Patricia Briggs - Fair Game

She wasn’t hurting anymore.

And now that he could think instead of panic, he knew what Anna had done. Who knew better what a shift felt like than another werewolf? She was smart, his mate. The wolf was tougher than the human and better able to defend herself, so she’d shifted to her lupine form.

She didn’t need immediate rescuing; she wasn’t hurting now, so he could take a moment. Brother Wolf was all for finding where they had her and killing everyone involved. Charles was okay with the last half, but thought that resting until he wasn’t breathing like a steam engine would make it more possible. He dropped to the ground under a bunch of lilac bushes near a sign that read WESTWOOD DANCE STUDIO: ESTABLISHED 2006.

Charles would go in when he was at his best, not panting like a greyhound after a race. Brother Wolf wasn’t happy, but he had learned that sometimes his human half was wiser – and sometimes not.

High above him, the moon sang. Tomorrow she would be full and there would be no ignoring her. Tonight she kept him company as he rose to go hunt down those who would harm his mate.

Benedict shoved the stick at Anna in a quick, jerky motion designed to fool the eye. Charles occasionally sparred with Asil using Chinese qiang , and they used the same sort of movements, twirling the spears and making the ends bob around.

Maybe if she’d been human, it would have worked.

Instead Anna dodged, then grabbed the end just behind the hypodermic when the stick pushed past her. She twisted her head while she clamped her teeth on it.

If it had been a human holding the spear, she’d have pulled it from Benedict’s hands. If she had been a real wolf, she couldn’t have damaged it. But, though she was small for a werewolf, she was huge for a wolf and stronger than a wolf her size would have been. The end snapped and the hypodermic fell at her feet.

She had a weapon – just let them try to get it out of the cage while she was in her wolf skin. And when she was human, she could use it. She smiled at the old man, letting her tongue loll out at him. Take that.

I am not anyone’s victim, not anymore.

Benedict dropped the stick and jumped back – and she smelled fear. She showed her teeth to him and growled, just a little. A taunt.

Uncle Travis took four big strides to reach Benedict and slapped him hard in the face with the flat of his hand. ‘Stop that. Stop that. She is an abomination, but we have killed abominations before. She’s a prisoner and weak – you are a Heuter. We don’t cower before disease-ridden monsters.’

Benedict started to say something, then stiffened and raised his head. ‘He’s coming.’

‘Who’s coming?’ asked Travis.

Benedict changed without answering. Between one breath and the next he became something … fantastical.

Anna expected him to be ugly in his fae form, for the outside to represent the inside, but she should have known better. She’d seen the white stag.

A wide rack of antlers, snow-white and silver tipped, rose like a crown from his head – which was not quite human. The eyes were right and the mouth, but the rest of the face was sharper, elongated in an oddly graceful manner.

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.