Burn Bright

CHAPTER 12

One of the most amazing things about the past few days, Anna thought, was that the whole mountainside didn’t go up in flames when the skinwalker burned. They didn’t have a fire line, they didn’t have a backhoe, and that bear went up with a ton more heat than Hester’s house had.

The bear burned to ashes in about five minutes, smelling disturbingly—given the nature of the beast—like bacon as it did so. When the fire had ended, there was only a pile of bones left on soil that looked as though a molten rock had pressed into it and left it blackened and shiny. The bones themselves weren’t blackened—they were white and clean, and they belonged to a human.

Wellesley knelt and pressed his hand on top of the skull—and the bones melted into . . . well, into nothing.

Anna thought of his story, of the spirit of the hurricane who had called this man its brother. She thought about what it had said about Wellesley. Something about how Wellesley carried the blood of earth magic and was descended for a thousand years from a lineage of priestesses, whatever that meant—other than being able to resist a blood-magic curse for as long as he had.

No one said anything about going after Sage. They weren’t in any shape for a pursuit—and besides, they had all heard the sound of Sage’s SUV starting up and driving away.

Tiredly, quietly, thoughtfully, they took the trail down to the cars.

ANNA AND CHARLES stayed in their own house that night—Bran’s orders be damned. Charles looked like he’d gone forty rounds with a meat grinder. She wasn’t going to bring him into the middle of pack HQ looking like that. He wouldn’t sleep there when he was hurt, for one thing.

And she needed to get him alone.

Anna fed him frozen pizzas while she worked on something with more protein that would take longer. And she joined him in eating the pizzas and the steaks.

Anna wasn’t going to say anything, but her mouth said, “She called you Charlie.” It had bothered her—that another woman had a pet name for Anna’s mate. She hadn’t realized how much it bothered her until she said it out loud.

Charles put down his fork and nodded. “She had a bruise that covered most of her face when Da introduced us. She was terrified and half-starved—which is why the bruise was still there. I let it go—and she continued to use the name. I thought at the time that it was a prod—a check to see if we were as bad as her first pack. If we would hit her for not following the rules.”

“And now?” Anna asked.

He shook his head and started eating his steak again. “That might still have been the case. She was brutalized—no question about that. Even if she volunteered . . . and I don’t think a skinwalker asks for volunteers any more than any other witch who uses black magic does.”

Anna thought about that for a while. “So maybe she didn’t want to betray us.”

“Anna,” Charles said in a gentle voice, “she was here for twenty years. She could have come to my father for help at any time. She gave Hester, Jonesy, and Jericho to the skinwalker.”

“And then there was Devon,” Anna said.

They had found Devon’s body when they returned to the cars. Evidently, he’d decided to go stop her. She’d killed him as painfully as she could manage without delaying too long. The Sage that she had known would never have done that.

“There never was a Sage,” Anna told him.

He put his hand on her knee and kept eating.

He was healing as she watched him. Bruises fading, cuts mending themselves.

“It almost killed you,” she said. And she hadn’t meant to say that, either. She tried to lighten the stark terror she heard in her voice with a little humor. “No more fighting bears for you.”

He set down his fork and squeezed her knee. “I killed it,” he told her. “It was dead and rotting when I turned my back. It used magic to conceal itself, or it would never have taken me by surprise.”

“No more fighting dead things,” she said, but her voice wobbled on the last word.

He reached for her—and she crawled on his lap, burrowing into his arms. He rested his chin on the top of her head.

“I will probably have gray hairs tomorrow from the moment when I saw you throwing rocks at the bear,” he told her. “No more throwing rocks at bears for you.”

Eventually, she slid back into her seat, and they both ate some more. When neither of them could eat another bite, she left the mess in the kitchen and they leaned on each other all the way to their bedroom.

In the darkness, while he slept, she cried silently on his shoulder—tears that she would never have allowed herself had he been awake. He worried too much over her tears. But in the darkness of their room, surrounded by his warmth and his scent, it seemed the proper time for tears.

They could have lost him today. She wondered, If the skinwalker had taken him, would she have noticed? Would she have, like his grandfather’s uncle, lived for months without understanding that Charles was dead?

Skinwalker, the old medicine man’s voice rolled through her head. Though she didn’t think he’d ever used that word in the . . . in the vision that Brother Wolf had sent her.

She cried because she didn’t know what else to do with the roil of fear and just-missed grief that was bound up in the thought of what the skinwalker could have done.

And when she was done with that, she cried for the woman she had thought was her friend. Thinking back over all the time she’d known Sage, Anna couldn’t decide if Sage had been very good at deception or just very good at avoiding things that were lies. Maybe Charles would know. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.

She cried for Asil. For the romance with Sage that had been something else and for the friend that he had lost.

When they had found Devon, Asil went very still. He picked up Devon’s body without a word. He laid the bloody mess on the leather of the backseat of his Mercedes without any hesitation. Then he’d sat in the back with Devon’s head on his lap. He had not protested when Anna got in the driver’s seat, with Charles taking shotgun.

They had taken both of them, Asil and Devon’s body, to Bran’s house, where the rest of the pack would take care of them. Then she and Charles had gotten into Charles’s truck and driven home.

Anna cried for Devon, too, though she hadn’t known him well. She’d never seen his human form—only known him through the stories of others. Asil had liked and respected him—and goodness knew Asil didn’t respect very many people on the planet. Bran. The mysteriously amnesiac Sherwood Post. She couldn’t think of anyone else offhand.

Jericho, the real Jericho, she had never met. Charles said that he was pretty sure that he’d been taken the same time all of the enemy soldiers had died. Hard to tell if those men had been killed by Jericho or by the skinwalker, to draw Charles to Jericho’s home. She thought that they would probably never know for sure.

Hester, Jonesy, Jericho, and Devon—they’d lost so many in a very short time. Anna put her ear to Charles’s chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

Suddenly, every muscle in his body tensed, and he sat up. He gave her a wide-eyed look. It seemed like an overreaction to her tears.

“Leah saved me,” he said in a disgruntled voice.

She couldn’t help it—she laughed. And then she cried a little more.

He made love to her—which helped both her tears and his ruffled feathers.

But before he went to sleep, he murmured, “Leah is never going to let me live this down.”

“That’s okay,” Anna told him. “If you were dead, you wouldn’t be bothered by anything Leah had to say. I hope she torments you good and proper.”

He laughed then, a warm, sleepy sound that followed her into her dreams.

BRAN PARKED THE rented silver Camry on the road outside his house—there was no room for it any nearer. He left his suitcase where it was and walked home.

The lights told him that everyone was awake. He felt the subtle expectation that told him the pack could feel him, even if they didn’t know what was causing their restlessness. Standing on the porch, he straightened his shoulders and opened the bonds, accepting back the responsibility that he had handed to his son.

For a moment, the sensation was overwhelming. He took a step sideways to balance himself. Then everything settled back into place, and it was as if he had never left—except for the missing pieces—no Hester with her tie to Jonesy, who lit up Bran’s feel of that tie like a nuclear explosion; no Jericho, who could have taught Tag a thing or two about berserker fighting; no Devon, whose sweetness had survived the years that had robbed him of all else.

As Bran walked into the room, an expectant hush filled the air.

Juste, looking exhausted, rose from his seat and went down on one knee before Bran. “We have failed you, sire.”

Yes. They ran their packs differently in Europe.

“Get up,” he said, trying not to sound irritated. It had, after all, been he who had failed them. But this pack could not deal with doubts about their leader, so he could not apologize to them—as much as it would have relieved his guilt to do so.

“Get up, man,” said Tag. “We don’t bend our knees around here. If he wants your throat, you’ll know it. Otherwise, we can say we’re sorry while standing on our feet.”

Bran looked around the room—Asil met his gaze with wry sympathy. According to the pithy report Charles had left on Bran’s message app, Asil didn’t know that Bran’s absence was because he thought Leah was their traitor. But Asil was a wise old wolf, and it looked as though he’d worked things out.

“I think,” Bran said, “under the circumstances, we are lucky we didn’t lose more of the pack. Thank you.”

They had Devon’s body laid out on the bar, the dead wolf curled up as if he were merely asleep. Bran bent down and kissed his forehead.

For a moment, he saw a wild, laughing young man, full of joy and adventures. “Come on, Bran,” he’d said. “It’ll be fun. We’re all werewolves—let’s join the Wild Hunt!”

Tag, standing at Bran’s shoulder, said, “Do you remember the day he talked us all into trying to find the Wild Hunt?”

Bran’s memories sometimes leaked out through the pack bonds if he wasn’t careful.

Bran shook his head. “Reckless idiot.”

“And so you told him,” agreed Tag. “But you came with us anyway.”

That had been . . . six hundred years ago, give or take fifty. And now, of those who had run that night, only Bran and Tag were left.

“So I did,” agreed Bran.

He stayed there for a little while, feeling his presence settle the pack down until they left by twos and threes, going home to rest. Until only he was left.

He found Leah in her bedroom. She was curled up in a chair, reading a magazine that she put down when he entered the room.

“You,” Bran said, “I can apologize to. I thought you were our traitor.”

“I?” she said. Her expression of astonishment changed to comprehension. “That’s why you left. If I had betrayed you, betrayed the pack, you’d have had to kill me.”

He nodded. “I can’t do that. You know why. So I left it to Charles.” He apologized again. “I am sorry.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Whatever for? I’m flattered that you thought that I was our traitor. It would take a lot of ingenuity and ability to be this close to you and betray you.”

She didn’t lie. But he knew her well enough to read the hurt in the set of her jaw.

“I should have known better,” he said. “You have always been driven by the good of the pack.”

She shrugged. “I never suspected Sage. That’s the nature of traitors, isn’t it?”

She stood up and strolled toward him, leaned into him, and kissed his mouth softly. “I accept your apologies—though I don’t need them. You look tired. Come to bed.”

He unbuttoned his shirt, and she took it from him to put in the laundry hamper. She came up behind him and put her warm, skilled hands on his shoulders and kneaded them as she kissed his spine.

“Come to bed,” she said again.

He did.

WHEN CHARLES GOT up, he checked his cell phone and found he’d slept thirty hours.

Charles showered, brushed his teeth, and braided his hair, listening to his da, Anna, and Wellesley in the kitchen—cooking breakfast, if his nose was any judge. Charles left the bedroom, sauntered into the kitchen, and wrapped his arms around his mate from behind while she scrambled eggs. He kissed her ear.

Charles looked up at his da, who was leaning against the wall next to the back door with his arms crossed over his chest. Bran Cornick, the Marrok, leader of most of the werewolves in North America, looked tired.

“Morning, Da,” he said. “Wellesley.”

The artist smiled at him from the other side of the kitchen, where he was buttering toast. “Good morning, Charles. Your timing is excellent. Your father was just going to tell us why he was so certain it was Leah who was our traitor.”

“You were right,” Anna said. “It was in the files Boyd sent over.”

Charles glanced at his da—who gave him a rueful smile.

“There were interviews Boyd conducted with each of his pack members about Leo’s dealings with our enemy. One of Boyd’s people overheard a conversation about ten years ago. One of our enemy’s people said something about a female werewolf they were getting information from,” Da said.

“So not the financials?” Charles had been sure there had been something in the financials. Something more substantial than an overheard conversation that might or might not be relevant.

His da grimaced. “It was more damning than I made it sound. The information was something that only Leah and I knew.”

“And maybe Leah’s best . . . not best friend. I’m not sure Leah has a best friend. But best confidant, anyway,” Anna said.

Bran nodded.

“You didn’t make it to Africa before you set me up to kill Leah—and”—Charles hesitated, then shrugged—“whatever happened after that?”

“I had plane tickets,” Bran said. “But the monster”—he tapped himself in the chest—“wouldn’t allow me to leave. My wolf decided we needed to protect Leah. I had a time keeping him contained in a hotel in Spokane. That’s as far as I could get.”

His da’s belief in Leah’s guilt had really thrown him for a loop.

“Do you know where Sage is?”

“Not at present,” said Wellesley peacefully. “But I’m sure she will turn up.”

“You told me,” Anna said, “when we were running up the trail, that you remembered what happened at Rhea Springs.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

Anna made an impatient sound, and Wellesley grinned at her.

“So what happened to you?” she said.

“After my wife died, I traveled a bit,” he said, “as men did in that time. And I found surcease of a sort by helping other people. I garnered a reputation among the powerless and the poor.”

“He was a hero,” said Da. “He healed people. He killed people who needed killing. He saved people who needed saving.”

“You knew that when you sent me to him?” asked Charles.

Bran nodded.

“And I caught the attention of a woman who called herself Daisy Hardesty,” Wellesley said.

“Hardesty was Sage’s last name when she came to us,” Charles said softly. “Before she changed it to Carhardt.”

Wellesley nodded. “Daisy owned Rhea Springs. Everyone who lived there was a member of her family. People came from all over the country to be healed of their disease. Some of them disappeared—including the brother of a woman I’d helped. She got word to me, and I went to investigate.”

He grimaced. “I thought I was walking into a den of murdering thieves, and instead, I found a town practicing blood magic. There was a battle. People died—some by my hand. I hurt her, and she cursed me. I think she assumed the authorities would take care of my continued existence for her, and she didn’t need to kill me herself to profit from it once her spell was in place.”

“Instead,” Anna said, “Charles came and spirited you away.”

“Indeed,” said Wellesley.

SAGE DROVE TO Missoula. She’d changed to her second spare set of clothing—Devon’s blood had made her look like the victim of a serial killer. So she stopped in a mall and bought two or three sets of clothing with cash. She had several credit cards and a hefty bank account under the name Samantha Harding. But she didn’t want to take chances.

She was certain no one knew about those accounts. Very certain. Still . . . Charles Cornick was good with electronic money. Better to wait until Grandma Daisy contacted her before she used credit under any name.

She stole a car from the airport’s long-term parking lot, after switching plates with another car of the same make and color. Driving a silver Toyota Camry was as close to invisible as she could get.

Deciding that she’d best avoid the bigger towns for a day or two, she pulled into a hotel in Deer Lodge. Not that Montana had many “bigger” towns. She’d get an apartment in Billings, she decided, getting out of “her” car.

The hotel wasn’t happy about the cash, but her spare ID and the fact that she didn’t fit any criminal or terrorist profile helped her—as did her story that she was trying to get away from her husband, running to her sister in Canada.

People always liked to feel like they were helping someone escape something bad—especially if they didn’t have to risk anything or make any effort to do it.

The water in the shower was hot, and the sheets were clean. She slept deeply.

And when she awoke, she was not alone.

“Hello, Hello,” said Asil.

Charles was following his mate into his da’s kitchen when his da grabbed him and pulled him into the office. And that was how neither he nor the Marrok attended the first and last pack barbecue and music social.

By the time Charles came out of the office, Leah was just wiping down the countertops, and no one was around.

“I know we were in there for a few hours,” he told Leah, “but weren’t there supposed to be activities until dark?”

It was not dark yet.

She looked at him. “Tag took out his bagpipes and played ‘The Wild Hunt.’ The new one, by The Tallest Man on Earth.”

Tag had gone through a new-folk phase, and The Tallest Man on Earth had been one of his favorites.

“On bagpipes?” He tried to imagine it. The effect would have been a lot different than the original. Especially with Tag playing. Tag could play—but he liked to embellish.

“It wasn’t that bad,” she said. “Not that good, mind you. But not that bad.”

“It didn’t drive everyone away?” Bagpipes weren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Especially if most of the people here were werewolves—bagpipes were loud. His da’s office had some serious soundproofing if they hadn’t heard bagpipes.

“No,” she said. “It made everyone want to go for a hunt. My backyard is full of piles of clothing. Anna and I pulled all the instruments inside—and then we turned the sprinklers on.”

She smiled in satisfaction—and Charles grinned at the thought of the two indignant women plotting how to get back at the people who spoiled the musical part of their barbecue.

He and Leah happened to be looking at each other when they smiled. Leah looked startled, and he imagined he did, too. It had probably happened, but he didn’t remember the two of them ever smiling at each other.

It would probably be a long time before it happened again.

“I take it that this will be a onetime thing?” he ventured.

She shrugged. “Maybe. Anna suggested we make Tag plan it next time.”

He started to go, but Brother Wolf prodded him.

“I have never told you thank you,” he said.

Her eyebrows raised—though he knew very well she understood what he was talking about.

“If you had not come back,” he told her, “the skinwalker would have killed me.”

She folded up the wet cloth and hung it over the faucet to dry. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “You weren’t dead when we got there. If there is one thing that I have learned over the time I’ve spent here with your father, it is that it doesn’t do to underestimate you.”

He folded his arms and looked at his father’s mate, and for the first time, the reason he was glad he had not had to execute her for being a traitor had more to do with Leah and less to do with his da.

“Thank you,” he said, “for coming back to help when I needed you.”

She considered it a moment. “I didn’t do it for you.” She opened a drawer and took out a clean dish towel and set it out beside the sink. With her back to him, she said, “I do not like you. I have never liked you—and it is not your fault. He loves you. And he does not love me.”

She turned around and looked at him with clear blue eyes and an expressionless face.

Charles thought about how his da’s wolf had fought Bran to a standstill in Spokane, unwilling to leave Leah to her fate. When Bran knew that the safest place for everyone, if Leah had been their traitor, would have been Africa. His father, who had controlled that wolf for a very, very long time.

Maybe it hadn’t been just the wolf who couldn’t leave.

“What,” Charles said carefully, because he tried very hard not to interfere in his da’s marriage, “would be different if he loved you?”

She stared at him. “You cryptic son of a bitch,” she said.

And that’s why he didn’t interfere in his da’s marriage.

“Do you know where Anna is?”

“She left,” Leah said coolly, as if the brief moment of accord over wet clothing had not happened. “I presume she went home.”

HE FOUND HER working her little gelding in the arena—she pointedly ignored him. Anna stiffened a little, though, and when she asked the gelding for a transition from canter to trot, she bumped down on his back, off balance.

The cheery little gray took a few more strides—and when it was obvious she wasn’t fixing matters, he stopped.

“You forgot to sit a couple of strides before you started posting,” Charles said cautiously, climbing on top of the arena fence. If she was mad at him, greeting her with an instruction seemed to be a bad way to make things right—but he couldn’t help himself.

Rather than responding—or trying it again—she walked Heylight over to where Charles sat, and said, “Think carefully over your next answer. Your father’s life might just depend on it.”

He met her eyes, but he couldn’t tell how serious she was. “All right,” he said.

“Did he pull you into his study so neither of you had to participate tonight?”

“I will answer that,” Charles said. “But first let me say that the pack has been wounded by Sage and by the death of the wildlings. Badly wounded in some cases.”

Asil had disappeared for a few days. When he returned, he had retreated to his roses and only come out when Kara went and got him.

Bran had been shaken badly—first discovering that they had a traitor, then that business with Mercy’s kidnapping, then believing that Leah was their traitor. But the worst issue, as far as his da’s confidence was concerned, was the way Sage’s betrayal had totally blindsided him.

“This party was just what the pack needed—Wild Hunt and all,” Charles told her. “Did Asil go with them?”

Anna nodded. “He said someone had to mind the children.”

“Da isn’t at a point, yet, where a good run would do him any good. If he had gone out, no one would have played. And they needed to play.”

Anna pursed her lips, her body swaying a little as the gelding shifted his weight. “Okay,” she said. “I can see that. What about you?”

“I would have loved to go chase the Wild Hunt,” Charles said truthfully. “But Wellesley sent my father a bunch of names and social security numbers. So I spent the afternoon working.”

Wellesley was keeping his home in the Marrok’s pack. But he’d asked, and received permission, to go out hunting witches. He’d left a few days ago with freshly minted identification, credit cards (which he now knew how to use), and a mission to drive him.

“What did you find?” she asked.

“This is bigger than the skinwalker—or at least bigger than just one skinwalker. It looks like the Hardesty family has managed to stay under everyone’s radar. They own a fast-food chain, large tracts of land, and a few buildings in New York City. And they are witches. The first powerful witch family for three hundred years—that we know of, at least.”

Heylight threw his head up and blew, as if challenging a strange horse. Anna petted him.

“And they are aimed at us?” she said in a small voice.

Charles nodded. “Looks like. But maybe not. Asil—” He sighed. “Asil found Sage.”

“No wonder he’s been troubled,” Anna said somberly. Charles knew he didn’t have to tell her that Sage was dead.

He nodded. “Asil told Da that the skinwalker was chasing down rumors that Wellesley, who was once Frank Bright, was here. She had targeted him originally—back in the thirties—because she knew about the collar spell. That was the main thing she wanted. But once she was here and she captured Jericho, the skinwalker thought she might try to take over this pack—and use it as a weapon against another branch of the family.”

“Sage told Asil all of that?” Anna asked.

Charles shrugged.

Anna liked Asil. And even if it made Brother Wolf crazy, Charles was not going to interfere with that unless he had to. When she was ready to hear about how much of a monster Asil could be, she could ask him. Or Da. But Charles expected that she wouldn’t.

She looked toward the tree-covered mountains, and they were worth looking at. “You know?” she said. “I have been wondering what I’m going to do with my life. But meeting some of the wildlings taught me something.”

“What’s that?” When he looked at her with his grandfather’s gift, he could see the connections that centered in her: connections from the horse, from the trees, from the mountains—and from him. She was so beautiful.

“I may not know, right now, what I want to do with my life. But I have a long time to figure it out. I decided—at the party actually—that learning some things is a great way to start. Before I came out to ride, I signed myself up for online classes.” She frowned at him. “Do you speak Japanese?”

Brother Wolf said, No.

Charles laughed at his wretched tone. Brother Wolf did not want to disappoint Anna.

A wolf’s cry echoed from the mountain behind their house—and before it died away, it was answered by many throats. They had not found prey, Charles could tell, just joy in the run.

“Hey, pretty lady,” he said, leaning forward. “Does that horse sidepass?”

She gave him a demure smile. “Maybe,” she said.

“Why don’t you try it?” he asked.

She stepped the gelding sideways until he stood next to the fence, and raised herself in her stirrups. Charles had to bend down some, because her gelding was really short, but it was worth it.

Kissing Anna was worth however much effort he had to make.

We will learn Japanese, said Brother Wolf.