Highland Son (Highland Sorcery: A New Dawn) (2 page)

“Something that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.” He tried to keep his accent in check. Being raised in Scotland by a mum from Seattle and a thirteenth century Highlander gave him a peculiar accent and turn of phrases that even Ethan and Dez gave him strange looks over.

“Hmmmm.” Green eyes flashed up at him. “That happens. Sure ticked the monsters off when you sprayed them with it.”

“Yeah.” He looked down at the top of her worn and fraying knitted cap while she held her hand out for his ammunition. He handed over his bullets and the gel pack for his pulsar, which she shoved into the deep pockets that ran down the side of her camo-pants.

“Any knives on you?”

Smirking, Alexander pulled the blade from the back of his waistband and bent to retrieve his second in his boot all the while taking in the girl’s appearance. He didn’t want to lose track of who had his supplies. There wasn’t anything significant about her, average height, average features, slim build. A bit of dirt smudged her cheek, worn clothes, browns and greens, good for camouflaging within ruins of a city. Not much to distinguish her from the others around her, except being female, but there could be more women back at their camp.

“I need to pat you down,” she said without a hint of embarrassment.

“Don’t trust me?” He grinned, baiting her a bit.

She didn’t rise to it. “Don’t know you.”

Alexander spread his arms out wide, allowing her to move in close. She was quick and efficient, running her hands down his length and then back up and into his hair. He was about to make a quip, but…she smelled like cherries.

He hadn’t seen a cherry or a cherry tree in years. How was that possible? He leaned into her.

She jerked back, eyes flashing.

“Jewel?” The leader asked.

The girl wrenched her gaze away and straightened. “He’s clean.”

Jewel
. Alexander watched her walk away, even when she turned back to glance at him and immediately looked away again beneath his stare.

“At least you got a pretty girl.” Ethan muttered. Arms spread, he was still being patted down by a wiry old geezer who was taking his time. Since he’d already taken five blades off Ethan, he couldn’t blame the guy for going over him a second time. Alexander knew for a fact there were three more hidden on him.

“Oh dang, fella,” Ethan snarled. “Let me.” He pulled the half-inch blade from the seam of his pocket and another from the lining inside his waistband.

“What do you do with these? File your nails?” The old guy laid the small blades in the palm of his weathered hand.

Ethan shrugged. “File off something.”

The geezer squinted up at him while others around him gathered up their packs from the ground.

They left the dead Sifts where they fell. Let them develop a taste for each other’s flesh instead of that of humans as far as he cared. They walked single file out of the salvage yard and through what was left of the deserted town.

When the monsters first came out of hiding, it was the smaller communities that suffered the most. Entire towns were gone—devoured—leaving authorities perplexed until the monsters’ hunting grounds expanded.

Then without access to crops, hunger and disease wiped out half as many as the monsters did, even with the military acting in full force. Sifts simply reproduced faster than they could be killed.

A discarded doll squished beneath Alexander’s boot. He froze.

“I don’t get it,” Ethan said behind him. “How has a group of humans held out near this large a concentration of the flubbies? It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s what we need to find out,” Alexander whispered. Dez was up ahead, spine stiff, eyes straight ahead, though he knew the man was taking in everything, heard everything, every sense active. He’d already be weighing the situation and have several exit points mapped out.

They brought them into an abandoned motel, one of those two level square buildings with a courtyard and pool in its center. The outside walls and windows were boarded with steel and the entire parking lot rimmed with mismatched fencing material, boards, shells of cars, whatever made a half-decent barrier.

Alexander noted two trucks and three cars that appeared to be in working shape. One of the trucks had a small machine gun mounted in its bed.

They were taken through the lobby and out into the courtyard. The pool had been drained and now contained a bed of dirt for a garden. Short green leaves pushed up from the dirt already.

Chickens were penned in a corner of the courtyard near the old pool filters, and one of the rooms without a door but wire across the opening appeared to house scruffy goats. Several people came out of the other rooms surrounding the pool. Many were children.

Above, the open sky was crisscrossed with concertina wire running from roof to roof, a thumb-in-the-dyke measure at best. It may keep out one to two Sifts, but a horde of the hungry monsters would shred their own skin to get to food.

That’s without considering the beasts’ ability to create holes in the air and rift their way past any wire or walls.

Either these people had a helluva lot of firepower or they’d been plain lucky up until now.

Alexander wasn’t a big believer in luck.

But he was a believer in people and just one look at the children staring wide-eyed up at him and there was no going back.

He’d get these people to a safe location no matter what it took.

They were taken to and confined in one of the old guest rooms on the ground floor. It’d been stripped of, well, everything. No beds or dresser. Most of the hardware in the bathroom was gone, even the mirror had been removed. The glass from the one window was missing, replaced by stained Plexiglas and bars. Apparently they weren’t the first
guests
this group had detained.

Ethan sank down on the worn beige carpeting and leaned his back against the wall. “I’m not leaving Beatrice behind.”

Dez huffed an exasperated sigh. “If you’d stop naming your weapons you wouldn’t be so attached.”

“She’s irreplaceable.” Ethan ran a palm across his close-cropped hair. “Where would I ever find another one? If you guys want to jump out of here, go ahead, I ain’t going.”

“You think we wouldn’t?” Dez countered, prowling the empty room like a caged wolf. Of course he wouldn’t. Neither of them would.

“Unbunch your panties.” Alexander sank down along the opposite wall. “We’re not anywhere near that point. Assessment?”

Dez scratched his jaw. “The men holding our ammo all went into the first door left of the check-in desk. A good bet that’s where they keep their arms. There were three guys on the roof, another two in the parking lot, most likely another pair round the other side, and the dozen that brought us in, most armed with military grade, some with good ole boy hunting rifles and crossbows, which, makes me wonder if they have the fire power to keep off a large impact of Sifts or if they’ve pulled out all they got for show.”

“By my count,” Ethan jumped in. “Nineteen or twenty men, seven women, one of them older than the hills, and thirteen kids, none younger than five or six. The guy in charge is a pompous buttwipe. You thinking of bringing them to the lighthouse?”

“Their defenses are limited. We can’t leave them, especially those kids to be slaughtered.”

“I’m not suggesting that. It’s just…” Ethan scowled. “Something’s not right here. It feels…”

Alexander leaned forward. He’d been feeling it too, but having Ethan say it out loud stirred the uneasiness in his gut.

“…off.” Ethan shrugged.

~~~

Jewel ladled out three bowls of stew and placed them on the silver platter along with the mugs of water and bread Mae had baked this morning. Sheppard wouldn’t like her going near the strangers, but she’d never been that good at doing as she was told anyway. And maybe these guys had the means to help her.

She walked casually through the courtyard with her load. Miles sat outside the room on one of the old plastic poolside chairs.

“They give away anything interesting?” she asked, knowing part of his guard duty would be to try and listen in on the strangers’ conversation inside.

“Not really. They’re keeping their voices low, but…” Miles frowned. “They’re a cool lot, cool as cucumbers. Not one of them has freaked out and from what I did hear, they sized us up pretty accurately. Mentioned something about a lighthouse?”

“A lighthouse?”

Miles stood and reached for the tray. “I’ll take this in to them.”

Jewel tightened her grip. “I’ve got it.”

Miles didn’t move away from the door. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“They’ve been in there two hours. I’m not going to let them go hungry.”

“But Sheppard…”

“…wants all the fighters we can get. Keeping them locked up and hungry isn’t a great way to convince them to join us.”

He frowned down at her. She smiled sweetly. “When I’m done feeding them, I’ll go fetch you some stew too.”

He eyed the tray. “And Mae’s bread?”

“Sure.” She knew she had him.

“Okay, but this needs to stay out here.” Leaning in, he slipped the small handgun out of the holster on her hip and set it on the plastic chair to lift his own rifle. “I go in first.”

“Of course.”

“And when I say it’s time to leave, you leave.”

“Understood.”

“Ready?”

She nodded and Miles turned the key in the lock and opened the door and stepped inside before her. “Stay where you are,” he ordered the men inside while Jewel stepped into the threshold.

The Plexiglas window didn’t allow in much light. Two of the men were on opposite sides of the narrow room, seated on the carpet, legs sprawled out in front of them. They appeared as relaxed as cats yet Jewel didn’t miss the underlying coil of tension as the one with his hair close-cropped bent one leg up to casually rest his forearm along his knee. These guys were anything but relaxed and Jewel’s stomach tightened at the undercurrent of uneasiness just being at the edge of the room with these guys emitted.

That they were dangerous men and a little too confident in their situation was a given.

It was the third guy that made her the most nervous, though she couldn’t put a finger on why. Between the three, he was the most lanky, the most unassuming, yet…

He stood at the far corner of the room, watching her.

“’Bout time you fed us,” the dusky blond snapped. Jewel had the sudden impression he was purposely gathering any attention to himself. “Seeing as you took all our own rations off us.”

“Thought we were guests.” The other guy still seated drawled.

“You are.” She came all the way into the room. Careful to go behind Miles and not get between his rifle and the men. “Dinner has just been prepared and you’re the first to be served. As
guests
should be.” She lowered the tray to the blond man first, going on the assumption that he was the leader…or at least wanted them to believe he was. It was actually hard to tell. They were three alpha wolves. Any one of them could be the pack leader.

The
leader
straightened against the wall and accepted a bowl from the tray. “Thank you ma’am.” His quiet gratitude softened some of his rough edges. Jerking her gaze into the light blue eyes, the genuineness surprised her.

She went to the other guy on the floor next, because he was closer, not because she could feel the intense gaze of the longer-haired man.

The other dark close-cropped haired guy waggled his brows while she crouched near. “A silver tray. Bringing out all the stops, sweetheart.”

She grinned. “This one hasn’t been melted down for bullets yet so I thought I’d make use of it.”

The guy’s eyes twinkled at the mention of bullets. Yeah, he’d been the one with an entire stockade hidden on him. Jewel found herself smiling back. She could get along with a guy like that.

Straightening, she went to the last man, careful not to turn her back on the others even though she knew Miles had her covered. Without a word, the guy took the last bowl of stew from the tray and cradled its warmth between long fingers..

None of them had taken the bread yet so she stood there holding the tray like a dimwit. She couldn’t set it down on the floor between them, not without giving them access to the heavy tray that could easily become a weapon.

She internally huffed at herself. They still each had their handguns, albeit unloaded. Even without those, these guys didn’t look like the type who needed a tray if they meant to take her down.

She debated setting it down in a show of trust—Miles would kick her butt if she was wrong—when she realized that none of the men had touched their stew yet.

This time her huff was heard. “You think we’d go to the trouble to bring you here just to poison you?”

“Not all drugs are intended to kill.” His voice was so quiet beside her, she made the mistake of looking up into his eyes. Dark eyes, not brown, but…almost violet. And wary. Geez, what had these men been through that they worried about being drugged more than a bullet to the gut? Her heart stumbled to a complete stop. Intelligence gazed back at her. He knew things, this guy. He’d seen and done things that hardly anybody else could comprehend.

Taken in by those eyes, Jewel wanted nothing more than to wipe that haunted expression away. She’d show him she wouldn’t serve them anything dangerous. Shifting the tray to her hip, she grabbed his spoon and helped herself to a mouthful of his stew, swallowing it down. She looked back up and froze. His gaze was transfixed on her mouth.

She swallowed again, feeling the warmth of the stew intensely.

Her pulse banged through the veins along her throat. She couldn’t move, could barely draw in a breath, her lips as captured by his gaze as if he’d leaned close and kissed her.

A throbbing tingle came to life low in her belly and when his gaze lifted from her mouth to her eyes, the tingle erupted into a rattling burst.

Grinning, he took the spoon from her nerveless fingers, flooding her with more warmth when their hands met, that seemed to build inside as she watched him scoop up stew and bring it to his own lips.