Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
KAEL
It comes like a cold sweat. An ache between blood and bone. A thrum buried beneath flesh and light.
First one throb. Then another.
Tempest feels it, too, head rearing back as if she’s been struck by lightning. My legs grip her sides, steadying her. A hand drops to stroke her neck.
“Shh,” I croon. “You’re good, girl. Steady now.”
My sidearm feels heavy in the ancient holster at my hip, and my leg presses back reflexively, feeling the reassuring long gun scabbard behind me. Just in case.
The air crackles. This place too alive for someone like me—the lifeless, though not yet dead—to enter.
Beneath a large cottonwood, the rocks sound different. Can’t explain how. Maybe not meant for me to hear. But I do anyway.
I dismount, boots grinding across reddish gravel. Then I kneel, pressing a hand to the ground and feeling what it remembers.
It aches with ancient redress. Wildblood hunts. My brother, Clemson, and his woman, Ruby.
And something else. More recent.
I bow my head, dig deeper into the vibration between atoms… until metal threads the air.
Not flesh and blood. Or the kind of thing that breathes. Something animated by ghosts… or whatever passes for them.
Something taken. Killed by things that don’t live the way we do.
My eyes rise to the distant Starborn Range, air palpable with the menace done here.
By malice? No.
I dig into the land’s memory like I would a mind, sensing energy, the story between atoms and molecules. I can almost make out the shape of it.
The cutting of something… a single thread of communication that prevented devouring.
Until it didn’t.
Tempest paws the ground next to me. A warning.
But even before I hear the first footsteps or the click of two hammers, I smell it.
Lavender and honey. A fragrance that shouldn’t hover over this godforsaken place.
“Hands in the air where I can see them,” a too-petite voice calls, trying to sound fierce.
I may not know why I’m still here. What this all means, but being shot in the back by a woman is no option. Not for a man like me.
That’s when the surge hits me again. Buried deep beneath my marks. I squeeze my eyes shut, observing the sensation, the force of it like a punch to the gut, only higher. Right where rib meets pulse.
“On your feet,” the voice growls. But it still comes out all wrong. Too soft. Too feminine.
I rise without a word. Electricity threads the air between us. Like I can feel the woman’s presence bleeding into mine.
Then another pulse. Harder this time. The kind that could shake a soul clean out of its body. If I have one of those left at all.
I grind my teeth, turning slowly to face her.
A hazelnut braid tied with a thick pink ribbon drapes over one shoulder, wisps of hair forming baby curls where they escape the neat plait.
Her eyes are warm and wide, sunbaked clay echoed in the freckles across her nose and the tops of her cheeks.
A thick black fringe frames those too-warm orbs, fluttering at me for a moment. Her face is stuck somewhere between alarm and curiosity.
Maybe.
Been too long since I’ve had cause to read a human face.
Her pink tongue darts out, wetting thick lips. Something in my throat tightens. Then the thrum hits again. I grind my teeth, working to stay on my feet.
This. Whatever this is shouldn’t happen. It’s what the dampener is for.
My eyes dart to a thin band of silver around her wrist, and I break out in a sweat. Strange alloy. Not from here. Starborn, earthbound.
“Where’d you get that?” I rasp, eyes locking on the bracelet.
She stiffens, eyes narrowing. “I’m the one asking the questions.” She takes a deep breath, steadies herself.
“Ask away,” I drawl.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, a slight tremble in her voice.
“Got turned around, that’s all,” I grind out through clenched teeth.
“Here? At this very spot?”
My eyes dart to the place where hers go. “There a problem?”
“Was a problem,” she corrects too fast.
I shrug, lowering my hands slowly.
The barrel of her gun comes up, eyes crinkling behind the scope. “Didn’t say you could do that, mister.”
“Trespassing. Well within your right to shoot me. But figure you’d have done it by now.” I drop my hands, watching the flash of anger that makes her pink cheeks flush.
Her face is heart-shaped, drawn at the point in a cleft. It pulls at something behind my sternum I thought long dead.
It comes again. Another surge tears through the tattoos beneath the duster. I grunt, trying to latch the feeling down. Bury it beneath decades of self-deprivation.
Not discipline. Something darker than that. More dangerous than Mags could ever comprehend.
“Heard about a bull. Drained of blood and organ-less. Figure I’d check for myself.”
Her forehead creases, face steady behind the gun. A puff of air escapes her lips. “But you’re not from around here. How?”
I remove my hat, rubbing the heel of my hand over my forehead. “Was from here. Before you.”
“How do you mean?” Her chin trembles almost imperceptibly. A hundred years ago, a tell like that was enough to take a man down in cold blood.
My forehead furrows. “Friend of Mags.”
“Thank God,” she says, lowering the weapon and stepping closer.
The throbbing instantly intensifies. Rips clean through me. I step back instinctively, hand clutching my chest. “Don’t.” It comes out too hard.
She arches an eyebrow, nostrils flaring. Eyes dropping for one second too long to my mouth.
A pressure builds in my head, but it’s nothing compared to the one lower. An ancient, unsatisfied longing. Should’ve died ages ago. Thought it had.
“Does she know… I mean, do you have any clue what may have happened?”
I shake my head, truly at a loss. “Tell me more about what you saw. What you noticed.”
Her eyes wander to the spot beneath the tree where the shadow presses thicker. “Like I said. No blood. Missing organs. No flies would land on it. And the smell…” She pauses.
“God awful?” I offer.
She shifts the weight on her feet, curvy body too full and inviting beneath white floral cotton and navy blue denim. “None at all.”
I rub a hand over my neck, trying to tamp down whatever this feeling is. This reaction to the range. This reaction to her.
“Lightning, maybe?”
Her mouth quirks, brows knitting. Entirely unconvinced.
“Insects… or a predator you haven’t considered?”
She grimaces, frowning. Disappointment flashes as if she expects more, better from one of Mags’s people. Don’t have the will to tell her I’ve never been one of them.
“Can I have a look at the carcass?”
“Too late. Already called it into the authorities.”
I cross my arms over my chest. Unspoken rules no longer apply, it seems. “Pity,” I grunt.
“I have pictures,” she offers reaching into her back pocket and digging out a phone. In the distance, I see her mount, a buttery Palomino, tail swishing against flies.
“Not the same,” I mutter, rubbing a hand over my beard, feeling its wiry thickness, hearing the sound of rough hair against rougher flesh.
“The authorities… aren’t how we handle things out here,” I say matter-of-factly. She should know better.
“I understand that now.”
I shift my weight, eyeing the gun still in her hand, though dropped by her side now.
“But?” I ask, feeling the open end past her sentence. Another spasm tears through me, knocking me to the roots of my teeth, though I work hard to hide it.
Her face is ambivalent, eyes regarding me slow. Like she’s digging beneath blood and bone to the heart of me. “But what if it happens again, and I’m all alone?”
Tempest wanders closer to the Palomino, ears up, still on guard.
“Why would you ever be out here all alone? Wakefield family’s huge as I recall.”
She cocks her head to the side, face going dark and guarded. “Actually, I’m the last one.”
Those five words grind into me hard. The passage of time distilled down to one sentence. Wakefield family. Used to be twelve sons. All shitkickers. Some more trouble than others.
“Does that surprise you?” she asks, scrutinizing my face.
“Been awhile is all.”
Her face hardens, lips forming a thin line.
It hits me again. A sensation that makes me take a step back.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Fine,” but I fight for the words, strained and thick.
“Why don’t you follow me back to the house where we can talk away from this sun and heat?”
It’s a terrible idea. The worst possible outcome.
I should say no, excuse myself back to Mags. Force the redhead to tell me everything… even if it means digging into her thoughts.
Instead, I nod once, already walking toward my mount. “I’ll follow you.”