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Kade released Seth to him, and watched as his father carried the body, barefoot through the ankledeep snow, toward the Darkhaven's chapel that stood near the center of the compound. There, as was custom, Seth's corpse would be prepared for the funeral rites to be carried out at the next sunrise. Kade felt Alex's arms come around him in a warm embrace, but it did little to ease the cold regret that gnawed at him like a vulture on carrion.
In just a couple more hours, nothing but a pile of sun-scorched ash would remain of his brother--or of Kade's place among his kin.
Back in Harmony, the warriors were hauling ass to clean up the situation with the locals, which had begun some time ago with the task of disappearing several dead bodies from cold storage at the airstrip and at the town's tiny clinic.
"One nice thing about all this snow and wilderness out here is there's a lot of goddamn snow and wilderness out here," Tegan remarked dryly as Chase and Hunter met up with him at their waiting snowmachines on a game trail several long miles into the bush.
They'd sledded out of Harmony with the Toms family, Big Dave, and Lanny Ham in tow, carrying all of the Ancient's recent victims to a cavern in the area mountains. A few strategically fired gunshots had collapsed the ice and rock at the cavern's mouth, sealing it off and ensuring that the dead would not be found until sometime well into the next ice age.
"Any word from Gideon about Phase Two of this operation?" Tegan asked Chase, who'd been charged with coordinating the in-town portion of their task list for the day
"Everything's in place," Chase said. "Gideon has spoken with one Sidney Charles, Harmony's acting mayor, informing Mr. Charles that the unit dispatched from the Alaska State Trooper pision in Fairbanks should be arriving within the hour to address the townspeople as a group and collect statements."
"And I take it the good mayor was agreeable to that?"
Chase nodded. "He told Gideon he would personally see to it that every citizen was in attendance. They're gathering at Harmony's church to wait for us as we speak."
Tegan chuckled low under his breath. "So, where does that leave things? Breaking and entering, evidence tampering, compromising a crime scene, impersonating police officers, scrubbing roughly a hundred human minds in one fell swoop and getting it done before first light ..." Chase grinned. "All in a day's work."
Kade wasn't sure he would be welcomed in the Darkhaven chapel where all of the compound's residents had gathered to say their good-byes to Seth in the remaining minutes before daybreak. He had intended to sit the damned ritual out completely, pacing his quarters in front of Alex like a caged animal as the hour crept closer and closer to noon, when the winter sun would finally make its brief appearance. Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore.
"I have to be there," he blurted, stopping in front of Alex where she sat on the sofa in his cabin's living room. "Whether they think I belong with them now or not, I need to be there. For Seth. And for myself, too. Goddamn it, they all need to hear what I have to say."
He stormed out of the cabin and headed across the frozen grounds. The faintly blue-tinged snow, lighted by the approaching sunrise, crunched under his boots with each long stride that carried him toward the chapel.
The windows of the small log building were already shuttered tight in anticipation of daybreak. As Kade drew nearer, he heard the soft murmur of voices lowered in private prayer, mingled with the intermittent sounds of the grieving inside.
Even before he reached for the latch of the door, he could smell the paraffin odor of the eight candles that would be burning at the altar, and the fragrant scent of the perfumed oil that anointed Seth's body in preparation for the infinity rites about to take place.
Eight ounces of oil to bless and cleanse him. Eight layers of pristine white silk to shroud him until his body would be surrendered to the sun. Eight minutes of scorching ultraviolet exposure for the one who would be chosen from among the living to attend Seth in private for the final moments of the funeral ceremony.
"Fuck," Kade whispered, paused at the chapel doors as the reality of it all settled on him. His brother was dead.
His family was in mourning.
And Kade felt more than partly to blame for all of it.
He opened the chapel door and stepped inside. Nearly every head swung in his direction, some looking on him in pity, others staring at him like the stranger he had become in the year he'd been gone with the Order.
Everyone gathered in the chapel was dressed in ceremonial attire--females draped in black hooded gowns, males in belted long black robes. He found his parents in the front row of pews, standing with Maksim and Patrice, all of them garbed in black, their faces pale with shock, eyes rimmed in red, moist with grief. Had Seth been mated to Patrice, as his widow, she would have been gowned in hooded scarlet to signify their blood bond. His body, cocooned in white silk on the altar, would have borne a single crimson kiss where his Breedmate would have scored her own lips then pressed her mouth to his in one final goodbye. As Kade considered the solemn traditions of his kind, he couldn't help thinking of Alex. He couldn't keep from flashing forward to a future where he was the one laid out on the funeral altar, his face transformed as Seth's was, frozen by Bloodlust under the shroud of white silk. Would Alex love him then?
Could he really ask her to love him now, after everything she knew about him? After everything she had seen and heard in the past several hours, could he ever expect to have her trust or affection ever again?
For that matter, what about the people gathered in this chapel? Would his kin at this Darkhaven have anything but scorn for him, once he'd said his piece?
Kade didn't know. At the moment, he didn't damn well care. He strode to the center aisle, knowing how out of place he must look in his combat-worn, bloodstained black fatigues, guns and blades bristling from the belt around his hips while his lug-soled boots echoed hollowly over the polished wood path toward the altar.
His father's gaze narrowed darkly as Kade began to walk toward the front of the chapel. As he passed the rows of filled pews, he heard the quiet murmurs of prayers and softly whispered praises for his brother.
"Always such a charming boy, wasn't he?" someone reflected in a barely audible voice. "How tragic that something like this could have happened to him."
that something like this could have happened to him."
"Seth was the studious and responsible one," another detached whisper recalled. "He might have made a fine Darkhaven leader himself one day."
"Poor Kir and Victoria, they must be heartbroken," remarked yet another grief-choked resident, voice lowered so that Kade could hardly hear as he passed. "Would anyone have imagined that Seth could turn Rogue? What a waste, and what a disappointment for his family."
"Kir has refused to speak of it" came a hushed reply. "I understand he is so ashamed, he would let no one near the body after Kade brought Seth home."
