Текст книги "Fair Game"

Автор книги: Patricia Briggs

Соавторы: Patricia Briggs
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Anna pointed out the cornerstone of a house and what was undoubtedly originally a planted hedge of roses that had gone wild. He pointed out some poison ivy and a pair of curious rabbits who weren’t at all scared of them. Any hunt on this island would be boring if they were hunting rabbits.

The whole thing stank of black magic. If he’d been trying to find the center on his own, he’d have had to crisscross the whole island and hope he’d stumble into it.

As much as he hated to admit it, the witch had been right. Only amateurs would leave this much power residue behind. After they were done here, he’d have to talk to his father about how to clean it up. This much tainted power was more troublesome than asbestos – people would get sick here and die from colds. They would scratch themselves on a thornbush and die from the resultant infection. They would kill themselves from a despair they would never otherwise have felt.

This much residue would also attract dark things– and in the ocean there were some very bad things who might decide to come ashore for the kind of invitation the island was sending out. And the worst part was that there were more places like this, everywhere the killers had struck over the years.

Sally Reilly, Caitlin the witch had said when she identified the marks the killers left on their victims. It made sense. He hadn’t ever met Sally, but his father had made a point of attending one of her ‘demonstrations’ and had come back shaking his head and sent Charles out to do research. Back then it had been more foot and phone work than computer work. After talking to her father (her mother was dead), some old friends, and a couple of witches, he’d returned to Bran with a report.

Sally wasn’t a hack or an amateur, but rather a skilled witch. She’d broken with her family and decided to turn the heat up – maybe cause another witch hunt. A hunt that she intended to protect herself from by money she gained while she was busy convincing the television-watching public that witches were real.

He’d told Bran that they needed to stop her – and then she’d quit trying to publicize witches. Instead, she’d started charging rich people large fortunes for her work. She’d disappeared altogether sometime in the early 1990s, but he’d always supposed that she had retired, until Caitlin the witch had been so utterly convinced that Sally Reilly was dead.

It would have been just like Sally to do something like agree to work up a spell that would leave a residue like this, one with incorrect symbols, maybe– while she charged them through the nose for it, thinking them fools who intended to kill chickens or goats.

Hadthey killed her? The timing was right. And if he’d paid a witch for a spell to let him feed from people he killed, he’d have felt the need to get rid of her, since she was a witness he wouldn’t have wanted. And a serial killer didn’t stay free and killing for this many years without being smart enough to take care of witnesses.

Charles let his hand linger on Anna’s back. She wore a sweater and a light jacket, but he pretended he could feel the heat of her through the clothing that covered her.

Brother Wolf wanted her off this island and somewhere far away from killers who hunted werewolves and left no scent behind for them to discover. But Charles knew better. To try to encase his Anna in bubble wrap would be to kill the woman who protected him with her grandmother’s marble rolling pin. She was the woman he fell in love with.

Then why are you hiding your ghosts from her? Brother Wolf said.

Because I am afraid, Charles answered his brother, as he would have answered no one else. He had lived a very long time, and only since he gained Anna had he learned to fear. He’d discovered that he had never been brave before – just indifferent. She had taught him that to be brave, you have to fear losing something.I am afraid I will lose her. That they will take her from me– or that I will drive her away when she sees what I really am.

Beauclaire had addressed that. Charles couldn’t remember the fae’s exact words, but he felt them. People as old and powerful as he should never be given someone to love.

For Anna he would destroy the world.

Anna felt Charles more than heard him, even though he’d taken his hand off her back and let her go ahead. She could hear the others walking in front of her, but Charles was a silent, reassuring presence behind.

She could smell the wrongness in the air and it made her wolf nervous. It felt like something was watching them, as if the wrongness had an intelligence– and it didn’t help to remember that at least one of the people they were hunting could hide from their senses.

Anna fought the urge to turn around, to take Charles’s hand or slide under his arm and let his presence drive away the wrongness. Once, she would have, but now she had the uneasy feeling that he might back away as he almost had when she sat on his lap in the boat, before Brother Wolf had taken over.

Maybe he was just tired of her. She had been telling everyone that there was something wrong with him

but Bran knew his son and thought the problem was her. Bran was smart and perceptive; she ought to have considered that he was right.

Charles was old. He’d seen and experienced so much – next to him she was just a child. His wolf had chosen her without consulting Charles at all. Maybe he’d have preferred someone who knew more. Someone beautiful and clever who

‘Anna?’ said Charles. ‘What’s wrong? Are you crying?’ He moved in front of her and stopped, forcing her to stop walking, too.

She opened her mouth and his fingers touched her wet cheeks.

‘Anna,’ he said, his body going still. ‘Call on your wolf.’

‘You should have someone stronger,’ she told him miserably. ‘Someone who could help you when you need it, instead of getting sent home because I can’t endure what you have to do. If I weren’t Omega, if I were dominant like Sage, I could have helped you.’

‘There is no one stronger,’ Charles told her. ‘It’s the taint from the black magic. Call your wolf.’

‘You don’t want me anymore,’ she whispered. And once the words were out she knew they were true. He would say the things that he thought she wanted to hear because he was a kind man. But they would be lies. The truth was in the way he closed down the bond between them so she wouldn’t hear things that would hurt her. Charles was a dominant wolf and dominant wolves were driven to protect those weaker than themselves. And he saw her as so much weaker.

‘I love you,’ he told her. ‘Now, call your wolf.’

She ignored his order– he knew better than to give her orders. He said he loved her; it sounded like the truth. But he was old and clever and Anna knew that, when push came to shove, he could lie and make anyone believe it. Knew it because he lied to her now – and it sounded like the truth.

‘I’m sorry,’ she told him. ‘I’ll go away—’

And suddenly her back was against a tree and his face was a hairbreadth from hers. His long hot body was pressed against her from her knees to her chest– he’d have to bend to do that. He was a lot taller than her, though she wasn’t short.

Anna shuddered as the warmth of his body started to penetrate the cold that had swallowed hers. Charles waited like a hunter, waited for her to wiggle and see that she was truly trapped. Waited while she caught her breath. Waited until she looked into his eyes.

Then he snarled at her.‘You are not leaving me.’

It was an order, and she didn’t have to follow anyone’s orders. That was part of being Omega instead of a regular werewolf – who might have had a snowball’s chance in hell of being a proper mate.

‘You need someone stronger,’ Anna told him again. ‘So you wouldn’t have to hide when you’re hurt. So you could trust your mate to take care of herself and help, damn it, instead of having to protect me from whatever you are hiding.’ She hated crying. Tears were weaknesses that could be exploited and they never solved a damned thing. Sobs gathered in her chest like a rushing tide and she needed to get away from him before she broke.

Instead of fighting his grip, she tried to slide out of it.‘I need to go,’ she said to his chest. ‘I need—’

His mouth closed over hers, hot and hungry, warming her mouth as his body warmed her body.

‘Me,’ Charles said, his voice dark and gravelly as if it had traveled up from the bottom of the earth, his eyes a bright gold. ‘You need me.’

He kissed her again, his hands roaming from her jaw down her neck and shoulders. His hips pressed forward, and he released her mouth as he slid his body up until his sex pressed, hard and full, against hers. She jerked involuntarily, and he laughed in the same deep way that he had spoken. She growled at him, wolf to wolf.

‘There you are, there you are,’ he said. ‘Are you just going to let me do this alone?’

He was talking too much when he should be feeling. She curled one leg up until the angle of their hips was better, climbing his body until she could bite down on his collarbone. He drew in his breath at the pain and she released him. Now his attention was on her instead of on making words, so she could be gentler. She licked the wound she’d made, feeling it heal under her tongue as she cleaned the iron-rich blood from his skin. She lunged upward and this time she caught the tendon in his neck gently, and his gasp had nothing to do pain.

She wiggled her hips, rubbing the seam of her jeans on him as she absorbed the heady smell that was her mate when he was aroused. She wanted to smell it better so she slipped down and rested her open mouth against his hardness, letting her hot breath caress him through his jeans. It had been so long since they’d touched.

His scent grew stronger: musk and forest, salt and bitter, with an indescribably delicious edge of sweetness.

‘Anna,’ he said, a little desperately. ‘Isaac, Malcolm, and probably that damned fae can hear us.’

She opened her mouth and bit– not hard, just enough to shut him up and to let him know that pushing her away was not an option.

Charles made a noise that might have been a laugh, but all she heard was the surrender in it, and then he let her knock him onto his back in the damp soil of the island and unzip his jeans until she could get to him. Once she had his bare skin in her hands, the frantic need lessened, partly assuaged by the clear evidence that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

His skin was so soft to sheathe something so hard. She licked him delicately, loving the taste of him now seasoned by the ocean’s salt. She loved him in all of his flavors, loved the noises he made as she pleasured him, loved the catch in his breath and the jerkiness of his movements – he who was always graceful.

She swallowed him down, claiming him, man and wolf, in the most basic way possible.

‘I am yours,’ he said, a finger under her chin dislodging her claim. ‘And you’ – he moved his hands under her shoulders and pulled until she was all the way on top – ‘are mine.’

Her jeans were in the way so he rolled her to the side and stripped her shoes, pants, and underwear off in three quick motions. He pulled her back on top with hands that were more urgent than gentle and slid inside her.

She closed her eyes and absorbed the feel of the slow burn, the slick pressure and warm friction that meant he was hers. Then he grabbed her hips and asked, so she moved– and quit thinking altogether.

Limp and well loved, Anna panted on top of Charles. As the last tingles died down, she started to think again instead of just feel.

‘Did we,’ she whispered, feeling the blush start at her toes and travel all the way out to her ears. ‘Did we really make love while everyone was listening? Right out in the open? When there might be a bad guy we can’t see or hear watching?’ She might have squeaked the last word.

Underneath her, Charles laughed, his belly bouncing her up and down. He felt resilient and relaxed, like a cat bathing in the sun.‘All I was trying to do was get you to call up your wolf so she could fight off the black magic that was making you doubt yourself.’ He paused and the relaxation faded. ‘Making you doubt me.’ He rubbed her back. ‘I made you doubt me.’

Anna tucked her head in the hollow of his shoulder and closed her eyes, but hiding didn’t work. After a minute, she laughed helplessly. ‘There is no saving it, is there? We might as well go face the music.’

Anna sat up and lifted her head to scent the air. All she smelled was green growing things, Charles, sex, and the ocean air.‘The wrongness is gone,’ she told him.

He frowned and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply.‘From here,’ he said. ‘Not from the whole island. That’s interesting.’ Then he looked up at her and smiled. ‘I think we’d better pull ourselves back together. They’re waiting for us.’

Anna stood up and he handed her his T-shirt. She cleaned up as best she could, handed him back his shirt, and then climbed back into her clothes. He was faster, since he had only to zip his jeans. She was brushing the dirt off one of her socks when he took the shirt and pressed it against a tree.

She watched him as she put on a shoe and started dusting off another shoe.

Charles murmured to the tree in what she was pretty sure was his native speech– which he very seldom used. He and Bran were the only ones left who spoke it as his mother’s band of people had used it, a variant of the Flathead tongue. It made him feel sad and alone to use it, he told her once, and he and his father communicated quite nicely in English, Welsh, or any number of other languages.

Clothed and shod, she ran her fingers through her hair to dislodge leaves, grass, mud, and whatever creepy crawlies might have come to rest there. Charles went down to one knee and pressed the shirt into the ground

which ate it.

He murmured one more phrase and came back to his feet. He saw her watching him and smiled, his face more open than she’d seen it in a long time. ‘I wasn’t going to put it back on,’ he explained. ‘And leaving something like that lying around when we’re traveling with a witch is just not smart. The apple tree will absorb it eventually and guard it until she does.’

‘Are you done yet?’ called Isaac.

Charles tilted his head and called back,‘I suppose that’s why they call you the five-minute wonder.’

Anna could feel her eyes round and her mouth drop open.‘I can’t believe you just said that.’ She paused and reconsidered. ‘I am so telling Samuel you said that.’

Charles smiled, kissed her gently, and said,‘Samuel won’t believe you.’ Then he took her by the hand and started off in the others’ wake.

9

As they climbed, scrambling over broken cement, rocks, and bits of assorted underbrush, Anna had too much time to think about the show they’d just put on.

It had been her fault.

Charles had been trying to raise her wolf– because apparently the black magic had been affecting her. She cringed away from the self-pitying stupidity she’d allowed herself to wallow in. Talking hadn’t worked to pull her out of it, so he’d kissed her, and her wolf had risen up to shrug off the effects of the magic, just like he’d thought she would. And then her wolf had changed the game.

Anna remembered distinctly that he’d warned her that they had an audience – and she’d totally ignored him. That was bad enough. To do it when there was a distinct chance that they were going to run into the bad guys was the height of stupidity.

‘Anna,’ said Charles. ‘Stop brooding.’

‘That was really dumb,’ she said without looking at him. ‘My fault. I’m sorry. We could have been attacked by the killers.’ She threw up her hands. ‘We might as well have set up cameras and invited everyone to watch. And now we’re going to have to go meet up with our audience and explain ourselves.’

He stopped abruptly and jerked her to a halt beside him with a hand on her wrist. It startled her with its hint of violence– Charles was never out of control.

‘If you think that it was dumb, unnecessary, and your fault,’ he said in a husky voice, ‘then you weren’t paying attention.’ He kissed her again, his mouth demanding her response, his body hot against hers.

Charles smelled like home, warm and right. She knew she should pull back, knew that this was more distraction they couldn’t afford, but she was so hungry for him – not just for sex, but for the simple touches, the absolute certainty of knowing she was welcome to pet and tease and laugh. Anna sank into him and gave as good as she got.

They were both breathless when he pulled back.

‘When we get back tonight, we will talk,’ he told her. ‘I just learned something.’

‘That my wolf is shameless,’ she muttered, though she couldn’t pull away.

He laughed, damn him. More of a huff than a chuckle, but she knew amusement when she heard it.

She’d thrown him down in the middle of a hunt when there were a herd of people listening in. All the werewolves, he’d reminded her – and Beauclaire, who was here to find his daughter, not to listen to her make out in the woods. And now, to show that she hadn’t learned her lesson, all she wanted to do was take up that last kiss where it had left off.

‘No help for it,’ Anna muttered. ‘Time to face the music.’

‘Shame is

not a very productive emotion,’ Charles told her. There was a funny little pause when he tilted his head to look at her face and then away. ‘Brother Wolf liked claiming you in front of the others so that there will be no question who you belong to. While I

I regret your embarrassment but otherwise agree with Brother Wolf.’

Anna stared at him incredulously. If there was a more private man in the world than her husband, she hadn’t met him.

‘As for the other

’ Charles grinned rather fiercely at her and raised his voice. ‘Isaac, go on ahead; we’ll follow.’

‘You’re the man,’ Isaac called back.

‘We’ll trail them closely,’ Charles said. ‘If something happens, we’ll be right there – but if we wait until there are more interesting things about than we are, they won’t give you a hard time.’ He didn’t need to say that no one would give him a hard time.

‘Thanks,’ Anna said, not knowing how else to respond.

He put his hand on her shoulder as they started back up the trail. While they hiked, there was none of the reluctance to touch her that had characterized him for the past few months. He kept a hand on whatever part of her was closest to him.

Charles had tried to open their bond and call up her wolf to defeat the black magic and hadn’t been able to. Brother Wolf had panicked because Charles had somehow messed up their bond – and then Anna threatened to leave them and Charles had panicked, too. If she hadn’t allowed them to make love to her, to re-establish their claim, things might have gotten

interesting, in the same way that a grizzly attack is interesting. Because neither he nor Brother Wolf was capable of letting her go.

It had been something of a revelation.

The bottom line was that he was a selfish creature, Charles decided more cheerfully than he’d been about anything in a long time. He guided Anna around a hole in the ground with a subtle push of his hand on her hip. She probably had seen the hole, but it pleased him to take care of her in such a small way. He was willing to pay any price to keep her safe

any price except for losingher.

When they got back to the condo he would tell her about the ghosts who threatened to kill all that he loved unless he could find the key to releasing them. It was a risk– but quite clearly, he had damaged their mate bond by trying to do this alone – and that was worth any risk to fix. He’d see if, between the two of them, they could mend what he’d broken – and if not, he’d call his da.

If this trip had done nothing else, it had given him distance from the unrelenting grimness that his life had become since the were wolves had revealed themselves to the public. He’d been so focused on duty, on need, and on just getting the job done that he’d lost perspective.

Honor, duty, and love. He would not sacrifice Anna for his father and all the other werewolves in existence. Given a choice, he chose love.

That meant he had to find a way to deal with the ghosts– or quit being his father’s hatchet man. It wasn’t the result his father had been hoping for from this trip, but Charles couldn’t help that. He would not lose Anna even if it meant they went to war with the human population.

The decision left him feeling oddly peaceful, if more than a little selfish.

‘We found it,’ Isaac called.

Charles started jogging and Anna stayed by his side– just where she belonged.

The place where the others awaited them had once been a yard with a small house or storage shed, maybe ten feet by fifteen, in the center. The wooden part of the structure was long gone, but the granite foundation blocks were still in situ. The eyebolt that was driven into one of the blocks might have been original, but the chain and cuffs attached to it were bright and shiny new.

Beauclaire was standing in the center of the foundation, his eyes closed and his lips moving. Charles was pretty sure he was working some magic, but with the feel of the blood magic that had already been done here clogging his senses, he couldn’t sense it.

Along the perimeter of the clearing, Malcolm trailed after the FBI agents, who were busily using their flashlights to examine the ground for clues or a trail.

‘We’ll have to come back in daylight with a team,’ Goldstein said, and there was a hard edge to his voice. ‘We shouldn’t be tromping around here at night; we’re going to miss or destroy clues.’

‘You aren’t going to get Beauclaire to leave without his daughter,’ said Leslie. Then she glanced back at the werewolf behind them and stepped a little closer to Goldstein.

Charles took a good look at Malcolm himself.‘Malcolm,’ he said sharply.

The bearded werewolf looked up.‘You told me to watch them.’

Isaac had been in a low-voiced conversation with his witch, but when Charles spoke he looked over, too.

‘Malcolm?’ he asked, his voice too gentle.

The other wolf sighed and drifted a little farther away from the FBI agents, but also shifted his body language from stalker to bodyguard. Charles wasn’t sure that the humans could consciously read body language well enough to tell the difference, but their hindbrains could. As soon as Malcolm started to behave himself, Leslie’s shoulders relaxed and she quit patting her thigh with her right hand.

Isaac left the witch kneeling beside the chains, her fingers tracing spells that left little red glowing lines behind them.

‘Hally says that there were ten or twelve people killed here over a period of years,’ he told Charles. ‘She says that she’ll gather some of her apprentices and they’ll put the island to rights after the police have gathered their evidence. She’s doing what she can now. We don’t want aherd of armed people in a place that has such a strong dark magic residue – the words “accidental shootings” don’t even begin to cover the disasters that could spring up.’

‘Good,’ said Charles. That was one less thing for him to worry about. ‘Any sign of Lizzie?’

‘Not right here. No one alive but us and some rabbits within hearing range, and there aren’t any trails into or out of this place. I can’t smell anyone but us in the vicinity. Maybe if I were in wolf form, I could do better.’

‘We’ll all change to hunt for the girl – except Malcolm, if he can help it,’ Charles said.

‘I can help it.’ Malcolm sounded a little put out to be left behind.

‘We need you to be able to take us back to the mainland in a hurry when we find Lizzie,’ Charles explained. ‘She’s going to need medical attention as soon as possible. It’s not just guard duty.’

‘You believe Lizzie is here,’ Beauclaire said sharply, leaving off his spell casting. ‘Can you smell her? Do you have proof?’

Charles waved his hand at the stone.‘They have used this place to kill all of their local victims once they are through with them. Do you think that they found a better place than this isolated and quarantined island to keep their victims while they are still alive?’

The fae stared at him, his face hungry.‘How do you propose finding her? If she were here, I would be able to find her. But my magic doesn’t tell me anything. It hasn’t from the beginning.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I thought it meant that she was dead.’

‘I know a few ways to stymie fae magic,’ said the witch without pausing in whatever she was doing to the granite stone. ‘The Irish and German witches are well-known for their ability to disrupt your kind of power, one way or another, and Caitlin told me that this guy got his rune spell from an Irish witch. There’s a dozen ways to make charms that I know, some more effective than others.’

Beauclaire looked at her, face taut with hope.‘There are,’ he said. ‘There are indeed.’

Isaac started stripping off his clothes and so did Anna. Charles moved until he stood between them in answer to a small fit of territoriality and unfounded jealousy. Brother Wolf was feeling possessive tonight.

Not bothering to take off his jeans, he began his change. It was harder this time because he’d been changing a lot today, and the last time he’d pushed for speed. His shift was slower and it hurt more, leaving him with the dull ache in his bones that told him he would pay for the next change back to human. If he could, he’d wait until they got back to their condo before attempting it.

He still managed the full change before the others and was shaking the tingles and cramps out of his muscles when Isaac staggered to his feet, a wolf of medium height and a gold coat that reminded Charles of Bran’s mate, Leah. Anna was still changing.

Charles left the others to recover and started to explore the ground with his nose. Like the FBI agents, he concentrated his efforts along the edge of the clearing. He found nothing on his first pass or his second and was starting a third– Beauclaire pacing attentively by his side, a hand on the long knife he wore in a sheath on his belt, a knife Charles didn’t remember seeing on the boat – when Anna called him over with a couple of demanding yips.

He took his time, casting around where Anna stood, but he scented nothing, not even the ubiquitous rabbits and mice. She whined at him when he lifted his head and he tried again. The second time he lifted his head, she yipped and started trailing something he couldn’t smell.

Frustrated at his inability to perceive what she had, doubly frustrated because if he hadn’t messed up their bond somehow, she could have told him what she found, Charles stalked after her with Isaac and Beauclaire following. Probably because he was so annoyed, it took him about fifteen feet to figure it out.

Nothing. He smellednothing.

As if something that disguised scent had trailed by here many times, he smelled absolutely nothing. His mate was very smart. He touched his nose to hers to let her know he understood. She smiled at him, her tongue lolling happily between sharp white fangs.

‘Wait,’ said the witch.

Charles stopped and looked at her.

‘Isaac said that you won’t be able to see or hear this fae you are chasing.’

Charles gave Isaac a dark look. He’d told Isaac what they were hunting when he’d called him for help tonight. That information had not been for general distribution, and the Alpha wolf had known it.

‘Peace,’ the witch said. ‘Isaac only told me because I was putting myself at risk in coming here, and he knows that I do not talk. This fae has been eating the essences of the people who died here, and that Isaac did not need to tell me. I talked to Caitlin about the nature of the magic they were using. So. I can give you some of that power and it will recognize the fae – sympathetic magic, wolf, like to like. There is enough to give it to only one of you.’

Charles flattened his ears at Isaac when that wolf would have stepped up. If there was a risk, it was for Charles to take– of them all he was the one with the best chance of taking on the enemy.

He trotted over to the witch and waited for a lot of smoke and dramatic gestures and dancing. Instead she simply bent until her face was level with his and blew on him.

He coughed and then choked and gagged at the smell. It hurt, too. Like getting stung by a thousand bees at once or leaping from a car onto asphalt that shredded the skin off of him– both of which he’d done before. But that wasn’t the worst of it. It felt like used motor oil had been poured over his body and clung there, smelly and greasy.

Brother Wolf growled and hung his head low, his ears pinned. Isaac whined and took a step forward, as if he might try to get between Charles and the witch. The ghosts inside of him began howling and laughing. Then Anna brushed up against Charles, silencing the voices inside with a radiant peace, the gift of the Omega, that let him regain control.

Only then did the witch move. She stood up and dusted her hands briskly.‘My apologies. I didn’t know that it would affect you so adversely. It will stay on you until dawn dispels it – and likely it will only be enough for a quick warning, so pay attention.’

Calmer now, if not more comfortable, Charles nodded his thanks– it was not her fault that it hurt, or that it made him long to go jump in the ocean to clean the oily filth of it off his fur. Or that she gave him orders, because Isaac hadn’t taught her any better. The spell, if it worked as she said it would, allowed them a chance if they ran into the fae.For that, he could forgive her a great deal.

Hally the witch stood before him unafraid– and so fragile in her humanity.

She could not help being a witch any more than he could help being a werewolf. Both of them born to theirotherness. Isaac was right that most white witches died while still very young, unable to defend themselves from their blood-magic-using kin. She had, within the limits of what she was, been very helpful– and he would remember it.

The wolves and the fae left the others behind to the dubious safety of the little clearing, and the guardianship of Malcolm and the witch.

Charles let the other wolves take the lead, as his nose was not at its best under the burden of the spell the witch had used. They traveled slowly because it was more difficult to follow no scent than it was to trail any given odor.