3
Charles held two of the awkward drink carriers and strode through the crowded hotel lobby. In his hurry, it didn’t dawn on him that there was anything unusual about the way his path cleared, or the empty elevator that took him to the third floor where their meeting with the feds was to take place. Not until the man waiting for the elevator when it opened on the third floor backed up three paces and, keeping a wary eye on Charles, broke for the stairs, did it strike him that people’s reactions had been a little unusual.
He was a big man and Indian. (He’d been Indian for more than a century and only occasionally thought of himself as Native American. When he paid any attention at all, he might consider himself half-breed Salish or Flathead.) The combination of size and ethnicity usually had people avoiding him, especially in places where Indians weren’t as commonplace. Not their fault; it was in the nature of man to find the unknown intimidating, especially when it came in the shape of a big predator. His da dismissed it, but Charles was pretty sure that somewhere in their hindbrain most people knew a predator when they met one.
His brother maintained that what sent people backing away was neither his size nor his mother’s blood, but solely the expression on his face. To test Samuel’s theory, Charles had tried smiling – and then solemnly reported to Samuel that he had been mistaken. When Charles smiled, he told Samuel, people just ran faster.
The only one who appreciated his sense of humor was Anna.
People didn’t retreat from him when Anna was beside him. But even without Anna’s presence, having a person he wasn’t even looking at backing away from him as if he held a loaded gun instead of a bunch of espressos and lattes in a pair of flimsy cardboard drink carriers was a little excessive. He stepped out of the elevator and moved slowly so the man didn’t think he was giving chase.
Brother Wolf thought it might be fun and sent him a picture of the man running terror-stricken through the lobby as Charles loped behind him – still carrying the silly drinks. Because Anna had specified hot drinks for all, and he would never welsh on a bet.
So he walked with deliberate slowness down the hall instead of chasing, instead of rending and tearing sweet, metallic, blood-drenched meat between his teeth, just as he’d taken the elevator instead of running up the narrow stairs where someone might bump into him and spill the drinks.
Da had been crazy to send him on such a mission when he was so close to losing it that even a clueless human could tell there was something wrong with him. Charles had known there was something up when he’d arrived for lunch as requested and it had been only his father who awaited him, cooking BLTs in the big house’s kitchen.
Da had eaten his own lunch and waited until Charles had finished his before leading the way to the study. His father shut the door, sat behind his desk, and pursed his lips, giving Charles his ‘I have a job for you and you aren’t going to be happy with me’ look. Father–son meals often included that expression on his father’s face. When Da wanted to talk to him alone, it was seldom a happy talk.
Charles waited, standing, to hear what his father had to say. His wolf was agitated, unhappy – and that meant he could not sit on the chair provided and hinder his ability to move.
‘Asil has been nagging at me about you,’ Da said.
‘Asil?’ Asil didn’t particularly like him – and Charles hadn’t so much as seen Asil for a couple of weeks. Which, come to think on it, was a little odd in a town so small someone might sneeze twice and never notice they’d driven all the way through it.
‘Anna, of course, goes without saying,’ Da continued.
Charles braced himself. She knew why someone had to keep order; she knew why it had to be him – she just thought he was more important. Anna was wrong, but it warmed him that she thought so. If her opinion had made his father decide to send someone else, though, it was something that had to be dealt with. Charles, as the Marrok’s son and longtime troubleshooter, was the only option for keeping the violence down to unnoticeable-by-the-public standards. His reputation – and who his father was – kept the packs from going to war to protect their own when someone needed to die.
‘I know what she had to say. But Anna is wrong. Brother Wolf is not ready to break loose.’
‘No,’ agreed his father softly. ‘But your grandfather would tell you that you need to cleanse yourself of all those ghosts you carry with you.’
Charles flinched. He should have known that his da would understand what was happening to him. Da wasn’t a spiritual man, not that Charles could tell, anyway. He was pretty sure that his father couldn’t see the ghosts the way that his grandfather would have. But his da had a way of seeing right to the heart of things when he wanted to.
‘I have tried,’ Charles said, feeling about thirteen. ‘Fasting and sweat lodge haven’t worked. Running. Swimming.’
‘You hold on to them because you do not feel that their deaths were just.’
Charles turned his head away slightly and angled his eyes down but not so far that he couldn’t see Da’s face. ‘It is not for me to determine the law, only to carry it out.’
Da frowned at him, not like he was displeased, just thoughtful. ‘I had a talk with Adam Hauptman.’
Charles raised his eyebrows and found a dry voice to say, ‘Adam is worried about me, too?’
‘Adam is worried about his mate, who is injured, cranky, and obstreperous,’ replied his father. ‘So he’s not available to take on a rather tricky situation.’
Charles didn’t follow where this conversation was going, so he adopted silence as a strategy. Da liked to hear himself talk anyway.
The old lobo sighed, stretched, and put his feet up on his desk – a sign that Charles was talking to his father and not just the Marrok. ‘I’ve been racking my brain – not to mention Asil’s brain – with how to make your job easier.’
He spoke as if Adam’s situation had some bearing on Charles’s, though he couldn’t see how. ‘You have.’
His father frowned at him. ‘No. It’s becoming painfully obvious that nothing I’ve done has helped you.’
Bran didn’t say what it was for a few moments, just studied Charles’s face as if it were not the face he’d worn every day since he became an adult nearly two centuries before.
‘I cannot send anyone else to enforce the rules – but I am, as of this moment, relaxing the penalties for many transgressions in the hope that it will allow the Alpha wolves to need less … help enforcing them.’ He held up a hand and Charles bit back his protests. ‘You are the only one I can send out, yes. But if you falter, there will be no one but me – and I do not trust myself. So it is necessary that you not break. Anyone who has been Changed less than five years gets one warning. Asil is as frightening as you – and he also is not an Alpha right now. He has volunteered to go out and scare the bejeebers out of young idiots who break the rules the first time.’
Charles knew it was wrong. His father had weighed and assessed the needs for the wolves’ survival and had made the necessary changes in the laws of the packs. But it wasn’t shame, but rather relief, that made him drop his eyes.
‘I have failed you,’ he said.
‘No, son,’ said Da. ‘I nearly failed you. You are, as Asil has reminded me, one of my pack and I am responsible for your well-being.’ His tone turned wry.
‘Asil has appointed himself my guardian?’ asked Charles softly. Asil was overstepping himself.
‘He was bored, he told me,’ said his father. He gave Charles a small smile. ‘I have given him a job so he doesn’t get bored again.’
Da rocked back in his chair and studied the ceiling as if it were interesting for a moment, before turning his yellow eyes back to Charles. ‘Asil scaring the britches off our young wolves won’t be enough. I … We will still need you to kill. However, Adam thought that maybe doing other things, too, might … dilute the effect. Maybe if every trip you take isn’t to go kill some more old friends and acquaintances—’ Charles hid a wince, or tried to.
‘Maybe it will help. So. I have a call from some of my contacts in the government that they need to consult with one of us about a possible serial killer.’
His father saw his face and smiled without humor. ‘Not one of us. One of the killers they’ve been tracking awhile seems to have changed his victim of choice. At least three of his kills in Boston have been werewolves.’
‘Three? And we didn’t know?’
‘I knew three had died,’ said Da. ‘From three different packs, but someone did not see fit to tell me that they were probably connected. I’ll deal with that part.’
Some heads would roll – probably not literally. ‘There is only one pack in Boston.’ It wasn’t quite a question, but Da should have started asking questions if three wolves from the same pack had died in a short period of time.
‘One tourist from a Vermont pack and another from Seattle. Only one from the Boston pack. The FBI is interested in anything we can add to the investigation.’
‘You’re sending me?’ People instinctively wanted to please Adam. Charles was better at the destroy-and-subdue, not so good at the coax-and-charm.
‘No,’ said his da. ‘That would be dumb. I’m sending Anna. You are going as her guard. I’ve sent the particulars of what I know to your e-mail and to hers.’
And thus Charles found himself wandering around a hotel, trailing a pair of federal agents as he held a cardboard coffee cup holder in each hand, instead of out killing misbehaving werewolves. He knew they were federal agents because only men who were partners moved that closely together. Body language said they weren’t in a relationship, so that meant military, feds, or cops. Since they were headed the same direction he was, Charles surmised that he’d happened upon two of the feds they were supposed to meet with.
The thought came to him suddenly that he was enjoying himself, stalking feds through the halls of the old elegant hotel, especially because they had no inkling that he was doing it. It amused him.
If he hadn’t lost the bet to Anna, he’d never have gotten the chance. Who’d have thought that the security people at SeaTac would be so worried about him that they’d miss Anna smuggling a bottle of water through the checkpoint? His bet should have been a safe one – and the worst that would happen to Anna was that they would throw out her water bottle.
It was his fault he’d lost the bet.
Maybe Samuel was on to something when he’d told Charles that his expression put people off, because one of the hotel workers who’d been giving him a worried look suddenly relaxed and gave him a cheery grin.
He could have beaten Anna. He hadn’t needed to let out a subvocal growl at exactly the right moment to distract everyone when Anna threw the plastic bottle over the scanners and onto someone else’s pack on the other side of the machines. No one heard him, not really, just felt the hairs on the backs of their necks crawl while Brother Wolf laughed at their mate’s audacity.
Not only had Anna made it through unscathed; she’d distracted him while they patted her down and ran her through the scanners. Which had probably been her intent in the first place. Smart woman, his Anna – but she hadn’t let him off from paying up on the bet.
When the TSA finally let him through security – because being scary wasn’t really enough to keep him off an airplane – Anna had been waiting for him comfortably curled up on one of the little benches where people sat to put on their shoes. She’d raised her blue food-colored water in a triumphant toast and then drank it down to the last drop. It had been Anna’s idea, not his, to dye the water so she couldn’t just play sleight of hand – she would never cheat on a bet with him.
Watching her throat as she downed the liquid was a strangely erotic thing – erotic and magical, something that couldn’t exist in the same universe as the deaths that haunted him. So the ghosts retreated, not a permanent thing, but it was more freedom than he’d had for a while, and it was good.
Charles didn’t mind losing to his mate, though leaving Anna alone to deal with the feds while he fetched for her didn’t make his wolf happy. But he knew that Anna could charm the birds out of the trees, and a few feds who needed their help weren’t going to give her any trouble. No one was going to try to hurt her. Not yet, not before they involved themselves in the FBI’s hunt.
Da thought it would be good for Charles to hunt something other than a werewolf, something truly evil. He hoped that his father was right – and empirical evidence tended to support his hope, as his da was frequently correct.
So Charles followed the pair of feds down the hallway to the room where they were meeting his mate and a small group of others. These weren’t FBI field agents, he decided, because neither of them noticed him, even though he wasn’t making any particular effort to avoid detection. Homeland Security and Cantrip tended to have more chair sitters than the FBI did. They were speaking quietly enough that it would have taken a werewolf’s ears to hear them. Unabashedly, he listened in.
‘Are you sure this is safe?’ asked the blond man of the federal pair nervously. He looked fresh out of college, not yet twenty-five. ‘I mean, werewolves, Pat. Plural.’
‘They’re cooperating with us,’ said Pat, the older man. Charles pinned his accent as New England native softened a little by a stint somewhere in the South. He was in his early forties and walked like someone who’d done a lot of it. ‘They’ll behave themselves because they have to.’
‘You don’t think they’ll be mad because I tagged along? It was supposed to be just you. Five people. Two FBI, two Homeland Security, and one of us.’
They must be Cantrip, then, thought Charles. According to Da, there should have been two of them and one Homeland Security. Someone had been flexing their muscles. Several someones. Brother Wolf decided that Charles was feeling too relaxed to teach them to mind their manners better.
‘Easier to ask forgiveness than permission,’ said Pat as he opened the door to the room that they were meeting in. ‘Isn’t that right, Leslie?’
‘One of you can leave,’ said a woman’s voice coldly. ‘Just because you aren’t in the FBI anymore, Pat, shouldn’t mean you forgot how to count. Five. It’s easy. You can cheat and count your fingers if you have to.’
‘Ha-ha,’ said Pat, pulling the door shut behind him. Charles stopped to listen before going in. ‘Bet you that no one really cares. When is the werewolf showing up? I thought the memo said eight straight up.’
‘Six people is fine,’ said Anna, and Brother Wolf relaxed further at the amusement in his mate’s voice. ‘Five was just to keep the numbers down.’
He’d known she was safe. She was a werewolf, and if the training he’d been giving her didn’t make her safe in a room full of humans, he’d been doing it wrong. But still, Brother Wolf was happier listening to the relaxed tones of her voice.
Charles looked at the door and realized that it would be tough to open with both hands full. He might have managed it, but there was another way.
He knew better, knew that the ghosts weren’t gone. But the temptation was too great. It had been so long since he’d touched her, and Brother Wolf was so hungry. Almost as hungry as he was.
So he opened the bonds that tied wolf to mate and said, as mildly as he could manage, Open the door, please – and someone is going to have to drink hotel coffee since I only brought enough for five federal agents.
The door snapped open and she looked up at him, her face entirely serious and her eyes bright with tears.
You talked to me. But more than words traveled along their bond from her side; she was always generous in sharing her feelings with him. She gave him a rush of relief that almost hid the deep-seated sorrow and pain of abandonment. He’d done that to her; he’d known he was doing it – and still knew that it was the lesser of two evils. He had to protect her from what was happening to him. Knowing he was right didn’t mean he wasn’t torn, that he didn’t regret hurting her.
‘I don’t mind hotel coffee,’ she said aloud, her voice a little foggy.
He w
as afraid that he was going to hurt her much worse before this was all over.
Charles bent his head down and touched his nose to hers, closing his eyes to hide the effect of the knowledge of what he’d been doing to her – and the effect of feeling her, skin on skin, once more. Brother Wolf wanted to drag her away from all of these strangers and find the nearest empty room so he could wrap himself around her and never let go. Charles wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry for hurting you,’ but that implied that he would do something differently if he had to do it again. He would never allow the ugliness of his life to stain her, not if he could help it.
So he said something stupid instead. ‘My wife is drinking the cocoa I brought her.’ He looked past her and into the room. Except for the two men he’d followed, everyone was sitting down around the table. It must have been her suggestion, because all of them looked tense and uncomfortable. Being seated when someone else is standing can be a position of power – a way of saying, ‘I am so confident that I can take you that I won’t bother getting up.’ But when a monster comes into the room, everyone wants to be on their feet. Charles was a big monster.
Proof that Anna had been smart to do it, though, was the level of his irritation with the two men still standing behind Anna.
He met the younger Cantrip agent’s eyes. The human dropped his gaze and stepped back involuntarily, pleasing Brother Wolf. Charles smiled at the agent with his teeth. ‘You invited yourself where you weren’t asked. You can drink hotel coffee.’
And now they’d think he really was stupid, because most humans wouldn’t understand that he’d needed to establish who was in charge so that Brother Wolf would know that Anna was safe. Giving an order that they would obey had established the pecking order. It was okay they would think him stupid, he decided. He and Anna could engage in a little smart cop, dumb cop if they needed to. And playing with the federal agents was so much easier than trying to deal with what he was doing to Anna.
Fair Game aao-3 Page 5
