Wild Card (33 page)

It’d taken an hour of Bian’s patient argument to wear Felix down to this point. At one point, I thought he’d been about to crack and say he’d take over the hunt for the Matlal Athanate as well, just to keep other Weres out of Denver, but Silas and Ursula didn’t want that. They didn’t want bounty hunting Weres on their territory either, but Bian had kept hammering on the selling point—the faster they got this under control, the less opportunity there was for the Confederation to sneak in. Bounty hunters would pack up and go when they finished. Getting rid of a Confederation-sponsored rival pack might weaken the Denver pack to the point where the Confederation could just walk in anyway.

I didn’t know how much of Bian’s staging of it helped, but what I thought was a minor point, that I’d somehow forced Altau into this position, seemed to count more as far as the pack were concerned. They’d all yelled at me and Bian, but it was as if having two targets reduced the force of their arguments against either one.

The one thing they’d all been inflexible on was that we meet on neutral territory. And so we were shivering on the crumbling strip of the old Colfax airfield, further along I-70, waiting for the bounty hunters.

Bian explained that one, Verano, was a small pack, the other, Gray, was a solo operator. Verano had been highly recommended by the Houses of the Eastern Seaboard for tracking down Basilikos trying to infiltrate their mantles. Gray had come with the recommendations of the central Canadian Houses in the wilds of Manitoba and eastern Ontario. He’d also just finished working for one of Altau’s formerly secret affiliates in the Dakotas and Bian seemed to think we’d been lucky to get him. I was just intrigued by the thought of a solo werewolf.

A black limo with dark windows cruised down off the interstate and stopped short of the strip, unwilling to risk the uneven boundary with its low-slung chassis.

I slipped my hand inside my jacket to rest on the HK. There could be anything behind those windows.

“If that’s Verano, then bounty hunting is good business,” I said.

“Better believe it,” muttered Bian.

I edged closer to Alex’s SUV. Melissa sat up inside, bleary-eyed and wincing at the movement.

Alex ended his call and joined us, making us two obviously distinct groups welcoming the hunters. We should have thought of that earlier.

The car came to a halt and the door opened.

A werewolf flowed out, long and sharp and the colors of steel in snow.

Ursula and Ricky immediately shucked their clothes and changed with that eye-twisting shimmer. Ricky’s wolf I recognized from the first meeting out at Coykuti. He was pale with russet tints. Ursula was unrelieved midnight black and the pair of them were huge, much bigger than the Verano wolf.

“Freaking hell,” Melissa whispered.

“Just werewolf formalities. And that’s Verano,” Bian said quietly, as a man followed the wolf out of the limo.

Verano wore a black suit with white shirt and thin tie, the color of the suit and tie exactly matching his big, frameless sunglasses. A white woolen coat with a matching fur collar was draped over his shoulders. His hair was so white it had to have been dyed.

And his big, square face was expressionless as he looked between the two groups waiting.

A second wolf, the twin of the first, slunk out of the car and took station on his right.

“Shit, is he here to hunt Matlal or to design dresses?” I was talking to myself, but Bian heard me and grinned crookedly.

We walked forward, Melissa scrambling out of the SUV to join us. Felix and his enforcers set a path to meet us all halfway.

With excellent timing, a Harley hardtail came grumbling down the same road. My recent history with bikers being what it was, I closed my hand around the reassuring butt of the HK and pulled it just clear of the holster, but left it hidden.

“Gray,” Bian said.

He was encased in leather, as he needed to be with the cold. Not a slick racing suit, but a jumble of pieces, topped off with an old brown World War II flying jacket and a Russian hat with earpieces.

He bounced over the edge of the runway, and brought the Harley to a halt near us.

The throb of the Harley died. He tossed his gloves and lifted his fur hat to scratch his scalp under his long, black hair.

“How very…picturesque.” Verano’s voice was cold as the wind.

It was amusing, given how staged his arrival had been.

Gray leaned the hog on its kickstand and walked over to us.

“You must be Bian.” He held his hand out and they shook.

“What gave that away?”

“You’re the exact height I imagined from your voice,” he said, making Bian laugh. He offered his hand to me. “Nick Gray.”

“Amber Farrell, House Farrell,” I replied automatically and shook.

For all his English name, Nick Gray looked full Native American. He had the wind-burned, chiseled-down cheeks and steady stare of a backwoods hunter. His eyes were the brown of walnut heartwood, polished to a fine sheen.

And his marque was strange, as polished and glossy and full of secrets as his eyes.

We froze, looking at each other long enough that I felt the rumble of jealous anger building in Alex.

He blinked and smiled. “Chippewa,” he said, as if that’s what I’d been puzzling over.

“Arapaho,” I responded. “Only a little, though. And this is—”

“Alexander Deauville
kin-Farrell
,” Alex interrupted me, leaning across to shake Gray’s hand, maybe too firmly.

Down, boy.

And not the best way of introducing himself, with Felix listening.

The moment passed. Gray moved to greet Felix and Silas while Verano introduced himself.

His was a clear werewolf marque; the scent and whatever else it was I was sensing. The eukori. What made Gray so different?

Greetings over, the groups separated out into the corners of a square, emphasizing the tensions between us. Bian started to explain what we had agreed. All the searches were combined together and I would co-ordinate between the Denver pack, Verano and Gray. That meant setting up areas, times, schedules, routines, procedures and other fun stuff.

I laid down some objectives to be met if at all possible. When we caught up with the Matlal Athanate, Bian would have to be involved. Matlal or Confederation Were had to be delivered alive to the Denver pack. I needed to be there when we tracked down the rogue.

Between the colonel’s TacNet system and headsets borrowed from Victor, we’d have a workable comms and I promised to list some protocols for the next meeting.

Everyone had personal weapons. I had a list of equipment that I wanted and Bian agreed Altau would fund.

Wonderful. Except Verano and Gray had disliked each other on sight, and Verano made it known through every step of the discussion.

That was a personal problem for me. I didn’t like Verano either, but there were twenty in his pack of hunters and feet on the ground was a big consideration. I’d have to choose Verano over Gray, if it came to it.

Verano was already pushing for it, querying the contract with Gray, saying he could bring another two or three to replace him and take over his contract. Gray smiled and Bian refused to discuss it.

“I don’t understand what a solo operator brings to this mission,” Verano said finally. “It’s complicated enough.” His eyes roved over the groups. He had a point there.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll get assigned all those places where you’d stand out,” Gray dismissed it. “Are we done?”

Bian nodded to me.

“We are, until the 09:00 meeting tomorrow at the Oxford Hotel, just across from the station. The meeting room is booked in the name of Rose Cooper.” I stepped forward into the empty space between the groups.

Verano was still flanked by his escort of wolves.

I stared at where his eyes were hidden behind his glasses. “Invitation-only meeting. You, you and you.” I flicked eyes between Verano, Silas and Gray. “Leave the doggies behind. Along with the attitudes.”

“I’ll be there.” Verano sneered and turned on the heel of his well-polished shoe.

Gray straddled his hog, but waited for the limo to complete its painful 180 turn on the narrow track.

That gave Alex time to stalk over, all stiff-legged and prickly.

Crap. I followed.

“I’d like a chance to talk,” Alex said to Gray, looming over him.

Gray squinted up, unfazed. “Okay. What about?”

“Chippewa oral tradition, specially to do with Were.”

I relaxed. Alex’s pet obsession with the Were among Native Americans.

“Hmm. I’d be glad to have the opportunity to meet the pair of you off-duty,” Gray said, putting his fur hat back on.

Not the best response, but thankfully Alex didn’t get any more territorial.

And it served my purposes. Diane had told me taking a werewolf out of a pack would end with them going rogue. I hadn’t thought that through until Gray triggered it—what if I never had a pack? Or was Gray his own pack and his own alpha? Was one of those a way out for me? Could I be part-Were and not wrapped up in the Denver pack? Please.

Oh, yes, I wanted to talk to Gray, to hear about how he came to be solo.
And
to find out what was behind that strange marque.

Chapter 34

I’d gotten in the front with Alex in his SUV when we headed back. Melissa was in the back with Bian, and nervous. Good. It might serve to underline the seriousness of the situation she was in. I couldn’t spare the time to worry about her. I was tired and confused. I needed answers from Alex. He had to have known what Felix was thinking, but he hadn’t told me.

“So Felix thinks the rogue isn’t a werewolf,” I said calmly.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Time to tell all, Alex,” Bian said from the back.

She didn’t mention the tension between Alex and the rest of the Denver pack. She didn’t need to. The fact he’d been prepared to stand with me was another reason I wasn’t going to give him a hard time about keeping secrets from me. He was already in a difficult position with the pack, and siding with me might mean he never got back in.

Alex grunted. “Felix went ballistic after your news about the rogue. He pulled the pack off everything else and sent us looking. People had to call in sick off work, or take vacation. They worked around the clock.”

“But you were already maxed out chasing down the Matlal Were,” I interrupted him. “And he provided some of the pack to guard your house over the weekend.”

“Yes, and the pack went and killed the Matlal Were down in Cherry Creek. All of that,” he said. “You’re not seeing the problems Felix’s facing. If it gets out that there’s a rogue loose in Denver, the Confederation would use that as an excuse to come and ‘help’. Then we’d never get rid of them. We’re between a rock and a hard place. That’s why it was so easy for you to get the hunters in.”

“That was easy?” Bian snorted. “I wouldn’t like to see—”

“Hold on.” I shushed Bian. “There are rules for Were? The Confederation can come in here if there’s a rogue?”

“Not like that,” Alex said. “But they are concerned for the opinion of other packs. They’d rather grow by accumulation. If they’re seen as aggressors, they might even be attacked. But a rogue, and the local pack not able to catch it? Open door.”

“Back to your hunt for the rogue,” Bian said. “What did you find?”

“Nothing. That’s the point. Even in a place as big as Denver, even in the limited time, it’s near impossible that the whole pack could look and not find even the slightest trace of another marque.”

I didn’t know how realistic that was, but I realized I hadn’t told him everything I knew. I guessed that made us equal.

“He’s using some kind of a spell to hide it.”

The SUV swerved as Alex turned to stare at me.

“What?”

“The road’s out there—the thing in front of us.” I waited until he focused on it again. “When my clothes were stolen from my car, the marque was hidden. I didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t until I had Mary and Liu look at it that I knew.”

I glanced in the back. Melissa was so bemused by all the talk she’d forgotten to be anxious about Bian. And Bian herself was looking very interested.

“So,” I said. “Maybe a Were who uses magic.”

Bian grimaced. “Hate that word. Anyway, we all use ‘magic.’ Athanate use it to manifest fangs, Were use it to change shape.”

“Athanate work at using it more.”

Bian eyes flickered. She wasn’t eager to talk more about how Athanate might channel the energy, probably because she didn’t want any chance of it getting back to the Adepts and the Were. “There’s nothing to stop a werewolf from developing his or her capabilities the same way.”

“It takes time?” I asked and Bian nodded. “So who’s the oldest werewolf?” I asked Alex.

“Larimer, by quite a bit. But that doesn’t mean—”

“No, it doesn’t mean he’s the rogue, throwing everybody else off track and telling us it can’t be anyone in the pack because he’s asked them all. Or that it can’t possibly be a Were. But it’s a possibility. What is he saying to you?”

“He thinks it’s an Adept who’s used the energy to shape shift. That’s why there’s no Call and no trace of marque.”

Was that even possible? I had something more to ask Mary, or Alice. In the meantime, another thought struck me.

“Assuming it isn’t Larimer, is that the reason he wanted me to do this investigation? That I have links with the Adepts?”

“Wasn’t just that,” Alex said.

Bian leaned between the seats, Melissa forgotten for the moment. “Explain,” she said.

“Larimer’s playing it safe. If Amber’s just a ploy by Altau, he’ll find out, and in the meantime, either Amber will find the rogue and he claims credit, or she won’t and he’ll blame Skylur.”

“Why the unending suspicion of Altau? Of me?” I asked.

Bian laughed. “It’s the mind voodoo he doesn’t like. Larimer’s afraid Skylur will seduce him.”

“Bian, stop it, that’s just a distraction.”

“Skylur has tryied to manipulate Felix,” Alex said. “Back when you were the liaison with the pack, Bian.”

She didn’t deny it.

“Why?” I asked her.