Raising Kane

by Long, Heather

  “Thank you, Mr. Kane.”

  The Indian—Buck was already putting the two horses back up and Evelyn frowned as she passed him. What horse had the other—Cody—taken to the ranch? Exhaustion slowed her steps, but she pressed on. If she were to let the weariness catch her up entirely, better to do it in a room behind a locked door. The additional time in San Antonio would also give her the opportunity to purchase a gun, though somehow she doubted her new friend would be as eager to show her how to use one.

  The rain continued to fall, but she trudged through it with the promise of a warm room and a change of clothes ahead. It would be enough for now.

  And if they aren’t there tomorrow or the next day? I can make other arrangements. She glanced back at the stable, replaying the odd encounter in her mind. Still, I think they will be…

  Kid, The Mountain

  Some Days Later…

  * * *

  “I hate you.” Kid declared without any real heat.

  A flicker of a smile curved Wyatt’s mouth. “Again.” The demand that he repeat his earlier action, one that needed to apparently become a habit—that was if it didn’t kill Kid first. He didn’t wait for Kid’s agreement, a series of emotions buzzed him like so many insects.

  “Annoyance.”

  “Irritation.”

  “Patience.”

  “Sadness…wait…” No…not sadness. Kid frowned. The last one seemed different, the pang of sadness present within the emotion, but not precise. “Loneliness.”

  “And the others?”

  “The first two came from you. The patience is Quanto. And the last…” He shrugged. It could have been either man. Wyatt wasn’t so bad, though he wasn’t as certain if his opinions were tempered by the amount of time they’d spent together. Kid had been accused of living dangerously before. “I’m done. I need a break.”

  They were in the barn again. Wyatt seemed to prefer the old structure to the main house and often took their lessons out here. Despite its name, it only played home to a couple of horses—both the ones he and Wyatt had ridden up the mountain. The giant Goliath spent most of his time nodding while Kid’s mare paced impatiently in her oversized stall. She wanted out to run, but the constant snowfall made for some treacherous landscape and the Morning Stars didn’t seem to believe in paddocks.

  Hostility.

  “I need a break.” He replied, ignoring the heated wave and headed for the doors. He’d taken to long walks every day. They served to both let him explore the mountain and as an escape from the lessons. Quanto and Wyatt didn’t allow him to shirk, hammering him with lessons at every opportunity—when he ate, when he slept. The walks also served as time in his mind and feelings, time they insisted he needed.

  Aggravation.

  “Not listening.” He continued to the door, but a force dragged him backwards before he could grab the handle. Digging his heels in didn’t work, it just kicked up the dust as he slid all the way back to the chair he’d occupied and dumped him on his ass next to it.

  Amusement.

  “I’m glad you think it’s funny.” Kid scrubbed a hand over his face. “I really am tired, Wyatt.” He hadn’t slept well the last few nights. Nightmares stalked his dreams.

  “You wanted to learn.” Wyatt reminded him and slid the sword he’d been hammering into water to cool the metal. “One of the first steps to truly controlling what you can do is to make it instinctive, so that you can do it even when you are exhausted or frustrated—or tired of having to do it.”

  “The identification of emotion has never really been a problem.” He knew what the feelings were, sometimes better than the people who experienced them. The acute sensations weren’t colored by their thoughts or perceptions, or blunted by experience. They simply were.

  “No, but recognizing what you are feeling and distinguishing it from the feelings of others is not a skill you have.” Setting aside his hammer, he pulled the sword out of the water. “This blade must be heated, hammered, the metal folded, again and again and again until it is strong enough to withstand the blow of another. If you do not do it correctly, you will find flaws in the metal. Those flaws weaken it, make it susceptible to damage.”

  He slammed the blade, edge down onto the anvil and the metal shattered, shearing off the end.

  “Rush the process, skip the steps, and this is the result.” He held up the broken blade. “You are this—untempered, unweathered, and unable to withstand the pressure. You broke.”

  His attack on Jason came up the night before at dinner and he’d had to describe the emotions cascading through him during the fight, why he’d lashed out and again, why Jason. Why was all of his anger targeting only one of his brothers? Why not the two who had been there throughout his childhood and his journey into manhood? Why not those who’d seen what he could do, but still remained oblivious?

  Kid really didn’t have an answer for it.

  “Even you have to rest and give the metal time to shape.” He could argue the blacksmithing angle. He’d made enough of the blades. “I am not saying I am done learning.”

  Wyatt set the broken blade to the side and began to clean up his tools. “Every gift has a breaking point, a point where it dominates the possessor. I once believed that those with passive gifts must not suffer from their gifts as we with the more active ones do. But that was a mistake.”

  Blinking slowly, Kid focused on the story. Wyatt didn’t share often.

  “Passive gifts are more insidious, perhaps even more cruel, because they have no switch to control. At least not consciously.” The broken blade went into a bin with other scrap metals. “Though they can be trained by finding that point of pressure where the passive gift exerts and then continuing to apply it.”

  “I’m not sure I see the point of the lesson.” Turning the issue over and examining it from different angles didn’t seem to help.

  “You believe yours to not be passive, correct?” He didn’t wait for the answer. “You have allowed it to become passive. Never turned off. Never under conscious rein. You have lived with the awareness of the feelings of every person around you, always.”

  Still uncertain of the other man’s point, Kid frowned. “I know.” He knew intimately and at times violently. He knew when passion turned a man or he harbored secret lusts. He knew what they hated, what they wanted, what they feared. No one’s secrets held shadows for Kid. If only they did.

  Loneliness.

  “Loneliness. We already did that one.”

  Wyatt shook his head slowly. “It’s not loneliness.”

  “Yes, it is.” Dropping his head into his hands, Kid rubbed circles against his forehead. “I know what it feels like.”

  “Do you? And what reference do you have for it?”

  “I’ve felt it before.” Lots of people held loneliness. His father’s carried the peculiar tang of regret coupled with disappointment and at times fringed with the strangest of hopes. It was confusing, but loneliness? He recognized it.

  “In yourself or in others?”

  That question stopped Kid’s retort. He wanted to say of course he knew what it was to be lonely. He’d been lonely most of his life, isolated from his brothers by the onus of being born on the day of his mother’s death. Isolated even further by surviving the fever with an ability that left him drowning in a sea of other’s feelings.

  “Isolation. Not loneliness.” Separation from others, the need to be separate—they were different. “You’re looking for nuances to emotions, how personal feelings shape and color them.”

  Wyatt nodded slowly. “Exactly. You base your definitions on perception. Your foundation is weak, built on the observation and understanding of a child. What we see and perceive when we are young is influenced by how much of it we have reference for. Isolated may seem lonely, but what is it if you choose to be isolated?”

  “Safe.” The association made sense to him. Away from everyone, Kid didn’t experience their emotions. He was safe. Isolation helped, but only in sm
all measures. Too often he’d still drown in whatever he’d experienced because the stronger the emotion the harder— “Oh. Seclusion, segregation, isolation, remote—similar, but not exact.”

  “We believe you need to understand how you feel. You also need to examine how the emotions you touch color your perceptions of those emotions. You told Quanto that you knew what love was. You felt it in your brothers.”

  Kid nodded once.

  “Do they each feel the same kind of love?”

  “Yes and no, subtle variations. Sam is intense, marked by loyalty and this unshakeable faith in what is right. It’s hard to put into words.” And uncomfortable, but he kept that part to himself. “Micah is…devotion. Almost pure in the sense that even the commitment can be felt—”

  The other man held up his hand. “But you recognize them all as love?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t have an answer for that question. Kid sat in the barn long after Wyatt left him to his thoughts, but no matter how deeply he dug, the response remained elusive. How do I know?

  Chapter 10

  Quanto, The Mountain

  Early April

  * * *

  “Where is he?”

  “About halfway down, I would imagine.” Wyatt leaned against the porch rail. The snow still blanketed the land around them, but it had been slowly clearing on the lower elevations, revealing different trails.

  Once past the deep snow, Kid would merely have to keep descending and eventually he’d come out into the valley and, if he followed the running water, he’d find the river. Plenty of trading towns along the river and in Old Mexico, depending on what Kid left to find.

  “I thought you weren’t going to let him run.” Despite a very rocky start, the young empath proved a capable student, but he still fought the most basic principle—shielding others out. They tested it periodically by having Ike or Rudy in close proximity. The youngest of Quanto’s adopted sons, neither developed the filtering techniques necessary to keep someone as strong as Kid from reading them.

  Every time they were close, the bombardment aggravated Kid to the point that he became curt, anxious, and at least one time violent. The violence escalated over the last several days as they pushed Kid to make another choice. Reticent to begin with, his innate stubbornness handicapped him in the most difficult of ways.

  “Sometimes you have to let them run. I won’t let him get off the mountain. Goliath and I can catch him up pretty quick. I think he needs to taste freedom. By the end of the month, we won’t have the snow to box him with so we’re really going to need his cooperation if we expect him to learn.”

  Surprised by the observation, Quanto studied his oldest friend—his brother. “You are being affected by him.”

  Wyatt pivoted to face him, brows gathered into a deep frown. “He’s not influencing me.”

  “Not with his gift, no.” Undecided on whether he should be amused by the insight or concerned, Quanto tapped the arm of the chair. Despite the snow it was actually warmer today than it had been in months and he needed only a light blanket to keep the chill off his legs. The sunshine dappled the land in patches of sparkling white against deeper shadows.

  “Then why bring it up?” Suspicion echoed in the question.

  Since Scarlett and her brothers left the mountain, Wyatt leaned more toward brooding. While he’d never admitted it, he missed the presence of his younger siblings, settling their squabbles, keeping a watchful eye over them. The distance challenged his need to protect and impacted the choice he’d made to go to the ranch after he learned about the siren. Wyatt wouldn’t appreciate the speculation. Worse, he was far more likely to deny it.

  Training Kid gave him a purpose, one that distracted him from his darker thoughts. Far too soon to be certain if the friendship would provide him with increased purpose and the fragility of the younger Kane disputed whether he’d ever achieve what Quanto hoped.

  Forgoing that line of thinking, instead he offered. “Trouble is brewing on the ranch.”

  Unsurprisingly, Wyatt’s focus hardened. “What kind of trouble?”

  “After nearly three months, Kid’s absence is truly being experienced. Buck came to me last night and we spoke at length because they needed advice.”

  “The children are rebelling.” It wasn’t a question. The ease at which the fresh new generation of Fevered had adapted following the deaths of their parents and their own transformations had troubled Wyatt. One or two might deal with it well—Cody, for example, never acted out on the loss of his parents. His wolf gave him tremendous comfort, but that created other issues that had to be addressed. Scarlett had been an infant, she didn’t remember her birth family at all.

  Noah, on the other hand, struggled terrifically not only because of his altered circumstances, but out of nascent guilt. The healer never forgave himself for surviving when his mother and everyone on the plantation where he worked had not. When Quanto found the young boy, he’d been dirty and barefoot and traveling from corpse to corpse, trying to wake them up.

  Some things had to be endured and overcome, but never forgotten. In the first days after the outbreak in Dorado, the reports Quanto received disturbed him because of the unnatural calm. Kid contributed far more than he’d realized and, now, those left behind on the ranch were dealing with it, too.

  “Yes,” Quanto nodded. “They’ve had to separate some of the younger boys. Fights are becoming more common and they have an earthshaker.”

  “Not. Good.” The lines around Wyatt’s mouth tightened.

  “No. His damage has been limited so far, but at least one full herd of cattle died…”

  “From an earthshaker?” Skepticism filled the question.

  “Shocks, the animals were likely frightened to death.” Buck had thought so, particularly after witnessing one event where the animals stampeded. They ran until a few keeled over, hearts stopping. They’d moved that young man as far from the animals as possible and decided on Scarlett to work with him, but she was already being pulled in multiple directions. The young amplifier had taken to disappearing regularly and his daughter couldn’t quite handle the tremendous overload to her own gift.

  But he would save Wyatt from that knowledge. The amplifier’s passive ability was harder to control, but Quanto suggested exercises for her. Abilities like that were most often tied to secondary abilities and if one could be controlled, then the other might prove more tractable. Buck’s surprise had amused Quanto. Secondary abilities were rare, but not unheard of and he’d advised them how to test her.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “A great many things,” Quanto teased, but truth existed in his jest. “The children aren’t the only ones struggling.”

  “Delilah?” Fierce focus and a sharp tone showed Wyatt still had his doubts about not dealing with the siren.

  “Surprisingly, no. She is more intimately aware of the intrinsic danger in her gift than some. Micah Kane’s wife, Jo, continues to learn about her gift, but it seems to be attracting animals to her so it may be that what they thought was only an ability to speak to them is growing…”

  “…or was something else altogether.” Wyatt nodded. Like Quanto, he’d seen his share of gifts manifesting in one way and disguising their true natures. “Mariska?”

  “Yes. And before you do anything, Cody does not wish our assistance and sent a very specific message that he would take care of his wife. Not you.” Buck delivered that caution with a certain amount of wryness. Apparently Mariska’s emotional state destabilized faster than any of them realized. She’d spent a great deal of time as a wolf after her initial change and her wolf was far less human than Cody’s. This presented a danger, except she obeyed Cody. His son was fiercely protective of the woman he’d taken to mate.

  “Kid kept her calmer. Without Kid to mitigate the animal desires, she’s struggling with the more primal nature.”

  “Yes.” Quanto shook his head. “That boy has no i
dea of the impact he had on them, on all of them. His presence alone relieved anxiety, drained away the negative emotions, and allowed them to see past their own struggles.”

  “That boy is a menace.” He shook his head and drained the coffee from his cup. Ike brought fresh fruits and vegetables over, along with coffee beans he’d harvested. The man’s ability to nurture plants allowed them access to food stores even in the midst of winter. His gardens were a place of wonder and a secret they kept guarded even from the young Kane for now. “But that makes more sense.”

  “What does?”

  “Why he chose now to break. He’s been on that ranch his whole life and from everything we know, it’s heavily populated. Yet, it’s only been in the last couple of years that he’s been pushed to the brink.”

  “The increased Fevered presence.” Quanto had suspected that as well, but they had no real proof. Truthfully, Kid had likely been shattering and putting himself back together for years, and he used a variety of methods to ‘manage’ his condition, most noticeably his sexual dalliances. They disguised the deeper issues—issues that it had taken months in isolation to reveal and yet, despite his cooperation, his growth remained elusive.

  “I think that may explain it. When he was in those mountains with Cody, he did a hell of a thing from a very great distance.” Wyatt frowned. “It damn near killed him. But any time I bring it up, he changes the subject.”

  “He doesn’t know how he did it.” That didn’t surprise him. So much of what Kid did was instinctive. Getting past that block proved difficult even with his help.

  “He cared.” Wyatt said. “He cares more about their feelings and their safety than his own.”

  Quanto frowned. “That could be a problem…”

  Draining his cup, Wyatt set it down and stepped off the porch. “Or a tool. Depends on how we use it.”

  “Be kind to him.”

  Halfway to the barn Wyatt paused and glanced back. “He doesn’t need kindness. I think we’d kill him if we were kind. He’s too spoiled and too protected. Call Ike and Rudy back.”