Chapter 8
Pedro Ortiz lived at the edge of the reservation in a house that was partly adobe, partly rock, and entirely his.
He had lived there for as long as anyone in the Clan could remember, which given the Clan’s long memory was saying something.
The house sat at the end of a dirt road that branched off the main road and narrowed steadily until it was just a track surrounded by mesquite and palo verde.
Pax drove out with Ari. They knocked on the door and waited.
Pedro opened it after a moment, which was a courtesy. Pax knew the old man had probably known they were coming for the last ten minutes at least. He had all kinds of magical wards around the Clan lands that told him all sorts of things.
Pedro was small and ancient though he moved easily, and his dark eyes were as sharp as they’d ever been. He regarded them with his usual calm demeanor.
“Paxton,” he said, which was also a courtesy. Pedro rarely used names unless he meant something by it. “Ariihau.”
Pedro knew that both the twins had names that related to peace.
Pax literally meant peace in Latin, and Ari’s full name was a nod to their Polynesian roots.
It translated loosely as prince of peace.
Both were apparently significant to a shaman who had lived for centuries and seen many conflicts in his time.
“Elder.” Pax dipped his head slightly in respect. “Do you have time for us today?”
“Come in.”
The inside of the house was cool and smelled of dried herbs. There were baskets on the walls, and a low wooden table with three chairs by the window that looked out over the desert. Pedro sat in one and gestured to Pax and Ari to take the others.
Pedro looked at them both for a while without speaking. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. It never was with Pedro. Just the silence of a man who got a lot of his information from observation.
“How’s your leg?” Pedro asked Pax finally.
“Better. The healer says another week and it’ll be fully—”
“No. Not the leg.” Pedro tilted his head slightly as if reconsidering. “The place where you were. Salt Lake City. Someone found you there who had magic.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re wondering if they followed your path here.”
Pax tried not to squirm in his seat. “I noticed a few things in town. A car in the wrong place. A man who might have been watching.” Pax kept his voice level. “It could be nothing, but Ari and I thought it was worth bringing to your attention in case you noticed anything troubling your wards.”
Pedro was silent for a long time. He looked out the window at the desert and Pax had the feeling he was looking at something that wasn’t in the physical landscape.
“I’ve felt some disturbance very recently,” he said at last. “Something at the edge of my wards. Not pushing. Not trying to get through. Just sort of feeling the shape of them.” He turned back to Pax. “The way a blind man feels a wall.”
Pax’s jaw tightened. “How long has that been going on?”
“Eight days.”
Eight days was well before Pax had noticed anything. Damn. He was slipping. Or maybe he was just too distracted by Bree.
He thought about Bree, the store, the workshops, and all the activity of the last few weeks. His chest tightened with concern.
“What can you tell us?” Ari asked, taking over while Pax sorted out his feelings.
“Mage-trained.” Pedro said it with a hint of contempt. “Not old training. Modern. Someone who learned quickly and uses magic practically rather than ceremonially. He’s looking for something specific. Not for all of us.” The old man’s eyes focused on Pax. “He’s looking for you.”
Shit. He’d brought danger to the entire Clan, and to his family home. Pax cursed under his breath, then breathed deeply and regrouped. He had to get himself under control. “How visible am I?”
“Through my wards, you’re a small flame. Your parents are the same. The rest of the Clan is invisible. The wards are oldest around the reservation proper, thinnest around the edges of town where the younger ones move.” A pause. “He might see a family. A small group.”
“So he doesn’t know about the rest of the Clan?” Ari asked.
“Not yet,” Pedro assured them. “Probably not ever, unless they give themselves away.”
Pax thought about that. The mage knew about Pax because he’d been followed from Salt Lake City.
The trail had led to Arizona and the mage may have found what looked like an isolated family of shifters.
According to Pedro, the mage didn’t know he was looking at the edge of a Clan with deep roots and a shaman who had been hiding them since before this nation had a name.
That was an advantage, but it was a fragile one.
“I’ll tell Rodrigo,” Ari said, but Pedro waved him down.
“I already told him.” Pedro regarded them both with the patient affection of a man who had watched the Rojas twins grow up. “He said to tell you that the Clan will follow your lead.”
Pax absorbed the weight of that. He and Ari were the Arizona Clan’s Betas without having been formally named as such. They’d just grown into the role as they served the Alpha and the Clan out in the world. In jaguar Clans, the Beta served as the right-hand of the Alpha.
The twins were protectors of the Arizona Clan, much as Nick Balam served that role in the larger jaguar Clan under Alpha Mark Pepard.
The only thing different with the Arizona group was that there were twins serving in the role that usually was held by a single jaguar shifter.
Twins were rare among shifters and most pairs were fraternal, like Pax and Ari.
Only a single pair of identical twins was born into each generation of shifters in each region, marked by the Goddess to rule over all shifters in a vast territory.
Pax had never minded being a fraternal twin.
He knew he was a good protector, but he didn’t think he could have taken on the responsibility of leading an entire region of shifters, even with Ari at his side.
That was just too much. He was content playing the Beta role in their Clan and using his training and martial tendencies to protect their people.
That was plenty enough for him and he knew his twin felt the same way.
When Pedro said nothing more, Pax and Ari stood, and Pedro stood with them, nodding. He walked them to the door in silence. As they left, he finally spoke again.
“The woman,” Pedro said, standing on the threshold.
Pax looked at him in surprise. Pedro’s eyes were mild.
“The one who took care of you. Who cooked for you.” A pause. “She’s woven into things now. You understand that, right? Whether you intended it or not, she’s part of the pattern.”
Pax thought about Bree, standing behind the counter at the hardware store, and the Clan members who’d been frequenting the place more and more. Those workshops. Her father and the young people bent over pieces of lumber. Tomás working there. Yeah, she and her dad were part of the Clan’s web.
“I know,” he said.
“Good.” Pedro gave him a faint smile. “She sees clearly. That’s rare for one so young.” He put one hand briefly on Pax’s forearm. It was a light touch that was brief, but deliberate. “Don’t be so careful with rare things that you forget to hold onto them.”
Pax nodded, unable to speak. Pedro closed his door and the twins drove home through the desert morning in silence. Pax thought about the old shaman’s words all the way back.
Later, Pax and Ari sat on the porch. The porch had once again become their thinking place, the way it had been when they were teenagers.
A visit to Pedro always required a time of reflection afterwards to untangle his words.
He said so much without actually speaking a lot of words.
All of his meanings had to be decoded and absorbed and that was best done immediately after the encounter, the twins had discovered.
So, they sat and thought about what the old shaman had said, tossing ideas out to each other as they had them.
“Eight days,” Ari said, sounding a bit pissed off. “Someone’s been sniffing around the wards for eight days and we didn’t notice.”
Pax watched the desert, feeling his twin’s frustration.
He felt a lot of guilt, since he’d been the one at home the entire time, and he should have noticed something a whole hell of a lot earlier.
He’d been too caught up in Bree and in his own limitations while healing to have been paying attention to things he should have seen a lot sooner.
He wouldn’t do that again. The safety of his Clan came first, no matter the circumstances.
“He’s been watching while I’ve been going in and out of the hardware store, putting Bree and her dad in danger,” Pax noted darkly. He didn’t like that at all.
“Did you get a look at the mage in Salt Lake City?” Ari asked.
Pax had to shake his head. “No. The attack came from the other side of a delivery truck. The blast took the truck apart and it was the metal sheeting from the side of the truck that nearly took my leg off. Once that happened, I didn’t really see much.
I was a bit preoccupied with trying to get out of the line of fire and do enough to distract them so you could get the hell out of there with Danny.
” Pax fell silent, remembering the mad scramble with his leg so badly injured.
Then, a thought occurred to him. “I think I remember the mage’s scent, though.
They were close enough that I got more than just the faint whiff of magic. ”
“That’s something, at least. Have you come across that scent anywhere in town or around here?”
Pax shook his head slowly, thinking hard. “No. Not that I recall. And I think I would’ve noticed. I mean, that scent is associated with something recent and traumatic. I think it would set off my jaguar, if nothing else.”
“As I recall, there were two in the ambush group that were giving off magical scents. It was distant, so I couldn’t even tell if they were male or female, but there were definitely two.”