by R. K. Syrus
SIENNA
MCKNIGHT
NEW PRAETORIANS 1
RK SYRUS
Copyright © 2017 Yuan Kun Publishing Ltd. 远昆出版有限公司
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Edition: 1.0.1
This is a work of fiction, all rights reserved, including trademarks whether registered or not. New Praetorians® Shadowbolt® and intertwined rose and scorpion symbol are trademarks of Yuan Kun Publishing Ltd. The moral right of R.K. Syrus to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted under Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (UK) et al.
Editing:
Crystal “Godzilla” Watanabe
Taryn “Lois Lane” Lawson
Vanessa “Mother of Dragons” Ricci-Thode
Proofing:
Pikko’s House
Cover:
James “Tiberius” Egan of Bookfly Design
Book Interior Design:
Crystal Watanabe
Paper book
ISBN10 1-910890-06-5 (ISBN13: 978-1-910890-06-6)
E-book
eISBN10 1-910890-00-6 (eISBN13: 978-1-910890-00-4)
“We don’t see things as they are,
we see them as we are.”
— Anaïs Nin
Seduction of the Minotaur
1
ELEVEN YEARS AGO
WOODS NEAR THE BASE
NORTH CAROLINA
SIENNA
That sunny morning near her hometown she battled a ravenous beast with the help of a monster, the one that abides in her still.
Sienna McKnight looked up into the face of Uncle Bryan. Sarge Bryan. She squinted as rays of the mid-morning sun flared behind his head, blurring his bone-white features. Back then, he had his old eyes. As well, he sported fresh bruises swelling on his cheek and jaw. Over the years, her memory would graze over this small mystery tucked away amongst larger ones held by that day.
“Now git goin’.” Exasperation dragged on his deep voice.
“Like heck.” Sienna’s empty hand, the one not holding a knife, slapped her leg. Long baggy shorts released a small puff of summer dust.
“Glantzer was tryin’ to be nice. You know he’s a good guy.” Bryan’s brow furrowed while he tried to think of something nice to say about the woodlands hermit. “He’s just tryin’ to teach you how to fight, to expect the unexpected, to survive. You did bug me to ask him to give you lessons. An’ now he’s tryin’ to apologize.”
That was impossible. A girl’s twelfth birthday was sacred, and that no-account hillbilly had ruined it. All to pieces, with the worst surprise irregular combat lesson ever.
But Sarge, who did more ordering than persuading in his job, kept on at her. “Look, he lives off roadkill in a lean-to in the woods. That’s probably the nicest thing he owned.”
Sienna looked at Glantzer’s let’s-be-friends-again gift: nearly ten inches of high-carbon steel, polished to a mirror finish. That was rad. But the handle was gross, chipped and worn, and felt light, hollow. Felt like it wouldn’t throw well.
“Old coot probably stole it.”
“Watch your language, please.” Bryan leaned back, like he was working some sore muscle obstinacy out of his back.
Good luck getting obstinacy out of me. A single yellow rose ain’t gonna cut it.
Sienna never wanted to see that one-eyed loon again. Bryan went on, “And he probably didn’t. His family had money. Owned a lot of land around Raleigh. He went to college and everything. Before. That there Bowie knife might be the last thing he had from his past.”
“Oh yeah.” Sienna recalled a fact useful to her argument. “You two are related, ain’t you?”
“A little. You may find this comes in handy. It’s one of the benefits of being adopted. Your family chose you, so you can choose your family. He’s my dad’s cousin eight times removed, or some such.”
Sienna looked at the knife. She respected Bryan more than any of her teachers. Like her mother, he actually went out and fought bad people. But that damn old…
“You even had to burn my sweater.”
“Along with my gloves,” Bryan agreed. “And my pants.”
“You knew he was gonna jump me? Then and there?”
That put Bryan on the defensive. Sienna had grown up an Army brat and knew soldiers hated losing the initiative.
“Well… sort of. If he’s planning a surprise lesson, he has to tell me. But really, girl, I had no idea he’d drop out of a tree after he covered himself in some muck.”
“Axle grease and dog crap.”
Bryan’s attempt to stifle a laugh came out as a snort. “That was a new one on me. Hey, come to think of it, Glantzer doesn’t have a dog. You don’t think…”
Sienna let out some real cuss words and tossed the knife. Contrary to her skepticism, it flew pretty good and stuck in some roots at the edge of the woods.
Man! People thought they were weird enough already. Sienna didn’t care about that. But that sweater.
“In the man’s defense, the lessons of the day were: never let your guard down, and never get distracted during a fight.” Bryan had too much of a smile pulling at one side of his pale face.
“It wouldn’t be funny if it was you he was trying to choke out jiu jitsu style.”
“You got him back. Nearly knocked him out, and he’s got to have thirty, thirty-five pounds on you.”
“I weigh eighty-nine and fillin’ out fast,” she shot back.
Her anger was settling. But damn, that sweater was store-bought new. From Bonworthy’s. In spite of herself, as she walked toward the trees to get her knife, she figured the fastest way through the woods to Glantzer’s hootch. He probably had no other human friends. Maybe these knife-fighting lessons were the one thing keeping the few marbles he still had from rolling off for good. If Uncle Bryan chose to keep the crazy old sasser as a relative, even a distant one, that meant they were related. By choice.
Bryan was already walking to his Jeep. “There’s a sale on at Cross Creek Mall, I’ll pick you up at the end of Mac Ridge. Commandant needs me to check on something by the west gate,” he called after her. “On the way over, could you check by Ellie’s place? She’s on medical, restin’ up.”
Sienna watched Bryan. Most people who saw him or his kind were shocked or disgusted, or fixed him with a stare marking the skin, hair, and eyes that made him different. She imagined the gawkers were stuck between hate, pity, or fear. If she had to pick something for those people to feel, fear was it.
She’d researched it online. Where US Army Sergeant Shetani Zeru Bryan came from, they cut up anyone who looked like him. They cut them up and made magic charms from parts of their bodies. She thought the other kids in social studies should know this. But Mr. Butterfield said they should not and disallowed her presentation idea. Some truths of the world were too gruesome for North Carolina middle school students.
Maybe Uncle Bryan was afraid for her. Maybe it was because he had seen enough, been through enough, and that was why he taught her as many Special Forces fighting moves as he thought she could handle. And when she asked to learn more, asked what a real fight was like, he stopped, thought a moment, and just said: “It’s everything you don’t expect.”
Afterward, he asked—probably threatened or bribed—the most low-down, bat-pee crazy ’billy in the Carolinas to show her some highly irregular fighting secrets. These secrets included ambushing victims while they were walking to a bake sale.
She
wished there was something she could do to keep Bryan safe. And her widowed mom Annalies, too. But it was Uncle Bryan, on account of being attached to Delta Unit, who got sent on worse deployments, ones which were never over until they were over. You never knew if he was all right until he showed up home or called from Ramstein in Germany.
That sucked, because it was Annalies and Uncle Bryan out of the whole world who she was certain she loved. Annalies and Theodora had adopted her, but really, Bryan did, too. He was in all of the mostly embarrassing pictures taken twelve years ago, when they brought her home as a baby.
Stopping at the tree line, she flipped the Bowie backward. Intending to catch it by the blunt, beveled spine, she was not familiar with its weight and had to use both hands to keep it from falling. Fingerprints smeared polish. Fingertips grazed the carefully, even fastidiously, honed edge. She felt dumb and clumsy. Had she caught it wrong, it was heavy enough and sharp enough to slice four fingers right off.
In her bare arm, some kind of blood vessel beat, pulsing under the scar across her arm. It was part of a matching set on her back and the sides of her legs. There was even a chunky scar divot at her ankle. They seemed all random, until she curled herself up in a ball. Then they aligned pretty straight into five slash marks. Keepsakes of a tragedy? A warning? Hogwash that had no meaning at all except to make you crazy thinking about it?
She could not read their true tale by sight or touch, not back then. Sienna looked at Glantzer’s offering. Had a blade like this cut those scars into her body twelve years ago? No, she decided. There was no way a blade this beautiful could make marks that ugly.
***
Being jumped and befouled by that backwoods critter wasn’t all that riled and bedeviled her. For some reason, her mom and Uncle Bryan chose now to tell her that her birth mother hadn’t died in a car accident. She had been murdered. The fib didn’t chafe, not really. Now she knew as much as they did, and understood as little. That knot in her gut was one she’d never untangle. Never ever. Even grown-ups were constantly getting flummoxed.
Past the tree line, the wooded areas in the hills around the Base got gnarly fast. There was always the chance of tripping over some rusted crap left by generations of Army since World War I. More than 50,000 active-duty soldiers and their families lived on government property at the outskirts of Fayetteville.
Sienna kicked a root. She did not imagine Glantzer’s shin. She’d gotten more dirty and scuffed up by herself on the Green Beret’s obstacle course. And maybe he hadn’t mixed poop in with the grease. It all happened pretty fast. That had probably been her first- or second-best sweater, but they were going to the mall to get a replacement. As she stepped into the tree line, she figured she was mad for other reasons. She was mad at the whole military.
They were making her widowed mom ship out again. Sure, Bryan would stay over. But then he’d ship out, too. Dr. Theodora McKnight would never come back. An IED took her from them. Coffins came back to the Base airstrip at dawn. Probably so people wouldn’t see them. Would they up and quit if they saw coffins coming home every day? There had been one for Dr. McKnight. Annalies told her it was empty. She was really buried in a faraway place inside the blown-up wreck of an ambulance. The military seemed to take and take and never give.
She wished she could change it all. But she was young and just a girl. It didn’t matter what backwoods ninja skills she learned from Glantzer. Didn’t matter a hoot she could shoot as well as the ROTC boys. She’d never be as strong as they were or as fast over the obstacle course. There was no guarantee she’d even be as smart as Dr. McKnight. Smarts were in the blood, and she didn’t know whose blood she had. How could she be as brave as Annalies, then? She was just chicken-shit fraidy. Fraidy of everything.
Sienna could tell her mom was afraid sometimes. When she shipped out. She tried not to show it. When she had to leave. Nights before, night of, and nights after she deployed were worst. Bryan stayed at their house. Just like he had, they told her, when Theodora McKnight, Annalies’s wife, was alive and they both had duty assignments. Until one day Dr. McKnight, the Army’s best trauma surgeon, didn’t come back. Still, Annalies went. She went when she was called on. Sienna was pretty sure it wasn’t just for money.
Sienna, then, in those woods, found herself unable to name the power that could take Annalies away from safety, away from friends, away from her, whenever it chose. She could not name it, but she could hate it all the same. And she let out her preteen rage at something she could name. She hated the Army.
What seemed like a long time ago, back somewhere in her twelve years, she had felt differently. Once she felt pride and excitement at the sight of a long gray line of new recruits double-timing through the gates of the Base under the fluttering stars and stripes. She felt community when Uncle Bryan took her to eat at the mess hall. They’d give her double applesauce without her even asking. But between then and now were many people who had gone out. Out There. Only to come back wounded, or not at all. Sienna was tired of trying so hard to be brave, and that just made her ashamed, which was the worst feeling of all.
She scrambled up a small ridge and stopped. Dead still, it was. Dead quiet as woods ever get. Breeze, and leaves, and water unseen, all part of a silence she invited into herself. Delicately, she probed underneath for an unquiet. When she got mad it would sometimes get pipey. That thing, inside, underneath.
Nothing.
Down deep, quiet. That was good.
She scuttled sideways down the other side of the ridge. With practiced ease, Sienna rode a controlled hillside of loose rocks, moss, and logs eaten through by termites. A thorn vine blocked the trail. Sienna hacked it. The fat, green, hooky-spine crusted length of it hung unsupported for a second, not knowing it was severed, then fell. She stepped on it for good measure.
She imagined herself chopping her way through the deepest, darkest Amazonian jungle. Bloodthirsty natives were always hiding gold idols all over the place. Maybe the headhunters who worshipped animal gods were unaware of their cash value. If she found a golden idol, she’d sure as heck sell it and buy a new house. One for her and her widowed mom. As a single parent, she could retire from the service, but they needed the money.
If there was enough from the idol, and the loot that idols were normally found on top of, she’d definitely buy a place for Uncle Bryan. He lived in a house that smelled like wet socks. Heck, if it was one of those idols with jewels in the eyes, she might even get something for Glantzer. Nothing expensive, mind you. Maybe a tent without duct tape patches and a secondhand propane stove…
“Meerrrw.”
Sienna stopped hacking.
“Meerr.”
A cat. More like a kitten, in the low crook of a tree. The only house nearby was Ellie McNabb’s. She had a kid, which was probably why Uncle Bryan asked her to stop by there on her way back to the road. If this was their kitten, returning it was a good excuse to take the longer way round to Glantzer’s hootch.
Sienna tried to pick the warm fluffball off the branch. Ornery or scared, he hung on with scrabbling nails. Now, whether to stroke-pet the little fellow into line with her program or just yank the scruff of his neck. She was deciding when a sound behind her made her ears tick back. She looked.
From behind a log another pair of ears pointed at them, ones topped with reddish fur. She couldn’t see it clearly. It stayed behind some bushes. Definitely not a dog. Must be one dumb coyote to come this close to houses. Sienna picked up a rock and whizzed it in the general direction of the ear tufts.
After the
thock
she expected to see a mangy, twenty-five pounder do a vigorous coyote skedaddle back up the ridge she’d just slid down. What she got was an energetic growl of aggression, the sort only truly wild things can produce. This was followed by a confronting leap forward by a ninety-pound critter. One starved lean, ribs showing, yellow eyes flaring, and a long mouth coa
ted with fresh blood.
A red wolf.
Contact!
In science, they taught that increased precipitation from climate change had caused more vegetation growth in the Carolinas. This had spurred an increase in the populations of deer and rabbits, which had in turn resulted in a comeback for the endangered local predator. While she normally rooted for underdogs, she was instantly not a fan of this one.
Along with the half-dried blood and saliva on pulled-back lips, she noticed the wolf was missing a chunk of fur and most of his tail. The stump twitched and oozed. Angry, hungry, he took turns staring first at the appetizer in the tree, then at her knobby knees, like they were the main course. Drumsticks McKnight.
If she had a .22, this fight would already have been over. But she didn’t. She forced herself to be aware of what was around her, without ever losing contact with two unblinking eyes that were threatening to block out everything else.
Tunnel vision: bad. Be aware of your surroundings.
No rifle. What she did have was a phone and a big tree angled up all nice for climbing, assuming you had thumbs. Evade, regroup to the strong point, and call in ground support was the best option.
Hooah!
It was the smart option. The doable one. The only option that made sense. Until it was no option at all.
“Triskiiit.”
Aw, man! A beautiful plan went in the crapper as some darn kid, a boy, about six years old, came crashing through the underbrush. Wolf ears, wolf eyes, and bared teeth flicked back and forth between her and the noisy newcomer, who was totally unaware of the deadly danger ahead.
“Tris-kit!”
The puff-ball kitten in the tree; that must be his name. Kind of appropriate for a side dish. The red wolf, sensing the kid was not a threat, turned back to her and her more meaty calves. Plan A was still viable. She could hurl her knife, larger rocks, even Triskit, at the threat, grab the kid, and pull or push him up into the tree with her. This would take longer. Chances of her drumsticks being gnawed to the bone increased if she took the kid up the tree with her. But she had to. You never left a man, or a noisy kid, behind. You just didn’t.
