Patricia Briggs - Fair Game

Charles stood frozen, his breath still. He was too far away. It would take him three leaps to get to Travis – and that was two leaps too many.

Les Heuter had raised his hands over his head – but he hadn’t let go of his gun.

‘Les Heuter, Travis Heuter, drop your weapons,’ said Goldstein. ‘This is over.’

No one moved.

Charles growled.

‘Drop your weapons,’ said Goldstein, and then he gave in to what must have been years of frustration and pushed it too hard. ‘You are done. We know who you are and you are going down. Make this easy on everyone.’

‘You drop your weapon,’ Travis screamed. ‘You fucking drop yours. You are nothing . Nothing but the impotent tool of a liberal government too weak to serve its people and protect them from these freaks.’ It sounded oddly like a memorized speech, like some of the phrases Charles Manson’s little harem had spouted. Maybe Travis Heuter had said it so often he didn’t have to think about it anymore. ‘You drop your weapon, or I’ll shoot her now and move on to you.’

Goldstein and Leslie were focused on Travis. They missed Les, missed the odd expression on his face that changed from desperation to satisfaction. They didn’t see him change his grip on his gun, drop down on one knee, and fire almost in the same single motion. Charles had seen it, but there was nothing he could do without risking Travis shooting Anna, and he wouldn’t do that.

‘Get down. Get down now,’ shouted Goldstein, but Les Heuter was already on the ground. ‘Flat on your face and lock your hands behind your head.’

Les had already done it before Goldstein had gotten out a word. The human’s reactions were too slow. Now Les was harmless and killing him would be more difficult. Had Charles had a gun at that moment, he would have killed Les anyway, because although Heuter had shot his uncle, it hadn’t stopped Travis Heuter from pulling the trigger. Travis Heuter, with a bullet hole right in the center of his forehead, had still managed to squeeze off a shot before he died.

Anna had collapsed in a heap on the bottom of the cage.

He’d hit her in the thigh and her blood pooled around her like a red blanket. Her nose was bent and swollen; Travis had broken something when he’d hit her with the stick.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said Heuter. ‘It was my uncle. He made us do it. He was crazy.’

Anna whined, and Charles quit hearing Les Heuter try to blame the dead for his crimes.

Charles wrenched the doors of the cage apart with his bare hands, not even realizing that he’d become human again until it registered that he had opposable thumbs to grip the skin-burning silver. He’d never been able to change that quickly before.

And he stank of fae magic. He jerked his eyes to Beauclaire, and the old fae, standing in the doorway next to Isaac, gave him a nod. Later, Charles would wonder at that; he didn’t know that there was a way for a fae to affect the change of a werewolf.

But Anna was hurt and there was no time to worry about what Beauclaire was right now. No time for the blind panic he felt or the way he wanted to tear into Travis Heuter’s dead body. He had to make sure that Anna would survive.

‘… stop the bleeding until we can get an ambulance out.’

Charles growled because Goldstein had come too close to his injured mate. But Isaac stepped in before Charles was driven to act.

‘Leave him alone; you don’t want to be anywhere near them right now.’ Smart wolf, that Isaac. Too young or not, Bran had been right to leave him in power. Charles would have killed anyone who got too close.

Threat to his helpless mate averted, Charles mostly ignored the words going on behind his back as he checked Anna over with gentle thoroughness.

‘Why is he wearing deerskin and beads?’ ‘Shut up and stay there until we get some cops in to read you your rights.’ ‘I mean, he’s Native American but how are we going to explain—’

When Charles changed without thinking, when he changed from wolf to human too fast, sometimes his clothes forgot what century he was supposed to be in. The soft deerskin felt comforting and familiar as he touched Anna’s poor nose. She licked his fingers nervously because he was hurting her.

First, the bleeding.

He reached down and ripped Travis’s sleeve off his arm, ignoring the squawk from the feds as he did so. But Anna growled when the makeshift bandage came close to her, so he dropped it. It made sense that she wouldn’t want his scent on her, but Charles’s buckskins wouldn’t work, leather not being absorbent at all.

‘I need—’ He didn’t get the words all the way out before Isaac said, ‘Catch,’ and tossed him one of the huge first aid kits all of the packs kept in their cars on Bran’s orders. Just because you could heal fast didn’t mean you could heal fast enough, the Marrok liked to say.

Charles banished his da’s words, wishing the ghosts of them didn’t linger in his ears. There was no reason to panic. She was bleeding freely, but the bullet had gone right through and was embedded in the floor, and there was no sign of arterial bleeding. But Brother Wolf wouldn’t be happy until she was well.

Once he had the bullet wound under control, he took a second good look at Anna’s head.

He bent down to touch his lips to her ears and asked her, ‘I can do it now, or you can wait until later. Their drugs don’t help much and they’ll have to rebreak …’

Now. Her voice was clear as a bell in his head – and he realized that their bond was open and strong.

For a moment he was breathless. When had that happened? When he’d accepted his role as justice once more? Accepted that there were other answers than death – but that death was the proper and fitting one? Or had it been when he’d seen blood and known that Travis had managed to hurt her even with her mate so close, when guilt and right and wrong had become only words next to the reality of his mate’s wound?

But Anna was hurt and there would be time to figure out what had happened later.

He used their bond to soak up her pain and take as much of it into himself as he could. Then he set the bone of her nose back where it needed to go before the werewolf’s ability to mend quickly made it heal crooked. She didn’t flinch, though he knew he couldn’t take all the pain from her.

Stop that, Anna scolded him. You don’t need to hurt because I do.

But I do, Charles replied, more honestly than he intended. I failed to keep you safe.

She huffed a laugh. You taught me to keep myself safe – a much better gift for your mate, I think. If you had not found me, I would have killed them all. But you came – and that is another, second gift. That you would come, even though I could have protected myself.

She was confident and it pleased him. So he didn’t think about the three experienced, tough wolves these men had killed at their leisure. Let her feel safe. So he didn’t argue with her about it, just ran gentle fingers through the ruff of her fur.

The ghosts are gone, she pronounced with regal certainty, and was asleep before he could answer her.

But he did anyway. ‘Yes.’

When Charles was a boy, every fall his grandfather had taken his people and met up with other bands of Indians, most of them fellow Flatheads, Tunaha, or other Salish bands, but sometimes a few Shoshone with whom they were friendly would travel with them. They would ride their horses east to hunt buffalo and prepare for the coming winter.

He was no longer a boy, and traveling east was not a treat anymore, not when it meant that he and his mate were back in a big city instead of settled into his home in the mountains of Montana. Three months had passed since he’d killed Benedict Heuter, and they had come back for his cousin’s sensational trial. Boston was beautiful this time of year – the trees showing off their fall colors. But the air still smelled of car exhaust and too many people.