Fair Game aao-3 Page 26

  She had to remind herself firmly that she was only acting hopeless and afraid. That she was not a victim, that she would prevail over them.

  Uncle Travis sneered. ‘Pathetic. But they all are eventually.’

  ‘I don’t mind pathetic,’ said Benedict earnestly. ‘As long as they are pretty. And human. I don’t screw animals. Screwing animals is bad.’

  But Anna noticed that he didn’t get any closer to the cage than he had to. His scent was … uneasy. Charles had hurt him when they fought and now he didn’t want to get too near her.

  Uncle Travis ignored Benedict, studying Anna as though she were a puzzle. ‘I don’t think we’ll wait. Get the bang stick and the muzzle. We’ll put her out again and get the chains back on her.’

  Uncle Travis didn’t specify whom he was ordering around, but Benedict strode off to do his bidding while Heuter never even moved.

  Bang stick. A bang stick was a long pole with a firearm that could fire bullets at sharks underwater. She’d seen one on some National Geographic show on TV. She’d been rooting for the sharks.

  Benedict went into the office in the far corner of the barn and came out with a seven-or eight-foot-long stick with what looked like a hypodermic taped on the end with duct tape. It wasn’t a bang stick – but it looked like one had inspired its creation.

  Anna rocked back warily. She had no intention of being unconscious again if she could help it. Drugs might not work right on werewolves, but enough drugs could knock her out for a few minutes. She didn’t want to be helpless with these men.

  Isaac was pretty surprised that the high-and-mighty Lord of the Elves didn’t get how scared he should be right now, stuck as they all were in a car with Charles while Charles’s mate was in the hands of a bunch of serial killers.

  That the FBI agents didn’t get it, either, was a tribute to the hellacious fine poker face Charles had on, but Isaac would have thought that the fae, being so much older and wiser in song and story, would have better instincts. He should know that the Marrok’s Wolfkiller was about to lose it and lots of people were going to die.

  Of course, Isaac had gotten the distinct impression that Beauclaire was a tough, tough bastard last night when they’d fought the horned lord together. Attacking an invisible monster with nothing more than a long knife was all sorts of gutsy and maybe a little crazy – though the fae was still alive, which might mean that he hadn’t been as crazy as all that. Not that either of them, Isaac or Beauclaire, had done a tithe of the damage the bogeyman of the werewolves had managed. Isaac had been impressed even when he thought that Charles must have been able to see the monster, but Hally had disabused him of that notion.

  ‘He might have seen a flicker,’ she had told him as they waited for the cops and officials to do their cleanup bit on Gallops Island. ‘But it’s been nearly a week since they killed Jacob. Magic goes fast when you waste it the way these guys do. Like to like, the magic released by Jacob’s death would have lit up a little, enough to tell him that there was something in the room, especially if it were a little dark, but not enough to see what it was.’

  And Charles had attacked as if he knew exactly where he was aiming. Fast. Freaking fast and powerful. Isaac had heard the thunk as the other wolf had landed on the beast, had watched him hang on after the creature had rolled over on him a couple of times. By that time Isaac’s clock had been rung but good, so all he remembered were pieces of the end of the fight – but it was enough to wow him.

  Isaac had been in his share of fights, both before and after his Change. He knew without arrogance that he was damned good, and five years of karate before he’d been Changed – inspired by the desire to never let anyone throw him into a locker again – had proved useful in his job as Alpha. But if he ever went in a ring against Charles, he might as well roll over and show his throat before the first round of hostilities began. No wonder the Marrok used Charles as his cleanup man. Who was going to stand up to that?

  Isaac drove the van because when Horatio, the wolf who owned the van – Horatio was not his real name, but he wanted to be an actor and his grasp of Shakespeare was really good, so the nickname stuck – got a good look at Charles’s set face, he’d tossed Isaac the keys. Then he’d suggested that he could stop by Isaac’s house sometime in the morning to pick up the van if they didn’t really need him to come along. He’d waited to make sure that Isaac wouldn’t order him to drive, but looked extremely relieved when Isaac gave him the nod. Horatio had more common sense in his little finger than anyone in this van had in his whole body – including Isaac.

  Horatio was a good fighter, though. He might have been handy when they ran into the bad guys. Isaac glanced over his shoulder at Charles, who was playing intently with the phone he’d taken from Isaac. Beauclaire was sitting in the far backseat, so maybe he wasn’t as oblivious to Charles’s state after all. The Marrok’s Wolfkiller kept his body turned in the exact direction of their goal. Probably they didn’t need Horatio. Probably they didn’t need anyone except Charles.

  And Horatio would have insisted on driving if he’d come; it was his van, after all. Charles had chosen to give Agent Fisher the shotgun seat – which might have been old-fashioned manners; old wolves did things like that. It was unlikely that he’d done it so he could screw with Isaac by sitting behind him, even if that was the end result. The black cloud of intensity Charles shed made Isaac all sorts of jumpy and would have had Horatio, who was much more high-strung, driving like a six-year-old trying to throw a bowling ball.

  It was late, maybe one in the morning, and traffic was correspondingly light so Isaac punched it a little. Not so fast that the cops would feel like it was imperative to pull him over, but not so slow that the wolf in the backseat would decide to take over.

  It was a delicate balance. Horatio didn’t have any kind of GPS navigation in his old van, but Agent Fisher used her phone to imitate one. They decided that I-93 would be the fastest way there, even though it was a farther distance than taking the back roads.

  ‘Pull over,’ said Charles, his voice rough.

  Isaac wasn’t going to argue with him. So he eased the van to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

  Charles hopped out, patted the side of the car, and said, ‘Go on out to the address I gave you. I’m going to run the direct path and I should beat you there.’

  It wasn’t until then that Isaac realized Charles had begun changing to wolf. Isaac couldn’t speak – except to swear at the worst bits – while he changed, and Charles could have a regular conversation, or something pretty close to it. Damn. When he grew up, he wanted to be like Charles.

  Charles shut the door and took off into the darkness, still on two legs, but his gait was an odd leaping glide, neither human nor lupine. Funny, Isaac mused, how being a werewolf had made him complacent, made him think he knew all there was about being a wolf.

  He pulled back onto the interstate and asked, ‘How long until we get there?’

  ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes,’ Leslie said. ‘He thinks he can beat us?’

  These weren’t Isaac’s usual stomping grounds, but he had a fair idea of geography – and a pretty good idea of how fast a ticked-off werewolf was. He mentally added 10 percent more speed just because it was Charles and said, ‘I think he can, too.’

  Charles wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not, but Brother Wolf was done with riding in a car when he had four good feet and Anna needed them. He changed the rest of the way as he ran, which wasn’t his favorite way to do it, but he managed.

  Isaac’s phone, which Charles had left on the seat of the van, had suggested that he could cut through some woods, a few cemeteries and golf courses, and end up where he wanted to be. He didn’t expect it to be quite that simple – which was a good thing. Fences, waterways, and houses kept him from a direct path, but he managed. As he got closer, his link to Anna sharpened. He still couldn’t talk to her, but he could feel her pain and fear – and that made him flatten out and run even harder.

&nbs
p; He narrowly missed being hit by a Subaru Outback on a narrow highway, left it stopped dead with the sour smell of burnt rubber and the driver asking his companion, ‘Did you see that? What was that thing?’ Only as he approached the house did he slow down.

  She wasn’t hurting anymore.

  And now that he could think instead of panic, he knew what Anna had done. Who knew better what a shift felt like than another werewolf? She was smart, his mate. The wolf was tougher than the human and better able to defend herself, so she’d shifted to her lupine form.

  She didn’t need immediate rescuing; she wasn’t hurting now, so he could take a moment. Brother Wolf was all for finding where they had her and killing everyone involved. Charles was okay with the last half, but thought that resting until he wasn’t breathing like a steam engine would make it more possible. He dropped to the ground under a bunch of lilac bushes near a sign that read WESTWOOD DANCE STUDIO: ESTABLISHED 2006.

  Charles would go in when he was at his best, not panting like a greyhound after a race. Brother Wolf wasn’t happy, but he had learned that sometimes his human half was wiser – and sometimes not.

  High above him, the moon sang. Tomorrow she would be full and there would be no ignoring her. Tonight she kept him company as he rose to go hunt down those who would harm his mate.

  Benedict shoved the stick at Anna in a quick, jerky motion designed to fool the eye. Charles occasionally sparred with Asil using Chinese qiang, and they used the same sort of movements, twirling the spears and making the ends bob around.

  Maybe if she’d been human, it would have worked.

  Instead Anna dodged, then grabbed the end just behind the hypodermic when the stick pushed past her. She twisted her head while she clamped her teeth on it.

  If it had been a human holding the spear, she’d have pulled it from Benedict’s hands. If she had been a real wolf, she couldn’t have damaged it. But, though she was small for a werewolf, she was huge for a wolf and stronger than a wolf her size would have been. The end snapped and the hypodermic fell at her feet.

  She had a weapon – just let them try to get it out of the cage while she was in her wolf skin. And when she was human, she could use it. She smiled at the old man, letting her tongue loll out at him. Take that.

  I am not anyone’s victim, not anymore.

  Benedict dropped the stick and jumped back – and she smelled fear. She showed her teeth to him and growled, just a little. A taunt.

  Uncle Travis took four big strides to reach Benedict and slapped him hard in the face with the flat of his hand. ‘Stop that. Stop that. She is an abomination, but we have killed abominations before. She’s a prisoner and weak – you are a Heuter. We don’t cower before disease-ridden monsters.’

  Benedict started to say something, then stiffened and raised his head. ‘He’s coming.’

  ‘Who’s coming?’ asked Travis.

  Benedict changed without answering. Between one breath and the next he became something … fantastical.

  Anna expected him to be ugly in his fae form, for the outside to represent the inside, but she should have known better. She’d seen the white stag.

  A wide rack of antlers, snow-white and silver tipped, rose like a crown from his head – which was not quite human. The eyes were right and the mouth, but the rest of the face was sharper, elongated in an oddly graceful manner.

  There was such beauty in the odd symmetry of his features, a beauty not hurt at all by his silver skin. No. Not his skin, though that was pale as well. His whole upper body, face included, was covered with a short, silvery white fur that caught the light and sparkled. His hair was three or four shades of gray and it cascaded through and over the base of his antlers and lay over his hugely muscled shoulders in locks, like drips of melted wax.

  He was huge. He wouldn’t have been able to stand in a normal house. If Uncle Travis was six feet tall, and she thought he was near that, then Benedict was twice that, not including his horns.

  His clothes had melted away – and it occurred to Anna that he probably hadn’t changed at all, just lost his hold on the glamour that all fae could use to look human. But his shoulders, chest, and belly were covered with silvery armor that reminded her of an armadillo’s covering. It wasn’t clothing, but part of his skin.

  From the chest downward the pelt of silver hair grew longer, thicker, and curled like the pelt of a buffalo. It covered his hips and left his genitalia peeking through here and there. His legs were built like the back legs of a buffalo or deer – though the size looked more like the giraffe she’d seen at the Brookfield Zoo when she was a kid.

  At his … hocks or knees, the fur darkened to steel gray and grew longer, like the hair – feathers, her horse-crazy friend from third grade had insisted they call it – on the bottom of a Clydesdale’s legs.

  He stood on a pair of two-toed hooves, like a moose. He bent his head back, his nose rising toward the ceiling and his antlers exaggerating the movement, and raised one foot up nervously, before setting it down and lowering his head again. He rocked from one hoof to the other, making hollow noises on the wooden floor and leaving marks on the polished surface.

  ‘He’s just scared,’ said Heuter, in the lazy Texas drawl he seemed to drop and pick up again without notice. ‘There’s no one out there. They are clueless.’

  Anna hadn’t heard a car drive up and couldn’t smell anything different, though the door was closed and she couldn’t get a good scent-fix on anything outside of the barn anyway. Still, she suspected that Les Heuter was right. She knew that no one was looking at Heuter for the killings.

  Benedict tossed his head and let loose with the challenging roar she’d heard before. Nothing answered him but the distant sounds of rushing cars and wind trailing through leaves.

  But Anna sensed it, too. A feeling of impending doom, like standing on railroad tracks and feeling the rails begin to vibrate before she could hear the train. It took her a moment to realize what that feeling was: she’d been so sure he couldn’t find her.

  He didn’t come through the door. He crashed through the walls like a battering ram. Old two-by-twelve timbers bent open before him like leaves of grass and dripped off him as toothpicks and twigs. His eyes caught hers, swept the room, and then focused on Benedict.

  The red wolf’s head lowered and he sank down just a little and growled, a sound so deep that the floor of her cage vibrated.

  The horned lord shook his great antlers and bellowed, charging forward, in spite of the terror Anna could smell. Charles waited, then moved just enough to get out of his way. The fae’s hooves slipped on the hard, slick floor and he hit the mirror, cracking it, before he managed to stop.

  ‘Les, get my Glock,’ snapped Uncle Travis. ‘It’s still loaded with silver bullets.’

  Heuter had pulled his own gun, but, obedient to his uncle still, he ran for the office. It meant that he wouldn’t shoot Charles yet, but the respite wouldn’t last long.

  Anna couldn’t do anything, stuck in the cage. Charles had many strengths, but he was even more adversely affected by silver than most werewolves. She couldn’t let them shoot him.

  She had to do something. Anna shoved her head through the silver-coated bars and fought to get free, digging her claws into the wooden bottom of the cage for leverage. She was smaller than most werewolves, so maybe she could force her way out – or maybe the bars would yield to her need to protect her mate. The silver burned even through her thick coat of hair, but she ignored it and kept struggling as she watched her mate battle with the monstrous fae.

  Charles leapt as Benedict swept past, landing momentarily on the horned lord’s back, and then Charles kept right on going for a dozen strides before turning to face his prey again. It happened so fast that Charles had already stopped before blood started gushing from the long tear down the side of Benedict’s neck. Arterial blood, black with oxygen, it sprayed a little as it pumped out.

  Heuter had reached the office and Anna felt the bars give against her sho
ulders. She lunged again, harder. Uncle Travis grabbed the remnants of the bang stick and, swinging it like a baseball bat, he hit her in the face, slamming the side of her head into the bars and wrenching her neck.

  Mindful of Charles’s battle, not wanting to distract him, Anna didn’t make a sound, just kept struggling.

  Charles crossed the room in the same zigzag motion she’d seen him use when hunting moose. He didn’t look like he was moving very fast – but he crossed the space in record time. This time he sliced the horned lord’s face open with his fangs.

  The cut on the side of Benedict’s neck had already quit bleeding; he healed that quickly. But fully half of his silvery body was crimson with gore. He staggered and reached both hands to his face. Charles had taken out one eye entirely and sliced though the fae’s nose.

  It took the fight out of Benedict – Anna could see how that would be; she was pretty sure that something in her nose was broken, and it hurt, blurring her vision and sending weakness shivering through her muscles. Then Heuter came out of the office with a second gun, and she quit caring about anything except getting out so she could keep them from shooting Charles. The bars had moved that last time, before Travis hit her; she knew it.

  Anna wiggled with all of her might, and the floor gave a little beneath the claws of her back feet. It was too little, too late. The red wolf prowled slowly forward about fifteen feet from Benedict, giving Heuter the perfect shot.

  Heuter stopped, fumbled the second gun before putting it in his holster. The fumble made him rush his shot to make up for it and he squeezed the trigger just after Charles lunged.

  The sound pulled the old man’s attention from the fight. ‘Les! Get your scrawny ass over here and give me my gun. You can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Get a move on. My grandfather was faster than you when he was eighty-six.’