Death Cache (38 page)

She’d killed so many people. How had Tern been so naïve about her? They were friends. “Why do you hate me so much?”

“Oh, I don’t hate you, Tern. I love you. You know it’s the highest form of compliment to emulate someone. I’ve looked at this competition as my metamorphosis. I am becoming you. And now with all of you dead, I will be welcomed into the bosom of your family. I’ll take over your business, nurturing Chickadee in the process. Such a lovely girl, your baby sister. Raven and I will become the best of friends.” Nadia shrugged. “I’m thinking your brother Lynx might make a nice replacement for Gage, since he won’t live through this. Your sister-in-law would have to go, but I can take care of that easy enough.”

She didn’t know Eva very well.

“You weren’t the right woman for Gage anyway. What kind of spell do you have over men?” Nadia gave another sadistic sound. “Doesn’t matter anymore since you’ll be dead. Doubt you’ll attract anything other than bugs from now on.”

“But why kill Gage? Why not just kill me?”

Gage made a hiss of protest.

“I hadn’t planned on killing him, but you guys figured it out. I’d planned on consoling him after you died a horrible and tragic death. We would have had a wonderful life together.” Nadia advanced closer. “He was supposed to love me. Killing him will be so disappointing.”

Tern felt the sudden need to vomit.

A raven cawed and landed on a branch overhead, flapping its blue-black wings, startling Nadia.

Tern jumped her, knocking the gun out of her hands. She grabbed her hair and pulled, clawed at her face. “You won’t look like me now, bitch.”

Nadia screamed, blood dripped from her cheek in three nice deep scratches. She punched Tern, knocking her to the ground. Tern swept her foot under Nadia’s, knocking her off her feet. She scrambled on top of her and they rolled toward the cliff. Nadia slammed a rock into Tern’s head and stars exploded behind her eyelids and her body went limp with pain.

Nadia struggled to her feet and picked up the rifle. She stood over Tern, breathing hard.

“Die, bitch.” With an unholy gleam in her eye and a malicious smile twisting her lips, Nadia pulled the trigger.

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Gage yanked the knife out of his chest and threw it at Nadia’s heart. The blade sunk deep. Nadia’s shot went wild and the rifle fell from her hands.

“You die, bitch,” Gage said.

Nadia stumbled back and teetered on the edge of the cliff, her arms flailing wild. A breath of wind, and she tumbled over the same precipice she’d pretended to fall off earlier.

Gage gasped for breath as blood gurgled into his lung. It felt like he’d been mowed down by a herd of caribou and one of them was sitting on his chest.

“Gage?” Tern crawled over to him. “What did you do?” Her hands pressed on his wounds, attempting to staunch the blood now seeping from his chest as well as his gut. Pain flared at her touch and he groaned.

“I love you,” he wheezed. “Sorry. Should…have…told you…so many things.”

“Damn words don’t mean anything if you die on me!” Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks.

He wiped at the blood flowing down the side of her head. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll be fine.” Pain thundered in her head the likes of which she’d never felt. Made getting hit by the log and being left to drown feel like a prank. Nadia had done that to her too. Had she winged Robert the day before that? Gage had checked her gun. Had she’d been carrying another one they hadn’t known about? Obviously, there was a lot she hadn’t known about Nadia.

She checked Gage’s injures, all the while praying to the gods of her ancestors and to Gage’s God. To anyone who would listen and answer, she prayed. Either there was a lot more blood around her, or there was blood pooling behind her eyes. Everything suddenly had a bloody tint. Tern struggled not to lie down alongside Gage to rest for just a moment.

“Tern, your…eyes,” Gage struggled to say.

“Just shut up! I swear if you die on me I’ll hunt you down in the afterlife and hurt you.” Her voice caught on a sob. “I love you, Gage. Please, please stay with me.”

Already the hoodie she’d used to staunch the gunshot in his stomach was soaked with blood. There was too much blood and the gurgling in his chest was louder. It sounded like he was drowning.

Tern’s vision started to dim, the edges blurring. For a moment she thought her sister flew out of the trees. “Raven?” Then darkness swooped down like death.

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“’Bout time you opened your eyes,” Mac said, leaning over Tern, a gentle sun backlighting him in a halo. “I have to say, you’ve looked better.”

“Mac?” Tern asked. Either he was alive or she was…

“Did you miss me, babe?” Lucky asked, walking into her line of vision.

Now she knew she was dead. A person couldn’t live without their head attached. Lucky looked healthy with all his body parts intact like the last time she’d seen him before—

“Oh, no.” She closed her eyes on a moan. How had she let that bitch kill her?

“We’ve been asking that ourselves,” Mac said.

She hadn’t voiced that, had she?

“Nope,” Lucky said. “In the hereafter, seems as though we can read each other’s minds.” Lucky gestured with his thumb toward Mac. “Sure is freaky to hear what this guy is thinking.”

“While this dingbat doesn’t have an original thought in his head,” Mac said, his eyes bright and full of life. She’d never thought to see them like that again. “So, why are you here, Tern? You aren’t going to let that little bump on the head do you in, are you?”

Her attention was caught by the meadow of wildflowers in which they were currently convalescing. Bright and sharp in their beauty, they rivaled any she’d ever seen. Amethyst, snow-frosted mountains soared into an azure sky. “Wow.” She sat up with an ease that borrowed on weightlessness, as though she was the bird she was named for. If she put her arms out, she wondered if she could fly.

“Now don’t get any ideas,” Mac warned. “This place is something, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t your time to experience it.”

“Ahh, come on, Mac. Let her stay,” Lucky said, sitting next to her on the sweet-smelling grass. “I’ve missed you, babe.”

“I’ve missed you guys too.” Tern wanted to wrap her arms around them.

“No hugging, we don’t have time for that,” Mac said. “The longer you stay here, the harder it will be to go back. Listen, I’ve got my Shannon waiting for me and Lucky, well, he’s got every damn mountain he could ever imagine climbing. We’re content.”

Lucky nodded. “It’s pretty rad.”

“I’m so sorry, guys. This is all my fault. I should have known Nadia was crazy.”

“Stop that. It’s nobody’s fault but the one who killed us.”

“Nadia was like a black widow or something,” Lucky said.

“You had to be married to her in order for her to be a black widow,” Mac scoffed. “She was a psycho. You were too busy getting into her pants to find out anything about her.”

“Yeah, well, paid for that in spades.” Lucky rubbed his neck.

Mac ignored him and knelt in front of Tern, his piercing eyes arrowed right into hers. “Tern, you have a full life ahead of you. Many things to do. Go, forgive that man, make him yours, settle down with a few kids and get fat.”

“No, not fat,” Lucky said, shaking his head. “You can do all that other stuff if you want, but don’t get fat. You’re too hot the way you are. Mac’s right, though, go ‘climb every mountain.’ Yeah, I saw the movie,” he replied sarcastically at the look Mac gave him. “Geez.”

“Good thing I’m not stuck in eternity with you. That would be some kind of hell.” Mac regarded Tern again. “Gage is a good man. He was cuckolded by Nadia like all of us were. You included. He kind of reminds me of myself a few years ago.”

“More like decades,” Lucky muttered under his breath.

“Do you think my dad’s here?” She didn’t want to revisit the heartache Gage was attached to.

“Near as I can tell, this is a holding place. A type of limbo. Neither Lucky nor I were willing to move on until we knew you were out of danger. You have a family and a man who loves you waiting for you.”

“Why isn’t Gage here with me?” Tern asked. He’d pulled the knife out of his chest. Sacrificed his life for hers. “There’s no way he could have lived.” She didn’t want life, or death, without him.

“Help came just in time. He’s sitting next to your hospital bed, crying like a baby,” Lucky said. “Really touching if you ask me.”

“He would have died if not for Raven and Aidan showing up when they did, along with Search and Rescue. They’d been just a step behind you for days. Pretty cool magical connection you two have. It saved all of your lives.”

“Robert?”

“They found him first. He’ll live.”

“How did Raven and Aidan know where we were? I never told them where I was headed. None of us knew until we landed.”

“Raven knew as soon as you’d flown out of Chena Marina that something was wrong. She questioned everyone until someone told her where Hugh had been flying the last month, helping this woman set up some competition.”

“So if we had stayed in camp, like Nadia had wanted, none of this would have happened?”

“If you had stayed in camp, Nadia would have been able to play out her game the way she’d planned rather than on the fly,” Mac said. “Doesn’t do any good to second-guess everything.”

“How had Nadia planned to be rescued?”

“She had a satellite phone on her the whole time. Once her plan was complete, she’d call in a mayday, act devastated over the tragedy that had befallen all of you, and gain your family’s sympathy.”

“Girl knew how to spin a yarn,” Lucky said. “I fell for it.”

“Any more questions?” Mac asked. “You need to head back before it’s too late and you’re stuck here.”

“Doesn’t seem like such a bad place,” Tern said, gazing at the pink-tinged clouds floating in the blue-purple sky.

“Gage won’t survive without you,” Mac said.

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Gage sat in a wheelchair, praying over Tern. She lay like death swallowed up by the hospital bed. He’d wasted so much time pushing her away. Now she was so far away, he couldn’t reach her. She hadn’t woken since she’d lost consciousness in the wilderness.

They were currently patients of Fairbanks Memorial Hospital thanks to Tern’s sister and brother-in-law, who’d been on their trail from about the time they’d been stalked by the raven and the wolves. He needed to know more out this ‘link’ Tern’s family had. Whatever it was, he was eternally grateful.

They’d been life-flighted right to Fairbanks, after being triaged in Ruby’s medical clinic, as their injures were too severe for the little village clinic to handle.

Robert had been the worst. They’d rushed him right into surgery. He’d live, but the doctors had to amputate his arm. Gage also had surgery the minute they’d landed, resulting in two blood transfusions and a slight reduction of his intestines. Nadia’s knife had punctured his lung and it had been touch and go there for a bit. In a few months he’d be roughly as good as new.

But Tern…

That last bash on the head, combined with the hit she’d taken the day before, had done something. Problem was, the doctors had run every test they could think of and couldn’t figure out why she wouldn’t wake up. She was currently in ICU and there was nothing more they could do but wait and pray.

It had been five days.

The same length of time they’d fought for their lives in the arctic wilderness.

It was after midnight and he’d refused to be taken back to his room. The nurse had given up and let him be with Tern. He wasn’t leaving her side. Her family had been visiting in shifts, but the nights were his. Tern lay prone on the bed, multiple tubes and IVs stuck in her, machines monitoring her vitals. Even with her honey-golden Athabascan skin, she was as white as the sheets she lay on.

Why wouldn’t she wake up? What kept her from him now?

He’d been talking to her since they let him enter her room. She had to wake up. He couldn’t think that she wouldn’t. Life would be no life without Tern in it. Why hadn’t he realized that before he almost lost her? Hell, he could still lose her.

“You die on me, and I’ll haunt you in the afterlife. Isn’t that what you threatened me? I’ll not only haunt you, I’ll haunt your ancestors.” He lightly applied chapstick to her dry lips and smoothed back her hair. “Just wake up and swear at me. Tell me I’m an idiot. Tell me to shut up. Something. Just come back to me, Tern.”

Tears choked him, and he pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. Pain in his chest burned, but it wasn’t coming from his injuries. Unless there was some way they could treat a broken heart. Exhausted, he laid his head down on the bed, next to her side.

He must have dozed, for the next thing he was aware of were fingers softy sifting through his hair. He slowly lifted his head, afraid to let hope flare in his soul. He gazed into Tern’s beautiful eyes.