Redeemed: Bitter Harvest Book Five

by Ann Gimpel

  “Yes, I do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have wasted my breath.”

  Moira closed her teeth over her lower lip and took a chance. “How can you?” she demanded. “You’re a doctor. Trained in scientific method just like me. Since when do idle words shape the future?”

  Karin pursed her lips into a tight line. “Scientific method requires we leave no stone unturned.”

  Heat rose from the zippered neck of Moira’s long underwear top. “Unless the words in question are part of a spell, I fail to see how—”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Karin cut her off. “Let’s join the others in the dining room. If the goddess grants us grace, choices we make this evening will keep us alive.”

  Moira watched the wolf Shifter stride out of the bar, moving quickly. Karin and the other female Shifters had all made Wyoming their home. Moira had been the only transient, and while the others had always been nothing but warm toward her, nonetheless she’d never truly felt like part of their tight clique.

  Until that ten-year stint in Ushuaia where they’d formed an unbreakable alliance aimed at protecting humans and evading Vampires. Realizing she’d been rooted in place, she followed Karin’s route out of the bar. The sound of voices reached her long before she dropped two decks to the dining room level. Ketha hovered just inside the door, and Moira handed her one of the bottles of wine.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Moira made her way to a table where Zoe and her husband, Recco, were already seated, digging into overflowing plates. Irish to the core, Zoe was a redheaded coyote Shifter with compassionate hazel eyes. Recco had been a Vampire in Ushuaia, but magical intervention turned him, Viktor, Juan, and Daide into Shifters. Recco’s bondmate was a wolf, just like Karin’s.

  “Come sit.” Zoe patted an empty place next to her.

  “You just want my wine,” Moira teased.

  “Aye, that too.”

  “We’ll guard it for you while you get yourself some dinner.” Recco grinned. Darkly striking, he had black hair, liquid brown eyes, and a movie-star-handsome face marked by the high cheekbones and defined chin characteristic of Native tribes. He and Daide became friends in veterinary school and practiced together in Ushuaia for twenty years before the Cataclysm changed everything.

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.” Moira plunked the wine on the table and went to fill her own plate. She still wasn’t hungry, but food and rest were her best hedges against magical depletion. With whatever was chewing up the ley lines still loose, she needed all the help she could get.

  She’d just sat down when Leif cruised past and asked, “Mind if I sit here?”

  “Happy to have you,” Recco said and waggled the wine bottle. “There’s a glass left.”

  Leif shook his head. “I don’t drink. None of my Shifters do.”

  “Why not?” Moira asked.

  “Doesn’t play well with our physiology,” Leif replied. “Not much of a window between feeling good and getting sick.”

  “Would tend to put a damper on things,” Zoe agreed in her soft brogue. “Sure and ’tis a good thing you don’t hail from Ireland.”

  Leif settled into an empty seat and tucked into his meal. “I wasn’t so far away as all that,” he said after he’d swallowed a few mouthfuls.

  “As in?” Zoe arched a reddish brow.

  “I was raised in the hill country north of Carlisle. At the time, borders were fluid, and it was sometimes part of England and sometimes part of Scotland.”

  “I thought sea Shifters were born in the sea.” Moira drained her glass and wished she’d brought an extra bottle down from the bar.

  “That would be true in modern times, but I was born during an era when there was little difference between us and you.”

  Moira bit back the obvious question, which was how old he was. Such things weren’t polite, and didn’t matter since Shifters sometimes lived for a thousand years. She had a feeling the whales lasted longer than that.

  “Here’s to the British Isles.” Zoe raised her wine glass, and Leif clinked it with his tumbler full of water.

  Viktor strode to the front of the room and clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Humans are welcome to remain, but you might wish to take your meal and retire to the other dining room.”

  Boris stood. Tall and slender, he shook black hair out of his eyes. “What are you going to be doing?”

  “We have a problem with the source of our magic,” Viktor replied. “We’ll be brainstorming solutions.”

  The zoologist from McMurdo stood too. Middle height and barrel-chested, he had dark, shaggy hair and brown eyes. “Aside from the fascination factor, I vote to remain. If your solution goes south on you, it’s probably in your best interest for us at least to have a ballpark idea of what’s going on.” He sat back down.

  “My thoughts too,” Boris said as he sat. “We’re all in this together, which means we don’t split into human and magical camps.”

  Viktor’s green-eyed gaze tracked around the room. Tawny hair fell below his shoulders, and he wore his usual black pants and black top, covered by a vest he hadn’t bothered to zip. “Open discussion, people. Get your thoughts out there.”

  Leif set down his fork and turned his chair so he faced the front of the room. “I believe Amphitrite might be behind this.”

  Viktor spun his hand in a circle, encouraging Leif to continue.

  “When Rowana first noticed the damaged ley lines, didn’t she conclude someone had been tapping into them for a long time?”

  “Something like that,” Ketha spoke up.

  “Places where the lines bisected held chewed aspects,” Karin added. “Like a rodent had taken to them and selected a bit here and another there, but never too much in any one spot.”

  Leif nodded, a solemn expression on his face as he regarded the group through blue eyes. He’d braided his gray-green hair, and it trailed over his shoulders in many small sections.

  Moira respected his knowledge and his standing as alpha in his Shifter pack, but she took a good look at him for the first time. He was a damned attractive man with his high, unlined forehead, square chin, and straight, white teeth. His body drew her too. Broad shoulders tapered to narrow hips and a rounded ass. When she started imagining what he’d look like once she’d divested him of the clothing hugging him like a second skin, she brought herself up short.

  For one thing, if anyone was looking, they’d be able to read her thoughts. Her cheeks grew warm, and she wished again for more wine. She’d barely thought about sex during their time in Ushuaia, but with Ketha, Aura, Zoe, and Karin newly mated, the very air vibrated with pheromones, making it impossible not to be impacted by them.

  “Why do you think it’s Amphitrite and not Poseidon?” Viktor asked.

  Moira glommed onto the question, hoping to mute her lust with an overlay of logic.

  “Poseidon’s not canny enough to pull off something like that,” Lewis answered in his British accent. “Powerful sod, but anything subtle is beyond him.”

  “Same conclusion I drew,” Leif agreed. “Regardless of who’s behind raiding our power, though, I came up with a way to stop them. Or at least slow them down.”

  Settles one thing, Moira thought. Their power springs from the ley lines too. Intrigued, she leaned forward.

  “Before you launch into solutions, does anyone have any more data to add to the mix?” Viktor asked.

  “Nothing new,” Ketha replied. “The lines are in worse shape than they were when we last looked about a month ago. We’re not sure how much worse, but if the current trend continues—” She mimed slicing a finger across her throat.

  Moira winced at the dramatic gesture and wished it weren’t quite so true.

  “Come on up here.” Viktor motioned to Leif. “Let’s hear what you have in mind—and how much it will cost us.”

  The corners of Leif’s well-formed mouth twitched. “What makes you so sure it will cost anything?”

  “Because even green a
s I am when it comes to Shifter magic, all power has a price. That was even true when I was a Vampire, but less so. Blood smoothed over a whole bunch of rough spots.”

  “Feel like going back?” Leif started for the spot Viktor stood.

  “Bite your tongue.”

  Ketha punched the air in his direction. “Good thing you came up with the right answer. My wolf was ready to take on your raven in armed combat.”

  The humans sported a variety of alarmed looks, but Ketha made soothing motions with both hands. “A joke.” She projected her voice. “It was a Shifter joke. The animals don’t operate like that.”

  Moira turned her attention to her cooling food. If her mouth was full, it meant she couldn’t talk, couldn’t contradict Ketha. The animals most certainly did “operate like that,” but the humans didn’t need that tidbit of intel.

  Leif reached Viktor and turned to face the room. “My idea is quite simple,” he began.

  3

  Meet Stealth with Stealth

  Leif took a swallow of the water he’d brought with him to buy himself a moment to think. Talking openly about how magic worked in the presence of humans ran against the grain, but these were desperate times. The humans had thrown in their lot with Arkady’s Shifters, knowing full well what they were. In truth, the five from Arctowski hadn’t had much choice since a dark mage blew up their home and was running amok after his genetic atrocities were destroyed. The four from McMurdo were another situation entirely; they could have remained at McMurdo but had chosen to leave.

  “If you’re hunting for a more palatable explanation, don’t bother,” Juan said from a nearby seat. His blond hair was drawn into a queue, and his green eyes radiated shrewd intelligence. A mountain cat Shifter and Aura’s husband, he and Viktor had operated a polar cruise service before the Cataclysm. Arkady was one of two ships they’d owned. The other, Gavrill, had pitched up on rocks off Argentina’s southern coast at the Cataclysm’s front end.

  Leif smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was doing. All right. Here’s my idea.” He took a measured breath. “We pick two or three spots where the ley lines are quite weak and chop away more of their infrastructure. Enough to alarm Amphitrite if she’s the one behind this. While we’re in destruction mode, we also plant magical markers.”

  “What will they do?” Viktor asked.

  “Two things,” Leif replied. “They’ll act as a homing device, so we can hone in on the miscreant, but they’ll also pack a nasty wallop. Rather akin to a powerful electrical shock. Because our sneak thief will be linked with the ley lines, however briefly, their distress will reach us, and we’ll close in for the kill.”

  “I’ve always considered myself a pacifist,” one of the women from McMurdo called out, “but I’m all for murdering whoever’s behind this.”

  “Hear, hear,” some of the other humans chimed in.

  Their support warmed Leif, but also worried him. He hoped to hell they wouldn’t do anything stupid. A rash move that would require a diversion of magic, which was spread thin already, to rescue them.

  Karin frowned, stood, and moved toward the front of the room. “There’s a downside. A big one.”

  Leif nodded. “Aye. The price Viktor alluded to. I know. We’ll have to be damned careful. There’s barely enough juice to power our spells as things stand. If we take too much, we won’t have any magic left to deal with the bastard once we catch them.”

  Her frown deepened, and she drew her brows together. “How about a staged approach?”

  “What do you mean?” Leif asked.

  “We designate a B Team. They’ll dive in and shore up the lines the minute we have the target in our gunsights.”

  “I like it,” Leif said, trying not to sound too bloodthirsty. The humans in the room might have lived through the Cataclysm, but they didn’t have animal forms where they killed and ate their prey. While they’d offered a staunch vote in support of violence, who knew where they’d actually stand when faced with the grisly reality.

  And then he reminded himself most of them had stuck around through the episode when he and the other Shifters killed the Kelpie. The Scottish water demon had transformed back into a horse in its death throes, and Kelpies held an unearthly beauty as horses. If the humans were going to revolt, that would have been the time for it to happen.

  “If we did select a B Team,” Viktor said breaking into Leif’s thoughts, “they’d have to be some of the strongest of us.”

  “Agreed.” Karin nodded once, sharply. “It will be a get in, do your stuff fast, and get out endeavor.”

  “May I ask a question?” Ted, Boris’s partner, got heavily to his feet. As fair as Boris was dark, he was quietly competent and not much rattled him.

  “I don’t see why not.” Leif crooked two fingers.

  “The way I’m envisioning these ley lines, they traverse the globe, not just the area we’re in right now. And they’re kind of like longitude and latitude lines. Is that correct?”

  “Close enough,” Leif said.

  “First off, just because the lines are damaged here, does it mean they’re damaged in other spots?”

  Karin exchanged a glance with Leif before she answered, “Probably. Since we unearthed fragmented lines in Antarctica and also here, it suggests the problem is widespread.”

  “Is it similar to a bushel of rotten fruit where once one piece rots, the ones next to it do, and so on?” Ted pressed, still working to flesh out his understanding.

  “No,” Leif replied. “The ley lines are self-repairing to a point. It’s why none of us noticed the damage until Rowana looked.” Ted wore a puzzled expression, so Leif went on. “It takes a lot for the lines to get to a tipping point where there’s no going back. To the best of my knowledge, it’s never happened. Something like that would have been noted in our Shifter histories.”

  “Exactly,” Moira chimed in. “The lines can be reduced to a state where we can’t tap into them anymore, but that doesn’t mean they’re on the edge of fading into nothingness.”

  “Only that we are,” Karin muttered sourly.

  “Yes, the lines would eventually cure themselves,” Leif muttered. “With or without us. I’m not sure how amenable they’d be to providing a magical assist to the darker side of things, but it’s at least theoretically possible.”

  “Are they sentient?” Ted asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Leif replied.

  “What does that mean?” Ted persisted.

  Leif blew out a breath. It was a reasonable question, but not one he had a ready answer for. “They hold magical energy,” he began, “and it resonates at a frequency our personal magic recognizes. It’s what allows us to tap into the lines’ wavelengths.”

  “So anyone with magic could use them as long as they knew the proper frequency and wavelength? Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I like to understand. If it’s tied to electrical theory, we could generate the frequencies artificially. Would the ley lines know the difference?”

  Leif looked at Karin, who shrugged. “Not something that’s ever come up before,” she said.

  “You asked for a reason,” Leif said. “What was it?”

  “If it’s just a matter of a certain frequency, we can help. If those electrical pulses have to originate from a magical source, we won’t be much use to you.”

  “We’ll figure it out while we’re cutting deeper into the lines,” Leif said, followed by, “If that’s what we end up doing.”

  “Discussion?” Viktor raised his voice to make certain everyone heard him.

  Moira stood and walked to where a whiteboard hung on one wall. She snapped up a colored marker and began to draw a diagram, talking as she went. “Essentially, this is a two-stage process.” She pointed at a set of intersecting lines she’d drawn with little lightning bolts around them.

  Switching colors, she marked Xs at three junction points. “Some of us will hit these exposed spots and make them weaker, while laying traps in what’s le
ft of the junction points. Once it’s done, we wait.”

  She drew another identical grid next to the first one, duplicating the Xs. When she was done, she went on. “The B Team will have to be ready to roll round the clock, which argues for at least four of us. We can take twelve-hour shifts. If the trap activates, whichever duo is awake will dash in and institute as much of a fix as we can.”

  “And the other part of Team B will show up as soon as we can roust them,” Viktor said.

  “Yeah. Four might not be enough. We’re going to have to work damned fast with minimal magic to keep the lines usable,” Leif said. “Plus, we’ll have one pissed off thief on our hands.”

  “Once we identify him, I figured we’d drag him back here,” one of the whales said. “We can ride herd on him—or her—better with more of us.”

  “What if there’s more than one?” Juan asked.

  “We’ll figure it out then,” Leif replied. “There are too many unknowns to plan for every contingency.”

  “All right, people.” Viktor clapped his hands together twice. “Who’s doing what?”

  Moira erased what she’d drawn and made three columns on the whiteboard. She labeled them Destroyers, Team B-1, and Team B-2.

  “Put me down as Destroyer and Team B-something,” Karin said.

  “Me too,” Ketha cut in.”

  Leif thought about it. More than two as Destroyers made stealth much harder to maintain. “All right,” he called. “Ketha and Karin can boobytrap the lines. I’ll volunteer for one of the Team Bs. Three more will give us three on each leg of the B Team.”

  “Me,” Moira said.

  “And me,” Viktor spoke up.

  Ketha shook her head. “Nope. Not you. The ship needs you.”

  Viktor opened his mouth to argue, but Daide made his way to Karin’s side. “I’ll help.”

  “So will I,” Zoe said, her usually thoughtful expression set in grim lines.

  Moira shifted names around and ended up with Karin, Daide, and Ketha on B-1 and herself, Leif, and Zoe on B-2. “Nice work, folks.” She tapped the board. “Here are the assignments.”