Burn Bright

by Patricia Briggs

  “Other Gray Lords,” Charles said.

  Tag made a noise. “Well. Well. He wasn’t a Gray Lord, not really. Not by his choice, anyhow. But with his parentage, it wasn’t something he could easily get out of. And if any of the fae with an ounce of sense had talked to Jonesy this past fifty years, they’d have hunted him down and killed him. Had to. They take care of their problems, same as us.”

  “Would they?” asked Anna. “Did they? Do you think this was something aimed at Jonesy because one of the fae found out he was here?”

  Tag pursed his lips, but before he or Charles could say anything, Anna was already shaking her head. “No. Sorry. This was a werewolf thing—werewolves working with humans and technology.” She indicated Charles’s already mostly filled backpack. “A Gray Lord wouldn’t need technology to spy on someone.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Charles. “It’s too early to rule anything out. It doesn’t look like it from where we are standing, but that could change.”

  “A Gray Lord might put all the cameras in place and zap them himself, just to watch us run around like half-wits,” muttered Tag. “Some of those guys are really off-kilter.”

  Charles took pride in the self-control that allowed him not to respond to the maybe-unintentional irony in that statement. His self-control was aided by the short time it had to stay strong because, from somewhere out of sight, Asil called, “I’ve got another one up here for you techies. Está roto. What is it you said about the last one, Tag? Pretty borked. This one is pretty borked, too.”

  “Coming,” Tag called back.

  The three of them headed toward Asil. Ducking through some underbrush, they came upon a fresh break in the ground some three feet across, fifteen feet long, and maybe twelve feet down. Probably the crack was due to Jonesy’s earthquakes. Roots were stretched from one side to the other, the damage from the sudden wrenching obvious. One tree leaned precariously, its root ball rising out of the otherwise stable side of the tree.

  Next storm or heavy snow, and it would fall, Charles judged. Several hundred years of life now dying a slow death. It was not the oldest fatality this day, nor the only tree to fall. But Charles was tired of death, and the trees were entirely innocent.

  Brother Wolf wasn’t tired of death, just tired of the deaths of those who had belonged to them, who were theirs to protect. He would be happy to kill all of the ones responsible for this attack on their territory. Very happy.

  Anna slipped her hand under Charles’s tee, just at the small of his back, and let her fingers rest against the skin there. Brother Wolf relaxed. Anna made Brother Wolf happier than killing their enemies would have.

  “Not sure it wouldn’t have been smarter to have put Jonesy down when he went funny,” Tag said thoughtfully, looking at the damage. “Lugh’s children are too damn powerful by half to let run around without the sense God gave a goose. But he was Hester’s mate, and she wouldn’t have survived his death any more than he survived hers.” On the last word, he jumped across the broken ground.

  Charles waited for Anna to make the jump. She had no trouble with it, and he didn’t expect her to, but some things were ingrained. And he liked to watch her move. She was economical, so much so that it was easy to underestimate just how strong she was. He liked that about her, the way she could pass for human. It made her safer.

  As he jumped, part of him was locked onto how well Anna’s jeans showed off her muscular curves, part of him noted that she still had that witchcrafted gun tucked in the waistband of her jeans, but the biggest part of his attention was still stuck on Tag’s rambling dialogue. “Lugh’s children,” he’d said.

  There was only one Lugh Tag could have been talking about when referring to a fae. Charles had met a son of Lugh once. In Boston. He’d rather that none of the ancient fae god’s progeny had ever been located within a thousand miles of his home.

  He regretted Jonesy’s death, but the chasm, small as it was, gave evidence of how much more Hester’s death could have cost his pack. He thought of what he would do if someone killed his Anna—and part of him, Charles and Brother Wolf both, thought the less of Jonesy for not defying Hester’s wishes and laying waste to the world for her sake.

  “Finally, children. I had despaired of you reaching me in this century.” Asil’s voice came from somewhere in the mass of evergreen branches directly over their heads. “Your slowness has not been without benefit, however. It allowed me leisure to locate three more devices of some sort in a direct line from this one in this tree. Our enemies were very industrious.”

  * * *

  • • •

  OVER THE COURSE of the next few hours, if they didn’t find all of the electronics the invaders had left, they probably found everything within a mile of Hester’s house. Charles was, at least, absolutely certain that the pack left nothing any human-based investigators would be able to find.

  “You seem to be awfully worried about human authorities,” commented Asil, dusting off the dirt and debris that an afternoon of tree-climbing had left on him. “Do you think this might be the US government who dropped in to visit?”

  Sage, who was seldom to be found too far from Asil if he was present, looked at Charles, echoing Asil’s question without speaking a word.

  “I don’t,” Charles said. “At least not directly. As far as I can tell, the government is as happy with werewolves as they have ever been. But a government is made of individuals, and there are plenty of those who are afraid of us, of the fae, and all the other things they know are out there in the night.”

  “Can’t blame them,” said Sage softly. “They call us monsters for a reason—and werewolves are just the tip of the iceberg. I could tell you some stories . . .”

  Sage had her own nightmares suffered at werewolf hands. That his da had found out about her and rescued her as soon as he heard didn’t mean that she loved being a werewolf any more than most of those who’d been Changed against their wishes.

  Anna—who, as far as Charles could see, seemed to have embraced her wolf without bitterness—gave Sage a sharp look. “Hating all werewolves or fae makes as much sense as hating all humans,” she said mildly.

  Asil smiled at her, a smile both patronizing and affectionate. “Ah,” he told her. “But you are a child of your generation. Raised by people who grew up in the 1960s and taught that people are not to ‘be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ That profiling by race, religion—or species—is anathema, no matter how useful.”

  If Asil had realized his expression was also wistful, doubtless the old Moor would have found a different smile for Anna.

  “Werewolves are a bit more frightening than a black man in an all-white restaurant,” said Sage.

  Anna pursed her lip. Her father was a high-profile liberal lawyer who’d started his practice defending protestors, which gave her a certain perspective on the subject.

  “Not to someone raised in ignorance,” she said. “The unknown is a lot more scary than something you understand, no matter how bad that is.”

  “It isn’t the ignorant,” said Asil softly, “who fear our kind. And their fear is not baseless. What do you think would happen if Bran chose to take over the government?”

  Sage started to speak, then her face went blank except for the narrowing of her eyes.

  Asil nodded toward her. “Yes, you see it, don’t you? We hear all the time that the fae couldn’t do it—they are too few for all of their power. Human weapons have advanced unimaginably far since my birth. Eventually, in any match of strength to strength, they would win an outright battle with any of us on the supernaturally endowed spectrum. The vampires . . . I think the vampires believe that they are in control. That spider in Europe could no more resist allowing the government to run without unwitting slaves in key positions than he could resist . . . poking his fingers into the Nazi pie in the middle of the last ce
ntury. But if Bran wanted it?”

  Anna, her eyes bright, was still mouthing “supernaturally endowed spectrum” at Charles, when Sage murmured, “Bran is more subtle than the vampires. Even Bonarata. Bran is . . . like everyone’s favorite big brother. He’s charming. He looks so harmless until he doesn’t. And you know that he really does care.”

  “My da,” said Charles dryly, “Dictator at Large.”

  “Well, yes,” said Anna, recovering from her amusement. “Of course, he could make a fine stab at it. But since he really doesn’t care about anyone who doesn’t turn furry in the full moon, I’d rather he leave the government to the humans.”

  “And so would Da,” agreed Charles.

  “But if he wanted to . . .” said Sage, her voice soft.

  “No,” said Charles firmly. “It wouldn’t be as easy as Asil makes it sound.”

  “I’d help,” said Asil.

  But the seriousness had gone out of the moment. Anna made a pithy sound.

  “Seduce the women,” she said, her accent a flawless copy of Asil’s. “It is the women who run everything, anyway. If a man’s wife says, ‘do this,’ he does. Simple. If you want a government to do thus and such, get their wives and mistresses on board.”

  It sounded like a quote. Charles gave Asil an interested look.

  “I was teaching Kara about your Revolutionary War,” Asil said with dignity.

  Sage grinned—she was a beautiful woman, but her grin transformed her face. Made her less beautiful and more approachable. “Or how Benjamin Franklin’s skill between the sheets managed to win the war.”

  “Which is true,” said Asil.

  “True-ish,” admonished Sage. “And, in current times, incredibly sexist. A lot of the people in power are women. What are you going to do, seduce their husbands?”

  Asil smiled slowly, his eyes bright. “Want to watch?”

  “Getting back to your question, children,” said Charles, deliberately using the word Asil liked so much, “assuming we can put world domination, sexual politics of the eighteenth century, and flirting aside for the moment, I don’t think this is a government operation. Too much money in some areas and not enough in others. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some glory hound watching for a chance to change the game. I don’t want to give anyone something they can hold over us.”

  He dumped his overfull backpack on the bed of the nearest convenient truck, and Anna did the same with hers. Laid out in the open, it made an interesting pile in several ways.

  Tag pursed his lips. “Helicopter. Trained men and werewolves. Twenty thousand dollars of equipment. You’re right: too much money to be casual but not enough for official government.”

  Anna sorted out the tech by nose until she had three piles. “Tech guy the first,” she said, pointing at one pile. “Tech girl” was the second pile. “Tech guy the second” was the third pile. “Just guessing, but from the wear and tear and the scent of tech gurus, this was set up in three waves.”

  Tag nodded his agreement. “That first group was out here last fall—you can see the effects of winter—maybe eight months ago. The second was put out this spring. The third batch looks new. Two weeks, maybe a month. Each set of equipment is topflight, bleeding-edge stuff. I was off by maybe ten thousand on the cost.” He tapped his finger on the first group. “Prices on this have gone down since last winter. Someone spent thirty grand on tech to keep watch on Hester and Jonesy—who mostly didn’t do anything interesting.”

  “I bet they wanted to know what they were going to be dealing with,” Sage said thoughtfully. “I mean, they came here specifically for Hester—that damned cage was meant to hold a werewolf. Maybe they were being careful, trying to make sure they knew what they were getting into.”

  Tag grinned suddenly, showing his teeth. “Jonesy. I didn’t catch it until it was all laid out.” He looked at Charles. “Do you see the pattern?”

  He did.

  “Jonesy found all of the tech when it went up—probably right away,” Charles said, thinking of the forest spirits. The fae probably had some other name for them, interacted with them in some other fashion than Charles did, but they had been much too in tune with Jonesy and with his death for them not to have had some kind of contact with him. “The oldest set were simply disabled, the power destroyed with a surgical blow.”

  “Zap,” said Tag, popping his lips.

  “The second bunch were damaged a little more severely,” Charles said.

  “Double-zap,” said Tag.

  “That is not a technical term, I hope,” murmured Asil.

  “Only the most technically advanced people can use ‘double-zap’ correctly,” Anna told Asil sotto voce. “You and I shouldn’t try it.”

  “By the third wave,” Tag said, “Jonesy was insulted. He was a chess player—and these idiots had used the same strategy three times in a row and expected different results. Thus this third wave of tech is not just zap or double-zap but truly borked.”

  “So why didn’t he tell Hester about them?” Anna asked. “Or did he? Did she know they were being watched? Why didn’t she tell Bran?”

  Somberly, Sage said, “The only people who know the answer to that are dead.”

  Charles found himself considering that last question. Tag said Hester was faking her troubles so that she could protect Jonesy. He said, and Charles agreed with him, that probably Bran had known that.

  So why hadn’t she called his father about the planes that had been flying over them? Had she known they had people trying to spy on them?

  But as Sage said, the only people who knew that were dead. Unless, he thought, Hester had called his da. He considered that for a moment—and decided that, while certainly possible, the idea that his da had known about someone’s flying over Hester’s cabin and not alerted the pack carried some uncomfortable possibilities with it.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE GROUND AROUND the wooden building was raw where the backhoe Tag brought up had done its work. After careful consideration, the chain saws that had cut the ATVs free had been employed again to cut down a tree that stood midway between the house and the rest of the forest. Better to lose one centuries-old tree than thousands of them.

  They laid Hester on the bed next to the remains of her mate. The room was too small to hold the pack, so they entered the cabin in twos and threes while the wind played background music, with the trees as its instrument.

  Charles let Leah and Anna sort the shuffle of pack and sought out Asil, who stood a little distance from all the hustle.

  “Fire,” Charles said, “may be a purifying force. But it is not one of the usual methods of destroying fae magic.”

  Asil made a considering noise. “Do you think there are fae artifacts in that cabin?”

  “I didn’t feel anything when Anna and I were in there earlier,” he told the old Moor honestly. “But according to Tag and to Brother Wolf’s independent assessment, Jonesy was a Power. I think he could hide his toys well enough that they would not attract my casual attention.”

  Asil said nothing for a moment. “You think I could find them?”

  Charles chose his words carefully because flattery was not something he did. Anna had (often) suggested it as a good way to get cooperation from Asil—and pointed out that the most effective flattery had only truth.

  Charles decided that now was as good a time as ever to test out her advice.

  “I think that any wolf who has survived as long as you have has at least as much a nose for fae magic as I do. I would appreciate it if you would come down there with me and help look. I’ve asked Anna and Tag to keep the crowd occupied with stories about Hester while we go in.”

  The Moor snorted. “You just want help searching the field for land mines and are looking for cannon fodder.”

  But despite his words, he came with Charle
s and slipped into the cabin with him under the guise of paying last respects. It shouldn’t take them too long, Charles thought. Tag could tell stories all night, though, so they had time.

  They began in the basement.

  Asil paused beside the bed and touched the surface of the blanket between the remains that had been people just this morning. Then he raised both hands, palms flat, and said, “Allāhu akbar.”

  Charles, recognizing the sacred when he heard it, in whatever language or religion, fell still, folding his arms and saying his own prayer, as Asil folded his hands in front of his chest.

  Asil’s prayer was soft for the most part, punctuated by several calls of “Allāhu akbar.” When he was finished, the Moor touched his hand to Hester’s hip, and said, “Good-bye, formidable lady.”

  “I thought that the funeral prayer was only for Muslim people,” said Charles.

  Asil’s face lit with a smile that he was using to hide some emotion he didn’t want Charles to see. “But I am a very bad Muslim—and Hester was old. One believes many things in a very long life. Who knows if she was not Muslim in her heart of hearts?”

  “You knew her?” Charles asked.

  Asil shrugged. “I knew of her—the stubborn woman who would belong to no pack. She killed a dozen wolves—some of them Alphas—before they let her alone. I did not meet her. Bran said that she and her mate wished to be isolated, or I would have paid my respects. It saddens my heart when the great ones die. This world is the less for her passing.”

  He glanced where the earth lay on the bedding. “The fae?” he said, as if Charles had asked a question. “Him I am less saddened by. I never met him, either, but I have seen too much of what their kind have wrought in carelessness. He was certainly not Muslim, so the Salatul Janazah was not for him.”