FIVE
“WE are
worried about the innocents,” said the Russian wolf from the
podium. Ostensibly, he was speaking to the crowd, but his words
were for Charles. He spoke in English, which was well because
Charles’s smattering of Russian wasn’t trustworthy on serious
subjects, and he was distracted by Anna, who sat, very still,
beside him.
“We are
strong,” the Russian said, “and we can protect ourselves. But we have mates
who are human, families who are human. They will suffer, and this
cannot be tolerated.”
There was
something incongruous about the venue they were in: an elegant
auditorium with oak accents, trimmed in fabrics of various brownish
gray hues, understated and expensive. A place where Angus hunted
the CEOs of large companies and captured them with images of the
power his technology could give them. The men and women filling the
seats this morning were a different kind of predator. Dressed in
their best they might be, but the current occupants of those nice
seats made the CEOs look like puppies by comparison.
“If you
can’t protect your own, you deserve to lose them,” commented
Chastel from the back quarter of the auditorium. He didn’t speak
loudly, but in a room designed for sound and populated by
sharp-eared werewolves, he didn’t have to.
Charles
waited. The Russian wolf, whose turn it was to speak, looked at him
to enforce discipline. But it wasn’t Charles’s job. Not this time.
Brother Wolf was confident that it would be theirs very soon. Then
they would discipline Chastel, and blood would flow. But here, in
this room, it was someone else’s job.
The morning
of the first day of the meeting was a very good time for a
demonstration.
“Jean
Chastel,” said Dana. “You will not speak again in this room until
it is your turn to do so.”
Charles was
probably the only one in the auditorium who wasn’t surprised that,
when the French wolf sneered and opened his mouth to say something
to the fae, he couldn’t. In Chastel’s own territory, with his pack
behind him, she wouldn’t have been able to bespell him so easily.
But this was Dana’s territory (one of the reasons the Marrok had
decided to hold these talks in Seattle). Chastel had only his
collection of unhappy Alphas who did not share their power with
him, no matter how cowed they were, because Chastel would never
have let them that close to him. Chastel was not the
Marrok.
He could
have been—wasn’t that a frightening thought. There had been a
European ruler equivalent to Charles’s da at one time.
After the
Black Plague . . . he wasn’t old enough to have been there—but Da
and Charles’s brother had been. It had been horrible. Dehumanizing.
Especially to those who weren’t truly human anymore. So much death,
so many lost. Someone had seen the writing on the wall, knew that
humanity would recover—and had come looking for the monsters who
had fed upon the dying. So the first Marrok had been created. He
hadn’t been called the Marrok—that was Da’s decision in the New
World—but that’s what he’d been. Made Alpha of all Alphas and by
the power of that, able to take on any other. Or he should have
been.
Chastel had
killed him—and anyone after him who tried to reestablish rulership.
Chastel could have taken it for himself, but he didn’t want it. He
didn’t want the responsibility. He just wanted the freedom to kill
and keep killing as he pleased.
Arthur
Madden, Master of the Isles, was the closest equivalent to the
Marrok that Chastel had allowed in Europe—mostly because Chastel
didn’t consider the British Isles to be a threat to
him.
Even with
so much power, Chastel did his murdering more secretively these
days than he had when he was first Changed. And that, Charles
thought, was because there was one person on this planet the Beast
feared. And his da had told Chastel that he didn’t want to hear
about any more ravaging monsters in France. That had been a couple
of centuries ago.
Thinking
about it, Charles wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Chastel
could care less about the Marrok bringing the werewolves out to the
public. He’d as near as nev ermind done it himself centuries ago.
The most probable reason Charles could think of for Chastel’s
presence at this summit was that he’d wanted a chance to take out
the Marrok—which he didn’t get.
At least
he’d be quiet for now.
Charles
turned his head to Dana and nodded his appreciation. She looked
frumpier than usual today. She’d given herself twenty pounds more
on the hips, lost six inches in height, and wore an expensive but
unattractive suit and schoolteacher shoes. He wondered if she’d
done it to see if she could get any of the wolves to challenge
her—or if, as Anna had said, her other guise had been too
distinctive, too beautiful.
“Nice
shooting, Tex,” murmured the Emerald City Pack’s witch in a voice
that would, for all its softness, carry into the crowd. She and her
mate stood just behind the small table Charles and Anna sat
at—honor guards.
The witch
was a little thing, the mate to one of Angus’s top wolves, a quiet,
scar-faced man named Tom Franklin, who was nearly as unhappy about
his mate’s being in the room as Charles was about his, if for
entirely different reasons. The witch was blind, and that meant—at
least to her mate—that she was vulnerable.
Normally
this wouldn’t be a problem for Tom. Charles knew him as a tough son
of a gun, but no second was going to be able to protect his mate in
this crowd. In other circumstances, Charles would have counted on a
witch’s being able to protect herself pretty well—but this one
smelled clean and pure. White witches weren’t nearly as powerful as
their black counterparts.
Charles
wanted his mate out of this room, too. He tried to focus on the
Russian, who’d continued speaking now that the interruption had
been taken care of. But too much of him was focused on
Anna.
She’d
started out all right. She sat close to him and paid attention. But
there were more than fifty Alphas in the little auditorium. Fifty
Alphas, some of their mates, and a smattering of lesser wolves,
over a hundred in all—and most of them were more interested in
seeing his Omega wolf than in watching whoever was speaking. And
under the weight of all of those eyes, Anna was
shaking.
I will kill them
all, Brother Wolf whispered, for frightening her.
Charles
glanced at Anna, but she didn’t hear Brother Wolf this time. Why
she heard him in Dana’s home but not now, Charles put to the back
of his mind as a mystery that would solve itself
eventually.
Brother
Wolf’s protective streak aside, it wasn’t Anna he was worried
about, not directly. She was tough, and she would bear up to a few
hours of stress—and he’d make sure that’s all it would be. The
problem was the wolves.
The wolves
nearest Anna were, almost to a man (and a couple of women as well),
beginning to focus entirely on her. Her Omega qualities called out
for their protection—and these were Alphas and dominants in whom
the instinct to protect was paramount. A few of them knew what was
happening if not why. Arthur met his eyes and grinned. Bastard. He
was enjoying this.
The Russian
finished his comments and moved his right foot back, turning his
body toward Charles—inviting Charles to address his concerns
without asking verbally.
Charles
stood up. He could have taken the podium and the mike that the
Russian wolf had indicated he would yield to him, but doing so
would have left Anna alone (with the second of the Emerald City
Pack, his witch, and Dana to guard her) and Brother Wolf was
adamantly opposed to that.
It was a
good thing this was a small auditorium, and werewolves, like their
cousin in the fairy tale, had very big ears.
“I hear
you,” Charles said, projecting his voice to get his words to the
back row. “You are right to have concerns. Almost three decades
ago, the year the fae came out, three of our wolves reported being
contacted by unnamed government agencies who threatened exposure if
they didn’t cooperate. One wolf was told that his family was at
risk.
“This year,
forty-two of our wolves were contacted—by government agencies, by
foreign countries, and by at least three different terrorist
organizations. In many cases loved ones and family members were
threatened or held under implied threat. My father takes care of
his own, and he took care of them. Money, power, and influence
mostly, though several people died.” He had killed two of them
himself.
“But in the
end there can be only one way to cope with blackmail.” He paused
and looked out at the wolves. “Bring our secrets out into the open,
and they have no more ammunition. And we must carry the tide of
popular opinion when we do. Only then will we be truly
safe.”
He turned
his gaze to the Russian wolf, who did him the courtesy of dropping
his eyes at once. “I am not saying that it is a perfect
solution—merely that it is the best available to us.”
First day,
he reminded himself, stick to the script. Today he offered the
first of the proposals they had come up with for the European
wolves.
“We plan on
public opinion keeping the government under control, forcing them
to be, at the very least, circumspect in their dealings. My father
is aware that public opinion is a much bigger weapon here in the
United States than it is in some countries where the governments
are less responsible to their citizens. In light of that, he offers
this much—for the next five years he will allow any wolf who wishes
to migrate to come here.” That was a big concession. Usually
migrations were only allowed after a lot of
negotiation.
“Also, he
is willing to consider the migration of whole packs.” Now he had
their attention. He made sure he wasn’t looking at the French
wolves, who had the best reason to want to leave where they were.
Packs only moved into open territory or territory they had killed
to take.
“There will
be conditions. They must submit to the Marrok and agree to the
rules that we live by here, in his territory. They must agree to go
where they are told. In return, they will receive the benefits that
all of my father’s wolves do—protection and aid.”
He glanced
at the big clock in the back of the room and noted with some relief
that his internal clock was correct. It was eleven—still early for
a lunch break but not absurdly so.
The Russian
wolf bent back to the mike. “We have had these recruiters you speak
of among us as well. Unhappily, our response has not always meant
that the only casualties fell among our enemies. I am not as
certain as the Marrok or you are that the best answer is to expose
ourselves, but . . . given the generous offer of relocation, we are
willing to acknowledge that coming out to the humans would be a
solution to many things.” He bowed to Charles—and offered a lower
bow to the fae.
Once the
Russian had seated himself in the middle of his fellow countrymen,
Charles said, “Our host has had food delivered downstairs. Let us
take a break for lunch.”
He caught
the witch’s mate by the sleeve when he would have headed off to
some errand—probably having to do with lunch. “Tom, stay a moment.
With your mate, please.”
From near
the door, Angus looked at Charles’s hand. A good Alpha protects his
own. Charles dropped his hand and gave him a nod to tell him that
he meant no harm to Angus’s wolf. Tom saw what was going on and
made a hand gesture that seemed to have more effect on Angus than
Charles’s reassurances.
“There was
no time for introductions this morning,” said Charles when they
were alone. “Anna, this is Tom Franklin, Angus’s second, and his
mate—I am sorry, you were not introduced to me.”
“Moira,”
the witch said. The wraparound sunglasses she wore made her
expression difficult to read, but his nose told him that meeting
the Marrok’s hatchet man wasn’t scaring her. Unusual, but then she
couldn’t see him either. “Nice to meet you both.”
“And this
is my Anna.” He looked at Tom. “There are too many dominant wolves,
and she’s been”—not afraid; he found a better word and used
it—“overwhelmed this morning.”
Anna
stiffened.
It was Tom
who saved him. “Good to meet you. Hell. I’m a little overwhelmed,
too. Who wouldn’t be?”
“But you
aren’t an Omega,” Charles told them. “Tom—you probably wouldn’t
notice—”
The witch
interrupted him. “Because he was too worried about me being
‘overwhelmed’ himself”—she nudged Tom with her shoulder—“by all the
überwolves. Not being handicapped by overprotective, studly
impulses, I could pay attention to other things. By the end, they
were all focused on Anna, weren’t they?”
Charles
felt his eyebrow creep upward as he looked at the
witch.
“Hey.”
Moira shrugged. “I’m blind, not sensory deprived.”
“I’m
causing trouble for you,” said Anna. “I’m sorry. I’ll try not . .
.”
Under his
gaze, her voice trailed off. “Do not,” he told her softly,
“apologize to me for what was done to you. If it were you who were
the problem, I would have no worries. You would stay here and not
flinch if the Beast himself leapt slavering in your face. Your
courage is not in doubt.”
The witch
pursed her lips, and said, “Wow. That was a good one.”
After an
assessing look at Charles, Anna turned to Moira, and said, in a
very serious voice, “He scored a few points, all right.” She looked
back at Charles. “So what is the problem, if it isn’t
me?”
“Omega,”
said Charles formally, “it is the privilege of the dominants to
protect our submissive ones, the heart of our packs. Alphas are
called upon to protect even more strongly. An Omega calls to us
strongest of all.”
Anna gave a
puzzled nod. She already knew that, Charles thought. She just
couldn’t see what it had to do with the situation. She was too used
to looking at the dominant wolves as threats.
“Sweetie,”
said the witch, “while you were up here getting the cold shakes
from all those nasty wolves staring at you—they were trying to
figure out why you were upset and who they needed to kill for
you.”
“Whoops,”
said Anna as she comprehended the scope of the problem. “I—” He saw
her bite back her apology. “I need to go, then, don’t I? I can go
back to the hotel.”
“Well,”
said Charles apologetically, “I’m afraid that won’t
work.”
“Why not?”
Anna smiled, and asked archly, “So are you renting it out during
the day? Stashing ex-girlfriends there?”
He didn’t
have to bend very far forward to touch the top of her head with his
chin. Putting his mouth next to her ear required just a little more
bending.
“Because
Brother Wolf has been spending the whole morning getting pretty
worked up, too.” He pulled back and let his brother out just enough
so she could see him in his eyes. “If you were in our hotel room,
I’d never get anything done here for his fretting.” He looked at
Tom. “You weren’t doing so well either.”
Angus’s
second started to smile. “You want Moira and me to take your lady
out to play?”
“If Angus
will let you.”
Tom pulled
out a cell phone. “I don’t think he’ll have any
objection.”
Charles
narrowed his eyes at Anna. “This is important as well. You have the
credit cards. I want you to use them.” He watched the refusal in
her face—she didn’t feel part of him . . . part of
them yet. His money was
not hers, not to her.
She was
independent, and she’d spent at least the last three years almost
too broke to feed herself. Money was more important to her—and
spending someone else’s an impossible task. “You need clothes of
all sorts. What we could get for you in Aspen Creek is not
sufficient for this venue. Your status as my wife means you need
clothes for formal occasions. Dresses, shoes, and all the
trimmings.”
She was
still mutinous, but weakening.
Tom put
down his phone. “Boss says fine.”
“And,” he
said, “if you go shopping for the Christmas presents, I won’t have
to.”
She grinned
suddenly at that—and he knew he had her. “Okay. Okay, fine. What
are the limits?”
Tom raised
an eyebrow—that Charles handled the Marrok’s finances . . . and was
very good at it, was pretty well-known.
Charles
tilted his head. “If you decide you want to buy a Mercedes, you
might have to pull out both cards. Go. Conquer downtown Seattle so
I don’t have to.”
“Banished.”
Anna sighed, but she couldn’t hide the humor that softened her
expression as she gathered her jacket and purse. But he took her
comment seriously.
“Not
permanently,” he said. “We’ll go and introduce you to Arthur more
properly tonight. You’ll know Tom and Moira by the end of today. I
think that if we keep you out of the auditorium today, everything
will work itself out.”
“Tomorrow
night Angus has invited everyone to our hunting grounds,” Tom
said.
Charles
nodded. “That will be less formal, and everyone will be paying
attention to the hunters. Give them some chance to observe you
without staring and vice versa.”
“Where do
you hunt?” she asked Tom. “By the airstrip?”
Tom shook
his head. “Angus has a pair of warehouses.”
“It’s
cool,” said Moira. “He’s turned the whole thing into a
maze—tunnels, lots of half stories and walls that can be moved to
change it up. You’ll have a great time.”
“What are
we hunting?” Anna’s voice had lost the tautness of
stress.
“A
treasure,” said Tom. “The exact nature of which is a surprise. We
dragged stuff all over the warehouse yesterday.” He glanced down.
“Wolves eat fast. If we’re going to leave, we ought to get out
now.”
Anna gave
Charles a shy kiss on the cheek and strolled out of the room
without a backward glance. Until she reached the doorway, and then,
in full view of the curious who’d had the courage or discourtesy to
linger in the auditorium after he’d dismissed them, she kissed her
palm and blew it to him.
And despite
. . . or because of their audience, he caught it in one hand, and
pulled the hand to his heart. Her smile dropped away, and the
expression in her eyes would feed him for a week. And the
expressions on the faces of the wolves who knew Charles, or knew
his reputation, would make him laugh as soon as no one was
watching. Keeping them off balance wasn’t a bad thing
either.
SHE
wondered that the cards Charles had given her hadn’t burned their
way out of her purse from the blaze of frictional heat. They’d
already dropped one load of shopping at the hotel and had just
completed the last bit.
“We’re
about halfway between the hotel and Angus’s offices,” she said.
“Which way should we head?”
“I’ll take
you back to Charles,” said Tom.
“If you’re
going to eat with that stuck-up Brit, you need to get ready,”
advised Moira over the top of him. “Go to the hotel and start on
it. You have a cell, your mate has a cell. If he doesn’t know where
to find you, he can call.”
Anna looked
at Tom.
He
shrugged, his face not looking half as meek as his words. “You
think I’m going to argue with her, you’ve got another think
coming.”
Moira
bumped him with her hip. “Ooo. You’re so scared of
me.”
The big,
scary wolf grinned, his mouth pulled a little by the scar on his
face. “Truth. Nothing but the truth.” He spoiled it by rubbing the
top of her head, then he kept his hand where it was so he could
stay out of reach as she batted at him.
Anna had
quit being nervous around him after the first hour as he patiently
led them from one store to another. She’d heard of Pike Place
Market for years . . . and at first she hadn’t been that impressed.
It looked like just another flea market . . . with fresh fruit and
fish.
Then Moira
began tugging her here and there to this little store and that
little booth—for a blind woman she was a heck of a shopper. And Tom
was always in the right place to put his arm out to guide her and
murmur low-voiced warnings as they dodged around other shoppers and
across the uneven floor.
Tom was
consulted about fit and color while Moira fingered fabrics and
dickered with the shopkeepers. The result was that for less than
she’d spent on a couple of pairs of jeans in high school, she had
the beginnings of a whole wardrobe. When the booth didn’t take
credit, Tom paid despite Anna’s protests.
“Calm
down,” he told her. “Charles is good for it.” The last statement
seemed to amuse him.
She also
acquired a whole slew of Christmas presents as ordered. Last year
she’d been afraid (and too broke) to send presents to her father
and brother. This year she . . . she and Charles had them and all
of Charles’s family and a double handful of others to buy
for.
The
conference would run through Christmas—she had the impression that
there had been some incident that had stepped up the Marrok’s
timetable. Charles had been gone for a couple of days and returned
even more grim than usual. He hadn’t volunteered where he’d gone or
what he’d done, and she’d been too intimidated by his oppressive
silence to ask. It had been the next day that the Marrok began
planning this summit—and he and Charles had begun to fight about
it.
She’d found
a pair of small gold hoop earrings with round bits of rough amber
for Charles—to replace the one he’d given to the troll. And at the
same shop, she broke down and bought a cheaper, more dangly pair
for herself. She felt guilty about it—but maybe she could pay him
back for them. They had been cheaper than they would have been in
Chicago.
She came
out of a little shop the proud new owner of three silk shirts—and
her gaze caught on the display window of a store a few doors
down.
“What?”
Moira said urgently. “What is it, Tom?”
“A quilt, I
think,” he rumbled. “Jeez, Moira, if the two of you buy anything
more, I’m going to have to help carry stuff—and that makes me a
lousy guard.”
The quilt
was trimmed with narrow strips of red and green, the colors of the
old Pendleton blankets. On the interior, there were four squares
and a center section that was round. The square panels were
abstract mountain scenes of the same mountain, the top two were
daylight, spring and summer. The bottom were night, fall and
winter. The center panel was deep mottled green with the red
silhouette of a wolf howling.
“I don’t
think we face anything worse than a pickpocket here,” Moira was
saying to Tom. “I trust you to handle them with a few bags on one
arm.”
Moira
touched Anna’s shoulder. “What are you doing out here? Go in and
buy it. Tom, what does it look like?”
Anna looked
at the price on a discreet tag pinned to the edge of the quilt and
swallowed.
They went
back to the hotel after that, Anna the proud new owner of three . .
. three . . . quilts. One
for her dad, one for the Marrok, and one for Charles—the one she’d
seen in the window.
“You can
put them down on the bed,” Tom said, sounding amused. “They won’t
break—or run away.”
“I’m in
shock,” Anna told them. “Except for the first time I saw Charles, I
don’t think I’ve ever lusted after something so badly in my life.”
Then because Tom, at least, would know that she wasn’t telling the
whole truth, “Okay. There was that cello at the luthier’s in
Chicago that cost more than most cars and was worth every
cent.”
“And she
kept finding more quilts,”
said Moira to the air, her amusement evident.
“I couldn’t
help it,” Anna said. Even though she was joking, mostly, she was
still shocked by the sheer possessiveness she’d felt. They were
lucky she’d stopped at three. “Maybe I’ll have to take up
quilting.”
“Do you
sew?” Moira asked.
“Not yet.”
Anna heard the determination in her voice. “What do you think? Will
I be able to find someone to show me how to do this in Aspen Creek,
Montana?”
Tom
laughed. “Anna, I think Charles would fly you to England twice a
week if you wanted him to. You should be able to find someone to
learn from closer than that.”
His
statement gave her an odd feeling. She touched the package she’d
had wrapped for Charles, then turned with a smile when Moira told
them both they needed to get moving because there were shoes to be
found, and the day was wasting.
Anna pulled
the hotel-room door shut behind them and tried to deal with the
revelation that she was pretty sure Tom was right.
It wasn’t
until they were standing in front of the elevators that she found
her balance. So he would fly her to England if she asked him
to—she’d followed him up a frozen mountain buried in the depths of
a Montana winter, hadn’t she? It made them equals.
“Hey.”
Moira snapped her fingers in front of Anna’s nose. “Shoes,
remember?”
The
elevator had opened.
“Sorry,”
she said. “Revelation, here.”
“Ah.” Moira
appeared to consider that for a moment. “Nope. Shoes are more
important. Especially if you’re going to have that British snob
eating at your feet.”
And so Anna
girded herself and set off for a second round of marathon shopping.
Dark came early in the dead of winter, even if it was just raining.
When Moira had done her worst, when Tom was complaining about numb
feet, and Anna had shoes—and her hair trimmed and styled—Moira
finally relented and told them they could head back.
To the
hotel, the witch insisted firmly, not the auditorium.
Moira
leaned around Tom as if she needed to see Anna’s face when she made
her final pronouncement. “Men don’t care about dressing for dinner.
Men shave and put on a tie and ‘poof’ that’s good enough.
Wom—”
They
stormed out of the darkness of a basement apartment stairwell and
brought a spell of silence and shadow with them. A spell that had
hidden them from Tom’s sharp senses as well as Anna’s
less-well-trained sensory abilities.
They hit
Tom first, but not by much. Anna heard Tom’s gasp, but before she
could see what had happened to him, a delicate, strong-as-steel arm
snaked around her throat.
Magic moved
and settled around them all, a familiar spell, one used by packs to
conceal fights or kills or anything else they didn’t want the rest
of the world to know about. But the attackers didn’t smell like
wolves.
As she
fought to free her throat, she could see one of their attackers, a
woman, run into the witch like a linebacker, knocking her down, off
the curb and into the street.
A scream
cut short, and a body hit pavement hard from Tom’s direction. She
couldn’t see him, but it wasn’t Tom who had screamed; she’d be
willing to bet Tom had never made a sound that high-pitched in his
life. Moira’s attacker left the blind witch to help the others with
Tom.
“Pretty
Anna.” Her attacker was a woman, and as she whispered she licked
Anna’s throat. She wasn’t human, though. Nothing human could have
immobilized Anna this easily—or taken down Tom in whatever numbers.
“Come with me, little girl, and the others will
survive—”
And, the
immediate shock of the attack over, Anna kicked and broke the
enemy’s knee. She wasn’t a “little girl.” She was a
werewolf.
The woman
screamed into her ear—a sharp, high-pitched noise that deafened and
hurt and drove Anna to the pavement to escape it. Hard hands dug
into her shoulders in preparation to drag her somewhere. Anna
twisted and writhed and hit the woman’s jaw with her heel. That
stopped the noise.
Her wolf
took over then. Not in wolf body but in her human form, Anna taught
the woman what she should already have known—Omega didn’t mean
doormat. It didn’t mean weak. It meant strong enough to do exactly
what it had to in order to triumph, whether that meant cringing in
the presence of dominant wolves or tearing her enemy
apart.
Anna was
too far gone to pinpoint exactly when she understood what had
attacked them: vampires. But she remembered Asil’s lessons in how
to kill them. When the vampire lay in two pieces—body at her feet
and head rather nearer to Moira, who was screaming in incoherent
rage—the wolf gave a satisfied snort and let Anna take over. And
Anna heard what the wolf had not.
What Moira
was yelling was, “Damn it, damn it—tell
me what they are! Tom. Tom. Anna!”
And, as she
sprinted to the pile of bodies that must have Tom on the bottom,
Anna told her, “Vampires.”
Moira
didn’t hear her, so Anna ripped the arm off the vampire she’d been
trying to pry off Tom, and yelled, “Vampires, Moira.
Vampires!”
And light
exploded around them, warm and brilliant—and the vampires she and
Tom hadn’t killed stopped fighting and ran. Anna’s vampire grabbed
his arm off the ground before tearing after the others. Anna took a
step after them, then forced herself to stop.
There were
still four vampires, and that was probably three too many for
her—and she couldn’t abandon her fallen comrades.
“Tom?”
“He’s
alive,” she told Moira after a quick-but-thorough examination—done
from five feet away. “But he’s going to need a moment before he’s
ready to believe we aren’t the enemy.” She knelt beside the witch.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine, damn
it. Just fine.”
Moira was
bleeding, Anna could smell it, but not a lot. She saw cuts on knees
and elbows, but nothing horrible. The horrible thing had nothing to
do with the vampire attack.
Moira’s
glasses had been knocked to the pavement and Anna saw what she’d
hidden behind them. One eye scarred beyond belief, as if someone
had ripped it out with a clawed hand. The other withered like a
raisin, a sickly yellowish white raisin.
Without a
word, Anna found the sunglasses—which were unbroken—and put them in
Moira’s hand. The witch’s hands shook as she shoved them onto her
face, then she steadied.
Anna
understood about shields and the odd shape they sometimes
took.
“He’ll be
all right,” Anna said—glad that Moira couldn’t see what Tom looked
like. It would be easier to convince her that he would be all right
that way. Werewolves were tough.
“Can you
shield us from sight? The vampires were doing it—or someone was”—it
had felt like pack magic—“and now that they’ve run, it’s gone.” She
didn’t know enough about pack magic to do it herself—and it usually
required a pack anyway. Her pack, her new pack, was in Aspen Creek,
two states away.
“I can
manage for a little bit, but you’ll have to tell me if it’s
working,” Moira told her, sounding more like the opinionated woman
Anna had been spending the day with and less like the scary
witch.
Anna
glanced around, but the beheaded vampires’ bodies had turned to
ash, either from true death or from Moira’s sunlight—she didn’t
know that much about vampires.
“That will
work,” said Tom, though he didn’t make any effort to move. His
voice was still growly, and his eyes gleamed yellow in the
darkness. “Anna, my cell’s in pieces, and Moira won’t carry one.
You need to call for help—I’m not going to be walking anywhere for
a few days.”
Dominant
wolves didn’t deal well with injuries like that. Ones that left
them vulnerable. Angus’s pack would be set up like most of them.
Angus clearly at the head, then two or three near the top, the rest
ready to step in when necessary. And Tom had a broken arm, and she
was pretty sure there was other damage not immediately
obvious.
“You have a
healer, right?” Anna asked.
“Alan
Choo,” said Tom. “But you call Charles and tell him to
send—”
Deciding he
wasn’t going to budge, she turned to Moira, who’d followed Tom’s
voice until she could touch him. From the look on her face, it was
a good thing for the vampires that they were either dead or had
fled.
“Moira,
tell me about Alan Choo. How dominant is he?”
“He’s not.”
Tom sounded exasperated. “He can’t make you safe.”
A moment
before, Anna had been numb and shaking with the aftereffects of the
fight. But when his words registered, Anna was suddenly furious
that Tom would put himself at risk for her. Again. Because the
vampires had been hunting her.
Power came
to her call, and she said, “I will make
myself safe.” When he didn’t have anything to say to
that, she turned to the witch. “Moira do you have Alan Choo’s
number?”
“Give me
your cell phone, and I’ll call him myself,” Moira said in an odd
voice.
Anna handed
it over and turned to deal with the witch’s mate—and found him
looking at her with a little smile. “Shit, woman,” he said, “I
haven’t been put in my place so well since the last time Charles
did it. You’d better call him. Your mate’s going to be wondering
why you drew upon him that way.”
What way?
But telling him she didn’t have the slightest idea what he was
talking about didn’t appeal to Anna. She’d learned about revealing
weaknesses, too. Even if she liked him.
“He’ll have
to wait—Moira, tell Mr. Choo to meet us at my hotel
room.”
“And just
how are going to get to the hotel without help?” Tom asked. He
tried to sit up and failed. “Shit,” he said. “I’m not going
anywhere for a while.”
Anna waited
until Moira was through talking to their medic and took her phone
back from Moira. Then she answered his question. “Your mate’s going
to keep us invisible, and I’m carrying you back to the
hotel.”
At Moira’s
astonished face, she rolled her eyes before she remembered the
witch couldn’t see her. “Werewolf, here. I may not look like a
brawny male, but I can carry Tom to the hotel just
fine.”
Tom relaxed
a little. “We don’t have any females,” he said. “You look pretty
scrawny. I forgot.” She looked at him, and he gave her a faint
smile. “Sorry.”
They
weren’t too far from the hotel, but it seemed like a hundred miles.
Tom was not light—werewolves are denser than humans, and she kept
worrying about the pained sounds he made no matter how carefully
she walked. Then he quit making sounds, and that was worse. And
remembering to warn Moira about curbs and broken bits of sidewalk
was harder than Tom had made it look.
Just when
she was ready to call it over, she looked up—and there was the
hotel.
Her cell
rang. A couple of people coming out of the restaurant attached to
the hotel patted pockets and looked bewildered, so Anna thought
that maybe Moira’s spell was fading.
Anna’s
hands were occupied, so Moira pulled the phone out of Anna’s jacket
and silenced it. Tom had lost consciousness a little while back,
and Anna worried about blood trail—but it couldn’t be
helped.
She’d
figured out a plan of action on the way back. She’d call Charles
and explain the situation. If she understood about pack hierarchy
and Tom’s danger as a wounded dominant, certainly Charles would,
too.
“Door,” she
whispered to Moira, and the witch trailed her fingers from their
place on her shoulder to the glass door and held it open while Anna
scooted inside with her wounded burden.
“Windy
tonight,” someone in the lobby commented as the door shut behind
them.
By some
luck there was no one in the hall by the elevators—or on their
floor when it stopped. Anna had to set Tom down to find the keycard
for her room. Moira stayed beside him, murmuring softly, when Anna
left him there as she tore the bedding from the bed and layered it
with towels to absorb the blood.
Getting Tom
up again took time they didn’t have. He was semiconscious and
defensive—and Anna was anything but calm. Finally, she just hefted
him up. If he bit her, she’d still have time to get him in and shut
the door. He was in too rough a shape to do any real damage, not
compared to the damage the vampires had done on purpose. And she
found that she was willing to risk that.
But he
didn’t bite her. She got him into the room, on the bed. Moira shut
the door, and they both heaved a sigh of relief. Anna’s phone rang
for the second time. Moira shoved it into her bloody
hands.
It was
Charles.
“Anna?”
His voice
was dark and urgent—and as soon as she heard it she felt him
running through the dark streets. Felt his panic and the rising
rage behind it like a dark tide of violence.
“I’m fine,”
she told him—though after she said it, she wasn’t entirely sure
that was true. In the heat of battle nothing had hurt—but she’d
caught a few good punches and given a few, too. She didn’t remember
it, really. But her knuckles were sore, and so was her right
shoulder. And her stomach wasn’t too happy with her either.
Fortunately, she hadn’t taken stock until after she’d told
him.
“Angus’s
healer called Angus to tell him he’d been summoned to our hotel
room,” Charles said. “Just after I felt your need.”
Anna
remembered the power she’d summoned to shut Tom up—and his
conviction that Charles would feel it. Leah, the Marrok’s mate,
sometimes used Bran’s clout when Bran wasn’t even there. Evidently,
Anna could do the same thing.
“Yes,
well.” Anna looked around and took in a deep breath. That secrecy
spell, the one the vampires used, had some odd effects on the
combatants, too, she remembered, enforcing the need for secrecy.
She should have called Charles right away.
“I’d like
it if you’d come here, too.” She’d like it a lot. “Maybe Angus—but
no one else. Tom’s been hurt pretty badly.”
“Badly
enough the rest of his pack needs to stay away,” said Charles
coolly. Her sense of him had faded with his urgency, and she wasn’t
sure she should trust that coolness. The drop from violence to calm
had been too fast.
“Right,”
she answered, though it hadn’t been a real question. “Moira and I
got him back here—but I didn’t realize how badly he was bleeding.
There’s probably a blood trail—”
“No,” said
Moira firmly, though she was as white as the sheet she was sitting
on—as white as it was because they were both covered in blood. “I
took care of the blood.”
Anna had
learned enough about witchcraft to know that she didn’t want to
know any more. The alert beast inside her accepted, provisionally,
that they were safe.
“You heard
that?”
“I
did.”
“So we’re
safe in the room. Tom’s not mortally wounded—I don’t think . . .”
The room abruptly smelled different. “He’s changing.”
“Best thing
for him to do, if he can,” said Charles. “You stay back from him.
Moira should keep him calm enough that he’s safe to be around. I’m
coming—and I’ll call Angus and tell him that if he values his
second, he’ll call off the rest of the pack. I’ll be there in a
couple of minutes, and you can give me the whole story then.” Her
phone stopped making noise, so she decided that he must have ended
the call.
“Have you
been around Tom when he changes before?” Anna asked Moira
softly.
“Yes,” said
the witch.
“Good.” She
let herself sink into the chair opposite the bed. “Just sit still.
It’ll take a while longer this time—and changing when you hurt
really sucks. He’ll be vile-tempered when he comes out of it. Maybe
not really himself, not for a while. Give him a little time before
you touch him. He’ll probably let you know when he can bear
it.”
“They
almost killed us,” Moira said. “If I could have seen
them—”
“That blast
of sunlight was impressive,” Anna told her. “Next time we’re
attacked by vampires, I’ll cower behind you and shout what they are
into your ear.” She paused. “It’s a good thing you were with us.
We’d have lost on our own. Someone knew a great deal about Tom.”
She remembered the dog pile of vampires who’d been trying to kill
him—virtually ignoring her and Moira. “But they discounted
you.”
“Why would
vampires attack us?” asked Moira. “Oh, I know they aren’t
friendly—but they are practical. Attacking Charles’s mate is
anything but practical.”
“Someone
paid them, I expect,” Anna said tiredly. “Someone they were pretty
certain could and would keep Charles away from them. Someone who
knew we’d be out shopping today.” She looked down at her hands as
Tom growled and wheezed with the difficulty of the change. Then she
said the last bit slowly, “Someone who could give them pack magic
to mask the noise and the bodies until they were done.
“You think
one of the werewolves is behind this?”
“I don’t
know.” But she was afraid she did.
Tom
completed his change. His breath came out in harsh, groaning pants.
His fur was chocolate brown except where a silvery scar wound
around his muzzle—and he was nearly as big as Charles in wolf
shape. Charles was a very big wolf.
Moira
reached out and touched his neck, and the wolf lunged, sending Anna
to her feet. But before she did anything stupid, he settled again,
his head in Moira’s lap.
Someone
knocked on the door, and it wasn’t Charles.