Bj James - Journey's End

They are, in most cases, men and women who have plummeted to the brink of hell because of their talents. Tortured souls who have stared down into the maw of destruction, been burned by its fires, yet have come back, better, surer, stronger. Driven and Colder.

As officially nameless as The Black Watch, to those few who have had the misfortune and need of calling on their dark service, they are known as Simon’s chosen... Simon’s marauders.

Prologue

“No!”

Boot heels thudding on the bare wood floor, Ty O’Hara scowled and paced and listened.

“No,” he declared again into the telephone. “There have been guests here from early spring into early August. I can’t have any over the winter. I won’t.”

In rare impatience, he whipped his Stetson from his head, sailing it across the room. Any other time he would have been mildly pleased when he scored a bull’s-eye, with the stained and worn hat settling perfectly onto the peg by the door. Another time, but not today. Not when he had the sinking, drowning feeling he was waging a losing battle.

“I said no. N, period. O, period. A short, simple word an intelligent woman such as yourself should have no trouble comprehending.”

He stopped his pacing abruptly, his fingers raked through sweat flattened hair. “Of course I love you. Of course I trust you. Of course I know what you’re asking is exactly the sort of thing that saved you. And of course I know you wouldn’t ask unless this was of the direst importance.

“But,” he turned to face a bank of windows and the mountainous vista they offered, “the answer is still no.”

He found no pleasure in the view. None in his refusal. Sighing, he grumbled, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

There was silence in the cabin, then, interrupting the coaxing voice whispering in his ear, he demanded, “Why? Why is it so important this Santiago comes here? With the resources Simon McKinzie has at his command, why send his walking wounded to me?”

Finding no resolution in the mountains, Ty turned his back on them. “It was your suggestion?” Closing his eyes he thought of a much loved face with a stubborn chin framed by a wealth of hair only a shade lighter than his own black mane. Of a level gaze a shade darker, descending from deep blue to navy in solemn resolve. Of a mouth that trembled in tenderhearted concern. “Because this is your friend, you promised I would help?”

He began to pace again. “No, I wouldn’t want you to break your promise. Yes, I remember our promise to each other. We are blood brothers and sisters, Val. We were born that way,” he reminded drolly. “No, I haven’t forgotten cutting our palms when you were eight and I was ten, then bleeding all over each other to make the bond stronger.”

Once he would have smiled at the memory: The five of them, descending in age by one year or two from Devlin, to Kieran, to himself, then Valentina and the youngest, Patience. Five O’Haras huddled together on a summer day, swearing secret and eternal fidelity, biting back pain, dripping O’Hara blood.

A kid’s stunt and Dev’s idea, but Tynan had decided more than once over the years that the ritual had succeeded. Why else had he always been such a soft touch for his sisters? Why now, he wondered as he went down in flames. Crashing, burning, sighing in defeat, he agreed, “All right.”

Pausing, he waited for the long distance jubilation to subside. “That’s what I said. Yes, I promise.” His brows plummeted in a deepening frown. “When? When will this Merrill Santiago come?”

Gripping the telephone, he squinted and nodded. “You were so certain I would agree, he’s already on his way?”

“She?”

His eyes blinked open, the telephone crackled under his grasp. “She! Tell me this is a joke, Val. I need for you to tell me this is a joke.”

The open phone line hummed hollowly in his ear.

“Val! No! Don’t you dare.”

With the sounding of a pleased and wicked chuckle, the line went dead. Valentina had seized her victory and signed off. Leaving her brother with a broken connection and a growing sense of dismay.

“A woman!” Ty muttered to the four walls, to the mountains, to the darkening Montana sky. “Merrill Santiago is a woman.” The receiver clattered into its cradle. “What the hell have you done? Why, Valentina?”

Brooding in the gathering of twilight, Tynan knew with dreadful certainty there was no help for his sister’s coup. No remedy for an O’Hara fait accompli.

“Caged with a wounded kitten for the winter. A female kitten! God help me. God help us both.” Teeth clenched, he scowled into the first fall of night. “Beginning with tomorrow.”

One

Snow!

Tynan O’Hara looked into a cloudless Montana sky and offered another silent plea. He cajoled. He implored. Before that he’d commanded, demanded. And he’d cursed.

But Mother Nature, that fickle and wily lady, hadn’t listened. No more than Valentina had listened.

“When will I learn to say no, and mean it?” he asked the wolf sitting patiently at his feet.

As it echoed through the comfortable, but spartan room, the sound of his deep voice would have been startling if there had been ears other than his own and the wolf’s to hear. He spoke softly for a man so large, his words filled with unshakable, ironic calm even in anger. Anger directed at himself, destined to be short lived as his anger always was.

Leaving the window and its ever changing view, he crossed to a woodstove. The scarred and monstrously ugly antique, more than thrice his thirty-five years, had proven more than thrice as practical for his needs than one less ugly and more modern. Lifting a battered tin pot from the iron top, he refilled a tin cup nearly as battered. Sipping the brew that would have grown hair on his chest if it weren’t there already, he returned to his study of sprawling pastures and silent mountains. The latter, riddled with deep gashes of chasms carved by the great rivers of ice called down by the unheeding Mother Nature aeons before, forever fascinating.

Ty moved with an easy grace, walked with an agile step. Attentive and poised as he was in everything.

Given his manner, his coal black hair, his chiseled cheeks and darkly weathered skin, were it not for his eyes, he might have been mistaken for a member of the nearby Indian tribe. But as there were no ears to hear the soft, deep voice, neither were there eyes to see the eyes that were as blue as a Montana lake, bluer than its sky. Irish eyes, an arresting reminder of his black Irish heritage, in a thoroughly American face.

The quietude with which he surrounded himself, with which he unfailingly reacted, told less of his share of the fabled Irish temper than of a remarkable control. Which, now, as he looked out over the rugged land, was sorely tested.

This was his home, his time. The season of the tourist, the interim when he served as guide and outfitter for the temporary guest, was over. The season purposely cut short, with most of the horses moved to more temperate pastures; the summer hands decamped, scattered, taking up their winter’s work.

And Tynan O’Hara had returned to the small cabin no tourist and few ranch hands had ever entered.

He wasn’t misanthropic. Far from it. He truly enjoyed these people he called summer folk, enchanting the ladies with his easygoing charm, engaging the gentlemen with his down-to-earth approach to life and living. And all of it easily, naturally done, with Ty hardly realizing that he had. He was always glad to see them come, the wide-eyed and eager adventurers with childhood dreams of the West tucked in their hearts and shining on their faces. He delighted in sharing with them this land, the land that had chosen him, the wilderness that fulfilled his own dream and halted his restless wandering.