Dead Heat

by Patricia Briggs

Quiet filled the hallway as Brother Wolf met Hosteen’s eyes and drove the Alpha to his knees. It was not for that one to tell him what he could or could not do.

  “Grandfather?” asked Kage from behind Brother Wolf. That one had bolted for his mate as soon as he’d seen her, ignoring Brother Wolf’s presence.

  “He’s fine,” said Anna grimly. “He just forgot who is in charge here, and Brother Wolf—Charles reminded him. You have a decision to make, Kage, or it will soon be made for you. Would your wife accept life as one of us? You know how we are regarded by the rest of the human race.”

  Charles had some other things for Anna to tell Kage.

  She listened and then said, “Charles wants me to point out that if she dies, we are unlikely to find out why a fae bewitched her into attacking her children. It will be difficult to find that fae and bring them to justice, leaving Chelsea’s attacker free to continue killing. Your wife fought the magic, saved the children at great expense. Is that enough for her? Or would she want to stop her attacker?”

  The woman was fading, and Brother Wolf shot an impatient look at Anna.

  “No,” said Hosteen, without getting up or raising his eyes. “Not Chelsea.”

  “Why not?” asked Kage. “Because she isn’t the wife you wanted for me? Because she doesn’t like you? That is your fault, old man.”

  “She is witchborn,” hissed Hosteen. “Witches are evil.”

  I am witchborn, Brother Wolf told Anna.

  She nodded at him but didn’t interrupt. She was better with people than he or Charles. If she thought that fact would not be useful now, she was probably right.

  “Her grandmother was a witch,” Joseph’s son said in a reasonably snarly voice for a human. “Chelsea has no power at all.”

  That was not true. Without power she would never have defeated the geas laid upon her. In fact, the closer to death she drew, the more easily Brother Wolf could smell witch. That probably meant she had some way to hide it, and now that she lay dying her magic was dying with her.

  He glanced at the children, at the small girl who looked at him with a steady gaze though her hand was grasping the bottom of the shirt of the young man standing next to her. That one smelled like something more. Witch.

  Hosteen hissed between his teeth, unsatisfied. “Witchborn should not be werewolf.”

  “Mama?” said a small voice. Brother Wolf saw the youngest child grab hold of the teenage boy’s hand. “Mama?”

  “It’ll be okay, Michael,” said Kage, his face ravaged as he knelt beside his wife. “Yes, Charles, yes. Change her. Grandfather, take the children away, please.”

  “I’m not leaving,” said Hosteen.

  “Stay,” said Anna decisively. “I’ll take the children. Hosteen should stay.”

  He’ll make her angry, Anna’s voice rang in his head. Make her fight to live. “I have to leave because I’m not useful at this stage.”

  She gathered the children despite the young man’s protests and left the room. That was right, Brother Wolf thought. The Omega soothed. Surviving the change was a battlefield, and this woman who lay at his feet needed to remember how to fight.

  He waited until Anna left the room.

  “What do—” began the woman’s mate. He might have been talking to Hosteen or to Charles. It didn’t matter to Brother Wolf.

  He sank his teeth into her thigh, tasting old blood and, faintly, detergent from her clothes. He shook his head to tear flesh and let his saliva flow into the damaged tissue. He had not Changed many people—his job was to kill. More often than he’d like, it was to kill in the most gruesome manner possible to discourage others from following the choices that had led to his victims’ deaths. This was better.

  Inexperienced or not, he knew how it worked, had stood witness to hundreds of Changes and nearly that many deaths in the days that followed. He knew what not to do. He didn’t bite her near her head or heart. She needed both to function for the Change to take place. The thigh was meaty with lots of little blood vessels to take his magic and spread it through her body.

  Her mate cried out and would have tried to interfere, but Hosteen, who had Changed a lot more people than Charles had, stopped him with an arm around his shoulders. He dragged his grandson away from Brother Wolf and his charge, out of the bathroom and into the laundry room where they could watch from a distance.

  “If you want this,” Hosteen said heavily, “and if you don’t want to join her in death or Change, then leave the wolf to his work. He won’t allow your interference, not now. She won’t hurt long, one way or another.”

  Brother Wolf did not like Hosteen—though he knew that Charles did. They did not always share the same opinions, even though they shared their existence. Though what Hosteen told the woman’s mate was not meant to be comforting, it was truthful.

  Brother Wolf released her leg and considered. She needed to be dying from a werewolf bite—not blood loss. His next bite was to her soft belly. He let himself taste the sweetness of her flesh, let the flavor of it stimulate his saliva glands—and then he did something he’d seen his father do once.

  He slashed his own leg and bled into the wound, letting the pack magic seep in, binding them together: temporary pack. It was an awkward feeling; he wanted to make her his. His to protect, to lead, to live with: to make her family. But Charles did not want to lead a pack. Brother Wolf rejoiced in the understanding that they belonged to the Marrok and felt no need to rule his own pack. It was not his place to bring a wolf into the Marrok’s pack. So he let this magic lie uneasily and temporarily between them.

  Then he reached with the extra senses that were his because he was the Marrok’s son, and therefore witchborn as his father was witchborn, and found the connection created by his blood and hers. He asked the dying woman, What do you live for?

  Kage was fighting his grandfather now, fighting to stop what he’d begun without really understanding what it meant to be Changed. Had he thought it would be without pain or cost?

  Mine, the dying woman said.

  His ears flattened in pleasure because he heard more than words. She meant those she considered hers. Her children, her mate—hers. Here was a woman who would be dominant. Maybe more dominant than Hosteen. And wouldn’t that get in the old wolf’s craw?

  Will you fight for them? he asked her, inviting her to hear her husband’s angry voice.

  Yes. Not a simple answer but a warrior’s battle cry.

  While her response was still vibrating through him, he bit the calf of the leg he had not already bitten, letting his teeth slice through flesh and scrape bone.

  Then fight! he roared at her with so much more power than sound could have conveyed—sending energy down the temporary bond he’d made between them, energy that grabbed her and held her to her dying flesh and made her live.

  Only once had he seen his father force the Change on someone this way. Charles had been, perhaps, the only one who could fully appreciate what the Marrok had done. He’d waited until later, until they were alone in his father’s library, to ask why that one and not others.

  “He is needed,” his father said. “He was willing and he will make a fine wolf. But mostly he is needed—we have so few submissive wolves. He will stabilize his brother’s pack, stabilize his brother, too, and that will save dozens of wolves.” He’d frowned at the book he had been reading, then set it aside. “It is not such a gift to be a werewolf. I had it forced upon me, and I was angry about that for a long time. I would not do that to another person. If they don’t want life badly enough to fight for it, who am I to argue? Life is hard; dying is easier and kinder. But Neal is willing, and he was very near to making it on his own. I just gave him a boost.” He sighed. “It was probably still the wrong thing to do.”

  So every October, when people who wanted to be wolves died under the Marrok’s fangs when they failed to survive the Change, only Charles and Brother Wolf knew how deeply and why his father grieved.

  When they had to carry out the more h
orrible task of killing those who Changed but could not control their wolf, Charles understood that his father was wise. If a person could not fight through the Change on their own, what chance did they have to control their wolf nature? Neal had managed, but it had not been easy for him.

  This woman was hampered, not by her nature but by the blood she had shed to protect her children. Brother Wolf knew that she would be a fine werewolf, so Charles used what his father had showed him and pushed her through the Change.

  He bit her again—an arm this time, while her mate clung to his grandfather and wept. Hosteen watched Brother Wolf over Kage’s shoulder with rage hidden in his eyes. He dropped his gaze after a moment because Brother Wolf was the dominant wolf in this room.

  “What happened?” asked Max, still angry that he’d been ordered away.

  Anna had hauled the kids all the way out of the house and up the street toward where Max told her there was a park. Changing someone wasn’t painless and generally involved screaming and other scary noises that no kid needed to hear their mother make. Max had been especially angry when she’d made him leave the house.

  “Fae magic,” Anna said; she’d gleaned a little from Brother Wolf.

  “What does that mean?” muttered Max, kicking a rock off the sidewalk. He caught his wandering brother by the hand and tugged him out of the road. “No, Michael, you walk next to us. Stay on the sidewalk, no matter how cool some rock might be.”

  “Wasn’t a rock,” said Michael with dignity. “It was a penny.”

  “Sorry, buddy, you need to stay with us.” Max let out his breath. “So. Let’s assume ‘fae magic’ doesn’t mean anything to me; what does it mean to you?”

  “Charles says that someone, some fae someone, put a magical compulsion on your mother.”

  “When did he tell you?” Max asked sharply. “Mackie, put that down, you don’t know where it’s been. Tell me, Anna, did you know that when you came in through the window? Because it takes a werewolf fifteen minutes to half an hour to change to a wolf. And he was a wolf when we went downstairs.”

  “He is my mate,” Anna told him, patient with his sharpness. His blistering anger was caused by worry and frustration that he couldn’t protect his mom. “We can communicate without talking.”

  “Telepathy?” Max’s voice was scathing.

  “Look,” she huffed in exasperation. “Werewolf. Me. Magic darn near strong enough to make your mother try to kill you—and you are balking at telepathy. Charles is my mate, and that means we share a spiritual bond. Far as I’ve been able to find out, that bond works a little differently for everyone. Charles and I can find each other in the middle of an Atlantic hurricane—and we can communicate some things.”

  “Men,” said Mackie smugly, reacting to Anna’s tone rather than the content of their conversation. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

  “Shut your piehole, punk kid,” Max said, thumping her on the head with the palm of his hand.

  “I’m telling Mama you said ‘Shut your piehole,’” Michael said. “‘Shut your piehole’ is a bad word.”

  “‘Shut your piehole’ is three words, Michael,” said Mackie.

  Undaunted, Michael said, “I’m telling Mama you used three bad words.”

  “You do that, kid,” Max told him, sounding subdued. “I hope you do that.” He glanced at Anna and said, “So tell me about this fae magic that made my mother try to kill us. I thought the fae were all locked up.”

  Anna snorted. “They locked themselves up. I don’t know who got your mom or why; maybe she can help with that when she—”

  “Don’t you mean if she—” He didn’t complete the sentence.

  “It could go wrong,” she admitted. “Lots of people don’t make it. But your mother has courage and willpower. She fought to keep you safe. Apparently she could stave off the compulsion by hurting herself; that’s why she was so cut up, why she stabbed herself before telling you to take the kids away.”

  “But she made it,” Max said. “Why didn’t they just call the ambulance? Why Change her?”

  “She saved you,” agreed Anna. “But it took us too long to get here. By the time Charles found her, she was dying from blood loss.”

  He swallowed.

  “Mom is dying?” asked Mackie.

  Darn it, thought Anna. Forgot the little ones were listening in.

  “I thought she was turning into a werewolf like Ánáli Hastiin,” Mackie said. “Dying is like Mrs. Glover. Dying is gone forever.” Her voice rose and wobbled.

  Her little brother picked up on it and started to cry. “Mrs. Glover was nice. I loved Mrs. Glover. She gave me candy.”

  Max looked overwhelmed.

  Anna gathered herself together and said, “I don’t know who Mrs. Glover is, but your mother is strong. Brother Wolf told me so, and he never lies.”

  “Who is Brother Wolf?” asked Max.

  She hadn’t meant to bring Brother Wolf out in the open. His presence confused people who had been werewolves for centuries.

  “He’s the big wolf,” said Mackie. “The one who made Ánáli Hastiin listen.”

  Anna tilted her head at the little girl who smelled like witch—witchborn and observant, too.

  “That was Charles, Anna’s husband,” said Max.

  “You are both right,” she said. “That was Charles and Brother Wolf.”

  “You call your husband Brother Wolf when he is in his wolf shape?”

  Anna decided that a technical discussion would lower the emotional distress and possibly give the kids some useful information. Charles wouldn’t mind; Brother Wolf wasn’t a secret.

  “No,” she said. “I call Charles Charles. And I call Brother Wolf Brother Wolf. It has nothing to do with the shape they wear, or that they share the same body.”

  “I’m lost in an episode of Doctor Who,” said Max without even a hint of humor. “Explain that to me.”

  “Werewolves,” Anna told him, “have two natures. The human part and the wolf part. But the wolf isn’t like a real wolf—it’s a lot more angry than that.” How did you tell a kid his mom was going to be a monster? Maybe she should have thought this through better.

  “Like the Incredible Hulk,” Mackie said thoughtfully. “Nice Mommy and Werewolf Mommy. We’re not supposed to bother Ánáli Hastiin when he’s grumpy.”

  Anna looked at her for a moment. “Exactly. Most werewolves learn to control the wolf, the Hulk part, in a year or two.”

  “Does Great-Grandfather have a Brother Wolf?” asked Michael.

  “I don’t know,” Anna told him. “Most werewolves don’t actually think of themselves as two people, not like my husband does. But he was born a werewolf and it made him strange in a lot of ways. To him, his wolf is a separate being who lives with him inside his body.”

  “I thought werewolves weren’t genetic,” said Max. “Kage isn’t a werewolf and neither is Joseph, even though Joseph’s father is.”

  Anna nodded. “You are right. Except in Charles’s case. His mother was Flathead, one of the Salish tribes, a wisewoman with magic of her own. Werewolf women can’t have babies, but she did anyway.” As I will. “She died when Charles was born.”

  “I could be a werewolf puppy,” said Michael thoughtfully. “Then no one could steal my toys.”

  “That happened a long time ago,” said Mackie impatiently. “Don’t be a baby. Mrs. Glover made Joshua give you back your robot and say ‘I’m sorry.’”

  Michael’s bottom lip stuck out. “I liked Mrs. Glover.” Tears gathered.

  “Mrs. Glover was my teacher,” Mackie said. “She liked me better than she liked you.”

  “Shut up, you freaks,” snapped Max. “Shut up.”

  “‘Shut up’ is a bad word,” said Michael, incipient tears interrupted by the chance to point out his older brother’s fault.

  “Just shut up anyway.”

  Anna touched his arm. “Who is Mrs. Glover?”

  “My teacher,” wailed Macki
e. “She died and never came back.”

  “She did too like me,” said Michael, crying in earnest.

  “And now Mommy is dying,” Mackie said. “Everyone is dying.”

  “Stop it,” said Max tightly. “Just stop.”

  “Your teacher where?” Anna asked. Mackie might be old enough to go to elementary school—but Michael wasn’t.

  “Preschool/day care,” said Max. “They both go. Different classes. Mackie is five, but she was born after the September deadline, so she’ll go into kindergarten next year.”

  “So your mom leaves work, picks up the kids, and then goes home, right?” Anna said.

  “That’s right,” Max said. “I get home an hour or so after they do. Hey, Mackie, was Mom okay when she picked you guys up at the day care?”

  Mackie had been bickering with Michael, but Max’s question made her fall silent.

  “Mackie?”

  “Mackie was in the time-out chair,” said Michael. “Her teacher was mad at her, but Mommy wasn’t.”

  “Yes, she was,” said Mackie in a small voice. “She didn’t sound like it when she talked to Miss Baird, but when Mommy was talking to me in the car she got mad. She didn’t talk to me at all, and then she sent us to watch TV.”

  “That’s unusual?” Anna asked.

  Max nodded. “Mom doesn’t do the silent treatment, not ever. My grandmother—her mom—abused it. Mom swore she’d never do that to us. She yells.”

  “Once she threw dishes at Daddy,” Michael said. “But she hit the floor instead of him. Then he laughed and cleaned up the glass. I didn’t touch the glass.”

  “She wasn’t trying to hit him, just make a point,” said Max. “But yeah, Mom is loud. She doesn’t do the silent treatment, and she doesn’t like the kids to watch TV by themselves.”

  “Half hour a day,” said Mackie. “Michael gets a show and I get a show, unless we’re at Granddad’s. There’s the park.”

  “And Mom or Kage or I watch those shows with them,” Max said. “She’d never just send them in on their own.” He glanced at Anna and gave her a half smile. “Especially not after Grandma let them watch Supernatural; Michael had nightmares. She says she can’t control what they watch at their granddad’s house, but she can make sure they’re not watching grown-up shows at home.”