Chapter Twenty
WOLF HAD WEATHERED at least a dozen death rituals since his arrival as a raw eighteen-year-old recruit. He’d presided over half a dozen of them alongside Jude after his nesi had risen to leader of the Eagle Clan and appointed Wolf as his second.
He knew what to do, how to do it—how to set his nesi’s spirit free to find the path to Shining Man and take his place with the ancestors.
But nothing . . . nothing before in his life had ever felt so . . . wrong.
The mantle of beniinookee of the Eagle Clan sat sloppy and raw over his shoulders. It didn’t belong to him.
As befitting the leader of the Eagle Clan, Jude’s body was wrapped in a buffalo robe. A full war bonnet of eagle feathers sat on his chest. He’d be buried as he was laid out here, in the most sacred of sacred rooms.
Once the death ceremony was complete, Wolf and Neniiseti’ would escort the body down to Riverton in the big bird for a second, Catholic ceremony at Saint Stephen’s church.
The cavern was full of huge, silent warriors. Above the flickering yellow torches, the smudging smoke swirled across the rocky ceiling as though it were a living, breathing thing, purifying all who drew it into their lungs.
Except . . . Wolf didn’t feel cleansed, or purified, or made whole. Rather, the emptiness expanded within him, swallowing huge chunks of his soul. If Jude’s death could steal the spirit from him and replace it with such hollowness, how much worse must it be for Jillian?
For the first time, he truly understood the emptiness swallowing her. To lose all her children and the brother she loved in one moment of madness. No wonder her spirit sought escape and turned to those she loved and lost to the spirit realm.
With the smudging smoke choking his lungs and tearing his eyes, Wolf knelt over his nesi and best friend, chanting the holy words and painting sacred red circles on Jude’s cold forehead and cheeks—counterclockwise this time to allow the trapped remnants of Jude’s spirit to break free and follow the smoke to Shining Man and the spirits of their ancestors.
But the words felt hollow, the sacred red paint foreign against his fingers. The silent, stoic eyes of his warriors, with the red circles he’d painted on their faces, seemed intrusive . . . judgmental. Jude’s dead flesh against his fingers so very, very wrong.
Had Jude felt unworthy when he’d taken over the duties of beniinookee of the Eagle Clan? If so, he hadn’t shown it.
As Wolf stood and stepped back, Neniiseti’ stepped forward, a faded and worn red leather pouch held high in his right hand. He broke into the sacred chant, beseeching Shining Man to light a path with the smudging smoke so that their brother Jude Standing Eagle could find his way to the ancestors and take his rightful place by their side. Wolf, along with the rest of the warriors, repeated the chant. When the last word fell into echoes, Neniiseti’ threw Jude’s totem pouch into the fire.
The sacred prayer was chanted again in unison by dozens of strong warrior voices. Then only the crackling of the fire echoed in the chamber.
Wolf stared into the blaze, the emptiness inside him widening. He watched as the fire enveloped Jude’s totem pouch and the talismans inside it. The leather charred quickly, cracked and blackened, as the flames stole Jude’s spirit away.
The spirit totems were private and sacred. The only thing Wolf knew for certain was that Jude’s pouch had held the remnants of the eagle feather the spirit bird had gifted him.
As did all Eagle Clan spirit pouches.
Lost in his thoughts and memories, Wolf didn’t hear Neniiseti’ offer the final prayer of thankfulness or the rustle of clothing as the warriors slowly filtered out of the cavern, leaving him alone in his grief.
“Come.” A hand touched his arm. “Our duty here is done.”
Wolf stirred, turned away from the body at his feet. It would remain here, wrapped in smudging smoke, until they loaded it into the coffin for the trip to the reservation. He followed Neniiseti’ from the chamber, achingly aware of the empty place at his side.
Once outside the chamber, in the mouth of the ancient tunnel that led to the base, he paused to shake the disorientation aside.
Neniiseti’ waited for him, the fierce black eyes dark with sorrow and secret knowledge. “After Standing Eagle became the beniinookee of the Eagle Clan and presided over the first hiihooteet ceremony, he came to me.”
Standing Eagle had been Jude’s Arapaho name, although he’d been christened Jude Eaglesbreath by Father Murphy. The Christian name had stuck, thanks to his mother’s insistence that everyone use it. Wolf’s grandmother had been a progressive Indian. She’d wanted her son to assimilate into Western society and reap the rewards of Western approval. She’d been willing to give up her culture and heritage to do so. It had been a source of never-ending frustration to her that her only daughter, Wolf’s mother, had fallen into the blanket Indian ways and named her grandson Wolf, following the old teachings. The name served as a constant reminder of the culture and heritage of the hinono’eiteen.
The light touch of Neniiseti’s hand on his arm was a subtle rebuke, a reminder that the elder was speaking and deserved the honor of attention.
“Forgive me, Grandfather, my mind travels.” Wolf offered a half bow of penance and forced his mind to focus.
Neniiseti’s quiet nod offered acceptance and understanding. “As is expected with the death of one’s father.”
Wolf opened his mouth to correct the old man only to realize that the elder was right. Jude had been much more to him than uncle. He’d been his father in every way that mattered. The grief dug in again, with claws tipped in poison. He held hard against it and focused on Neniiseti’.
He fell into step beside the elder on the way down the tunnel. For the first time since Jude’s death, his curiosity stirred. Many things had been brushed aside to stand steward over his nesi’s death, but they had not been forgotten.
Many updates were needed.
With that in mind, he went to headquarters instead of his rooms. Bright Feather, who’d been charged with running the base, met him in the war room and filled him in on the events of the past three days.
The news that Mackenzie had skated across death’s scathe, surviving by the thinnest of margins, was followed by the news that he’d talked Kait into inserting into a battle zone.
What had Mackenzie been thinking? If the commander wasn’t clawing his way back from death’s door, he’d kill the heebii3soo himself.
“When will Embray have the antidote ready?”
Although William and Kait were taking turns healing the child, no one knew how long this could continue.
“Soon,” Bright Feather said, twisting in his chair to study Wolf’s face. It was the third time he’d done so.
What did he see that brought such curiosity? Had Jude’s death been stamped upon him in some way he was unaware of?
“What of the nih’oo3oo from Anchorage? What say they?”
The two men who’d been asking questions around town about strange military aircraft and an Indian base had been easy to bait and trap. His last conversation with Jude had been after the first interrogation. At the time they hadn’t offered anything of value.
“Nothing.” Bright Feather sounded disgusted. “They don’t know who hired them or what they wanted the info for. Everything was done through paid cells and money wires.”
Money wires sounded traceable. Bright Feather was a genius at electronics and computers. If the transfer could have been traced, he would have done so. Still . . . “You couldn’t trace the wire.”
He received a look of disdain at the question, as though he should have known better and avoided wasting both their time. “The account’s been deleted. So far I’ve had no luck pulling up any information on it.”
Wolf nodded. So the men were useless. Time to cut them loose.
“What of Link? Has he given us anything we can use?”
Bright Feather’s face lit up. “Yes and no. He’s been a gold mine of information. Names. Locations. Schematics. The problem is they know he’s been tapped. He doesn’t know where they’re holding the devices. But even if he did and gave them to us, the locations would be invalid now. All the product has been moved. Yeah, we know who to take down, but getting to them isn’t going to be easy. They’re covering their asses. There is one thing that could really be to our advantage. One of the NRO quarterly council meetings is coming up. If we could hit them then, we’d get the head and all the tentacles of the beast.”
“When?” Wolf asked, his heart picking up speed. Bright Feather was right. If they could hit them during this meeting, not only would the NRO be crushed, but also Wolf would be able to cut out of them the location of Faith’s new energy device.
“Twelve days,” Bright Feather said. “Thing is, nobody knows where the meeting will take place. The original location is certain to have been changed as soon as Link was taken.”
True.
Wolf scowled. While sometimes a spirit quest could pinpoint locations tied to certain people—that’s how they’d located Faith’s friends—such ceremonies worked best if the location was already in use. It was much more difficult to pinpoint an upcoming location.
In fact, it had been done only once before, and the success there had been solely due to the fact that the target had mentioned the upcoming meeting while Neniiseti’ was spirit-stalking him.
The chances of that happening again were slim to none.
They needed to come up with another way to pinpoint that meeting.
Mac awoke slowly, incrementally, his journey to awareness punctuated by the beep of machines, the blinding flashes of overhead lights, the ebb and flow of hushed conversations, and the soothing scent of baby powder and rain. Amy’s scent.
He forced sticky eyelids open. The overhead lights all but blinded him, and he tried to turn his head in search of that clean, fresh scent. The pain that dug into his torso convinced him to reconsider the movement. He swallowed a groan and froze, waiting for the discomfort to subside.
“’Bout time ya joined us in the land of the livin’,” Rawls said quietly from Mac’s left.
The fact that he was in the land of the living brought misgiving and expletives. There was no way he should have survived those shots. Hell, he’d been bleeding out. He’d felt it. Kait must have healed him instead of Embray.
Goddamn it.
Although—Christ, he caught his breath as another wave of pain dug into his chest—he wasn’t feeling all too healed at the moment. “Sitrep?”
“You took two rounds—armor piercing—to the chest.”
AP rounds? Motherfucker. Well, that explained the chest hits even though he’d been wearing ballistics plates. It didn’t explain why he was still alive, although he suspected he knew the answer to that. Damn it. “Kait healed me? What about Embray?”
If they lost Embray because of those damn shots he’d taken, he’d never fucking forgive himself.
“Embray’s alive. Kait healed both of you. You enough to plug up the holes and stop the bleeding. Embray enough to get him off the machines—alive—and onto the chopper. She got you both back to base so you could undergo treatment.”
Color him impressed. That had been some damn fine thinking on Kait’s part. And it sure as hell beat being dead.
“Where’s Amy?” Her scent was still so strong in the air, she must have just left the room.
“She’s off to talk to Embray.”
No shit? “He’s awake? Aware? Does he have an antidote?”
“Yes, he’s awake and aware. No brain damage as far as anyone can tell. As for reversin’ the isotope, that’s what she went to find out.”
Ah hell, he should be there beside her. If Embray didn’t know how to shut that damn isotope down, Amy would need someone with her. Someone to help her absorb the blow. Girding himself against the pain he knew was coming, Mac dragged the covers and sheets to the side and tried to ease himself up.
Fuck.
The avalanche of ripping, shredding agony dropped him flat again. Yeah, he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.
“Jesus, Mac.” Rawls sounded annoyed more than concerned. “What the fuck? You can’t give it a day or two before you undo all the healing Kait did?”
“Amy shouldn’t be alone with Embray,” Mac said when he could talk again.
“She ain’t. Cosky, Kait, and Brendan are with her.”
Mac relaxed slightly at that news. Settling back, he carefully rolled his head on the pillow until he could see Rawls’s face. More pain—but bearable this time. “Cos still pissed at me?”
Rawls shrugged, his soft snort echoing through the cubicle. “I figure your whole self-sacrifice routine smoothed those waters, but I’m sure Cos will be weighin’ in on that himself.”
Yeah.
Fuck. Not a conversation he was looking forward to.