Patricia Briggs - Hunting Ground

He could handle Arthur. Arthur had not been wolf enough to take Chastel. But Anna and Alan Choo were here, and they needed him to keep them safe as best he could-and that meant calling in help.

“You were looking for lockpicks,” said Arthur.

“Yes.”

“I have some in there.” Arthur tipped his head to indicate his treasure room. “I’ve been packing things up-I won’t be coming back here.”

Charles followed him in. It looked as if Arthur had been doing exactly as he said. The tapestries were off the wall, set into two-by-four frames to keep them stable and slid into the kind of plywood rough-lumber shipping crate museums used to transport artwork. A smaller wooden crate had already been sealed. The only thing left out was the box that held the sword.

“I understand the rest,” Charles said, running his fingers over the wood that protected the old sword. “But how did you bribe Dana into breaking her word?”

He looked up and watched Arthur go very still. The British wolf… altered subtly. Lost the aura of grief almost entirely.

“The same way I got the vampires to do my bidding. Offered her something she wanted.” Arthur smiled. “Even that wouldn’t have worked if you hadn’t ticked her off.”

“How did I do that?” As soon as Charles asked the question, he remembered Dana’s extreme reaction to the painting his father had sent her. It was lost, that place that had once been hers, and his father meant to gift her with a remembrance-but maybe she’d thought it was a taunt, instead.

Arthur threw up his hands theatrically. “How should I know? Fae are easily offended. As for what I offered her-” He motioned to the sword case.

“That is not Excalibur,” Charles said. “When she discovers you don’t have it, she’ll be… offended.”

Arthur ran his fingers gently over the display case-and slid open a dark chunk of wood on the end. “There is something to be said about hiding things in plain sight.”

The sword he removed from the hidden compartment wasn’t the one that had been on display-though it looked very like. Both were swordsmen’s weapons rather than movie props. As soon as this once-hidden sword left the case, the hair on the back of Charles’s neck came to attention.

Excalibur or not, there was no denying that the sword in Arthur’s hand was a fae blade: he could feel its magic on his skin, could smell it.

Arthur was a swordsman, Charles knew. He’d studied fencing and had received the same sort of martial training that Charles himself had. Arthur’s balance was right and his grip-neither too tight nor too loose-showed all that training had not been wasted.

He hadn’t been worried about a sword, but that sword… Charles was a dead man, most likely. But Angus would be coming with help. Enough help that even with the sword, Anna should be safe. All he had to do was delay as long as possible. And Arthur always had loved to perform.

“Anna won’t go with you,” he told Arthur. “She won’t stand by your side. She’ll wait until you take your attention off her for a moment, then she’ll gut you.”

Arthur smiled. “You really don’t believe in reincarnation, do you? Or fate. I came here to kill Chastel and your father. Chastel I had an answer for. For your father, I needed more.”

“Why my father?”

Arthur looked at him as though he was stupid. “Because I am he, of course. King Arthur. It is my destiny to be the high king.”

Madness indeed, thought Charles

“But my father didn’t come.”

“No,” agreed Arthur. “Fate is an odd thing. Do you know just who Dana is?”

“Obviously you are going to tell me,” said Charles dryly.

“I wonder if your father does. This is what I mean by fate-that I who was Arthur would find Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, here. I knew a couple of decades ago that she was here in Seattle -the first time I saw her, in fact. I knew that there would come a time that it was important-so I bought Sunny this house.”

Obviously, Charles thought, it wasn’t going to be hard to keep Arthur monologuing.

Arthur’s smile turned sly. “I didn’t find Excalibur in an archaeological dig-though that’s what I was doing at the time. At Cambridge I made friends with a boy whose family was old Cornish gentry. He invited me home for Christmas. I discovered that they’d been guarding a treasure for so many generations that they’d forgotten all about it. It took me to find it again. It was hidden under the flagstone in the carriage house. A sword in the stone-so to speak.” He laughed at his own cleverness.

“The boy’s older sister looked enough like Dana to be her twin.” With his free hand, he rubbed his thumb over his first two fingers. “A little research, and insight becomes knowledge. So I knew when I saw Dana I had the perfect thing to bribe her with.” He swung the sword gently. “She had no idea it wasn’t resting beneath the stone where she’d placed it until I showed it to her-a photograph. I am not stupid.”

“I could disagree with you on that,” Charles said. “You’ve done a number of stupid things that I can pick out. But trying to get the best of a Gray Lord is the stupidest by far. You never had any intention of giving her the sword.”

Arthur bobbed his head-a polite agreement. “The first deal would have been honest. Excalibur isn’t the only thing I discovered there. I had other weapons, you know. I offered her the dagger. She refused-and made it clear she would hunt me ‘to the ends of the earth,’ I believe. I know her, you see, but she doesn’t know me. Doesn’t believe I am Arthur.”

Charles knew which Arthur he was talking about.

“But my father didn’t come.”

“No, you did. And you brought her with you.”

“Her?”

“Gwenevere. My white lady.”

And then Arthur proved that he wasn’t as stupid as Charles had started to believe. Because without telegraphing his move by so much as a breath, while Charles was still absorbing the idea that Arthur wanted Anna because he thought she was his, Arthur struck.

The sword in his stomach didn’t hurt, just robbed Charles of his strength. Of his ability to move.

He heard Anna cry out, but his attention was on the icy cold that was sucking him down.

As his legs collapsed, Arthur followed him down. “A swift fight,” Arthur said, “is the best kind of fight. I know you. When your father didn’t come, I was so disappointed. But when I saw her… saw my Gwenevere, I knew.” He grimaced. “She was mine, and you had her, just like before. I could have killed you cleanly, you know. But I want you to suffer. Lancelot.”

“There was no Lancelot, fool.”

For a moment Charles thought that he’d said those words, he’d thought them so hard. But the voice was a woman’s.

Dana.

Arthur jerked the sword free and stumbled back until he regained his feet. As soon as the steel left his body, the coldness dissipated. Charles put a hand to his belly to staunch the bleeding. It hadn’t gone all the way through-Arthur had wanted him to suffer-so if he could keep from bleeding to death, Brother Wolf could heal them. The wound was small enough to heal fast.

Sharp steel, Brother Wolf told him, cuts swiftest, hurts least, heals soonest.

Charles gave the pack magic a little tug and received a bounty in return. He wasn’t the Alpha, but his father could grant him help if he chose. And Bran was a generous leader. Pain faded. No need to advertise that he was not dying, though. Not yet. He stayed collapsed, out of the way. Don’t pay attention to me, I’m not a threat. Charles could become less noticeable if he had to, though not as well as Bran-his da had the technique perfected. It is easier to go unnoticed, Bran liked to say, when everyone is focused on something else.