Dead Heat Read online

  Chelsea cried out, her voice hoarse and guttural.

  “Mom,” Max whispered, resisting Anna.

  She quit trying to move him, just put her shoulder between him and his mother so he couldn’t get to her without going over Anna.

  “Changing hurts,” Anna told him. “It hurts every time, but the first time is the worst. Almost all werewolves awaken from their first change completely out of control. There is nothing you can do to help or stop it. And I guarantee you that with Hosteen and Charles in there, your mother will be fine.” She waited and said, “You need to be out of here before she changes. If she hurts you, it will break her.”

  He stood firm for a moment more, muscles twitching with the desire to help. Then he nodded once and let Anna tug him out of the room. She took him into the big living room and led him to the far side of that before she let him stop. They listened to Chelsea’s pain from there for a few minutes, Max flinching and fisting his hands as the noises his mother made changed from human to something else.

  “Would it be easier with three werewolves in there?” he asked.

  “You mean me?” Anna shook her head. “Not while she’s changing. Charles will call me in when she’s done. My wolf has a calming influence on other werewolves. Right now she needs to keep her fighting edge. As soon as she’s found the wolf shape, I’ll be more useful.”

  Someone knocked at the front door just as Chelsea’s voice roared out again. Before Anna could decide how to handle visitors, the door opened and Wade started in at a run.

  He saw Anna and Max and paused in his dash.

  “Chelsea?” he asked Anna.

  She nodded. “In the kitchen.”

  Wade glanced at her. “Are you coming in?”

  “No,” she told him. “We’ve found that having an Omega too close slows down the first change.”

  He grimaced; no one wanted to slow down a change. Then he sucked in a breath. “Omega?” He blinked at her a moment. “That’s what it was.” He gave her a smile. “Thanks. I’ve never had such a weird reaction to a wolf before.”

  Chelsea made another noise and he bolted for the kitchen. After fifteen minutes or so, the sounds all died down.

  “Have you seen Hosteen in his wolf form?” Anna asked Max, though her eyes were directed at the kitchen. She had a vivid memory of how alone she’d felt the first few months she’d been a wolf.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Scare you?”

  “Not after the first time,” he said.

  She turned to him. “Truthfully. No judgment at all on you. Even a normal wolf makes most people want to find a door to hide behind, no matter how often they see them.”

  He smiled. “He’s beautiful,” he said, and there was no fear in him.

  “Anna,” Charles called out quietly.

  “That’s my cue,” she told Max. “Wait here and if everything is okay, we’ll introduce you to your mother’s wolf.”

  When Anna got back to the kitchen, Chelsea had pushed her butt into the corner between the fridge and the wall. Her head was half-lowered, but her nose kept wrinkling into a snarl.

  Like Charles’s older brother, Samuel, she was icy white with bluish-white eyes, but the tips of her ears and her eyes were lined in the same medium brown that covered her belly and the underside of her tail.

  Wade was the closest to her. He was on one knee with his head bowed. Yeah, Anna had been pretty sure Chelsea was going to come out dominant. They were going to have issues trying to put her down on the bottom of the pecking order with the females who had no wolf mate to gain rank. Not when the pack’s second was already acknowledging her dominance over him.

  “Hey, Chelsea,” Anna said cheerfully. Silver eyes met hers and the snarl slid off the new wolf’s face. Anna kept talking. “It’s okay if things are a little mixed up right now. Just wait a second and it will all come back.” She walked in front of Wade and let her wolf bring the tension in the room down.

  “Having warning doesn’t help at all,” said Hosteen.

  “Sure it does,” Charles said. “You aren’t giggling this time.”

  Hosteen made an odd noise, a half growl, half laugh that attracted Chelsea’s attention. The new wolf’s hackles rose and she let out an unhappy whine.

  The Alpha left his post leaning against the sink and walked up to Chelsea. He took her muzzle in his hand, meeting her eyes and holding them. If he worried that she had insufficient control to keep her wolf from biting him, Anna couldn’t see it.

  Slowly, shivering with stress, Chelsea dropped to the ground and rolled over, giving Hosteen the unprotected vulnerability of her belly. He held her there a moment, then let her up.

  “Good,” he told her. “Begin as you mean to go on, Chelsea. You are in charge and the wolf must listen to you.”

  “Max is waiting,” said Anna. “Do you think it’s safe, Hosteen?”

  Chelsea gave a panicked yip and scrambled back into the corner.

  “Chelsea,” Hosteen said. “I promise you won’t hurt him.”

  She held his eyes for three heartbeats.

  “It will be okay,” he said.

  She dropped her eyes and took two steps away from the corner, still looking unhappy.

  Max, summoned by Anna’s call, stopped in the doorway, and for a moment Anna thought it was going to be bad. But then he grinned. “Wow, Mom. Kage is going to have a heart attack, you came out so pretty. He’s going to have to carry a silver-loaded shotgun to keep off the wolves in Hosteen’s pack. You’ve gotta see this in a mirror. Come on, there’s a full-length one in the main bathroom.”

  They had about an hour of light left when they got to the barn. Anna was tired and stressed. She was pretty sure that Charles was in worse shape even though he didn’t show it.

  Hosteen had taken a good look around the kitchen and decided that what everyone needed to “heal the spiritual wounds of the day” was a ride out into the desert. That he could deliver phrases like that and not sound hokey was impressive, Anna decided.

  Chelsea came down with them, running beside the four-wheeler with Charles, who was also in his wolf form. They’d driven around back this time, where there were tie posts outside the back of the barn. Four horses were tacked up with western saddles. A harried-looking Teri was hastily brushing out one horse’s tail with a hairbrush.

  “New dogs?” she asked Hosteen as they all disembarked from the four-wheeler, looking at Chelsea. “Sure are pretty.”

  Pack magic let people see what they expected to see. Otherwise werewolves could never have stayed hidden as long as they had.

  “One new dog—the white female. The red one belongs to Anna, our guest,” Hosteen told the woman.

  “What’s her name?”

  “We haven’t decided yet. Would you go get Kage? I’ll take over here. We’ll put them away properly when we’re done.”

  Teri gave him a bright smile. “Sure thing. He said to tell you he’d be right out, but I’ll let him know you’re here anyway.”

  As soon as she disappeared inside the barn, Charles returned to human form, a little more slowly than was usual for him. This was his second change of the day, Anna thought. If he had to do another one, it would be slower yet. Charles stretched, trying to loosen cramped muscles.

  “Chelsea,” said Hosteen. “The horses won’t care as long as you don’t stare them in the eye for very long. If you make eye contact, they recognize you as a threat.” He turned to Anna. “Let me introduce you to Portabella while we’re waiting for Kage.”

  Chelsea stayed close to Hosteen as they walked over to the horses. As promised, none of the horses seemed particularly bothered by her.

  “Here she is,” Hosteen said, then stood back and let Anna look.

  Portabella was a big mare. Anna had to stand on tiptoes to look over her back. Her color was not dark enough to be black, but very dark just the same. Bay, Anna thought, though the characteristic black points—legs, mane, and tail—were really very close to the same color as
her body. A white streak dropped from a star between her big eyes to another splash of white on her nose. She was polished and beautiful. Even Anna, amateur that she was, could see that she was spectacular.

  Anna couldn’t help but put her hands out to touch and found herself stroking steel clothed in silk. She ran her hands down the horse’s legs, and the mare lifted her front hoof to Anna’s asking. She wasn’t shod and the bottom of her feet looked—like the bottom of a horse’s foot. She laughed inwardly at herself, because she didn’t know enough for the examination to tell her anything except that the mare would stand quietly while an idiot ran hands all over her.

  Somewhat to her own surprise, Anna’s fingers found a bump on her neck that struck her as odd. She was more surprised by her understanding that it was out of place than she was at finding something wrong with this paragon of a horse.

  She glanced at Hosteen.

  “From a vaccination,” he told her. “Some horses just do that sometimes. I have a vet report on it in her file.”

  “Is she a mare you bred?” she asked, after looking for a question that wouldn’t make her sound too stupid.

  Charles was being very quiet, even for Charles. He must have been as exhausted as she was. Hosteen was right: it was a tiredness of spirit rather than body. Even so, she was pretty sure she should have insisted that they retire to their room.

  Hosteen shook his head. “Three years ago, Joseph was out at a trainer’s barn looking for interesting horses,” Hosteen said. “And he found this mare. She’d been soured in the ring so they’d put her in the breeding barn, but she wasn’t sound for breeding. So they’d sent her back to the trainers. But sour didn’t even touch on how much she hated arena work. She put the trainer’s assistant in the hospital and he was done with her.”

  Hosteen shook his head. “My son is magic on a horse, and game for any challenge. He wanted to retrain her himself. We got her for more than we should have paid for her, but a lot less than she’d be worth if he could fix her. Before he could start working with her, his health started going downhill again.”

  Hosteen turned away and ran a hand down the mare’s shiny neck. The smile he gave Anna when he turned back was unhappy, but not, she was sure, because of the horse. “Anyway, since then she’s been one of our trail horse band. We keep them in shape and ready to go for buyers or clients who want to take a ride out in the desert. So she’s been ridden steadily since she came, but not in the arena.”

  “Portabella,” Anna said, having thought about the name and come up with an alternate theory for it, instead of the one attached to the mare’s pedigree. “Because someone fed her BS until she turned into a mushroom.”

  Hosteen laughed. “Kage tried working with her last spring and he wanted to call her Soyuz.”

  Anna frowned.

  “After the Russian single-stage-to-orbit rocket,” said Kage dryly as he emerged from the barn. “I’ve never been dumped so fast with such authority in my life. It was a lesson in humility, especially since my eighty-year-old father had ridden her in the arena a couple of times before…” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the wolf standing next to Hosteen.

  Chelsea regarded him warily and, well versed in dealing with skittish animals, he stopped where he was and crouched down. “Oh, honey,” he crooned. “I’d have known you if you had six legs and scales. But I had no idea what a beautiful wolf you’d be.”

  She leapt toward him—and misjudged, knocking him right off his feet. Portabella jumped back and Hosteen yanked at the rope that attached the horse to the tie post. A single jerk and she was loose from the post, her lead held in Hosteen’s hand instead. She took a couple of steps away and then settled, regarding the pile of wolf and man with pricked-ear disdain.

  Chelsea backed off and looked distressed. Kage laughed and leaned forward until he could rub her neck. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll get the hang of it.”

  Anna thought he hesitated a little as he got to his feet, but if he was hurt he wasn’t showing any other sign. Smart man. If Chelsea thought she’d hurt him, it would unsettle her, and unsettled was a bad thing for a werewolf in her first time out.

  “If you get Anna taken care of,” Kage looked at Hosteen, “I’ll introduce Charles to his horse.”

  A little snorty after the excitement, Portabella still let Hosteen bridle her with little trouble. She mouthed the bit and then stood, ears up and muscles quivering, while Anna mounted. She didn’t move, but Anna got the feeling it was an effort for her to remain still while the others got on their horses.

  Charles’s horse was a rawboned gelding with a long, flexible neck and a Roman nose.

  “I didn’t think Arabs ran to convex noses,” Anna said.

  “Not a purebred Arab, anyway,” said Kage, seeing where she was looking. “Though I could show you a few pictures … But Figaro is a national show horse that’s half-Arab and half-saddlebred. He turned out all saddlebred in looks and Arab in gait. That’s pretty much the opposite of what we’re trying for when breeding national show horses. He’s a terrific jumper, though, and loves the trail.” He looked at Charles. “He’s for sale, too. He’s big enough to carry you.”

  Charles patted the gelding. “We’re shopping for Anna.”

  Charles’s gelding was a little smaller than Portabella, Anna found when she started out riding next to her husband.

  The big mare had big gaits, too. She quickly outpaced the rest of the horses. Anna was forced to circle her to stay with the others. Like Heylight, the gray gelding from her first day, the mare was very sensitive to cues. Anna finally quit using the bridle for anything except speed control and just shifted her weight from one hip to the other to turn.

  “Comfortable?” asked Hosteen, coming up on her left side. He rode a short chestnut gelding with a wide blaze and a friendly demeanor who trotted to keep up with Portabella’s quick walk.

  “Very,” she said, straightening her back a little and making sure her heels were down. Portabella slowed.

  “Ah,” Hosteen said, effortlessly keeping his horse next to hers, “don’t worry about me, just relax. Charles would never teach anyone the wrong way to ride. You ride better than a lot of the people you’ll see at the show tomorrow. Ready for a trot?”

  “Sure,” she said. Were they going to the show tomorrow? She’d have to ask Charles.

  “Go ahead and ask her, then,” he said. “We’ll follow. Just keep her on the trail. There’s a fork ahead, take either one you want.”

  Portabella’s trot was lilting, but not heavy, so Anna didn’t bang into her back, but she had to really relax to keep her seat. As she did so, the mare’s ears perked up and her gait softened.

  “Canter,” called Kage.

  And before Anna cued her, Portabella broke into a blistering run, head up and tail flagged. Anna laughed and sat back, slowing her with a light hand on the reins until she was cantering. This was a lot different from riding Jinx. Chelsea ran beside them, stretching out with her tongue lolling in pleasure.

  See, thought Anna, there are some things that are amazing about being a werewolf.

  As soon as Hosteen tried to ride even with them, Portabella put on an extra burst of speed. The trail forked and Anna took the left, which was up a little hillock. At the top of the hill, she asked her to walk. Willingly the mare dropped speed and let the others catch up.

  “We’re going to lose our light,” said Kage. “We ought to turn back soon.”

  “I’d like to see what she does in the arena,” Charles said. Maybe there was something to what Hosteen had said, because Charles looked better. He had expressions that Anna could read again, which was an improvement.

  “A challenge,” said Hosteen, laughing. “You always were up for a challenge. Okay, fair enough.”

  They walked back to the barn. Anna ended up beside Hosteen again.

  “I just remembered,” Anna said. “It’s not important to help us find the fae anymore, but I’d like to know, I guess. Do you know a werewol
f named Archibald Vaughn who was here back in the seventies?”

  “Archie?” asked Hosteen, startled.

  “He’s dead,” said Charles, riding up beside them. “Killed by a fae … at least thirty years ago, now. Why do you ask?”

  “Killed by a fae?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

  Charles just looked at her, but Hosteen said, “I found the body. Yes. I’m sure. It was in the fall, 1979.”

  The hair on the back of Anna’s head stood up. “Did he ever tell you that he saved a little boy from a fae creature? June of the year before. We’re pretty sure it’s the same one who built the fetch that tried to make Chelsea attack the kids.”

  “Not that I heard,” Hosteen said. “After his mate died, he went to live with his family for a few years. We hoped it would help, but then I found out he’d stayed in his wolf shape the whole time. So I picked him up and brought him back to the pack and made him change to human. He never did go back to being his old self. When I felt him die, I was sure he’d found a way to kill himself. I thought it was suicide by fae.”

  “I think,” Anna said, “that maybe it was revenge because he stopped this fae from stealing his grandchild. Or great-grandchild. Great-something-grandchild, anyway. It’s an awfully big coincidence otherwise.”

  “Maybe he went looking for the fae,” offered Charles thoughtfully. “And both of you are right.”

  “Any way you look at it,” said Anna. “The fae we’re chasing is powerful enough to kill a werewolf.”

  “Tore him to pieces with magic,” said Hosteen thoughtfully.

  “Makes you wonder,” Charles said slowly, “that such a fae let a handful of federal agents and police officers escort him off to jail.”

  “Do you think they have the wrong fae?” Anna asked.

  He didn’t quite answer. “I think … I think, Hosteen, that we need to borrow your wolves. This is not a fae that is going to let Amethyst, the little girl we rescued, stay rescued. We probably should send wolves out to protect Dr. Vaughn, too. And we’ll keep a weather eye on Chelsea and the kids.”

  “Who is Dr. Vaughn?” Hosteen asked.