When he pulled away, he left his face against hers as he said, “I don’t know. We’ll just have to see-keep a count of the red T-shirts, maybe.”
“Why red?” she asked. “Why not green or blue this time? I’ve seen you do blue. Do you pick?”
He laughed, needing this, small intimacies he’d never had before Anna. “I don’t know. No one ever asked, and I never paid attention.”
She put her mouth against his ear, and the feel of her breath in his ear certainly made him pay attention. “I bet they wondered, though. Too scared of the big bad wolf to ask.”
He laughed again, the relief of her presence-not just Omega but his Anna-making laughter necessary, whatever the excuse.
She pulled back, her eyes still smiling. “Dana is a water fae, isn’t she? The ones who lure men into the water and drown them.”
“Yes.”
“How did she do it? Was it compulsion-or was it some sort of manipulation?”
He couldn’t read anything in her face. “I don’t know. Why are you asking?”
“It’s not like you to freak out like that-not without planning it better. And Chastel. He is how old? His modus operandi is more subtle than it was tonight, right? He takes out little kids and human women in front of people too weak to hurt him. You, he would never antagonize like that, not where you would be justified in attacking him face-to-face.”
With Anna here, Brother Wolf settled down into a contented presence. Charles could think more clearly, consider tonight’s oddities.
“Not quite true. He is reckless sometimes-and no coward, really. He likes to play games: his lunge at you that would have been fatal if he’d wanted it to be-that is very much the Beast of Gévaudan.” But she was right in that the Frenchman’s behavior had been odd. “But that moment when he laid the bag, his prize, at your feet, that was unusual.” He thought a moment. “Romantic, even. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard Chastel had a partner. Women, mostly, he kills. Children, too. It’s as if their fragility calls out the worst in him.”
“He told Ric and me that he was the opposite of the Omega. All the violence, none of the protective spirit.”
Charles felt his eyebrows go up. “That’s perceptive,” he said. “I would have just called him a sociopath. My father calls him evil.”
“ ‘Evil’ works for me,” Anna muttered. She played with the bark of the tree: mostly rotted from its immersion in the water, it virtually dissolved under her fingers.
“But the thing with the bag wasn’t typical of Chastel,” Charles said. “And… what I did wasn’t usual either. Not like that. It felt like he had done it, ripped your throat out-even though I knew very well that he hadn’t touched you. You think the fae had something to do with it?”
“I think I read bloodlust on her body when you attacked Chastel. The first thing out of her lips was an accusation-of something you actually hadn’t done. Stupid fae hadn’t remembered that once the bells sounded, the hunt was over.” Anna’s nails dug into the tree as if she had claws, and her voice was hard. “She wanted you as her prey.”
And he knew, suddenly, that the reason Dana hadn’t gotten him was sitting beside him on this log. She didn’t look tough, his Anna, with her freckled face and body that could still stand to gain ten pounds even though it was considerably more sturdy than it had been the first time he’d seen her. But she was tougher than old shoe leather, and what was hers, she took care of.
“Dana didn’t know who she was messing with,” he murmured, charmed and awed at the same time.
“Damned right,” Anna said. “She was hunting tonight. I don’t know who was her initial prey… it might be like when a dominant comes into a new pack and looks for the nastiest brute around to fight and so establish his place. I don’t know if it was a planned thing or if it just happened.”
Charles caught a scent and turned his head. “Angus,” he said, as the other wolf walked up to them.
“Let you scent me,” Angus said, a little defensively.
“Thank you.” Charles decided that wasn’t enough as Angus still looked uneasy about interrupting them. “I appreciate it. What do you know?” Because the wolf had been there a little while, and likely would have ghosted back up the hill without saying anything if he didn’t have something to contribute.
“I heard a bit of that,” said Angus. “Anna’s right. I tasted fae magic at work, but I didn’t realize what she’d done until you attacked Chastel. She attempted to make you kill Chastel.”
“I thought they couldn’t do that,” Anna said.
“Obviously it’s not impossible,” said Charles. “And I don’t know why they don’t. Just that they don’t. Ever. They don’t break their word, and they don’t lie. Can’t is how I’ve always heard it. Always. But she did.”
“Ask the Marrok,” suggested Angus.
Charles reached for his cell phone, then stopped. “No cell phone,” he told them.
Anna giggled. “All those red T-shirts and no cell phone? I don’t have mine either, left it in the car.”
Angus handed his over to Charles. “Red T-shirts? Do I want to know?”
“Probably not,” Charles told him as he dialed and put the phone to his ear. Then his da answered and he busied himself laying the whole story before the old bard. Bran listened all the way through without comment. When Charles was done, there was a small pause as his father sorted out what he wanted to discuss.
“Six vampires hunting together,” he said finally.
It wasn’t a question, but Charles answered it anyway. “Yes.”
“I’ll look into it. There’ve been a few stories-I’ll check them out more thoroughly. They sound like mercenaries to me: assassins for hire. Angus hasn’t had trouble with the Seattle vampires for a good long while-and Tom would have recognized them if they were local. Vampires in a minivan says rental to me-”
“I have the plate numbers,” said Anna. “But it looked like a rental car to me, too. American minivan less than five years old.” She rattled off three letters and three numbers.
The joy of phone calls with sharp-eared werewolves was that all phone calls ended up being conference calls whether he wanted them to or not. At least Charles didn’t have to repeat everything anyone said.
He could hear pen running across paper as his da wrote the license-plate number on a piece of paper. “I’ll check it out,” he said when he was finished writing, “but I suspect she’s right. We’ll find them faster by other methods. You think they’re trained by a werewolf?”
“They fought like a pack,” Anna said. “Made their choices like a wolf pack would. Brought in magic that felt just like pack magic.”
“That was Tom’s assessment, too,” Angus said. “Tom’s been in a few fights-and can wield pack magic with the best of us.”
There was another pause, then the Marrok said in that light pleasant tone that warned everyone who knew him that all hell was about to break loose. “Can you prove Dana caused the fight?”
Charles looked at Anna.
She shook her head. “No. You had to have been there.”
“That’s so,” said Angus. “I saw it, but I doubt anyone else was looking who would recognize what they saw. She would have sent me after Charles, you know, after I refused to go. Bespelled me with my true name. I haven’t answered to that name for nigh on a hundred years-and a hundred years ago I was no one. Not Alpha at the time, not even in this country. Be interesting to know how she found out what my birth name was. I doubt there are ten people who’d know after all this time.”