Twisted Steel: An MC Anthology: Second Edition by Elizabeth Knox (top 5 ebook reader txt) 📕

energy inside the sweat lodge was at once exciting and calming, a feeling of being embraced by Mother Earth while the smoke was drawn through a hole in the roof by Father Sky. Anchor and reach up, Stone had once told him, stressing the need to ground yourself before you went flying off onto the astral plane.

Feeling the tail that was hidden in this form, Quake burrowed it energetically into the ground beneath him, hooked himself in place, and sent his thoughts spiraling out, focused on one thing. Finding Magenta.

At first, there was only darkness. The feelings of hopelessness and fear. He saw a maned wolf running, looking more fox than wolf while being neither. Jackals surrounded it, emanating evil. The maned wolf fell, plunging into an abyss.

He came out of his trance to find his face wet with tears.

Fuck.

He thought she was dead, but he could still feel her fear. He prayed to God it wasn’t an echo, something left behind when she passed on.

He wouldn’t know until they found her.

If they found her.

“You will.” Grey Smoke’s voice reached across to him as if he’d read his mind, offering comfort and inspiring new hope.

One by one, his brothers came back from wherever the hell they’d been. Quake couldn’t wait to hear what the rest of them had to say.

The temperature had dropped outside but they were still superheated from the sweat lodge. Throwing on their clothes, they stood waiting for the shaman to speak.

“Do you have someplace to stay?” he asked.

What the fuck?

Quake wanted to shake him, demand that he tell them what he’d seen.

“No,” Stone answered. “We’ve been searching for a kidnap victim all day. The signs pointed north.”

Grey Smoke nodded. “Come, then. We’ll put up the teepee. Talk. Rest. You will need it tomorrow. I can use a hand . . . .”

They followed the Ute shaman to a corrugated metal storage shed and walked away with a large teepee, lodge poles, stakes, and a mallet to hammer them into the ground. Working together, they had the traditional shelter up in a matter of minutes.

The Indian disappeared while they were finishing up, returning with a frame drum and a leather-headed beater.

Quake’s fingers itched, missing his guitar.

Stone excused himself and went back to his bike, returning with the two bags from the truck stop.

“Come,” Grey Smoke called to him, shooing the rest of them inside. “We sit. Talk. Listen. Learn.”

Once they were seated, Grey Smoke asked Quake to speak first.

“I saw a maned wolf,” he told them. “In darkness and surrounded by jackals before it was swallowed into nothingness.”

Ryder and Inferno shared a worried look.

He could see they were interpreting it the same way he had. That something had happened to Magenta and she was dead.

“Visions do not always mean what you think,” the shaman explained quietly. “The darkness could be the situation the wolf has found itself in. Falling does not always mean death. A fall from grace or hope . . . Descent can indicate a return to the past or a past life.”

“She’s in danger,” Quake muttered, clenching his jaw. “I can feel it.”

The shaman tilted his head, casting him a shrewd look. “Hold onto that connection and remember how it feels. You will need it in the future.”

“I saw a jackal, too,” Inferno spoke up. “One was circling me.”

Ryder made a sound in his throat. “I think my vision was broken. All I saw was one of those tigers from the show we went to in Vegas.”

Quake rolled his eyes. “Did you even empty your mind?”

“I know how to meditate,” the Viking grumbled. “It’s not my fault it didn’t work right.”

“I saw my old Remington rifle,” Stone murmured. “God, I loved that gun.”

“So we have jackals, a maned wolf, a tiger, and a rifle,” Quake recounted. “Does any of this make sense to anyone?”

“The answers will come in time,” Grey Smoke told him solemnly. “In the sweat lodge, I saw Spider Woman but she said nothing. She lives in a kiva under the ground. Her home is a hole in the earth like the pit you described. I need to drum,” he told them. “If I put myself into a trance state, I can search the upper, middle, and lower realms for her. Hopefully, she will tell me what you need to know.”

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small aspirin tin, opened it up, and put a pinch of something in his mouth. Picking up the drum, he struck the leather head with the beater, quickly finding his rhythm and maintaining it. The Dragons watched him in the darkness, sheltered by the skins of deer that he’d harvested, watching as the mushrooms he grew took effect and his shamanic journey started.

Eventually, he returned.

“I found Spider Woman,” he rasped, sounding like he wasn’t fully back in his body. “She refused to talk to me.”

Quake felt his shoulders drop. They’d been so close to learning something. Now they were back where they’d been.

Grey Smoke angled his head. “To me,” he repeated. “But White Buffalo Calf Woman knew my heart was pure. She deemed me worthy and offered to help me and intercede with Spider Woman. And now I wait for White Buffalo Calf Woman to come to me in my dreams,” he told them. “Sleep. She said you’ll have an answer at dawn. That’s all I know. That’s all I know.”

Quake was filled with frustration. Dawn was hours away, more time trickling through their fingers while Magenta was in peril. He prayed that tomorrow, come the break of dawn; they’d have a glimmer of hope, that White Buffalo Calf Woman would tell Grey Smoke where they could find Magenta.

10

Rory hoped her ankle wasn’t fucked up. As a shifter, her healing abilities were accelerated but not instantaneous. A displaced fracture would need to be broken and reset, making her recovery that much longer. Dancing was challenging enough without injuries. If she couldn’t dance, she’d be upstairs full time at The Pole Barn, spreading her