She hadn't told him how to find Charles, so Asil started them back toward her cabin. He'd carefully explained to Mariposa that he'd felt Charles there, that Charles might have decided to wait where he thought they would come.
It was possible that Charles had done just that-so he wasn't lying to her, precisely. Bran had somehow shut down the pack links, so Asil couldn't check, but he was pretty sure Charles was nowhere near the cabin. The boy was cautious, and he had his fragile new mate with him. He'd have taken off to contact Bran before the last sliver from the cabin's explosion had fallen. The witch and Sarai's wolf was one thing-but the boy would know he stood not a chance against Asil as well.
Charles should be well on his way to the cars by now. Asil didn't know the mountains here that well, but he had a good head for distances. He'd have to track him after they got to the cabin-or what was left of it-but if Charles was smart enough to drive away, the witch's search would be fruitless.
Of course, if Charles found out his father was out here, too, the damn fool would probably head right back into the maw of danger; he was that kind of heroic idiot.
Still, it would be a while before they reached the cabin, so Asil had bought Charles that much of a head start. He didn't know what to do that might help more than that.
Besides, he wanted to see Mariposa's face when she saw the wreckage. Destroying the cabin had been smart, smarter than he thought Charles was. Maybe he hadn't been giving Bran's pet assassin a fair shake.
He hoped that Charles had killed the poor coyote trapped so near death but held alive by Mariposa's will and magic. He never wanted to spend another night listening to some poor tortured creature breathe in ragged gasps in the space beneath the floor he lay upon. It had taken him most of the miserably long night to figure out what it was. For the longest time he'd had the terrible suspicion that it had been the lost hunter everyone had been making such a fuss over.
He never wanted to watch someone cut up a live animal again, either. Never wanted to see Sarai's beloved person filled with some stranger who watched the witch as if she were her goddess and did her bidding. His Sarai would never have fetched an animal for Mariposa to hurt. Would never have fetched Asil. She'd done it without orders, too. Mariposa hadn't expected him.
Guardians were supposed to be obedient, incapable of thinking for themselves. He thought there was more to the wolf than Mariposa's mindless guardian. It was the same stupid hope that had led him into this mess.
If only Charles's Anna hadn't been an Omega, he thought, his rage would have rendered the lure of Sarai's form useless. He felt that rage now-helpless tearing sorrow that his Sarai's wolf had been stolen and turned into...a thing.
If he'd stayed with Charles, helped him figure out what to do about Mariposa, maybe they'd have had a chance. But Anna's presence had dulled his pain and left only the knowledge that whatever the witch had done to Sarai, she hadn't broken his bond with her. When the wolf who looked like his Sarai left, he'd had to follow.
No, he was too old to be blaming other people for his mistakes. It had never been Anna's fault, it was his own. He was too old to believe in happy endings. The best thing he could do for Sarai was make certain that her wolf died this time.
When Mariposa had scried with water this morning and discovered a new wolf was coming, he'd known who it was. Had known what a disaster it would be if she got her hands on Bran. So when she'd asked him what other wolf Bran would send after Charles, he'd lied. And he'd lied with the truth. The next wolf Bran would have sent was Tag.
Asil didn't look at Bran, pacing beside them with all the ferocity of a golden retriever. Bran was always a deceptive bastard, gentle and mild right up until he ripped your throat out. He had many other fine qualities as well.
Asil'd been sure that, even with the weakness he, himself, had left in Bran's defenses, the old one would somehow wiggle out. Maybe if he'd been able to give him more warning? If he'd told Bran everything when he'd first come to Aspen Creek years ago?
Too late, too late.
Asil wasn't troubled by modesty. He knew his own strengths, which were many-and he'd fallen victim to her. He didn't know why he'd managed to convince himself that Bran would be able to resist her when he hadn't been able to.
At least she didn't know who Bran was. Yet.
He wished it had been Samuel in the woods instead of Charles. Charles was a thug, a killer. He didn't say much, just lurked silently behind his father to inspire the terror that Bran should have been able to cause by himself if he weren't so concerned with looking like a harmless boy.
Asil'd seen Charles in action a time or two-and he was impressive, Asil had to give that to him. Charles might be strong and swift, but what they needed here was subtlety, not brawn. Samuel was old and canny. Educated. Charles was a killer who'd be half-distracted by his new mate, a helpless and fragile mate. She wasn't much like his Sarai, who had been a warrior in her own right.
Something brushed his hip.
He glanced down, but didn't see anything, even when it touched him again. Unobtrusively, so as not to attract the witch's attention, he dropped his hand and it landed on a furry back-that wasn't there to any of his other senses. Even so, he knew what he touched. Foolishly, hope grew in his heart as his fingers closed on a silky coat he'd once been very familiar with.
Can the witch change shape?
Bran again, dragging him back to reality. Unfortunately Mariposa noticed his hesitation.
"Is there something wrong?" she asked.
"A lot of things," Asil told her. She'd been right, he was happy to mislead her with the truth as much as he could. She hadn't yet acquired the ability of all good Alphas to ask specific questions. Bran was a lot harder to deceive.
"My Sarai is dead, and I am not." He unobtrusively sampled the air and relaxed as the wilderness gave him a better answer for her. "And there is something in the trees- a large predator that is not a bear. I have heard that there are wolverines in this place."
She shrugged off the predator and quit paying attention to him. He wondered if she knew she was humming Sarai's favorite song. Did she do it to torment him with the memory of what was lost, or because she derived comfort from it?
Bran waited until Mariposa was occupied with her own thoughts before he talked to Asil again.
The witch has the immortality, the strength, and the speed of a werewolf. Can she change shape, too? Is she really a werewolf? Disguising her scent somehow, so she smells human and witch, but not werewolf? Or is she just borrowing from her creation?
Asil shrugged. He'd never seen her change. He looked down at the hand still buried in invisible fur. Maybe there was a chance to learn more about Mariposa.
For almost two centuries, as soon as he realized that the mating bond gave Mariposa access to him, he'd blocked the connection as best he could. But the worst had happened, so what was the danger in it anymore?
He dropped his shields and only iron control allowed him to keep walking as if nothing had happened as Sarai's love flooded him like an ocean wave. For a while all he could do was put one foot in front of another.
Some few mated pairs could talk to each other mind to mind, but with Sarai it had always been emotion. Over the years, practice had allowed it to develop into something not so much different from telepathy.
She was so happy he'd finally let her in so she could drink of his energies, create herself from him, rather than Mariposa. He opened himself to her so that she could do as she wished. If it had been the witch behind it, it would have been fatal, but he was confident that this was his Sarai. She sipped only a little from him as he learned from her.
Sarai was dead, he'd never have her back. He understood it, because it was something this half-living shadow of his mate understood. If he succeeded in killing Mariposa, even this shadow of his mate would be gone forever-if not, she'd be trapped in this half-life that was a living hell. He understood, but part of him couldn't be bothered with future mourning while he absorbed the joy that something of her remained to him.
What?
He could feel Bran's frustration and wondered how much he sensed of what he and Sarai were doing. Did he need Bran to know? Sarai thought so, so he tried to tell him.
"I know now that your guardian isn't her, but she feels like Sarai. I sometimes think about what it would be like to speak to her. Just once more," he said, and was rewarded when Mariposa's nails sank into the sleeve of his white coat.
"She is here; she is Sarai. But she is mine," Mariposa said. "You don't need to talk to her. She doesn't want you."
But Bran had understood; Asil could see in the thoughtful gaze his Alpha turned on him. He could stop there. But Mariposa was laying claim to someone who was his.
"She still loves me," Asil replied, knowing it was just going to antagonize her. "Part of her does. I could see it in her eyes when she came to get me." And what he'd seen had been real, he knew that now. Fiercely, he held the thought to him. "She came to me-you didn't send her."
"She belongs to me." The witch sounded agitated. "Just as you do." She stopped as she spun the thought around and found something that pleased her. She turned to him and gave him a seductive smile. "You love me, too." He felt her reach out to him through the bond he shared with Sarai's wolf and felt her quiet panic that the witch would see what they were doing. She was so afraid-and he couldn't bear it.
So he set out to distract Mariposa. It wasn't as if it was difficult.
He bent down and took her mouth in a carnal assault. After a bare moment's surprise, she welcomed it. He had known, all these years, what the real basis for her obsession with Sarai was. He'd tried to tell Sarai when he'd first understood, but she wanted to see only the good in people. She thought he was too suspicious-and vain, which was true enough. She thought that obscured his judgment, which was not true.
She hadn't believed him when he told her that Mariposa had fixated on him, until that night, the second time Mariposa had poisoned Sarai. The girl had tried to disguise herself as his mate. It had been useless, of course. She might have been able to change what she looked like, but she smelled nothing like his mate. If Sarai had been only human, she would have been dead from the poison; instead she'd been sick for three days. Mariposa had meant her to die.
Only then had Sarai agreed there was something wrong with the girl that she couldn't fix. Only then had she agreed to send Mariposa away.
He kissed Mariposa until she was breathless and panting, until the scent of her arousal rose in heated waves. Then he released her, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and told her the absolute truth. "I don't love you. I never loved you."
She heard it in his voice, felt it in his unaroused body. For a moment her face was blank with shock, and he might almost have felt sorry for her. Almost. If he didn't think about Sarai, about the poor coyote under the cabin floor and the raccoon she'd carved to pieces and kept alive-not because she needed it alive for her spell but because it pleased her to do so.
The next moment her shock was over. She gave him a cynical smile, a whore's smile. "Maybe not, but you wanted me. I saw it in your eyes. I see it now. I am young and beautiful, and she was old and big like a cow. You wanted me, and she knew it. She was jealous and sent me away."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're mixing up your stories. I thought it was I who was jealous of the great love Sarai bore you. I thought I was the one who sent you away because Sarai loved you. Isn't that what you said?"
"¡Cabron!" She stomped her foot. "Hijo de puta."
Hard to believe that she was two centuries old and not the young girl she looked and acted. Like Peter Pan, she'd never grown up.
"She loved me. She chose me in the end. That's why she is with me and not with you. But"-she held up a finger- "you wanted me. That's why she made me go away. You wanted me, and it made her angry. I was young and helpless, a child in your care, and you wanted me."
"Why would I want you?" he asked her coldly. "I had Sarai, who was more woman than you could ever be. I wanted Sarai; for Sarai I lived and died. You were never more to me than a stray pet Sarai wanted to take care of."
He let his truth ring in her ears, and when her hands came up, full of magic, he made no move to defend himself. He was confident that she wouldn't kill him-not before she convinced him that she was right. Or until he drove her into a real rage.
Honor demanded that he fight to live as long as he could, to try to stop this threat he'd brought to the Marrok. Anything short of death, Asil could handle. And while she was concentrating on him, she wasn't paying any attention to what he and Sarai were doing-and, more importantly, she wasn't paying any attention to Bran.
But Sarai's wolf wasn't so sanguine. In the instant before the witch's power hit him, she flashed him pictures of things that she'd seen the witch do to people. Things that might have made him question his earlier assessment that as long as he didn't die, he'd be fine.
If he'd needed proof that he was only dealing with a shadow of his mate, he'd have known it then. Sarai would have known that scaring him in advance wasn't helpful. But it did remind him that if he didn't block her out, she'd feel his pain, too. And even if she was only a shadow, he didn't want her hurt. He pulled up his shields to block Sarai out just before the witch hit him with more fury than finesse.
He screamed because he wasn't braced, because it hurt worse than he'd thought possible, and because his wolf decided that it wasn't going to let him just lie down and take it.
Changing at that moment was as imperative as it was stupid. Pain quadrupled and sizzled down nerve endings he wished he didn't have. Time changed for him, seconds became hours until he existed only in a limbo of agony. Then it stopped. His whole body went numb as he completed the change. It was only a moment, a space of freedom that Sarai bought him as she took his pain for him. Leaving him in wolf form, standing two feet from Mariposa and in full control of his body.
For the first time, Mariposa looked frightened, and he ate that fear as if it were fresh, dripping meat. He paused to savor it before he launched himself upon her. But that gave her one instant too many because she had time to scream his mate's name.
"Sarai!"
And his open jaws met with fur instead of skin, with Sarai's blood and not Mariposa's. As his fangs sank deep, the pain of Mariposa's magic ripped through him again, only to stop when Bran made his move.
"This stuff isn't vile," Anna told Charles. "If I were, say, five and still enjoyed sticky-creamy sweet things, I might actually like it."
Anna barely whispered while she munched on freeze-dried ice cream. He'd apparently convinced her that consuming calories was important. It was too bad that she fed it to Walter and him, too. Though Walter seemed to appreciate it.
Charles grunted as he stared down the valley at the small figures who walked across the meadow. The wind blew the occasional word their way, but it was coming from the wrong direction to alert the others that they were being watched.
"I wonder why he's doing that," Anna said, as Asil changed to his wolf.
It didn't look deliberate to Charles-maybe it was some sort of bizarre punishment. But if so, it backfired. Asil staggered to his feet-and in the middle of it, his movements were suddenly graceful and directed as he launched himself at the witch.
All three of them-Charles, Anna, and Walter-stood up. They were too far away to affect the outcome, but...
The thing that looked like Asil's mate's wolf just appeared out of nowhere to intercept him. And that's when his father made his move. The witch, distracted by the fight between the two wolves, almost missed it.
Almost.
And Charles was too far away to change what happened.
Asil felt her frustration, but Sarai couldn't ignore the prime directive of her creation, guarding Mariposa. Not yet. He hadn't given her enough. So they fought because she couldn't stop until he was dead or the witch stopped her.
Normally, it would have been no contest. Warrior she might have been, but Asil had taught her all that she knew, and in this form he outweighed her by fifty pounds of muscle. He was faster and stronger, but she was fighting to kill him. He was fighting to stay alive without hurting her.
If she killed him, she would have forever to grieve, and he couldn't bear it. He felt the witch's leash fall away from him, saw Sarai hesitate as it fell from her as well.
And then that moment of freedom was over.
"Asil, sit," Mariposa said, her voice hoarse, but the whip of her power settled over him and forced him to do as she said, leashed and held as tightly as ever.
"Sarai, stop." She hadn't noticed that Sarai had made no move to continue her attack. Because she wasn't looking at Sarai; she was still looking at Bran.
Asil followed her gaze.
At first he thought Bran was dead. But Mariposa staggered over to the still figure and kicked it. "Up. Get up."
Stiffly, it rose to its feet. The body was still Bran's, a gray wolf with a silly splash of white on the end of his tail. But when it looked up at the witch, there was nobody home.
Asil had seen zombies with more personality. And if he hadn't been a wolf, he'd have used the sign his mother had taught him to ward off evil, which would have been useless. It wouldn't work unless it was made by a witchblood- and if Mariposa didn't know it, he didn't want to be the one to teach her.
Even the guardian, shadow of his mate that she was, had more inside than whatever animated the Marrok.
Satisfied Bran was obeying her again, she looked at Asil. "Hussan, change back to human."
Ah Allah, it hurt. Too many changes in too few hours, but her orders were pitiless. He staggered to his feet and felt the sharp kiss of the ice crystals in the snow. Cold didn't usually bother him-less even than most werewolves. But he felt it now.
"Put on your clothes," she snapped.
They were torn and bloody, but better than standing naked in the winter winds. His hands shook, making it hard to unlace his boots. He could only find one sock, and it was so wet he didn't put it on; blisters were the last of his worries.
Asil was afraid, terrified. No witch he'd ever seen, and he'd known a lot of them over the years, had been able to do something like that to a wolf with no more than the magic she had at hand. To a human, yes-to a dead human. He'd been making a mistake, he realized. Thinking of her as the child, however powerful, she had been, but she'd had two hundred years to acquire knowledge and power.
Cautiously, he felt down the pack ties toward his Alpha and felt...nothing. Had she really done to Bran what she'd done to his Sarai? Two centuries was a long time to study and learn. Maybe she'd found a way to make another guardian for her protection, a way that took minutes instead of four days of torture.
Then he realized that Bran himself was shutting him out, that the pack bindings were still in place. The understanding gave him hope; he looked at the Marrok again, but still saw only a dim intelligence that bore no resemblance to the man Bran had been...was.
Just to be certain, Asil examined the pack ties again, but someone was actively shutting them tight. And the only person he knew who could be doing it was Bran.
But they weren't shut down entirely.
Something eased out from Bran and touched him with black cold fingers, oozing slowly into his soul. Sarai whined softly as she realized what it meant before he did, but then she'd always been better at this sort of thing than he was-he'd always thought of anger as something hot and quick. This was worse.
Berserker.
He had been in North Africa at the time, not even a century old. But even there he'd heard the stories. Deathbringer. Whole villages killed, from old woman to day-old infant. There were songs and stories, most of them lost now to time.
A witch had forced the Change on her son and her grandson-so she could play with them. For years she held them as pets, to do her bidding. It made her the most dangerous witch in the British Isles. And then her son broke free.
He killed his mother and ate her. Then he killed every living thing within miles. He found a home in the dark heart of the great Welsh forests-and for years nothing lived within a day's walk of his den.
Great hunters of a generation, human, werewolf, or other, sought to win their honor or prove their courage-and they died. Some came to visit vengeance for lost loved ones. They died. Even the fools who didn't understand, who were unlucky enough to venture too close to the monster, they died, too.
Then one day, or so he'd heard, Bran had walked out of the wilderness, his son at his side. No more berserker, only a harper, a teller of tales, and lone wolf.
Given enough time, even the most horrific story drifts to legend, then nothing. Asil was pretty sure that he was the only one, except for Samuel, of course, who knew enough to understand just what it was that the witch had done.
She thought she had the Marrok under her control. But then, Mariposa had always rewritten reality to suit her.
"...him of eagum stod ligge gelicost leoht unfaeger," Asil quoted softly.
"What did you say?" Mariposa was white and visibly exhausted, but her leash was strong and unbreakable.
"Beowulf," he told her. "Roughly translated it is, I believe...'from his eyes shone a flaming, baleful light.' I'm not a poet to do the translation in verse."
She looked suspiciously at Bran, but saw only eyes so dull they were more brown than amber. Asil knew it, because he kept looking himself.
From his eyes shone a flaming, baleful light. Grendel owed something to Bran's time as a berserker, as he did to other stories handed down over the centuries. But the lack of intelligence in his Alpha's eyes and the cold black rage flowing slowly from Bran into every werewolf tied to him was far more frightening than Grendel or Grendel's mother, those fierce monsters of the epic poem, could ever have been. He hoped that it was only infecting the immediate pack, but he was very much afraid it might spread to all of them.
Death would flow through the world as it had not since the Black Plague, when a third of Europe had died. And there would be no peace for a werewolf in this world ever again.
"You are afraid," she told him. "As you should be. For now I allow you to be yourself-but if you continue to trouble me, I will make you my pet, as I have made him. Pets are less useful than Sarai, incapable of responding to anything except direct orders-I had planned on making you a guardian, like Sarai. You'd best be careful I don't change my mind."
She thought he was afraid of her. And he had been, until the monster she had created surpassed her. She had no idea.
She took two steps toward Asil, then slapped him hard. He made no move to defend himself. She was hampered somewhat by her size, but she hit him at full strength, Sarai's strength. Reflexively, he licked the blood from his lip.
"That is for lying to me about who this werewolf was. It is the Marrok, not some stupid lesser wolf. You knew, you knew-and you let me believe him to be someone else. He might have hurt me. And you are supposed to keep me safe, have you forgotten? I was given into your keeping so you could make me safe."
Eventually, old wolves lost touch with reality. The first crisis was when all the people they had known died, and there was no one left who had known them when they were human. The second came at different times to different wolves, when the change in the world left them no place where they could feel at home.
And Mariposa had never been stable, even before she killed Sarai. However, if she thought he wanted to keep her safe...truly she was mad.
"But your betrayal didn't really matter," she told him with a girlish toss of her head. "I can keep myself safe, too. This one is mine." She glanced at Bran. "Change. I want to see your face. I've never been able to find a photo of you, Bran Cornick."
Asil found himself holding his breath as his Alpha obeyed. Would the pain of the change be the straw that allowed the monster to break free of her chains?
They waited in the cold, Asil, his shadow-mate, and the witch as the change happened. Their breath rose like steam, reminding him for some silly reason of the time, years ago, that Bran took the Marrok pack, all the wolves who belonged only to him, in a hired bus to stay at the big hotel in Yellowstone Park in the dead of winter. He'd rented all the rooms so they could run and howl all night in the snow-covered geyser basin with no one to see them but a few buffalo and elk.
"You can't hide in your hothouse all the time," he'd told Asil, when Asil politely requested not to go. "You have to make new memories sometimes."
Asil closed his eyes and prayed for the first time since Sarai had been taken from him-though he'd once been a truly devout man. He prayed that Allah would not allow Bran to become such a monster that he destroyed his careful creation of a home, a haven for his wolves.
When Asil opened his eyes at last, Bran stood naked in the snow. He wasn't shivering, though it was only a few degrees above zero, well below freezing. His skin was pale and thin, showing the blue veins that carried blood back to his heart. There were a few scars, one that ran across his ribs and one just under his right arm.
"Pretty enough body," said Mariposa. "But you all have those, you wolves. A little more delicate than I like my men." She pursed her lips and shook her head. "I was expecting something...a little more impressive. A Marrok should be..." She looked at Asil. "More like Hussan. A man other people turn their heads to watch. A man who makes other men walk wary. Not one who needs his son to impress visitors and do his killing. You see, I've done my research. When I heard that, I knew that you were too weak to hold all those packs on your own."
She was trying to goad Bran, Asil thought incredulously. Testing her hold to make sure there was no more independence in her slave. Hyperventilating wasn't going to help matters, Asil told himself a little desperately. Couldn't she see the monster inside the still exterior?
The only thing that kept him from panic was the knowledge that her assessment of him was more likely to amuse Bran than enrage him. Of course, Bran was not exactly himself anymore.
"Can you change back?" she asked Bran when he made no response to her judgment. "I don't have shoes for you, and I'd prefer not to have to cut off your feet because of frostbite."
"Yes." Bran slurred the word, dragging out the last sound, almost as if he were drunk.
She waited for him to start, but finally gave an impatient sound, and said, "Do so."
Before he had completed the change she motioned Sarai to her and climbed on her back as if her guardian were a donkey. Asil bit back his anger, anger that was too large for the small attack on Sarai-who-was-not-Sarai's dignity. He glanced nervously at Bran and tried very hard to be calm.
"When he is finished changing, the two of you catch up with us."
Sarai brushed against him, leaving behind a flood of affection and worry. As soon as she was out of sight, he felt that insidious anger ramp up-as if Sarai's presence had helped calm Bran, as if she were still the Omega she had once been...and why not?
He dropped to one knee and bowed his head, hoping against hope that when the other werewolf arose, he would still be bound, by the witch or his own will.
Though he dare not do it with the proper motion, and it had been a long time since he'd been a good Muslim, he could not stop the impulse to pray. "Allaahu Akbar-"
THE witch flung out her hands, and even as far away as Charles was, he could feel the stain of her magic-corrupt and festering magic, but powerful. Very powerful.
Charles saw his father fall-and then Bran was gone.
He froze. Breathless with the suddenness of it. The cool presence that had been there for as long as he could remember left a huge, empty silence. His lungs didn't want to move, but suddenly he could get air in and all Brother Wolf wanted was to howl to the heavens.
Charles fought and fought to keep Brother Wolf quiet, but there was an odd undercurrent of savage rage that he'd never felt before, deeper and darker than the usual violent urges; and he understood, or hoped he did.
Bran wasn't gone. He was Changed.
His father mostly talked of the present or near present. Ten years, twenty, but not a hundred or more. It was something Charles had grown to appreciate as he himself grew older.
But Samuel could sometimes be persuaded to tell stories to his younger brother. And Bran as berserker had been one of his favorite stories until he'd grown old enough to understand that it wasn't just a story. If it weren't for that story, he might have been tempted to overlook the darkness seeping into him, he might have thought that Bran had truly been broken.
He used his hope to soothe Brother Wolf, and together they ran down the pack magic that cradled them in the Alpha's care. Searching, searching, they found it, changed, shut down almost entirely, until only a little of the poison rage seeped through. Bran still lived.
But as what?