Burn Bright

by Patricia Briggs

  “Anna can help you,” said Sage intently. “She just broke a hundred-year-old curse on another wildling. I was there.”

  The first statement was a lie. Charles turned his attention to Sage—because he’d never heard her lie before. Even more interesting than the lie was the implication that she didn’t believe Anna could help Jericho.

  Even though he’d once rescued her—and Charles remembered the incident pretty much the way she’d told it—she was scared of Jericho. Charles could tell that much, though her control was very good. Probably he and Jericho were the only ones who could smell it. Charles because he had Brother Wolf, and Jericho because he was mostly wolf even when he wore human skin.

  “Eith—?” asked Anna.

  “I killed him before he finished the sentence,” said Jericho smugly. “He was probably going to say ‘either’ but you asked me what they said. Not what I thought they were going to say.”

  Asil said, “You are feeling talkative tonight, my friend.” He sounded a little suspicious.

  There is something going on, said Brother Wolf. Something is wrong with Jericho.

  Well, yes.

  More wrong, said Brother Wolf intently. Differently wrong.

  He just killed seven people and has been waiting for two days for his death sentence, Charles reminded him. But I agree.

  Satisfied, Brother Wolf fell silent.

  “Did you kill them before they attacked you?” asked Leah.

  “Don’t,” Sage whispered.

  Jericho gave Leah his ice-blue stare. “They invaded my territory. They came with guns and sharp things. With wires and switches and buttons to make me tell them things. They wanted to take Bright. I couldn’t let them do that. They said, ‘Sage can’t figure out where Frank Bright is, and she’s had years. How hard is it to find the only black man among Bran Cornick’s misfits?’”

  Charles bolted, but it had taken him an extra breath to realize what Jericho had said. That short space of time allowed Sage to get a head start.

  As she ran, she grabbed her necklace. He had time to see her shift to her wolf as quickly as he could, felt the wave of witchcraft that allowed her to do so.

  Then a puff of smoke billowed in the air right in front of him. The acrid, greasy cloud filled his nose and mouth and left him coughing and gagging and trying to breathe. He plowed to a stop and tried to clean his nose with his paws, wiping his face on the ground when that didn’t work.

  Asil passed him without hesitation, Leah and Juste on his heels. Anna stopped and pulled off her shirt. She wiped his face and paws with it. That did the trick, and he could breathe again.

  “Witchcraft,” she said. “I saw something burst right in front of you.”

  Smelled stale, said Brother Wolf. The magic was trapped in an object. We would have known if she were witchborn.

  “If she had that with her,” Anna said, “then she was prepared for us to find her out.”

  Yes.

  Sage was their traitor. He’d let himself process that, to grieve over that, later. He got to his feet and shook himself, trying to decide how to proceed.

  “Heyya,” called Jericho.

  The wildling had Devon beside him, and they were walking along the side of the mountain about twenty feet above where Charles and Anna were. Devon still had his tail between his legs and was watching Jericho with uncertain eyes—probably wondering why Jericho had tied him up, though it was hard to be certain with Devon.

  “She’s following a trail,” Jericho said. “I know where it comes out—there’s a shortcut. If they don’t stop her before she gets that far, we can take her at the other end.”

  Charles and Anna made short work of climbing the slope until they were up on the path the wildlings were on. It didn’t take them long to catch up. Jericho was not in an apparent hurry because he waited for them.

  As they neared, Jericho tilted his head and frowned at Anna. “I don’t know you,” he said. “Should I know you?”

  “Hello,” Anna said as they drew close. “We haven’t met. I’m Anna, Charles’s wife.”

  Jericho looked at her with blue eyes that shifted from wolf to human with an unhealthy speed. “The Omega?”

  She nodded.

  Without tightening his muscles in warning, without a word or a sign, he jumped her.

  They rolled down the steep side of the mountain so quickly that Devon and Charles didn’t catch up with them until they were nearly to the bottom. They rolled up against a tree and slammed into it, Anna letting out a grunt that had more startle than pain in it.

  Charles would have snapped Jericho’s neck if Devon hadn’t knocked him sideways, then stood in front of the tangle of bodies. His head was lowered, tilted submissively, his tail was tucked, and he was shaking like a wet horse in a snowstorm, but he still stood between them.

  “Second time in one day,” Anna complained with a tremor of shock in her voice. “What is it with people? Did they forget their manners? Hello, how are you? No, I get the full tackle like I was a quarterback.”

  If she was complaining, she wasn’t badly hurt—though rolling down that rocky mountainside wouldn’t have done her any good.

  “No manners at all,” said Jericho’s muffled voice. “Oh God. Oh God. You don’t parade surcease like this in front of wildlings, you young idiot. What were you thinking?”

  It took Charles a second to realize that he was the young idiot Jericho was talking about.

  Charles growled.

  Jericho gave a shaky half laugh that was full of tears. “I’m sorry. So sorry. God. I can think. I can breathe.” There was a little pause, and he said, in a lost voice with a touch of panic, “What I can’t do is let go. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Well, I hurt,” Anna said in a grumpier voice than before. “We just rolled down the side of a mountain.” This time there was a thread of panic in her voice. “Don’t get me wrong, but I would really, really be grateful if you would let me up.”

  “I can’t,” Jericho said.

  They were so fragile, these wildlings of his da’s. Dangerous as all get out, but they were fragile.

  He is frightening our mate, growled Brother Wolf. If he doesn’t stop, it won’t matter how dangerous or fragile he is—he will be dead.

  Devon whined anxiously—and Brother Wolf nosed him to reassure him that they wouldn’t kill Jericho unless they had to.

  Talking seemed like a good idea if no one was to die, so Charles changed. He let his human shape come upon him more slowly than usual. That way he could do one more quick change if he needed to be wolf again without pulling on the pack.

  Fully human again, though the stress of the last minute or so showed in that he was wearing buckskin and moccasins instead of jeans and boots, he stood up and shoved Devon aside.

  “It’s okay,” he told Devon, “But I need to sort this out.”

  Anna’s eyes were panicky, and he could see that she’d about reached her limit. Understandably, she didn’t like anyone on top of her at the best of times. Brother Wolf would have just killed Jericho and been done with it. Death was coming for that one sooner rather than later anyway.

  But with his stepmother’s accurate assessment of Bran’s sorrow at losing another wildling and the understanding that probably, unless Leah beat him to it, he was going to have to kill Sage, Charles had little taste for more death. Though at least, he thought with some relief, he would not have to kill Leah nor meet his da in mortal combat.

  Not yet.

  Instead of killing Jericho, Charles peeled the werewolf off his mate while Anna helped by scrambling body parts out of reach as soon as he’d freed them. When Jericho’s skin lost contact with Anna’s, he screamed, his whole body locking up in agony. Charles finally took him all the way to the ground and pinned him, facedown.

  Wrestling with werewolves was complic
ated by the fact that weight didn’t hold a werewolf unless his opponent was the size of an elephant, maybe. Joint locks still worked, though.

  “Move again,” Charles snarled, letting Brother Wolf’s dominance color his voice, “and I’ll break your neck, and you won’t have to worry about touching my mate ever again.”

  Devon made a soft, frightened sound.

  Anna, on her feet and winded, said, “Don’t worry, Devon. He doesn’t mean it.”

  But he did. Fortunately, the right person believed him, and Jericho subsided, panting and sweating. And sobbing.

  Anna crouched and touched the skin on his arm with her fingers. She frowned a little, reaching with her other hand to touch Charles. Her pulse was still fast, and her grip was just a little too hard—she was using Charles to calm herself down.

  Jericho was lucky Charles didn’t break his neck anyway for the way the wildling had made his Anna’s heart race with reflexive panic.

  As soon as Anna touched him, Jericho’s whole body relaxed, though he still panted with stress.

  “Gods,” he said, again.

  Carefully, Charles let him go, keeping himself between Anna and Jericho without breaking Anna’s grip on Jericho’s arm. Which left him too close to the other wolf. He liked to give himself a little distance if he might have to kill someone. A little distance gave him more options.

  He saw Jericho’s eyes do the weird blue-swirl shift to the ice of his wolf again. And for some reason, his long-dead grandfather’s voice echoed in his head.

  You can always tell them by their eyes. The old medicine man’s hushed voice rang in his ears as if his mother’s father had been standing right behind Charles. He could picture where he’d been when he’d heard those words the first time—ten or eleven and huddled by the fire with a handful of other boys his age as his grandfather taught them the things they would need to know when they were men.

  He had no idea why he was thinking of that tale right at this moment.

  Hadn’t Sage said that werewolves were just the tip of the iceberg as far as monsters were concerned? And she had been right.

  Anna said, “Some days, this Omega gig sucks worse than others. What is it with everyone’s throwing themselves on me?”

  “It’s the wolf,” said Charles absently. “The wildlings, most of them, have worn out their ability to control their wolf. The wolf spirit wants to be close to you—and their human half cannot restrain it.”

  “Sorry,” said Jericho, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Charles could hear it in his voice, smell it in his scent. Jericho was sorry.

  So why was Charles feeling like he was overlooking something important? He asked Brother Wolf, who understood what he was feeling but didn’t know what it was, either. He was no help at all.

  “Sage will be long gone,” Anna said. She didn’t sound too unhappy about it.

  He appreciated how she felt—a lifetime of never hearing “Hello, hello, Charlie” again. But they could not allow a traitor to live.

  Devon made a noise—and then Jericho said, “No. No. We can still get there—” He started to get up, moving away from Charles to do so. He also moved away from Anna.

  And Charles had to put the wildling back down on the ground to keep him from attacking Anna again.

  “No,” growled Charles firmly.

  “You and Devon go,” said Anna. “If Devon knows the shortcut?”

  She put her hand on Jericho’s. He gripped her—and relaxed again.

  Devon yipped.

  Anna looked at Charles. “You and Devon can go and help them with Sage.” Tears welled up, and she wiped them off impatiently as she continued urgently, “Sage. Of all people. Damn it. I know she can’t be allowed to live. I know that. But you can make it quick. Leah won’t. You know Leah—she plays with her prey as if she were a cat rather than a werewolf.”

  Jericho, released from Charles’s hold again, sat up but made no other move.

  “Jericho and I will stay here,” Anna continued. “We will wait for someone to come back and tell us what happened. Then we can figure out something to do about this.” She made a waving motion to indicate their joined hands.

  Rare—his grandfather’s voice—but deadly.

  Charles, watching Jericho’s icy wolf eyes, abruptly remembered the story his grandfather had been telling that day when Charles had been a child.

  * * *

  • • •

  “SHE WORE THE skins of her victims,” his grandfather told them, his voice shaky with age. “She wore the spirit and memories, too, as if they were clothing. She cried when my aunt would have cried, laughed when she would have laughed. Her own husband and their children could not tell that the monster in their home was not their beloved one. Only I saw the monster wearing my aunt’s skin—and I was only a little boy younger than any of you are now. I had no one to show what I had seen because there was no one else in the village to see her for what she was. My mother’s uncle, who was our medicine man and my first teacher, had died the year before.

  “That fall, though, a trading party came to camp, and their shaman came with them. I told him about my aunt and asked for his help. He came with me to the fire where my aunt and uncle were sitting—and he told my uncle that his wife had been taken by evil. My uncle, he did not believe the strange medicine man, nor the affidavits of his power that the man’s companions were quick to give. The thing who wore my aunt’s face cried and begged my uncle not to hear the stranger’s words.

  “While she was pleading, this medicine man walked up and placed his hand on my aunt’s head. She quit talking, frozen in place by the great power he held.”

  Charles’s grandfather sighed. “I was there, and still, what happened is so strange that I do not know how to build the picture for you.” He’d fallen silent and watched the fire as if he had not noticed the terror he’d inspired in his audience. For weeks afterward, he would be asked to examine someone’s mother or aunt or uncle to make sure they had not been taken.

  “That old man,” Charles’s grandfather said, “he sang a song to her in a language I had never heard before—and have not heard since. After a moment, he raised his other hand and put it out so.” He put one hand down as if it rested upon the head of a woman. He put the other one up. “Then he tipped his hand over slowly until it was palm down, too. And under his hand another person formed, as real as you or I, an old woman, naked, sitting in the same position as my aunt. Then my aunt fell to the side. For a moment I thought he had saved her, but she was truly dead. Her corpse rotted until it was as any body that had been dead over a year would have been. The medicine man changed his song, and he sang for a very long time. Eventually, the naked woman disappeared, and the medicine man was left with the feather of a bird in his hand.”

  Charles’s grandfather looked each boy in the eye. “Afterward, that old man sat down with me and explained what the monster who took my aunt was. He said, ‘A medicine man, healer, or shaman who has given up his connection with the way of the earth is more evil than anything I have ever met—and in my youth I hunted the stick men and three separate times I brought down the Hunger that Devours. When those who are sent to do good turn from that path, when they gain power and long life by stealing life from others—there is no evil greater.’ He had, he told me, seen only one other such. The creature who took my aunt is the only one I have ever seen. They are rare and dangerous. Hard to see them—but if you look in their eyes . . . If you keep watch, it is their eyes that give them away. There is only one way to kill them, if you are not a medicine man such as he or I. That is with fire.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “JERICHO,” SAID CHARLES softly.

  A quick change, my brother, he asked the wolf. As quick as we ever have. For Anna’s sake.

  Then, opening his mating bond as widely as he could, he said, Anna.
I need you to do something for me.

  The wildling looked at him, and so did Anna.

  “Jericho,” said Charles again, heavily. This time, it wasn’t a request for the other’s attention. “Jericho’s wolf’s eyes are yellow.”

  Run, he told Anna. Run and do not stop.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Anna bolted before her brain caught up to her feet.

  Skinwalker, Brother Wolf breathed into their bond. The Diné would call him a skinwalker. Such as he can only be killed by fire or a medicine man’s magic.

  And then Brother Wolf drove her to her knees with the sudden, complete memory of a smoky, dimly lit place where eight boys listened in terror as an old man told them a warning tale about a monster. And the information the old man had given those boys terrified her, too.

  Devon whined. Anna turned her head to see that he was trotting back and forth, watching the battling wolves—because apparently whatever wore Jericho’s body didn’t have a problem making a quick shift to wolf.

  Given what she now knew about Jericho, she should be running.

  “Devon,” she said. “Devon—that’s not Jericho.” She remembered what Charles had said before he attacked. “Jericho’s wolf had yellow eyes.”

  Devon froze and looked at her.

  “Skinwalker,” she told him. “They kill the people whose form they want, then they steal it. They wear their whole person like a coat. It’s not Jericho, Devon. He’s dead, and the skinwalker stole his body and his memories to wear.”

  Flesh and spirit, Charles’s grandfather had said. That must be why the blood bonds between the Marrok and the wildlings had not warned him and, through the Marrok, the rest of the pack. But the thought of it made her want to be sick. How much of Jericho was left? Did he understand what the skinwalker was doing? Or was he truly dead and “spirit” meant something different?

  Anna, said Charles, I cannot defeat him. I have magic, but it is not the kind that my grandfather meant. He meant the magic of a holy man. Get out of here, my love. Get out of here and warn the others. Call my da and tell him he—