CH 27 fires

Jake POV

Firefighters of every species gathered, listening as Matthias spoke to them about Samhain Elms and how to spot them. Everyone was grateful it had been a dry summer and fall in the mountains. The crews set to work cutting down every one of them below the grafting line. The Native shifters worked the most difficult terrain ahead of the ground crews. I worked side by side with them for days. Once we had a wide fire break created around homes and the burn area. I returned with the crew to the command center. A Native woman showed up at the staging tent with Saul.

"Monarch Vangaurd, I would like you to meet the last firebird shifter of the Coushatta tribe. Hasí Pacihowá, this is my cousin," Saul announced as he chewed a cigar. It smelled like Cuban tobacco and bourbon.

"It is my honor to meet you." I bowed respectfully. "Please, speak with the fire boss about where he wants you to start."

Hasí Pacihowá nodded then frowned as she looked up. "It is sad that I must do this to Attakulla, it is a sacred place to my cousins but the dark fae have brought a great curse upon this land. We can only pray it will heal over time and that Our Mother will forgive us." She walked away with the grace of a dancer.

I eyed Saul. "Did you have a good time in New Orleans?" I asked as we walked to my tent.

"Not as good as Will and the Ravers had in Biloxi. Those Mississippians know how to barbeque during a hurricane." Saul chuckled, adding, "Will is sharing the pictures to his social media. Evidently Ravers will eat more than raw meat if it is smoked and seasoned properly."

Together, we watched the firebird fly toward the designated area. The news crews stopped watching the ground crews, and everyone watched Hasí Pacihowá as she flew in great arcing passes. The tip of her burning wing brushed the blood red leaves of the cursed elms and they ignited vigorously. In less than an hour the whole mountainside was in flames. The firebird flew above in lazy circles like an eagle on a warm day. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. If the fire tried to jump the lines, she swooped in and flapped her wings at the flames, pushing the burning wall back. I rubbed my arm. It suddenly hurt and felt cold.

"Jake? Are you okay? You look pale." Saul noticed my movement.

"I... I don't know. I just felt cold suddenly then..." Words failed as I stumbled backwards into the tent and fell to my knees. It felt like my soul was being sucked out of my body. Like my lips were pressed against frozen metal.

"Jake? Jake!" Saul pulled out his phone and demanded, "Bianca, I need you back at Mount Mitchel. Something's wrong with Jake."

I pawed at his arm as I wheezed out, "Not me, Shalom." My wolf howled in grief as we felt our mate dying.

VvvvvV

Shalom's POV

I shuddered watching the news. The Federal Government Forrest Service was burning a mountain. Gerard and his clan with the Human Purity terrorists had grafted thousands of trees over the last century. There were too many to just cut down, so they were burning them. The area was evacuated, and hundreds of homes were at risk. The only good news was that by burning them then cutting all the stumps below the graft lines the forest would grow back as other kinds of trees. I remembered that a fancy rose bush Kenneth once bought for me for Mother's Day had frozen down to the graft over the next winter and what grew back was a common red rose instead of a splash rose. I wondered what those mountains would look like when the forest recovered. I would be around to see it now.

Looking away from the monitor showing the last firebird shifter moving gracefully over the burning mountain on the internet news stream, I looked back at the pages of information on seed genetics and crop manipulation. A company now owned by another pharmaceutical and food group would suffer a lot of future profit loss or be forced to explain why they were continuing to send out seeds for crops that had been genetically manipulated to be hard to digest by genome carriers and non-humans. I closed my eyes for a moment then yawned. Jon came and looked over my shoulder.

"Would you be surprised to know they also caused the African drought famine on purpose a few decades back?" Jon asked angrily. "They realized by removing the ground cover, the area would become more arid like the Sahara. They purposely sent seeds and chemicals together that would ruin the natural flora and strip the soil of nutrients so nothing but their ground killing crops would grow. It was all free at first then they started charging more and more. They forced entire countries to bankrupt themselves and caused a catastrophe that changed the climate of the area for generations. They would have managed the rains failing if they had just stuck to regional plants and traditional farming techniques."

"As a gardener, that is the thing of my nightmares. Seeds that won't grow unless they are sprayed with a certain chemical and that strip the soil bare of nutrients," I admitted as I leaned back to stretch.

"They got the idea from the invasive, non-native trees the railroad planted for timbers in the southwest." Jon echoed my yawn. "Let's wrap it up for the night." Then louder he added, "We can't all keep Bethany's hours."

"Don't make me bite you," the vampire CSI taunted back from somewhere behind the rows of boards. Nicolea's chuckle joined her laughter. I was so glad that she had woken, even if she was weakened. She insisted on helping us go through the data.

"Get some rest, Shalom. As your doctor, I'm ordering you," Nic's words floated to me.

"Fine, goodnight ladies." I stood then picked up my sleeping son from his playpen.

It amazed me that he was already crawling and trying to stand at six months old, but Jake had told me that wolf pups matured quickly. In my soul, I could feel how proud my wolf was of our pup. She flashed a fang at me, and I felt a twinge of guilt as she reminded me of all the times I had said I didn't care if he lived or not. I didn't mean it, well, I meant it, but it wasn't because I didn't want him. It was because I hated his father. Walking carefully, I got into Jon's Hummer. We were back to sleeping in the school since half the town was burned. Jon yawned again but said nothing more than to wish me goodnight.

Sitting in a chair in my room, I fed Jestice, noticing for some reason my room felt colder than the evening air outside. I heard something in the hall that sounded like a surprised yelp and a laugh. It was getting colder. Suddenly, I had the terrifying thought that Gerard was here. I locked the door. Laying Justice down in his bassinet, I yanked my scarlet cloak out of the closet and covered my son. When I exhaled as I stood, I could see my breath. The doorknob rattled. Pulling out my phone, it wasn't working and neither was the phone on the wall.

"Ohgawd," I murmured as the lock clicked. I seized the door handle and held it with all my strength.

"Open the door, Quinn." The voice was velvety smooth, swoon worthy.
"Go away, Gerard! I won't let you have my son!" I screamed at him.

He laughed and it was the single most evil sound I had ever heard. "Oh, my beautiful queen, I'm not here for Justice... I'm here for you."

"Liar," I cried out as my palms and fingers began to burn cold. "Leave us alone."

"I'm not lying, I need you, Quinn, need your love, need the courage and purity of your soul to heal me." He scratched at the door as he spoke. "You can't escape. There is no one here to help you. Come with me and I'll leave Justice to grow up with his father."

The door handle was suddenly wretched from my hands and flung away. I clutched my frost-burned hands in front of me. He stood there with darker hair and eyes than I remember, but still handsome in a perfectly tailored suit. My wolf pushed forward with a snarl. My scream at the pain of our sudden shift became a growling roar as she leapt at him driving him back and slamming into the wall across the hall. Her teeth found no purchase in his flesh, but he backhanded us down the hall. His laughter followed us.

"You can't hurt me, Quinn. I gave you my blood to save your life. You are beholden to me as my clan members. Change back and talked to me." He waved his hand and my wolf yelped in distress and retreated.

Panting, I laid unable to move, in the rags of my clothes. "Get a-away."

"I can't... you're the last one. You fed me willingly at the manor, my inner shadow longs for another taste." He announced as he lifted me up by my arm. "But you have to be willing."

Dragging my battered body back to my room, he brought me over to where my son slept. "I don't want to hurt him. I am not the monster my brother claimed. I just want the chaos of hatred between the species to end. I want to bring peace."

He used the same luring tone he had in all my dreams and suddenly, I wondered if I was awake or if I had fallen asleep while feeding Justice. "Vow to the great shadow you won't hurt my son."

His eyes turned solid black as he stared into my terrified soul. "Do you remember when we danced? I do." He talked almost fondly of those daydreams and nightmares like they actually happened, ending with, "I don't want to hurt you or Justice. I just want us to be a family like you dreamed. You could be a queen, the mother of a king, able to change the world for the better and all it will cost you is a kiss."

I couldn't feel my hand or arm any longer, his grip was so tight. I repeated, "Vow to the great shadow you won't hurt my son and I'll do what you want. Just... Just leave him here for his father."

"I vow." He smiled and I could smell the lie so strongly I wanted to vomit.

"Say I vow to the great shadow that I will not harm Justice Julien Vanguard," I cried out as his clenched hand tightened. It felt like the humerus in my arm was splintering. "Please, I'll do what you want, just say the words."

He licked his perfect teeth then smiled. "Fine, if it will ease your mind, my queen. I vow to the great shadow I won't touch your son." He let go of my arm and tipped my chin up. "Do you feel better?"

I could only nod in tiny movements as his hand slid around my neck. I shivered at the coldness in the room but his breath on my lips was colder.

"My I have my kiss now."

Sobbing, I whined, "Yes... Just don't hurt him."

His lips were colder than ice as they touched mine. He seemed to be inhaling and sucking at the same time and it hurt but I didn't resist. This was my only chance to save Justice. Just when I thought I would pass out of die, Gerard lifted his lips from mine and let me fall back onto the bed in the small room. Swirls of light moved around him and he became more golden as he groaned indecently.

"How could I have forgotten how good you tasted? Like vanilla honey and flowers, orchids I think, or maybe something else," he asked himself casually as he looked over his change in the reflection of the window while I lay on the bed twitching.

I forced myself to sit up, covering my naked breasts as I held my injured arm. "Just take me and go," I begged.

"Oh, my impatient beauty. Not just yet. I want to see the child you would sacrifice your soul for."

"No!"

Before I could move, he was standing over Justice and reaching to pull off the scarlet cloak. He reached to touch it then yanked his hand back with a hiss. The symbols Mr. Black had enchanted it with burned with burned with eldritch fire and Gerard swatted his hand trying to put the flame out. Suddenly the restraining power on my wolf snapped like an elastic strap. I grabbed the cloak from over my son and threw it over Gerard. He screeched in the most horrific way. His handsome facadé melted into a demonic reaper. As he tried to pull the cloak off, it tore pieces of him away as it burned. I seized Justice with my good arm and almost ran into Jon. He was staggering down the hall with a gash on his head. I shoved Justice into his arms and kissed my son's head one last time.

"Run. Get to Nicolea!" I shouted then I sprinted back into my room and tackled the burning dark robbed Demonus. We went though the windows out into the courtyard.

Grabbing the neck of the cloak, my desperation to save Justice overcame my pain and I managed to wrap it around my tormenter and fasten the clasp behind his head. Shifting to my wolf's beast, she held him in her stronger arms and howled before she began ripping any exposed bit she could get her teeth into. Growling and hissing demonically, Gerard struggled as she nosed the hood over his skeletal face. We toppled to the floor together and she latched our jaws around his head. Together we poured all the strength in our beast form's body into that bite. Something crushed with the disgusting sound of a round watermelon under a weight. In my mind, I could remember doing that for a science fair project.

Miles laughed as he counted the weights. "That one took four." Miles sounded so excited as he measured the circumference on another one and calculated the diameter. He put it between two metal rods and began putting the weights on. "One... two... three... four... oh this one's stronger... five... six!" The watermelon crushed with a disgusting sound.

"Stop it!" Molly screeched. Running out the door, she pushed Miles away from the mess. "You're hurting them!" She knelt in the crushed watermelon flesh and wept.

"Molly, honey," Kenneth came out quickly. Ignoring that he was in shorts, he knelt bare-kneeded next to her. "Sweetheart, I know it sounds like he is hurting them, but melons don't feel anything after they are harvested."

I nodded showing her where the stem fell off. "The vine connecting it to the rest of the plant withers and drops off when it dies so it can become seeds for the next generation." I assured her.

"Molly, life is a circle. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes forms," Kenneth promised her.

She chewed her lip then asked. "Can we save the seeds to grow more?"

"Sure," Miles promised. "I'll plant them all." And he did. We became the watermelon people at the local farmers market that summer.

It was one of my last happy memories of my family together. Clutching the cloak, I felt it disintegrating and saw the symbols floating in burning shapes. My strength suddenly ebbed and I felt myself shrinking. I wondered momentarily if this was what death felt like as the purple eldritch flames burned out around Gerard and I. A weakness I had only felt on the Revelation Night pulled my eyelids down and in the distance I could see a bright soft light and hear the sound of bells.

'Molly, Miles... Mommy's coming.'