Smoke and Other Storms Read online

  SMOKE AND OTHER STORMS

  J.L. DELAVEGA

  SMOKE AND OTHER STORMS

  By

  J.L. Delavega

  Copyright © 2022 J.L. Delavega

  * * *

  Edited by Tee Tate.

  Cover Design by MiblArt.

  All stock photos licensed appropriately.

  Map illustration by Cartographybird Maps.

  * * *

  Published in the United States by City Owl Press.

  www.cityowlpress.com

  * * *

  For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.

  CONTENTS

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  Find Your Next Read

  Arrival

  Part I

  1. Adelaide

  2. Moira

  3. Adelaide

  4. Moira

  5. Adelaide

  6. Moira

  7. Adelaide

  8. Moira

  9. Adelaide

  10. Adelaide

  11. Moira

  12. Adelaide

  13. Adelaide

  14. Moira

  15. Adelaide

  16. Moira

  17. Adelaide

  18. Moira

  Part II

  19. Adelaide

  20. Adelaide

  21. Moira

  22. Adelaide

  23. Adelaide

  24. Moira

  25. From the Diary of Zachariah O. Wells:

  26. Adelaide

  27. From the Diary of Zachariah O. Wells:

  28. Moira

  29. From the Diary of Zachariah O. Wells:

  30. Adelaide

  31. From the Diary of Zachariah O. Wells:

  32. Adelaide

  33. Moira

  34. From the Diary of Zachariah O. Wells:

  35. Moira

  36. From the Diary of Zachariah O. Wells:

  37. Moira

  38. Moira

  39. From the Diary of Zachariah O. Wells:

  40. Moira

  41. Adelaide

  42. From the Diary of Zachariah O. Wells:

  43. Adelaide

  Part III

  44. From the Diary of Amnesty H. Wells:

  45. Adelaide

  46. From the Diary of Amnesty H. Wells:

  47. Adelaide

  48. From the Diary of Amnesty H. Wells:

  49. Adelaide

  50. From the Diary of Amnesty H. Wells:

  51. Adelaide

  52. Moira

  53. Adelaide

  54. Adelaide

  55. Moira

  56. Adelaide

  57. Adelaide

  58. Moira

  59. Adelaide

  60. Moira

  61. Adelaide

  62. Adelaide

  63. Tesla

  Exit

  Sneak Peek of Hellfire and Honey

  Find Your Next Read

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  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Additional Titles

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  Don’t miss more of The Revere Trilogy from J. L. Delavega coming soon!

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  Until then, discover HELLFIRE AND HONEY, by City Owl Author, A.N. Payton

  Sal’s parents vanished years ago, leaving her as an unpopular monarch to lead the kingdom of witches in a war against the vampires that has spanned over two-hundred years. She is finally forced to surrender her kingdom to the vampire king, Kadence, who binds her magic as part of their agreement. Preferring to solve problems with her sword, Sal reluctantly relies on diplomacy to maintain the fragile peace. Kadence can’t decide if he’d rather kiss or kill Sal, and his desire wars against his ingrained hatred of witches. The two fight each other as often as they battle the witch-vampire hybrids trying to assassinate them.

  But an approaching demon army is about to force them to work together or face the annihilation of both of their kingdoms. They must unite their people for a final battle, or bloodthirsty demons will consume everyone they vowed to protect. If their distrust and longing for revenge rekindles the ancient war, both kingdoms will fall before the demons even reach the front gates.

  GET IT NOW!

  For my sisters. Obviously.

  Hollie, Olivia, Kirsten, Jess

  ARRIVAL

  My name is Adelaide. I am twenty-one years old, eyes like bastard gray quartz. Where I come from doesn’t matter, but to anyone that asks, they call me the Stranger, and there’s only one name you should bother knowing around here. Ours. Revere.

  Welcome to the Rim.

  PART ONE

  TERRITORY WEST

  ONE

  ADELAIDE

  I was born with two shadows. One is thrown by the sun. The other is the Stranger.

  The dried brush hugs the abandoned walls as I leave the rough grass and walk toward the fort, a thing of dust and focus. It looks dead, but there is a difference between things that are dead and those that only appear that way.

  Twenty-nine—the number of steps I take before the fort shadow hits me. The Stranger counts them for me.

  Few people can see her. But she’s always with me. Watching my back, counting my steps. It’s not enough to notice details if you can’t remember them later. The Stranger remembers everything. She is a second pulse, sensing danger, sharp edges that frighten others. The one thing my mother managed to give me.

  My shoulder to the bleached wall, I listen deeper. Around me, the Rim hisses behind a slow-moving wind. Behind the fort’s chipped stone is silence. I drag my scarf off my face and whistle to my sister Leagan waiting downslope with the wagon.

  We are alone, the Stranger confirms.

  Rock cracks as the horses get moving.

  I slip my hand through the gap to lift the plank from the inside slot, walking the gate open as the wagon rolls inside.

  Leagan hops from the high seat, landing with a fresh cloud of dust. Her face is muffled with a blue scarf and goggles. The right eye is a red sniper’s lens with distance dials, the left all-purpose amber to dull the sun.

  I drop the plank back into its slot and shake the gate. There will be no surprises from behind.

  The smuggler’s cache is in the jail room.

  “Eighty-six crates of Exodus brand ammunition…” Leagan tugs at one of her buns and stabs another pin through it. “And we get to carry all of them. Thanks a fart-load to our favorite arms dealer, Raleigh.”

  Leagan’s hair is fire red, twisted on top of her head like two cinnamon buns, lipstick always black. The colors of her two moods. “You’re my favorite arms dealer.”

  And she blushes.

  The familiar tic rises in my chest with each step. It doubles when my gaze makes a pas
s over the other five doors facing the courtyard. The Stranger again.

  I’ve picked through all those rooms before, but the Stranger won’t let me leave here without doing it again. It’s always been this way.

  After we get the ammo dug up and loaded.

  Seventeen steps.

  I sweep open the door ahead of Leagan. Bottles and piss still lurk in the corners. Another gang was here not too long ago. I drag away the flabby mattress covering the recently disturbed dirt in the first cell.

  “Catch.” Leagan tosses the shovel.

  The wooden lid peels back, and the tang of metal hits me. Loose dirt continues to trickle in around the ammo boxes. Rows of fresh, brass-capped lead. Heavy. Not something an unprepared bone picker just walks away with. But I look into the entire top layer of boxes, to be sure no one got to this before us.

  Leagan breathes in the gunpowder, humming as she closes her hazel eyes. “Fresh.”

  An earthy whistle scours across the wind. I go still.

  “Did you hear that?” Leagan eases a hand toward the rifle on her back.

  It sounded like a train. But the Stranger and I know better than to turn our backs to a stray sound. “Stay with the stash.”

  Thirteen.

  The midday sun is beginning to burn through my back despite my clothes. Pieces of my white hair stick to my neck as I reach the top of the wall.

  Smoke.

  A train glides southwest along the red bank of the river Sol, a copper snake. Against the clear sky, both smoke and steam spread dark blue, but straight out of the stack, at its most concentrated point, it looks like boiling midnight. Black means it’s burning Hannah’s pyrite quartz, better known as black gold.

  East blood—prospectors, settlers, and fools.

  The cars spool around the rock bend, out of sight. Heat ghosts twist the hillsides out of place, false pools of water appearing under them, but the sage-bristled landscape near us doesn’t move.

  The sun is strongest during Moon Season. Even under the wide shadow of my hat, my neck has a hot pulse. I’m definitely burning.

  “Well?” Leagan says.

  “Train. Headed for Vantage.”

  “Alkaline.” Her smile slants. “Enjoy the Rim, you fools.” She holds out a bottle of Sun Fire whiskey. “I think this is supposed to be our smuggler’s bribe.”

  “Lucky for Aunt Tess.” She’s the only one who drinks that sludge and likes it.

  “Aunt Tess isn’t here hauling this. Next time they should send us something we can all enjoy. Silver pinchers.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know…” Leagan grabs another crate. “Some books…or a puppy.”

  “Tell Raleigh. I’m sure he can find one for you.”

  “I’ll tell him to stop working with such a cheap-ass supplier. It just makes him look bad. I think by now he owes me a dog and you a horse because we always get stuck doing the wretched heavy-lifting jobs.”

  “A horse doesn’t fit on the train.”

  “A dog would. We can share it. And name it…Barley.”

  The bed of the wagon gets lower as we fill it.

  “You know why we’re here?” I ask.

  “Why?”

  “Because no one else can actually lift these besides us.” I squeeze Leagan’s flexed arm. “They just won’t admit it.”

  “Still,” she says. “It’s the bribe that counts. And I’m not feeling very persuaded.”

  As soon as we finish loading Raleigh’s ammo, I return to the jail, rake the dirt back over the smuggler’s cache, and then cover the disturbance with the soiled mattress. The Stranger’s pulse is clicking again, deep in my chest and in my head. Once again, I feel the rooms I haven’t looked in. They pick at me like nails in my spine.

  Thirty-two.

  The first door breaks apart a spider’s web. Relief from the sun. Army-issue cots still clutter the floor, a scorpion shell and nothing but rat droppings in the gun cabinets. We haven’t done a pickup here in eight moon cycles. But I still have to look. With each opened cupboard, the Stranger’s clockwork pressure winds down until it’s no longer a weight I have to breathe past.

  Leagan sits up in the wagon, reading.

  “Ready.”

  My horse looks me in the eye as I untether him from the wagon and run my hand down the wide white stripe marking his face. I’ve only known him since this morning, but he’s proud to be strong, taking people where they need to go. I can see it. And I want him. But we don’t stay in one place long enough for a creature like him to be satisfied. Horses are like us. They need the wild air. They need to run.

  Someday I’ll have a horse I don’t have to give back at the end of the day. But for now, the rails are my freedom.

  * * *

  Two miles outside the town of Vantage, something dark moves beyond the creek crossing. I put up my hand, and Leagan stops. The water is low and sharp on the red-brown rocks. We haven’t had rain since the red Season moon rose, won’t until the Season is over and there’s only one moon again.

  A group of four men huddle on the opposite bank where the trail is steep. Their cart bed is cracked, no tack, no horses, a yellow flag to signal help clinging to a brittle limb.

  “This looks like a bum uncle,” I say.

  “Yeah, it does.” Leagan lets go of the reins and brings her boar rifle around. Verdict, she calls it. “I’m ready when you are.”

  My horse obeys my nudge into the creek. The water doesn’t even touch his ankles. Leagan stays where she is, partially obscured by the brush.

  Eyes up.

  “Hello there, missies.” The man wearing an oversize felted hat lifts a dirty hand. “Think you can spare a minute?”

  When I don’t speak, he and another move in.

  “Thank the good Lord Providence you came along. Thought we might be stranded out here.”

  “You’re only two miles from town,” Leagan calls. She tilts her head in Vantage’s direction. “I can walk that far, can’t you?”

  “I dunno. Got a bad leg. Token of the war.”

  He’s not old enough to have been in the war.

  “Think you can give us a hand?” He hums to steady my horse as he reaches to gather my reins. “We’d be ever grateful.”

  He clamps his hand tight. I slip my feet from the stirrups. From the other side, the second man grabs my arm and belt, ripping me from the saddle. He locks an arm around my waist, the other pinning my elbows to my sides. Fool’s gold, he smells. They always smell.

  I wait.

  The roadman digs into my scarf, greasy nose to my neck, breathing deep. “Ah…ignore the color, boys. This one smells clean.”

  A revolver sets on my temple. “Don’t move, don’t scream.”

  They’re not from here. Gangs that have been on the Rim very long know there’s no advantage in threatening victims into submission. There’s usually no one around to hear a scream, and even if there is, no one is going to risk their life for a stranger. It might be different in the cities back east. But out here, you’re on your own. You use violence to get what you want. You wield it to survive.

  The roadman holding the gun chuckles, ripping down the yellow flag.

  The arms squeeze me. “Never trust a stranger, little girl.”

  I don’t. Only mine.

  “What do you have for me, huh?” He moves his hand across my stomach. “You’re too pretty to be a fox. Too pretty to be out here alone.”

  My scarf comes up past my nose and the brim of my hat down to meet my goggles. He has no idea what I look like. But I know they’d still try me even if I had one red eye and pointed teeth.

  Leagan won’t make a mistake or strike too soon. She never has.

  He slides the hand between my legs, and she fires. It’s the roadman holding the gun to my head who drops, an echo and spray of blood coating my cheek and ear.

  Leagan’s already lined up her next shot. “She’s not alone.”

  “Sweet Jezebel—” The fourth still crouchin
g by the busted cart leaps up. He’s dead next.

  “Stay back,” the roadman still holding on to me yells at Leagan, using my body as a shield against her. “If you ever want to see your friend alive.”

  The back of my heel snaps up into his groin. The arms crushing mine break away as he doubles over. My elbow catches his head first. Then as he folds, I shove my heel deep into his stomach. He lands in the creek, red spooling in the water from his mouth.

  I draw my pistol. “Never trust a Stranger.”

  “Get back!” He tries to spit blood on me as I crouch over him. I make sure he feels my hand in his pocket, stealing from him.