Chapter 26

Bishop’s back slid down the bubble, and he slumped onto the floor. He hugged his knees to his chest, rested his forehead on his knees, and broke down in wrenching sobs. Raleigh’s forehead touched the firm clear wall. She closed her eyes and let the tears streak down her cheeks.

How could this happen? Of all the people they lost in the battle, why did it have to be Dax? Why couldn’t she die in his place? Why couldn’t his power save him? Why, oh, why did she have to face the rest of her life without him?

His death shattered her heart as much as Bishop’s ever did. She loved him. She admitted that to herself now in a way she never admitted it to herself before. She loved him as much as she ever loved Bishop.

Why did she hold him at a distance? Why couldn’t she kiss him and hold him and touch him? Why couldn’t she show him how much she wanted him and cherished him? Now he would never know.

She couldn’t even enjoy getting Bishop back. The pain of losing Dax destroyed her. She would never recover from this. She didn’t want to live. She didn’t want to see the sun shining in the fields. She didn’t want to sit down by Mrs. Mitchell’s fire without Dax there.

How could she face Mrs. Mitchell? Coming home without Bishop was one thing. She dared not face Mrs. Mitchell and tell her Dax was dead. She would rather die herself.

Oh, she hated this whole wretched world! This stinking, filthy, rotten world that kept stealing her loves away from her. She wanted to destroy it once and for all. She never wanted to see Hinterland again as long as she lived.

She pounded her fists against the bubble, but nothing could damage it. Dax spent his vital energy creating that bubble to get them out of Solaris while he dealt with the Eochehxea. He sacrificed his life to save them and get Bishop out.

She hated the bubble, and she hated Dax for doing this to her. How could he abandon her when she needed him most? She never wanted to love him. She hated herself for loving him so much. If she didn’t love him, his betrayal wouldn’t hurt so much now.

She beat her fists against the wall while she cried and cried. She would never cry enough tears to express what she lost—what the whole world lost.

She cried so hard she didn’t notice Bishop touching her leg. He wrapped both hands around her calf and gave her a tug. “Raleigh.” His voice cracked with sobs.

She didn’t respond. She thumped the bubble one more time, just to show it how much she hated it for what it had done to her. Her sobs choked her. She wanted to hold them back and she wanted to let them go. They hurt her so much, but she had to keep crying forever.

Bishop squeezed her leg tighter. His grip inched up over her knees. “Raleigh, Raleigh, come here.”

She didn’t want to come over to him. She didn’t want to take refuge in his arms. She didn’t want to take refuge in anything. She wanted to dwell in agony and despair forever and never be happy again. Being happy would betray Dax’s sacrifice.

Bishop wouldn’t let her go. He kept nagging and tugging and wheedling. “Come here. Raleigh, come here.”

She turned to look down at him, and he took hold of her hand. He dragged her down until she had no choice but to sink down next to him. His arms closed around her, and he cried on her shoulder.

His grief broke the dam holding her away from him. Dax gave everything so they could be together. He idolized Bishop, and he gave up the woman he loved to Bishop. She could only love Dax and repay the gift he gave her by loving Bishop, by giving freely the love in her heart for the man of her dreams.

She bent her head, and her forehead came to rest on Bishop’s neck. A fresh outbreak of tears tore her to pieces. She couldn’t stop them. Bishop was here. He understood. He grieved for Dax as much as she did. They both lost the best thing they ever had. Now they were alone together.

They cried together for what seemed like hours. They didn’t notice the bubble drifting and bobbing on the breeze, lower and lower, toward the ground. They stayed locked in each other’s arms until the bubble touched the short grass in the middle of a field.

The grass popped the bubble with a subtle kissing sound. It vaporized into nothing and left Bishop and Raleigh sitting on the grass. Bishop sat back with a shuddering sigh. Raleigh looked around through her tear-stained eyes.

The golden sunlight shone through a thousand blades of grass. Fluffy white clouds skated across a clear blue sky. Cows grazed and rabbits hopped in the fields. Before her eyes, a herd boy strode down a country road. He whistled to himself and tugged his cap brim at her.

So that was it. Life went on as usual. This sordid old world didn’t even know Dax was gone. They would never know and they would never care. Did the Auhlulhu know? Did they sense the loss of one of their own?

And so Hinterland came full circle. Maybe Cassandra was dead, too. The baby boy who disappeared no longer existed. He would never do the work for which he came into this world. Then again, maybe he already did it.

Bishop rubbed his face against his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Well, that’s it, then.”

He got to his feet and put out his hand to Raleigh. She took it, and he helped her to her feet without a word. They set off in silence down the road. Neither said a word until they came to the village. Bishop strode through it the way he always did, through the other side and farther through the fields to the stairs leading up to the Gingerbread House.

They looked neither right nor left or said anything to anybody until they got back home. Bishop went inside. At least he would have to face Mrs. Mitchell. Raleigh went to the shed to feed the twen. She glared at it while she cut up the blue mussel meat. She hated the little creature. She never wanted to see or think about it again. It was responsible for all of this. It sent her to Hinterland in the first place.

She threw the remains of the blue mussel back into the crate and slammed the door going out. She found the kitchen door standing open as usual, but when she stepped into the familiar room, she heard Mrs. Mitchell crying in the servants’ quarters. So she knew.

Every pot and chair and speck of dust on the floor screamed Dax. They used to scream Bishop. Now he was back and Dax was gone. The pall of rot and death fell over the house.

Raleigh stood in the doorway and inspected every piece of furniture, every crack in the walls, every knot in the roof beams. Dax lived and breathed in every one of them. She couldn’t sit by the blazing fire without seeing him across from her. She couldn’t open her eyes without seeing his twisted grin and his hair tumbling into his eyes.

The nightmare started all over again, but with a different man fixed before her eyes. How could she love Bishop with Dax occupying her every thought? How could she touch him without thinking about Dax?

She couldn’t live in this house another day. She had to leave. If she couldn’t go home to her father, she would find somewhere else to live. She would wander the Earth in search of some resting place where she could die and forget.

She wandered through the kitchen and into the foyer. She looked all around her in wooden despair. This house was a graveyard. Her heart lay buried here along with all the other dead ghosts.

She meandered back to her own room, but she couldn’t rest there, either. She hated the thought of Bishop coming for her there. She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone touching her or seeing her vulnerable and exposed.

She sat down on the bed, but she couldn’t sit still. Even here, in the place where she always felt Bishop’s presence before, she sensed Dax now. Those few times she held him in her arms and kissed him expanded to fill her whole awareness. She couldn’t remember all the other times.

She left the room the way she found it, but no matter where she went, the same phantasms plagued her. They destroyed her life. She went upstairs and inched down the hall past every door. Some of the doors that once remained closed now stood open. Lamps burned on the walls, and a fire blazed in Bishop’s bedroom.

He was here. He infused this part of the house with life. A lamp even burned in his office, but he wasn’t there. Raleigh continued to the last door and found him sitting in his chair in the parlor. Dancing flames in the fireplace reflected off his cheekbones and glistened in his eyes.

He didn’t look up when Raleigh entered. She stood in the shadows and watched him. He hadn’t changed his clothes, and he hadn’t cleaned up the dried blood and dirt around his wounds. He made a sorry sight from the elegant gentleman she first met so many long months ago.

He stared into the flames, insensible to everything. Dax weighed him down as much as Raleigh. Dax’s death destroyed him the same way. He didn’t want to live or think or feel anything ever again, either.

Raleigh’s heart went out to him. Someone had to pull Bishop back from the brink. Someone had to clean him up and set him on his feet again, and no one could do that job but her.

She stepped into the glow of light. He looked up, but no sign of recognition flashed in those eyes. He had no idea what she went through while he was gone. He didn’t know she hammered out an alliance with Rianne. He didn’t know she traveled to the mountains to visit Cassandra. He didn’t know she found out the truth about his relationship with Angela.

Raleigh couldn’t think about Angela right now. Was Angela alive or dead? Raleigh might never know, but this wreck of a man needed something from her. What he needed, she couldn’t guess, but maybe he needed her. Maybe she could soothe his battered heart and find comfort for herself.

She came to stand in front of him, but he turned aside and returned to gazing into the flames. She waited, but he said nothing.

Raleigh searched her brain for anything to say to him. “The twen is doing well. It’s eating the blue mussels we bought for it.”

He didn’t turn.

“I tried to complete your contract, but since I had no idea who hired you, I couldn’t return the twen to your client.”

“I don’t know who hired me,” he replied. “I told you that. An agent contacted me, and the client remained anonymous.”

“I know, but while I was investigating, I discovered there is the possibility the cabal hired you. If that’s the case, we can’t hand over the twen. We have to find out exactly who hired you.”

“It doesn’t matter now. We don’t have to hand over the twen.”

Raleigh blinked at him. “Why not? We can’t leave the contract unfulfilled.”

“I don’t care about the contract. I don’t care what happens to the twen. I’m finished with all that. I’m not a slayer anymore. I quit.”

Raleigh’s jaw hit the floor. “You can’t quit. The twen is right out there in the shed. What are we going to do with it?”

“I don’t care.”

“If we don’t keep feeding it, it will die.”

He shrugged. “So what? It won’t be the first twen to die.”

“Well, what do you want to do with it? I can’t just leave it sitting there.”

“Do what you want with it. I don’t want to have anything else to do with it.”

She took a deep breath and stepped closer. She laid her hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t feel her touch. The old charge no longer sparked between them. An impassable barrier separated them from each other, and the barrier’s name was Dax.

“Listen, Bishop. I know how you feel. I really do. I don’t want to deal with the twen, either. I would like nothing better in the world to quit and forget all about it, but I can’t do that and neither can you. You already accepted payment for this contract. You can’t leave it undone, and you can’t let the twen die. The Guild of Martial Arts is setting up their new headquarters in Henleyville. Once the cabal succeeds in creating the Elixir of Life, they’ll take over the world.”

He picked up his old pipe from the side table at his elbow. He stuck his finger into the bowl the way he used to, but then he let his hand fall onto his knee without giving it another thought. He went back to staring at nothing. “It doesn’t matter. They’ll take over eventually anyway. If they can’t get this twen, they’ll just get another one. We can’t stop the cabal by doing anything with the twen.”

Raleigh’s resolve started to flag. What could she say to snap him out of this depression, especially when she felt the same heavy despair herself? She tried one last time. “I know you’re upset about losing Dax…”

He cut her off before she said anything else. “Then you understand.” That sharp edge in his voice told her not to say anymore.

She turned around and walked out of the room. The moment she left the fire’s welcoming glow, the chill settled into her heart. The despondence oppressed her heart until she thought she could never rise again.

She got halfway down the hall when Bishop’s voice boomed off the walls behind her. “Raleigh, wait!”

She turned around to see him standing in the parlor door. His long hair hung in his eyes, and his mouth wrenched in wordless misery. He strode down the hall to stop in front of her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t demean your investigation. You and….you did good work while I was gone.”

“I feel the same way you do,” she told him. “I wanted to quit after we lost you. I thought you were dead, and I never wanted to be a slayer again. I went home to my father, but he convinced me I had to finish this contract. I planned to hand over the twen and then leave. That’s all I’m trying to do now. If you don’t care about the cabal getting their hands on the twen, then contact your agent and turn it over. That’s all there is to it. Don’t saddle me with the decision on what to do with it.”

He cast his eyes down to the floor. “I know. You’re right. I’m just not thinking clearly. I can’t stop thinking about…” He broke off.

“Don’t you think I feel the same way you do? Don’t you think I’m dying inside for Dax?” Her voice cracked, and her mouth twisted in anguish.

His face spasmed at the ragged sound, and he took a rapid step toward her. “Don’t do this. It’s hard enough. Let’s just forget it for now and go to bed. We’ll deal with the whole investigation in the morning.”

Her voice rose to a high-pitched whine. Her throat ached trying to get the words out. “I can’t stand this! I went through seven weeks of agony when you disappeared, and Dax got me through it. He was the one person who understood, and we faced everything together to get you back. Now I can’t even be happy you’re back because he’s gone. I can’t go through this again. I can’t face losing somebody close to me all over again. I can’t!”

He put out his hand and laid his rough palm against her cheek. Her eyes blurred with tears, and she leaned into that touch the way she did so many times in her dreams. The reality only hurt worse for being real. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “I know. I feel the same way. I should be thanking you for getting me out of there, but I only wish I was back there. I wish I never left Solaris. I wish I could stay a prisoner there forever if it meant he would be safe here with you.”

Her emotions overflowed, and a tormented sob broke out of her. She couldn’t bear the grief tearing her apart. Without thinking, she put her arms around Bishop at the same moment he closed her in his big embrace.

His shoulders shook with sobs, and his furry face scratched her neck. They held each other and cried all over again. How long would this go on? How long would they keep living in a wasteland of despair? Was their love destined to take this shape from now on?

His shirt smelled musty and rank from sweat, and his hair matted in back. She couldn’t touch him like this, not even to find some solace from the grief. She pushed him back and wiped her tears away with her hand. “Come on. We need to get you cleaned up.”

She steered him to his room. She never entered it before as anything but his apprentice, and she hesitated to enter it now. She stood him in the middle of the room and went to his closet.

She ignored the armory she knew hid behind those walls. She concentrated on the clothes hanging from the racks. She picked out a clean suit and shirt, underwear and socks, and a new pair of shoes. She laid everything out on the bed and came back to Bishop.

She paused again standing in front of him, and her eyes trailed up his disheveled form to his eyes. Behind the rough stubble of his beard, his unkempt hair and untrimmed mustache, mysterious fire glinted in his eyes. The old power blazed awake behind his broken exterior.

He looked down at her mouth once and back up to her eyes. That sparkle of life and energy woke her own sleeping desire. She wanted him back in one piece, not a broken hulk lost in a sea of hopelessness.

He lifted his hand and touched her cheek one more time. That touch no longer spoke of loss and despair but called back the ancient desire that once bound them together. He fingered her hair, and his heavy hand came to rest on her shoulder.

Bottomless longing for him pushed her toward him. She touched his chest and felt the flimsy shirt separating him from his bare skin. As hurt as he might be, she still wanted him. She wanted to taste his sweat and his blood and his kiss.

She unfastened the first button, and a starburst of scorching heat shot down her body to her crotch. She needed him under there. She needed every inch of her skin touching him. She needed to consume him into herself and feed him on her intoxicating essence.

She unbuttoned his shirt down to his stomach. He shuddered at her hands slipping underneath to caress his chest. He burst out of his skin and swept her up in his arms. He pressed her in tight against him, and his kiss closed over her mouth.

Raleigh collapsed into the unaccountable sweetness of that kiss. It brought back all the memories of their time together before he disappeared, but somewhere all tangled up in it, it awakened latent feelings lying dormant in her heart.

All of a sudden, she wasn’t kissing Bishop anymore, but Dax. His warm chest radiated his energy into her breasts and ignited forbidden passions. All the aborted desires she never let herself feel toward Dax erupted to life.

She kept her eyes closed to preserve the vision hovering in her mind. She kissed him and stroked his hair back from his forehead. She rubbed her breasts over his chest and her hips across the growing bulge between his legs. She urged him to raging hardness. She wanted him all over her.

She massaged down his neck and raked her fingernails down his back. She dove under his shirt and jammed her hands down his pants to squeeze his ass. She attacked every spare inch of his skin at once.

She craved his touch, his kiss, his nearness for so long, she couldn’t hold back now. She welcomed his hands running down her hip to grapple her thigh around his waist. She locked her ankle behind his back and groaned when he plowed his prick between her legs. Her moist slit screamed for him inside to fill up her emptiness at last.

He mauled her lips in rabid kisses. He pawed her breasts to hard nubs. His erect member stabbed through his pants to torment her quivering mound. He would have her in a second. He would fulfill all her dreams and scatter the ghosts haunting her to the four winds.

He spun her around so he faced the bed. He backed her up to it and bumped her knees against the mattress. His fingers started working on her shirt buttons, and he tore off her mouth to look her in the eye.

The moment their eyes met, the shocking reality hit Raleigh in the face. She wasn’t kissing Dax at all. She wasn’t caressing him in anticipation of falling into bed with him. She was staring into the startled eyes of Knox Bishop….The Wolf of Hinterland.

Bishop gasped and stared back at her. What was he thinking just a moment before in his frenzied rush to rip her clothes off? That didn’t matter, because when they looked at each other, they both saw one thing: Dax.

The passion died in the blink of an eye. The instant they looked each other in the eye, they couldn’t do anything. Dax stood between them, and they became once again two tattered hearts grieving for something they would never have again.

Raleigh’s hands fell to her sides. Bishop’s skin turned cold to her touch, even when he burned warm and alive under his clothes. His energy repelled her, and she repelled him. The apparition they saw in each other’s eyes killed any spark of desire they could ever feel for each other.

Raleigh stole a glance at Bishop’s mouth. She loved kissing that mouth, but she didn’t want to kiss it anymore. She only wanted Dax, and she could never have him.

Bishop eased back a fraction of an inch, just enough to let that insurmountable separation grow and breathe between them. He looked down at the clean clothes lying on the bed. He cast a quick, embarrassed glance at her face and tried to smile. “I guess I better get changed.”

Raleigh took the hint and turned to the door. Already the idea of kissing him and undressing him and touching him like that struck her as unseemly and inappropriate. She didn’t want to see him with his shirt off. She didn’t want to graze his hand by accident.

She nodded to no one in particular. “I’ll tell Mrs. Mitchell to bring you up a hot bath.”

He called after her. “Thanks, Raleigh.”

She didn’t turn around. “Don’t mention it.”

They were nothing more than friends, colleagues, partners. They never had been anything else. She wouldn’t see him take his clothes off, and she certainly would never watch him take a bath. Mrs. Mitchell could comb his hair and tend his wounds. None of that was Raleigh’s job. It never had been, and it never would be.

She opened the door. Just before she went through it into the hall, she caught sight of the lamp glowing in his office. She would stop by there and take another look at his papers before she went to sleep in the maid’s old room behind the kitchen. Maybe she would find something relevant to their investigation.

The investigation and all its thousand details waited for her outside this room. She turned back at the last second. “Bishop?”

He looked up. He had gotten as far as taking off his old shirt and unbuckling his belt. He stood in the center of the room bare chested. His eyes registered no modesty at her seeing him like this. “Yes?”

“Did you know the Maple Midges eat only metal?”

He blinked at her. “Yes, I knew that. Didn’t you know?”

“Klimpt told me. I didn’t know it before.”

He cocked his head and frowned. “I thought everybody knew that. Why do you ask?”

She shrugged. “Just something I was thinking about. Dax and I went through the papers on your desk. I hope you don’t mind. We were looking for some clue who hired you to find the twen.”

“I don’t mind,” he replied. “You did what you had to do to carry on the investigation. I’m proud of you both.”

She started to leave again, but something drew her back. “When you disappeared, when Dax and I came home after the explosion at the Guild of Martial Arts building, we found the house broken into and ransacked. Almost everything in the house was destroyed, and the only thing the culprits took was your father’s notebook. I’m sorry. We haven’t been able to recover it.”

“That’s all right,” he replied. “I have a duplicate copy.”

She stared at him. “You do? I thought you kept the original in your wall safe.”

“I do—I mean, I did. I also kept an exact copy of it in a safe deposit box in town. I never wanted to be without that information in case something happened to the original.”

Raleigh punched her fist into her palm. “Dang! I wish I’d known that. We could have used that copy these last few weeks.”

“What did you want the notebook for?”

“To find out who you were working for, or to find out how close the cabal was to creating the Elixir of Life, or to find out who hired that cab to run your father down. There’s a million details in that notebook we could have used instead of floundering in the dark.”

His eyes bugged out of his head. “What did you just say?”

Her head whipped around. “What’s the matter?”

“Who hired that cab to run my father down?”

She breathed a sigh. “I should have told you. We found out someone hired the cab to stand in that particular spot, and the fare made the driver get out of the seat so the cab would be unattended. The same man contracted Chivvy to deliver a trainload of blue mussels to some factory in Henleyville, which is also where the Guild of Martial Arts is setting up their new headquarters. You might also like to know the cab driver retired to Henleyville after he left the service. There’s a lot going on in Henleyville at the moment.”

Bishop stared at her another long moment. Then he pursed his lips, shook his head, and got to work stripping the rest of his ruined clothes off. He showed no sign of noticing Raleigh watching him. “Get downstairs and tell Mrs. Mitchell to start heating the bath water. As soon as I’ve changed, meet me in my office. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we leave in the morning.”

“Leave in the morning?” Raleigh repeated. “What do you mean?”

He sliced his finger through the air. “Get moving, and while you’re waiting for me to take a bath and comb my hair, get down to the armory and arm yourself. We’re going back. We can’t let the trail go cold.”

Raleigh hurried out of the room. She found Mrs. Mitchell seated on a bench in front of the kitchen fire. Raleigh would recognize that blank stare anywhere, but when Mrs. Mitchell heard that the Master wanted to take a bath and cut his hair, she rocketed out of her seat. She bustled around the kitchen and hauled water. She never hurried faster in her life.

Raleigh went down to the armory and spent the next hour sawing off the buttstock on one of Bishop’s spare crossbows so it fit her. She restocked her empty ammo wallet and found a short scimitar that could function as a throwing blade. She hefted it in her hand. It didn’t quite feel right, but it would work for now until she got it tuned and balanced.

She buckled two gun belts around her hips and primed and loaded the pistols. She tried a few quick draws to make sure their handles pointed the right way. She felt better, now that she was armed.

She didn’t realize how coming back unarmed from Solaris affected her thinking. Without her weapons, she was nothing but a helpless farm girl. The Eol’i, the Guildsmen, the Uk, and the Eochehxea robbed her of the tools of her trade. They turned her into nothing. Without her weapons, she was incompetent and not fit to walk the streets.

Now she had them back. She was a slayer. She was on her way to do her job, and nothing and nobody better stand in her way. Once Bishop got his old clothes on, his frock coat draped around his shoulders, and his guns buckled around his hips, he would feel the same way. He would come back.

She went upstairs. The sound of splashing water and Mrs. Mitchell’s harsh voice came from behind Bishop’s closed bedroom door. “Will you keep still? How exactly do you expect me to get these snarls out without pulling?”

Bishop’s low voice growled back, but Raleigh couldn’t make out the words. She walked away and returned to Bishop’s office. She went through his papers and set aside anything she thought he might want to keep. She didn’t bother to empty the overflowing basket of trash in case he wanted to go through it and keep it after all.

She came to the end of the last stack of paper none the wiser. She pushed it aside. She had nothing else to do in here until Bishop came and took over for her. At least she didn’t have to be the senior on duty anymore. She could hang back and let someone else run this investigation for a change.

That little detail about the Maple Midges kept nagging at her thoughts. She’d seen them almost every day for more than ten years, and always in the same context. They devoured the kataracts she killed. She killed more and more of them every year until their numbers eclipsed every other monster in the district.

She never once disposed of a kataract in her life. The Maple Midges consumed them, blood, flesh, and bone. They never left one tuft of fur on the ground. That could mean only one thing. The kataracts must be made of metal.

How was that possible? She saw kataracts all over the place. She once saw a farmer from the other side of Tunstead leading a kataract on a chain across the road. Blood dripped from a wound in its side, and intestine bulged from the gash. While she watched, the farmer turned around and jabbed the creature with a powerful electric cattle prod. It bellowed in pain before he led it away.

That kataract was alive. It certainly wasn’t made of metal. No Maple Midges came out of the forest to buzz around its wound and peck at it. Yet all the kataracts Raleigh killed around her father’s farm got eaten in the end by Maple Midges. Something didn’t make sense here.

Then there was the time she visited the Hodges farm on the other side of Tunstead. She was inside the house when a kataract attacked their pig sty and started munching the new piglets one after the other. Raleigh’s friend Quentin Hodges and his two brothers raced out and shot the kataract so full of bullets it fell right on top of the pig sty. It crushed the sty with two sows still inside.

After that kataract lay dead, no Maple Midges swarmed out of the trees to eat it, either. In the end, the boys cut it up and fed the meat to their hunting dogs.

Why hadn’t Raleigh remembered this before? If this was the case, only one conclusion remained. The kataracts around her father’s farm were made of metal, while the other kataracts in the neighborhood were not.

Raleigh shivered. This couldn’t be right. The whole scene at home flashed before her eyes. Her father stooped under his kitchen roof beams to step into the kitchen. The tall, thin man with the sharp features and the sharp way of talking. The farmer who didn’t act like a farmer. The kataracts growing more numerous with every passing year until Raleigh developed into a killing machine. The kataracts dropping off and fading away after she left Tunstead to work for Bishop.

The whole terrible reality congealed into one cohesive picture before her eyes, and this time, she didn’t push it away. It was right there in front of her face the whole time, and she didn’t see it. She couldn’t, because she didn’t have all the facts until this very moment.

Her father never told her Ethan went to join the Guild of Martial Arts. He never told her anything about Hinterland, but he must have known all about it. He must have known about the Guild of Martial Arts from the beginning. What could induce him to want his son to join the Guild if Benjamin Douglas wasn’t a Guildsman himself?

Generation Guildsmen trained from their earliest childhood to join the Guild, and that’s exactly what Ethan did. He worked as a slayer for years to hone his skills. He worked as a slayer—on his father’s farm.

Could it be? Could it really, truly be? Did her father train Ethan to kill monsters around the farm in preparation to join the Guild? Why else would he start Ethan’s training so young?

And what about Raleigh herself? Benjamin started her training even younger than Ethan. Did he plan to send her to the Guild, too? If he planned that, why didn’t he?

The answer couldn’t be simpler. He never planned to send her to the Guild. He sent her to Bishop, even when she didn’t want to go. All those kataracts she used to slay in the fields around her home—they weren’t real. They were metal contrivances designed to perfect her skills. When she destroyed them, the Maple Midges ate their remains and left nothing behind.

Raleigh walked away from Bishop’s desk. She paced down to the window and gazed out at the night before she came back to the same place. The desk sat in exactly the same place. Nothing had changed, and yet everything changed.

Why did her father send her to work for Bishop? He insisted Bishop was the best, that she couldn’t hope for any better way to continue her career as a slayer than to work for the great Knox Bishop. Why would he say that, when there was a better way? She could have joined the Guild along with Ethan. She would have become a better slayer, but he didn’t send her there.

He must have had a reason, and the reason was right there in front of her eyes. Bishop’s wall safe stood open the way Raleigh left it. She plucked the stack of folders and papers out of the safe. She turned over the folder’s top leaf and stared down at the records from the blue mussel farm.

Bishop told her this was the only blue mussel farm in the world. Any trainload of blue mussels heading for a factory in Henleyville would come from there. She flipped the pages.

The first page showed a shipment of blue mussels going to the Guild of Martial Arts building in Pernrith. That was the page Bishop saw when he opened the folder, but he read this folder from front to back more than once. He studied it in quiet moments before the fire, but he never discussed the contents with her. He must have found something pretty interesting in this folder, but he never told her anything about it.

She turned over the shipping docket from the Guild and read down the second sheet. It was another shipping docket exactly like the other one—all except the delivery address.

Raleigh read the words: 85 Nuthanger Road, Tunstead.

The blue mussels were heading for her father’s farm.

To Be Continued…..

 

 

The Wolf’s Prize: Book 4:

 

Raleigh Douglas got her beloved Bishop back, but he’s not the same as the man she lost. He’s broken by tragedy and hardship. He vows to give up their hunt for the forces threatening Hinterland and the rest of the world. Raleigh despairs that he will never recover and their investigation will die along with Hinterland. Is her love enough to bring him back, or will he turn away from her along with everyone else?

 

One thing keeps Bishop going: his obsession with reclaiming his father’s book. In this, he and Raleigh unite for one last heroic battle against insurmountable odds. Can they discover the secrets for which the evil cabal will kill and destroy? Can they save Hinterland before it’s too late, and can they save Bishop from a life of ennui into the bargain? The answer will blow everything they ever knew out of the water and leave them facing the ultimate choice between right and wrong.