius jerked his arm away, but didn’t leave the fire, and Marc delivered a final message from the demon. “You have a traitor here. I can feel him, listening and worrying. Beware.”
Marc let the red bleed through slightly, and then pulled it in. Every moment like this was practice for when he would use his gifts in battle for the first time. “Do not ignore my words. It will lead to death.”
Marc shoved up from his seat and everyone flinched.
Getting a little taste of what Angela had gone through, Marc was overcome with the need to be alone. “I’m leaving in five minutes.”
He walked toward the tree line to get himself under control and heard the immediate response of a camp being broken down.
So, this is what Adrian feel likes every day. No wonder he thinks he has it all covered.
Marc swallowed the pride, glad that he could, and got to work.
9
They left exactly five minutes after Marc spoke it, Paul and Jax in their usual place and the Chickasaw Indians behind them, studying. Marc was glad of that, too. The more details they picked up, the more likely they were to fight with him.
“Would you hear of a legend?”
“I enjoy stories,” Marc invited.
“Perhaps you will tell us one sometime,” Natoli tried to confirm.
“Perhaps.”
Natoli cleared his throat, turning his head to the front at the lightly given sting. It said his story had to be good enough.
“When we were first sent here, the land was welcoming. It gave us great harvests and fed our bellies. Then the warming came. Year after year, it got hotter, damper, until the ground refused to be so generous. When the catastrophe came, we were starving.”
Marc blew out smoke, waiting, observing.
“After it all fell, we took what we needed from the stores and began to recover our stolen culture. We formed new trade routes, new law
s and rights, and we joined with our brothers on all sides.”
This was what Marc had been hoping for and he gave the man his full attention.
Natoli, sensing Marc’s interest, provided more details. “We have hatred in our hearts for the soldiers. We would fight, but they are all gone. The Indian has inherited the earth, not those who drove us out of our homes.”
“And now here we come, ruining the happy ending,” Marc drawled.
He could certainly understand their hatred and their desire to be in charge. They’d never raped the earth the way a government-run society did.
“Yes, the news has been devastating. Some of the tribes are holding councils as we ride through their lands. Some are refusing to consider the fight now that it has come to us. My own tribe has chosen to battle, but we are among the few who practiced the old ways in secret. We have more students than fighters, though. It is true of all tribes now.”
“My people are the same,” Marc said. “Some will fight, but most will hide until it’s over. There was never any doubt for me of my path.”
Natoli viewed Marc’s matching, ivory-handled Colts with the respect they deserved. “No, with one such as you, how could your future be anything but what you’ve become?”
“Indeed,” Marc agreed. He’d been battered through life until he was now the ram that others would be hurt upon. So be it.
“You have Indian blood.”
“I’m a mix of many things. I used to think the Gypsy side was dormant.”
“Until you discovered the spirit lurking inside,” Natoli guessed.
Marc stared. “How do you know so much about my kind?”
Natoli gave a light sneer laced with scorn. “You are not the first ghost to travel these lands since the war.” Natoli’s voice lowered. “Or even before that day.”
Marc felt it then, the kinship, and let himself ask, “You have tribesmen like me?”
Natoli didn’t openly confirm or deny it. Instead, he began to speak in the deep tones of a natural storyteller.
“The odd ones came among our people when the white man arrived. They were drawn to our kindness, to our respect of nature. When the soldiers began driving us out like cattle, the odd ones aided us, healed our warriors and provided shelters that the army could not locate. We were protected.”
Marc noticed all the braves listening and guessed by the expressions that it was a story that some of them hadn’t heard.
“Then the white man began taking the odd ones, stealing them from our vibrant camps. The Indians began to die in massive numbers and the odd ones vanished from our knowledge.”
Natoli stiffened his shoulders. “We were sent here to be brainwashed and it has worked. Half of the tribes are still clinging to the soldier’s rules, though their control of us has ended. Some kept the old ways in secret and those are the warriors who came to view the odd one who calls himself our Ghost.”
“And when they understand that I am who I claimed to be?”
Natoli grunted in set resolve. “Then we will go to war against the soldiers once again, except this time, we will not let our power be stolen!”
Marc instantly felt protected and knew his Eagles did as well. “Are many coming?”
“All the tribes have stories of the odd ones arriving to rescue them from their prisons. Believe in these legends or not, they are curious,” Thaddeus confided from Marc’s other side.
“So I shouldn’t fear to show them who I am?”
Thaddeus’s face tightened. “The more you demonstrate your differences, the more all of the warriors will view you that way. The months of freedom have allowed a return to manhood for those brave enough to chase it. They will follow, if you are worthy.”
Marc thought of Adrian, who was followed despite his now glaring weaknesses. I don’t want that fall. I won’t stand for the disgrace.
Natoli left Marc to his deep thoughts, satisfied the Ghost understood his message. Natoli wanted the tribes to unite against the government so that he could take his people out of these dead lands, but without enough consensuses, the other tribes would hunt them down for bringing the wrath of the soldiers. The government didn’t care which tribe they hit, only that an Indian had broken the rules and must be punished. Natoli wouldn’t bring that down on his people any more than he would run and have his tribe be hunted, but in his heart, he knew they had to fight. If the soldiers made it to Oklahoma, his people would be wiped out this time. Eight months of learning how to be fighters wasn’t nearly enough against the government and Natoli knew it.
He glanced at Marc’s stern profile thoughtfully. If this hard-ass is what he claims, his power alone might give us an advantage.
“They may have odd ones, of their own,” Marc warned. He refused to downplay the danger.
Natoli had considered that. “But they will be weak after living inside the earth all this time, yes?”
“That’s my hope,” Marc stated evenly. “But I won’t count on it.”
“Mine, as well,” Natoli confided. “When the other odd ones join us, it won’t matter.”
“There are a lot of horses moving through the woods around us,” Marc commented lightly. He wasn’t sensing a threat, only curiosity.
“Yes. Most of the scouts will observe from a distance,” Thaddeus confirmed. “There were more than fifty tribes crammed into Oklahoma and many were bitter enemies. The government hoped we would fight each other and finish what they started.”
“And instead?”
Thaddeus’s head went up. “We did to them, what they’d done to us. We learned their ways and copied them. We took advantage of the treaties and enacted new laws to protect our children. For that, we had to sacrifice our heritage.”
Marc thought of the areas they’d come through. The land here wasn’t as if untouched. It was as if marked by nature to flourish. There wasn’t any mold, no mutations that he’d spotted. The air was sweet and inviting, the wildlife, well it was everywhere. Marc had never seen so many animals in Oklahoma. This had mostly been an arid place, full of dust and tornadoes, meant to be harsh on anyone who lived here, but that had changed.
“Why do you want to leave? By staying true to your beliefs, it looks like nature is leaving you alone in these areas. I’m also assuming that the medicine you need isn’t for anyone here. Should I try to guess?”
Thaddeus didn’t look over. “Some of our people have broken the rules and left. The Navajo have missed their rocky homelands, as have the Cheyenne missed the Great Plains. It was a radio transmission from your Safe Haven that drove me to gather the older warriors from my tribe and begin training our youth. Others did the same and we have been able to carry supplies to our rogue groups.”
Marc stared in understanding. “Instead of fighting after you came here, you banded together.”
Natoli offered more details, sensing that if he did, Marc might do the same. “Quiet deals made a tense peace possible at first. When it became clear that Uncle Sam did not intend to honor his promises to any of the tribes, we began talking, trading to ensure our survival. Except for the Iroquois Nation, all tribes in Oklahoma coexist.”
“That’s amazing,” Marc praised. “And your outer clans, will they come?”
“We will take word to them, with the medicine.”
Marc was satisfied. He’d expected to have to convince each tribe that they encountered, but thanks to Indian adaptability, he might have this part of the plan already covered. These men wanted to be free. He could lead them there and Marc now intended to make sure they knew it before he left them. They might be ‘civilized’ Indians trying to remember who they’d been, but with their natural instincts and longings, Marc had no doubt about helping them become as lethal as their ancestors had been. It was who he was in this new life, who he’d always wanted to be before, and there was no longer any wrestling with the demon inside. He asked and the voice answered. Denial had come and gone. Now, only hard anger had that place.
A cold chill swept over Marc an
d he knew instantly what that feeling meant.
“Hit the deck!”
Marc’s command was instantly followed by Paul and Jax, but their escorts doubted his concern. Until the arrows began flying at them and they realized their farthest lookouts had been overcome.
Natoli and Thaddeus began shooting orders and Marc led his rookies into the shelter of a nearby thicket, eager to discover if they would be as protected as implied.
Screams and shouts came, though the thicket was too dense for sight, and the three men waited uneasily. They were used to being the ones fighting and it felt wrong to let the Indians do their work.
“It is over,” Atolius called.
Marc cautiously led them out of hiding, a gun in each hand. Behind him, the Eagles appeared much the same.
Atolius grinned. “It was only a raiding party who didn’t know what they were walking into.”
“Iroquois?” Marc asked, holstering as he swept the riders. He was hoping none of them died, already feeling responsible for them.
“Yes. Why do you scan the braves? There are no traitors among this group.”
Marc nudged his horse toward a bleeding man. “To heal them, of course.”
Shock went through the group. He meant to demonstrate his power! They were about to witness the Ghost in action.
Marc wasn’t sure if he could. He’d been on the receiving end and watched it, but hadn’t tried it yet. Determination filled his heart as the demon spoke in his mind, telling him how.
Cameron didn’t flinch from Marc’s light touch or the pain of the arrow in his leg. It wasn’t deep, though blood was dripping steadily to the dirt.
Marc pushed hard, shoving the shaft through.
Cameron screamed, clutching at his leg and Marc used an iron grip to keep him in place. “Look at me!”
Cameron forced himself to stare into Marc’s eyes and the pain faded into a dull throb.
“Good. Be still.”
Marc placed a hand over the gushing wound.
The tiny colored orbs shot out as if from a cannon, striking Cameron and knocking him from the horse.
“Too hard,” Marc muttered, mentally adjusting and he switched positions. “Hold still now.”
