Bones Of Contention: The McKinnon Legends - The American Men Book 3 (2 page)

There had never been all out war with the Sidhe. The king understood it was not in the Sidhe’s best interest. Nevertheless, the warriors had defended the treaty on seven separate occasions against various rogue bands. Often there was no bloodshed once the Protectors were unleashed. Surrender was usually immediate. Turning the violators over to the king was said to be far worse punishment than any human sentence could offer.

The Protectors were a reminder to the Fae and their king.

That reminder?
Never forget.

He understood that the Brotherhood was a necessary evil to protect the greater good. In time Melitta would as well.

This child was not theirs, but a servant of all mankind.

“We knew, Melitta, we knew,” he whispered a second time as if repeating it might ease his pain.

“And that is to ease my broken heart?” she sobbed wondering how she would ever get past the pain she felt in her heart and the rending pain in her soul.

“You know we must let the boy go. It is custom and our duty to the Brotherhood. I am one of them, honor bound.”

It sounded hollow even to his ears.

Some brethren are called to it. Some are born to it. Blessed is he who is both.

He saw the mark on his son, acknowledging his destiny for greatness.

His son’s fate was sealed. It was sealed within the very blood which coursed through his veins. The first-born child of the first-born child of each Brother was relinquished to the wizards for training. It had been so for over twelve thousand years. The chain had never been broken and it would not happen this day.

“Men and their damned honor!” Melitta struck him a glancing blow out of guilt and grief. “This is my flesh and blood, my baby. He is gone, and you care not!”

She knew the words were not true even as she clutched his tunic, balling the fine fabric into her manicured hands and burying her face into his shoulder for comfort.

“That is not fair, Wife. I love you and we made that child together.”

Lysander paused. He did care about his child. He cared deeply; aching, knowing he had glimpsed his son’s fate, but he would never know the man. “I care enough to give him up. It is his destiny, Melitta. The wizards have spoken.”

“Must we give him up?” The hope in her voice tore a wide hole through his heart as she looked up at him. So much hope was reflected there and he had so little to give.

“You know we must.” He stroked her beautiful face knowing he would love this woman forever and he would lay down his life for her. But as much as he loved her, this was one thing he could never give to her or give to himself. The boy belonged to the world. His destiny was to protect and to serve mankind with his blood and shield.

“Maybe it is not too late. Maybe they would make an exception,” Melitta begged Lysander to consider asking the Council of Nine one more time before it was too late. “You are one of them.”

Silently, he shook his head. “All the more reason they cannot.”

Melitta cried harder as she leaned over the balcony begging Poseidon to raise the Aegean Sea to swallow her whole along with her grief.

“Careful what you wish for, Melitta. Fate is a fickle force that one should never trifle with, not even in grief.” He felt the prick of fear surge through his veins. She hit very close to home wishing for the very thing he feared was going to come to pass.

“He is my child, Lysander. How can you expect me to just let him go?”

“We must trust the wizards. They know what they are doing.”

She stayed at the balcony praying for one final glimpse of the trio before they boarded the boat. The act was totally in vain. Her child was gone, but would never be forgotten. Forbidden or not, she had given her child a name and sealed it into the mosaic family tree. Disguised as a symbol, they would never know she had committed the forbidden sin.

Her azure eyes bright as the sea itself filled with tears. She did not bother to stop them. Resigned, they watched the boat disappear into the column of steam and ash rising from the island of Thera just seventy miles away to the north. It was eerie, yet beautiful in the light of the full moon.

He was still in contact with a few Brothers within the sect. According to his sources, the wizards' plan was to abandon Thera and Crete forever. The Wizards' Council of Nine had gathered the whole of the Brotherhood in Knossos from all four corners of the known world to discuss their plans for a new beginning.

He prayed they left soon following the wizards' lead. To be gathered all at once was a serious risk to take, and he wondered about the wisdom of the Council of Nine to make such a grave tactical maneuver. The rumbling of the earth just solidified his belief. Surely the wizards knew the island was not safe or maybe they just did not care.

The next morning at dawn he awoke to see more ships leaving with the tide. He counted one hundred and fifty ships still at anchor. By his calculations that meant ninty-eight percent of the Brotherhood were still there.

“Fools!” His fear escalated as he watched provisions being carried to each ship at a pace even he could have managed. “Can’t you see?” he spoke to the wind. “You must hurry! Leave this place of the damned before it is too late.”

Even the locals had taken to the sea, evacuating days ago and in some cases weeks past. The island was almost empty of inhabitants.

Was the Brotherhood and Council of Nine so smug as to think they were immune to the dangers even simple fisher folk could see?

Turning back and away from the sea, he faced his wife. “Melitta, it is time. The servants are waiting for you at the dock.”

“I will have the men come help lift your litter and take us to the ship,” she said, then turning to leave their quarters.

He grabbed her wrist keeping her from leaving. “No, Wife.” He shook his head resolute in his decision. “I am staying until the last Brother has left us. I may be broken in body, but in mind and soul I am still one of them.”

Melitta understood what he was saying. To stay at this point could be suicide. She lifted her chin in defiance of the sea and angry volcano. She loved him and she would face this by his side.

“If you stay then I stay,” she said calmly, oddly feeling at peace with her decision.

“Are you insane? No, I forbid it! Argyros!” he yelled for his faithful manservant. He would have her removed by force if that was what it took to save her. He had been a fool not to see this coming. He should have seen her to the ship and safely aboard before he revealed his plans to remain behind. With him gone she would be a wealthy widow. She could seek another husband. He hated the idea, but he wanted her to have a life he could no longer give her. He was dying.

“No, Lysander.” She came to sit on the edge of his litter, softly stroking his beautiful, rich ebony hair. “I am staying. We will either survive this together or we will die together. Without you I am dead anyway.”

Lysander freed his household giving each enough to start a fresh life wherever the tides took them. Six chose to stay. Seventeen chose to go. Stowed aboard the wizards' ship, one followed the child at Melitta’s command.

And on the morning of the second day standing on the balcony supported by his wife, Lysander held Melitta tightly as Thera erupted in a manifestation of power and an enormity that no man living or dead had ever seen before or since. They knew there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The wine cellar was the best they could manage.

The collapse of the caldera produced a tsunami three hundred feet high which reached them in less than seven minutes, wiping the lingering fleet of Atlantis and the Minoan civilization of Crete totally from the face of the earth.

It would be another thirty-five hundred years before Lysander and Melitta’s story would come to light.

Sheriff Josh McKinnon pulled his Crown Victoria to a stop about twenty feet from where she lay against the bright green sign that told travelers heading south on Highway 349 they were entering Martin County.

From his headlights, he could see her jean-clad legs spread slightly apart. Her right arm was stretched above her head and her left arm was tucked under her body. Her deep blonde head was turned away from the roadway. At first glance he could not determine if she had been killed here. Perhaps she was a pedestrian struck by a lone car. He doubted it since the closest town or dwelling was miles away. It was more likely someone disposed of her body on this desolate stretch of highway. He could just make out drag marks along the side of the roadway, but they were coming from the direction of the field just to the west. Perhaps a wild animal dragged her from the field before dropping her along the side of the road. Josh pondered the possibility. It would not be the first time he had seen such a thing, except, it usually involved baby calves or small herd animals, not human remains.

He turned off the engine as the police radio crackled to life.

“Sir, what’s your 20?” asked Sissy Rimes, the county dispatcher.

Josh could tell she must have just gotten the news. It was amazing how fast bad news traveled.

“I’m at the county line on Highway 349. I’ll call you on the secured line, 10-4?” Josh released the switch on the mic.

“10-4, Sir. Better hurry, though. I’m getting calls already, and I need to know how much to tell them.”

“10-23.” He gave her the order to stand by. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“10-4, Sir. I’ll stall them as long as possible, but you know how it is around here. Telegraph, telephone, or tell-a-woman, the end result is the same. By the nine o’clock news they will all know.”

He would have corrected her if she had not been right on that account.

He did not want this out on the general airways until he could secure the area. Popping the trunk release just before unfolding his six-foot-four-inch frame from the car, he slipped on his cowboy hat. He would have preferred the ball cap sporting his daughter Jesse’s softball team, but regulations were regulations, and here in Texas anything besides a Stetson was just one step shy of heresy.

“You’ve got to stay inside the car on this one, boy.” He scratched his Doberman K-9 partner behind the ears before shutting the door on Saber’s whine and single bark of protest.

Walking to the back of his car, he lifted open the trunk, and the interior light shined brightly against the early evening twilight. Reaching inside to get the crime scene kit, he wondered why it seemed things like this always happened at the worst possible time for law enforcement personnel; for the victim, he guessed it was never a good time for them.

Today was Jesse’s fifteenth birthday party. However, he felt certain seven teenage girls would never miss him. Thank goodness for his housekeeper, Lilly, who had been with a McKinnon household as long as he could remember. He was just the one lucky enough to have her at present. However, with Jesse quickly growing up to be a young adult and his cousin Gage having a new baby on the way, he was sure he would be losing Lilly soon.

He slammed the trunk lid with a resounding thunk and just stood there for a moment. Squinting eyes of cobalt blue fringed by dark lashes, Josh looked around at a landscape seeing very little change in the last one hundred and fifty years. He just let the land talk to him hoping it would tell him something... anything.

It was the only witness he had at the moment.

Dotting the rich farmland were brand new cell phone towers. Somehow these looked out of place to him here on the nearly unbroken horizon of this West Texas countryside. If those were removed, Josh thought, you would have seen the same background as in the photo of his great-great-grandfather hanging in his family room. The photo had been taken of Gavin McKinnon just before going off to the first World War in 1918.

“Nope, not much has changed,” Josh mumbled to himself. He thought it especially true on this desolate stretch of asphalt called Highway 349 which served only one purpose in Josh’s estimation: to join the Middle-of-Nowhere with Not-Much-Else.

The Martin County line on Highway 349 was located between the crossroads town of LeMesa and Midland, famous for unrivaled high school football. In short, Martin County was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by large family and commercial farms and fields that in July were filled with bright yellow sunflowers as far as the eye could see. The fall crop was usually cotton, and this time of year those fields were a blanket of snow white cotton bowls, ripe for the impending November harvest.

Shallow oil wells with their distinctive hammerhead pumps dotted these same cotton fields. Endlessly, steadily moving up..down..up..down..up..down, they were a testament to the unrelenting pursuit of the precious oil reserves located just below the surface. The people of Martin County went about their lives just as rhythmically as the up and down of the wellheads.

Yesterday, last week, last year - it was all the same as one day flowed into the next until a person could completely lose a decade. He loved it here. It was home and had been for most of his thirty-eight years.

Nothing ever happened here in Martin County which was just fine with him. He had voluntarily left behind the excitement of large city law enforcement several years earlier after he fought and won custody of Jesse.

As a single man raising his child, he could not afford to die in the line of duty. So leaving the S.W.A.T. team in Miami in 2003, he won the office of Martin County sheriff. The McKinnon name was just as solid and just as much a part of the fabric making up this country as the cotton and oil. Running for sheriff just seemed to be the logical thing to do. The timing had been perfect for him to toss his name into the political arena. Sheriff Davis retired after a twenty-two year run in office leaving the slot open. Josh won by a landslide and had subsequently been reelected.

So here he was on the evening of his daughter’s birthday doing what he had promised the voters he would do, protect and serve. Old Man Hammers had called him at home with the news that he found the Jane Doe as he was moving his tractor from one field to another. Josh knew that had this been Miami there would already be so much activity around the body, little evidence collected would be credible. However, Mr. Hammers said he had seen enough cop shows on television to know not to touch anything and to call him “straight away.”