As head of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Paranormal Operations Unit, Clay Chiles has found a place where he can serve with honor and a surrogate family to replace the one he never truly enjoyed. When he meets Elven warrior Arondel and begins to build the partnership he had never hoped to find, life seems good. Still for two life-long loners to merge their lives, hearts and minds, an occasional conflict is bound to arise.<br><br>Clay’s discovery he has not only a father but a half-brother on Arondel’s home world of Elvenheim creates new and different challenges -- can he accept and trust relatives so different from all he has known? Can they accept him? Finally, faced with incredible tasks and dangers, Clay and Aron are torn asunder. Will the strength of their still- fragile bond be enough to bring them through hell and back to one another’s arms?

Runes of Redemption

At around two o’clock by the angle of the sun, Aron stopped so abruptly Clay almost ran into him. The elf turned his head, pointed ears erect and twitching slightly, like questing antennas. Clay knew better than to interrupt his partner with questions and tried instead to pick up whatever the other sensed. He caught a very faint awareness of something between a sound and a tingle of energy, but could not pinpoint its location.


Apparently, Aron did. He nodded once. ::I have it, off to our left, down a bit in that side canyon. Let’s go.::


This time he set a harder pace, but they did not have to go far. Less than a half-mile from where they’d paused, they came to what looked like an old mine adit, a dark, half-caved-in passage leading into the mountainside. A musty odor tainted with a hint of decay wisped from the cavern.


Aron wrinkled his nose. ::Trogue and something else.::He glanced at Clay. ::I think this is our gate.::


Chapter 8