Burn Bright

There were three of them, brothers all, a set of twins and their younger sibling. If the stable twin hadn’t been with them, Charles suspected Bran would have had the other two executed for reasons of public safety.

“You think you could do better?” Charles said very softly. The wind didn’t favor him. He couldn’t tell which of the brothers he was talking to other than it was one of the twins.

The other twin dropped down to the ground from a higher branch in a different tree. His landing was loud—louder than it needed to be to cover for their third, as yet unseen, brother.

“We could hardly do worse,” he said. And, confident that his twin had an eye on Charles, he looked at Sage and smiled. “Hey, pretty lady. You’ll make a fine prize.”

Despite herself, despite the years between Sage as she was now and the beaten woman she’d been when she came to them, when she said, “Try me,” her voice was tense, and she took a step closer to Charles.

The second twin laughed, a full-throated, merry sound. “Oh, I intend to, yes. Don’t we, Geir?”

The other twin smiled. “Yes.”

Geir was the sanest of the three.

Charles had no intention of believing them about which of them was which, of course, not when they were being so careful to stay downwind, where his nose couldn’t make the distinction. He took a slow step away from Sage, putting her between him and the twins.

She stiffened at the unexpected move. She’d asked for his protection by stepping into his personal space. His movement was a denial. But he couldn’t help her perception—or worry about it too much.

He was too busy spinning to catch hold of the axe that Ofaeti, the third of the Viking brothers, tried to stick in his back. He grabbed it by the haft, one hand on top, the other at the end, Ofaeti’s hands caught between his. The Viking wasn’t expecting it, so Charles was able to swing the big man around, off balance. Charles snapped a quick kick into his knee, which gave with a crack.

And right then, right at that moment, Charles felt Anna call him.

“Sage,” he said. “Get in the car and stay out of this.”

Strictly speaking, a fight for dominance was supposed to be one-on-one. For that reason, he wanted Sage completely out of it. And maybe he’d seen that look of betrayal on her face and wanted to remove any doubt in her mind that he had kept her safety at the forefront of his decisions.

Unlike his Anna, Sage would follow orders. He put her out of his considerations—except as a noncombatant to be protected.

Ofaeti had released his hold on the axe when his knee broke. Charles tossed it up and caught it in a proper grip. It was a good axe, heavy and weighted for fighting rather than cutting down trees.

The twins, Geir and Fenrir (Charles was pretty sure that wasn’t the name he was born with but a name he’d earned), had sprinted forward when Ofaeti attacked, but seeing Charles with the axe in his hand and Ofaeti out of the fight (more or less), they slowed to a more cautious pace.

Charles? If you aren’t busy, I could use some advice.

Charles heard a soft sound behind him and without looking, swept the flat side of the axe to his right about hip height like a backward swing of a baseball bat.

Now, said Brother Wolf in satisfaction as behind them the ground accepted a probably-not-dead body with a hollow thump, Ofaeti is no longer a factor.

Charles smiled in amusement—and the simple joy of battle. The Viking brothers had been fighting for longer than Charles had been alive, but they did not have Brother Wolf as a partner nor had they had Bran Cornick and Charles’s uncle, Buffalo Singer, as teachers.

The twins separated, trying to make him defend both of his sides at the same time. He let them do it because it would make no difference to his game. He was only a little hampered because he’d prefer not to kill either of them. His da had put them in his hands to protect, and they had not done anything (yet) that would force his hand.

Fenrir closed first, aiming a kick at Charles’s thigh. Charles stepped into it, and Fenrir’s kick slid up his thigh and into his hip, its force spent before it did any harm. Charles grabbed that leg under the knee and hit Fenrir in the belly with his other hand. The force of it bent the other wolf over, and Charles tucked Fenrir’s head under his free arm, then pulled them both over backward in a suplex.

Fenrir’s fall was outside of his control, and his spine came down across the stump Charles had been aiming him at. It broke with a loud snap, and Fenrir let out a whine.

Charles was free of Fenrir and rolling to his feet before Geir’s sword struck and missed. The second strike Charles caught on the axe.

Charles? Anna’s voice was small. I really need your help, or I’m pretty sure that some of us aren’t going to make it out of this.

A moment, he told her. And he quit playing because his wife needed him. He broke the sword with a swing of his axe and caught Geir’s eyes—only then realizing it was Fenrir, not Geir. He’d rather it really had been Fenrir lying with a broken back.

Hopefully, Geir would survive.

“Enough,” Charles said. “I do not have time for this. We are done. Submit.”

The old wolf fought the compulsion, sweat dripping down his face and dampening his shirt. But his fist opened and the blade dropped to the ground as he dropped to his knees, tilting his chin for Charles’s pleasure.

Brother Wolf was tempted to give him the coup de grâce. This one had kept him preoccupied when he needed to be attending his mate. Charles hit him on the side of the head with the blunt end of the axe instead. Enough to keep him out for a few minutes, not hard enough to kill him.

If it had been Geir, he could have counted on him to honor the submission as a cease-fire. But Fenrir wasn’t the kind of wolf he could trust that far.

Anna? he sent along the bond between them. What can I—

And he was sucked into a cartoon. He recognized it vaguely as the rendition of a fairy tale. The sky was dark, and the colors were bruise-like: purple, deep blues, deep grays, and black. The ground was squishy under his feet, which made him vaguely uneasy, but not as uneasy as the reek of black witchcraft. He looked around but didn’t see anything except the towering forest of thorn-encrusted vines.

“Anna?” He couldn’t see her, but he could feel that she was near and that she was worried.

“Charles!” she called. “I’m here, trapped in the stupid plants. I can’t get out.”

He waded through the sticky, sloggy ground, and when he reached the forest of vines, it opened reluctantly before him. It would have kept him from Anna if it could have, but their bond and his magic was too strong here, where such things had more meaning. But the vines closed behind with a wash of malice and dark whispers.

In a very small clearing, his mate stood contemplating the vines with her arms crossed over her chest, her back to him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s witchcraft,” she said, without looking away from the vines. “I don’t know what to do with witchcraft.”

He approached her and became aware that her clothing was ragged and there were bloody scratches up and down her arms and on her cheek. She was frowning fiercely.

“Is the cartoon yours?” he asked.

She looked up at him then. “Oh good, you’re here,” she said, as if she only now saw him, though she’d answered his question. It was that kind of place. “Cartoon?”

She turned around slowly, looking around. She shook her head and laughed. “I think I’ve built this as a metaphor. But I’m not sure who is really in charge here. This”—she waved her arms to indicate the whole scene—“is a conglomeration of my powers, Wellesley’s magic, and that.” On the last word, she pointed at the briar-vine hedge. “That is black magic, witchcraft. And I don’t know how it got here or how to break it.”

He surveyed the hedge a little more thoroughly. The first thing he noticed was that the plants bore only a vague resemblance to any plant he’d ever seen—but this wasn’t reality. He’d had some experience with this kind of magical dreaming, though his adventures usually looked a little more like the real world and less like a Disneyland adventure.

“So is there a sleeping princess trapped behind the thorns?” he asked.