Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(97)

Not your problem, Asil told himself fiercely under the sting of guilt. It was not self-indulgence because he had come here to set down his responsibilities and die with honor. He was not an Alpha here. He’d tended to such matters for long enough. Here his duty was clear. He would take them—and take Kara—to his Alpha. Once delivered, he was done.

Speaking of his Alpha . . . he took his cell phone out of its holster and called Bran.

“Asil?”

“I am standing in the middle of the forest where three of our werewolf guests had decided that hunting our Kara would bring them some benefit,” he said.

“They are still alive?”

“If they were not, I would be hunting my next victim instead of calling you,” he said.

“You sell yourself short,” Bran told Asil, but his voice was distracted. That argument was an old one. Asil did not make the mistake of thinking that Bran’s calmness meant he did not care that these wolves had trespassed. People died when Bran was at his most reasonable. Some of them died horribly. All of them idiots.

“I assume that Kara is all right,” Bran said. “If not, I would be getting reports about a werewolf who had killed every living thing in Aspen Creek and was heading next for Troy.”

Someone listening might think that Bran was being facetious, or even mocking—and they might be right. But it was himself he was mocking, not Asil. They both knew that Bran had been that monster.

“Probably,” agreed Asil. “But I would be a much better monster than you were. There would be no stories about my reign of terror because no one would live to tell the tale.”

Black humor took the sting out of the truth—but did not obscure it. And Asil knew the stories came later because the monster who had once ruled Bran’s body had not left victims alive, either. Bran had come back—and the reason for that was the reason why Bran Cornick was Asil’s Alpha and not the other way around.

“They’re almost done,” Asil told him.

“Done?”

“I made them change back to human—that way none of them will be able to hurt Kara when my back is turned. It’ll take us fifteen minutes or so to get to my house and another fifteen to take them to you.”

“Don’t make it too easy on them,” Bran said.

Asil smiled at the first of Kara’s attackers who was trying to stand up. “I won’t. You have my word.”

“See you in half an hour,” Bran said, and hung up.

•   •   •

Asil made the other wolves sit in the truck bed. If they had really been human, he’d have been risking their lives by making them stay out, naked, in the cold for so long. But werewolves can’t be killed by a little cold.

“It isn’t that cold,” he told Kara when she whined in concern while her attackers climbed in. “They are tough. If they are tough enough to pick on little girls”—he looked at them, and they turned their heads away—“then they are tough enough to ride in the back.” To them he said, “You stay there until we get where we are going. If you jump, I will back up and run over you until you are too broken to heal—and leave you for someone who cares to pick you up. It might take a while.”

They heard the truth in his words, and he saw their submission. They would stay where he’d put them—which disappointed him. He could have run them over with his truck without disturbing his wolf. He would have enjoyed it.

He opened the driver’s side door and gestured to Kara. She leaped in gracefully, the only evidence left of the wound the mess the blood had made of her fur.

He drove to the Marrok’s house, following four other cars and a truck doing the same thing: the Marrok had summoned the wolves. Because he knew where the only place big enough to house everyone was, Asil drove past the house and took the back road that allowed him to drive all the way to the pole barn. The truck in front of them did the same thing, and there were more trucks and SUVs parked at the barn—pack members.

The pole barn had been built about thirty years ago because the Marrok did not like Changing people in the school auditorium. “Too much blood and misery,” he’d said. “I am old enough to believe it leaves a mark on a place.”

Asil agreed.

Bran leaned against the outside wall of the pole barn as Asil drove up. He met Asil’s eyes through the windshield and pointed to the empty space in front of him, right next to the entrance. So Asil pulled in and parked.

Bran looked considerably less dangerous than Charles—the huge, blank-faced man who stood alertly beside him. Not for the first time, Asil thought that it had served Bran well to have a son who oozed threat like a Twinkie oozed plasticky cream filling. Everyone looked at Bran’s son Charles and forgot who the most dangerous person was.

Asil got out and held open the door for Kara. She jumped down beside him and gave Charles a wary look. Bran’s son was too busy taking in the shivering and na**d men in the truck bed to notice. He threw them each a pair of sweat bottoms—which Asil hadn’t noticed him holding.

“Get dressed,” Charles rumbled at them. Once they were clothed, if only a little, Bran’s son took charge of herding them inside.

Once they were gone, Bran looked at Kara, who shrank under his gaze.

“It would have been better,” Bran said grimly, “if we hadn’t handed ammunition to our enemies. I’m afraid I’m as much at fault as you are, Asil. But it is Kara they want to pay.”