Fair Game (Alpha & Omega #3)(68)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Horatio was a good fighter, though. He might have been handy when they ran into the bad guys. Isaac glanced over his shoulder at Charles, who was playing intently with the phone he’d taken from Isaac. Beauclaire was sitting in the far backseat, so maybe he wasn’t so oblivious to Charles’s state after all. The Marrok’s Wolfkiller kept his body turned in the exact direction of their goal. Probably they didn’t need Horatio. Probably they didn’t need anyone except Charles.

And Horatio would have insisted on driving if he’d come; it was his van, after all. Charles had chosen to give Agent Fisher the shotgun seat – which might have been old-fashioned manners; old wolves did things like that. It was unlikely that he’d done it so he could screw with Isaac by sitting behind him, even if that was the end result. The black cloud of intensity Charles shed made Isaac all sorts of jumpy and would have had Horatio, who was much more high-strung, driving like a six-year-old trying to throw a bowling ball.

It was late, maybe one in the morning, and traffic was correspondingly light so Isaac punched it a little. Not so fast that the cops would feel like it was imperative to pull him over, but not so slow that the wolf in the backseat would decide to take over.

It was a delicate balance. Horatio didn’t have any kind of GPS navigation in his old van, but Agent Fisher used her phone to imitate one. They decided that I-93 would be the fastest way there, even though it was a farther distance than taking the back roads.

"Pull over," said Charles, his voice rough.

Isaac wasn’t going to argue with him. So he eased the van to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

Charles hopped out, patted the side of the car, and said, "Go on out to the address I gave you. I’m going to run the direct path and I should beat you there."

It wasn’t until then that Isaac realized Charles had begun changing to wolf. Isaac couldn’t speak – except to swear at the worst bits – while he changed, and Charles could have a regular conversation, or something pretty close to it. Damn. When he grew up, he wanted to be like Charles.

Charles shut the door and took off into the darkness, still on two legs, but his gait was an odd leaping glide, neither human nor lupine. Funny, Isaac mused, how being a werewolf had made him complacent, made him think he knew all there was about being a wolf.

He pulled back onto the interstate and asked, "How long until we get there?"

"Fifteen, twenty minutes," Leslie said. "He thinks he can beat us?"

These weren’t Isaac’s usual stomping grounds, but he had a fair idea of geography – and a pretty good idea of how fast a ticked-off werewolf was. He mentally added 10 percent more speed just because it was Charles and said, "I think he can, too."

CHARLES WASN’T SURE if this was a good idea or not, but Brother Wolf was done with riding in a car when he had four good feet and Anna needed them. He changed the rest of the way as he ran, which wasn’t his favorite way to do it, but he managed.

Isaac’s phone, which Charles had left on the seat of the van, had suggested that he could cut through some woods, a few cemeteries and golf courses, and end up where he wanted to be. He didn’t expect it to be quite that simple – which was a good thing. Fences, waterways, and houses kept him from a direct path, but he managed. As he got closer, his link to Anna sharpened. He still couldn’t talk to her, but he could feel her pain and fear – and that made him flatten out and run even harder.

He narrowly missed being hit by a Subaru Outback on a narrow highway, left it stopped dead with the sour smell of burnt rubber and the driver asking his companion, "Did you see that? What was that thing?" Only as he approached the house did he slow down.

She wasn’t hurting anymore.

And now that he could think instead of panic, he knew what Anna had done. Who knew better what a shift felt like than another werewolf? She was smart, his mate. The wolf was tougher than the human and better able to defend herself, so she’d shifted to her lupine form.

She didn’t need immediate rescuing; she wasn’t hurting now, so he could take a moment. Brother Wolf was all for finding where they had her and killing everyone involved. Charles was okay with the last half, but thought that resting until he wasn’t breathing like a steam engine would make it more possible. He dropped to the ground under a bunch of lilac bushes near a sign that read WESTWOOD DANCE STUDIO: ESTABLISHED 2006.

Charles would go in when he was at his best, not panting like a greyhound after a race. Brother Wolf wasn’t happy, but he had learned that sometimes his human half was wiser – and sometimes not.

High above him, the moon sang. Tomorrow she would be full and there would be no ignoring her. Tonight she kept him company as he rose to go hunt down those who would harm his mate.

BENEDICT SHOVED THE stick at Anna in a quick, jerky motion designed to fool the eye. Charles occasionally sparred with Asil using Chinese qiang, and they used the same sort of movements, twirling the spears and making the ends bob around.

Maybe if she’d been human, it would have worked.

Instead Anna dodged, then grabbed the end just behind the hypodermic when the stick pushed past her. She twisted her head while she clamped her teeth on it.

If it had been a human holding the spear, she’d have pulled it from Benedict’s hands. If she had been a real wolf, she couldn’t have damaged it. But, though she was small for a werewolf, she was huge for a wolf and stronger than a wolf her size would have been. The end snapped and the hypodermic fell at her feet.

She had a weapon – just let them try to get it out of the cage while she was in her wolf skin. And when she was human, she could use it. She smiled at the old man, letting her tongue loll out at him. Take that.

I am not anyone’s victim, not anymore.

Benedict dropped the stick and jumped back – and she smelled fear. She showed her teeth to him and growled, just a little. A taunt.

Uncle Travis took four big strides to reach Benedict and slapped him hard in the face with the flat of his hand. "Stop that. Stop that. She is an abomination, but we have killed abominations before. She’s a prisoner and weak – you are a Heuter. We don’t cower before disease-ridden monsters."

Benedict started to say something, then stiffened and raised his head. "He’s coming."

"Who’s coming?" asked Travis.

Benedict changed without answering. Between one breath and the next he became something…fantastical.

Anna expected him to be ugly in his fae form, for the outside to represent the inside, but she should have known better. She’d seen the white stag.

A wide rack of antlers, snow-white and silver tipped, rose like a crown from his head – which was not quite human. The eyes were right and the mouth, but the rest of the face was sharper, elongated in an oddly graceful manner.