Burn Bright

She leaped, cleared the bed of the truck, and took off running, presumably for the backhoe with Tag in it.

• • •

ANNA DROVE THE truck right up to the front door of the cabin and hopped out. By the time she had the tailgate down, Asil and Charles had come out of the cabin with their discoveries.

Between them they carried a small cedar chest, each holding on to one of the handles on either end. Impossible to see how heavy the box was—two werewolves could probably stroll around carrying a VW Bug from the bumpers and not show much strain. Balanced diagonally across the top of the chest and overhanging the sides was something—Anna was pretty sure it was the sword Jonesy had killed himself with—wrapped in a blanket.

They gently set the box down on the tailgate. Sage had rearranged the bodies so there would be some room, but neither she nor Anna had envisioned an entire cedar chest. Charles and Asil unhooked the tarp the rest of the way and rolled it back, working together as a silent team, one on either side of the truck. They were so apparently unconcerned with all the attention they were getting that Anna knew they were very conscious of the eyes on them.

They must have found the mother lode of fae magic. Anna glanced at the pack and saw that same realization on the faces around her: excitement, greed—and on the smartest of them—worry. Only an idiot would get excited about having something the lords of Faery might want.

Charles hopped up on the truck bed and redistributed the dead men again so there was room for the cedar chest. He set the wrapped thing that was almost certainly a sword down on the bed and hopped back out. Anna shut the tailgate, and he and Asil rolled the tarp back down and secured it.

Charles looked up. “I need not tell you how dangerous the cargo in the back of the truck is,” he said to the pack at large. “Neither Asil nor I know exactly what we found here. We’re taking it back and putting it in my da’s safe room, where it will stay until he gets back. The Marrok will dispose of it as he sees fit.”

After he spoke, he slowly panned his gaze over the gathering, meeting the eyes of each pack member until they looked away.

Silence hung powerfully in the air as the pack waited for Charles to say something else. But apparently, he’d said all he felt necessary because he held his peace.

Asil frowned at him, cleared his throat, and said, in a clear, cold voice that was missing his usual accent, “We do not need to remind any of you what would happen if the Gray Lords discovered that we found fae artifacts in Hester’s home. We lost two of our own here, and if I read the signs aright—and I always read the signs aright—we are about to find ourselves engaged in war with an unknown enemy. We do not need to add a battle with the Gray Lords on top of it.”

From the back of the crowd, Tag growled, “What he means is, shut our mouths or someone will come pay a visit.”

He bristled—and Anna was pretty sure that it was Asil’s implied threat that Tag was bristling at. Charles, she thought, hadn’t been wrong in his assessment that he’d said enough.

This was the kind of spark that caused wolves to fight within their packs—and could leave them with more bodies. Anna’s job was to prevent fights. On the other hand, she was her father’s daughter, and any civil-rights lawyer in the country would be on Tag’s side of this.

“No,” Leah said clearly. It felt as though everyone was holding their breaths. Even Tag paused, his mouth partially open—doubtless to say something that would increase the ugly energy in the clearing.

Into the silence, Leah said, with soft promise, “Asil will not be paying anyone any visits on this matter.”

Okay, thought Anna. Give the woman points for courage—if not for brains—in directly giving Asil such a shutdown. Especially since Anna knew, the pack knew, that Leah was scared spitless of the Moor.

“I won’t allow it,” Leah continued—not looking at Asil. “It isn’t necessary. No one here will make a move that would harm our pack. We all know the dangers of letting word of what Charles found in that cabin escape before Bran chooses. There is no need for threats. In protecting the pack, protecting what is ours, we are one. Asil was merely warning us of the danger—but I am certain”—she raised an eyebrow and looked at Asil, in that moment as cool and controlled as the Moor had been—“I am certain that he would not issue a threat, especially as it is not necessary.”

There was a long, pregnant pause.

Then Asil bowed formally to her. “As you say,” he said silkily.

Leah was lucky, Anna thought, that Asil’s anger was a cold thing, so he heard Leah’s argument and agreed with it. Only a fool would think that any of Bran’s pack would betray them, and Asil was no fool. He had just been too long an Alpha before coming here, and his ruling style differed a great deal from Bran’s.

And still there was tension in the air. Leah wasn’t the only wolf afraid of Asil. Because the pack might be filled with all the crazies Bran didn’t trust with any other Alpha, but it wasn’t filled with stupid people with death wishes—those ended up with the wildlings. Even Tag was afraid of Asil—if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have reacted to Asil’s threat so hotly.

“Can you—” Charles murmured to Anna without taking his eyes off the dramatis personae, “pull the truck far enough from the house that it won’t burn when we light Hester’s cabin but close enough that if anyone tries to get into it, we’ll see it?”

“Sure,” she said. Later, she thought. There will be time to tell him about the identity of the dead man later, when the pack isn’t ready to ignite along with Hester’s house.

There must have been something in her voice, though, because he gave her a sharp look. She pretended she didn’t see it and headed to the front of the truck.

The pack opened a path for her as she slowly drove away in a truck full of dead bodies, fae artifacts, and that weird, witchcrafted gun, which she had pulled out of her jeans and set on the bench seat of the truck. She tried to figure out just how far was close enough to make people think they would be spotted and too far for something from a burning house to explode and crash through the windshield. It was good to have something to focus on instead of the cold fingers of her past that were trying to unravel the core of the woman she’d become since coming to Aspen Creek, to this pack, to Charles.

In the end, she decided to pull the old truck next to Asil’s very expensive, brand-new Mercedes SUV, reasoning that no one would risk the double whammy of both Charles and Asil—and that “no one” probably included the fire they were going to set.

Once she was parked, she stayed in the cab, though. She watched Charles say something to Leah, watched the pack start moving in an organized fashion. Asil and Tag working together, their former antagonism … not so much forgotten as pushed behind them. The wolves could do that, she’d noticed. They were so much creatures of the present that as long as their human halves stayed out of the picture, quarrels that were over and done with stayed that way.

From the driver’s seat of Charles’s truck, Anna saw Tag step into the cabin with one of the long-nosed lighters more commonly used for lighting barbecues than setting house fires (she fervently hoped). A moment later, orange light flared in the window—more brilliant because the dusk was quickly fading into darkness. Tag came out of the front door as the flames licked hungrily up the old wood of the cabin.

Anna should be out there, she knew, instead of huddled in the truck where she could draw comfort from the scent of her mate without any of the inconveniences of his actual presence. He saw too much, her Charles did.

She really didn’t want to tell him she knew one of the dead.

• • •

BEFORE ASIL GAVE in to the impulse to make Leah pay for being right, Charles said, “We should light the cabin.” He paused, “Did anyone think to call the Forest Service?”

“I made the call before we came here,” Leah said. “I told them that the Aspen Creek volunteer fire department had decided to burn an old cabin that posed a fire hazard. They weren’t happy, but it’s on private property, and there isn’t a ban on open fires”—someone said “yet,” and she nodded at the speaker to acknowledge their accuracy “—so there wasn’t much they could do.”