Child, page 1
part #6 of Sam and Sam Series
Child
Sam and Sam Book Six
Chloe Garner
First Edition
Copyright © 2019 Chloe Garner
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Covers by Christian
Published by A Horse Called Alpha
Work by Chloe Garner
Anadidd’na Universe
-Rangers
-Shaman
-Psychic
-Warrior
-Dragonsword
-Child
-Book of Carter
-Gypsy Becca: Death of a Gypsy Queen
-Gypsy Dawn: Life of a Gypsy Queen
-Gypsy Bella: Legacy of a Gypsy Queen
Other Urban Fantasy
-Hooligans
Science Fiction
-Portal Jumpers
-Portal Jumpers II: House of Midas
-Portal Jumpers III: Battle of Earth
Space Western
-Sarah Todd
They stumbled into the apartment, drunk on champagne and no sleep, slamming each other into in the doorway and against the door. Kara smelled like sweat and smoke and woman, and she felt like a wild animal in his arms, all muscle and skin. Jason had spent half the night meeting the last demand from Sam and Samantha - that none of the Rangers go home with demons from the wedding reception - and finally Jason was alone with Kara. She had looked strange and beautiful in her bridesmaid’s dress, like she had put on a costume to pretend to be a part of another life, but he preferred her in her Ranger’s clothes, tattered and sturdy at the same time, pockets full of surprises.
She grunted at him and pushed him away, biting his lip and pulling him against her, then pushed him away again.
“I’m going to go take a shower.”
He pulled her close again, palms sliding from her sides to the small of her back, kissing under her jaw.
“Why?”
She pushed him away once more, fingers playing with the hem on his tee shirt, then spun, the wet fringes of her hair flicking against his face.
“Because I like to make you wait.”
He laughed, letting his fingers slide along hers as she sauntered away, glancing once over her shoulder at him with a grin.
Damn, she was sexy.
He went to run water over his arms, slurping cupped, lukewarm water out of his hands and splashing it over his face. He needed to shave.
He always needed to shave.
He was surprised that they’d left without saying goodbye. He got it. It was exactly how he would have left, but it wasn’t really like either one of them. He had half expected they would be here at their apartment, outraged at his intrusion with Kara - he had been hoping that would be what would happen, actually, how funny would that have been? - but the place where his brother and his best friend had lived on their own for six months was empty. Being alone in the space made him realize how dingy it was. It needed to be cleaned.
Desperately.
It wasn’t until he turned to lean against the counter that he noticed the laptop sitting closed on the opposite counter, left for him to find as he came in the door. Well, that hadn’t worked very well, had it?
He picked up the folded sheet of paper sitting on it and opened the refrigerator, peering in at the half-jug of orange juice and the jar of pickles - pickles? - before reading the hand-written note.
Jason,
If you let anything bad happen at the reception after we left, I will find out about it, and I will injure you appropriately. Consider yourself warned.
We are taking a well-deserved vacation. We won’t be in touch until we feel like coming back. Yes, Sam is going to miss you. But we need this. Sam is turning off his cell phone and won’t be checking it. Kerk is your problem, now. I wish I got to see how that went.
Kelly is also your problem. Don’t throw an imaginary ball. Just don’t do it.
Maryann will stay with Doris when she needs someplace to stay. In the event of dire emergency, call Doris. Maryann can find me wherever.
Kerk is still looking for the thirsty man. Don’t lose sight of him. Sam says he killed two more little girls after the one we found, and that’s just that we know of. And be careful. He’s really powerful. Don’t underestimate him just because he’s human.
And don’t do anything stupid, showing off for Kara. Sam says so.
I think that’s it. Be safe. We’ll see you later.
Samantha Elliott
He looked at the signature for a long time, a slow grin spreading on his face, then he folded the paper back and stuffed it into the laptop. He’d worry about that later. He wasn’t looking forward to dealing with Kerk on his own, but they were right. They deserved some time off on their own.
Jason checked Anadidd’na over his shoulder, a long-practiced motion to make sure the sword was where she was supposed to be, then went to go look out the window. It was dawning outside.
A very new day.
CHILD
They lay tangled in bed, basking in gratitude.
They’d been traveling for three days, driving when they felt like it, stopping in little roadside motels when they felt like it, feeling very little need to talk. The relief was immense. Everything, in that small window of time, was okay. They were healthy, they weren’t in pain, they had no targets to research or hunt, and they had no place to be. No one was expecting them anywhere. Even Abby couldn’t watch them; Samantha had worn her hair pin since the wedding. They were alone in their own heads, comfortable, and happy.
Sam wanted nothing more than to hold her with his eyes closed.
They held hands in the car as she drove, watching the hood of the old-school Mustang devour mile after mile of asphalt. From time to time, Samantha turned on the radio and sang, but it was almost too high-energy for them. They were relaxing like they actually knew how to do it.
They hadn’t had sex yet. She wasn’t ready yet, and he didn’t have to be in her head to know how frustrating and intimidating it was for her to think about it, and how carefully she was avoiding doing just that. She locked the door on the bathroom when she went to shower, the first time she’d ever done that, just to make it clear to him that he still wasn’t welcome to walk in on her, even now.
He was patient.
They’d made a mess of it, the last time they’d attempted a physical relationship, and he knew - without Jason’s added, and incredibly awkward, warnings - that she was going to struggle with this. Without her ever having told him in detail, he knew she had seen an awful lot of things that drained the intimacy out of sex and turned it into something that had a lot more to do with violence. At times, her skittishness from when they had first met would return. He could see her battling it, trying to talk herself out of it, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to help. He knew it.
He shifted, resting his chin against her temple, and she sighed, reaching up to rub his hair between her fingers.
“Are you hungry?” she murmured.
“Not if it means I have to get up,” he answered, tightening his arm around her just a little. She laughed and sighed again.
“We’re going to rot here, if we stay any longer.”
He grinned.
“So?”
She nodded, burrowing her forehead in against his neck.
“Good point.”
He pulled his toes up, finding his calf was half-asleep, then hooked his ankle around hers and she bent her knee, twisting her hips and rolling her shoulder under his. His brain rolled, the wave of warm comfort threatening to send him to sleep again.
“No, if we sleep any more, I’m going to be sick,” he said, stretching his other leg.
“I think I already am,” she answered. “It’s lovely.”
She sighed again, the warm air of her breath caught against his chest. He lost his grip, his next conscious realization being the slip of time as warm, vapory dreams ripped away. He heard Samantha’s soft breath as she slept. He stretched his back to the side and she shifted again.
“Mmm. We should get up now.”
“That’s what you said ten minutes ago.”
She put a finger on his lips.
“Shhh.”
He kissed her fingertip and she kissed his chest. He hugged her and pulled the covers straight, letting them settle in a warm heap over them again.
“All right, all right,” she said, rolling over. He pulled her back against him, curling around her. She pressed her back against him, arms out like a cat, and he buried his face in her hair. He heard her breathing change again, and felt his eyes slide up in his head.
“No,” he said, rolling away. “No, I need to get up.”
He heard her laugh as she arched her side to let his arm out from under her, and he got up, pulling on a tee shirt and going to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face. When he came back out, she was asleep again.
<><><>
They eventually ended up in Wisconsin. They’d both known where they were going; there had never been a need to discuss it. They drove past Swift’s little motel without stopping, heading up and out of town down little forest roads that they hadn’t noticed in the Cruiser, but that were treacherous and rough in the Mustang. They got to a spot where the leaf litter covered a just-big-enough open space and Samantha pulled off the road, pulling her backpack out of the back of the car while Sam pulled the tent and the food.
They hiked for a couple of hours, and Samantha kept expecting the scenery to look familiar. That tree had a characteristic bent to it, surely she would remember it if she had seen it before, wouldn’t she?
And yet, it was like any other trip through the woods. They followed deer paths that went the right direction, avoiding thick underbrush when they had to break their own way. Samantha let Sam go first so he would cut a hole through the big spiderwebs.
The trees were budding out in bright green colors, but the grass and shrubs were deep green in the shadow of the evergreens.
“Nice time to be out,” Sam commented over his shoulder.
“Perfect,” Samantha answered. Cool enough that they could work hard without getting too hot or thirsty, but warm enough that her skin never really felt cold.
Where there was space - which wasn’t very often - she walked alongside Sam, holding his hand. It was strange to just be walking, to do something they wanted to do. She wondered if she could come up with another example of a time they’d done it, and the best she could come up with was the day Carter had given them off in New York while she’d been training Jason. She’d actually seen the Statue of Liberty, that day.
This was easier. It lacked the sense of rush that that day had had, the feeling that they needed to drain every last drop of recreation out of their time.
She was glad they had left their time open-ended, now. If they weren’t ready to go back tomorrow, they wouldn’t. It left so much more space on today. There was the looming specter of what would come next, the knowledge that before too long she would start to feel guilty about putting it off, but the last mandate had taken so many years to turn up. Surely this Ashley girl could wait until after they had taken some time for themselves.
Surely.
Sam’s GPS said that they were nearly there by early afternoon, and finally they broke through the last line of thick brush into the clearing around the forest pond. This, she recognized. The rotting log they’d sat against was most of the way to becoming a pile of dirt, now, but the stone at the top of the pond was still there, as was the willow where the Iara had lived. It felt different, though.
They set their stuff down, leaving the tent in its sleeve, and went to stand at the edge of the water, hand in hand.
“That’s where she was,” Sam said. Samantha slid her sunglasses onto the top of her head and squinted against the diffracted reflection of the sun off the mossy pond, nodding.
“That’s where she was.”
“And this is where we stayed.”
Standing here, she even remembered the shape of the pines downstream, how she had resisted the softer ground there because she had been concerned that a good rainstorm would bring one of them down. And how she had been right.
“This is where we stayed.”
“Why don’t I recognize it?” Sam asked.
“It’s different.”
“It is different.”
Samantha leaned against him, watching the trees across the pond from them. What, just a couple of years ago, had invoked fantasies of hobbits and pixies, glimmering with magic, now looked weary and overgrown, buzzing with insects.
“Is it the Iara?” Sam asked. “That she’s gone?”
“I don’t know,” Samantha answered. “It may just be that we’re different.”
Sam slapped his forearm, killing a mosquito. He looked back at the pile of camping gear.
“Do you still want to stay? We could probably be in Milwaukee by tonight.”
She took a long look around the place that had been a sanctuary to them a lifetime ago, then nodded.
“Yeah, I don’t think it would be the same.”
He put his arm across her shoulders and squeezed, then turned to go back up the slight hill to pack up.
<><><>
They wandered. They went to parks, to zoos, to museums. They talked more as the intensity of everything leading up to the wedding began to fade, and it was like spending time with his best friend again.
Standing in front of a golden painting at an art museum in Indianapolis, Sam glanced down at Samantha.
“I miss Jason.”
She snorted, then slapped her hand over her mouth, embarrassed.
“What made you say that?” she asked, trying not to laugh. “Now? What made you say that now?”
He shrugged.
“I was just thinking about how he’d be making fun of us for this, if he knew. And I wish I knew how he was doing.”
“Sam, you can’t check on him. You know that.”
He sighed. It had been one of the things they’d talked about the night of the wedding, as she was writing the note to Jason. If Sam kept checking on Jason, eventually he was either going to see something he didn’t want to see and wouldn’t be able to change, or he would drag them off to go help with a problem, because he was worried about what was going to happen.
“He’s strong, now,” Samantha had said. “Really strong. You can’t worry about him.”
“I just wish I knew what he was doing,” Sam said now, going to sit on a bench. Samantha joined him, watching him as if she wished she could hear what was going on in his head. That was the other rule. He couldn’t check in on Jason, and she couldn’t let Abby check in on them. It was the only way they would get any space to themselves, as precious as that was.
He missed the bond. They’d had it almost since he’d met her, and it had evolved to a level of communication that was hard to go without, now. He couldn’t argue that it wasn’t necessary; Samantha had told him once that the only other bonded pair who had had a romantic relationship had literally eaten each other to death, in the end.
So the hairpin, with its powerful angeltongue characters, was here to stay, for now, and they had to go the old-fashioned route and talk to each other.
“We need to decide how we’re going to handle this,” Samantha said. He didn’t disagree, but that was too broad to be helpful.
“What, exactly?”
“Jason. You. You haven’t been apart since you were kids.”
“It’s just for now,” Sam said. “I mean, I miss him, but I want time alone with you.”
Time alone when they weren’t both completely crazy.
Samantha’s face warned him that there was more to it than that, and he frowned at her.
“What?”
“What are we going to do after that?” she asked him.
He shrugged.
“I don’t know. Go find him. Save Ashley. What did you have in mind?”
She looked up at the landscape in front of them.
“Sam, we don’t travel together. We only work together when we have to.”
“This is the ‘us’ we, isn’t it? The gray people?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought that that was because you all hate each other.”
She laughed.
“Well, we do that, as well, but we don’t work together because there’s no point. We’re too powerful, and it’s a waste of time. You get two egos in the room like that, and…” She shrugged.
“You and Jason work fine together.”
“But we shouldn’t.”
“So what, now that he’s one of you, you’re just going to start to hate each other?” Sam asked skeptically.
“No. He should do his thing, and I should do mine. We’re more effective that way.”
“But you’re his shaman,” Sam said. She smiled at this.
“Thing about shamen is that they usually stay home. I can be his shaman from anywhere.”
“Well, what about Lindsay? She’s always got her whole entourage with her.”
Samantha rolled her eyes.
“I’m talking about the effective people, Sam.”
He smiled, then it faded.
“You’re taking about splitting us up permanently.”
Sam had never considered following a plan for his life that separated him from his twin brother. This was the first time Samantha had suggested that they even consider it. They’d traveled together for as long as they’d known her, and she had… well, he couldn’t say that she’d always liked Jason, but she liked him most of the time.
She licked her lips. More than ever, he wanted to know what she was feeling as a conduit into what she was thinking. Even to feel she was torn about this would have comforted him.
“That’s why we need to talk about it,” she said.
“Sam, I don’t know if I can do that.”
She nodded.
“I know.”
