Page 125 of Shadow Blind

Even if he’d received a warning flash aimed at Samuel, he would have been too far away to reach him. His Caetanee would have taken the blast full force. Even if Wolf had screamed at him to drop, between the wind and the engine noise from the Thunderbird, his second might not have heard him. Reaching him through the Neealaho would have been an option, but Samuel would have had to react instantly. The RPG had hit within seconds of the vision.

No matter how he adjusted the situation in his mind, Samuel would not have lived through a direct blast. His Caetanee would survive his injuries. It would not be easy. He faced a slow and painful recovery. But he would survive.

Daniel’s murder was more difficult to accept, as his crossing was on Wolf’s shoulders. If he hadn’t misjudged Kuznetsov’s mistress, Daniel would not have died. He’d let the woman’s tears and apparent openness blind him to her nature. She’d fooled him completely. Because of this massive failure of insight, Daniel was dead, and she was gone.

Their only link to who’d created the nanobot weapon was gone.

With a low, pained grunt, he sat on his bed. Without bothering to turn on the bedside lamp, he bent, untying the laces of his boots by touch. He retrieved his phone from the pocket of his tactical pants and set it on the table beside his bed. Once he was naked, he laid down and pulled the top sheet over his aching body. His eyes closed, he settled deeper into the pillow, willing sleep to take him. Instead, Daniel’s blank eyes and rigid face stared back.

The face he saw behind his closed eyes was identical to the one he’d found in the shed. The empty gaze. The frozen expression. The young warrior had likely already died, when the sound of an engine had roared to life inside the shop. They’d burst into the building to find the roll-up door open, Kuznetsov’s mistress gone, and Daniel journeying to the web of his ancestors. Their healers—already weakened from their efforts to heal Samuel—could not revive the young warrior. But then, not even the strongest healer could circumvent death and return a spirit to its mortal shell.

Wolf had found snowmobile tracks outside, and a syringe embedded in a lipstick tube lying on the shop floor. If he’d confiscated that crimson tube back at the house in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Daniel would be alive.

With a deep, shuddering breath, he banished Daniel’s frozen face and empty eyes from his mind. But both followed him into sleep.

A deep, rattling vibration and musical ringtone pulled him from dreams of death and severed limbs. Groggy, with the nightmares still seething through his mind, he reached for his phone.

According to the name lighting up the diminutive screen, the call was from his mother. He sat up, tension flaring. It was not like her to call so late.

“Anistaa—” He coughed the thickness from his throat. “What is wrong?”

“Ho'cee!” Her voice rattled down the line, choppier than normal, without its normal smooth cadence.

His heart started pounding. The edge to her voice tightened his chest and pierced his gut. His mother wouldn’t call with a personal problem. Certainly not so late. She was too independent and unwilling to ask for help. She hadn’t even told him about her cancer scare until her second screening had proved negative.

This call must be about Jillian.

Jillian had lived with one foot in the Shadow Realm for three cycles. None of his attempts to drag her back to life had worked. She seemed to slide further across the veil every year. Had she finally given in to her ghosts and stepped fully onto the path to her ancestors? An ache spread across his chest.

“Is it Jillian?” He braced himself.

The breath his mother drew sounded like a hiss. “Yes—”

“She’s dead.” He flinched, his heart dulling.

It was a statement, not a question. He’d been expecting this call. Still, even expected, the news hit like an arrow to his chest. The breath left his lungs. Hope fled his heart.

“No, no.” His anistaa sucked in a deep, raw breath. “She lives. It’s…just…she’s been chosen.”

“Chosen?” Wolf shook his head in confusion. “By the shadow people?”

They beckoned to her; her lost children, her dead brother. But if her shadow family had finally enticed her to step across the veil, she would be dead.

“No, not by the shadows. She’s been chosen by the woodland spirits—by an animal clan.”

Wolf froze, then glanced around his dark bedroom. Was he still dreaming? The woodland clans did not choose Anglos. Never in the history of the Kalikoia had a woohanna been chosen by a woodland clan spirit.

He stared down at the bright white screen of the phone warming his palm. The heat of the metal against his skin assured him he was not dreaming. Indeed, he was wide awake now. Yet this news made no sense.

Few among the Kalikoia were chosen by the animal clans. And most of those who bore the mark and carried the totem were men—warriors who had been gifted an animal’s essence to keep the tribe safe. The few women who had been chosen through the cycles, like Kait, were gifted by the Blue Moon Mother in ways that kept the tribe nurtured and healthy. Or like Samuel’s Olivia, who had been given the ability to recognize heartmates, thus keeping the tribal ties intact.

But for an animal clan to claim a woohanna—one with no tribal blood? Such a thing was not possible. His mother must be mistaken.

“Ho'cee! Did you hear me? Our Jillian has been chosen by the woodland spirits.”

Wolf frowned. His mother sounded so certain.

“Such a thing is not possible. She is Anglo. She has no tribal blood.” His words didn’t lessen her worth. Wolf had chosen her as his own, even though she never reciprocated. But why would the spirit clans choose her? It made no sense. “You must be mistaken.” His voice was flat. Unbending.

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