Lost Lyrebird (Harbingers of Chaos #2)

PROLOGUE

The air is thick with the stench of sulfur, gasoline, and copper.

It’s choking my lungs as an eerie stillness hangs inside the transport.

The kind that presses in on you, forcing you to acknowledge your worst nightmare.

We’re a twisted pile of limbs, weapons, smoke, fire, and body parts.

Blood—dark and vivid—coats everything, the aftermath of being tossed around like ragdolls in an exploding metal coffin.

Beyond the utter despair and fear riding me, I also feel relief. I’m alive, and by the sounds I’m hearing, I’m not the only one.

A rustle of fabric. A moan. A cough. The gasping for breath. Tell-tale signs that someone else survived.

But from where I lie crumpled in the footwell, I can’t see shit.

No idea who it is. Gritting my teeth, I shove the agony aside.

There’s no time for it. Men are missing.

Seats torn out. The driver’s side is just…

fucking gone. Flames lick at the edges of where the door used to be.

The heat sears my skin the closer I crawl toward the backseat.

Moving sends searing pain hammering down my lower back, but I fight through it. When I finally see into the backseat, the sight of what I see guts me, and I swallow hard to force down bile rising in my stomach.

A black pit of grief rolls through me. I shake my head over and over, my knuckles turning white as I fight off the useless tears.

These men… they were good men. They have families. And some will never return to them.

I reach out, grabbing a hand. My eyes trace it to a face—Brady. That broad smile of his flashes in my mind. Twenty-nine, and a newlywed. The kind of guy who had a bright future. I grip his blood-slicked hand, wishing with everything I am that I could turn back time.

“Fuck, man. Just fuck.”

I sit with him a moment and send up a prayer, then I let go of his hand and focus on the sounds. The living. That’s who needs me right now.

A low groan, followed by a hand slapping over the top of the seat, sends my heartbeat into overdrive. Ignoring the pain, I drag myself over the middle console.

A bloody blond head pops up. Blue eyes meet mine.

“My own gun, man,” Rivers gasps, voice ragged.

“Nearly fucking impaled me. And the damn seatbelt… almost cut me in half.” He dips his chin to indicate the wound to his shoulder, which is bad.

Then his eyes flick past me, to the wreckage.

His usual grin is gone, dimples inverted into a deep frown.

His jaw flexes, nostrils flaring as he sucks in a slow, shaky breath.

When he hauls himself over the seat, I examine the severity of the gash across his eyebrow.

Blood is streaming down his face, mixing with the dirt and sweat.

But it’s the way his eyes widen once he gets a better look at me that has a rock forming in the pit of my stomach.

“Fuck, Sarg,” he mutters, voice low, head tilted. “You’re bleeding like hell.”

Yeah, I figured. My skull feels like it’s been split wide, wedged open by a fucking crowbar. It’s everything I can do not to let the agony riddling my body drag me under. “Just a scratch,” I lie, even though blood is pouring down my neck in a steady flow.

“Scratch?” He shakes his head. “You’ve got a damn crater in your skull.”

“I’m still breathing,” I say.

“Yeah, but—”

“And I’d like to stay that way, so let’s focus on getting the fuck out of here.”

His camo is soaked, the right side of his body painted red. Blood spreads from his jacket down to his pant leg. I can’t help but think that if he’s the most mobile of us, we’re fucked.

I nod toward the massive gash in his shoulder. “We’re gonna need to patch that.”

“I’m still breathing,” Rivers replies, as if mocking me.

A barrage of bullets pings against the metal exterior in rapid succession. Glass shatters. We both duck to avoid being hit. Thankfully, the onslaught ends without either of us taking a bullet.

It lights a fire under us, sparks a sense of urgency. We need to get the fuck out of here.

“We’ve got minutes—maybe—before they come to finish the job.”

He nods. “Let’s med up and get ready to move.”

Fighting the fog clouding my vision, I say, “Find the med kit if you can. I’ll patch you up first—don’t want you passing out from blood loss on me.”

We both freeze at the sound of movement.

“Jesus! Ahh… my leg! My fucking leg!”

Our heads snap to the back of the Humvee. Larsen is sitting upright. He’s covered in blood and soot.

“Damn, Lars. I thought you were a goner,” Rivers says, crawling into the back so he can reach him. “Hey—calm down. Don’t touch it,” he scolds.

“My fuckin’ leg, Riv.”

Rivers digs through the supplies and gets to work, trying to stabilize what’s left of Larsen’s leg. It’s a goddamn mess—barely held together. This is just a stopgap, and we all know it.

At one point, Larsen hisses, “Just leave me.”

“Shut up,” Rivers snaps, not looking up from his work. “None of that shit.”

“I’m seriou—”

“We’re all getting out of here,” I cut him off. When that doesn’t stave off Larsen’s panic, I add,

“Nico and Sasha. They need you, man. You give up now, you’re giving up on them. Don’t you want to see their faces again?”

Larsen’s eyes meet mine and hold. He sucks in a long breath, then nods rapidly to Rivers. His nostrils flare as his pain-fueled despair slowly subsides. “Okay, do what you need to do.”

Seeing the will to live come back into his eyes floods me with relief.

And though it hurts like hell to move, I do.

I push through the pain to get closer to him and clasp his hand with mine, and pour every ounce of my strength into him.

He squeezes my hand in a death grip to make it through the worst of it.

Rivers works fast as Larsen curses him out, all the while muttering, “Push through, Lars. We’ll get you back to your wife and kid.”

When Rivers finishes, he patches me up, and then we address the next problem. He can’t carry both of us, and neither of us can stand, much less walk. I tell him to take Larsen first and come back for me. He doesn’t like it, but he follows my orders.

Rivers gears up, loading himself with weapons and ammo, then drags Larsen to the doorway and prepares to make a run for it. Before they disappear, he looks back over his shoulder, and his blue eyes lock with mine. “Hang tight, Sarg. I’ll be back for you before you know it.”

I nod and say, “Go. Get him out.”

To Larsen, River says, “On three. I’ll be your legs. You fire every round you’ve got at those motherfuckers.”

The second they’re gone, I start praying—hard—that some guardian angel is watching over them, helping them dodge the bullets I know are coming. Then I sit alone in what feels like a metal coffin surrounded by the dead, and hope like my life depends on it that I don’t become one of them.

I wake to a fog—real or in my head, I can’t tell.

Did Rivers get us out?

I force myself to sit up fully, testing my body for damage. Pain ripples through me—sharp but also distant, like a knife buried too deep for too long. My legs tingle, my muscles still scream in protest. But it’s duller, as if I’m numbed from it.

Off-balance and trembling, I manage to get to my feet.

“Finn.”

I shiver at the sound of the voice. I tell myself it has to be off due to the echo. But why is he talking so low, so quiet? And why is he using my given name?

“I’m here, man. Where you at?”

“Finn.”

“Yeah, man. Right here,” I call out again.

The more I focus on the voice, the clearer it becomes. The deep, raspy baritone strikes an old chord, triggering memories. This isn’t Rivers. And I have no business hearing this voice, because the man it belongs to I buried only a few short months ago.

My senses scramble to make sense of the thick fog around me, searching for movement, something to orient myself. I try clearing the mist with a sweep of my arm, but each time, more haze fills the space.

I step forward cautiously, and eventually, the sand beneath my boots stops shifting.

It turns solid, like wood or stone. The stillness stirs unease deep in my gut.

Then it hits me—the oppressive, stifling heat of the Iraqi desert has vanished.

The air no longer tastes of copper, sulfur, and gasoline.

My fatigues aren’t clinging to my sweat-soaked skin.

The voice calls out again, as if nowhere and everywhere all at once. No matter which direction I turn, I get no closer.

The fog thins, and the scent around me changes. It’s teakwood and pine. Home.

My chest aches, not from the pain—though the pain is there, a fuck-ton of it, especially at the back of my head—but from loss. It dawns on me then that when I turn around, I’ll see something that will hit me square in the chest.

But I have to look.

When my father finally steps into view, the sadness in his eyes shakes me to my core.

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

I sense it too. The wrongness of it. I don’t belong here. But how can I deny what I’m seeing? My father’s face is the same but different—more youthful. His onyx hair is full and thick, just a slight wave, like my own.

The thought would be comforting if it weren’t for what it means to see him again.

He strides toward me, and as he closes in, I start forward to meet him.

When we collide, it’s like two boulders crashing together.

I melt into the embrace I thought I’d never feel again.

His hug is the kind only a bear of a man can give to his grown son.

The peace in that moment is everything. It fills the cracks in my heart that have been there since the day he died.

The day I held his fragile hand as he slipped away.

The fights. The harsh words. Everything I never said. In that hug, it’s all forgiven and forgotten. It’s the best thing I’ve felt in months.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says gruffly, pulling me even tighter. I don’t mind one bit.

“Honestly, I don’t understand what’s happening.”

He grunts, a sound that carries so much weight.

“Is this… it, then?” I ask.

I feel more than see him shake his head. “No.”

“Then what? I don’t understand.”

He pulls back, one hand gripping the back of my neck as our eyes meet. His stare drinks me in, his jaw tight with something like pain.

I try to finish my thought, but the words won’t come. “Am I…?”

His eyes narrow, grief lining his face. He touches my cheek, my jaw, then lets his hand drop to my shoulder, gripping it tightly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

He stands two inches taller than me, and I remember how, as a kid, he seemed like a giant.

He shakes his head again, his voice thick. “Not for this. For the time we never had. The time we don’t have now. For the time we wasted.”

“Dad… what time? I don’t understand. Am I… dead? Because I can’t… I can’t be. There’s someone… someone I made a promise to. I told her… nothing would stop me from making it home.”

He smiles, just barely, one corner of his mouth lifting as he nods, but the grief never leaves his eyes. “I know. Your little bird.”

Choked up now, I say, “Yeah, Dad. My little bird. She’s waiting for me.”

“Go to her, son.”

I stare at him, trying to make sense of it all.

“I love you. You know that?” His voice cracks.

My throat tightens as he turns his head, nodding toward the misty horizon to his right.

“You need to fight, Finn. It won’t be easy, but you can make it back.

If we had more time, I’d tell you everything, but we don’t.

Just know I love you, and I’m so fucking proud of the man you’ve become.

Keep helping the people who need it most. Keep pushing for what’s right. ”

I place my hand over his on my shoulder, squeezing. When I finally nod, he grabs me in another fierce hug. I relish it. He pats my back, and I swear his touch lingers like a brand after we part.

“Go, son. I’m good here. I’ll see you again when it’s time.”

So I do. I take one step. Then another. When I glance back, he’s watching me with steely blue eyes, arms folded over his chest. His expression holds so much emotion, but his shoulders are drawn back, a stubborn stance I’d known as a kid—a sign there’s no point in arguing further.

“Keep your promise to her.”

I nod, and focus on what lies ahead, not what I’m leaving behind. Step after step, I move toward the promise I never intended to break.

A promise to a little bird, a woman who needs me more than he ever did.