Page 7 of Brawler
A chill prickled up her spine, though the jungle pressed humid and hot. Emily shoved it into her pocket, breath quickening, and moved on.
By dusk she had her answer, footage of Sombra herself. The jaguar slipping through shadows, head low, muscles rolling with predator grace. Emily exhaled, relief catching in her chest. Proof Sombra was still alive, still holding ground, and she was not alone. Two cubs stumbled after her, Luz and Brío. Emily had written the names in her field notes the first time she caught them on camera, unable to resist. Light, fragile hope that kept her mother fighting. Spirit, the spark that gave Sombra her edge and reminded Emily what courage looked like. They were proof of defiance.
She slid the memory card free, slotted it into her laptop, and dragged the files onto her rugged backup drive. Insurance against humidity. Against accidents. Against everything.
While the file transferred, the little progress bar crept across the screen, each percent stretching like a lifetime, the air shifted,heavy and strange, pressing close. Emily’s skin prickled like static before a storm. She told herself it was nerves, but her body knew better. Danger was out there. The rainforest hushed. Cicadas cut out mid-cry, the usual rustle of wings stilled. Even the river seemed to pause its endless murmur. A hunter’s quiet. It made the hair rise along Emily’s arms.
Leaves rustled in the distance.
Her pulse hammered.
When she looked up from the laptop, the jungle wasn’t empty anymore. Two men had stepped into the clearing, machetes swinging at their sides, rifles slung across their backs. They hadn’t seen her yet. But one man glanced down at her footprints in the dirt, his shoulders stiffened, then his head snapped up.
Her breath seized.
She ejected the drive, shoved it into her pocket, and ran, the jungle closing over her like a trap.
Flash had never likedjungles much, too hot, too wet, too blind. Damp in the bones, thick in the lungs, alive in all the wrong ways. But since that impossible night in Venezuela, he’d carried the weight into every green hell he stepped into, something massive and unseen, pacing just beyond sight. A presence with a mind, eyes, and a dark, shadowed soul.
The absence of Lechuza gnawed at him worse than the heat. The last time he’d seen her, airport tarmac, sun sinking low, she’d kissed him and said,Watch the sky for me, águila estrellada.
He had. Every drop zone. Every clearing. The skies stayed empty. His chest did too.
The air shifted, warm to sharp and crisp in an instant. Leaves stilled. The jungle exhaled in a giant, verdant breath. His skin prickled, his mind buzzing. Something was coming…something he knew…wanted to know more intimately, but like that fleeting need, it eluded him.
His frustrated growl was drowned out by a wild, echoing cry splitting the canopy, not merely heard but felt, low and resonant. A call to a warrior’s heart…tohisheart.
A great white owl dropped from the green shadows in a rush of wind that lifted his hair and left the air tinged with cold. Its feathers gleamed like moonlight poured over snow, edges shimmering with a faint, otherworldly silver.
The wings moved with a grace too deliberate for chance, each pulse pushing back the hum of the jungle until there were only the two of them. She turned her heart-shaped face toward him mid-flight, and in those amber eyes burned a knowing, fierce, protective, and threaded with a sorrow so deep it felt like a memory he could almost claim as his own.
The downdraft settled in his chest like thunder. She landed in a patch of light. Shifted. Changed.
The name came unbidden, but he didn’t question it. He didn’t have to understand the why. Operators didn’t stall on the unexplainable. They worked with what was in front of them. Lechuza was here for a reason, one she couldn’t tell him yet. Beneath his shirt, the inked wings along his back seemed to ruffle, a faint prickle like the wind had found him from the inside out. A call. Maybe to battle. Maybe to something else. He didn’t flinch. He went where he was needed, no matter how strange the road in front of him looked.
Was she a harbinger? A figment? A loss he couldn’t accept?
“Killa.” The name was half a prayer, half a gasp.
He stepped toward her, but she blinked out, reappearing to his left, close enough that her warmth brushed his skin.
“I’ve been watching the sky for so long,” he said. “When are you coming back?”
Her lips parted, but instead of words, a deep, mournful hoot rolled out, vibrating in his bones. The world blurred, light smearing around her edges.
He reached for her?—
—and his hand hit nylon webbing. The roar in his ears became the steady hum of the transport’s engines. Red light washed the inside of the bird.
Brawler was watching him. “Man, you all right?”
Flash sat forward, elbows braced on his knees, head in his hands. Sweat ran cold down his spine, his lungs still dragging for air like he’d been under too long. His pulse pounded like he’d sprinted a mile. Something soft brushed his palm, and when he looked down, a single white feather rested there. “Just one of those dreams.”
Brawler’s hand settled on the back of his neck, solid and grounding. “Maybe that’s her. Reaching out to you.”
Flash lifted his head, breath still uneven, his fist curling around the feather. “You a fortune teller now? Pretty sure you’d look terrible in a peasant skirt and scarves.”
He heard a sharp inhale from further down the bench.
