Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(78)

As soon as Anna touched him, Jericho’s whole body relaxed, though he still panted with stress.

“Gods,” he said, again.

Carefully, Charles let him go, keeping himself between Anna and Jericho without breaking Anna’s grip on Jericho’s arm. Which left him too close to the other wolf. He liked to give himself a little distance if he might have to kill someone. A little distance gave him more options.

He saw Jericho’s eyes do the weird blue-swirl shift to the ice of his wolf again. And for some reason, his long-dead grandfather’s voice echoed in his head.

You can always tell them by their eyes. The old medicine man’s hushed voice rang in his ears as if his mother’s father had been standing right behind Charles. He could picture where he’d been when he’d heard those words the first time—ten or eleven and huddled by the fire with a handful of other boys his age as his grandfather taught them the things they would need to know when they were men.

He had no idea why he was thinking of that tale right at this moment.

Hadn’t Sage said that werewolves were just the tip of the iceberg as far as monsters were concerned? And she had been right.

Anna said, “Some days, this Omega gig sucks worse than others. What is it with everyone’s throwing themselves on me?”

“It’s the wolf,” said Charles absently. “The wildlings, most of them, have worn out their ability to control their wolf. The wolf spirit wants to be close to you—and their human half cannot restrain it.”

“Sorry,” said Jericho, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Charles could hear it in his voice, smell it in his scent. Jericho was sorry.

So why was Charles feeling like he was overlooking something important. He asked Brother Wolf, who understood what he was feeling but didn’t know what it was, either. He was no help at all.

“Sage will be long gone,” Anna said. She didn’t sound too unhappy about it.

He understood how she felt—a lifetime of never hearing “Hello, hello, Charlie” again. But they could not allow a traitor to live.

Devon made a noise—and then Jericho said, “No. No. We can still get there—” He started to get up, moving away from Charles to do so. He also moved away from Anna.

And Charles had to put the wildling back down on the ground to keep him from attacking Anna again.

“No,” growled Charles firmly.

“You and Devon go,” said Anna. “If Devon knows the shortcut?”

She put her hand on Jericho’s. He gripped her—and relaxed again.

Devon yipped.

Anna looked at Charles. “You and Devon can go and help them with Sage.” Tears welled up, and she wiped them off impatiently as she continued urgently. “Sage. Of all people. Damn it. I know she can’t be allowed to live. I know that. But you can make it quick. Leah won’t. You know Leah—she plays with her prey as if she were a cat rather than a werewolf.”

Jericho, released from Charles’s hold again, sat up but made no other move.

“Jericho and I will stay here,” Anna continued. “We will wait for someone to come back and tell us what happened. Then we can figure out something to do about this.” She made a waving motion to indicate their joined hands.

Rare, his grandfather’s voice. But deadly.

Charles, watching Jericho’s icy-wolf eyes, abruptly remembered the story his grandfather had been telling that day when Charles had been a child.

? ? ?

“SHE WORE THE skins of her victims,” his grandfather told them, his voice shaky with age. “She wore the spirit and memories, too, as if they were clothing. She cried when my aunt would have cried, laughed when she would have laughed. Her own husband and their children could not tell that the monster in their home was not their beloved one. Only I saw the monster wearing my aunt’s skin—and I was only a little boy younger than any of you are now. I had no one to show what I had seen because there was no one else in the village to see her for what she was. My mother’s uncle, who was our medicine man and my first teacher, had died the year before.

“That fall, though, a trading party came to camp, and their shaman came with them. I told him about my aunt and asked for his help. He came with me to the fire where my aunt and uncle were sitting—and he told my uncle that his wife had been taken by evil. My uncle, he did not believe the strange medicine man, nor the affidavits of his power that the man’s companions were quick to give. The thing who wore my aunt’s face cried and begged my uncle not to hear the stranger’s words.

“While she was pleading, this medicine man walked up and placed his hand on my aunt’s head. She quit talking, frozen in place by the great power he held.”

Charles’s grandfather sighed. “I was there, and still, what happened is so strange that I do not know how to build the picture for you.” He’d fallen silent and watched the fire as if he had not noticed the terror he’d inspired in his audience. For weeks afterward, he would be asked to examine someone’s mother or aunt or uncle to make sure they had not been taken.

“That old man,” Charles’s grandfather said, “he sang a song to her in a language I had never heard before—and have not heard since. After a moment, he raised his other hand and put it out so.” He put one hand down as if it rested upon the head of a woman. He put the other one up. “Then he tipped his hand slowly over until it was palm down, too. And under his hand another person formed, as real as you or I, an old woman, naked, sitting in the same position as my aunt. Then my aunt fell to the side. For a moment I thought he had saved her, but she was truly dead. Her corpse rotted until it was as any body that had been dead over a year would have been. The medicine man changed his song, and he sang for a very long time. Eventually, the naked woman disappeared, and the medicine man was left with the feather of a bird in his hand.”