Phantom Wolf

Chapter 23

Nestled amid the rugged Allegheny Mountains, the Sweet Valley farm had a rolling vista of meadow and sunflowers. It was a lovely spot to toss down a blanket, enjoy a picnic.

Or hold a gathering of Mages intent on eradicating an entire race.

Kelly parked her rental car out of sight on the roadway and walked along the long gravel drive. Disguised as Sam. She had his DNA, after all.

The white farmhouse had a wide porch filled with rocking chairs. Kelly mounted the steps and didn’t bother knocking.

She opened the screen door and stepped into a living room with plaid furniture, a basket of wildflowers in the fireplace hearth and Colton Shaymore sitting on a chair.

His face lit up with an enthusiastic smile as he stood. Kelly felt ill, knowing the reason.

“Samuel. You decided to join us.”

Kelly shifted back into her true form. “Not exactly...Dad.”

Shock twisted Colton’s face. And fear. Of all the emotions, she’d come prepared for hatred, prepared for him to attack and kill her.

Not this.

A dawning suspicion pushed aside her dread. He was afraid of her. The knowledge fed her strength. No longer would she remain silent, a cowering ghost in his household.

Disgusted, she advanced, watching his wary look. “I came here to settle old scores, Colton.”

Finally, after all these years, she’d dared to speak his first name.

“I found something of yours in your old bedroom, something you probably never wanted back.”

Kelly opened her palm. In it lay the twisted, partly melted remains of Colton Shaymore’s most precious possession.

His wedding ring.

“Your wife used to brag at her tea parties about how you loved her so much you never removed your wedding ring. I found this in the master bedroom, where the fire originated. If you loved your wife that much, you’d leave your wedding ring on after her death. My father never removed his wedding ring after my mother died. But you took yours off.

“You threw it in the fireplace, didn’t you? You lied to Sam. You hadn’t been outside, after all. You were in the bedroom when the fire started.”

Blood drained from his face. Colton stepped back as if she waved a sword. “Stop it,” he said hoarsely.

“What happened that night? Did you see Dad in your bedroom with your wife? Thought they were having an affair, not realizing he was there to clean up the oil he’d spilled on the carpeting?”

Anguish twisted his face. “That bastard stole my wife!”

“And you stole his life, goddammit. Your hatred blinded you to the truth. You’re a Phantom. You can imitate anyone.” Words bubbled up like lava, the pressure on her chest increasing.

“Did you duplicate my father and run out of the house, knowing he’d be blamed?” she screamed.

Silence hung in the air.

“Yes,” he whispered.

Staggering backward, he collapsed into a chair. Colton buried his head in his hands. “Annabelle,” he moaned.

Hatred boiled inside her. She wanted to shake Sam’s father, kick and scream at him for what he’d done. Ruining her life. Ruining Sam’s.

The man, unlike his son, was a coward.

Kelly took a deep breath. Hatred solved nothing, only brought more grief. Something eased deep inside her.

“I should hate you, but I don’t. I’m only sorry you’re Sam’s father. He’s a good person who deserves much better than you.”

It felt oddly freeing to state those words, as if they’d been locked away for a long time. Now she finally believed them.

A noise sounded in the doorway.

Dressed in camouflage, pistol in hand, Sam stood in the room. Shock slackened his jaw.

“You killed Mom and Pete?” he asked in a broken voice. “Dad?”

“Yes.” Tears glistened in Colton Shaymore’s hazel eyes, so much like his son’s. “They’re dead and it’s all my fault.”

Shay couldn’t think. Breathe. He stared helplessly at his father, and the world stopped spinning on its axis.

He must be dead and this was hell, the claws of his father’s words reaching into his heart and shredding it. Blood rushed to his fingers as they loosened from the death grip he kept on his Sig.

Shay holstered the weapon. He’d come here expecting to save Kelly, the headstrong, brave woman who thought she could stop a genocide.

Instead, he walked into a nightmare.

Colton wiped his eyes. “Annabelle, my beautiful Annabelle...I found out she never went to her bridge club. She was with Cedric, that bastard. Christmas Eve I saw them in our bedroom, whispering. They looked guilty as they jumped apart. I tore off my wedding ring and threw it into the fireplace. Picked up the poker, came swinging, shouting he would never take away my wife. Annabelle tried to stop me, but I kept hitting until he dropped. And then I turned and saw Annabelle...lying on the floor, so much blood...”

Shay’s chest squeezed tight. His mother, always the peacemaker.

“It was an accident. I never meant to hurt her.”

“Where is my father?” Kelly whispered.

“Burned. I incinerated his body to erase evidence. And then the fire got out of control. I ran to grab an extinguisher down the hallway and I heard Pete screaming. I tried to go back, but the flames were too much.”

Shay staggered to the sofa and collapsed. I know my heart’s beating because I can feel it pounding against my chest.

Ever since becoming a SEAL, he’d sought to live with honor, fight with honor, hoped to die with honor in combat. Just doing his job, like the other operators on the team.

He followed his father’s example of discipline, courage and control.

His father, whose uncontrollable jealous rage caused the deaths of Shay’s family and Kelly’s father.

For the first time, nothing was worth fighting for. Then he felt the softness of a warm hand sliding into his, the gentle reassuring pressure squeezing his palm.

Nothing worth fighting for? Kelly was. His team. His country.

The future of all Mages.

“Can you forgive me, son?” Colton asked.

Shay found his feet and went to his father, his idol.

For the second time in his life, he hit him. Colton fell down, blood streaming from his split lip.

Wiping away the blood, Colton sat up, gazing at the floor. Shay felt an eerie sense of déjà vu. So many times he’d looked like this, head hung in shame as his larger-than-life father verbally thrashed him for failing to live up to the Shaymore name.

Gods, he wanted to vomit, but he forced himself to swallow the bile burning in his throat.

“Is this why you wanted to kill Kelly’s people? Because you blamed Cedric, thinking they had an affair?”

Colton remained silent.

“They weren’t,” Kelly put in quietly. “Annabelle was aiding my father with an underground resistance to achieve equality for Arcanes. That’s why they whispered. Your wife was a gentle soul who loathed injustice but knew how much you hated my people.”

Blind panic spread over Colton’s face. “No, it couldn’t be. The man organizing us into a coalition convinced me it was Cedric’s fault because he was Arcane. In fact, he is organizing others who believe as I do, others who would eliminate the Arcane threat for good. The cleansing campaign starts tonight.”

Shay stared at his father, a once honorable, good man. “You’re condoning genocide.”

“Of course not,” Colton snapped. “I support elimination of the threat against Elementals.”

“By killing my people, even those who are innocent?” Kelly cried out.

“Are they innocent?” he scoffed.

“My father was. He didn’t kill your wife. And he didn’t take her away from you. You drove her away, with your blind hatred and jealousy. Would you have killed your wife had you known she was aiding Arcanes?”

The man’s eyes widened and he stared at her, as if the truth finally slammed full force into him. “I loved Annabelle with all my heart. I’d never hurt her.”

“But you did,” she said softly. “She died by your hand, not my father’s.”

Colton pressed fingers to his temples. “The committee chairperson said I was within my rights to destroy Cedric and administer justice. Oh, gods...what have I done?”

A horrible suspicion filled Sam. “Who is this person organizing the committee?”

“Senator Rogers, the council Elder. He should have been here by now. He wanted to meet with me early.” Colton sounded uncertain for the first time in his life.

Shay stared at the man. The crunch of tires on the gravel driveway drew them to the window. Shay scanned the open room and spied a closet, shuttling Kelly inside.

“If you dare tell him we’re here, you’ll regret it,” he told his father.

Colton looked shaken, broken, a shell of the man he’d once known. Shay didn’t give a damn. He joined Kelly in the closet and cracked the door a notch.

The screen door slammed. Footsteps sounded. Not the heavy tread he’d expected.

Shocked, Shay watched a woman enter the room and look around, her nostrils flaring, the aristocratic cheekbones sharp blades against her skin.

Moira Rogers, the pampered and privileged wife of Senator Robert Rogers.

“Moira? Where’s your husband?” Colton’s voice was courteous but suspicious.

She gazed around the room. “Colton. Has your son killed Kelly Denning yet?”

“I thought you were more inclined to hair appointments, not politics and assassinations,” Colton said, dropping the veneer of politeness.

“You fool. You have no idea of the real power behind my husband.”

A flicker across his father’s face. Behind him, Shay heard Kelly’s muffled gasp.

“A shame your son is so disobedient. Denning’s death would herald the new era of our people no longer tolerating the Arcane threat. The first wave takes place tonight, in this community. A small pocket, but enough to declare a victory against those roaches.”

Colton hardened his expression.

“No. I’ve had a change of heart. There will be no killing of Arcanes until this entire matter is officially investigated by the council. And if you, or your husband, try to start, I’ll not only have you arrested, goddammit it, I’ll toss you into prison myself.”

Flesh tightened against the woman’s cheekbones. “You would not dare. You lack the power.”

“I am an Elemental Phantom Mage. Try me.”

The senator’s wife raised her hands and began a series of chants Shay remembered well. Chants to call for the powers...

Hellfire! Dark energy snaked out of the sky, burned through the screen door and shot into her hands. She released the tendrils and struck Colton. He sailed backward, hitting the fireplace and sending pottery smashing to the floor.

Enraged, Shay emerged from the closet and fired, but the bullets burst into metallic dust in midair.

A soft, almost gentle laugh as Moira flicked a finger. Agony blasted through him as the burn of dark magick hit.

“You can’t destroy me with bullets,” she said, her tone amused.

The pain faded like a needle prick. Shay narrowed his gaze, moving around Moira, gauging the best way to take her down. Kelly crept out of the closet. “Sam, use this!”

He caught the triskele one-handed. Power hummed in his blood, a gathering force swelling like the sea, thundering through his pores. But before he could release it, Moira hurled more dark energy, sending him flying backward.

What the hell... Stunned, he realized the woman was no ordinary Mage.

From his peripheral vision, Shay saw his father move.

“No one,” Colton grated out, “touches my son. You bitch.”

As she turned, his father wrapped his hands around Moira’s throat and squeezed. The senator’s wife gasped as two thumbs pressed against her windpipe. Snarling, she tried to throw him off, but Colton persisted, even as her power seared his skin.

Talons emerged from her fingertips, and crimson stained the crisp whiteness of his father’s shirt as Moira sank them into Colton’s chest. A red glow suffused them, the power cooking his father from the inside out.

A wheezing gasp as his father’s face paled with agony.

Shay flung back his hand, ready to send more energy bolts into Moira. Hell, he couldn’t do it, not without hurting his father.

“Let her go, Dad. I can’t hurt you.”

Colton’s pain-racked gaze met his. “I’ve been a fool, a pawn in their ideology of hatred. I have to make up for what I’ve done. Don’t let hatred rule like it ruled me, son.” He moaned as the claws sank deeper. “I love you.”

Stricken, Shay regarded his father, his powers shimmering in his palms. “I love you, too, Dad.”

Then the Shaymore patriarch spoke in the firm voice Shay remembered well from his childhood. “Do it.”

Shay released his power as Colton snapped Moira’s neck. Her final scream cut off as the white-hot energy surged into them both, suffusing them in an eerie glow.

Colton dropped to the floor beside the senator’s wife.

Panic surged through Shay. He ran to Colton and cradled him, fingers searching for a pulse. Hazel eyes, much like his own, stared sightlessly at the ceiling.

Shay gently lowered him to the floor. Throat tight with grief, he glanced at Kelly.

“He wanted you to be proud of him, Sam.”

“I am,” he said quietly as he closed his father’s staring eyes. “He finally did the right thing and saw how wrong he’d been.”

If it had only been sooner. All these wasted years. Bitterness had killed his father long ago. But maybe in those last moments, Colton had finally felt a sense of peace.

“Sam, look at her,” Kelly whispered. “She’s changing.”

Blinking, he studied Moira Rogers’s corpse as it slowly shifted into a stranger’s face, a man’s slightly overweight body.

“If that wasn’t Moira Rogers, then who is that? And where’s the real Moira?” she asked.

Shay shook his head. “Someone must have killed her and stolen her powers.”

“But I didn’t see a Death Mask.”

Damn. He needed Curt, but his CO was out. He needed his teammates. He was going to have to go this alone. Shay glanced at his watch. In less than an hour, the committee would assemble and then all hell would break loose in this picturesque farming community. He’d have to take them out by himself. No innocents died on his watch.

Then he heard the sound of heavy vehicles coming up the drive. Shay’s heart sank as he glanced at Kelly. No time for her to escape. But her face lit up.

“Sam! Look!”

He turned to the window. The cavalry had arrived. Two Hummers parked in the drive, and out climbed seven men, dressed in battle gear, submachine guns in hand. The entire Phoenix Force. Even Tiger.

Shock loosened his jaw. The screen door banged as he ran outside.

“What the hell are you guys doing here? You’re AWOL!”

Dakota looked quietly at him. “Yeah. But we couldn’t sit on our asses, knowing you needed us.”

“Besides, you didn’t think you’d hog all the fun, while we stayed at the base, did you?” Renegade asked.

“Especially after you told Dakota where you were headed. We gauged the timing to arrive before you did,” Jammer added.

“Except we’re a little late. Dakota drives like an old lady,” Sully said.

Emotion at the thought of their loyalty tightened his chest. Words failed him. Instead, he slapped Renegade on the back.

Kelly stood on the porch, watching them quietly. “If Arcanes and Elementals were all SEALs, we’d never have a problem. Because we’d finally learn to work together, instead of apart.”

She gave a small smile. “Even if they poured jalapeño juice into our water.”

The men laughed, but Renegade shook his head. “Still owe you for that one, Shay.”

“Collect it tomorrow. Here’s what’s going down. In less than an hour, Senator Rogers arrives. He’s spearheading a committee that plans to slaughter Arcanes, starting in this community.”

Silence filled the air. Dakota’s expression hardened. “What’s your plan?”

Shay narrowed his gaze, looking out at the sweeping meadows, the jagged mountains. “We’re going to arrange our own welcoming committee.”