Fair Game (Alpha & Omega #3)(54)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"I didn’t ask her a question. She just talked. Told me she wants them caught and caged so they can’t do anything to anyone else. Tough woman. She fell asleep mid-word – and I think her father had something to do with that. Can the fae send people to sleep?"

"I am not an expert in fae magic," Charles said carefully.

She turned her head and nodded. "You are very good at skirting the truth." Leslie sighed. "You are an experienced detective and you met the enemy. What are your impressions?"

"I’ve only met the one," Charles said. But her request for information was fair – and he wanted the perpetrators caught. "The fae is definitely the junior member of the group, even though he’s probably the only one with magic – and he’s the reason they can take on fae and werewolves."

"What makes you think so?"

"He’s not a hunter," Charles told her. "He’s a stag – he’s not a predator, no matter how tough or deadly he is." Herne the Hunter notwithstanding, Brother Wolf knew that the fae they’d fought with was prey. Maybe Herne was more huntsman and less deer, but this one…This one ran from his foes. He was not a hunter; he was a tool of the real hunters.

"You think he’s a victim?"

Charles snorted. "No. He’s no angel – but he’d never go out hunting victims. He might rape and kill someone who came too close to him – but he wouldn’t hunt. That’s predatory behavior. Doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. Most years, moose kill more people in Canada than grizzlies do. Moose, though, generally don’t trail people with the intention of killing them like a grizzly will."

"All right," Leslie said. "We have a moose, not a bear. What else?"

He reflected on the fight. The horned lord fought instinctively instead of strategically, seemingly incapable of focusing on more than one attacker at a time. "That fae isn’t smart. If he has a day job – and I’d guess that he does – " Charles tried to verbalize the instincts that allowed a dominant wolf to control his pack. "If you are going to keep someone that dangerous under control, you don’t let him start thinking that he’s too valuable. You don’t support him just because he’s useful in your hunt. He has to go support himself."

"Okay."

Leslie sounded doubtful and Charles shrugged. "It might be different if our family of killers didn’t come from money – then they’d find some other way to make sure he knew he was subordinate."

"They come from money?"

"This much traveling, this many years – if you were looking for a group of poor people, you’d have found them. Money makes a lot of things easier. Murder is just one of them. And they had to have money to be able to afford Sally Reilly."

"Fair enough. Our profilers figured that the Big Game Hunter was well-to-do about fifteen years ago. You were going to speculate about a job."

"Right. He’s not bright, and because of that his other nature is going to be difficult to conceal."

"’Other’ as in fae?"

Charles nodded. "Yes. So he’ll be a box boy at a grocery store or a stocking clerk. Maybe a janitor or handyman. He’d be very strong. Dockworker, if you still have them here."

"Would people remember him?"

"Is he scary, do you mean? Like your husband?" Charles shook his head, following Brother Wolf’s instincts. "I don’t think so. I think people are going to feel sorry for him. Otherwise he’d be in jail. Scared people generally run or attack. If someone ever attacked this one, he’d kill them. If he went around killing people in the open like that, he’d be in jail or dead."

"All right," Leslie said. "We’ll see what we can do with that. Run it by our profilers and see if they agree."

THE CONDO WASN’T home, but it felt welcoming all the same. Charles pulled some steaks out of the fridge and cut them up in bite-sized chunks. One of them he set down on the floor for Anna and the other he ate standing up. His human teeth weren’t really sharp enough for the raw meat, but he persevered and was rewarded as the aches and pains gradually settled down as the energy from the food entered his system.

He watched his mate eat with a satisfaction that had never faded since he’d met her, half-starved and wild-eyed. Brother Wolf never forgot how thin she had been, and he would get pushy if he thought Anna wasn’t eating enough.

When she was finished eating, she changed back to human.

It always made Charles restless when she changed, seeing her hurting and knowing that there was nothing he could do to help. He paced back and forth a couple of times, then sat down and turned on the TV, idly flipping through channels until Anna, human again, took the controller out of his hand and turned the TV off.

"Bed," she said. "Or you’re going to be married to a zombie."

He’d intended to talk with her, he remembered, to tell her about his ghosts. But neither of them was in shape for talk.

Charles looked at her and said in his most serious voice, "I don’t think werewolves can become zombies."

"Trust me," she said in a passable zombie voice. "Another ten minutes and I will eat your brains."

He pulled her down onto his lap. "I think I’ll chance it."

She sighed as if annoyed, though his nose told him she liked being in his embrace. "So, can you do this without an audience? Is that what’s been bothering you these past few months? All I needed to do was invite the pack into our bedroom? You should have told me."

He laughed. She made him laugh. "I don’t know. Let’s find out."

A RATHER LONG while later, Anna stretched and then flopped comfortably next to him. "Urr, brains," she said.

"Go to sleep," Charles growled, pulling her closer.

"I warned you," she said. "You didn’t let me sleep." She yawned widely and said regretfully, "And now I have no choice but to eat your brains."

"Obviously," he said. "You need more exercise before you go to sleep." He rolled onto his back. "I suppose I’ll just have to be a good mate and help you with that."

She crawled on top of him, naked and warm and soft, smelling like a miracle that had saved him from a lifetime of aloneness.

"I wouldn’t want you to strain anything," Anna told him. "Why don’t you just lie back and think of England."

His mouth caught the nearest of her body parts – the soft inside of her elbow – and gave it a light nip. "England is the furthest thing from my mind."

She settled down on top of him, taking him inside her, and he quit talking altogether. Her eyes were blue, her wolf’s eyes, when she came for him for the second time that night.