Dead Heat Read online

  “Hosteen is not right about everything.” Charles grinned at Joseph’s ironic tones. “And Chelsea is no more evil than you or I.” He paused thoughtfully. “Than I am, anyway. I don’t know about you.” More seriously he said, “There is a scent to black magic—I would smell it.”

  “Ah, good,” Joseph said. Then he said, in the same tone, “My wife will ask you to Change her after I’m dead.”

  Charles had no time to prepare. No warning to brace himself, and he felt as though he’d been punched: Maggie.

  He had loved her once. She was a fiery warrior, Maggie. Tough and smart and funny—and unexpectedly tender. If he closed his eyes he could still see her, her beautiful bright eyes wet and luminous. There were many things in his years on earth that were faded by time, but not that night. That night was clear as cut glass.

  “If you would have me, I would be yours,” Maggie said, moonlight softening her fierce young features into something more accessible.

  He knew how hard those words were from this proud woman who did not believe in making herself vulnerable for anyone. Her childhood had been hard and hadn’t made it easy for her to trust.

  The night air was crisp—spring in the desert. The wooden boards of her porch were uneven under his feet. He could hear the wild-caught horses in the corrals moving idly a dozen yards from the little house. Could hear the soft sounds of Joseph’s sleeping breath.

  Her roughened hands reached out slowly, and he did not back away. They touched his face and he closed his eyes, allowing himself the comfort of her touch. To be touched with love was uncommon in his life, and he treasured it, absorbed it.

  She was beautiful, but that had nothing to do with why he loved her. He loved her for her refusal to give in to a world that twice judged her wrongly, first for the color of her skin and then for her sex. He loved her for the joy she took in the sun on her back and the horses she rode. He loved her for the laughter she found in danger and storms.

  And that was why he’d let it go this far. Far enough that she risked her battered heart—and he’d done it knowing that he would break it. There was no name for the depth of hell he deserved for doing that to a woman he loved.

  He pulled back gently. “You don’t know me, Maggie. If you knew what I am you would not touch me.” But he knew her. And that knowledge gave him no hope to cling to—no excuse for letting her think that they might be more than what they were.

  “I know you,” she said, trying to hide her hurt. She couldn’t hide from him, but he didn’t let her know that. Her pride he would protect as well as he could; it was easier than protecting her poor heart. His poor heart.

  “We may have known each other for only four months,” she continued. “But those have been four months of sixteen-, sometimes eighteen-hour days. I know you, Charles Smith.”

  You don’t even know my name, he thought in despair. And I don’t dare give it to you. He wanted to take what she offered, wanted to drown himself in her until he wasn’t alone anymore.

  “I am not who you think I am,” he told her. I am a liar. I have lied because I could not bear for you to turn away from me.

  “If you tell me you’re a murderer,” she said stoutly, “I’d say that whoever you killed deserved it. If you tell me you are a thief, I’d not believe it. Thieves don’t work as hard as you do, and I should know. My dad was a thief and a murderer—he killed my mother as surely as if he’d shot her. I know evil, Charles. And I know a good man when I see him.”

  His father’s rules rang in his ears. No one must know what you are. Charles had lived long enough, seen enough, to know that his father was right—and still. She thought that he was a good man when he wasn’t a man at all.

  “You know a good man, do you?” he asked, feeling anger sweep up and make him light-headed. “Do you?” asked Brother Wolf, hurt and enraged that he would be the cause of such tragedy. Brother Wolf loved her, too, but he knew that she could not love him. Would not love him. “Then see me, Margaret. See me and tell me again that you love me.”

  In despair and anger then—knowing what would happen because even though she did not know him, he did know her—he did what he’d sworn he would not do. He let Brother Wolf’s shape take him, glorying in the odd quirk of magic that let him shift swiftly, faster now because it had been so long since he’d allowed Brother Wolf to stand out in the real world.

  Maggie froze. For a moment there was no expression on her face at all, and then it went blank with fear. She screamed and stumbled away from him, falling to the ground and curling into a ball. Not physical fear, but fear of what he was, what he might turn her into. The Navajo had more experience than most with the ugly side of magic.

  Joseph barreled out the front door and saw Maggie and Charles. He’d always been quick; he took in everything at a glance. Joseph, the son of a werewolf, knew what Charles was, had known what Charles was from the first.

  But Joseph was also the son of his mother, who had been so frightened when she found out what it was she had married that she’d left them and gone back to the reservation. Joseph understood the terror that had stricken Maggie silent, too.

  Joseph knelt and gathered Maggie into his arms and made soothing noises. She quieted, her head buried against his shoulder so she couldn’t see the wolf. Joseph looked up at Charles.

  “Give her some time,” he counseled. “Let her see that the wolf is still you.”

  If he’d listened, maybe his life would have been different, and so would Joseph’s. But he hadn’t listened; he’d left at a run, knowing that she’d be safe with Joseph. When he came back a year later, he had not been surprised to learn that Joseph and Maggie were married.

  “Did you ever think about what might have happened if you hadn’t left that night?” said Joseph.

  It didn’t surprise him that Joseph understood what Charles had been thinking about. Dying left a man very close to the whole spirit of the world, and odd things made it through. As long as he didn’t draw Joseph’s attention to it, Joseph wouldn’t even notice.

  “Yes,” Charles said.

  Joseph laughed. “You ever lie?”

  “Not unless lives are on the line,” he told his old friend.

  “Yeah, I remember a few of those times,” he agreed. “Now that you mention them.” There was a natural pause. “The stories I’ve heard about you and Anna—they tell me that you’ve learned to fight for what you want.”

  Charles let that ride for a moment, trying to frame the truth. “I think I’ve learned what I wanted. Maggie could never have loved Brother Wolf the way we needed her to. In a stupid way, I think that’s why I wanted her so badly.”

  “Man, that’s twisted,” said Joseph. “You loved her because she only loved your human half.” He thought a moment. “Is that, like, sibling rivalry? Does that mean you have a ménage à trois now, you old rogue, you?”

  Charles found himself smiling. “Maybe à quatre, don’t you think? Anna has a wolf side, too.”

  Joseph fell asleep as Charles drove up to the house. He slept while Charles carried him up to the door. Maggie opened it before he needed to worry about how to get through it without waking Joseph up. She followed him silently up to Joseph’s apartment and watched as he tucked Joseph in. The host of medical equipment had been pulled to the side of the room and stood like a grim, silent reminder that this chance to talk with his old friend was a finite thing.

  “You don’t sleep in here?” he asked. Because this room was all Joseph.

  “He sent me away,” Maggie told him. “Right after the cancer came back. Told me I needed my sleep.” She leaned against the wall and looked at Joseph. “He probably meant it. But the pain makes sleep very hard for him to find; mostly he dozes because he can’t really sleep. I move in my sleep, I always have. He can’t sleep with me in his bed.” She pushed off the wall and walked to the bed.

  “You could sleep with him tonight,” he told her. “He’s exhausted, and the pain shouldn’t be too bad.”

  “An
effect of your magic?” she asked. “It’s good that something could stop the pain.” She looked at Charles. “I know it’s not permanent, but it is hard not to hate you for leaving him alone when you could have helped. He’s been in so much pain.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her that it wasn’t his magic. That he had no idea why the spirits had decided to relieve Joseph of his burden for a while. That they probably wouldn’t have helped earlier. But he closed his mouth without speaking. She didn’t need truth. She needed someone to be angry at because anger was easier than pain. He could give her that.

  She sat down on the bed and turned her attention to Joseph, who slept like a child.

  “Silly old man,” she said, brushing his hair with her hand. “Think a little magic is going to turn back the years? So you can go out and break mustangs and women’s hearts again?”

  It can, Charles thought. Because he’d lied to Kage. He could pull Joseph through the Change whether or not his old friend wanted him to. Chelsea had taught him how to do it.

  In his heart, he ached more for this man than he ever had for Maggie, and his heart had ached plenty for her.

  “What am I going to do with you?” Maggie asked her husband.

  Joseph didn’t answer her, and neither did Charles.

  “Go away,” she told him finally, her hand on Joseph’s cheek. Just as she had touched him once.

  A long time ago.

  He left, closing the door carefully, and pretended he didn’t know she was crying.

  CHAPTER

  6

  After putting Joseph to bed, Charles checked in with Anna, who was sitting in the rocking chair in Chelsea’s room working on her current knitting project. Hosteen was in the room, too. Chelsea would need a dominant werewolf around for a while, until they were certain she could control her wolf. The most dangerous time would be when she woke up after the first deep sleep.

  “Maggie needed to take a break,” Anna said, looking up at him. “She went up to check on Joseph.” She paused, but he thought it was because she’d done something wrong to her knitting while she was looking at him, because she pulled out a few stitches before continuing.

  “She’s up there now,” he told Anna. “He’s sleeping. We tired him out.”

  “I told her that he’d come down to the barn,” Anna said. “She wasn’t pleased. We sent Kage away, though. Chelsea’s been showing signs that she might be waking up. Have to get the fragile humans out of the room, just in case.”

  “I told Anna that one person watching another sleep was plenty,” said Hosteen. “Maybe you can persuade her.”

  “I’m just fine,” said Anna. “I have to get this knitted before Christmas, anyway.”

  “It’s February,” said Hosteen.

  “Yes, I know,” his Anna deadpanned. “I should have given myself a little more time. Now I have to speed up my knitting to compensate.”

  She didn’t want to leave Hosteen alone with Chelsea, thought Charles. He saw Maggie’s touch in this, but Maggie knew Hosteen better than Charles did. If she thought it would be good not to leave the Salt River Alpha alone with Chelsea, she was probably right.

  “I need to call Da, anyway,” Charles told Anna. “You stay here and knit. I’ll come back when I’m done.” He didn’t tell her to be careful. His da used her all the time to help wolves who were awaking from that first sleep. She knew the dangers, and she was better equipped, even than Charles or Hosteen, to deal with any trouble.

  He kissed Anna on the cheek and headed up to their rooms. His father needed to know how closely Charles had walked the line of the law they all lived by.

  “You Changed her without her consent,” the Marrok said softly when Charles finished. “Without talking to me. And she is witchborn.”

  His da was just repeating what Charles had already told him, so he saw no reason to say anything more. He also knew it would annoy the Marrok, and decided it served him right for the implied chastisement. Da knew that Charles wouldn’t Change someone lightly.

  Silence played loudly between them. Until he heard his father take a deep breath and release it. When he spoke he sounded more willing to discuss the matter.

  “You are certain she was bespelled by a fae?”

  “Absolutely,” Charles replied. And that was the real cause of his da’s temper.

  When Bran spoke again, he didn’t sound happy, but he wasn’t playing the chastising Alpha, either. “You got her husband’s consent, which will appease the worst of the letter-of-the-law crowd. Most of them are old enough to believe that a husband’s word is good enough for his wife. I will give my retroactive permission—it was an emergency situation. The witchborn part can stay between us. It may not be against our law to Change a witchborn, but it is frowned upon. There is no sense in making a nasty monster into a nastier one.”

  Charles listened for irony, but he didn’t hear it. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Bran was witchborn and he certainly considered himself a very nasty monster. So did Charles. He’d glimpsed what lurked inside his da, and if he never saw it again it would be too soon.

  “She’s not a black witch,” Charles told his da, because that was important. “She hid her witch blood pretty well. I got only a faint scent until I tasted it in her blood. It might have been what attracted the fae’s attention to her, though. Or she might have seen something that a human would have overlooked, and the fae tried to get rid of her.”

  “It sounds as though the fae was trying to get rid of her children.”

  Charles grunted. “That’s a fae thing, going after children. But she was supposed to kill herself, too.”

  His father sighed. “I suppose you’re going to go looking for the fae.”

  There was a long silence, because Charles seldom bothered answering stupid questions.

  His da swore, taking a good long time about it. That he used Welsh made it softer sounding—and might fool someone who didn’t know him about just how frustrated he was. The drop into Welsh meant he was really unhappy.

  “It took us a long time to hammer out that agreement,” he complained, his voice a little bitter. “And it’s been in place not even six months. My whole intent was to keep our people safe.”

  “It attacked children,” Charles said. He wasn’t pleading, not really. Because whatever his da said, he was going after it.

  “Mortal children,” growled his father harshly. “Human.” When he heaved a big sigh Charles knew he’d won, even before his father spoke. “The first trespass was theirs. They attacked the great-grandchildren of the Salt River Pack Alpha. You won’t be breaking the treaty because they already did. Maybe I can salvage something from this. Find out who it is and stop them.”

  “By whatever means necessary,” Charles clarified.

  “This is a fae capable of making a woman kill her children,” his da snapped. “Assuming that she didn’t have a hidden desire to kill them?”

  “No,” said Charles. “Quite the opposite.”

  “Then this is a powerful fae. Mind control, forcing someone to act against their nature and perform a specific task, especially a task repugnant to them, is rare. At least outside Underhill it is rare. Leaving such an enemy alive is stupid. Find this one and kill him if you can.” He snorted, and his voice was full of self-directed amusement. “I’ll deal with the Gray Lords. You go kill whatever is attacking children. And tell Hosteen that I authorized it.” He muttered, “Not that he’d wait for my approbation, either.”

  The Marrok ended the call.

  Charles loosened his shoulders to lessen the tension of Brother Wolf’s eagerness. “I told you he would not object,” he murmured. They would hunt, but it would take patience and care. Hunting a fae was different from hunting a deer or elk. More challenging—and more satisfying.

  Then his phone rang.

  “You couldn’t tell she was witchborn until you tasted her blood?” asked his father.

  “You can leave,” Hosteen told Anna. He’d been pacing for the better p
art of the twenty minutes that had passed since he’d driven Kage and Maggie out of the guest room, with a brief pause when Charles had come in.

  He stopped moving, possibly accidentally, between Anna and the bed where Chelsea lay in the comalike sleep that marked the Change from human to werewolf. He put his hands on his hips, stared at Anna, and waited for her to obey him.

  Alphas were used to people obeying them.

  Anna raised her eyebrow at him and continued to knit, rocking herself in a dark wooden rocking chair that was a lot more comfortable than it had looked when she sat down in it. Knitting was new for her.

  She’d started with quilting. She loved the feel and looks of the fabric. It was like making stained-glass pictures with cloth, and it was an effective gateway drug. Weekly lessons with one of the people who kept the little craft store in Aspen Creek had led her into a whole world. She’d found knitting particularly useful because it let her wait without being restless.

  “I’m not going to hurt her,” Hosteen said, nodding toward the bed.

  “Okay,” Anna said, continuing to work on the sweater she was making for Charles.

  The last one had not turned out very well, and she was determined that this one would be better. It was red, his favorite color. She wasn’t ready to try any kind of fancy pattern yet, but so far the sweater was looking like the picture in her how-to book, so she was encouraged. Except, that is, for those weird little holes that crept in here and there.

  “Go,” Hosteen said with power.

  She gave him a chiding click of her tongue, though it wasn’t diplomatic. But she wasn’t feeling very charitable toward him because he thought she was stupid. Anna could tell when someone was trying to lie with the truth. It didn’t tingle her magic werewolf senses, but her plain old body language skills were plenty adequate. Sure, he wouldn’t hurt Chelsea: death can be painless.

  The idea that Hosteen would kill Chelsea would never have occurred to her. For one thing, murder was murder, even among werewolves. But Kage had been worried, and Maggie had been emphatic. Hosteen’s actions since then weren’t exactly subtle. She didn’t know Chelsea, but she wasn’t going to let anyone be murdered on her watch.