A Nature of Conflict (The Redemption Saga Book 3), page 32
Quinn only growled back at her. Sawyer swatted his stomach gently. He looked over to her and frowned.
“Be nice,” she told him. “She’s helping us, remember?”
He took a deep breath and nodded. She wasn’t going to get in on whatever was happening between them, but she wasn’t going to let him treat Yasmin badly. Yasmin was unfortunate enough to be in similar company of the women who’d hurt him. She didn’t want to see Quinn continue the habit of judging someone not on their actions, but how they were born.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I will never forget the kindness you’ve shown my mate and I here.”
“Then we will talk.” Yasmin continued to smile and led them to a large hut. Sawyer had passed it before. It seemed like a community building of sorts.
Once inside, Sawyer decided to start asking questions. “I was wondering if you may have a satellite phone or-”
“We have no technology here because we can’t make it. I’m sorry.” Yasmin raised her hands. She sat down slowly on a mat.
“You have towels.” Sawyer was confused. She needed to know what she was working with. “You don’t make those.”
“I receive things from hunters who know me passing through. They bring me pieces of the outside world, new textiles and the sort, and I give them some information about their hunt. It’s a common occurrence. I know they aren’t poachers and they know I won’t come after them if they are in my territory.” Yasmin sighed. “They offered me a cellphone once. Sadly, there’s no use for it out here and my people here find technology uncomfortable. They don’t want it.”
“Where’s the closest technologically capable village?” Quinn asked, leading Sawyer to sit with him across from Yasmin.
“Days away.”
“Quinn, we can’t just go find another village,” Sawyer spoke out. “We have to go back to the camp.”
“Why?” he asked.
“We need to make sure they aren’t dead out there,” Sawyer reminded him, closing her eyes. Their faces flashed in her mind. Part of her heart was secure, sitting right next to her, but the other pieces were out there.
“You’re right. I was thinking we would find them, then lead them back. Don’t worry.”
“Quinn is a wolf. He’s pack-oriented. If your pack is back where you fought Camila, then he will be unable to resist the urge to account for them,” Yasmin added. “I didn’t expect it from a feline though.”
“I’m not a jaguar,” Sawyer scoffed. “I’m a lot of things - a cat ain’t one of them.”
“Druids tend to equate someone’s animal bond as a judge of their personality,” Quinn explained. “I think a feline suits you…remember?”
“Okay, moving on,” Sawyer said in a decided tone. “How many days back to the camp?” A small growl and Sawyer turned to see her jaguar walk in with Shade and Scout. Images flashed in her mind. Sawyer walking. Two dawns, one night. Fell. Dragged until another night. “Two days.”
“Three,” Yasmin corrected. “I went out when I felt Sombra coming back into my territory. She was dragging you. Another day to get here.”
“And we slept for the day of travel here.”
“And another day here, yes,” Yasmin confirmed. “There’s one problem.”
“I don’t like problems,” Sawyer mumbled.
“Camila is waiting on the border. She wants your heads.”
Sawyer felt like ice water had been thrown over her. “The way back to our teammates, to make sure they lived or died…is through the Druid we were sent here to kill.” She considered that, grinding her teeth in some mix of frustration, dread, and general annoyance. She’d been hoping she stabbed the bitch hard enough to kill her.
“She’s injured, if that helps. Apparently, someone got a couple good hits on her,” Yasmin commented lightly.
“Damn right I did,” Sawyer growled.
“What?” Quinn blinked several times, turning to look at her.
“You think I snuck you out from under her nose. Fuck no. I stabbed her,” she told him, glaring. “I’m pissed off she’s not dead, though.”
“Well, a Druid’s knowledge of local plants and resources makes us capable of handling wounds. Healing salves and the like. Might not be perfect, like having a healer on hand, but we survive. Some Druids I’ve met have sold these things to their local villages or given them out in return for working together.”
“Why can’t Camila be nice like that?” Sawyer asked incredulously.
“Camila is a self-important little girl who feels too deeply and refuses to understand the balance of the world we live in,” Yasmin answered. “She took over that area, demanding the villages fall in line but receive no benefits for working together. When poachers started going into her territory, added with the villages that refused to work with her…”
“She lashed out and decided to purge the area of ‘invaders,’” Quinn finished. “Let me guess, one of her animal bonds died to poachers.”
“Yes,” Yasmin confirmed softly. “Instead of remembering and accepting what we taught her-”
“We?” Sawyer perked up at that.
“Tez’s mother and I trained her when she arrived, running away from her home to find a place where she and her magic would feel at peace. Like all Druids do, remember?”
Sawyer did, nodding.
“You want us to kill her.” Quinn groaned. “Haven’t we done enough?”
“If you want to get where you want to go, you’ll need to.”
Sawyer just listened to them argue now. Quinn wanted to find any way around Camila, while Yasmin told him there was no way. The moment they stepped foot in her territory, she was going to hunt them down.
Sawyer pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees, considering. Thinking.
What would Vincent want? Jasper? Zander? Elijah? What would any of them want from this situation? What skills could she draw upon to not only live through getting back to them, but also deal with problems she hadn’t yet wanted to consider?
Leaving the jungle wasn’t just going home. The WMC and the Councilwoman D’Angelo were still a problem. The mission could still succeed. Vincent had offered trying to find diplomatic solutions.
Sawyer tuned out of the argument completely as Tez joined and moved into the language she didn’t understand. Her eyes fell on Sombra. The jaguar only sent her a willingness to do anything. She would follow Sawyer anywhere and do whatever was needed of her.
“I can kill her, but I need help,” Sawyer said, cutting them both off. Those were the skills she had. She could kill. She could finish the job she started, one she thought she had already succeeded at.
“Sawyer-” Quinn switched back to English, desperate-sounding.
“I can, Quinn. I can sublimate, get inside her defenses. I did before, but it was pitch black and I barely had any back up, from only Sombra. With proper back up and help, I can take her down.” When he tried to cut her off, she waved him down and kept going. “You should have never tried to fight her alone.”
“You were safer. You and the team were safer together, but someone had to try.” He looked furious with her.
“Did you forget you have an assassin?” She raised her arms, questioning him, motioning to herself.
“Assassin?” Yasmin gasped, looking at her.
“They once called me Shadow,” Sawyer told her, smiling. Yasmin’s eyes went to the size of dinner plates. Sawyer was glad to finally have that out. Shadow and Sombra. Yasmin’s eyes flicked between the two of them, understanding her name might not have been the most appropriate, but it was the most fitting.
“We help,” Tez said in broken English.
Sawyer grinned as Quinn cursed.
“Sawyer…”
“Quinn.” She crossed her arms. “And thank you, Tez.” That made Quinn growl. “Speaking of you and Yasmin. We had another goal out here, not just killing Camila for what she did. Our team leader had offered the WMC the chance to search for diplomatic options to keep Druids and those around them happy.”
“Meaning a Druid from the Amazon would need to go meet the WMC,” Yasmin guessed. “Because the problem lies here, because our problems are different from the problems of other Druids around the world.”
“Yes.” Sawyer shrugged. “The Druid of the Florida Everglades doesn’t kill people.” The Everglades also didn’t have rampant poaching, deforestation, and corrupt human governments ignoring the pleas for those things to stop. She didn’t say that out loud.
“I can’t do that,” Yasmin sighed. “There’s a reason a Druid has never walked into the halls of the WMC. I might recognize them as the government of my people, of all Magi, but I can’t go to New York.”
“Someone needs to. It shouldn’t be long. I feel like they might be very accommodating.”
“I can’t.”
“Yasmin, please,” Sawyer begged. She didn’t need to do this. This was extra, but she felt like she’d be failing Vincent if she didn’t convince Yasmin to go.
Yasmin looked considering, shaking her head with her eyes closed. Tez whispered something, but Sawyer didn’t understand.
“I’ll think on it. We’ll help with Camila and then give you an answer,” Yasmin promised. Sawyer nodded. That worked for her. “Sleep tonight. We’ll leave in the morning.”
Quinn cursed and growled at Sawyer again.
She snarled back, baring her teeth. “We’re going to fight our way out of this jungle, Quinn. Deal with it.”
“I’m allowed to be mad at you for wanting to get yourself hurt.”
“Don’t start treating me like a princess now,” Sawyer ordered. “You haven’t before. I’ll remind you…I saved you this time.”
She left the hut to go back to her own. Quinn and all their animals followed. When she made it, she rolled her eyes at the new, bigger cot inside. Yasmin was sneaky. Her weapons were clean and laid out on the cot as well. Nothing was unaccounted for, except the dagger she had handed Varya. She hoped that dagger had kept the blonde alive.
“I’m sorry. You’re correct,” Quinn said as he walked in. He mumbled the next part. “I’ve been saying that a lot recently.”
“It’s dangerous, and I’m worried too - but it’s really our only option. If they died in that camp, I need to…I need to see. If that means finishing this god-forsaken mission and killing Camila to do it, then so be it.”
“Of course.” He sat down on the cot next to her weapons. “I agree, but…”
“It’s natural not to want to see someone you care about get hurt,” she murmured, kissing his forehead. “I’m not angry with you. A little annoyed.”
“No, I’ve seen you angry. I know you aren’t that. We will eat dinner tonight and rest well. Then we go hunting.”
“Then we go hunting,” she agreed.
30
Sawyer
The next dawn, Sawyer was ready already. She’d woken up before most in the village, Quinn by her side. They had prepared quietly. Yasmin showed up and gave them some sort of bread to eat.
“Are you going to go to the WMC and New York with us?” Sawyer asked immediately, taking the bread.
“I haven’t decided,” the Druid answered quietly. “I will once we see who does and doesn’t survive this. I’m sorry. It’s a…hard decision to make. I’m scared to leave my children, scared of leaving my bonds, scared of going back to a world I haven’t been in for…decades. Since I was a girl.”
“I understand.” Sawyer sighed, nodding. The answer would come soon.
Very little was said as they left. Yasmin and Tez led, back down the path that Sawyer guessed they had been brought in on. It was a fast pace. Tez and Yasmin knew the area well and Quinn was accustomed to the outdoors, able to keep up. Sawyer was the slow one, but she cheated. She phased through obstacles and blinked when she fell behind.
“Wasteful,” Quinn teased her.
“You all move faster than me and I’ll be fine. My Source is deep enough to handle it and we’ll be resting at least one more time before we run into her.”
“Those points are all valid,” he agreed. She liked the small smile on his face. She was glad to see he wasn’t getting dark on her, withdrawn as they left to fight this bitch one more time for all the marbles. He’d pulled away a little while they had hiked into this hot, humid hell. She enjoyed that he was smiling on their path out. Then he asked a question she hadn’t wanted to answer yet. “Are you ready to kill again?”
“To keep my family together?” Sawyer chuckled darkly. She’d done it before and failed. “Always.”
Sombra brushed against her mind, reminding her of the last time she’d failed. It should have been Midnight, but Sawyer was growing used to her new jaguar. She wanted a lifetime with her new cat, and her men.
This time, she wouldn’t fail.
They must have been going much faster than Sawyer originally had. Yasmin raised her hand on the evening of the second day to stop them.
“We’ll reach the disputed area between Camila and I by nightfall. It’s not that we fight over it, but our magic intermingles. It’s about two miles that belong to both of us. It’s a natural overlap, really.”
“Where did you find me and Quinn?” Sawyer crossed her arms, leaning on a tree to relax.
“We passed that already. You made it through this area somehow. Sombra brought you into my territory. Camila was too injured herself to chase until you were in my space. She wouldn’t dare cross into my home to do it.”
“Why did we stop here?” Sawyer felt like she was out of the loop. Quinn wasn’t saying anything and didn’t seem confused in the slightest.
“Camila can reasonably begin attacking us once we enter the overlap,” Yasmin answered. “She would wait until we enter her territory fully, if she was smart, but I think she’s too angry for that. She’s in the middle of the overlap, waiting.”
Sawyer couldn’t see this overlap. It all just looked like jungle to her. “You can feel her,” she said plainly.
“Of course. The magic in the world might be too much for you, Quinn, and Tez, but we Druids are strong enough to know where our kind is, especially so close.”
“So we stopped why?”
“Yasmin wants us to make sure we’re ready for this. She’ll be fighting with Camila for control of the jungle. Any of us could die.”
“She knows Tez is a healer,” Yasmin whispered into the wind. Sawyer watched her hold her husband’s hand. “She’ll have her target once she knows that we’re in the fight and she probably already assumes we are. Are you ready?”
“You all need to stop asking me that.” Sawyer huffed. “Let’s do this.”
She started walking again.
The Druid Camila stood between her and her home, her men, her new family. Sawyer could only do what she did best now. Kill her for it.
“I guess we’re doing this now,” Yasmin said with a sigh. “Well.”
“I’m not sure if Sawyer has ever backed down from a fight,” Quinn commented, following her.
Together they walked as the sun began to set. With each minute, the lowering of the sun brought out something in Sawyer she’d long put away. When the mission had started, she’d been cranky, distracted by politics, the consequences of everything she did.
Now, with no soldiers, and only one objective, she focused.
She hadn’t felt like this in a very long time.
It was a clarity of sorts. The last few fights she’d been in had been hurried, fights for her life or the lives of others.
This one was like every assassination she’d ever done. It was a hunt, and it brought her a focus. To fail would mean the deaths of others in an abstract way; she had the time to be patient and consider her options.
Like every assassination, she thought of objective wins and losses possible. To lose, any or all of her group would need to be dead and Camila would still be alive. The only win condition that included a death was if she died, but so did Camila. Sawyer didn’t acknowledge the idea of the deaths of others. She would need to kill Camila fast enough to keep herself the largest threat and Tez, Quinn, and Yasmin as secondary threats.
She could use her sublimation to avoid dangers. Phasing was too risky with how fast things would be moving. She couldn’t risk having a vine or snake in her body if she accidentally screwed up, or the chance of losing a limb.
Blinking would get her close to the Druid and do it quickly. If she got line of sight, or Sombra did and gave her a clear image, Sawyer could get on top of the Druid before she knew how to defend herself.
For the first time in her life, and probably the only time she ever would, she sent a private thanks to Axel Castello for making her the monster. It was proving to be her strongest skill, her ability to detach and analyze.
Night was falling, the sun nearly gone, when Yasmin whispered they were entering the overlap. None of them responded to her as they came upon Camila.
Sawyer was glad for the night, the darkness of the jungle. Now, focused, it didn’t hold surprises for her. It was just her domain.
“Camila,” Yasmin called out in Spanish. “You wanted to see my new charges?”
“They invaded my territory and attacked me, Yasmin!” Camila screeched. “Hand them over and walk away.”
“They were doing their jobs, Camila. I warned you that attacking, thinking you could eradicate humans, only brought trouble. We’re Magi and we answer to the W-”
“I answer to nobody!” Camila screamed. “This is my territory! I rule! No one is as powerful as me, and it will be run my way!”
“Camila, they just want to go home, and you are between them and their home,” Yasmin continued to try. “I am going to go with them and talk to the WMC.”
Sawyer didn’t know this was part of the plan, but she could imagine Yasmin wanted to find any way for this to work that didn’t result in her husband getting killed.
“I don’t care about the WMC. What can they do to me?” Camila gave a shrill, nearly maniacal laugh.
“Send more soldiers until they put you down, trample your home.” Yasmin was trying so hard.
