Page 55 of Swamp Kings 2

“I will give everything that I have, everything that I own, if you were to help me... help those girls.”

She glanced around at the murmur of chuckles and Voss held up his hand, silencing them. He wanted to play along. “How long do we get this service?”

She suddenly appeared stumped. “Well, I… I don’t suppose I have any other plans pressing in my life so… however long I’m needed.”

Voss stood, kicking a log closer to the fire, finding himself not only liking that proposition but wanting it. “You’re hired.”

He glanced at her confused face. “H-hired?”

“Everything comes with a price, yes. Our sisters are not a bargaining commodity. Their well-being is the only payment I require, it is the reason I breathe. But your services are still needed and if you want it, the nursing position is yours.”

She stared him down for many seconds then looked all around before getting back to digging into him again. “Who… am I nursing? Exactly?”

Voss shrugged. “Whoever comes along that should need it, I imagine.”

“And… you’re paying me? For this?”

He sat back down, staring at the fire while keeping her astonished face in his sight. “With food, lodging, and protection.”

He finally looked to see just how shocked she was. “What did you expect, Miss Mabel? Flesh payments?”

The men broke out in chuckles, getting back to what they were doing as she finallyfigured it out.

“But you’re… I thought…”

Voss reached his hand out to her, and she regarded it for a long bit before slowly putting hers in his, sputtering shock.

“Welcome to The Damned and The Shunned. You’re part of our family now.” She regarded their hands, her wide eyes moving back to his grinning face as his mind recorded a dozen notes about the tiny hand in his. “Mindless mouth breathers,” he muttered, her frozen fingers crying out for warmth. He released her when his mind went in the direction he’d just told her they didn’t traffic in.

“So you’re… you protect the girls from…”

“Every threat,” he helped. “But especially those from our own blood,” he finished in disgust before turning to her. “You’ve already seen their inconsistencies, my new sister. The holy passivists are very big on forgiving and turning the other cheek. All the while committing the vilest forms of violence against those they are ordained to protect. Their own young girls and boys.” He stood, kicking a log into the fire as a dark rage heated him down to his bones.

“You left,” she realized. “For the same reasons I did.”

He shook his head for many, numb seconds. “I left for reasons far worse than teeth pulling and shameful placards, Sister Mabel.” Flints supper filled the air, wiping the furrow from her brow and sending her gaze in hurried search.

“You hungry?”

She aimed her green eyes up at him, clear and free of those kinds of crimes he lived to punish. She suddenly laughed and the transformation was like winter and summer. “I’m sorry, I’m just realizing I may be starving. And I’m going to be a nurse,” she said, finally allowing the idea to be real.

“And assistant cook, should you wish,” he added, ready for a woman’s touch in the wilderness kitchen.

She filled the night with a single sharp laugh. “If you like cutting your meat with a hatchet and prying your bread apart with a crowbar, then I’m your girl.”

All in earshot filled the brutally cold night with gut-splitting laughter thatlasted for a good five minutes.

“A comedian,” she mumbled after a bit, maybe offended to be found that funny. “Laughter is good medicine,” she reminded herself, pulling her fur pelt back around her and sitting back at the fire.

Voss forced himself to sit again, needing to know things that often kept him awake at night. “Can you tell me how they’re doing?”

He met her curious gaze, the sharpness softening after a few seconds. “The innocent,” she said, her voice tender as she turned a matching smile at the fire. She listed off names he didn’t know but that was okay. They were all his to protect and some nights his whole being ached to see them living and happy without fear of any kind. As Voss listened to her recount things only a person with great passion would recall, he found himself enraptured. The way she spoke about them, the light on her face, as if she shared the same bond with him. Soon he was focused on the way her mouth formed words and the various smiles dancing across the stage of tiny features. And those slender brows... her entire face was a marvel he wanted to sit and study, along witheverything beneath. What caused her to be this person? What other treasures were under the transparency she so effortlessly expressed. But she hadn’t always been able to show that, he remembered. She knew she was safe with him. And seeing it with his own eyes felt some kind of fulfilling and amazing.

“What?” she suddenly demanded, drawing his gaze from her smiling mouth to her eyes.

He turned to the fire, shaking his head. “I may have…dazed off.”

“Dazed off,” she balked, her offense comical. “Is this like dozing off in a bloody daze while I waste my breath talking to myself?” she marveled in quiet amazement.

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