Jack (9 page)

17

Viki sat in her chair with her legs out in the bright summer sun.  A bright umbrella fluttered over her head shielding her injured face. Jack had plopped her down in the shade in a brand new chair with her umbrella.  She was still recovering from her injuries, but she was still sore and probably shouldn’t be out and about, but he just didn’t want her to feel left out of this outing. 

She listened to Bobby laughing at something Law said as he taught him to cast his new fishing rod.  He had caught two fish already and his smile rivaled the sun. 

She couldn’t believe how her life had turned out.  How had she gone from scratching to just have enough money to eat to having this much happiness.

Jack looked up and grinned when he felt her eyes on him.  He hopped up and jogged over to her.

“Hey Mighty Mouse.  You doing alright?”

He leaned down and kissed the only spot on her face that wasn’t bruised.

“I am.  I really appreciate you bringing me out here, I know it was a lot of trouble.”

He squatted down and looked her in the eye.  “Let me tell you something little miss.  You are no trouble to me.  I want you to be around.  I want you to see what that pain gained you.”  He pointed to where Bobby sat.  “You fought hard and you deserve to enjoy the rewards.”

He kissed her lips gently.

“I’m so damned proud of you.  Love you Viki.”

Her heart swelled until she felt it would burst.

“I love you too Jack.  I can’t believe this is really my life.  You have changed everything.”

He ran his hand over her leg and looked out over the water.

“This is something I really want Viki.  This life with you.  You say that I’m doing this great thing for you, but really it’s for me too.  I needed it too.”  His eyes met hers, the corners crinkled as he squinted.  “There is more than one way to starve.”

Bobby shouted with excitement as he pulled in another fish.  Jack kissed her and headed back to the water.  Nikki pulled her chair over and sat beside Viki.

“These are strange men we have chosen to love, but they are worth it.”

Viki looked at the woman who was so crazy over Law.  She was beautiful.  Captivatingly so and she loved a man that most would swear was evil.

“How do you do it Nikki?  How do you live this life and not lose who you are or who you thought you should be?”

Nikki laughed.  “Honey it’s not about losing yourself, it’s about redefining who you really want to be right now, after all the shit life has thrown at you.  That boy didn’t ask for his daddy to be a psycho maniac.  He didn’t ask to lose his mama either.  He could wallow in that shit for the rest of his life or he could go fishing and say fuck it.”  She shrugged and took a long drink of water from the bottle in her hand.

“I worry about him.  He has a lot to overcome.”

“Oh honey we all do.  He has to find his place, same as the rest of us.”  She looked over at Viki.  “You found yours?”

Viki felt her cheeks go warm.  Jack had been everything she could have dreamed.  It was like he’d made it his mission in life to wipe away all the bad memories of the past few years and replace them with happiness.  No, he wasn’t all roses and giggles, but he was solid and he stood by his word and he loved Bobby.

“I think I have.”

Nikki kicked back in her chair.  “I have my demons and they still get to me sometimes, but I don’t let them haunt me, I can’t give them that power, but sometimes it’s ok to be weak, just for a little while.  Law lets me do that.  He doesn’t care what was, he cares about right now and who I am with him.  That is a kind of freedom you can’t find anywhere else in this fucked up world.  In my old man’s arms I have it all.”

“He’s sort of scary.”  Viki said as she watched Law now.  He seemed like a normal man if you didn’t see the ink and the metal in his face.

“Sometimes the good guys have to be meaner than the good guys to really make a difference.  He does bad shit, but in his head, it’s for a good reason.  Killing that boy’s daddy made his life better and to Law that’s justified.”

As bad as it seemed, Nikki was right.

Viki pushed herself to her feet.  She was still sore as all hell, but she made her way over to where Bobby sat with Law.  Law’s blue eyes glinted when he looked up.

“Thank you.”  She mouthed not wanting to dampen the fun with the somber subject.

Law understood and nodded once.  “I’s what we do Vik.”

She placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed once before she tilted her head at Bobby.

“Hungry yet little mister?”  She asked and smiled as much as her face would let her.

“Aunt Viki your face looked gruesome.”  Bobby said with a scrunched up nose.  He sported bruises of his own that he seemed to forget at times.

She crossed her arms.  “Yeah, well so do you.”

Lamb walked up behind her carrying her chair.  “Sit.”  He said as he plopped it down by Bobby.

Viki stuck out her tongue and panted like a dog and lifted a brow.

“Love it when pretty women are panting after me, but Jack will kick my ass if I do anything about it so just sit your ass in this chair.”

Viki laughed and did as she was told.

“Aunt Viki?”

“Mum.”  She answered as she closed her eyes and let the breeze cool her face.

“Law says we’re warriors now, you and me and that if we were Indians I’d be considered a man.”

She felt a lump in her throat.  “What else does Law say?”

“Not much, just that we were really brave.”

“He’s right.  We were and we fought long enough for him and Jack to get there to help us.”

“Do you love Jack Aunt Viki?”

“Yes, I do Bobby.  Is that ok with you?”  She turned her head so she could see his face.

“Yeah.  He’s sorta nice and he makes sure you eat.  He said…”

Bobby stopped.  “He said what Bobby?”

“He said Law was right too.  That we are warriors and we shouldn’t be ashamed of our scars and bruises.  They show the world we can survive.”

Viki nodded.  “He’s right.”

“Are we going to stay here?”

“I’d like to.  Jack said he wants us to stay with him.  Do you think you’d like that?”

Bobby looked away.

“What is it Bobby?”

“Do you think we should go back to using our old names?  We could now.”

Viki thought about it for a long moment before she shook her head.

“I think I like being Viki. Sherry was a woman who had a different idea about what life was all about, but Viki knows what life can be, sometimes it can be really hard, but Viki knows something Sherry could never have understood.”

“What’s that?”

“How to be happy.  Viki is happy.  Happy sitting here with you and happy loving Jack and happy to just be alive.”

Bobby thought on that for a few seconds.  “Then I’ll be Bobby.  Matty was a boy with a momma that loved him and played at the park with him, but he had a bad daddy that hurt them.  Bobby is a boy that has an aunt that almost died to keep him safe and a...Jack that doesn’t mind if Bobby’s legs don’t work anymore.  Bobby is a boy that will can fish and swim and will be braver than Matty ever could have been.”

His little lip quivered.

“And Bobby has a momma in heaven that loves him very much and a daddy in hell that will never hurt anybody else.”  A tear slipped down his cheek.

Viki felt a hand on her shoulder.  She knew it was Jack by the warmth that spread through her body at his touch.

“If you ever hit my aunt Viki, I’ll… I’ll…”  Bobby looked frustrated.  “I’ll get Law to kick your ass.”

Jack let out a laugh that filled Viki with warmth.

“Done deal little brother.”  Law said with a grin that would make most grown men run in fear.

Jack leaned down and kissed Viki’s cheek then ruffled Bobby’s hair.  “No worries there, I’m afraid to hit your aunt Viki, she’s a badass.”

They spent the evening fishing and laughing and when the sun went down they packed everything up and headed home.

“Thank you for today Jack.”  Viki said as she rested against Jack’s side as Bobby slept in his booster seat.

“Thank you right back babe.  I haven’t felt this good in years if ever.”

“I’m not sure what I did, but you’re welcome.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.  “Baby, you gave me a family.  I’ve never had that, always wanted it, but I was afraid.  Losing you was worse, way worse, so I guess I figured I could take a chance on this and I never want to let it go.”

“Me either.  I don’t ever want to hide or run.  I just want to go home, out home.”

“That’s the plan baby.”

He drove them toward the house, their house, their home and she had never been happier.

Finally they were all headed home.

I hope you enjoyed this title!  Please take a moment to leave a review, five stars are always hoped for. ;-)

Please enjoy this excerpt from the first book in the

Brotherhood of the Magistrate Order

Series

DUTY

Available for purchase @

AmandaAndersonBooks.com

and

Amazon.com

CHAPTER ONE

River Channing stared at the crisp white envelope in his hands.  It had been left for him as all the others, but this one felt heavier, more important somehow.

The Council refused to use anything modern for things such as orders, instead insisting on having these damned things handed directly to River from the hands of a trusted courier who probably made more in a year than most men ever dreamed.

River shook his head as he slapped the oversized envelope against his palm.

“Why the hell couldn’t I have landed that job?”

He sighed and shook his head.   He’d been doomed from birth.  No one would trust one of the dragonkind with anything but killing, it was just how things were now, but that had not always been the way of things.

He wondered for the millionth time if things would be different if his mother were still alive.  Would she have been able to stop the way the world had turned out and the way the council used the Magistrates?

He let out a long breath and plowed his fingers through his hair.  Thinking like this did nothing but frustrate him.  He still had his orders.  He still had to do his job and try to tell himself that he protected his people, but he wondered if he lied, even to himself.

He eyed the envelope.  It didn’t feel like the others.  He wasn’t sure what was different, but maybe...

He shook his head, his black hair falling into his eyes.  He reached up to push it back again.  This was nothing.  It was just him hoping for something more than the assignments they’d been getting.  There had been a change in the assignments over the last few months.

They were almost always death orders with no reasons, just a picture marked ‘execute.’

Gone were the days of traveling the lands and listening to disputes before making judgments and issue orders on how those judgments were carried out.  Now the Brotherhood was nothing more than traveling thugs, sent to murder those the council did not approve of.

River knew that his brothers were growing as tired of the killings as he and they had never known the old ways.  It wasn’t good for men like them to kill without cause and the Council refused to give them that.  Refused to give them anything at all.  They wanted the Order to trust them explicitly, and they had for hundreds of years, but something was not right.

River felt an unrest in the world that hadn’t been felt since the death of the Queen, his mother.  He feared that these orders to kill were not just as they had once believed, but that they might be those who simply opposed the Council’s rule over all.  That he could not stand.

He thought back to the last kill they had been ordered to carry out.  The man hadn’t seemed to be anything other than a simple man.  He had cried and begged them to listen to him, to turn from the Council and be what they had been created to be.  To protect the people.

Hank had took off his head and laughed, but River had felt something long dead awaken in his spirit and it hadn’t quietened over the last few weeks.

The man hadn’t been lying.  He hadn’t committed a crime punishable by death, he had simply opposed the Council.

River felt his stomach churn as it had that day.

He had allowed his brother to murder an innocent man, but he had been powerless to stop it.

He knew he could trust his brothers in a fight, but when it came to the oaths they had taken to the council he was not sure where they would ultimately stand.  Only he and Creed owed nothing to the men that ruled their people.  The Council held that the oaths taken to the Queen now bound them to the Council, but they did not feel this conviction in their hearts, so they waited.  Silently.

River stepped into the cavernous room that held the majority of his team.  These men were his brothers.   Brought together by their honor and their strength to fight the corruption that was quickly taking over the world around them, but more and more River feared that they actually worked for this evil.

The Brotherhood of the Magistrate Order was created by Queen Citlali to ensure the secrets of their kind were guarded along with the lives of all people, but it had been distorted by corrupt men and used for ill purpose for so long that few remembered the honor of the original Order. 

He looked at each man and saw the battle raging in their eyes.  They all felt as he did.  He knew it, but it was one thing to disagree with something and another to break a sacred oath.  He knew it would be an agonizing choice for any of them.

His eyes fell to Mac.  Dragonkind felt oaths more strongly than any other race.  Mac would likely find it harder than the others to break his vow unless the evidence was unquestionable.  Even then it would rip him apart to break his oath.

Mac’s blue eyes flashed at River and he knew there was already a battle going on inside his brother.  A battle between what the man knew to be true and the dragon bound by the oath.  To break it without extreme evidence.  It would cause the beast to take hold and the man to be lost forever.

River allowed his eyes to roam the room taking in the face of each man that served under him.

They all felt that their blind allegiance was wrong.

They all wanted answers.

They all hungered for justice.

“Hey there boss man.  Those the orders?”

Creed Oliver said with a jerk to his chin.  By rights Creed should be the leader of the Order, he was older than River by more than fifty years, but he had been deemed too unstable to hold the position.  Looking into his black eyes now, River could see the madness.  There was only a tiny rim of green left around the blackness and when that was gone Creed would be lost to them.

Damn the Council and their rules.  Damn their race for being so weak and damn the shifters who hunted them.

River gritted his teeth.  There were only a few dragonkind left in the world.  Only three belonged to the Order.  So many had lost themselves to their beasts and been exterminated.

Even now River couldn’t keep himself from looking down at his hands.  They should be covered in the blood of his kinsmen.  So many had died at the point of his blade, some his brothers, kept from their sanity by the same council they served. 

Creed growled low in his throat.

“Stop looking at your hands.  Their deaths were not your fault.  Their blood covers the hands of the Council not yours.”

“Weren’t they brother?”  River spoke low, but he knew Creed would hear him.  He moved his fingers and could almost feel the sticky warmth of blood on his hands, could almost smell the coppery sweetness of it in his nose.

He met his brother’s eyes and saw the small shake of his head and understood his meaning, not yet.

“And stop watching me as if I may roast you.  Have I lost your trust?”

River shook himself.  No good could come of these thoughts today.  He knew he must find a way to save Creed, but the Council seemed to get in the way every time they got close.  He looked his brother in the eye and didn’t flinch when the blackness undulated in Creed’s eyes.

“You have my trust brother and my oath.”

Creed shook his head hard.  “You can’t find her Riv.  They have let her die too many times.  You only get so many chances at this thing.”

“That’s shit.  We look.  I’m not willing to give up.  We have to look.”

River let his eyes find Mac again.

“We look.”

Mac swallowed hard.  He had almost given up hope of finding his dragonmate.  He never spoke of it, never acknowledged it, but he was dragonkind so River knew he hungered for his mate.  River knew because he felt it too.

Dragonkind was the strongest of all the shifter races, the leaders in the beginning and the protectors.  It wasn’t until some found dragons to be too strict with the secrecy that protected them from discovery that a rebellion began.  Dragons were slaughtered in their youth, before they’d had a chance to gain their true power.  It became known that a male dragon could only do so through bonding with a certain female and after mating the males could only be killed with a blade dipped in the blood of their mate.  It was not the wound that ended the life of the male, but pain his mate had suffered, transferred to him through the blood that entered his body.  It was an agonizing death and the reason dragons protected their mates so completely.  The myth of a dragon’s hoard was based on nothing more than a devoted mate, but it was a fierce devotion, but could only be so after the ritual that forged the two together as one and the sharing of vows.  Mating was different for the females of dragonkind and not even River understood it fully, but it was believed by most to be similar.

The romantic notions of a true mate were bullshit.  It was not some magical meeting.  It was agony for both parties.  The male suffered the loss of his only mate, sometimes so many times that he lost his mind.  The human female suffered gruesome deaths at the hands of those who would eradicate dragonkind forever.  The fictions of fairytale endings were nothing but nonsense.

Somehow the original Council had found a way to find these women and discover their dragon mate.  Then they would be murdered.  They usually had no idea why they were being tortured and killed.  Their screams seemed to echo through the halls of their cavern as River stood there.  Was the blood of every one of those women on his hands?  Was the blood of those mates there as well?  Could he have stopped it all if he’d had the courage?

River’s hands shook as he remembered watching Mindy, his own mate, being torn apart by a man she’d trusted for years.  He’d been a childhood friend, but it hadn’t mattered when the symbol burned in the air above her head.  Nothing had mattered.  She had been stripped down to her skin and tortured, torn apart because she had been made for a man like River.

River felt bile rise in his throat.

He had been ordered not to make himself known at the time of Mindy’s death.  He had been assured that it was for the greater good that he allow her to be taken, just this once.  The council would help him secure her next time.

He had allowed those monsters to take her from him and it had ripped at his soul.  For what?  To show his loyalty to the most corrupt of all of their people?

The original Council issued orders for dragon mates to be executed on sight.  Those who still followed the old teachings still carried out these orders.  It didn’t matter who the women were, when the mark was seen, they were executed, but was the council different now?  How could it be when many of those same men sat around that long stone table?  How could it be so different when it was still led by the same man who had started the dissention between the races and the queen in the first place?  Was he the only one who had these thoughts?

River’s eyes fell on Creed again.  He had watched his mate die four times.  Each time she came back and remained hidden for twenty-five years.  Each time he found her she had been taken before he could complete the mating that would save them both.  One more time would end him and they all knew it.  He was too close to the madness to survive another loss.

“Five more years Riv.  I’ll hang on.  Let’s see the orders.”  Creed reached for the envelope and something else rose in River’s throat.  The smell of sulfur filled the room.  He had to grit his teeth to keep the flames from spewing from his mouth.  Creed knew, even now that his mate lived in the world and that the Council likely knew where she was.

The Council could help them, but they refused.  They feared what a true dragonkind male would do when he was at full strength, especially an ancient like Creed.  They allowed these atrocities to happen and expected River to continue to carry out his orders.  It would fall to him to take the life of his brother if something happened to his mate again.  His blade would have to bleed his own brother’s blood from his body.  He would never survive that, even now his beast beat against his mind rebelling against even the thought of such a thing.

No male had found his mate in too many years to remember.  The thought made River question his vows again.  Dragonkind did not break their vows.  They were almost powerless to do so and the council knew this, but he had his loophole.

“Well at least it’s not another kill order.”  Jonah spoke from where he sat leaning against one of the long benches that ringed the massive fire pit in the center of the cavern and distracted River from his dark thoughts.

River hadn’t opened the envelope, he had wanted to read it with the others as he always had.  Now he was curious.

He reached for the folder that Jonah had pulled from the envelope and stared down at a picture of a woman.  The black and white picture didn’t show the color of her eyes, but somehow he knew they were blue.  He knew it as sure as he knew her hair would be silky to the touch.

Josh read the file.  His dark hair falling over his golden eyes as he tilted his head.  River watched as his brother Deek mirrored Josh’s actions.  They were twins and the youngest of the Order, but they were a powerful team, an asset.  Would they follow River...?

“So, it looks like we are supposed to watch her.  Just watch her.  River can’t go anywhere near her because she is something that will drive his dragon nuts.”  Josh’s eyes narrowed.  “Doesn’t say anything about Creed or Mac.”  Josh looked up.  “Are you guys that different?”

River shook his head in confusion.  “We shouldn’t be affected differently by anyone.”  He met Creed’s eyes.  None knew how similar they really were.  They were brothers in more than ceremony, they shared the same mother and father.  Sons of Citlali and her mate, known only as Antinaco.  Their mother never revealed the true name of her mate, even to her children he was kept safe.  That was the nature of the dragonkind.  If the Council knew they would surely have River and Creed killed for no reason other than they were Citlali’s children.  The council didn’t understand dragonkind and would not likely listen to River, but dragonkind were a matriarchal people.  Females were natural rulers and men fought.  River had no desire to lead, although he could probably claim the throne.