Hidden Crimes (30 page)

“We have to stop her,” Evina said, seeing as
clearly as Nate that Iseult’s attacks were taking a toll on Paul.
“Vasili was an ordinary shifter. His blood couldn’t have given her
that much power. Why isn’t she running out of juice?”

Nate couldn’t answer that. Because theorizing
seemed pointless, he took a quick inventory of the materials around
them: a wall of split wood, a bottle of Jim Beam with a dribble of
booze in it, a cracked Bic lighter, and a rusty bean can with its
lid curled back.

“Evina,” he said, “do you think you could
sneak around and set that truck on fire without them catching
you?”

Evina gauged the height of the end-of-summer
weeds that would serve as her cover. “In my sleep,” she said,
grinning like the secret pyro Nate suspected many firemen were.

He wished there were time to kiss her.
Instead, he handed her the lighter and the can. “Put your
incendiary device together. As soon as you’ve thrown it, retreat
out of shooting range. I’ll use the distraction to charge Iseult. I
expect Paul will be quick enough to join me. With her attention
split, I think we can take her down.”

He hoped they could anyway. He didn’t have a
lot of experience battling souped-up half faeries.

Almost to his dismay, Evina rigged the
exploding bean can—including a fuse ripped from the tail of her
shirt—in less than two minutes.

“You should take this,” she said, offering
him the hilt of the dagger she’d held onto all this time.

He didn’t want it, partly because he thought
she should keep it to defend herself. “It might be spelled. I don’t
think I should bring it near Iseult again.”

Evina peered dubiously at him, then decided
not to argue.

“See you soon,” she said, and took off in a
running crouch.

Tigers had a reputation for hunting like
shadows. Evina didn’t disprove the stereotype. Silent as a ghost,
she melted into the reeds like she was part of them, her dirty
yellow oxford excellent camouflage. He barely heard her toss the
can underneath the car. Her targets certainly didn’t. The fuse
stayed lit long enough to ignite the alcohol-soaked wood chips.
They burned brighter than the cotton, the twigs they were bundled
with catching too. Their forking branches were designed to carry
the flames upward.

Catch the oil reserve
, he prayed. Cars
didn’t run on gasoline in Resurrection, but their gears still used
lubricant. Nate hoped this one was extra greased.

Thirty nail-biting seconds later, the truck
went up in a beautiful ball of fire. The blast blew Iseult’s crew
back like crash dummies, though Nate didn’t have a chance to
ascertain how badly they’d been hurt.

Here goes nothing
, he thought as he
vaulted over the cords of wood.

He blurred toward Iseult with all the shifter
speed he could muster, not wanting to give her time to put up
another shield. Paul let out a roar as Nate slammed into her,
carrying Iseult and himself to the gravel drive. Fortunately, Paul
figured out what was happening. Nate’s hands were full enough
grappling with an enraged part faerie. He didn’t need to deal with
the tiger too.

Whatever qualms he might have had about
trying to hurt a woman he lost when he realized she had more raw
strength. She made him glad for every bit of his quickness and
training.

To discourage her from chanting, first chance
he got, he drove his fist hard into her mouth, knocking out a
portion of her pretty snow-white teeth. Iseult’s head jerked back
in pain and amazement. Nate had a feeling she’d never been hit like
this in her life.

Then she spat blood at him.

To his relief, the blood wasn’t magic and
only blinded him temporarily. By this time, Paul’s tiger was
circling them as they wrestled back and forth. For once, the
tiger’s size wasn’t an advantage. Paul had trouble finding an angle
of attack that wouldn’t result in him chomping down on Nate as
well.

Iseult noticed Nate’s ally closing in. She
made an angry gurgling noise and started building another lightning
ball in her palm.

Nate guessed she didn’t need to chant for
that.

Hoping to distract her again, he aimed a
punch toward her nose. She wrenched away before the blow connected,
kneeing him in the groin instead.

Nate saw stars—thanks to being naked—but
refused to let go. Iseult’s baby lightning was now as big as a golf
ball. The missiles she’d lobbed at Paul had been soccer size.
Preferring not to wait for that, Nate grabbed her wrist and
walloped her forearm down.

Nothing happened. Her arm didn’t snap, and
her lightning ball didn’t stop accumulating new layers of sparks.
She grinned at him through her broken teeth, the smile crazy
looking in the bloody mask he’d made of her face. In Nate’s
opinion, she should have been in too much pain for that.

Then he noticed what her left hand was
doing.

She’d grabbed the triple tail of her
chainmail belt, its pearl finials clenched within her fist. He
remembered what he’d seen her wearing that morning: two pink pearl
earrings and one pink pearl pendant.

The answer came to him in a flash. These were
the same three pearls. Her power wasn’t unlimited, nor was her
constant rubbing of the jewelry a nervous habit. She was storing
extra energy in them. She had a damn backup battery.

He wondered if the pearls were pink from
being soaked in baby’s blood.

“Her belt!” he cried to Paul. “Rip it off of
her with your teeth!”

That made her angry. With the surge of
strength her fury brought, she rolled Nate under her. Struggling
against the clamp he had on her wrist, she tried to force her
lightning-making hand down toward him. The crackling sphere she
held might be small, but she seemed to be hoping to push it into
his cranium.

Nate didn’t want to discover what that would
do to his gray matter.

At least the change in position, with her on
top of him, allowed Paul a clear path to dart in from behind. He
got his shearing teeth under her belt first try. Apparently, the
chainmail links weren’t ordinary steel. He tugged Iseult
and
Nate backwards in his efforts to make them snap.

Iseult tried pushing the lighting back at the
tiger. Nate jerked her toward him for a head butt that should have
scrambled both their brains.

“Screw you,” she spat as a pistol
coughed.

Beaumont and the teller had gotten back in
the game.

The tiger yelped, so Nate guessed the bullet
had struck him—and that it was electrum. It mustn’t have done worse
than crease his hide. Paul continued worrying at Iseult’s belt.
Convinced that getting it off her was the important thing, Nate
heaved upward until he was kneeling. This positioned his back
between Paul and the two shooters. Hopefully, they wouldn’t target
him for fear of the bullet passing through his body to Iseult’s.
Ammo that hurt shifters damaged faeries too.

“Pull!” he exhorted Paul. “Use the strength
that broke that crate apart!”

Paul’s tiger muscles bunched for one great
heave. Another shot barked at them. A streak of fire licked Nate’s
shoulder.
Fuck it
, he thought to the pain. He sprang off his
knees in a move too fast for Iseult to counter, the brief air space
enabling him to whip his legs out straight. He drove his heels
through the gravel and down into the earth. Braced, he pulled
Iseult the opposite way from Paul, thus increasing the strain on
her belt.

With perfect timing, Paul yanked massively
backward.

At last, the tiger was successful. The girdle
snapped, dragged from Iseult’s waist and hold as the tiger tumbled
backward tail over head.

The lightning ball sputtered out. Iseult
threw back her head and screamed.

She did this from more than rage. Her
stored-up power had been protecting her from the brunt of her
injuries. Deprived of its support, her wounds turned into those a
human would have suffered if Nate had used shifter strength on one.
A crack appeared in her forehead from his head butt. Her
lightning-throwing arm shattered even as he held it, her soft skin
and lax muscles all that held it together. The punch he’d driven
into her mouth caused the lower half of her face to cave. The light
went out of her eyes before he could think about helping her.

Nate didn’t waste valuable time mourning.
Thrusting her limp body off of his, he turned and sprang over the
smoldering pickup toward the shooters. Beaumont and the terrified
teller got two more wild shots off. After that, he had them on the
ground. Their struggles were mostly symbolic. When Iseult lost her
power, it must have drained theirs too.

Evina was smart enough to dash out of hiding
and grab the guns. With one pistol in each feminine fist, she
ordered the rest of the cowering crew to freeze. They didn’t seem
inclined to run, as black-faced from the truck’s explosion as coal
mine employees.

“Hands behind your heads!” she barked, not
taking chances. “Don’t try any tricky stuff.”

She uttered this with such gusto Nate thought
she must have played cops and robbers back when she was a cub.

“Thanks,” Nate said, hiding his
amusement.

“My pleasure,” she responded.

A slow clapping noise came from the nearest
stretch of trees. Nate barely had strength to tense, but he
did.

Then Tony stepped from the trees’ shadows,
bristling with assault gear and grinning like a bandit. Adam was
behind him.

“Bro,” Tony said with a smirk. “Naked
fighting! I gotta say that is a bold fashion choice, but it looks
good on you.”

“Fuck,” was the only retort Nate could come
up with.

“Guess we missed the party,” Rick added from
a different direction. Tony’s big brother was strolling out from
between two cabins with Carmine beside him. “This all of them that
you know?”

“Yes,” Nate said, having done a quick
headcount. He must have been tired, because seeing his pack riding
in to help brought a sting to his eyes.

“Your kittycat know how to handle those?”
Carmine asked, eyeing Evina and her double fistful of pistols.

“She does,” Evina answered dryly, not turning
from her targets to look at him.

Since she seemed steady, Nate shook his head
for Carmine not to take the guns from her. “Toss me a couple
cuffs,” he said to Tony. “I want these two squared away.”

Tony threw him the requested items, unable to
resist reminding him that’s what pockets were for. Beaumont and
Mrs. Norman lay limp as he snapped them on, the fight literally run
out of them. Seeing he had them under control, Rick and Carmine
went to help secure Evina’s group.

“You know,” Rick said, stealing a page from
his brother’s book, “it looks like your girlfriend collared more
perps than you.”

“Jesus,” Adam said—but not at their ribbing.
His eyes had widened at something behind them all.

Nate turned to see and couldn’t help smiling.
Paul looked like a fricking fire department recruiting poster
emerging from the central cabin in human form. Shirtless, he’d
found a pair of too-short trousers and seemed to have healed most
of his injuries. This, however, wasn’t what made him noteworthy. On
each of his giant arms, he carried two wriggling one-year-olds. A
fifth was squished between the others, held up mostly by the fact
that there wasn’t room for any more on Paul’s chest. Nate doubted
he’d truly needed to tote them all out at once, but he understood
the impulse. As if they knew they were safe, none of the babies
were crying.

Though his father’s arms were obviously full,
Paul’s son Malik appeared to think he ought to be carried too.

“I ’tected!” he yelled, tugging at Paul’s
pant’s leg. “I ’tected good, Daddy!”

Completely charmed, Nate strode to Malik and
picked him up. This startled the boy but didn’t upset him. “You
protected
great
,” Nate said. “You should be really proud of
yourself.”

“Thanks,” Paul said over his armload. “You
probably saved our lives back there.”

“I’d say that’s mutual,” Nate replied
honestly.

Paul looked slightly embarrassed, making Nate
want to laugh. Even now the tiger didn’t relish being allied to a
wolf.

JOKING around aside, Nate’s squad took over
efficiently. Evina found herself downtown and giving Carmine a
statement almost before realizing her and Nate’s big quest was
over.

“Couldn’t I talk to Nate before we do this?”
she asked the older wolf.

“He’s giving a statement too,” Carmine
said.

He seemed good-humored and kind, everyone’s
favorite uncle. Evina suspected this was his best weapon.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “We
closed an investigation your squad didn’t want to pursue.”

He leaned back in his steel chair, a legal
pad and mini-recorder sitting ostentatiously on the interrogation
room’s scribbled-on table. Evina had been interested to see the
place Nate worked, but this room smelled like bad coffee and old
sneakers. Thus far, Carmine hadn’t turned the recorder on.