He nodded.
“Adam had to die,” I said, feeling my way. “But you couldn’t kill him. That’s why you left him to the mercies of your werewolves when he was still drugged. That’s why you stayed away from the warehouse, hoping that your men would pump enough silver into Adam to kill him.”
“Yes. He had to die and not by my hand. I had to be able to look my father in the eye and tell him that I hadn’t killed Adam.”
I was shivering because it was cold and my arm, which had been surprisingly quiet for the past few minutes, began to hurt again. “It wasn’t Adam you wanted to fight Bran, it was your father. You were counting on Bran going to your father as soon as he figured out what you were doing.”
“My father called me this afternoon,” Gerry said. “Bran had asked him about the tranquilizer and told him that I might be behind the attacks on Adam. My father knows I want the wolves to quit hiding. He knows how I feel about animal experimentation and the way some Alphas exploit some of our new wolves. He knows I’d never try to kill Adam.”
“If Adam died, my father would tell yours before he came here to kill you,” Samuel said.
Gerry laughed. “I don’t think so. I think Bran would have come here and killed me for my crimes. I hoped he would. I have killed too many innocents. But when he told my father what I had done, my father wouldn’t believe him.”
“Believing the Marrok had you executed for something you didn’t do, Carter would challenge him.” Samuel sounded almost admiring. “And my father couldn’t refuse the challenge.”
“What if Bran talked to Dr. Wallace first?” I asked.
“It wouldn’t have mattered.” Gerry sounded certain. “Either to protect me or avenge me, my father would challenge Bran. Even before he was wolf, my father was the Marrok’s man. He respects him and trusts him. Bran’s betrayal, and Dad would see it like that, could have only one answer. Only Bran could unite my father, wolf and man, against him—Dad loves him. If Dad and his wolf face Bran in a fight, they will do it as one being: Bran told me that it would only take that one time for my father to be safe.”
“If Dr. Wallace challenged Bran, Bran would kill him,” said Adam.
“Witches are expensive,” whispered Gerry. “But there are a lot of wolves who want to hide and they gave me money so they could keep their secrets.”
“You were paying Robert, Elizaveta’s son. He’d do something to ensure your father’s victory.” I’d thought Robert was doing it for money. I just hadn’t realized he would be getting it so directly.
“They’d be looking for drugs,” said Gerry. “But no one except another witch can detect magic.”
“I can,” I told him. “Robert’s been taken care of. If your father challenges Bran, it won’t be Bran who dies.”
He sagged a little. “Then, as a favor to me, Samuel, would you ask Bran to make certain my father never finds out about this? I don’t want to cause him any more pain than I already have.”
“Do you have any more questions?” Samuel asked Adam.
Adam shook his head and got to his feet. “Is he your wolf tonight or mine?”
“Mine,” said Samuel stepping forward.
Gerry looked up at the moon where she hung above us. “Please,” he said. “Make it quick.”
Samuel pushed his fingers through Gerry’s hair, a gentle, comforting touch. His mouth was tight with sorrow: if a submissive wolf’s instinct is to bow to authority, a dominant’s is to protect.
Samuel moved so fast that Gerry could not have known what was happening. With a quick jerk, Samuel used his healer’s hands to snap Gerry’s neck.
I handed Adam my gun so I had a hand free. Then I took out Zee’s dagger and I handed it to Samuel.
“It’s not silver,” I said, “but it will do the job.”
I watched as Samuel made certain Gerry stayed dead. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary. I wouldn’t lessen the moment by looking away.
“I’ll call Bran as soon as I have a phone,” he said, cleaning the dagger his pants leg. “He’ll make sure that Dr. Wallace never knows what happened to his son.”
A few hours later, Bran and Carter Wallace took a run in the forest. Bran said the moonlight sparkled on the crystals of the crusted snow that broke beneath their dancing paws. They crossed a frozen lake bed and surprised a sleeping doe, who flashed her white tail and disappeared into the underbrush as they ran by. He told me that the stars covered the sky, so far from city lights, like a blanket of golden glitter.
Sometime before the sun’s first pale rays lit the eastern sky, the wolf who had been Carter Wallace went to sleep, curled up next to his Alpha, and never woke up again.
Samuel hadn’t killed Robert, so we turned him over to his grandmother: a fate he did not seem to think was much of an improvement. Elizaveta Arkadyevna was not pleased with him. I wasn’t altogether sure that she was unhappy with his betrayal of Adam or with his getting caught.
Samuel decided to stay in the Tri-Cities for a while. He’s been spending most of his free time on the paperwork involved in getting his medical license extended to Washington. Until then, he’s working at the same Stop And Rob where Warren works—and he seems to like it just fine.
Bran didn’t, of course, throw his wolves to the world and abandon them there. He is not one of the Gray Lords to force people out of hiding who don’t want to come. So most of the werewolves are still staying hidden, even though Bran found his poster child.
You can’t turn on the TV or open the newspaper without seeing a picture of the man who penetrated a terrorist camp to find a missionary and his family who had been kidnapped.
The missionary and his wife had been killed already, but there were three children who were rescued. There’s a color photograph that made the cover of one of the news magazines. It shows David Christiansen cuddling the youngest child—a little blond-haired toddler with the bruise of a man’s fingers clearly visible on her porcelain skin. Her face is turned into his shoulder, and he is looking at her with an expression of such tenderness that it brings tears to my eyes. But the best part of the picture is the boy who is standing beside him, his face pale, dirty. When I first saw it, I thought he just looked numb, as if his experiences had been too great to be borne, but then I noticed that his hand is tucked inside of David’s and the boy’s knuckles are white with the grip he has on the man’s big fingers.
Chapter 16
Because there isn’t much a mechanic with a broken arm can do besides get in the way, Zee sent me to the office to work on my paperwork. I didn’t get much done there either, but at least—as Zee put it—I wasn’t whining at him.
He wouldn’t tell me anything about his dagger or who Adelbert was and why he needed smiting—and I hadn’t been able to find it on the Internet, either. When I got persistent, Zee told me he liked the modern era, with its steel and electricity, better than the old days because there was more for a Metallzauber, a gremlin, to do than build swords to kill other folk. Then he exiled me to the office and went back to fixing cars.
I am right-handed, and it was my right arm that was broken. I couldn’t even use it to hold a piece of paper still because the doctor at the emergency room insisted I wear my arm strapped to my side. I even had to type on my computer using one hand—which made it painstakingly slow to do any work. So I used the computer to play Vegas-style solitaire and lost two thousand dollars of imaginary money, instead.
It was probably not the best moment for Gabriel Sandoval to show up. I’d forgotten I’d told his mother to send him over Monday after school.
He had to wait until I typed in their bill, then an hourly wage that looked fair to me. It would give him twenty hours to work off, though, and that seemed too much to me. So I added a couple of dollars an hour, until the time looked better.