“I’ll go with you.”
“Because you think Brandon will attack me?” A scathing question.
Yes. Instead, he answered calmly. “Because I promised your mom.”
Liz rode down in the elevator beside Carson feeling jittery and sick. Her mind spun uselessly, unable to think of another possibility—another person—who could have betrayed her and Daria. Brandon was pack! He couldn’t possibly have sent someone to attack her, possibly to kill her.
But Brandon had been one of the few London-based members of the Beo Pack who hadn’t turned up last night, despite the late hour, to check how she was. His ex-wife had custody of their daughters, so there was nothing to stop him, and information sped faster than wildfire among wolf-weres. Why hadn’t he been there, especially after he’d stated his intention to court her?
If he was responsible, and she still fought against the idea, then he might have stayed away for fear the mage or one of the mundane fighters would recognize him as the man who hired them.
No. She trembled, sick at heart.
Carson put an arm around her shoulders. “I might be wrong. It mightn’t be Brandon.”
“And if it is?” she whispered as the elevator doors opened.
“Then all hell breaks loose.”
The hospital smelled, as all hospitals do, of disinfectant and sickness, of desperation and dying flowers. It also smelled familiar. Liz walked in the public entrance since Carson was with her. The good news was that Albert wasn’t in Intensive Care, but had been relegated to a general men’s ward. They found him in a private room, talking on the phone.
His eyes narrowed at their arrival. “Sorry, Daria. Liz has just arrived with her boyfriend. I’ll have to go. Yes, yes, I’ll give her your love.” He disconnected. “Want a kiss, ducky?”
Carson stiffened fractionally beside her.
Liz ignored him. She bent over Albert and kissed his clean-shaven cheek. “How are you?”
“Doctor talk.” He scowled at her. “If you want to know, read my chart.”
“Thank you.” She smiled and picked it up. “Everything looks good.”
“It’s like I haven’t been shot at all,” he grumbled.
She replaced the chart and shook his left foot through the light blanket covering him. “Don’t be grouchy. We have questions for you.”
“Oh, goody.”
“First, how come you were talking with Daria?”
Carson glanced up at her, surprised, as he finished placing two chairs by Albert’s bedside.
“Women!” Albert didn’t seem surprised, but a dull flush gave color to his pale face. “Always with the personal side. As it happens, Daria phoned me. John gave her my number. We had a nice chat last night before it was so rudely interrupted, and she wanted to make sure I was okay, today.”
“Fine. That’s your business.” Carson didn’t have the patience for more off-the-topic chatter. “About the wards?”
Albert turned to him with evident relief. “It was the same bloody mage who broke the greenhouse ward. Then he only broke the look-away spell and the inner, keep-out ward bounced him. I’m glad to think he’d have had the hell of a headache.”
“He has one today,” Liz said. “He’s getting over concussion from Carson’s punch.”
“I didn’t want him waking up and capable of using magic,” Carson defended himself.
She touched his arm as he sat in the chair beside hers. “You did what you had to. Thank you.”
“I was about as much help as a fart in a thunderstorm,” Albert grumbled.
“You saved Daria,” Carson said seriously. “We’ve all had time to think about it. The mundanes who came through the front and back doors were the distraction—dispensable in the minds of whoever hired them. The real threat to Daria was the mage who could locate her swiftly inside the house. Any open sesame spell would have gotten her out of that panic room.”
Albert grunted, but he seemed slightly less grumpy.
“About the wards?” Carson prompted. “What did that tell you about the mage?”
“I spoke to David about him,” Albert said unexpectedly.
“To Dad?”
Albert smiled slyly. “Your dad is a smart man and a lawyer. He knows everyone. He never looked into Daria’s situation—why should he? He never knew you were hiding her.”
Liz ignored the implied criticism. “But what can Dad do? He’s a human rights lawyer.” Her voice slowed. “He knows people.” What Albert had said finally penetrated. “Human trafficking is an international trade. Dad knows people in international justice.”
Albert nodded encouragement, then winced. “Flipping muscles are connected in unlikely ways. Weirdest things hurt.”
“Do you want more pain medication?”
“Nah, nah. I want a clear head. I wouldn’t mind a glass of water. Mouth like a desert.”
“That’ll be the anesthetic from when they stitched you up.” Liz poured water into a glass and held it till she was sure Albert’s grip was steady. He drank and she took the glass back. “What did Dad know?”
“He showed the mage’s photo around. A bloke in Interpol, one of the Collegium mages embedded there, recognized the bastard. Russian. Works for the Russian mob. Doesn’t normally travel far from home, they reckon. Hence me not recognizing his work at the greenhouse. Don’t worry. I’ve worked out how he broke the wards. Clever bastard. I overlooked—” He clamped his mouth shut. “Never mind.”
“We don’t,” Carson said. Professional secrets were familiar to all three of them. “I’d like to talk to him.”
“Oo-ee.” Albert hitched himself up against the pillows. “Me, too. But he’s under police guard, one of the Collegium mages, again, and they say his brain is rattled. You won’t get a chance.”
Liz took a deep breath. “We will if Grandfather arranges it.”
In fact, Liz didn’t have to contact her grandfather. Just mentioning the earl’s name was enough for the Collegium-bonded police mage to let them in, although the woman frowned at Albert.
“No tricks,” she said. She also refused to leave the private room.
However, having won the concession to speak with the mage Liz decided not to push their luck.
Carson did that for her. He addressed the mage in Russian.
The man lying in the bed brightened. He was average height, unimpressive, except for the intelligence that shone so strongly in his green eyes, denying the effects of his concussion. And besides intelligence, there was an impression of violence and aggression, smothered in a cloak of affability. Words accompanied by lavish gestures spilled out. Some of it sounded like swearing, especially when the mage mimed spitting.
“For this I hauled myself out of bed,” Albert muttered from his wheelchair.
“I told you not to,” Liz reminded him.
He glared at her. “Speak English,” he demanded of the man in the bed.
The other mage spared Albert one scathing look. “No.”
Despite everything, Liz had to fight the urge to giggle. However, a glimpse of the police guard showed an equally unhappy expression, so Liz swallowed her laughter. Apparently the Collegium mage didn’t understand Russian, either, and the rogue mage was taking full advantage of that fact. What made it more galling still for the two watching and frustrated mages was that, judging by Carson’s thoughtful frown, the rogue mage’s volubility conveyed some interesting information.
Carson asked a question or two, then nodded, frowning. Mage and wolf-were stared at one another for a long moment. There was a final machine-gunfire quick exchange of question and answer, then Carson maneuvered Albert’s chair out of the room.
“What did he say?” the police guard demanded just outside the open door.
Carson glanced back into the room.
The Russian mage grinned at them; a cheery, malignant Santa Claus.
“He said his boss had a deal with an English wolf-were. Sergei was to break the wards around my greenhouse, then men the Engl
ish wolf-were supplied would steal the Elixir Gentian.” Evidently Carson had decided that his gentians and their potentially life-giving properties were an open secret. He didn’t even glance at the listening police guard. He stared at Liz. “When the greenhouse break-in failed, Sergei had a bad headache.”
“Ha!” Albert pounded the arm of his wheelchair. “Ow.”
“The English wolf-were took advantage of Sergei’s ill health to inveigle him into another scheme. Sergei agreed since he knew his boss would want Daria Gretsky punished. A favor was owed Andrew Thirkell.”
Liz glanced back at the Russian mage.
He smiled, beatifically.
She felt sick in her stomach.
“Bastard.” Albert’s whispered comment summed up her feelings perfectly.
The Russian’s smile faded as the two mages locked gazes.
Albert leaned forward in his wheelchair.
“No!” The Collegium-trained police guard walked between them, cutting their dueling gazes, and closed the door.
“It’s better later, anyway. I eat revenge cold.” Albert nudged Liz’s foot. “Do you know who the English wolf-were is?”
“I know,” Carson said grimly. “John will want to deal with him.”
“If he doesn’t.” Albert was obviously in pain, hunched with it, but the malevolence in his voice came through. “I’ll kill the man.”
Chapter 8
Carson put away the wheelchair, while Liz helped Albert into bed. The couple of minutes alone gave Carson a chance to control his temper. He’d held it while talking with the Russian mage, but only by its whiskers.
The rogue mage had been voluble with excuses for his own recklessness. If not for the headache from the slap of the greenhouse ward, Sergei would have researched Liz before breaking into her home. He’d never have done so if he’d known she was the Suzerain’s sister. The English wolf-were had taken advantage of him, Sergei. It was shameful. A betrayal.
Sergei was intent on his own betrayal. He was obviously sharing information because he wanted revenge against the English wolf-were and had calculated that Carson was the man to deliver it.
But not thoughtlessly, Carson vowed.
Liz waited till they were out of Albert’s room, and alone in the corridor. “Who is the wolf-were? I didn’t hear the Russian mention Brandon’s name.”
Her expression made him hurt. Fear and hope. Grief. Pack was important to Liz. If Brandon had betrayed her…Carson shoved his hands in his pockets to hide the fact that they were fists. Last night, he’d fought to save Liz, Daria and Albert’s lives. Right now, he wanted to punch Brandon just because of the hurt in Liz’s eyes.
Since that wasn’t possible—yet—he walked along the corridor beside her, stepping around a cleaning cart abandoned to one side. “Sergei didn’t mention any names. He gave a description, instead. Short man, but powerful, like a bull. Fair hair, shaved, balding. Pale blue eyes.”
“It could be Brandon, but it’s not definitive.”
“With the evidence we discussed this morning, it makes Brandon the most likely suspect. Enough to question him.”
“Not you,” she said instantly. “Let Grandfather, or there’ll be some in the pack who might take offence at an outsider intervening.”
“I agree.” But I’ll be there, I’ll be listening to Brandon’s answers, and if I don’t like what I hear, I’ll challenge him.
Liz pushed open a door to staff stairs, and they walked down the echoing stairwell with its smell of disinfectant, deodorant and stale cigarette smoke. A chattering trio passed them, climbing up, and Liz caught the door before it swung shut behind them. They emerged to a rehabilitation wing, patients shuffling determinedly towards health and mobility.
The sight cut through some of Carson’s anger. This was what he hoped the Elixir Gentian could help with, to hasten recovery and lessen the effort of it.
They overtook two young men making slow progress on crutches, and cut down a short corridor and out by a staff-only door. Liz replaced her security pass in her handbag.
It was good to be outside. Carson breathed in the city smells of car exhaust fumes, garbage and roads. It was better than the smell of the hospital. “Do you want to phone John or should we go see him?”
“See him. I’d like to check on Daria, and our suspicions about Brandon are not the sort of news to give Grandfather over the phone.”
He nodded and slipped an arm around her waist.
Some of the tension holding her shoulders high relaxed. “The Russian mage could be lying about a wolf-were being involved.”
Now that they were out of the hospital, their steps slowed. Neither was in a hurry to give John the bad news about a member of his pack, a respected member. That Brandon could have ordered an attack on Liz would rock the pack to its foundations. The attack mightn’t have been aimed directly at Liz, she might have been merely—merely!—collateral damage, but no true pack member would have contemplated such an action.
And Brandon had aspired to be alpha. It defied belief. But then, men like him chased power.
“Sergei wasn’t lying,” Carson said. “He wants vengeance against the man who sent him into a situation where he wasn’t fully briefed, with the result that he got both knocked out and caught up in the justice system. The Collegium will take advantage of what they’ve learned of him. Fingerprints, DNA. Ugh.” He broke off. “Does the whole damn hospital staff smoke?” The stench of stale cigarette smoke was growing overwhelming.
“We’re approaching Smokers’ Court,” Liz said. She went on to explain too fully, obviously trying to distract herself from dwelling on Brandon’s behavior. “It’s not the whole staff who smokes, but enough do that the hospital has turned a blind eye to this patch. Technically it’s on hospital grounds, but so close to the street that everyone pretends it’s not, and since it’s far from being a busy street, the public don’t see the staff puffing away. The security camera here is one of the ones that doesn’t work,” she added with a were’s focus on surveillance, and avoiding it.
Carson grunted, trying not to inhale the stale smoke and a drifting smell of food waste from the kitchens.
The hospital was an old one, added to over the years without any attention to architectural design or even commonsense. When space had been needed, the cheapest construction possible had simply gone up. Possibly the argument had been that it would be done properly later, but later had never come. The result was a jumble of a building on this wing, with odd nooks and crannies as the building jutted out or dived in, and the whole neighborhood was much the same. In a crowded city, space wasn’t always used sensibly, but it was used.
He and Liz turned a corner and there was Smoker’s Court. Fortunately they didn’t have to cross it. They simply walked past its front entrance.
A couple of smokers nodded to Liz, others stared at the ground or slumped against the wall lost in their own worlds.
“Addiction is a terrible thing,” Liz murmured. “Rain, snow, smog, they’re out in it for the illicit cigarette. Do you think Brandon has an addiction, to gambling or something? So he came to owe the Russian mob, and they had ties to Andrew Thirkell, and so—”
“He threw you under the bus?”
She shuddered.
“Sorry.” Carson put an arm around her shoulders. It could have been worse. He could have shared with Liz his true suspicions. Brandon wasn’t a minor player in the criminal underworld, not if he could command the presence of a rogue mage of Sergei’s ability or if he’d been entrusted to obtain the Elixir Gentians.
His hackles rose, and he tried to shake off his mood. The gentians weren’t the important matter, not now. Not compared to human trafficking and the invasion of Liz’s home.
They were at the street, ready to cross it and reach the expensive carpark Liz had a bay in. His car was there. He couldn’t get his hackles to settle, and he damned his frustrated senses and the surroundings. The jumble of buildings blocked lines of sight and muddled sound, and his nose
couldn’t distinguish anything over the stench of cigarettes. It made him uneasy.
Add to that the insane English habit of driving on the wrong side of the road and he hesitated before crossing it. The visibility was bad, blocked by parked cars and vans, buildings and even trees.
Liz showed no such hesitation. The hospital was her territory. She walked out into the street and he followed, trusting her instincts.
The car came out of nowhere, accelerating hard as it reached them.
Later, he’d discover it had idled just out of sight, carefully positioned behind a white van.
With wolf-were reflexes, leaping out of its path should have been simple. But the driver of the unremarkable gray sedan was a were, too, and he’d had time to decide on a strategy. Carson and Liz were unprepared.
In Liz’s half-second of shocked disbelief, Carson picked her up and threw her not only off the road but to the safety of a gap directly in front of them between two parked cars. For himself, he’d never reach it. The act of throwing Liz took too long.
Carson leapt backwards, banking on the driver’s focus on Liz. The side of the car grazed him, the side mirror crunching agonizingly against his ribs.
Tires squealing, engine over-revved, the sedan hurtled around a corner and out of sight.
Liz scrambled up from between the two parked cars. The palms of her hands and her knees were red with blood. “Carson!”
He met her gaze from the far side of the road. His shirt was torn; his skin, too. “I broke the side mirror. Seven years bad luck.” The side mirror lay crunched and abandoned on the road.
Her laughter at the poor joke was more of a sob.
“Honey, it’s not so bad. I’ll toss some salt over my left shoulder. That’ll deal with the bad luck.” He limped across the road and put an arm around her.
That felt good, even if she was obviously wary of leaning against him. “And how about your ribs? If the impact knocked off the side mirror—”
Doctor Wolf (The Collegium Book 4) Page 9
