49. Chapter 49
Chapter forty-nine
Day 24 Denali, Alaska
Wolf stepped into the darkness of his quarters without turning on the lights. He let the door swing shut behind him, welcoming the shroud of silence and obscurity. For several long seconds he just stood there, his shoulders slumping, staring into an infinity of emptiness while a flash grenade of memories exploded in his mind.
Flash. Crack. Boom! Samuel and Kuznetsov swallowed by a ball of orange and white fire. Samuel’s body lifted and thrown, limp as a ragdoll. The crackle and spit of flames. High pitched screaming, shouting. The acrid smell of smoke, burning metal, spent accelerant, and roasted flesh.
The images vanished, but his flight or fight response continued. His heart slammed against his ribs. His pulse pounded in his ears. His harsh, loud breathing filled the room. His mouth had gone bone dry, his throat tight. His muscles were so tense they ached. No doubt his pupils were dilated too. All symptoms of an adrenaline burst, even though the danger had long since passed.
A low, frustrated grunt broke from him, fracturing the silence. Without hitting the light switch, he stumbled toward his bedroom. He was tired. So damn tired. The exhaustion was so heavy, it carried weight and heft. Each step was a battle. While lack of sleep, along with constant meetings over the past four rotations played a part in his exhaustion, most of the fatigue came from internal rather than external sources.
He’d lost warriors before. Jude, for one. His anisbecco’s death had left a bloody crater within him, one that hadn’t quite healed, even now, three cycles later. In one exceptionally painful case, he’d lost an entire helicopter of warriors. So many lost lives, so much vanished potential.
It was frustrating that his gift forewarned of some deaths, yet not others. He’d seen Aiden’s death multiple times, and early enough to prevent it each time. He’d prevented Kait’s death with it, too. Samuel’s as well. Yet he hadn’t seen Jude’s. He hadn’t seen the chopper crash that led to the end of all those warriors’ lives.
He hadn’t seen Daniel’s murder.
His gift was a fickle beast, serving only a chosen few.
Benioko said the warning pulse could not prevent all deaths, only those brought about through the meddling of the younger gods. The Shadow Warrior’s and Blue Moon Mother’s shadow children were a petty and jealous lot, envious of the love their parents showered on their earthborn offspring. Sometimes, the lower gods acted behind their parents’ backs, orchestrating events to bring about the demise of the favorites among their parents’ earthborn children.
Such deaths were not woven into the web of time by the elder gods; thus, they could be circumvented. Shadow Warrior created the warning pulse to prevent such unsanctioned fatalities. But other deaths, those that had been woven into the tangle of time, could not be prevented, thus his gift never warned of their passing.
Still, even knowing this, some fatalities were difficult to accept. Daniel, for instance. His murder should have been preventable. Maybe not through Wolf’s gift, but through his knowledge, training, and instincts. Daniel had died because of Wolf’s failure, because of his lack of foresight.
The sucking guilt of this was constant. It kept his eyes open deep into the night while he weighed what he’d done against what he should have done, where he picked apart every single decision. Every single command. Every single action.
If he’d left Kuznetsov’s mistress behind in Petropavlovsk, if he’d refused to let her off the Thunderbird to use the bathroom, if he’d assigned a more experienced guard to accompany her to the shed, if he’d gone with her rather than Daniel. Any of those decisions could have changed the outcome, saved the young warrior’s life.
Instead, Muriel was grieving the loss of her first borne child, and Samuel— Wolf flinched. Samuel didn’t even know his jnaaee, the youngling more like a son than nephew to him, had journeyed to the web of his ancestors.
Samuel’s condition was easier to accept. Not his maimed and broken body. That would never be easy to see. But Wolf’s what ifs over the past five rotations had proven that nothing he could have done would have offered a better outcome.
If he and Samuel had switched places, his Caetanee would have been directly in the RPG's path. The grenade would have hit him before it reached anyone else. The only reason Wolf and O’Neill had escaped death was because of Wolf’s gift, which gave enough warning for him to tackle O’Neill and drive them both to the ground, so the grenade had gone over their heads.
But O’Neill had been within tackle range.
Even if he’d received a warning flash aimed at Samuel, he would have been too far away to reach him. His Caetanee would have taken the blast full force. Even if Wolf had screamed at him to drop, between the wind and the engine noise from the Thunderbird, his second might not have heard him. Reaching him through the Neealaho would have been an option, but Samuel would have had to react instantly. The RPG had hit within seconds of the vision.
No matter how he adjusted the situation in his mind, Samuel would not have lived through a direct blast. His Caetanee would survive his injuries. It would not be easy. He faced a slow and painful recovery. But he would survive.
Daniel’s murder was more difficult to accept, as his crossing was on Wolf’s shoulders. If he hadn’t misjudged Kuznetsov’s mistress, Daniel would not have died. He’d let the woman’s tears and apparent openness blind him to her nature. She’d fooled him completely. Because of this massive failure of insight, Daniel was dead, and she was gone.
Their only link to who’d created the nanobot weapon was gone.
With a low, pained grunt, he sat on his bed. Without bothering to turn on the bedside lamp, he bent, untying the laces of his boots by touch. He retrieved his phone from the pocket of his tactical pants and set it on the table beside his bed. Once he was naked, he laid down and pulled the top sheet over his aching body. His eyes closed, he settled deeper into the pillow, willing sleep to take him. Instead, Daniel’s blank eyes and rigid face stared back.
The face he saw behind his closed eyes was identical to the one he’d found in the shed. The empty gaze. The frozen expression. The young warrior had likely already died, when the sound of an engine had roared to life inside the shop. They’d burst into the building to find the roll-up door open, Kuznetsov’s mistress gone, and Daniel journeying to the web of his ancestors. Their healers—already weakened from their efforts to heal Samuel—could not revive the young warrior. But then, not even the strongest healer could circumvent death and return a spirit to its mortal shell.
Wolf had found snowmobile tracks outside, and a syringe embedded in a lipstick tube lying on the shop floor. If he’d confiscated that crimson tube back at the house in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Daniel would be alive.
With a deep, shuddering breath, he banished Daniel’s frozen face and empty eyes from his mind. But both followed him into sleep.
A deep, rattling vibration and musical ringtone pulled him from dreams of death and severed limbs. Groggy, with the nightmares still seething through his mind, he reached for his phone.
According to the name lighting up the diminutive screen, the call was from his mother. He sat up, tension flaring. It was not like her to call so late.
“ Anistaa —” He coughed the thickness from his throat. “What is wrong?”
“ Ho'cee! ” Her voice rattled down the line, choppier than normal, without its normal smooth cadence.
His heart started pounding. The edge to her voice tightened his chest and pierced his gut. His mother wouldn’t call with a personal problem. Certainly not so late. She was too independent and unwilling to ask for help. She hadn’t even told him about her cancer scare until her second screening had proved negative.
This call must be about Jillian.
Jillian had lived with one foot in the Shadow Realm for three cycles. None of his attempts to drag her back to life had worked. She seemed to slide further across the veil every year. Had she finally given in to her ghosts and stepped fully onto the path to her ancestors? An ache spread across his chest.
“Is it Jillian?” He braced himself.
The breath his mother drew sounded like a hiss. “Yes—”
“She’s dead.” He flinched, his heart dulling.
It was a statement, not a question. He’d been expecting this call. Still, even expected, the news hit like an arrow to his chest. The breath left his lungs. Hope fled his heart.
“No, no.” His anistaa sucked in a deep, raw breath. “She lives. It’s…just…she’s been chosen.”
“Chosen?” Wolf shook his head in confusion. “By the shadow people?”
They beckoned to her; her lost children, her dead brother. But if her shadow family had finally enticed her to step across the veil, she would be dead.
“No, not by the shadows. She’s been chosen by the woodland spirits—by an animal clan.”
Wolf froze, then glanced around his dark bedroom. Was he still dreaming? The woodland clans did not choose Anglos. Never in the history of the Kalikoia had a woohanna been chosen by a woodland clan spirit.
He stared down at the bright white screen of the phone warming his palm. The heat of the metal against his skin assured him he was not dreaming. Indeed, he was wide awake now. Yet this news made no sense.
Few among the Kalikoia were chosen by the animal clans. And most of those who bore the mark and carried the totem were men—warriors who had been gifted an animal’s essence to keep the tribe safe. The few women who had been chosen through the cycles, like Kait, were gifted by the Blue Moon Mother in ways that kept the tribe nurtured and healthy. Or like Samuel’s Olivia, who had been given the ability to recognize heartmates, thus keeping the tribal ties intact.
But for an animal clan to claim a woohanna —one with no tribal blood? Such a thing was not possible. His mother must be mistaken.
“ Ho'cee! Did you hear me? Our Jillian has been chosen by the woodland spirits.”
Wolf frowned. His mother sounded so certain.
“Such a thing is not possible. She is Anglo. She has no tribal blood.” His words didn’t lessen her worth. Wolf had chosen her as his own, even though she never reciprocated. But why would the spirit clans choose her? It made no sense. “You must be mistaken.” His voice was flat. Unbending.
“I am not mistaken.” His mother’s voice chilled. “I know a claiming when I see one. She was visited by her spirit animal. I saw it. She bears the claiming bite. She was gifted a totem.” The chill in his mother’s voice gave way to dryness. “The spirit animals know better than you or I who is worthy of claiming. They chose Jillian.”
“You saw this claiming?” Could she have been dreaming? “Which clan claimed her?”
“Yes. I saw it. I heard it.” She hesitated, then rushed the rest out. “I heard the scream of the heschrmal first. It woke me from my sleep. It was close. So close. I followed the lion’s screams until they stopped. Jillian was sitting in the rocker on the porch. The heschrmal was curled in her lap. Purring.”
“A lion?” His voice rose beneath a combination of shock and protest.
No one within the Kalikoia had been chosen by the lion clan in centuries. Besides, according to tribal mythos, the lion spirit was a warrior totem, as was the wolf spirit. These two woodland clans only claimed males—the mightiest among the warriors.
Why would one claim a woman? A white woman at that.
This news made no sense.