Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(45)
Kouros changed the rules to suit the new times. His coven had between ten and thirteen members . . . He had a distressing tendency to burn out his followers. The current bunch descended from only three families that she knew of, and most of them weren’t properly trained—children following their leader.
Samhain wasn’t up to the tricks of the old covens, but they were scary enough even the local vampires walked softly around them, and Seattle, with its overcast skies, had a relatively large seethe of vampires. Samhain’s master had approached Moira about joining them when she was thirteen. She’d refused and made her refusal stick at some cost to all the parties involved.
“What does Samhain have to do with a werewolf?” she asked.
“I think they have my brother.”
“Another werewolf?” It wasn’t unheard of for brothers to be werewolves, especially since the Marrok, He-Who-Ruled-the-Wolves, began Changing people with more care than had been the usual custom. But it wasn’t at all common, either. Surviving the Change—even with the safeguards the Marrok could manage—was still, she understood, nowhere near a certainty.
“No.” He took a deep breath. “Not a werewolf. Human. He has the sight. Choo says he thinks that’s why they took him.”
“Your brother is a witch?”
The fabric of his shirt rustled with his shrug, telling her that he wasn’t as tall as he felt to her. Only a little above average instead of a seven-foot giant. Good to know.
“I don’t know enough about witches to know,” he said. “Jon gets hunches. Takes a walk just at the right time to find five dollars someone dropped, picks the right lottery number to win ten bucks. That kind of thing. Nothing big, nothing anyone would have noticed if my grandma hadn’t had it stronger.”
The sight was one of those general terms that told Moira precisely nothing. It could mean anything from a little fae blood in the family tree or full-blown witchblood. His brother’s lack of power wouldn’t mean he wasn’t a witch—the magic sang weaker in the men. But fae or witchblood, Alan Choo had been right about it being something that would attract Samhain’s attention. She rubbed her cheekbone even though she knew the ache was a phantom pain touch wouldn’t alter.
Samhain. Did she have a choice? In her dreams, she died.
She could feel the intensity of the wolf’s regard, strengthening as her silence continued. Then he told her the final straw that broke her resistance. “Jon’s a cop—undercover—so I doubt your coven knows it. If his body turns up, though, there will be an investigation. I’ll see to it that the witchcraft angle gets explored thoroughly. They might listen to a werewolf who tells them that witches might be a little more than turbaned fortune-tellers.”
Blackmail galled him, she could tell—but he wasn’t bluffing. He must love his brother.
She had only a touch of empathy, and it came and went. It seemed to be pretty focused on this werewolf tonight, though.
If she didn’t help him, his brother would die at Samhain’s hands, and his blood would be on her as well. If it cost her death, as her dreams warned her, perhaps that was justice served.
“Come in,” Moira said, hearing the grudge in her voice. He’d think it was her reaction to the threat—and the police poking about the coven would end badly for all concerned.
But it wasn’t his threat that moved her. She took care of the people in her neighborhood; that was her job. The police she saw as brothers-in-arms. If she could help one, it was her duty to do so. Even if it meant her life for his.
“You’ll have to wait until I get my coffee,” she told him, and her mother’s ghost forced the next bit of politeness out of her. “Would you like a cup?”
“No. There’s no time.”
He said that as if he had some idea about it—maybe the sight hadn’t passed him by, either.
“We have until tomorrow night if Samhain has him.” She turned on her heel and left him to follow her or not, saying over her shoulder, “Unless they took him because he saw something. In which case, he probably is already dead. Either way, there’s time for coffee.”
He closed the door with deliberate softness and followed her. “Tomorrow’s Halloween. Samhain.”
“Kouros isn’t Wiccan, any more than he is Greek, but he apes both for his followers,” she told him as she continued deeper into her apartment. She remembered to turn on the hall light—not that he’d need it, being a wolf. It just seemed courteous: allies should show each other courtesy. “Like a magician playing sleight of hand, he pulls upon myth, religion, and anything else he can to keep them in thrall. Samhain—the time, not the coven—has power for the fae, for Wicca, for witches. Kouros uses it to cement his own, and killing someone with a bit of power generates more strength than killing a stray dog—and bothers him about as much.”
“Kouros?” He said it as if it solved some puzzle, but it must not have been important, because he continued with no more than a breath of pause. “I thought witches were all women.” He followed her into the kitchen and stood too close behind her. If he were to attack, she wouldn’t have time to ready a spell.
But he wouldn’t attack; her death wouldn’t come at his hands tonight.
The kitchen lights were where she remembered them, and she had to take it on faith that she was turning them on and not off. She could never remember which way the switch worked. He didn’t say anything, so she must have been right.