No, she mused. We need the supplies and horses inside this church.
Erin dropped to a knee behind the wall, motioning Angie to drop as well. In the darkness, Erin’s eyes flashed like a wolf's as she nodded at Angie. Erin's job had been to get Angie close enough to the church to use her special magic, her life-sense ability. Now it was up to Angie.
Angie closed her eyes and sent out her consciousness, probing the area for life forms. In a flash, every living thing within a couple hundred meters flared into existence within her mind’s eye, glowing like candle flames. The smaller life forms, the birds, mice, and vermin, she ignored, instead working her way through the larger creatures, counting only men or horses. Rowan’s estimate had been good. There were eight men inside the church, a section. Most of the men lay prone, sleeping, but two men were upright and moving. One stood in the bell tower, while the other patrolled the interior wall of the church. Two sentries, then. One would have been better, but two was doable.
She exhaled and opened her eyes, nodding to Erin and holding up eight fingers and then making fists before holding up two more fingers—eight men, two sentries. Erin nodded. They had all the information they needed. A section of men was far more reasonable than they had any right to hope for. Hell, Erin could probably take out both sentries herself right now. That would be stupid, of course, and Rowan would be furious. But she could.
What would Tec think if Angie and Erin foolishly risked their lives?
Would Tec even care?
The strange were-jaguar warrior had been uncharacteristically morose since the death of his master, the dragon Quetzalcoatl, and had barely said a word to anyone in the days since. For reasons she couldn’t understand, she found herself watching him almost constantly in the days since escaping the temple of Zolin. Her thoughts always drifted to him, as if he were a magnet and she iron fillings. It wasn't just that he was good-looking—hell, he was probably the sexiest man she had ever seen—but something else was going on between her and him, something ... screwy. The other night, she had lain on the hard ground, watching his face as he slept, and she had been inexplicably aroused, wanting nothing more than to pull her pants down and jump his bones. No man was that good-looking, not even a were-jaguar with mesmerizing green eyes. Yet even now, her thoughts drifted to him, to his powerful biceps, to his—
Erin shoved her shoulder again, her eyes slits.
Angie's face heated beneath her night-vision glasses, and she mouthed the word "sorry." Erin shook her head and led her back down the hill, through the graveyard, and into the sleeping village.
Rowan and the others waited for them in the mountains to the south of the village. Their party consisted of Rowan and Erin's other two brothers, Casey and Jay, as well as the elven changeling Wyn Renna and Deldin Gar, the only surviving member of the elven Phoenix Guard that had helped raid the temple; Octavia "Tavi" Navarro, a Norteno combat mage, one of the famed Brujas Fantasmas, the Ghost Witches; and Tec, the man who filled Angie with inappropriate thoughts.
Erin led Angie through the village and then out into the surrounding woods. Erin, in her element, moved quickly and silently, but Angie almost walked into Erin before she realized the other woman had stopped.
Erin dropped to a knee, pulling Angie down with her. They had come to a small mountain road, little more than a hardened dirt path through the woods that led to the village, but now Angie heard the clopping of horses' hooves and the jingle of harness. Riders were coming, and by the sounds, quite a few. The two women remained in place, hiding behind bushes. A horse nickered, and a moment later, horse and rider came into sight, moving down the path toward the village. More riders followed, a long line of mounted soldiers, all carrying rifles.
Angie held her breath, and Erin eased her sub-gun into her shoulder, her finger resting on the trigger guard. Angie forced down her anxiety and closed her eyes, casting out her life-sense magic once more. She counted a dozen horses and riders as well as a long line of people walking alongside the horses. Many were children, she recognized with a start. The soldiers were herding prisoners. She opened her eyes and saw the prisoners now, bound neck to neck, including the children. There were thirty of them, mostly women, and at least a third were children, some as young as five or six. What the hell is this?
The mounted men were Aztalan soldiers, but the man leading them wore a heavy cavalry saber on his hip. She guessed his sword was hexed, which made him a mage. Only hexed weapons could slip past the magical shields a mage's shade—the supernatural spirit-like entity that shared a mage’s body—created to protect their mage host. Shades helped mages survive the caustic effect of using mana to create magic. In return, the shade kept the mage alive, shielding him or her from just about any threat—other than a hexed blade. If this man was a mage, then he was a Tzitzime blood mage and would be dangerous. He’d know magic spells she didn’t.
As the prisoners moved past, Angie saw they were Ferals, the savage tribes who were all that was left of those people who couldn't find safety within the protected zones and walled cities after A-Day. Without laws or structure, the Ferals had degenerated into primitive cultures, the ultimate dog-eat-dog society, literally. She had never seen Feral women and children before, only the fighting-age males who attacked the walled farming communities, but now, seeing the misery on their faces, Angie felt pity for them. When one of the children stumbled and fell, the nearest rider beat him with a stick, eliciting howls of pain. Angie held her breath, her body rigid with anger.
She and Erin couldn’t take on so many foes, not by themselves.
The long line of prisoners and soldiers moved past on their way to the village and then the church atop the hill. There was no way Rowan would want to attack that church now, not with so many soldiers and a Tzitzime mage. As Erin rose and led Angie away, Angie couldn’t stop thinking about those prisoners. And what the Aztalans—infamous for their bloody sacrifices—were going to do to them.
There was no way Angie was going to let that happen.
Chapter 3
Moss-covered boulders, some as large as wagons, lay strewn about the mountain gully where the others awaited Angie and Erin. As the two women came closer, a dark shape stepped out from behind one of the boulders, surprising Angie.
"Ha! Got you," said Jayden "Jay" Seagrave, the second youngest of the Seagrave family.
"Hardly." Erin brushed past him. "I smelled you two hundred yards back. Jesus, Jay, find a stream. You smell worse than Casey."
Jay was in his late twenties, with long reddish-blond hair. The young man was so good-looking, most of the women in the Home Guard, Angie included, had harbored a crush for him. Jay's left arm, where he had taken a Feral arrow in the shoulder a week earlier, was bound across his chest, but he held a sub-gun by its pistol grip with his good hand. His smile faltered. "Now you're just being mean." He turned to Angie, who still wore her NVGs. "How'd it go, four-eyes?"
"Good and bad," Angie said with a weary sigh. "Good and bad."
"More gooder or more badder ... badderer?"
As she drifted past him, Angie trailed her fingers over his stubbly cheek. Jay needed a shave. After days in the mountains, he had far too much scruff on his face. It made him look all woodsy and rough, but Jay was too sweet for that.