Burn Bright
Page 35“The monsters need somewhere to run,” Anna said.
Wellesley rose easily to his feet. “Indeed,” he agreed.
“You made a valid point, Asil,” Anna said firmly. She wasn’t sure that Wellesley’s rising to his feet was anything good. Her wolf was beginning to get agitated. Which valid point had she been talking about? She grabbed one at random, jumping back twenty minutes of conversation to do it. “I mean, when you noted that you’d have done a better job of the mess at Hester’s. If the intent was to abduct Hester.”
“Interesting,” said Asil. “What other intent could they have had?”
“They could have wanted her dead—and muddied the waters of motivation by implying that it was a bigger operation than a simple assassination,” Wellesley offered. “Or they could have wanted Jonesy dead.”
“Or they could have wanted to know where all our lone wolves, our powerful and vulnerable damaged wolves are,” said Anna slowly. They asked about the wildlings, Jonesy’s note had said. Charles had told her that there were wolves out here that had dangerous knowledge—things other people would kill to know. “Surmising that we would have to go out and warn them.” It only made logical sense, as long as you knew enough about how the pack worked, how the wildlings worked to know that a phone call was probably not going to do the job.
“We weren’t followed,” said Asil.
“On NCIS, they use satellites and can pick out individuals in guerilla-troop ground movements,” Anna told him.
“What is this NCIS?” asked Asil.
“They also have a mass-spec that can look at a clump of mud off a shoe and tell Abby the cross street it came from with no error. And it only takes five minutes,” said Wellesley dryly. “Mass-specs don’t work like that.”
Apparently, Wellesley watched TV. And knew what a mass-spec was and how it worked. This conversation could not get more surreal.
“It’s a TV show,” Anna told him. “About the Naval Criminal Investigative Unit. It’s a mix of mystery and military thriller.”
“A TV show,” Asil said, disdainfully.
Wellesley grinned, ducked his head, and raised a hand to high-five Anna.
There was a crystalline moment when she understood that this wasn’t a good idea. Wellesley clearly had some issues. All of the werewolves had a bit of multiple personality disorder—the human half and the wolf half sometimes existed in a state of conflict. Charles and Brother Wolf were a functional demonstration of how separate the wolf spirit and the human could be. But her mate and his wolf existed in harmony.
Wellesley and his wolf were not functional at all. Getting close enough to touch him when he had spent the last half hour switching back and forth between normal and creepy was stupid.
And still, she was the mate of Charles Cornick, who was second in the Marrok’s pack. If she let that friendly gesture hang, that would be quite a statement—one she did not want to make.
She stepped around Asil and slapped Wellesley’s upraised hand with her own.
Anna was a werewolf. She had been working out with Charles virtually since he’d brought her to Montana. Her reaction time was good; she was quicker than a lot of the wolves.
And she had no time to respond as Wellesley’s hand closed over her wrist, and he plowed into her like a grizzly bear, sending them both to the floor. She hit the hard-packed dirt floor underneath his not-inconsiderable weight. He wrapped himself around her, his body shaking. Her stomach lurched with memories that she thought were long behind her.
Something hit the ground right next to her ear, startling her out of her panic. She turned to see that Asil had buried a knife … a sword … something with a beautifully crafted hilt in the dirt. The blade was only visible for about a quarter of an inch.
Wellesley hadn’t attacked her … hadn’t meant to attack her, anyway. He was trying to get as close as he could while sobbing wildly and muttering something in a language she couldn’t understand.
“Omega,” said Asil quietly, he crouched beside her, his face only a few feet away from hers. “I should have stopped you from touching him. My wife, she had better control of what she was. No one would have understood what she was, or been affected by her by a casual touch unless she wanted them to.”
“What do I do?” she whispered, partly so that she wouldn’t startle Wellesley into anything more violent. But mostly because her throat was so dry with fear and remembered horror that she couldn’t have made a louder sound if she tried.
“Stay still,” he said. “Hopefully, his reaction will ease after a few minutes.”
She looked at him. She wasn’t going to be able to lie here, with a stranger on top of her, for a few minutes.
He saw it. “If I try to pull him off,” he told her, “it’s not going to help anything.”
She nodded. She understood that Wellesley was getting some sort of relief from her, and he would react badly if someone tried to take it away from him. Asil didn’t think Wellesley was rational enough to let her go.
“Okay,” she said, trying not to sound panicked. Hoping that Charles wasn’t picking up on this. He wouldn’t if she managed to keep herself from blind terror. “Okay.”
“What can I do to help?” Asil asked.
“Talk,” she said. “Distract me.”
“The girl in Tennessee?” Anna murmured, fairly certain that Wellesley wasn’t attending the conversation between her and Asil. He was crying noisily, and it was a horrible thing to hear from a grown man. But it reassured her, because he didn’t sound like …
Anyone else.
Asil nodded to her almost-question. “After Tennessee is when Bran brought him here. Back in the 1930s, I think. He’d been a well-known artist under a different name when his wife died.” The old werewolf, whose mate had also died while he survived, made a sympathetic sound. He patted Wellesley again, and this time left his right hand on the other werewolf’s shoulder.
“He tried to keep up his life, but one day he just left. Left his pack. Left his house with everything in it. A wolf who was there, a member of his pack, told me it was eerie. As if one morning, just after breakfast was ready to eat, he decided he was done with it. No one heard of him for a while. It was the Depression, and traveling on trains was a way of life for a lot of people. There was no easy way to find him.”
“Not like now,” Anna said. It was hard to get the words out of her throat, but at least she didn’t have to whisper.
“Not like now,” agreed Asil. “Technology has made a lot of things easier—but also Wellesley’s case in particular made Bran decide that it was important not to lose track of any werewolf if he could help it.”
“You were in Spain during the 1930s,” Anna said. Her voice was shaky. She didn’t like sounding like that—fear was dangerous around werewolves. But even knowing that there was nothing sexual about what Wellesley was experiencing, she couldn’t help the cold sweat that trickled down her back.
Asil made an assenting sound.
“You know a lot about this for a man who was on another continent at the time.”
Asil’s smile flashed. “I know everything worth knowing,” he told her. But his face grew pensive. “I asked after I started to visit with him. I wanted to know as much as I could in hopes I could help him. I knew a little before, of course. His story was widely published at the time. I think part of what has made Bran so harsh on the wolves, now that the public knows about us, is that he is afraid that someone will remember the old story of Wellesley.”