Wyatt

The Final Stand

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Streaks of sunlight broke through the thick band of gray clouds. Light stretched as though desperate to touch the ice-mud-churned earth. Every shaft betrayed the damage sustained from the overnight battle. Smoke twined upward through the misty air, casting a pall over the sun’s weak attempts to illuminate the field of dead.

“It’s time.” In his soul, he could feel the dull thud of his brother’s approach. Every time his foot struck the earth reverberated through Wyatt.

“No.” Jessica’s head shake decried the amplified awareness over the next steps. The border between a half-remembered dream and the present blurred. There had been a distance between them before, a miasma he hadn’t been able to penetrate.

“We don’t have any more time.” It was now or never. He’d failed the world once. “It’s time for me to put right what went wrong so long ago.” After fighting through the night, exhaustion wore at him—not from the battle but from refusing to pursue her as she waged her own war.

Jessica refused to look at him. “No. I’m not ready.” It had been easier when he had no idea how much he would care about this woman.

“No one ever feels ready.” No one save Quanto. The old man prepared for his passing with the same deliberateness he’d approached life. Odd how much Wyatt had learned from him, how much the old shaman had changed him. Extending his arm, he ignored the pull of pain along brutalized muscles. The war left its marks on everyone. Gripping Jessica’s shoulder, he blew out a breath. “You were born for this. You’ve known this was coming the whole time.”

“Knowing and embracing it are two different things.”

“I agree.” He shrugged, because there were no words that could undo what the lives they’d lived. “Life is what we make it. So is death. I need your help Jessica. You’re the only one who can do this.” In his dream, she’d always been a stranger, a half-formed image of someone he couldn’t imagine. A warning? A mirage? It didn’t matter. She’d never been the flesh and blood being who penetrated even the cold shell housing his damaged soul.

Another finger’s length of light expanded and the breeze shifted carrying wafts of blood, scorched flesh, and the tang of rot. The ever-present drum beat against his chest. His siblings were coming. The rendezvous was within the hour. He had to be in a position to take out MacPherson once and for all—before they got there.

“Maybe there’s another…” Her very real pain tore at him.

“Don’t.” He hardened his heart. “Don’t search for another answer. It’s time. We all have our parts to play. This one is yours.”

Finally, Jessica turned away from the devastation to look at him. Hell reflected back within the dark eyes he’d once thought soulless pools of black, death incarnate—but even that image passed away. The luminescence in her eyes was pure blue, the endless wonder of the skies on a sunshine splashed day. Still waters ran deep, and within Jessica they ran even deeper. “I love you.”

The words shivered through him. Words he’d sworn he never wanted to hear again. No response encompassed the first flickers of warmth to touch the ice crusting his wearied spirit. “Then stop wasting our time.” Cruel words. Vicious sentiment. They struck true.

The land continued to brighten, every second they wasted giving Adam that much more time to thwart him. “Damn you,” Jessica whispered, then closed the distance between them. Wyatt welcomed the harshness in her kiss, the salt flavoring it. He deserved both the recrimination and the fury. Anger fueled. It fed the soul. It kept the heart beating when everything in the body wanted to die.

He wanted her angry.

The explosion of sound seemed like an afterthought. The blast ripped through his chest, pellets peppering his heart and the muscle shuddered to a halt. Breath stuttering, he fell to his knees. Jessica dropped with him. Instead of pulling away, those deep blue eyes held him captive, and he saw the light extinguishing in his reflection.

“You did it…” he whispered. “Now, finish it.”

Blood flecked his lips, the copper taste so harsh after the sweetness in the kiss. In the distance, Scarlett’s scream pulled at him. His sister’s agony shredded his gut. Scarlett needed him. Power flared only to be sucked from him as Jessica’s lips tasted his again, then his soul stopped fighting. His first real kiss with her, and also his last.

Beginning and end.

Yes, she was perfection.

Eyes still open, he tumbled sideways. The world spun, dark spots littering his field of vision. The world tunneled away and his sister’s scream rose higher. Then fire engulfed Jessica, but Wyatt could do nothing about it.

Not anymore. Darkness crashed over him, endless, fathomless black. Lost. Alone. Frozen. The blackness parted and, for the first time in what seemed eons, he slipped free of his prison.

His soul soared.

Like the arrow loosed from the bow, he shot toward his body. Blood called to blood, but blood also bound the spirit. Angling over the destruction of the battlefield, he could truly see the scope of it. The long night, the furious fighting, and the dead littered everywhere.

A flickering form distracted him, a split second of hesitation and his heart ached.

Rudy.

One of his youngest brothers, and though sometimes careless, his loyalty and love were never in question.

“I failed,” Rudy whispered, lost. Even his spirit had been damaged, the part of him that had blended with the air spirit. Dazed. Confused. Though he was in the midst of his battle, the spiritwalker could not leave the broken boy behind.

Descending, he took him by the shoulders, and the confusion within Rudy’s eyes seemed to clear. “Wyatt?”

“Be free, little brother. Fly. There is more for you than in this world.” Those words had seemed so hollow to him for far too long.

“Ike.”

“We will find him.” An oath. A promise. Shamans cared for the whole of their world, including the hearts and souls of their people. “Fly free, little brother.” The power to heal a soul existed only within the soul itself. It had to want to repair, it had to fill in the gaps and knit together.

Souls, like bodies, could become stronger and evolve. Light suffused Rudy as the air spirit blended tighter with his own. Together they began to repair the ribboning of his form. Wyatt added his strength to theirs, suffusing them with the energy to heal. Awareness rippled through Rudy’s expression.

“Thank you, brother.”

“Fly, brother.” The farewell would be the last he spoke as Rudy bloomed and then his spirit fled the jesses of earth for the beyond. Equal parts saddened and buoyed, Wyatt resumed his path for his own form. The shadow spreading below him warned the creature was on the move.

The physical course his spirit took was the mortal within him. He saw the land as linear. He could not disappear in one place and reappear in another. His soul had to travel along pathways he recognized. That hadn’t always been true, but he’d been shackled for decades in a limited form, a form he’d required energy to even maintain a facsimile of life.

The creature awaited him, dressed in a linen suit, the cream jacket over the whiter shirt gave him the illusion of light. It was so at odds with the native bone structure and it emphasized the too familiar blue eyes.

“Intriguing,” the creature said, his gaze narrowing on Wyatt. That he could see him didn’t surprise Wyatt. Not when the other being only possessed his body, it hadn’t actually melded to it. After all these years, it seemed an unusual choice. It had taken vital parts of Wyatt’s soul to maintain his brother’s body. A flicker of sadness passed through him. The destruction of his physical form was the last remnant of the real Adam gone forever.

“You know you cannot defeat me,” the creature continued as Wyatt considered his grief. “Why do you insist on this cycle of failure? Do you not ever recognize your own weakness?”

Engaging the creature would give him time to assess the threat. He hadn’t realized it yet. An explosion reverberated behind him on the field. For a moment, the creature looked away, his attention riveted on the action playing out behind him.

Lust twisted his expression. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to meet them? These exceptional children you hid away from me…and our own are there, do you see them? I thought you, out of everyone, would appreciate passing on the essence of what we are to another generation. I even chose brothers, just for you.”

Pride shone in his eyes, and he clasped his hands together. Finally, he returned his attention to Wyatt.

“What is it, shaman? Have you finally discovered the true secret of existence? What is simply is? You cannot undo what has been done?” He motioned to the battlefield, but Wyatt wouldn’t be distracted. His family was there. Jessica. The war continued to rage. His fight was before him.

The creature was like a shadow, cloaking the physical form. The body itself could not contain the full breadth of his being, so he wrapped himself over and through it, but none of it knitted together.

All souls could heal. So why had he not blended himself, why had he not sealed the fractures and cracks radiating along the layers?

“I have a surprise for them,” the creature continued. “Combat brings out the best in our kind. It teaches them to reach deep into their abilities, blends them more fully, and enhances their strength…” He continued at length, but the shadow eddied as though it wanted to flow away while desperately clinging to its physical purchase.

The creature was exactly that. A creature. It hadn’t changed—not in all the years since it came to this plane and possessed his brother’s corpse. When Wyatt had opened that door and brought him through, it fed on the magic in the blood.

It had sealed itself into the form and thrived until Wyatt invaded and shattered his hold. The leap to Wyatt’s body had to have been desperation. It didn’t belong there, and it was fighting to stay.

A hand waved before his face, and the creature focused on him once more. “You’re flickering, Wyatt. Your strength is waning. If you need my permission to go, then cross over to the beyond. Be free, brother.”

The glee in his tone, the maliciousness, it was all to cover his genuine distress.

The creature was afraid.

Good.

As the shadow rippled again, Wyatt struck.

His body. His soul.

Rushing inside himself, he doubled over as the pressure of the creature enfolded around him. It thrust tentacles of darkness into him, seeking purchase. His knees buckled as he burned away the first connections. The hill slid out from beneath him, and they tumbled down to the rocky shore.

Time elongated, then twisted as he struggled.

Willow’s eyes gaped at him as he wrapped his hand around her throat. The wife he’d never imagined having, never imagined loving, choked as he tightened his fingers. Wyatt wanted the image to cease, to unpeel his fingers from the sweet column of her throat. Then she hissed out a word, “Forgive,” a moment before her throat was crushed. The crunch of bones was like stab wounds.

No sooner did the light die in her eyes than he punched at the creature, clawing and scraping. They ripped sideways, and he landed amidst the fiery debris of a town burning around him. A hatchet axe split the rapidly disintegrating wood, and a hole formed. Then a young brave—no, a shaman, leapt through into the flames.

Wyatt couldn’t breathe, the was smoke choking him. His eyes teared as the man hauled him up by the buckskin shirt. He hauled him outside into night air, to cold and bracing to match the pits of hell he’d escaped. Staring upward, Wyatt couldn’t wrap his mind around the fast grin on the shaman’s face or the gentleness in his eyes. “I have you, medicine man,” he said in the old tongue. “Live.”

Then the creature yowled, and Wyatt struggled with him again, as they slammed onto the icy surface of the lake. The water cut at him, and they twisted.

The woods around him were dark, and the scent of copper heavy. As the cloud abandoned the moon, pale light fell over the bodies. So many of the tribe, dead. Slaughtered.

The last of Morning Star’s people.

In the center sat the shadow wearing his brother’s corpse. He held a blade in his hand—a blade thick with blood. “They call us a curse, did you know that, brother? They blame Golden Hair for the perversion of their spirits, that her actions in saving us is what will destroy all the people. It was them or us—you see that, don’t you? If they lived, we would die. I saved you.”

Wyatt rushed him, the battle so much what it had been the first time. Power lashed out of him, and he flung the creature away, but the darkness clung to him. The creature fled from him, but in the middle of the pursuit, the sharp cry of an infant cut through the air.

It halted him, and he turned back. Someone lived amidst the carnage. The sound tore at him, begging, and he couldn’t deny the need. Amidst a collapsed teepee and by the cold form of a woman, he found a small boy. Tears streaked its dirty, bloodied cheeks.

The child was of the Blood, his spirit powerful and strong.

A spirit loomed over him, the mother, her expression fierce and proud. “Return.”

The command was one he wouldn’t have ignored, even if she hadn’t given it. The creature escaped while he cared for the infant and crossed many miles, listening to the wind. The spirits knew where the child belonged.

Water clogged his lungs as he burst through the surface of the lake, choking and spitting. The shadow dragged at him, pulling him toward the shore, and Wyatt pulled them under once more.

The mountain clearing appeared before him, a familiar cabin nestled against the rocks and surrounded by trees. Golden Hair hurried outside to greet him as he rode toward her. Heart heavy and defeated. How could he tell his mother that he had failed her, that he had lost her son?

Ice slithered over him, a dozen cuts, but he ignored them as Golden Hair strode toward him. His father’s absence had never struck him as profound before then. He went to his knees in front of her and began to explain. The broken words were like shards of glass in his throat, the tale one he couldn’t bear to spit out.

His abject failure.

Cool hands gripped his face and forced him to look into the beautiful blue-gray eyes of his mother. They were the eyes of early dawn, when twilight still kissed the sky.

“Love.”

There was more she said, but it was the only word which penetrated as the creature dragged him away and they fought. The ice shattered under the force of his power and they rose, arcing over the water and landed on a thicker piece of ice. The shadow tentacled around his throat.

He wrenched it away, twisting with it as the shadow took on its own semi-amorphous shape. Punching them back into the water, he dragged it with him.

And they fell, tumbling and he slammed into the dirt. Something deep in his soul screamed as he recognized the landscape around him.

The cold, dark camp.

The body sprawled in the dirt next to the empty fire.

Rising, he stumbled. A distant part of his mind acknowledged the horse behind him, but he tripped as he ran. Even over his own reek of firewater, he could taste the blood in the air and the stink of gunpowder.

Falling to his knees, he turned his brother over. Agony cut through him. He didn’t want to relive this moment. The profound moment he’d failed his twin, his other half—his brother…

“Son.” A voice called to him, the stern note forcing him to look up. Morning Star crouched before him.

What?

Fog curled around the ground, muting the scene.

“Father?”

Confusion curdled within him. His father hadn’t been there. He’d been alone.

“Son,” Morning Star said, then he reached past Wyatt and touched Adam’s shoulder. A shudder passed through Wyatt as his brother grasped his father’s hand and allowed him to pull him to his feet. Light outlined them. The dry tears in Wyatt’s eyes began to burn.

“Come,” Morning Star said as he wrapped an arm around his brother’s shoulder. “Let us walk a while.”

“My brother,” Adam protested, and Wyatt’s heart squeezed. All the air left his lungs.

“We will wait for him, where the land rises to meet the sky…” And then they were gone, walking away until they faded from view. The camp went quiet, and the memory hit him like so many stones.

Adam’s spirit moved on; he was gone. Wyatt wanted him back, and then he’d…

As his hand stretched out, Wyatt stilled it. Then he’d made a mistake. His anger at them leaving him alone, coupled with the liquor in his system, destroyed so much more than his last connection to his brother.

“Forgive.”

“Live.”

“Love.”

“Son.”

The words penetrated the haze, and Wyatt opened his eyes to find the shadow lunging for him. A smile spread across his face. This was his fight, his battle, and his life.

“I am Wyatt Morning Star,” he squeezed out as he burst through the water. “And your time on this earth is over…”

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Quinn

The End

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Hot air scorched her lungs as the fire poured over her. Shouts split through the air, but the body on the ground went up like a tinderbox. The explosion flung her away. Tumbling, Quinn fought to put out the fire on her duster, then shrugged out of it and onto her feet. Burns littered her arms, and then the fire swarmed toward her again. The maw opened and she pulled the fire inward, even as it tried to catch along her skin.

“Scarlett!” a voice shouted. Another power struck her, this one like ice, and she caught it and pulled it in, too.

“Stop!”

Steam rose around her, and then a wolf lunged in to knock her aside. The physical force sent her sliding down the hill. A rock cut her leg, and blood fell. Heart already pummeled, she had no patience for this.

As she twisted at the base of the hill, she looked for her weapon. Somewhere out there, Wyatt waged war on MacPherson. If he failed—he won’t fail—if he fell—he won’t fall—she had to be there. The rocks cut at her, but she ignored them. Between the bruises and the burns, she was numb.

At the crest, a hand extended over to her. “Let me help you…”

“Scar, enough. She’s not our enemy.” Jimmy Morning Star’s voice rose.

“She killed him! I saw her kill him!” Profound grief rent Scarlett’s voice.

“Take my hand,” Kid repeated, but Quinn didn’t trust the empath. She didn’t trust any of them. Grabbing another rock, she pulled herself up and jerked away when he tried to grip her shoulder. The action nearly sent her flying back down the slide.

Then Julianna was there. The young witch grabbed at her hand and pulled her upright along with Mitchell. The pair steadied her. All around the precipice stood Wyatt’s siblings—as well as the shamans. Jason Kane stood in front of Scarlett. Steam roiled between them.

They were all staring at her, except those trying to block Scarlett. Beyond them, the dead littered the ground. She hadn’t really taken in the carnage, but another glance at the red-haired firestarter and she straightened.

“There are more coming.” She could feel them. The power of them, surging. Whatever MacPherson had planned, the previous night’s battle had only been the tip of the iceberg. “I can’t offer you comfort, or assuage your pain.” Not when her own heart seemed to lose the power of her life’s blood. “You have to be ready for this fight.”

It wasn’t over.

The wolf prowled past her, paused to stare at Scarlett, then leapt away. Jason glanced at her, then toward the east. There was a slender column moving toward them.

“What the hell are those?” This from Delilah, and a note of real horror rang in her voice.

“The dead,” Blue said. “It has called the dead.”

Fighting to catch her breath, Quinn put her hands on her knees. “David, Jenny—” It didn’t matter what their names had been, they were getting all mixed up in her head. “You have to do a cleansing. This land…it’s soaked in blood. The blood of Fevered and human, and he’s trying to make a binding.”

That was what the witches had been doing in their abattoir.

“How do you—?”

She cut them off with a slice of her hand. “I know. I killed his spellcasters, but not before they’d done all the groundwork. That was the point of the bodies he flung at us last night. To sow his hate and poison into the blood. You have to cleanse it, all of it.”

A choked cry came from Scarlett, and they all looked to the burned body. Very little was left of Wyatt’s previous host. The corpse of his brother. Tears clogged the back of Quinn’s throat, but she swallowed the pain. He’d been right about one thing—she was the sin eater.

“He was already dead,” she told Scarlett, her voice firm. “You burned the husk, not the man. If you want to kill me when this is over, then I won’t fight you. But our work here isn’t done.”

The whole time she spoke, Kid stared at her. She could almost feel his power eddying around her, but not once did he try to read her. Perhaps the empath had finally learned.

“What are you going to be doing?” Though Kid spoke, his gaze tracked to where Jimmy set himself up with his rifle and Jason directed Scarlett away from the body. The wolf was still missing, and there were others she didn’t know.

He really didn’t want to know what she would have to do. Somewhere in the distance, a huge crack of noise split the smoky haze and plume rose from the lake. It spun up to the sky, then came down again with a splash.

The ice had shattered in several places.

Quinn tracked the motion.

Water cleansed. Wyatt was going to use the water to purge.

Blood on the earth.

Fire on the body.

Air in the lungs.

Then she turned to the water—water for the heart. If he drowned while he kept hold of the creature, it would destroy the demon.

No…the elements could be conquered. The creature had been conquering them for years, but there was one thing it could not take. The one thing that had to be given.

She had to stop him.

“Stay alive,” she told Kid, then looked to the others. “Protect the witches and the shamans. That one,” she pointed to Blue. “She can put the dead down. And that one,” she pointed to Buck. “He can trap them.”

As if her words were a catalyzing agent, the shamans moved.

“The witches can cleanse the earth, but they need time to do it.”

“Go save him,” Kid said, straightening and pulling off his jacket. He tossed it to her. “We’ll do our part.”

Trust.

It was a strange emotion. She’d barely made it a step before Julianna caught her arm. The young witch really needed to have more care with her personal space. Touching someone allowed them to touch back. “Don’t…” Quinn said before the young witch could utter a word. “This—this is the end for some, but it’s the beginning for the rest. This is your fight, the one you were all born and trained to do together.”

The fight in the Lake was hers.

Hers and Wyatt’s.

She wouldn’t leave him to fight it alone.

Pulling away, she descended the hill at a limp. Behind her, another cry went up, the scream of an eagle. The pull of magic flowed. Every part of her body hurt, but she ignored the pain.

Being born had probably hurt, too.

Dying definitely did.

The sound faded as she pushed it all away, then she squinted at the ice and ported. The cold went straight to her bones. Another plume rose, farther in the Lake. The ice cracking sounded like another explosion.

She ported.

The plume collapsed and she arrived just in time to see Wyatt strike the water. The shadow closing over him thrust him deep into the icy depths.

Blackness spread through the churning deep, and she slid as she reached the edge of the water. She had to see him, and all she could see was the darkness. Dammit.

“C’mon,” she whispered. As if in answer, a crack split across the ice shelf opposite her. How the hell they had frozen most of the lake, she didn’t know and she didn’t care. Following instinct, she ported, following the crack splintering its way across the ice. With every landing, she skidded. The blood running from her leg didn’t help, and the cold was making her teeth clench.

Then the ice exploded upward, and a plume rose. Lifting her head, she tracked the spiraling body as he fought. As the water fell, she jumped and tackled him, then ported. They tumbled over in the dirt. Rolling, the dirt clung to their soaked skin. All the wind went out of her. Blind ports were a terrible thing. A rock struck her as Wyatt’s power lashed out around her. The maw opened and she fought against draining his ability.

He’d need all of his strength.

Still wrestling, she ported them again. They crashed through a fiery building, and the wave of hot rippled over her. This was living fire, and it sucked at the moisture in her body, and scorched the chill in her bones.

Wyatt lay collapsed beneath her. His clothes were filthy. Blood marred his face, like two long lines of war paint from his eyes. When those eyes opened, they were a stunning blue—not blue and green mismatched. It was unsettling.

No recognition flickered in those eyes, but they couldn’t stay in whatever hell this was. Seizing his shirt, she dragged him upward and ignored his ineffectual hands beating at her.

Not hesitating, she seized him before the darkness could reach his face, and they tumbled again. This time, they landed in another mountain clearing. The snow was deep, and cold. Every muscle in her body ached. Where were they?

Wyatt went to his knees, and tears soaked his cheeks. It was the most heart wrenching thing she’d ever seen. The tears added fresh blades to the blood, soot, and dirt coating his cheeks.

Porting again, she groaned as they landed on the scattered bones of the dead. It was a field of bones. An empty shadow of where life had once thrived. A bone crushed beneath her feet as she staggered upward.

Wyatt weaved a path away from her. Breathless, and aching, she stumbled after him. As the clouds drifted away from the moon, she was able to take in the scene. The carnage here happened long ago. So long, many of the bones had become dust. Still limping, she followed Wyatt as he made his way through the field of dead. When he paused and went to his knees, she froze. The darkness around him continued to slither, squeezing. Blood flecked from his lips as air escaped the man.

Rising, he cradled…nothing, but his eyes were white. Pure white and the darkness closed in on them.

“Dammit, Wyatt.” She swore and launched at him. The next port took them to a fallen forest. The downed wood stretched out in a circle. A scorch mark had blackened the earth down to stone—as though revealing the bones of the earth.

The blackness recoiled and Wyatt went utterly still. Hurrying to catch up to him, Quinn pressed a hand to her side. Blood leaked from a cut, and her leg was numb below the knee.

Probably a good thing, considering she could smell the blood beneath the dirt, and the water, and the ash. The gleaming white eyes turned toward her, no—not toward her. Toward something else, then his mouth opened as though in a scream, only the sound didn’t escape.

Catching his face in her hands, she said, “Wyatt…I’m here. You’re not alone.”

“I am Wyatt Morning Star,” he squeezed out and seized her throat. “And your time on this earth is over…”

His power lashed at her, but his eyes were burning. She could fight him, but she didn’t. The fury in him wasn’t directed at her. Covering his hands with her own, she coughed. “I am Jessica Quinn, and it is not my time on earth that is over, creature.”

The shadow whipped toward her, but it never struck another force, impacting off the shield. Blue bled into the white of one eye, and slowly into the other. “Jessica?”

“You can’t beat him with hate or with anger or with power,” she whispered. “He needs you to give up your soul, to fly free, spiritwalker. He can conquer the elements, but he is terrified of spirit because he is spirit. He is made of things of the other world.”

If she hadn’t seen the dead he’d raised, the abattoir, she might have missed it, too.

“Then…” Wyatt bowed his head, shuddering as a harsh breath left him. “It’s here, all over me. I can feel it, digging in…”

“But it cannot make purchase if you don’t let it. You are the doorway. You are the gatekeeper. You are the spiritwalker. Not it.” Even in taking Wyatt’s body, it hadn’t gained access to his abilities; those were his and his alone.

Pressing his forehead to hers, Wyatt closed his eyes. The shadow lashed out again, trying to strike her, then to leap away. It could get no further than where Wyatt allowed.

“You have him,” she whispered. “You brought him into this world. You can send him from it. He has no more control. Only you. Love your brother, Wyatt, but forgive yourself and let him go.”

Where the words came from, she couldn’t say, but she believed every word. Wyatt had been desperate to save his brother, desperate to not live without his other half, and his grief opened a darkness within him, a darkness which fed the demon he’d freed.

Slowly, he raised his hand from her throat to touch her cheek. “You’re bleeding…and you’re filthy.” The comment pulled a wry chuckle from her.

“I blame the company I keep.”

His answer smile sparked a flare of hope, then the shadow wrenched over him and he flew backwards. Rising to her elbows, she stared after him. She had to—ugh, the weakness in her spread, and she put a hand to her side. Her shirt and the jacket were soaked with blood.

Well, that’s what she was for—the blood to close the balance.

So be it.