Fair Game (Alpha & Omega #3)(69)
Author: Patricia Briggs

There was such beauty in the odd symmetry of his features, a beauty not hurt at all by his silver skin. No. Not his skin, though that was pale as well. His whole upper body, face included, was covered with a short, silvery white fur that caught the light and sparkled. His hair was three or four shades of gray and it cascaded through and over the base of his antlers and lay over his hugely muscled shoulders in locks, like drips of melted wax.

He was huge. He wouldn’t have been able to stand in a normal house. If Uncle Travis was six feet tall, and she thought he was near that, then Benedict was twice that, not including his horns.

His clothes had melted away – and it occurred to Anna that he probably hadn’t changed at all, just lost his hold on the glamour that all fae could use to look human. But his shoulders, chest, and belly were covered with silvery armor that reminded her of an armadillo’s covering. It wasn’t clothing, but part of his skin.

From the chest downward the pelt of silver hair grew longer, thicker, and curled like the pelt of a buffalo. It covered his hips and left his genitalia peeking through here and there. His legs were built like the back legs of a buffalo or deer – though the size looked more like the giraffe she’d seen at the Brookfield Zoo when she was a kid.

At his…hocks or knees, the fur darkened to steel gray and grew longer, like the hair – feathers, her horse-crazy friend from third grade had insisted they call it – on the bottom of a Clydesdale’s legs.

He stood on a pair of two-toed hooves, like a moose. He bent his head back, his nose rising toward the ceiling and his antlers exaggerating the movement, and raised one foot up nervously, before setting it down and lowering his head again. He rocked from one hoof to the other, making hollow noises on the wooden floor and leaving marks on the polished surface.

"He’s just scared," said Heuter, in the lazy Texas drawl he seemed to drop and pick up again without notice. "There’s no one out there. They are clueless."

Anna hadn’t heard a car drive up and couldn’t smell anything different, though the door was closed and she couldn’t get a good scent-fix on anything outside of the barn anyway. Still, she suspected that Les Heuter was right. She knew that no one was looking at Heuter for the killings.

Benedict tossed his head and let loose with the challenging roar she’d heard before. Nothing answered him but the distant sounds of rushing cars and wind trailing through leaves.

But Anna sensed it, too. A feeling of impending doom, like standing on railroad tracks and feeling the rails begin to vibrate before she could hear the train. It took her a moment to realize what that feeling was: she’d been so sure he couldn’t find her.

He didn’t come through the door. He crashed through the walls like a battering ram. Old two-by-twelve timbers bent open before him like leaves of grass and dripped off him as toothpicks and twigs. His eyes caught hers, swept the room, and then focused on Benedict.

The red wolf’s head lowered and he sank down just a little and growled, a sound so deep that the floor of her cage vibrated.

The horned lord shook his great antlers and bellowed, charging forward, in spite of the terror Anna could smell. Charles waited, then moved just enough to get out of his way. The fae’s hooves slipped on the hard, slick floor and he hit the mirror, cracking it, before he managed to stop.

"Les, get my Glock," snapped Uncle Travis. "It’s still loaded with silver bullets."

Heuter had pulled his own gun, but, obedient to his uncle still, he ran for the office. It meant that he wouldn’t shoot Charles yet, but the respite wouldn’t last long.

Anna couldn’t do anything, stuck in the cage. Charles had many strengths, but he was even more adversely affected by silver than most werewolves. She couldn’t let them shoot him.

She had to do something. Anna shoved her head through the silver-coated bars and fought to get free, digging her claws into the wooden bottom of the cage for leverage. She was smaller than most werewolves, so maybe she could force her way out – or maybe the bars would yield to her need to protect her mate. The silver burned even through her thick coat of hair, but she ignored it and kept struggling as she watched her mate battle with the monstrous fae.

Charles leapt as Benedict swept past, landing momentarily on the horned lord’s back, and then Charles kept right on going for a dozen strides before turning to face his prey again. It happened so fast that Charles had already stopped before blood started gushing from the long tear down the side of Benedict’s neck. Arterial blood, black with oxygen, it sprayed a little as it pumped out.

Heuter had reached the office and Anna felt the bars give against her shoulders. She lunged again, harder. Uncle Travis grabbed the remnants of the bang stick and, swinging it like a baseball bat, he hit her in the face, slamming the side of her head into the bars and wrenching her neck.

Mindful of Charles’s battle, not wanting to distract him, Anna didn’t make a sound, just kept struggling.

Charles crossed the room in the same zigzag motion she’d seen him use when hunting moose. He didn’t look like he was moving very fast – but he crossed the space in record time. This time he sliced the horned lord’s face open with his fangs.

The cut on the side of Benedict’s neck had already quit bleeding; he healed that quickly. But fully half of his silvery body was crimson with gore. He staggered and reached both hands to his face. Charles had taken out one eye entirely and sliced though the fae’s nose.

It took the fight out of Benedict – Anna could see how that would be; she was pretty sure that something in her nose was broken, and it hurt, blurring her vision and sending weakness shivering through her muscles. Then Heuter came out of the office with a second gun, and she quit caring about anything except getting out so she could keep them from shooting Charles. The bars had moved that last time, before Travis hit her; she knew it.

Anna wiggled with all of her might, and the floor gave a little beneath the claws of her back feet. It was too little, too late. The red wolf prowled slowly forward about fifteen feet from Benedict, giving Heuter the perfect shot.

Heuter stopped, fumbled the second gun before putting it in his holster. The fumble made him rush his shot to make up for it and he squeezed the trigger just after Charles lunged.

The sound pulled the old man’s attention from the fight. "Les! Get your scrawny ass over here and give me my gun. You can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Get a move on. My grandfather was faster than you when he was eighty-six."

Instead of trying for a second shot Heuter ran back toward Travis – proving to Anna that he was no Alpha wolf, whatever he thought he should be.

The bars gave a little bit more and she was sliding forward – and Travis hit her again, in exactly the same spot on her nose where he’d hit her the first time.