Fair Game

Adam gave a huff of laughter that eased Bran's ire. "It's not that. She's grumpy and embarrassed at being helpless. I had to leave last week on business. By the time I got back, the vampire had to come take care of her because she'd driven everyone else off. I don't have to listen when she tells me to leave her alone, but everyone else does."

Pleased at the thought of Mercy ordering around a bunch of werewolves, Bran settled back in his chair.

"Bran? Are you all right?"

"Don't worry," Bran said. "I'll get David Christiansen to do it. The FBI will just have to wait a week or so until he gets back from Burma."

"That's not what I was asking," Adam said. "'Volatile' is not a word I'd normally apply to you - but you aren't yourself today. Are you all right?"

Bran pinched his nose. He should just keep it to himself. But Adam...He couldn't talk to Samuel about this; the only thing that would do would be to make his oldest son feel guilty.

Adam knew all the players and he was an Alpha; he'd understand without Bran having to explain everything.

Adam listened without comment - except a snort when he heard how neatly Asil had turned the tables on Bran.

"You need to keep Asil around," he said. "The rest of them are too intimidated to play games with you - and you need that now and again to keep you sharp."

"Yes," said Bran. "And the rest?"

"You have to back off on the death sentences," Adam said with certainty. "I heard about Minnesota. Three wolves took out a pedophile stalking a third grader with a rope in his hand and a stun gun in his pocket."

Bran growled. "I wouldn't have objected except they got carried away and then left his half-eaten body to be discovered the next day before they told their Alpha what happened. If they'd just snapped his neck, I could have let it go." He pinched his nose again. "As it is, the coroner is speculating all over the papers."

"If you backed off, Charles wouldn't have to go out and kill so often, because you wouldn't have so many Alphas refusing to take care of discipline."

"I can't," Bran said tiredly. "Have you seen the new commercials Bright Future has sponsored? The endangered species hearings are beginning next month. If they classify us as animals, it won't be just the problem wolves being hunted."

"We are what we are, Bran. We're not civilized or tame, and if you force that upon us, it won't be only Charles who loses it." Adam let out a breath and in a less passionate voice he said, "In any case, maybe giving Charles a break on other fronts will give him more rest."

"I've freed him entirely from his business obligations," said Bran. "It hasn't worked."

There was a pause. "What?" said Adam carefully. "The business? You've turned pack finances over to someone else?"

"He'd already backed away from most of the daily chores of running the corporation, put it in the hands of five or six different people, only one of whom knows that it's owned by Charles's family. He does that every twenty years or so, to keep people from noticing that he doesn't age. I brought in a finance firm to take over the pack's other holdings, and what they aren't handling, Leah is."

"So Charles is doing nothing at all except going out and killing? Nothing to distract him, nothing to dilute the impact. I know I just said he might need a break, but that's almost the opposite. Do you really think that's a good idea? He enjoys making money - it's like an infinitely complicated game of chess for him. He told me once it was even better than hunting because no one dies."

He'd told Bran that, too. Maybe he should have listened more carefully.

"I can't give him the finances back," Bran said. "He's not...I can't give him the finances back." Not until Charles was functioning better, because the money the pack controlled was enough to mean power. His reluctance to trust Charles, who had engendered it, made Bran admit, at least to himself, that he'd noticed that Charles was in trouble a while ago.

"I have an idea," said Adam slowly. "About that task you had for me - "

"I'm not sending him to deal with the FBI," said Bran, appalled. "Even before...this, Charles would not be the right person to send."

"He's not a people person," agreed Adam, sounding amused. "I imagine the last year and more hasn't helped that any. No. Send Anna. Those FBI agents won't know what hit them - and with Anna as a cushion, Charles may actually do them some good. Send them in to help as well as consult. One of us can tell the cops a lot about a crime scene that forensics can't. Give Charles something to do where he can be the good guy instead of the executioner."

Let him be a hero, thought Bran, his eyes on the Ivanhoe in his bookshelf as he hung up the phone. Asil had been right to point out that there was nothing wrong with a little bit of romance to cushion the harsh realities of life. Adam might have given him the Band-Aid he needed to help his youngest son. He devoutly hoped so.

Chapter 2

Special Agent Leslie Fisher stared out of the window that looked out over downtown Boston. From her vantage point she had a lovely, veryearly-morning view. Traffic was still light, and though it would get a lot heavier as people came to work, lack of parking kept the streets from being as crazy as Los Angeles, the last place she'd been assigned. In the FBI, she got to move every few years whether she wanted to or not, but she'd always thought of Boston as home.

The hotel was old and expensively elegant. Tasteful, striped, satiny paper covered the walls of the meeting room in authentic Victorian style. The smallish room was dominated by the large mahogany table with padded chairs that looked more like they belonged in a dining room than a boardroom. It was a hotel, though, no matter how well decorated, and it lacked even the hint of personalization that managed to break through the government drab in her own office cubicle.

She was here to meet a consultant. Though there was the occasional perfectly innocent computer geek or accountant, in her experience, consultants were quite often bad guys who had made deals so that the good guys could catch bigger bad guys: rewarding the smaller evil so that the big monsters got stopped.

Five people dead in the last month: an old woman, two tourists, a businessman, and an eight-year-old boy. A serial killer was hunting. She'd seen the boy's body, and to catch his killer, she'd have met with Satan himself.