Dead Heat

CHAPTER 2

The road switched from dirt to blacktop without warning. Anna couldn’t figure out why there was a paved driveway in the middle of nowhere, but then the house suddenly appeared.

The lines of the house blended into the surrounding sand and various desert plants and backed into a small rocky formation too big to be a swell and not big enough to be a hill. Between shape and sandy color, the house seemed to grow out of the desert.

Charles, seeing her surprise, said, “The Badlands of the Dakotas are like this, too. Things are hidden pretty easily out here. There’s a lot more relief to this land than your eyes tell you—that’s one of the reasons the landing strip is so far away. That’s where they had to go to find flat land without bringing in bulldozers.”

“Lots of flat spaces in Scottsdale,” Hosteen said. “But out where we are the landscape is more interesting.”

Hosteen pulled the truck into an empty slot in a line of covered parking spots designed to protect vehicles from the desert sun. A woman came out the nearest door to the house. She could have been anywhere between sixty and eighty, and she carried a broom in one hand.

“Welcome to our home, Anna Cornick,” she said graciously. Her voice sounded like it should have belonged to a fifteen-year-old—soft and birdlike, without the quiver that age can bring. She pulled herself up straighter, raised her chin, and looked Charles in the eye, searching for something that she evidently found. Her voice grew husky. “Welcome home, Charles.”

Anna couldn’t help but glance at her husband, but if there had been an expression on his face, she was too late to see it.

Briskly the old woman said, “Hosteen, take those filthy boots off before you come into the house. Please.” The “please” was an afterthought.

“Yes, Maggie,” said the Alpha, his voice soft. “And who is it that gave you a broom?”

She raised an eyebrow at him and thumped her broom on the stone of the walk in front of the door. “No one gives me a broom in my own house, Papa. I took it from Ernestine. She is a good girl, but she doesn’t get the edges where the floor meets the wall. Usually it doesn’t matter, but today we have visitors.” She looked at Charles and her face softened.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said, then ducked her eyes away almost shyly. “Joseph apologized for missing your arrival, but he takes an early lunch and then naps in the afternoon on most days. He would love to see you later.”

Charles took the old woman’s hand in his and kissed it with a gallantry Anna had seldom seen him use with anyone but her. “I look forward to speaking with him.”

Joseph, Anna thought, was not the only one Charles felt affection for in this household. She was a little wary of this turn of events. Clearly she should have pinned her husband down and forced him to disgorge more information.

Warned by Maggie’s scolding of Hosteen, Anna pulled off her shoes and put them on a mat near the door while Charles pulled off his boots.

“You two haven’t been playing in the horse manure all morning,” said Maggie. “You can leave your shoes on.”

“It is no matter,” Charles disagreed. “Shoes come off and on without trouble.”

The interior of the house was full of white plaster walls and high, dark-beamed ceilings with big fans designed to help keep the air moving. Though it was February, outside it had been pleasantly warm—especially compared to Montana, which was still in the middle of a deep freeze. Being a werewolf, Anna didn’t mind the cold, but she didn’t mind being out of it, either.

The floors were hardwood. Anna knew oak floors, and these had a different grain, with the worn patina that comes with decades of foot traffic and the gleam that comes with cleaning. She couldn’t help but check, but she didn’t see any hint of dirt against the wall.

“Maggie and Joseph and I are the only ones living here right now,” Hosteen said. “Ernestine, Maggie’s great-niece, comes in on the weekdays to clean and cook for us. Ernestine’s sister Libby does the same on the weekends.”

“Which is a waste of money,” muttered Maggie. “I am perfectly capable of caring for two old men for two days a week.” It had the sound of an old argument—all the heat gone.

“Kage knows you’re here,” Maggie told Charles. “He called from the barn to say he’d be up in an hour or so. They are shorthanded because one of the stable girls quit last week and my son is picky about the people who touch his horses. We’ll feed you a late lunch and then he’ll take you out to look at horses.” To Hosteen she said, “Why don’t you wash up, Papa, and I will show Charles and his wife to their room?”

She didn’t wait for Hosteen to say anything but turned and, summoning her guests with a gesture, led them through a large living room designed for entertaining. Anna recognized a pack house when she saw one. This room, with its multiple levels and conversational groupings, could hold twenty or thirty people, a whole pack, and still feel comfortable rather than crowded.

“That old wolf,” said Maggie as soon as they were alone, “is pleased as punch and flattered that you are shopping among our horses. Don’t let him make you think otherwise.”

Anna heard a huff of laughter coming from behind them somewhere. Maggie might think that they were out of earshot, but Hosteen’s ears were a lot better than an old human woman’s.

As she led them to a set of mission-style stairs, Maggie stopped and gave Anna a good once-over. Then she said something in a foreign tongue, almost staccato in its rapid use of short syllables, but the consonants were too soft. Pizzicato.

Charles narrowed his eyes. Whatever Maggie said, he didn’t like it. “Yes, she is.” His voice was soft. “It is impolite to talk in a language that your guest doesn’t understand. And even more impolite when you are talking about her.”

Maggie looked at Anna. “I told him you are beautiful and young.” She made it sound like a bad thing. “He will run over the top of you and never notice.”

“He is beautiful, too, don’t you think?” said Anna, big-eyed. She was unable to resist the urge to respond to the disapproval in Maggie’s face. She was tired of being misjudged, and more tired of people who thought that Charles would marry a doormat. She put all the earnest sweetness in her voice that she could manage. “And he makes me so happy. I would never dream of disagreeing with him. Why would I? He is strong and so much wiser than I am.” She reached out and ran her hand down his arm.

She was afraid she’d overdone the last sentence, but evidently not. Maggie frowned at her, missing the fleeting grin Charles gave Anna’s meek little speech of adoration. The old woman turned to Charles and let loose a flood of words.

“You know that she is Omega,” Charles said finally, when she had run to a stop. “Hosteen knows; Joseph knows, and it is something that he would tell you.”

She said something more, and her frown turned into a scowl.

Charles laughed, the quiet happy sound he made only when he was among friends. “Omegas aren’t submissive,” Charles told Maggie. “Some of them even have a sense of humor and tease well-meaning people who worry about them when they are hanging around big bad wolves. Don’t worry, she argues with me a lot. She even holds her own with my father.”

“With Bran?” Maggie looked at Anna as if she’d grown horns.

Anna said modestly, “My father-in-law could use more people who will argue with him. It would do him good.”

“I misjudged you,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t sound sorry. Charles might think that Maggie had been worried about Anna, but Anna knew better. She knew jealousy when she saw it.

She knew a number of very old people who looked as though they were twenty-five instead of two hundred or however old they were. One of the lessons that had been drummed into her was that no matter what a person looked like on the outside, who they were on the inside could be quite different. Lurking inside Maggie was a woman who still had feelings for Charles.

“People tend to look at me and think I’m a lightweight,” Anna acknowledged. “You aren’t the first.” She understood loving Charles, and since it was she who had him, she could make an effort to be gracious. “But you were worried, which was kind of you. It’s all good.”

She and the old woman exchanged equally insincere smiles. Anna had the distinct urge to roll her eyes and stick out her tongue.

Maggie ushered them into a suite of rooms with a sitting room, bedroom, and bathroom. “When you’ve freshened up, come down to the kitchen—you still remember where it is, Charles?”

“I do,” he said. “And we will.”

Anna used the bathroom, washed her face, and went back to the bedroom. Maggie was gone. Charles headed to the bathroom, presumably to do the same.

When he reemerged, she said as neutrally as she could, “Maggie likes you.”

He understood what she meant.

“We dated once upon a time,” he told her somberly. “Though ‘dating’ is too formal a word for it. Flirting is better, but too lighthearted. We didn’t suit in the end—and she and Joseph were married. 1962, I think. Though I could be off a year either way.”

Anna heard it all in his voice. The sorrow of friends who grew old and died when you did not. She hadn’t experienced it herself yet, but she knew that the probability was that she would live to see her father and brother grow old and die while she still looked like a woman in her twenties. Charles, she knew from talking to his father, had made a point of never getting involved with human women. Until Anna, he’d pretty much steered clear of any kind of real relationship with any woman. Maybe, she thought, Maggie had been one of the reasons why.

Charles knew the way around the house—it hadn’t changed much in the last twenty years. A few new pieces of art, different throw rugs, but mostly it was the same.

Despite what she’d said, Maggie met them at the top of the stairs. He could see her younger self superimposed in his imagination. Her fiery eyes were the same, and the straight spine that made people give way when she passed by.

Charles let the women lead the way down to the main rooms of the house, Maggie first, her back stiff and hostile. He was not unaware that Maggie had decided she didn’t like his Anna, a very unusual reaction to his Omega wife. Since it didn’t bother Anna, he let it ride. She had taught him that despite Brother Wolf’s determination to protect her from anything that would cause her discomfort, Anna was perfectly capable of protecting herself.

Brother Wolf had bowed to Charles’s belief that to protect Anna from everything would cause her more harm than good. It didn’t stop his wolf from being very unhappy with Maggie.

“I can’t find my phone,” said a half-familiar man’s voice in the kitchen. “I had it this morning. Have you seen it anywhere?”

“I don’t keep track of your toys, Kage,” said Hosteen. “But if I did, I might have seen it in the laundry room this morning.”

“I found it and put it on the phone table in the hallway,” Maggie announced as she entered the kitchen. “I thought you’d look there first. I’ll get it.”

Charles put a hand on Anna’s shoulder and walked into the capacious kitchen beside her.

Seeing a forty-year-old version of Joseph made Charles feel like a horse had kicked him in the stomach. The last time he’d seen Kage, he’d been a young man and the resemblance had not been so obvious. His attention on his mother, Kage grinned Joseph’s grin. “Thanks, Mom. I knew I could count on you. Now, as Chelsea likes to tell me, if I could only find my common sense, I’d be all set.”

Maggie shook her head. “If you had any common sense you’d have left this place to be a banker like your older brother. And you’d have been as unhappy for the rest of your life as he would have been if he’d stayed here. Be content that your phone is found.” She patted his shoulder and left by another doorway, presumably to get the phone.

“You find your rooms all right?” Hosteen asked them.

“Beautiful,” Anna answered for them.

Kage looked toward his visitors for the first time and stiffened warily. “Charles. Hosteen told me your names, of course, but I didn’t make the connection to you. I don’t think I ever heard Dad use your last name.” Charles wasn’t aware of anything he’d done to make Kage wary of him, but people often feared him. He had a sudden flash, an image of Kage as a young boy peering at him from around his mother’s back as Maggie sobbed, accusing him of …

He didn’t remember anymore.

Maggie was another reason that it had been such a long time since he’d last visited. It had not been her fault nor his, but his presence brought tension between Joseph and his wife. Oddly, the trouble wasn’t from Joseph, whom she had picked second. It was Maggie who couldn’t let the past rest. She had rejected Charles, but she was still possessive of him.

Anna smiled. “Lots of people named Charles around,” she said.

“Kage,” Charles said. “This is my wife, Anna. Anna, meet Joseph and Maggie’s son, Hashké Gaajii Sani. He goes by Kage.”

Anna smiled and moved forward, holding out her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” she said with the warmth that was so much a part of her. “I understand that you’re going to show us some horses.”

“That’s the plan,” Kage agreed, his face relaxing under Anna’s influence. “I just need to grab my phone—”

Maggie slid back into the kitchen from another direction and handed him an old-fashioned, battered flip phone.

“Thanks, Mom. Do you prefer mares or geldings?” Still paying attention to Anna, Kage flipped the phone open and glanced at the screen.

“I don’t know,” Anna said. “Mostly I’ve ridden geldings.”

“I understand you have a couple of weeks,” Kage said. “The big show starts in three days and I’ll have to spend most of my time there. I have a few horses in mind. I’ll show some to you today and then I’ll take you out on a trail ride tomorrow.”

Anna shot Charles a startled look, probably at the “couple of weeks.” But Charles needed time with Joseph. If the tension between Maggie and Anna got worse instead of better, they could find a hotel. Besides, choosing a horse was serious business; it was important to take the time to do it right.

“I’ve missed some calls from my wife,” said Kage with a frown. “She gets nervous when I don’t pick up. She rides pretty good for a city girl, but she knows that horses are big and things happen. I’ll give her a call and then we’ll go down to the barn.”

He hit a button and waited as the phone on the other end rang directly to a message. “This is Chelsea Sani. Please leave a—” He cut the message off and gave his phone an irritated look. “I have four new messages since this morning. I’m sorry, I’d better listen to them.”

“No trouble,” said Anna. “We have a couple of weeks. A few minutes isn’t going to make any difference.” She hesitated. “You should know this already, since Hosteen is a werewolf. But if you listen to the messages here, Charles and I will be able to hear them, too. So if they are private…”

He grinned at her. “No worries. We have a teenager and two younger children. There is no way either of us would leave private messages on our phones.”

“Kage, damn it. Pick up.” The voice was the same woman as before. But instead of being professional and cool it was irritated and … Charles didn’t know this woman well enough to do anything more than pick up some intense emotion.

The second message was more troubling. “Kage. You have to come home, please. I don’t feel well. Headache from hell.” She gave a laugh that was more like a sob. “And there’s a knife. It’s shiny and sharp.”

Kage was frowning when he called up the third message. This time his wife was whispering. “Something is wrong with me. Can you help me? Help them?”

The fourth message had them all bolting out of the house, all besides Maggie. She was left behind by an aging body that didn’t allow her to run with the rest of them. Brother Wolf grieved, but Charles was more worried about Kage’s children.

“I’ll drive,” Hosteen said shortly.

There wasn’t room for the four of them in the cab, and with a glance at Anna, Charles changed his direction and leapt into the truck bed. Anna landed gracefully beside him an instant later. Hosteen put the truck in reverse and burned rubber backing out of the parking area. He stopped and threw open the passenger door for Kage, who, human slow, was the last one to the truck.

It took them under ten minutes before Hosteen stopped in front of a pale stucco two-story house. A maroon BMW was parked in the driveway. As they all bailed out of the truck, Hosteen held one hand up. He looked at Charles and gestured toward the back of the house.

Brother Wolf hesitated but decided it was okay to take orders in this situation because it was Hosteen’s family in trouble. Hosteen would know best how to organize the hunt.

Anna, ignored by Hosteen, had chosen to come with Charles, and she had no more trouble than he did hopping to the top of the eight-foot cement wall that separated the public front yard from the private back. She waited on top of the wall with him while he took a quick but comprehensive impression of the situation.

The backyard was not extensive, consisting of a couple of small areas of arid-appropriate plants and a tile walk that surrounded a moderately large swimming pool. There was no sign, to any of his senses, that anyone was nearby. The nearest people were several kids playing in another swimming pool several yards to the west.

What he did notice was that someone was playing cartoons overly loudly in one of the upper-floor rooms in Kage’s house. He stood up and walked along the wall until he was fairly near the house. Someone had been safety conscious enough that there were no windows within easy human reach from the wall. But Charles had never been merely human.

He jumped toward the house, catching himself on the sill of the window and doing a chin-up so he could see inside the room the sound was coming from.

The bed was against the wall the window was on. He could see the backs of the heads of three people who were seated on the floor using the bed as a support. Two of them were young children cuddling as closely to the third as they could. One of the littler bodies still vibrated with the results of a bout of tears.

“Dad is coming, right?” asked one of the youngsters.

“Dad is coming,” said the one who was adult size. His voice was more hopeful than definite to Charles’s ears.

“Is she still out there?” asked the other child. “She quit knocking on the door.”

“I don’t know,” the older one told them. “It’ll be okay. You just stay in here with me, Michael. I’ll keep you safe.”

Charles dropped soundlessly to the ground and then went back up to the wall, where Anna waited. “The kids are up in that room. I don’t think any of them are hurt, but one of us needs to get in there and make sure they stay okay. You’re less scary than I am.”

He kept his voice quiet, well below the range anyone in a room with the TV blaring could hear.

“Do I go through the window, or open it?” she asked.

The window was modern. He’d have had to break the latches or go through the glass. Anna had another option.

“Why don’t you see if you can get the kids to open the window?” he said. “Save breaking the glass as a last resort. I’ll see you safely inside. Then I’ll go down and into the house from the back.”

He jumped back to the ground and stepped out of immediate view. Anna’s leap to the window was graceful, and she chinned herself up just as he had. But she kept going until her upper body was clearly visible, and then she knocked on the window.

“Excuse me?” she said.

He had to imagine the first reactions of a group of kids who had locked themselves in a bedroom to hide from … from something. He hoped that the older boy wasn’t armed. But the room was decorated for a young girl, not a teenage boy. If the boy had a gun, it was probably in another room.

“Who are you?” asked the older boy’s voice hostilely.

“I’m a werewolf like your great-grandfather,” Anna said, sounding cheerful and utterly normal, as though she hung by her arms outside windows all the time. “My husband and I were at the ranch when your father got a call that sounded … odd. He and your great-grandfather are coming in the front door. My husband is going in downstairs from the back, but he thought you might like an ally in here. I’m tougher than I look. But you’ll have to open the window first.”

There was a clicking noise as the latch released and the window opened inward. People did things for Anna. It wasn’t like when his father ordered people, and they just did what he told them before they had a chance to think about it. People wanted to do what Anna asked them to do.

“Thanks,” she said, swinging her legs up and over. “I was beginning to feel a little silly. My name is Anna, but I don’t know yours. Charles and I rode in the back of the truck on the way over here and I’d just met Kage, your dad, so there was no chance to get the details. You’ll have to introduce yourselves.”

She chattered at them as if everything were normal. Charles tuned her out and dropped to a crouch as he approached a pair of French doors he intended to use to gain entry. Inside the house, Kage called his wife’s name, but there was no response.

Charles eased the nearest door open and slid inside without wasting time.

Anna put her back against the wall, just to the side of the door, between the human children and whatever made this room smell of fear. They were as safe as she could make them at the moment.

“Okay,” she said. “Michael, Mackie, and Max. Tell me what happened. All we got was a few odd phone messages from your mom.” She kept an ear out. Kage was calling for his wife in a soft voice that she didn’t think the kids could hear. His wife was not answering.

“I got home from practice,” Max said. “Mom was in the kitchen and the kids were in the family room watching TV. She seemed a little off, but I figured she was tired—she works hard.” He glanced down at Michael, who had decided that the exploits of a lost little fish on the TV were more interesting than the woman who had climbed in the window.

Reassured that he wasn’t going to freak out his brother, Max continued in a calm voice designed, Anna thought, not to attract Michael’s attention. “She was chopping carrots on the cutting board and I reached out to take one.” He hesitated, looking at the youngest boy again. His sister patted his hand.

“Chindi,” she said in a very small voice.

Max nodded back at her. “Chindi.”

“What’s chindi?” Anna asked.

“Wild spirits, evil things, wrong things.” Max gave a nervous shrug. “It’s a Navajo word.”

“I’m not supposed to say it,” Mackie said in a small voice. “I said it, and then Mom got angry. It’s all my fault.”

Max huffed. “That’s just superstition. It’s not real.”

“Ánáli Hastiin says not to say that word or the evil spirits will come get you,” she told him.

“Ánáli Hastiin…” Max swallowed whatever he’d been going to say. “Look, pipsqueak, you didn’t cause any of this. Kage—your dad says that a lot of what Ánáli Hastiin says is make-believe. You can ask your dad, but he’ll tell you the same thing. You did not cause anything bad to happen.”

“You promise?” she asked distrustfully.

“Promise.” He raised his hand, trapped his pinkie with his thumb, and left three fingers straight in the air. Anna thought it might be the Boy Scout sign, but it could be the sign of the flying spaghetti monster for all she knew. She’d never been a Boy Scout or any other kind of scout.

Mackie evidently knew what it was because she heaved a big sigh. “Okay.”

“So your mother was chopping carrots?” Anna asked Max.

“And I reached out to grab a carrot out of the bag and she—” He swallowed and looked very young. He mimed someone holding a knife and bringing it down with speed and force. “She meant to get me, but she changed the direction at the last moment. She”—he made sure Michael was still occupied, but he spelled it out anyway in the manner of older brothers with too-young-to-be-literate siblings the world over—“s-t-a-b-b-e-d her own hand and screamed at me to get the kids and lock us in a room and not open the door until Dad came home. Not to let her in under any circumstance.”

He looked at Anna with great big puppy eyes and whispered, “She was bl— b-l-e-e-d-i-n-g. Her hand was stuck to the cutting board and I just left her there. Left my stupid cell phone in my backpack with my laptop and there aren’t any landlines in the house except in the kitchen. I couldn’t call anyone for help.” He looked away and blinked hard as his nose reddened.

“How long ago?” Anna asked, to give him something else to think about.

“Fu—” He quit speaking, wiped his face on his shoulder, and looked down at his sister. “Freaking feels like hours, but this movie is about an hour and a half long and we are only about two-thirds of the way through.”

“The chindi who looks like my mother knocked on the door,” Mackie told Anna solemnly from the shelter of her brother’s arms. “She screamed at Max to open the door. And then she cried. And she tried to be nice—and Max turned up the movie so we didn’t listen.”

Chindi indeed, thought Anna. It was as good an explanation of the events Max had described as any. She was a musician, not a psychologist, but she was pretty sure that mothers didn’t go crazy and stab themselves out of the blue.

“Max is very brave,” Anna said.

Mackie nodded. “Yes. Yes, he is. When I grow up I am going marry someone like Max and make him hunt chindi with me.” Her belief that saying that word would cause problems was allayed, evidently, by Max’s honest scout sign, because she said it without hesitation.

Max gave a choked laugh. “You do that, squirt.” To Anna he said, “Someone let her watch Supernatural and now all she wants is to go out and fight evil magic.”

Mackie frowned at Anna. “You said you are a werewolf. Like Ánáli Hastiin.”

Anna nodded. “If that is your great-grandfather Hosteen, then, yes, I am.”

“You can come hunt chindi with me,” she said with authority. “Max can’t because he’ll be an old man by then. Michael is too loud and clumsy. He gets scared and he will make mistakes. The bad things will eat him. And then what will I do without a little brother?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said slowly, as if she were considering the invitation. “My husband doesn’t like to be left behind. But if we take him with us, the bad things will all run away and it won’t be any fun.”

“Your husband is a werewolf, too?”

“Yes.”

“If he scares away our prey, he’ll have to stay home,” Mackie said.

Anna grinned. “Right. He’d ruin our fun. But maybe it would make him feel bad not to be included.”

“If he cries, you just have to explain it to him.” Mackie said wisely.

“Mackie,” said Max reprovingly.

“Max,” she said in the same tone.

“Both of you shut up,” Michael told them, still staring at the TV. “The shark is coming.”

Anna heard feet traveling upstairs in a rush and, just outside the door, Kage whispered his wife’s name and tried to open the door.

All of the kids came to alert (shark or not), but no one said anything. Maybe the whisper freaked them out—urgent and stressed. They’d already had one parent scare the bejeebers out of them today; apparently they weren’t trusting the other one not to do the same.

“No,” said Anna, unlocking the door, but staying ready just in case whatever had affected their mother was catching. “Not Chelsea. But all the kids are here with me and they are okay.”

When the door opened, Kage brushed past her to drag the kids into his arms, then pulled back to check each one to make sure they were okay. There was no difference in his urgency when he grabbed Max, whose coloring suggested that he was a stepson and not Kage’s own child. Hosteen watched them, his face cool, his attention focused outside the room. He knew that this was not over.

“There’s a fog of fae magic on the first floor of the house,” he told her. “Where’s Charles?”

“Downstairs,” she told him. “He sent me up here to make sure nothing happened to the kids.”

“There’s a pool of blood just outside the door,” he whispered, stepping aside so Anna could see it while the kids were preoccupied. “Chelsea’s blood. I can’t scent her through the stink of fae magic that is coating this house.”

“Charles will find her,” she said. “He—” She couldn’t complete the thought as her wolf surged forward with the urgency of the message Charles sent her through their mating bond. She knew that her usually brown eyes were pale, icy blue when she looked at Kage and said, “Choose.”

Kage looked up from his children. “What?”

She gave him the only words she had. “Choose. Choose now.”

Charles inhaled blood and magic. Blood he’d been half expecting, at least until he found the children all apparently safe. So the blood was not surprising. It was the fae magic he felt carelessly caressing his skin that changed the game.

There weren’t supposed to be fae out and about. They had, with great fanfare, locked themselves away on their reservations, declaring themselves free of the laws of the United States. For the last several months they’d made no appearances outside the reservations that he was aware of.

But he knew magic, knew the feel of fae magic. Brother Wolf rose and abruptly colors dimmed a little, and the shadows revealed their secrets to his eyes.

There was no one in the room he entered. It was a typical family room with a big-screen TV on one wall and bookshelves filled with trophies, photos, books, and games on the other. But the blood was fresh and nearby. He angled his head to see if he could pick up where the scent was coming from without making a large movement that would be more likely to attract attention if something was waiting for him.

Upstairs the TV was still blaring. If there weren’t so much noise his ears would be of more use. But the noise would make it more difficult for any enemy to hear him, too.

The floor creaked somewhere in the house. He thought it was to his left, but it was difficult to tell. He moved quickly to that side of the room, staying low, pausing next to the wall. He didn’t trust walls—he’d broken through a few too many in search of prey himself. Sheetrock and two-by-fours didn’t stop a werewolf, and a lot of fae were just as strong. But as a visual barrier, a wall worked okay.

He put his head cautiously around the corner. It was the laundry room. There was blood all over the floor here, some of it splattered, and then drag marks that slid around the appliances and out of sight. He paced cautiously forward, past the washer and dryer—and found himself staring into the eyes of a wild-eyed woman who was crouched in the bathroom hidden on the far side of the room. He froze where he was.

She was sitting on the floor, legs crisscrossed, with a damn big knife in her hand, and that hand was shaking as though she had palsy. The motion could have been caused by blood loss, shock, or both.

Long bloody slices, some deep and others shallow, decorated both of her arms and her legs through what had been a very nice pair of slacks. She bared her teeth at him.

“The children must bleed,” she gritted out, and the knife shook in her right hand. “Bleed out the bad—” She dug the knife into her thigh and he winced. But she didn’t push it deep, just slid it along her leg parallel to the other wounds that bled there. “Something in my head wants me to kill my children,” she said in a hurried whisper, very different from the voice she’d started speaking with. “You have to stop me.”

Brother Wolf snarled at this enemy he could not fight with tooth or claw; fae magic surrounded the woman. Charles needed to figure out how to help Kage’s wife. The magic clinging to her meant he was better equipped to do it than anyone else here. Not that it wouldn’t have been helpful to have a witch or someone else to back him up—his da would have been useful.

“Chelsea Sani,” he said with a push of his own magic, trying to give her something to cling to.

It wasn’t enough.

She paused and rocked forward, falling until she was on her hands and knees, and she started to crawl. Not toward him, he didn’t think. He wasn’t her target.

“There are bad children here … little boys who steal food, little girls who don’t play well with others, little boys who…” She dropped all the way to the ground then, and writhed as she groaned.

“Chelsea,” Brother Wolf demanded, pulling on his pack, on his da’s power. Icy with the cold of winter, the power came to his asking and hit the woman with his call.

She stopped making noise, stopped moving except for the heaving of her ribs. Then she rolled her head until she could see him. She met his eyes, opened her mouth and shut it. She sliced open her hand, leaving the knife in the wound. “Blood makes it easier to fight. Who are you?”

“I’m Charles. A friend of Joseph’s. Can you tell me what happened?”

He edged closer, calling upon gifts given to him by both his da’s and his mother’s blood. His skin warmed and tingled uncomfortably, but he could see the spells that encompassed her. Where fresh blood flowed onto the steel of the knife, the magic was drawn more tightly, never quite touching the cold iron. It pooled uneasily around the open wound, thinning around the rest of her body.

Witchborn, he thought, for her blood to have that kind of power. But not trained, or she’d have broken the geas.

She gasped, and a tremor shook her body as though she were freezing to death. “Werewolf. Charles? You are Joseph’s werewolf?” she half asked, half demanded.

“Yes. I’m here to help you.”

She laughed breathlessly. “Too late for that. Too late for me. I sent them to a room with a door they could lock against me, but they need to get out. You go take my babies away somewhere safe.” There was a command in her voice that he found himself shaking off with an effort. Brother Wolf found that very interesting.

“They are safe,” he assured her.

Her eyes widened, fae magic flared, and he realized, too late, he’d made a mistake.

Some of the fae are quick, and whatever magic had done to her, it gave her better-than-human speed. But Charles had been edging toward her, and that gave Brother Wolf time to move even faster and catch the hand that held the knife just before she shoved it up under her jaw.

It had been a two-part geas, then, forcing her to kill her children, and when that was done—or if that wasn’t possible—to kill herself. Her death would make it more difficult to find the fae who had done this to her.

She fought him, fought to control the knife with strength that was not her own, and he finally drove the blade into the floor, through the linoleum tile and into the wooden floorboards below. He sank it deep so he didn’t have to break her arm.

Sobbing, she tried to pull the knife out, but suddenly, between one breath and the next, the scent of fae disappeared and she collapsed, her breathing thready.

“Safe?” Chelsea Sani whispered. “Tell me again.”

“They are safe,” he told her, and her body went limp, as if she’d used the last of her strength. And he knew what had broken the geas.

He took a good look at the blood on the floor, the way her last wound was not bleeding as it should. Her heartbeat was irregular. She’d lost too much blood—and was losing more through every cut she’d made in her own body in the effort to keep her kids safe from the magic driving her. It had been an incredible feat of willpower and quick thinking for a woman who was only human. But it had come at a cost.

She was dying. Even if they were at a hospital, it would be unlikely that they could save her in this condition. She was dying, and that satisfied the geas.

We could Change her, Brother Wolf told Charles. She knows how to fight.

It would be skirting his da’s law. He didn’t have his da’s approval, but desperate times were a gray area, judged case by case. As his da’s right-hand man, he had more leeway than other wolves. He’d had nothing to do with the incident that brought Chelsea to this end; his actions would be seen as impartial. Brother Wolf’s clear judgment would weigh in his da’s sight, if not anyone else’s. All he needed was her consent.

Charles knelt beside her. “You are dying. Do you understand? I can Change you if you wish it.”

She said something, too faint for even his ears to hear.

It must be now, said Brother Wolf. And we must be in wolf skin.

She couldn’t give permission, but there was someone here who could. Brother Wolf’s shape came over him—the wolf had dictated the change. It was so simple, the change from man to wolf, this close to the full moon’s call when he had not walked on four feet for days. As the wolf shape became his, Charles sent his will to his mate.

Tell him to choose for his wife. Do I let her die—or do I Change her?