The Shadows

“You gotta give me something to do,” Hollywood said around his gritted teeth. “I gotta … I gotta do something.”

“You’re here. That’s enough.”

iAm embraced the guy and then kept going to the entrance to the locker room. Pushing his way inside, he stilled and just breathed for a couple of moments. Then he proceeded to the lockers immediately on the right.

There were four Nike bags in four separate units, and he took them out one after another. Strapping two on either side, he hefted the heavy weights and squeezed back out through the door.

In the tradition of the Shadows, remains were cleansed with sacred minerals and purified water over and over again while a litany of prayers was said forward and backward. Then there was a wrapping process with fragrant cloth, followed by wax that had to be melted on.

He was about to pass by Rhage again when he stopped and frowned.

Looking at the Brother, he said, “What time is it?”

Rhage checked his phone. “Five in the morning.”

“Actually, there is something you can do,” he murmured. “At nightfall.”

SEVENTY

As soon as the sun was safely under the horizon, Rhage was the first one out of the mansion. Leaving through the library’s French doors, he stalked across the empty terrace, its iron furniture having been put in storage for winter. The pool had likewise been drained and covered, the umbrellas stored away, even the flower beds and the fruit trees had been battened down for the coming snow.

It seemed appropriate. Like the compound was in mourning along with the rest of them.

At his side, a Husqvarna 460 Rancher chain saw hung from his dagger hand, all ready and waiting.

The daylight hours had been torture, the strange neutral aftermath of the death coupled with everyone having to stay indoors turning the house into zombie land.

The good news was that he was finally free and he was going to get to cut things.

Striding down to the trees at the far edge of the lawn, he penetrated the line and proceeded to the twenty-foot-tall retaining wall that ran around the compound. There was a reinforced door about twenty yards over, and he went to the thing, entered a security code on a keypad, and waited for the chunking slide that meant the internal bar had retracted.

Pushing the weight open, he stepped out and left the door wide for his brothers as well as Beth, Xhex, Payne, and all the others.

The trees beyond were mostly pines, and in the moonlight, he assessed the sizes of the trunks. He was going to avoid the old growth and stick to the young’uns.

Firing up the saw, he smelled gas and oil, and he reveled in the power as he approached a conifer that was about a foot in diameter. The blade went through the bark and into the meat of the thing like a dagger through flesh, the cut as fast and clean as a surgical strike. And as the fluffy-headed pine landed with a bounce, he moved on to the next, revving up, slicing through, monitoring the landing so no one got hurt.

In his wake, Tohr picked up the first twenty-foot-long section and dragged it off to the opening in the retaining wall. Beth was next. Z. Payne. Butch. John Matthew and Xhex. Blay and Qhuinn. On and on they went, working like an assembly line, nobody saying a word.

None of them had bothered with coats or even work gloves.

The blood that was spilled on those trunks as palms were scratched was part of their tribute.

On the autumn night air, the sweet pine pitch smelled like incense.

Rehvenge had helped him with the planning during the day. In the symphath tradition, funeral pyres had two parts: A triangular base of nine nine-foot vertical posts that was topped by a sturdy platform made of nine six-foot lengths, and an upper portion that was constructed out of ninety-six logs, of which ninety were nine feet long and six were six feet long. For the top part, each of the nine-footers was set nine zemuhs apart—which was roughly nine inches—and the succeeding layers were set across the one below perpendicularly.

The goal was to ensure plenty of airflow and a bright fire.

So that was the way they were going to do it—because none of them knew any other alternative, and although neither Trez nor Selena was a symphath, everybody figured it was best to go with something that had been proven to work rather than run the risk of a homegrown solution that failed.

Upshot was, Rhage was going to fell about sixy-five twenty-foot-plus trees. Then they were going to strip the branches and the bark using a combination of daggers, saws, and other tools, and set the whole thing up on the flat stretch of lawn to the west of the house.

As he worked, with the saw jumping at each and every cut like it was a wild animal barely leashed, he kept going back to his own past with his Mary.

He had been there, right there, where Trez had sat at the bedside of his beloved. He had known that frigid fear and disbelief that life, with all its endless permutations, had come to such a point. He had gone home and undressed and knelt on diamonds that had cut into his knees … and he had bowed his head to the only deity he had known and begged and pleaded for Mary to be saved.

And the Scribe Virgin had come unto him and provided him what he had asked for—but at a tremendous cost.

His Mary would be saved, but in exchange for the gift, she could not be with him. That was the payment for the incredible blessing, the balance to the miracle.

That pain had been a galaxy that had opened in his chest, an infinite wound that was so deep and of such a mortal nature, he had been surprised he had not started to bleed …

Rhage watched as another tree fell to the side in a dead faint to the cold ground.

He knew exactly what Trez was feeling right now.

The difference? At his nightfall, some two years ago, after he had sworn to give her up so she could be saved from her disease … his Mary had burst through his bedroom door alive and well, cured and saved, restored to health.

And able to unite with him.

It was the only sunshine he had known as an adult: Sure as if the roof above him had disappeared and the sun had risen just for him, warmth and light had shone down upon them both as he had held on to his female.

They had both been restored by the Scribe Virgin’s mercy in that moment.

Later, he had learned that because Mary had been rendered infertile due to her earlier cancer treatments, the Scribe Virgin had decided that that was enough to balance the gift of everlife.

And so Mary and he were together to this day.

Trez had not been granted such a miracle.

Selena had not been saved.

It was Tohr and Wellsie all over again.

Even though Rhage wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, he didn’t understand why he and his shellan had been spared. Especially given how the Scribe Virgin had cursed him with his beast earlier in his life for being so out of control.

And yet she had then seen fit to return his beloved to him.

Thanks to the mother of the race, his Mary was now free to exist without death until she chose differently—which would be when he went unto the Fade.

The fact that they had been spared … seemed just as random as why Tohr and Trez had been condemned.

At least his brother had managed to go on.

He could only hope the same for that Shadow.

“Take this,” iAm said to Fritz, “to my condo at the Commodore. Place it on the outside of the glass slider on the terrace.”

“My pleasure, sire,” the butler replied. Except then the doggen’s brows went up. “Is there aught else?”

“No.”

As Fritz just stood there outside the exam room, looking confused, iAm couldn’t figure out—

Oh. Right. He wasn’t letting go of the note.

Forcing his hand to release its hold, he stepped back. “Thanks, man.”

“If there is aught else you or your brother require, please call upon me. I would do anything to be of service, especially now.”

The butler bowed low and then headed down the corridor, disappearing through the office’s glass door.

iAm looked around even though he was still alone. His eyes just needed something to do, and in that regard, he understood why Rhage and the Brothers had been begging for a duty—also why the females of the house who were not out working in the forest had gone upstairs to help prepare a meal of ceremonial dishes traditionally served at mourning meals. And why the Chosen and the Primale had shut themselves into the gym to perform ancient rituals, the perfumed smoke from the sacred candles they were burning permeating the training center with a fragrance that was both dark and sweet.

It was such a hodgepodge of belief systems and traditions, all inter-mingling around the nucleus of grief.

His brother.

And so iAm waited here.

Sometime in the next three hours, the male was going to emerge, naked and dripping in his own blood.

The marking of a male mourner’s chest and abdomen was the very last part of the preparation ritual for a departed female mate.

And as the next of kin to the sufferer, iAm was the one who was going to seal the wounds with salt, making them a forever-in-the-flesh kind of thing.

He jogged the heavy black velvet bag that was full of Morton’s best in his hand. It was tied with a golden rope, and the weight was substantial.

In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help looking to the other side of all of this. To nightfall on the following eve.