Finding Valor

by Charlotte Abel

  His bike was built for speed not endurance. It wouldn’t be able to negotiate what passed for roads east of Whistler’s Gulch much less get him inside mage territory. It was time to say good-bye to “The Beast.”

  The thought of leaving his bike behind, even with protection spells, made his palms sweat. Maybe he could pay some empty to let him park it in his garage.

  Hunter cut the engine in front of Sheriff Black’s double wide trailer. Normally, he stayed as far away from Sheriff Black’s place as possible, but he was hoping the man wouldn’t recognize him as the scoundrel he’d caught climbing, bare-ass-naked, out of his daughter’s bedroom window a year ago.

  Sheriff Black opened the door in nothing but his boots, boxers and holster. His right hand rested on the grip of a pistol.

  Hunter swallowed then raised the visor on his helmet. He tried to mimic Josh’s Colorado accent, but it sounded more British than midwestern. “Hello. My name’s Hunter Brown and I’m looking for a place to keep my bike for a few weeks while I visit my mother’s kinfolk. Could you recommend a good honest man with a well built garage?”

  It wouldn’t matter how honest a fella was if thieves could break in.

  Sheriff Black opened the door and stepped out onto his sagging porch. He stretched his neck to look around Hunter. “That’s an awful nice piece of machinery. You willing to pay rent?”

  “Yes, sir. I am.”

  Sheriff Black spit a stream of tobacco off to the side then reached down and scratched his crotch. “I reckon I can look after your bike for a hundred dollars a week.”

  “That’s a bit steep.” Hunter was willing to pay the fee, even if it was highway robbery, but if he didn’t argue the sheriff might get suspicious.

  “I’ll be guarding it as well as storing it. A hundred a week is a bargain.”

  Hunter bit his lip and pretended to be thinking it over.

  “I’m a generous man. How about seventy-five?” The sheriff folded his arms across his chest. “No questions asked.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide. Will you take seventy?”

  The sheriff frowned then grabbed Hunter’s hand in a tight grip and shook it. “Deal.”

  Hunter rolled The Beast into the garage, hooked his helmet over the handle bars and handed Sheriff Black three hundred dollars. “Here’s a month’s rent in advance. I don’t plan to stay that long, but if something should delay me, I’ll pay you one hundred dollars a week to not sell my bike.”

  “What if you don’t never come back?”

  Hunter took a deep breath and focused on the sheriff’s energy field. The man was hiding something. He was obviously greedy, but was he willing to commit murder in order to steal The Beast? Hunter pulled his phone out and dialed Josh’s number. It went to voice mail, but that didn’t matter. “Hey, Josh. This is Hunter. I’m leaving my bike with Sheriff Black in Whistler’s Gulch. If I’m not home in two months, come get it. And pay the man four hundred dollars rent.”

  “How’d you know my name?”

  Oh, shit. “My stepfather is well connected. He ran a background check on you before I left.”

  Sheriff’s face paled. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Connected how?”

  “He owns a casino in Las Vegas.” Most of the casinos in Vegas were legitimate businesses, but Hunter doubted anyone in Boone County knew that. Let the sheriff think the mob would come looking for him if anything happened to Hunter.

  “I hope you ain’t planning on going any further east. Folks that wander off into the mountains don’t always come back. We’ve had more missing person reports filed this past month than we have in five years.”

  “I’ll be careful.” Hunter adjusted his backpack on his shoulders and started walking. He had a long way to go and the journey would only get more dangerous after dark. He’d told Josh that his heart would lead him to Channie, but the truth of the matter was he needed to be within fifty miles of anything he was hunting. And they needed to be outside so no artificial substance blocked their energy field from the living earth. His power-name didn’t work the same way a heart-bond did. There were a lot more limitations.

  He couldn’t feel Channie yet, but he felt something else. Someone else. Someone that felt like family. Shep.

  Hunter’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He jumped then nearly dropped it in his hurry to answer it. He didn’t recognize the number on the screen. “Hello?”

  “Hunter? Is that you?”

  “Shep?”

  “Where are you?”

  Hunter wanted to tell him so badly it hurt, but his entire family believed he was a traitor. He needed to be careful. “Have you talked to Ms. Wisdom recently?”

  “She told me all about you being a double spy. Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you trust me? I could have helped.”

  That’s all he needed to hear. “Where are you? You feel close.”

  “I can feel you, too. I’m at the Lucky Dog Saloon in Whistler’s Gulch.”

  “Hot damn! I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Shepherd’s power-name worked similar to Hunter’s. But he had the need to gather people together after he found them. This must be driving him nuts. “How’s the rest of the family?”

  Hunter thought he’d lost the connection until Shep sighed. It took another five seconds for him to speak. His voice sounded strained. “We’ll talk about that when you get here.”

  ~***~

  The wooden sign hanging over the door of the Lucky Dog Saloon creaked as it swung in the breeze. Hunter pushed through the double doors and squinted. His eyes were still adjusting to the darkness inside when Shep tackled him.

  They pounded each others’ backs then pulled away, sniffing and clearing their throats. Shep wrapped his fingers around the back of Hunter’s neck and pressed their foreheads together. His voice cracked. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  “Me too.” Hunter inhaled, drinking in Shep’s familiar scent. He smelled like woodsmoke, evergreens…and home.

  Shep rested his hand on the back of Hunter’s neck as he led him to the knotty-pine bar. He gestured for him to take a seat.

  Hunter slid onto a barstool and eyed the empty shot glass in front of Shep. None of the Feenie boys were opposed to alcohol but Shep had a bad experience with moonshine a few years ago and swore he’d never drink again. “Are you a drinking man now?”

  “When I can get the good stuff.” He nodded at the bartender. “Billy’s got a generous heart. It don’t take much to persuade him to give a fella a free round every once in awhile.”

  Hunter shifted his weight off his right hip and pulled out his wallet. “What are you drinking? I’ll buy the next round.”

  Shep’s eyes widened when Hunter extracted a twenty dollar bill. “What’d you do? Rob a bank?”

  Hunter laughed. “I got a job.”

  “Channie said you was a stripper, but I had no idea it paid that good.”

  Hunter froze then grabbed Shep’s arm. “You talked to Channie? When? Where is she?”

  “Shh…” Shep glanced around nervously. “Keep your voice down.”

  Hunter narrowed his eyes, but he also lowered his voice. “There’s no trackers in here. As far as I can tell, we’re the only mages in town.”

  Shep leaned sideways and whispered into Hunter’s ear. “Half the empties in town are on the Veyjivik payroll. Don’t trust nobody.”

  Hunter scooped the twenty and his driver’s license off the bar and stood up. “How about we grab a fifth of Jack Daniel’s at the liquor store and finish this conversation somewhere else?”

  Shep nodded and followed Hunter outside.

  Hunter sat on a fallen log and opened the bottle of whiskey. He took a sip and clenched his jaw to keep from coughing then passed it to Shep. He waited for the burn to mellow then cleared his throat. “So, where’s Channie?”

  Shep took a slightly bigger sip then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “At the Kerns’ place.”

  “What?” That couldn’t be r
ight. “Channie’s momma’s crazy but she ain’t stupid.”

  “She’s got it somewhat protected with misdirection and keep-away spells, but someone destroyed most of the old trees and bushes in the yard. She’s replanted saplings but everything’s too small to hold much magic. I had no problem breaking past her defenses.”

  “Neither will a tracker.” Hunter capped the bottle of Jack. “Let’s go.”

  “She ain’t as vulnerable as you think.” Shep stood up and dropped his pants, revealing an angry red scar on his thigh.

  “What happened?”

  “Twelve-gauge shotgun.”

  “Channie shot you?” Hunter’s mouth fell open.

  “I hear I ain’t the only one.”

  “You heard about that?”

  Shep nodded.

  “It was an accident.” Hunter unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his shoulder, revealing his own scar. “She thought I was a tracker.”

  “That’s the excuse she gave me, too.”

  “It’s not an excuse. She was kidnapped and raped by a tracker.”

  Shep’s eyes blazed as his nostrils flared. “She didn’t mention that part.”

  “It ain’t something she likes to talk about.”

  “How’d she get away from him?”

  “She killed him.”

  Shep’s lips curled up at the corners. “Good for her.”

  “But that was before she lost her magic. Come on. We need to at least expand the perimeter of the misdirection spells around her cabin.”

  Shep snagged the elbow of Hunter’s jacket and nodded at the log they’d been sitting on. “First, I need to tell you some bad news. You better sit down.”

  Hunter had suspected for months that most, if not all, of his family had perished. But suspecting something horrible and learning it was actually true were two very different things. He reopened the bottle of Jack and chugged three mouthfuls of the fiery liquid. It burned, but not as bad as the raw gaping hole in his chest. The space where his heart and lungs should have been was nothing but a chasm of pain. He couldn’t breathe. A wave of calm swept over him. He looked at Shep through blurry eyes and nodded his thanks for the be-calm spell. His voice still cracked when he spoke. “Are you sure?”

  Shep nodded. “I buried them myself.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “We’d been in hiding for over a month. We thought our misdirection spells would keep us safe, and they did…at first. The low-life scumbag trappers couldn’t find us. We found their tracks all around our perimeter but none of them ever breached it. We put too much faith in magic and not enough in bullets.”

  Shep tugged the bottle out of Hunter’s numb fingers and took a long pull. “Me and Steward was out trying to scrounge up something to eat when we heard the shots.”

  Shep handed the bottle to Hunter and stared off into space. “Pa wanted me to bag a deer, so he’d given me the shotgun. They never had a chance.”

  Hunter took another swig of whiskey, but it didn’t help.

  “We ran back to camp, but Keeper stopped us about a half-mile outside the perimeter.”

  “He was running away?” Hunter knew that Peacekeeper hated violence because of his power-name, but he couldn’t believe his oldest brother would abandon the family while they were under attack.

  “No.” Shep shook his head. “He had the kids with him. He shoved them at Stew and told him to run then yanked the shotgun out of my hands. He told me to lead the trackers away from Stew and the kids, then took off back to camp. I followed him and saw him drop one of the trackers with the shotgun. I cursed one, but his shield held. Keeper backhanded me and told me not to waste my energy.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “To knock some sense into me, I guess. The longer I ran, the better chance Stew and the kids had to escape.” He reached for the half-empty bottle and nearly dropped it when Hunter handed it off. Shep took two long pulls. Tears filled his eyes. “When I got back to camp, it was over. They were all dead. Gunned down like animals.”

  Hunter wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth. He closed his eyes and tried to force the image of his parents’ and brothers’ dead bodies out of his mind but nothing worked. He tried to block out the sound of Shepherd’s voice as he continued to describe the gruesome scene. He didn’t want to hear it, but Shep had faced that horrible ordeal alone. He’d dug half a dozen graves and buried six members of their family by himself with no one to comfort him or share that awful burden. The least Hunter could do was listen.

  “I dragged the bodies of eight trackers into a gully and left ‘em there for the buzzards. You can be proud of Keeper. Three of those sick bastards died from gunshot wounds.”

  Shep swirled what remained of the amber liquid in the bottom of the bottle as he spoke. “I planted redbud trees at the head of each grave. You know how much Ma loved her redbud trees.”

  “Yeah.” Tears flowed down Hunter’s cheeks and dripped off his jaw. He watched them splash onto the front of his shirt then closed his eyes and pictured Ma arranging a spray of redbud branches in a cobalt blue, cut glass vase; one of the few things she’d brought with her when she’d fled the Cumberland Mountains.

  Hunter wiped the tears off his face. “The redbud trees will be in bloom soon.”

  ~***~

  Shep guzzled the last of the Jack Daniels then tipped the bottle upside down and peered into it, as if he couldn’t believe it was really gone. “Let’s go back inside and buy another fifth. I ain’t near drunk enough.”

  Hunter had a buzz, but he wasn’t drunk. “I need to go check on Channie.”

  Shep sighed. “There ain’t nothing you can do for her. She swore a death pledge to obey her momma. I already offered to kidnap her, but if she don’t believe it’s real, she’ll die.”

  “I know about the death pledge. But I still need to go see her. I can at least tell her that we ain’t forgot about her. That we’ll figure out a way to get her out of this mess.”

  Shep rolled his eyes then groaned. “Damn. I think I’m drunker than I thought. The forest is spinning.”

  He was obviously in no shape to hike all the way to the Kerns’ cabin. “Where’re you holed up?”

  “In that old shack up by the quarry. Somebody fixed it up right nice. There was all sorts of protection spells around the place. All I have to do is keep ‘em charged.”

  “That’s where Channie and Josh stayed.” Hunter smiled, but it didn’t last. “How come you ain’t staying with Wisdom’s bunch?”

  Shep snorted and rolled his eyes again. “Whoa. I gotta quit doing that. Every time I roll my eyes it makes the world spin faster.”

  Hunter snapped his fingers in front of Shep’s face. “Hey. Answer the question. Why haven’t you joined Wisdom’s rebels?”

  “I cain’t.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “On account of the Veyjivik blood flowing through my veins.” Shep rolled up his sleeve and exposed a nasty scar. “One of the master mages that joined Wisdom’s army caught me off guard and used my blood to cast a keep-away spell around the only entrance.”

  Blood was extremely powerful. Most spells only required a drop. “How much blood did he take?”

  “Let’s just say that neither you nor I are going to be able to get anywhere near Freedom Ridge during our lifetimes.”

  “I can’t believe Ms. Wisdom let him get away with that.”

  “She’s having a hard enough time keeping that ragtag bunch of misfits from killing each other. Most of them still believe you’re a spy for the other side and I’m guilty by association. Ms. Wisdom risked her life, and her position of authority, to come tell me there wasn’t nothing she could do about it. I’m an outcast, same as you.”

  “Well, at least the refugees are protected against Veyjivik trackers.”

  “There is that.” Shep’s head lolled to the right as his body leaned to the left.

  Hunter grabbed him before he fell off the log then tugged h
im to his feet. “I’ll help you get back to the shack then I’m gonna check on Channie.”

  “Okay.” Shep’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he slumped forward.

  Hunter caught him around the waist and hoisted him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  The sun sank below the western ridge hours before they made it to the quarry. Shep wasn’t a big guy to start with and he’d lost a lot of weight since Hunter had last seen him, but that didn’t mean he was easy to carry.

  The quarter moon played hide and seek with the clouds, so Hunter cast a bright-eyes spell on himself, even though it drained more of his energy. If he stumbled and fell, he’d never get back up.

  Every muscle in Hunter’s body screamed in pain when he finally lowered Shep to the ground in front of the shack. The misdirection spells could use a re-charge, but Hunter was too tired. His hands trembled as he dug around for the key in the hollow stump. It wasn’t there.

  He found it inside Shep’s front right pocket.

  “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.” Hunter dragged Shep inside, stripped him down to his boxers then hauled him onto the bed. He rolled him onto his stomach and angled his head so his mouth hung over the edge of the mattress. He placed a water pail next to the bed and shook Shep’s shoulder.

  Shep groaned and tried to bat Hunter’s hand off his body.

  Hunter shook him again. “If you need to puke, use the bucket.”

  Shep nodded and groaned again.

  Hunter grabbed a quilt off the stack folded on top of an apple crate and draped it over Shep then climbed in bed beside him. He’d take a short nap and then head on over to Channie’s.

  He woke up to the sounds of retching, a foul stench and sunlight. He’d overslept. “You okay, Shep?”

  Shep’s only reply was a weak groan followed by a whimper.

  “I’ll take that as ‘no.’”

  Hunter found a teakettle full of water next to a hotplate. Ms. Wisdom had bought a gasoline generator for Channie and Josh after they almost froze to death, but it was out of fuel. “Is this water in the pot okay to drink?”