Quinn

Somewhere up north, 13 Days on the Trail

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They were getting close, though Quinn couldn’t put her finger on why she knew that. It was a gut instinct she’d long since learned to trust. Leaden gray skies hung overhead like an ominous warning. Snow began to fall, light at first, but the chill riding the wind promised a fiercer storm in the offing.

Smaller enclaves and towns had begun to appear and they’d avoided all of them. Smoke rose in the distance, however, and Wyatt slanted a look toward her. It was too early in the day to call it quits, but if they dropped south to return north, they’d likely be in a worse situation.

“Your call,” he said, slowing Goliath until they rode abreast.

Her call. She’d already claimed it, and they still had several hours of light, albeit gloomy light. The horses were both moving smoothly. Even her gelding seemed to be feeling frisky. A few hours in the growing cold might change that, but the land had contoured to rolling hills—not a lot of caves.

If they risked heading to a settlement, it might endanger the populace. There was also an increased chance of being noticed by one of MacPherson’s people. Something ratcheted inside of her.

Instinct said they would be safer if they didn’t go. A storm of trouble already lurked dangerously close, and if they went to the town…

“We should go.” The decision seemed to fly in the face of wisdom and reason, yet it was for exactly those two thoughts that she made the decision. Wyatt wanted to bait MacPherson, to pull his focus to them.

He wants me to betray him, too. The notion curdled her stomach. Had it been only a fortnight since she found herself face to face with one of the men it was her foreordinance to destroy?

Though the spells locking her eroded, her need to fulfill the quest the spirits had deemed for her continued to lag. Even the gaping maw within her didn’t look at him as something to be consumed. Perhaps fending off the spell-fueled Fevered who attempted to read her had satiated the hunger being near Fevered always ignited within her.

Or perhaps it was that like he’d said—he and his brother were different. They were the cause not the result. The concept made her head ache.

“Jessica?” Then he went and called her by that name again. When he said Jessica, it felt more like an endearment than a name. She much preferred it when he said Quinn in that deep, baritone. Quinn was a warrior, a goddess-blessed blade. She exterminated the wrongful and protected the innocent.

Jessica was too damn confusing.

She’d been Quinn for too long to be comfortable in Jessica’s skin. Not when Jessica had something to lose.

“We should go,” she repeated. “This storm is likely to get worse before it gets better. The horses will appreciate the shelter.” And the longer they were alone, the more her guard dropped. “It might also net us some information.”

Frowning, he glanced from her toward the vague outline of buildings they could just make out on the horizon. If not for the slender plumes of smoke rising, they could just as easily have been rock structures for their lack of definition. “Perhaps you can transport us ahead to another location.”

Wait? Doubt from him? “It’s close enough, we could be there in an hour.”

“Perhaps, but we’re still days from the Lake. You said he kept a compound there.”

“I know he does, but I’ve never been to it. I can’t tell you exactly where it’s located.” Why the reluctance now?

“We don’t need shelter to stay safe from the storm. I can shield us. Leave it for now.” He turned Goliath away and cut to the east.

“What?” Tapping her heels to the gelding’s side, she hurried after the other two. The horse picked up to a trot, then matched Goliath in stride. “It was your plan.”

“The storm is blowing toward us, but it’s also running darker to the north. If we stick moving east, we may only see the edges.” It wasn’t an answer to her question. “We still have hours of light.”

A chill worked beneath her duster, and Quinn rubbed her jaw. Though he shared what sounded like a valid reason on the surface, it didn’t help their cause. “Harder to track us if they can’t see us.”

That odd sensation of eyes on her crawled over her once more, and she studied the landscape around them. Save for some birds they’d seen earlier in the day, nothing seemed moving in the winter except for them. They hadn’t even encountered a person since leaving St. Louis.

Finding nothing amiss, she looked inward. Deep meditations and focused study had all been a part of her training. Wyatt might rely on his knowledge of the land and the spirits, but she had been raised to trust herself and to listen to those internal warning bells.

The tribes lived hand in hand with nature, while the coven lived with their fingers on the pulse. Similar, yet utterly different. The maw wasn’t active, the sense of Fevered reaching for her or trying to affect her absent. The spell bindings lay in tatters, their metaphysical ropes practically ash. The barest trace of familial magic left a tang on the back of her tongue.

It was gone. All of it. Her earliest memories were of the way the shackles chafed when her thoughts turned to hunting, or the gods help her, when a Fevered crossed her path. The choking sensation would threaten her with unconsciousness. It was not a way to live her life, yet it was what she had grown accustomed to.

Occasionally, the leash would be loosened, but only at the discretion of Rosemary in the beginning and the coven as a whole once Rosemary passed. Yet, over the years it had been damaged—likely when Wyatt tried to resurrect his brother. The disturbance had poisoned magic for months. It was a time no potion would formulate, and everything they had made before separated and refused to be combined.

The elders proscribed the use of magic, and for nearly three years afterward, the bindings on her had loosened. It was her first taste of freedom, albeit a short one.

Though she didn’t miss the locks, the chains, and the control—sadness bubbled for the last link she had to the witches who’d raised her. Granted, they hadn’t treated her like family or even as one of them, but they’d been the only family she’d known.

A hand on her arm pulled her to the present, and she blinked away the cobwebs of the past. “I’m fine.” She meant to pull away, yet found her hand taking his. Her gloves shielded her from the skin contact, but not from the way he gripped her fingers.

“Do you feel something?” He likely meant did she sense danger from an external threat, but the only hazard to her right then was continuing this foolish pursuit with him.

“No,” she answered, choosing to answer the meaning and not with the truth. “I’m tired. It’s likely affecting my judgment.” Why else would she be regretting the choices that put them on this path? “Why didn’t you run?” Blurting out the question was another mistake, yet once it jerked free, she studied the man still holding her hand as his horse angled him closer.

“When?” Wyatt studied her, the brim of his hat vibrating from the breeze.

“When you realized what MacPherson was…when you realize the Fever was spreading. When you lost the last time…why do you keep going for him?” She knew the answer, the only one it could be.

“Because I created a monster,” Wyatt said, agreeing with her belief. “My—if I hadn’t been so wholly focused on what I didn’t see in the vision quest, and making excuses for it by devoting myself to decadence, my brother wouldn’t have been alone. He might not have died, or I would have been there at the moment of death. I could have kept him with me. That was my first mistake. My second was lashing out and abusing the gift I’d been born with to defy the spirits I felt had abandoned me. Worse, the spirits had abandoned my brother.”

The raw grief in his words belied the nearly two centuries that had passed since the first events.

“What I created—what I loosed on this world? Every death, every pain he has inflicted, it’s my fault.” There was no artifice in the simple statement. “I did this. I have to undo it.”

“You are only one…”

“It doesn’t matter. Before he…before he took my body, I could still spirit walk. I had the chance to drive him from this one. I should have realized I need to make sure he had nowhere else to go.” Wyatt shook his head. “It was a stupid mistake, born from grief and arrogance. I had allies, powerful ones who encouraged me to live. To find a way to make it right. And it cost them their lives.”

“Did he kill your wife?” It was a blunt question, even for her. Yet, being confronted with the weight of his pain, she had to know. Had Adam added insult to injury?

“No, that was me.” Wyatt exhaled the words and released her hand as he looked to the distance. “I should have forced her to stay behind, but she insisted on joining the battle. It was no place for a woman.”

Not taking affront, Quinn listened. Who was the woman Wyatt had taken as a wife?

“To understand, I have to tell you about Katherine. I don’t really want to discuss her with anyone, but you need to understand that piece to have the answer to your question.” He didn’t continue, his fists clenching then unclenching.

Now was not the time to push him. Yet, she said, “Katherine was your wife?”

The sudden sharp, hard edge to his laughter declared the truth before he said, “No, and thank all that is holy I didn’t let that witch trap me that way. She damn near owned my soul.”

“You are a confusing man, Wyatt Morning Star.” Why the abrupt mood swing irked her, she couldn’t put her finger on. It irritated her nearly as much as her own eagerness to understand his life, what drove him, and why he’d made the choices he had.

Shouldn’t it suffice that the choices had been made? After all, what was done was done. They couldn’t undo any of it.

“Katherine was a siren, and one of the first I trained with when I met Quanto. He was young and enthusiastic. He believed in the innate goodness of those who suffered from the Fever. After all, no one sought the gifts they’d been given. It was his goal to heal everyone, to create a safe space for them.”

The shaman took the opposite tact of most in her experience. Wyatt blew out a breath he didn’t need to take. The breeze seemed to abate, or was Wyatt merely blocking it with his ability? The man did it as easily as breathing, wearing his power like a second skin.

“I thought you met Quanto after your last fight,” she said, not saying the last time he lost to Adam.

“No, I said Quanto saved me. I’d known him before. Time …tends to run together.” He wasn’t wrong. She could recall parts of her life with Rosemary with perfect clarity as though the witch and her coven were still waiting back east for her, and not that they were more than a century and a half dust.

“Katherine was an irrepressible spirit, powerful and gifted. She made everything fun. For a time, I learned to laugh again. What I didn’t realize is that she was so beloved because we all adored her voice, adored her for her ability—. When she turned us one against another, I would kill someone for her before it woke me to the reality what she’d been doing.”

“So their gifts affect you?” It was one saving grace for Quinn. She could feel the power directed at her, and she could consume it before it could inflict harm.

“It shouldn’t have been able to, or so I believed—that I was above them. Better than them. Katherine loved to manipulate everyone around her, it was as though she couldn’t help it. She took her value from how others perceived her, and even the hint of a question challenged how she saw herself. It may have begun innocently enough, but it rapidly spun out of control.” He shook his head. “In the end, Quanto wanted to help her but he couldn’t bring himself to end her.”

She didn’t have to ask, only to wait.

“I snapped her neck.”

---

Wyatt

---

Bringing up Katherine always left a sour flavor in his mouth. For a short time, he thought he’d tasted a real life with her. “I didn’t deserve what others did—to settle down, to dig in stakes anywhere—not when Adam was still out there. So the siren manipulating me showed me what it could be like, and I won’t deny that I wasn’t happy for a little while. Happiness born of a lie, but happy nonetheless. Killing her didn’t bring any relief from the reality of her actions, only grief when we returned to ourselves and realized to the extent how much had been created by what she convinced us of, and how much we’d lost.” He supposed, in some small way, he should have been grateful to Katherine. If not for her, he would never have looked at Willow twice.

Instead of prodding him for answers, Jessica kept her gaze on the distance. Was she giving him privacy or bored with his answers? Then she blinked and swiped a hand across her face before reaching for a waterskin hanging on the saddle.

Was she shedding a tear for him? It was the single most unsettling thing he’d experienced in a life marked by tragedy and horrific action. Jessica was far too poised and powerful to cry for him.

“Willow came into my life about six months after Katherine died.” It was rare to say Katherine’s name. He never mentioned Willow. Not even Quanto had mentioned her by name. “She was Apache, and she kept her distance from Quanto’s people. The Cheyenne had made their way south for a time. As long as they didn’t go into Apache lands or take anything from them, the Apache left them alone.”

He could see it like it was only the day before, the lone woman riding a paint pony and watching them from a distance. She’d shadowed their movements for days. Others in the tribe had noticed, but as long as she didn’t interfere with them, they left her be.

“The tribe would not have interfered with her, and she did not seem to be swift on coming to us, so Goliath and I went out to investigate.” The people of the tribe could afford to be magnanimous, but in Wyatt’s experience, that only invited further harm. He and Quanto had only rejoined the tribe after Katherine’s passing a few months prior. Quanto needed to be with his people, and they had been grateful enough to have their shaman back that they’d overlooked Wyatt’s presence.

He spent more time away from the tribe than with it, no matter what attempts Quanto made to involve him.

“I wanted to know what she wanted, and I wanted to make sure she wasn’t a threat.” The wind increased around them, so he thickened the windbreak he held before them. The force of his powers against the weather wasn’t a full shelter, but it would keep the worst of the cold off them. She hadn’t commented on the way the snow had begun to blow sideways everywhere except on them. “Willow didn’t flee at my approach, nor did she seem to welcome it.”

If anything, the woman had stiffened her posture and seemed torn between fight or flee. Wyatt had dismounted and stood empty handed as he spoke to her. If she was a scout, then she’d either take her chance or leave. If she needed something from them, then his appearing nonthreatening might open the door to communication.

“What did she choose?” The question brought him out of the memory, and he frowned. Had he been talking the whole time? Another reason he didn’t like to think about Willow, as his memories of her were both poignant and captivating.

“Neither. She collapsed. If I hadn’t been there, she would have been hurt. It was only after I caught her that I realized how ill she was. Her tribe ran her out because she’d become sick, then their medicine woman declared her cursed…” It was a familiar story, and a glance at Jessica nodding told him she understood.

Satisfied he didn’t need to expand, he reached into one of his packs and pulled out some bread he’d wrapped and carried with him. He didn’t need it, but Jessica’s surprised smile was reward enough.

“Quanto looked her over and declared it the Fever.” Which Wyatt had already known. “The tribe was leery, so I tended her while they moved on. I trailed them by half a day. Willow was not happy to wake a few days later—different, but alive. She’d thought to throw herself at the Cheyenne and perhaps they would kill her so her death would be swift. Of all the things I have ever done, she found me saving her unforgiveable.”

The memory of her fury at him, and the items she’d thrown as she verbally castigated him for everything from the manner of his birth to what he must do with pigs still held some amusement for him.

“Eventually, the tribe accepted her because Quanto did. He did what he always longed to do, and he began to teach her when her gift manifested.” Wyatt wanted to teach her, too. He’d also found himself drawn to her, more than he should have been. Katherine had awakened a need in him he hadn’t recognized, though Willow had.

“What was her gift?” Jessica’s using his term pleased him, and he reoriented himself to the present. Remembering Willow used to hurt more.

“She could become invisible and make what she touched also vanish. Quanto called it bending the light. I called it annoying.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “It manifested when she was upset or angry, and at first she refused to control it. So I spent a whole day infuriating her.” Her insults had grown more creative by the hour.

Jessica’s laughter warmed him further. “I have no doubt you could succeed at the task.”

“Yes, after a time, she mastered it, and then she began to use it to scout ahead for us. Eventually, when we settled on the Mountain the first time for the long summer, she used it to explore. She was forever sneaking away. She found another student for Quanto, and he took her with him on his excursions.” Those always annoyed Wyatt, but Quanto’s determination to save the Fevered knew no limitations. “Because they both insisted on their foolish trips, I went with them.” Eventually, Willow taught him to laugh again, then to care, and finally…

Continuing, he skipped forward in his tale. Some memories were private. “After a time, once we had gathered a tribe of our own, she asked me about my brother—about my history—and I confessed to her the truth. She thought of the best way to go after him, and how she could hide us from his sight. It took me a year to agree to it, but I did.” His choice cost her. “She was able to cloak us all, and it took us right to the heart of where he was.”

The battle raged around them, Fevered against Fevered. In some ways, it had been the most beautiful and horrible thing he’d ever seen. With Willow’s hand in his, he’d tracked through the fight to where Adam MacPherson oversaw the fight. He’d taken the risk and leapt. The creature housing his brother hadn’t expected it. Then he was there, thrusting him from the form he’d taken, their spirits waging war.

Sighing, Wyatt finished the tale. He had to finish it. “I didn’t expect him to flee the fight, though I should have. He knew he couldn’t take me at one on one combat, and so sure of my victory, I didn’t recognize he had an escape route. A route that took him to my body. Once he was there, he reached over and…” With Wyatt’s hands. “He snapped Willow’s neck. She died believing it was me who murdered her.”

Looking at his hands, he shook his head. “I knew better. I knew what the creature was capable of, and I knew what could happen. I leapt into the form he’d abandoned, and then he took advantage of the distraction and struck me—over and over.”

If Quanto hadn’t arrived… “He saved me. All of ours were dead, and Willow? The next thing I knew, we were back on the Mountain. Quanto and me, and the body of my dead wife.”

“It was a cruel thing he did,” Jessica said after a moment of silence.

He lifted his head and studied her. She said he not you.

“He took your body, he took you, then he took her. You can’t kindle the resurrection in that form, can you?”

No, he couldn’t. When Willow left the world, her spirit flew free and true. “I wouldn’t have tried anyway, not after last time.” It was a lie, and they both knew it, but she let him have it.

“Adam knew you well enough to know what would hurt you the most, so he did it…then he went after you to try and destroy you. He wanted you to suffer first.”

He had. It didn’t bring Willow back or mitigate his involvement in her death.

“I am sorry for your loss,” the gentle words washed over him, more their tone than the content.

“The reason I’m telling you all of this, is I won’t let the creature take anyone else. When the time comes, when I ask you for it, you have to destroy this body.”

“What?” No mistaking the shock in her eyes, but Wyatt didn’t look away as he stared at her.

“I’ve been forging swords for years. For one moment, one all too brief moment, I saw the blade that would kill this form. That would destroy it, and break the magic binding it to the world.” He’d never not seen it. But every sword he made, it was never right. “You carry that blade, Jessica. When I ask you for it, I need you to use it.”

Jessica Quinn could kill him.

She was the one thing he’d never had on his side before.

“I don’t know…”

“You don’t have to know. Believe me, trust me. I need you to do this. You can’t hesitate, either. You have to strike exactly in the moment I tell you to, and we’ll have a real chance.”

Disbelief reigned in her eyes, and more—sorrow. Girding his heart, he reached over and took her hand once more. “Please.”

“I don’t want to say yes.”

“I need you to.” It was something he needed more than anything in the world. He needed Jessica on his side in this. They could end the nightmare once and for all.

“What if—what if we do this and you’re successful? Does it close the door? Does the Spirit Fever end?”

“I hope so. I don’t know. Ending the creature is what we have to do, even if I have to die to make it happen.” He was a spiritwalker, and he was trapped in this body. If she destroyed it, maybe—just maybe—it would be enough to free him. Then he would take back what was his or destroy it in the process.

Either way, Adam MacPherson ended.

“Say yes, Jessica,” he coaxed, squeezing her hand. “You know you wanted to kill me when you met me.”

“You’re not funny,” she said with a scowl.

“Just remember, if you need me to annoy you into doing it, I will.” He meant to make it light. She’d said it was her destiny to destroy him, and he needed her to fulfill that calling.

It might just be enough to save them all.