Burn Bright

by Patricia Briggs

  “Jonesy was notably unhelpful in that,” said Charles apologetically. “I suppose that ‘us’ could mean the fae, but in this context, that is unlikely bordering on ridiculous.”

  “Okay,” said Anna. “How many wildlings are there? I know three, and I’ve heard of a couple more.”

  Bran kept the wildlings away from the pack. Part of it was they were dangerous and needed to be isolated—and part of it was that a lot of them were very old. Very old werewolves tended to collect enemies. As far as she knew, only Bran himself, Leah, and maybe Charles knew all of them. They weren’t kept completely isolated, and some of them sometimes joined in the hunt—but no one spoke about them when they did.

  “Eighteen,” Charles said. “Now that Hester and Jonesy are dead.”

  She made an involuntary noise of surprise. “That’s a lot more than I thought. But it’s still a reasonable suspect pool.” She did not want to think about it being someone she knew.

  He nodded. “Asil knows—he was there when I found the note. But I don’t want to tell anyone else until we understand more. Here.”

  “What?”

  “There’s reception here.”

  She stopped the truck and uploaded the photo and an explanatory note. Her phone had a contact list that included all of the Alphas under Bran’s rule, so she didn’t have to ask Charles for the number.

  “Jonesy said that they asked her about the wildlings,” Anna said, once they were moving again. “If their agent was one of the wildlings, why would they have questions about them?”

  Charles grunted. It was his “I’m puzzled, too” grunt. But then he said, “The wildlings don’t all know each other. Some of them do, but a lot of them are very isolated because they want to be. Or they need to be. Most of our wildlings change their name when they come here—Hester was an exception. Collectively, I expect that there is a lot of knowledge that our wildlings have that exists nowhere else on the planet. I can think of four things, just offhand, that would start a frenzied hunt if anyone knew about them.”

  “Or maybe it’s an item—like all the things you brought out of Jonesy’s house.”

  Charles nodded. “Of what we found, only the sword would really attract interest by itself.” He made an unhappy noise. “There were a couple of other things, too, I guess. But even without those, the whole collection represents a fair battery of power for someone who knows how to release or use it.”

  “Maybe Hester knew who or what they were looking for,” Anna said soberly. “But she can’t tell us now.”

  “Yes,” said Charles, very softly. “We know they were asking for information that was important enough to step up what has previously been a long game. We know they were asking about the wildlings, and they don’t know that. We’ll find out who their agent is, then we’ll use that person to hunt them all down.”

  Anna inhaled and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Okay. Yes.”

  * * *

  • • •

  BOYD HAMILTON CALLED as they were pulling into Bran’s house. More specifically, he called Charles’s phone. Anna had texted him the photo from her phone.

  Anna looked at Charles’s phone and gave an exasperated sigh. She turned off the truck and turned to the man who held her heart.

  “I survived,” she told him firmly. “I don’t need to be coddled as though I’m some fragile doll. I can talk to Boyd—who never did me any harm anyway—and not dissolve into a spineless puddle.”

  Charles gave her a look. If he were anyone else, she’d have been sure he had practiced those looks in the mirror: they were too effective to be naturally occurring. But he didn’t worry about things like that—he didn’t need to. Scary was easy—it was not-scary that was sometimes a problem for him.

  She raised her eyebrow to show that she wasn’t impressed.

  He almost smiled but caught it before it was more than a softening at the corner of his eyes.

  “Maybe it’s not about you,” he told her. “Maybe it’s about a man who failed to protect you from Leo when he should have. If you want to punish him, you could answer my phone and make him tell you all about this dead man who he also did not protect you from.”

  “He couldn’t do anything,” she said hotly, unable to let the attack on Boyd go on without defending him. Boyd had been the key to her getting out of Chicago, to her finding Charles. “Leo was his Alpha—and he kept everyone under his control. Boyd was not dominant enough to challenge him or disobey a direct order. Boyd protected people when he could. Without him, more bad things would have happened to people who couldn’t protect themselves.”

  “You really believe that,” Charles said, as if he didn’t. “Good for you.” He sighed, his gaze focused somewhere in the darkness outside. Another car pulled into the Marrok’s driveway, pack members coming to gather with the others. That they were coming here instead of going home spoke to the unease that Hester’s death had caused.

  The wolves who got out looked away from Charles’s truck with studious care.

  Charles spoke after they were alone in the darkness again. “I sometimes think that you could be right. But mostly I believe that any dominant worth his hide protects those who cannot protect themselves. I expect that’s how Boyd looks at things, too.”

  She, personally, had quit thinking about her first pack a long time ago. From the sound of it, she had been the only one. She used one of Charles’s grunts to express herself.

  “A dominant wolf protects his own with his life, Anna,” Charles told her. “That means from everyone. If he felt Leo was too much for him, Boyd had Da’s number. He could have called it at any time.”

  “He couldn’t disobey Leo,” she said doggedly—she’d watched him try. “Leo forbade it.”

  “His wolf couldn’t disobey a direct order,” agreed Charles, so mildly that Anna flinched even though it wasn’t directed at her. She knew that mild tone.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, the killing quiet was further away, and his eyes had returned to their usual almost-black.

  “We are more than our wolves, Anna,” he said. “Boyd is also a man—and the man is in charge. He could have disobeyed by shutting down his wolf. It would have been difficult, but he is not a newly Changed wolf. He has the control to do it. He just didn’t try.”

  She bit her lip. Did that change things? Knowing that Boyd could have stepped in earlier? No, she thought, with something approaching relief. There had been things that she could have done, too—if only she had known. One of the things she’d learned from being a wolf in Bran’s pack was that all the ability in the world did her no good if she didn’t know how to use it.

  “He knows better now,” her mate continued in a low growl, as if he’d been following her thought path.

  “Charles?” she asked, honestly unhappy. Charles wasn’t exactly tactful. Being in Leo’s pack had scarred her, no doubt, but it hadn’t been a picnic for anyone else, either. Boyd had been as close to broken as she had been, though she hadn’t seen it at the time. Boyd didn’t need her forceful mate telling him how he’d failed his pack—he already believed it.

  “Not me,” Charles said. “It was Da. He educated him—then he put Boyd in charge of the pack. Boyd wasn’t strong enough to control the territory, not in his condition, especially when that pack was so broken. But Da thought that Boyd would heal better if he were put in charge for a while, so Da made it happen.” His phone had long since quit ringing. “As it turns out, Boyd rose to the occasion, and Da left him in charge.”

  “That sounds . . . odd,” said Anna, feeling off balance. “Bran is all about the good of the many outweighing the good of the one.”

  Charles smiled grimly. “We failed that pack, too. Failed you. Da or I should have noticed the situation sooner. In retrospect, both of us noticed oddities that we should have looked into and did not. Rather than let Boyd break
under the weight of his inability to protect his subordinates from his Alpha, Da left him in a position where he could work out his guilt with action. Boyd needed to know he could take care of his pack, that what he had been and who he was now could be different, better.” He pursed his lips, and said thoughtfully, “I have no doubt at all that Boyd Hamilton will never again stand aside while someone is being hurt.”

  Clearly, Anna noted, that didn’t keep Charles from being very angry with him anyway.

  “So,” he asked Anna, in a suddenly brisk tone, “are you going to punish him by making him talk to you about how much he failed you? Or are you going to let him talk to me about it?”

  She gave him a shrewd look. “Which one is better for him?”

  “You’ll make him feel guilty. I’ll only make him mad,” Charles assured her.

  She laughed—and it was only a little strained. She should insist, but she didn’t really want to have that conversation, either.

  “Okay,” she said. “Go for it.”

  And she left him alone in the truck to make the call where she wouldn’t overhear it.

  * * *

  • • •

  BOYD ANSWERED AS soon as Charles called him back.

  “Hamilton,” he said, his voice wary.

  “You know who our dead body is?” Charles asked, watching Anna until she closed the front door behind her.

  “Yes.” Boyd’s tone was brisk—and relieved. He wasn’t stupid—he’d probably been expecting Anna to call him back even though he’d used Charles’s phone. “His name was Ryan Cable. Before . . . very early on, in the dawn of Leo’s troubles, Leo brought in five military men to be Changed in secret. It was highly implied, though never spoken outright, that they were special forces. Only the old second—Harvey Adler—plus me, Jason, and a couple of others knew . . .” There was a pause. “I think out of all the pack members there that night, I’m the only one who is still alive.”

  Charles thought that it might be a good time to get the conversation back on track. There was something in Boyd’s tone that indicated Boyd would have been happier to be among the dead. “Ryan Cable.”

  “Sorry,” Boyd said, his voice unapologetic. “I’m trying to get the details right. It was a long time ago. I think it must have been in the early nineties. The Gulf War had just broken out, and patriotism was strong in all of us. Leo told us that there were people in the military who knew about werewolves and that one of those men had asked him for help. Leo had agreed, and his contact sent us these five men to Change. This was hush-hush stuff, both on our side and theirs.”

  Brother Wolf grumbled. This was exactly the kind of thing that had driven Bran to bring the werewolves out to the public. Blackmail was less useful now—either as an incentive or as an excuse.

  Boyd made a pained sound back. “Believe me, I know. But Leo had been a good Alpha up until that point. It’s only looking back that I can see that he was starting to change, and that was probably the turning point. We all have done things against the rules now and then. All of us.” Boyd included, that meant. “Leo said it was for the war effort, and we could tell he was telling the truth.”

  “Not all of the five made it,” Charles said.

  His father might have been able to Change five humans and make them survive, though he’d told Charles he wouldn’t ever do that. Forcing someone to Change was not ethical. Most of the time, a person who couldn’t fight hard enough to survive the Change wouldn’t survive long being a werewolf, either.

  “I warned them,” Boyd said, “but Harvey took it further. He told them, in graphic detail, exactly what Changing a human to a werewolf meant. A couple of them looked pretty spooked, but they all chose to go forward.” He paused. “I wonder now what would have happened if they’d objected. If it was hush-hush, maybe they’d have been killed if they tried to get out of it. In any case, Cable was the only one who Changed. Leo and Harvey handed the dead men and Cable over to the people who came for them. Harvey didn’t like the looks of those people. I remember that. He didn’t think they were military. Leo told Harvey something that made him happier—though I couldn’t tell you what it was.”

  “You think Leo took a payout for it?”

  “I more than think it,” said Boyd. “We’ve spent the last few years going through the old books. Bran asked us to look for the names of people who paid Leo for things that we couldn’t verify were legitimate expenses. Leo took fifty thousand up front and another twenty after we delivered Cable. In his notes, he complained because he’d expected to get another eighty K. Thirty thousand per werewolf we successfully Changed, with one-third up front that we’d keep either way. I sent the financial files and the pack interviews—everything we’ve gathered about what Leo was doing—to Bran when he asked me for them, about a month ago.”

  There was a little silence as Charles absorbed something more than just Boyd’s words. His father had asked the Chicago pack to send him their files, and that information had never made it to Charles, who handled all the pack finances and always had—except for a six-month period last year when Leah had taken over.

  Leah had lost them a lot of money. Almost 20 percent of their net worth. It had taken him two weeks to replace it. Not that he was competitive or anything.

  “When your father asked us to send the information to him,” Boyd said, reading Charles’s silence pretty accurately, “he said he was putting together a puzzle and would bring you in as soon as he had a target to aim you at. I gathered that he thought you were still angry about Leo and what he did to Anna. Bran didn’t want you to go on a search-and-destroy mission until he was certain he had the whole setup.”

  “I see,” said Charles. If his da hadn’t given Boyd actual facts, just enough for Boyd to draw his own conclusion, Charles was pretty sure that it was the wrong conclusion. He wondered why his da hadn’t wanted to show him the books.

  “I tried Bran’s phone before I called you,” Boyd said in a neutral tone. “He’ll have those files.”

  “The Marrok is away,” Charles allowed. “That is need-to-know information that shouldn’t go past you.”

  “Got it.” He made a thoughtful sound. “How about I e-mail you the file on this transaction and all the banking information we have on it?” There was a pause. “Then I’ll compile the whole mess that we’ve been amassing and overnight it to you on disk. If you have Cable dead in your territory, Bran has run out of time to organize everything to his pleasure.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Charles said, because Boyd was right. He’d hunt down whoever his father had given those files to anyway, because then he wouldn’t have to spend all his time redoing work someone else had already done. But that might take time and he wanted that information now.

  Somewhere in those files was a trail to the man who had paid for Ryan Cable’s Change. Tough to follow a financial trail that old, but if one of the account numbers matched an account Charles had in his “to watch” files, he’d have a name. Someone had been running Cable and his dead friends, and there was a good chance that it was the same person who’d paid for his Change—or some close associate.

  “After Cable was Changed,” Boyd continued, “whoever ran him used him as a messenger. He’d show up, meet with Leo, and be gone the next day. Three or four times a year. Often enough that I didn’t have to search my memory for his name but not so often that I knew him more than to nod at. If we had a real conversation, I don’t remember it. I can brainstorm with a few of the other old pack members who survived Leo and see if we can get some sort of general feel for when he came—and maybe someone will remember a bit more about him. At the end, Leo pretty well ignored the more submissive wolves. They witnessed a lot he should probably have kept hidden from them.”

  “I’d be grateful for anything you can turn up,” Charles said.

  “I didn’t know Hester,” Boyd said. “But I’ve heard stories of her.
For her to die like this . . . I’ll do what I can.”

  Charles picked up the witchcraft-laden weapon that had dropped him unconscious in the midst of his enemies.

  “Did Leo ever work with a witch?”

  “Not while I was in the pack,” Boyd answered without hesitation.

  “Did he have weapons that were especially effective against other werewolves?”

  “No,” Boyd said, though this time his response was slower, his voice raw. “Other than Justin. But I know about the drug someone developed using the wolves Leo had made and sold as guinea pigs.”

  Charles took a deep breath and forced Brother Wolf to really examine the situation Boyd had found himself in—a gradual wearing away of all the rules until all anyone in that pack could do was cling to their Alpha because there was nowhere else to go. And Brother Wolf still thought that Boyd should have done more. So did Boyd, obviously.

  Charles gave him what comfort he could. “You learned what not to do,” he said. “Teach the others. Move forward. Backward does no one any good.”

  “How is Anna?” Boyd asked, and there was hunger in his voice. Not sexual hunger, but the need to know that he had, at the very least, helped Anna out of that mess.

  “She wanted to take this call,” Charles said with amusement.

  “Shit,” said Boyd. But then he laughed. “Next time maybe I’ll call her on her phone.”

  “She’d be glad to hear from you,” Charles said. He looked at the witchcrafted weapon again. “I’m going to send you a photo of a witchcrafted gun that was effective enough on me.” He explained something about how he’d come to have it. “Maybe one of your submissive wolves saw something that you didn’t.” It was possible if, as Boyd said, Leo had not viewed submissive wolves as a threat and did not pay attention to what they witnessed.

  “I’ll check,” said Boyd, sounding more like himself. “If they don’t know, they might have some ideas where to look.” There was a pause. “I don’t recall anything about witches in this business, though. But Harvey—he could smell a witch at a hundred yards.” Boyd paused again, then said slowly, “Harvey’s reaction that night—that might be about right if one of them was a witch.”