Highland Son (Highland Sorcery: A New Dawn) Read Online Free PDF Page B

watched carefully. It was clear Sheppard didn’t trust easily, but usually the news of a way to defeat the Sifts was met with more enthusiasm, more hope, often tentative and disbelieving at first, yet still discernable. Whatever Sheppard was thinking, hope had nothing to do with it.
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    They let them out of the room though each was shadowed with a guard and instructions to remain within the motel or inner courtyard and away from the storerooms, weapons or otherwise.
    Ethan clapped his palms together. “So where’s the kitchen?”
    “This way,” the skinny guard with the trucker hat flicked his twelve-gauge muzzle toward their left.
    Alexander scanned all the people in the courtyard, hoping for a glimpse of Jewel. There were a couple of women pouring water from pails on the fledgling crops down in the swimming pool bed while a teenage girl and boy went back and forth taking the empty pails from those below and refilling them with rain water collected from an industrial-sized plastic barrel.
    A few young girls playing jacks with assorted objects paused to look up at them. One of them, a girl around seven with bright red braids, started following them. “Hey misters.”
    Alexander turned back and felt Dez and Ethan and their guards stop ahead of him.
    “Are there really a lot more peoples out there?” Her hands knotted in the edge of her overlong T-shirt. “More than here?”
    Alexander nodded. Word of their news traveled fast in the small community.
    “Do you ‘spose…” She shifted from one foot to the other. “Is my momma there? She got lost.” Large pleading eyes looked up at him.
    Heart sore, Alexander crouched to her level. “I don’t know.” It was more than likely that her mother had perished like so many others.
    “Oh.” Her lips twisted. “Maybe you saw her?”
    Sheppard’s group had to be the most people she’d been among in her entire life. How could he explain to her how difficult it would be to know everyone in a group of hundreds? And how cruel would it be to not leave her any hope. “Maybe. But I didn’t know to look for her.”
    Her smooth forehead crinkled in thought. “I could draw you a picture.”
    Throat tight, he nodded. The empty hollow place in the pit of his gut expanded a little bit more. Seemingly satisfied she ran off, presumably to find paper or crayons or whatever they had for children to make drawings of missing mothers. Deithe ! His hands curled into fists.
    He couldn’t bring back dead parents. But he could give this child a world free of the monsters.
    Dez’s palm landed on his upper arm and pulled him up.
    Ethan shook his head. “Kids. They get you right here.” He pushed his knuckles against his own sternum.
    Yeah. Alexander stared at the room the child had disappeared into.
    “Food.” Dez steered him toward the front of the complex where the original motel’s check-in and restaurant or bar would have been. Never knew when you’d get another meal, his unyielding silent message conveyed in his grip, although Alexander’s appetite had fled with his inability to help that little girl. A few people were at the tables eating some kind of oatmeal mixture.
    Once again he found himself seeking out Jewel among the faces. Their escorts led them toward the back into the small kitchen area where a few people were drying and putting away dishes. Heat washed over them. The back door was ajar where the crackle and smoke of a fire steamed the opening like a screen of fog. Ah. The cooking fire.
    “Jewel.”
    Alexander’s head jerked at Ethan’s greeting.
    “Here. I got it.” Ethan took the large pot from her as she came in from the fire area outside. “I’m disappointed you didn’t come visit us again.”
    Jewel blew out a breath, causing a strand of hair that had come loose from her cap to dance in front of her nose. “So they’ve let you out then? And just in time. This is the last of the oats. Grab those bowls over there, would you,