David made a few calls, and got the number of a very private sanitarium run by a small, very secret government agency. The price wasn’t bad—all he had to do was rescue some missionary who was related to a high-level politician. The fool had managed to get kidnapped with his wife and two young children. David’s team would still get paid, and he’d probably have taken the assignment anyway.
By the time he called Clive back, his sons had located a few missing hospital personnel and the cop who’d been guarding the door. David heard the relief in Clive’s voice: Jorge was apparently a friend. None of the recovered people seemed to be hurt, though they had no idea why they were all in the basement.
David hung up and turned off his cell phone. Accepting the offer of a bedroom from the pack Alpha, David took his tired body to bed and slept.
Christmas Day was coming to a close when David drove his rental to his son’s house—friends had picked it up from the hospital for him.
Red and green lights covered every bush and railing as well as surrounding all the windows. Knee-high candy canes lined the walk.
There were cars at his son’s house. David frowned at them and checked his new watch. He was coming over at the right time. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to intrude—which was understood to mean that he wouldn’t come when Stella was likely to be there.
He’d already have been on a flight home except that he didn’t know how to contact Devonte. He tapped the envelope against his leg and wondered why he’d picked up a Christmas card instead of just handing over his business card. Below his contact information he’d made Devonte an open job offer beginning as soon as Devonte was eighteen. David could think of a thousand ways a wizard would be of use to a small group of mercenaries.
Of course, after watching David tear up the vampire’s body, Devonte probably wouldn’t be interested, so more to the point was the name and phone number on the other side of the card. Both belonged to a wizard who was willing to take on a pupil; the local Alpha had given it to him.
Clive had promised to give it to Devonte.
David had to search under the giant wreath on the door for the bell. As he waited, he noticed that he could hear a lot of people inside, and even through the door he smelled the turkey.
He took a step back, but the door was already opening.
Stella stood in the doorway. Over her shoulder he could see the whole family running around preparing the table for Christmas dinner. Devonte was sitting on the couch reading to one of the toddlers that seemed to be everywhere. Clive leaned against the fireplace and met David’s gaze. He lifted a glass of wine and sipped it, smiling slyly.
David took another step back and opened his mouth to apologize to Stella . . . just as her face lit with her mother’s smile. She stepped out onto the porch and wrapped her arms around him.
“Merry Christmas, Papa,” she said. “I hope you like turkey.”
ROSES IN WINTER
Kara never appeared in any of the Mercy books, but her father’s appeal to Mercy for help in Blood Bound struck a chord in readers. I never go to a book-signing event where someone doesn’t ask about her. I knew that she went to Aspen Creek with the Marrok’s pack, and I expected her to show up in the Alpha and Omega novels. That’s what I told people. But she didn’t come to Aspen Creek until after the events in Cry Wolf and Hunting Ground. And then Fair Game jumped ahead because I needed the events at the end of the book to happen between River Marked and Frost Burned. Which meant that if I was going to tell Kara’s story, I’d have to do it in a short story.
The events in this story take place between Bone Crossed and Silver Borne.
Asil smelled the intruder as soon as he opened the door of his greenhouse, but he made no sign of it.
Kara Beckworth was the Marrok’s current puzzle. She’d been attacked when she was only ten and was the youngest survivor either Asil or Bran had ever heard of—and between them they covered a lot of years. Her parents had done the best they could, but their only source of information was from a half-mad, antisocial lone wolf whose greatest skill was that he never did anything to attract the Marrok’s attention, so he could be left to live his life in peace.
He’d told Kara’s parents they should let him kill her. When they’d refused, he’d told them to keep her away from other werewolves. So every full moon, her parents had kept her locked in a cage and, when she’d reacted as most young things who had been locked in a cage would react, decided that werewolves had no control of themselves. Before she could prove them right, or succeed in killing herself—something she hadn’t had enough knowledge to accomplish—her father had used his skills as a reporter to find more useful help. Eventually, that had landed Kara and her father here in Aspen Creek, Montana.
Asil turned on the water and began to dampen his tomato starts as he considered his response to the intrusion. Most of the greenhouse was on drip lines, but he preferred to do some of the work himself—and he’d learned that repairing a drip line was nearly as time-consuming as watering it all himself anyway and considerably less satisfactory. The temptation in this age was to automate too much and ruin his own fun.
“I know you know I’m here,” Kara said defensively.
“Good,” he said without looking up from what he was doing. “I would hate to think you were stupid.”
“I should be in school,” she said, a little more aggressively.
Full moon in two days, close enough to make her restless, is what he thought. Hard to sit in a classroom with the moon singing in your veins, especially when she was so young. But he wasn’t subversive enough, quite, to tell her that.
“So why are you here instead?” He kept his eyes on his plants—which were only barely sprouts. They had a while to go before they would be plants.
“I like greenhouses,” she said.
Ah—not a lie. Refreshing in a child of, what? Twelve or thirteen, he thought.
“And no one would look for me here.” There was a little pause. “I am sorry for trespassing.”
He heaved a sigh and turned off the switch at the business end of the hose, which would temporarily shut down the water. “And I am sorry I am a responsible adult—at least today. I must insist we telephone whoever is watching out for you so that they do not worry.”
He looked at her for the first time. She was scrunched in the corner of the building, sitting on an upended five-gallon bucket. She was bundled up in one of those jackets that made everyone look like marshmallows even though the temperature was still fairly mild for early fall in Montana. He had not bothered with a coat when he headed out of his house. Her arms were wrapped mutinously around herself, so maybe the marshmallow effect was for something other than warmth. She’d been staring at him until he looked at her, but she couldn’t hold his gaze and shrank back farther in the corner.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked, curious. He was pretty sure that the Marrok, their Alpha, warned all the youngsters away from the big bad wolf.
She nodded. “You’re Asil. You’re the black wolf I saw on the last hunt. I can smell it.”
It had not been a moon hunt, those he no longer allowed himself; if the moon’s song was disturbing to those who were young, it dug in deep to those who were as old as he was. But he’d participated in the last training hunt, a few weeks ago. He was dark brown, not black, but he allowed that at night the difference was subtle, so he decided to let it pass.