by KL Mabbs
Faelon kept her human shape as she fell, knowing that hands would serve her better here. The air streaming past watered her eyes, and the scents coming towards her were too many and flowed too fast to sort through. She was ten body lengths in the air, more, but she had no time, grasping branches as they slid past her faster than a river. Her hands burned with pain, the friction tearing at her skin. She let go and grabbed at another branch. Her speed carried her closer to the ground, unable to stop. A scream tore from her throat. A branch hit her thigh, she felt a bruise well up, and the bone ached. She tumbled over, flipping in the air. She tried to right herself using her hands and her feet, her balance lost in the buffeting she received from the tree's branches. Something pierced her side and the sharp crack of wood echoed in the valley. The ground slammed into her. Faelon rolled over, the branch that had impaled her, dragging at her, weighing her down. She grasped it with her still tender hands and pulled. The mewling sound of a hurt cub escaped from her lips. Biting down, her teeth grinding together, she pulled again in one motion, ripping the branch from her already healing flesh. Her scream tore through the trees surrounding her, the snow dampening the reverberation of the sound. The branch toppled from her hands, the weight of its leaves too much for her as the pain rippled through her body.
She moaned.
And thought of Michael.
He hadn’t stopped defending her, or rolled over in submission as the black wolf had attacked him. He fought with all his being. Faelon brought her knees under her, found support for her arms. She had never shifted hurt, and bleeding, before. She knew how to do it, had known since her ability had come back to her when she needed to protect Michael. It was as instinctual as breathing; like the motion of the wind on her body, or how the ground felt beneath her feet, her presence in the world was a reflection of what she felt as a pulse all around her. The pain clouded that cadence. She put that aside though.
Michael was more important. He was her mate.
Faelon found her focus, the beat of the world around her, and shifted through the pain. It hurt, as if the muscles were stretching too thin and ready to snap from her limbs. The bones breaking under the pressure, her skin ripping, the way a rabbit must feel in the last moments before she tore its hide from the body. Then she was through, and running, her paws hitting the ground, snow flying behind her. Her nose up and questing for the musky smell of fire that was Michael’s scent, the richness of his sex, all the qualities that made him her alpha, that she could smell on the wind.
She searched for signs of where she was, scent markers from her or others that told of territory held and her place in the mountains she called home. She found what she was looking for and headed for the place between the sun’s travels. Michael called it north. She knew she was a quarter day’s lope from Michael. Faelon just ran, as fast as was possible for her. She cleared deadfalls in the forest, careened over rocks, and slid down slopes that normally she would have more care for, but it didn’t matter now. Nothing did.
She crested a ridge and familiar shapes and scents reached out to her. The dead she had left here were gone, cleaned up by the men who had tried to capture her. The blood was still in the snow. Animals had left their tracks about as they fed off the moisture, looking for the meat that should have accompanied it. Her eyes found movement in the pass below.
Michael.
In moments, she was near him, at his side. She drew his scent in, wuffed at the sheer beauty of that smell as it made her quiver with emotions. Joy, love, fear for his life. It was there still. A faint pulse that roared in her ears, made her blood pound in time with his. Faelon lay next to Michael, giving him the warmth of her fur coat and body. She licked at his wounds, the shoulder first, her tongue rasping over his cold flesh and the slight warmth that flowed from his blood.
Live, my mate. Stay alive.
It was too slow; she needed a way to get more of her healing into Michael. She stood up and growled, forcing the moisture in mouth and throat to flow. She panted. And felt her saliva drip and pool from her tongue down into his wound. After a few minutes she changed her stance, her legs braced over his arm. The water from her body flowed over . . . .
Pain jabbed through her ribs. More than she had felt from the trap that had crushed her leg. It had the power of a storm in it and her flesh tingled, twitching without accord. The fur dropping from that part of her body and the flesh suddenly cold, and warm from the sticky flow of blood. She turned. As she did, she was struck across the eyes. The same storm-driven power made her eyes twist, as if they were turning backwards. Faelon lurched away, found the distance to see her attacker. Again, her will barely left her in control.
“Beast. Get away from him. Leave the sacred alone.”
His scent, riding on the wind. Deer. And sweet honey. She knew this smell. A brown hide the colour of old bark. He carried the limb of a tree in his hand. It had bumps and swirls carved into it, words maybe, but she didn’t recognize these ones. Letters that seemed to twist over the wood like smoke through the air. Strips of hide were bound to it in several places.
He smelled of the animals he wore. The plant the Naklétso hated. No other smells clung to him, not fire, or smoke. Nothing of the human, like Michael. He was as much of nature as Faelon herself. But she knew his smell, remembered it. Had smelled it on the wound her bitch had died from.
She growled, her eyes focusing through the pain. The same pain as when she had been in Michael’s trap and her leg wouldn’t heal. Though the wound she had received as she fell from the sky was long healed, the pain gone, moments after her change. Why?
Now her ribs hurt, her breath ragged and shallow. Blood still leaked from the wound and the cold spread over the patch of bare skin.
The man crouched down and looked at Michael, put his hands to his throat and wrist, and then on his chest. He looked away for a moment. It was all Faelon needed. She lunged at him, her feet left the ground and she flowed through the air, silent, no growl to warn the man of her attack. It didn’t matter though. He rose up and swung the tree limb at her, hitting her sharply across the neck and chest. She bit at it, a familiar taste, making her dizzy. Her breath left her lungs in a sharp whine as her body twisted in the air. She landed in a crumpled heap, unable to stand the change coming over her so suddenly, without her volition. Her hands scratched feebly in the snow. She spit wooden splinters from her mouth, the pain of them worse than what had pierced her hide.
Fear clutched her chest, caught in her throat. For the second time in seasons, she knew she could be hurt and not heal from it right away. The mountain man had hurt her with his tree limb. He kept her from Michael. And if she didn’t run, he would keep her from her mate forever. With her death. Faelon forced herself to move, her limbs shaking and unsteady. Her muscles twitching uncontrollably. She limped away, as fast as possible, before the man could take time from Michael to follow her.
She didn’t go far. Couldn’t, with the pain that washed through her body from her eyes, through her neck, and across her chest. Waves of agony that kept her focus distant. The blood from her wound trickled over her flesh, slower than before, but the ache that pervaded her body was bone deep. She crossed the open space and found the safety of the forest. A heavy thicket of dry pine and brush under a tree to keep her warm. Away from the snow, away from the cold.
Looking back, she saw that the man was putting her mate onto a hide stretched over more tree limbs. A prey animal, like Chaka, nearby. Faelon could smell Michael. He was still alive. She sighed in relief, though it had nothing to do with the pain that racked her body. She lowered her head to her hands. Cold drove through her, fiercer than before. She shivered, the heat from her body leaking out, the muscles where she had been struck colder than the rest of her. They continued to twitch and ripple with the throbbing of her wounds.
Faelon closed her eyes, wanting the pain to go away, willing it as much as possible. She found a place within her where sleep was possible, though it was restless and fitful. Before losi
ng the world around her, she heard the mountain man speak. “We’re not done, animal. Abomination. I should have killed you both instead of your bitch. I thought if you stayed wolves and only killed prey that was proper . . . but now you’ve attacked a man. You will die, whether this one lives or not.”
He meant her sire. How did he know him?
It didn’t matter. Michael is what mattered.
She would follow when she could. The mountain man couldn’t change that.
Faelon curled up on herself, trying to find the heat she knew her body could always provide before. Today, though, it eluded her, the same way it had done, briefly, when she had been in Michael’s trap. She slept. It was the only way she could heal now, but it was a cold and fitful rest. Her muscles twitched as she dreamed of her father and the mountain man, locked in combat, teeth and club and pink skin so intermingled she couldn’t tell where one started and the other left off.
Chapter 21 Hillman
Blackwater was a mercenary company. It had survived because of people. Eric Prince the original owner for one. That it had moved ownership several times in the last fifty years was part of that survivorship. Now it was owed by another Prince, the grandson of the original Eric Prince. Gerund had followed that money trail. Just like the old adage in those detective movies his father had been so fond of, “Follow the money.” Well, Gerund was particularly capable in that area. Intuitive in fact. He had found things that Mr. Prince probably didn’t want anyone else to know. That knowledge got him face time with the head of the company. It was the kind of knowledge he had that would always be a threat. Would always be taken that way from a man in power.
He put it across as discretely as possible. From a position of trust and assurance. Say, as Operations Manager. Mr. Prince agreed. Perhaps a little too readily.
But it was done.
Gerund Hillman studied his image in the holo-field of his P.A.C. unit. Without a video feed, it looked like a translucent 3D mirror. He was a small man. Too thin, for all that he ate, and worked out. His chin was weak. His eyes though, he called them steel grey, he liked those, they held strength. That translated as power, enough to keep Blackwater at the top of the mercenary food chain. The wars that had always been a part of Africa for the last few centuries, the Oil Wars in the Middle East, and even the succession war in Belgium. But he was fighting a new war, now. One over technology.
“Jacob, show me the footage again.” It had taken time, but he had substantiated the rumours out of the Saudi Arabia. The footage of Ariyan’s son doing the impossible. He knew the cover up was Ariyan’s mother pulling political strings. She was the NATO Liaison to the UN, for god’s sake. A General in the army, as well. She got things done. The way he did. He could respect that.
Gerund walked through the video feed as was his want, looking for details he had missed the first time through. His damn P.A.C. machine had started to realize what he wanted in these sessions and was pausing, rewinding, and zooming in, just by where he looked. The video had been distorted by an outside source, but Jacob had been able to reconstruct most of it. And while it was legible, there were points that were pixilated, to use an archaic term. Lieutenant Ariyan was at that moment, in the video, moving too fast to be human. Stress indicators, supplied by Jacob, numbers peeled off at the side of the hologram, indicated that the man’s leg bones should have shattered under the impact of his running. The Lieutenant released a rifle from his back and came to a halt.
“Sir, you have a call from a Sergeant Jenkins,” Jacob said.
“What happened to Lieutenant Myers?”
The P.A.C. unit stilled his speech and the video he was playing for Hillman. He knew a rhetorical question when he heard it, and his owner’s ire was not worth the interruption.
“Yeah, put it through.”
“Sir . . .”
“What happened to Myers?”
“He’s dead, sir. Most of the recon group is, that . . . Captain Scott and his . . . she—sir, do you know what that thing is?”
“You do have video and satellite feed, right?” Gerund’s voice said the Sergeant better have pictures to go with his story.
“Yes, sir. Helmet cams and satellite feed, though that’s intermittent. We sent them, sir.”
“Where are Captain Scott and his—friend?” Gerund made a few hand gestures for Jacob to follow, and the visuals in front of him changed.
“We . . .”
“Go on,” said Gerund.
“Captain Scott was injured, badly. It was a wolf, not the same one we . . . We had his wolf in the helicopter, drugged. It shouldn’t have been able to wake up, sir.”
“But it did.” Gerund knew what that indicated. “It changed, didn’t it, Sergeant.” Gerund starting searching for the helmet feed he knew would be there. When he found it, his theory was validated. Everything pointed to Michael Scott and his recon unit.
“I . . . yes, sir. She told us—she threatened to kill us if we followed her.”
“And Michael?”
“We didn’t see what happened, but the satellite shows he was dragged off by a man. We don’t have a specific location. Just an area to search in.”
“Sergeant, set up camp in that old military station near you.”
“The Cold War Base?”
“That’s the one. Then go back and find me the woman. Michael will follow.”
“Sir?”
“Do you not understand an order, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. Uh . . . sir, we’ll need more . . .”
“I’ll make sure it happens, Jenkins. You just make sure to have the woman when I get there.”
“Uh . . . yes, sir.”
Chapter 22 Michael
Michael Scott stared at the package from his father. “Bang, you’re dead.” The saying coming to his lips automatically, along with Gwen’s face. Not the vision of her beauty, even after her surgery, but the way she had looked after he had invited her into his house and the trap had been triggered. The fleshy ruin of her eye. The look of horror on her face. The loss of trust.
Some choices were harder than others.
He pulled a knife and sliced open the tape. It was kind of the army to give the illusion that the package had never been opened, but the cardboard showed the damage from the previous tape, it having scarred the paper as it was pulled off. The army didn’t like his father right now.
A sad smile brushed over his face and stayed there as he ripped the seam on the envelope from inside the box. That had probably been steamed open, though the evidence was better concealed.
Dear Son:
By now you’ve heard of my situation. They also know by now that you are not my son in these regards and your loyalty is unquestioned.
“They questioned me, Dad. I just didn’t know anything. It’s not like I’ve been out playing terrorist.”
I’m sure they’ve scanned this delivery for everything from tech to micro-dots, old as that tech is, for any information that might lead to me. I’m sure you’ve received this just as I intended. The watches are for you and your recon group. Simple, durable, and tougher than god, to coin a phrase. They have a GPS unit and a few other reliable low-tech tools. Too many computers break down at the wrong time. A reminder of how much I love you and miss you. I think of time spent in the basement, you at my knee, learning computer science while I worked on the only project that meant anything to your mother and I.
Captain Scott looked up from the letter he held. The barracks were empty right now. His recon team, Ariyan, his best friend and second in command, Huer, and Boyen, were on leave, but the base was never empty. He was never alone, not really. This was the army after all, and his father had been accused of stealing government equipment. Considering the contract he had signed, any project he worked on belonged to the army. Some choices are harder than others. He read the last line of the letter, again.
“I love you too, Dad,” and picked up the four black bands from inside the box. He turned them over, examining the differences
in them. None he could see—but feel, that was another matter. He put three of them back in the box and slipped the unit onto his wrist.
Node One: DNA positive. Activated. Primary Interface accepted. Systems initializing: Communications online: Organics engine online: Updating. Status: nominal.
Primary Interface: Endocrine systems, muscle contraction, pupil dilation. Medical Mode. Interface shock. Arm numb. Normal response.
Michael smelled deer. Old. Dry. As if a skin had baked in the sun for a time, without decaying. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the sky above him. But there was only wood. The grain running in dark spirals.
The last thing he remembered was blue sky. That and the damn Whiskey Jack that had tried eating the flesh from his bones. The feeble movement he had made was enough to drive it away. But that was after he had been wounded, torn apart by that damn wolf. And after, he remembered Faelon standing over top of him. The warmth of her saliva dripping into his wounds, and then he had passed out. Again.
He was hot.
Then he noticed his thirst. A need as great as the hunger that assailed him. He tried to roll over to reach his pack. Pain left him gasping for breath, weak as birth.
“Don’t try to move. I’ll bring you some water.”
Who? It wasn’t Faelon. Where was she? He saw brown skin, weathered, covered in animal hide. His eyes watered up from the brightness in the cabin. He closed them.
His voice creaked, a low growl underlying the sound. “W . . . ? Who . . . ?”
“Here.”
He felt a hand slide under his head and shoulders. The deer smell came back stronger than before. And then something sweet, with a sense of vibrancy about it. The man put a glass to his lips.
