Fair Game Part 1

FAIR GAME.

AN ALPHA AND OMEGA NOVEL.

PATRICIA BRIGGS.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

No story is written alone. I'd like to thank the usual suspects as well as Supervisory Special Agent Randy Jarvis, Public Affairs Specialist Katherine Gulotta, and Special Agent Greg Comcowich of the Boston FBI for the time and effort they spent so I had a chance at getting things right. Thanks also go to the fine people of the Ghosts & Gravestones Tour of Boston. You rock. Though I have to say, if I never hear the phrase "Boston Mola.s.sacre" again, it will be too soon. Brenda Wahler sent critical information at just the right moment. Thank you.

As always, if this book is enjoyable, it is their fault-all mistakes are mine.

PROLOGUE.

A Fairy Tale.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Leslie.

The year she turned eight, two things happened: her mother left Leslie and her father to move to California with a stockbroker; and, in the middle of a sensational murder trial, the fae of story and song admitted to their existence. Leslie never heard from her mother again, but the fairies were another matter.

When she was nine, her father took a job in a strange city, moving them from the house she'd grown up in to an apartment in Boston where they were the only black people in an all-white neighborhood. Their apartment encompa.s.sed the upper floor of a narrow house owned by their downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Cullinan. Mrs. Cullinan kept an eye on Leslie while her dad was at work, and by her silent championship eased Leslie's way into the society of the neighborhood kids who casually dropped by for cookies or lemonade. In Mrs. Cullinan's capable hands, Leslie learned to crochet, knit, sew, and cook while her dad kept the old woman's house and lawn in top shape.

Even as an adult, Leslie wasn't sure if her dad had paid the old woman or if she'd just taken over without consulting him. It was the kind of thing Mrs. Cullinan would have done.

When Leslie was in third grade, one of the kindergarten boys went missing. In fourth grade, one of her cla.s.smates, a girl by the name of Mandy, disappeared. There were also, throughout the same time period, a lot of missing pets-mostly kittens and young dogs. Nothing that would have attracted her attention if it weren't for Mrs. Cullinan. On their daily walks (Mrs. Cullinan called them "busybody strolls," to see what people in their neighborhood were up to), the old woman began stopping at missing-pet notices taped in store windows and taking out a little notebook and writing all the information in it.

"Are we looking for lost animals?" Leslie asked finally. She mostly learned from observation rather than by asking questions because, in her experience, people lied better with their lips than they did with their actions. But she hadn't come up with a good explanation for the missing-pet list and she was forced, at last, to resort to words.

"It's always good to keep an eye out." It was a not-quite answer, but Mrs. Cullinan sounded troubled, so Leslie didn't ask her again.

When Leslie's new birthday puppy-a mutt with brown eyes and big feet-went missing, Mrs. Cullinan had gotten tight-lipped and said, "It is time to put a stop to this." Leslie was pretty sure her landlady hadn't known anyone was listening to her.

Leslie, her father, and Mrs. Cullinan were eating dinner a few days after her puppy's disappearance when a fancy limousine pulled up in front of Miss Nellie Michaelson's house. Out of the dark depths of the shiny vehicle emerged two men in suits and a woman in a white flowery dress that looked too summery and airy to be a good match for the men's attire. They were dressed for a funeral and she for a picnic in the nearby park.

Unabashedly spying, Leslie's father and Mrs. Cullinan left the table to stare out the window as the three people entered Miss Nellie's house without knocking.

"What are they...?" The expression on Leslie's father's face changed from curious (no one ever visited Miss Nellie) to grim in a heartbeat, and he grabbed his service revolver and his badge. Mrs. Cullinan caught him on the front porch.

"No, Wes," she said in a strange, fierce voice. "No. They are fae and it's a fae mess they've come to clean up. You let them do what they need to."

Leslie, peering around the adults, finally saw what had gotten everyone in a tizzy. The two men were carrying Nellie out of her house. Nellie was struggling, her mouth wide-open as if she were screaming, but not a sound came out.

Leslie had always thought that Nellie looked as though she should be a model or a movie star, with her sad blue eyes and downturned soft mouth. But she didn't appear so pretty right then. She didn't look frightened-she looked enraged. Her beautiful face was twisted, ugly, and, at the same time, breath-stealingly scary in a way that would haunt Leslie's dreams even as an adult.

The woman, the one in the airy-fairy dress who'd come with the men, exited the house about the same time the men finished stuffing Nellie in the backseat of the car. She locked the door of Nellie's house behind her, and when she was finished she looked up and saw the three of them watching. After a pause, she strolled across the street and down the sidewalk to them. The woman didn't appear to be walking fast, but she was opening the front gate almost before Leslie realized that she was heading for them.

"And what do you think you're looking at?" she said mildly, in a voice that had Leslie's father thumbing the snap that held his gun in the holster.

Mrs. Cullinan stepped forward, her jaw set like it had been the day that she'd faced down a couple of young toughs who'd decided an old woman was fair game. "Justice," she said with the same soft menace that had sent the boys after easier prey. "And don't get uppity with me. I know what you are and I'm not afraid of you."

The strange woman's head lowered aggressively and her shoulders got tight. Leslie took a step behind her father. But Mrs. Cullinan's retort had drawn the attention of the men by the limousine.

"Eve," said one of the men mildly, his hand on the open car door. His voice was mellow and rich, as thick with Ireland as Mrs. Cullinan's own, and it carried across the street and down the block as if there were no city sounds to m.u.f.fle it. "Come to the car and keep Gordie company, would you?" Even Leslie knew it wasn't a request.

The woman stiffened and narrowed her eyes, but she turned and walked away from them. When she had taken his place at the car, the man approached them.

"You'd be Mrs. Cullinan," he said, as soon as he was on their side of the street and close enough for quiet conversation. He had one of those mildly good-looking faces that didn't stand out in a crowd-except for his eyes. No matter how she tried, Leslie could never remember what color his eyes were, only that they were odd and strange and beautiful.

"You know I am," Mrs. Cullinan said stiffly.

"We appreciate you calling us on this and I would like to leave you with a reward." He held a business card out to her. "A favor when you need it most."

"If the children are safe to play in their yards, that is reward enough." She dried her hands on her hips and made no move to take the card from him.

He smiled and did not put down his hand. "I will not leave indebted to you, Mrs. Cullinan."

"And I know better than to accept a gift from the fairies," she snapped.

"Onetime reward," he said. "A little thing. I promise that no intentional harm will come to you or yours from this as long as I am alive." Then, in a coaxing voice, he said, "Come, now. I cannot lie. This is a different age, when your kind and ours needs must learn to live together. You could have called the police with your suspicions-which were correct. Had you done so, she would not have gone without killing a great many more than the children she has already taken." He sighed and glanced back at the car's darkened windows. "It is difficult to change when you are so old, and she was always in the habit of eating small things, was our Nellie."

"Which is why I called you," Mrs. Cullinan said stoutly. "I didn't know who it was taking the little ones until I saw Nellie over by our backyard two nights ago and this child's puppy was missing in the morning."

The fae looked at Leslie for the first time, but Leslie was too upset to read his face. "Eating small things," the man had said. Puppies were small things.

"Ah," he said after a long moment. "Child, you may take what comfort you can that your puppy's death meant that no more would die from that one's misdeeds. Hardly fair recompense, I know, but it is something."

"Give it to her," Mrs. Cullinan said suddenly. "Her puppy's dead. Give her your reward. I'm an old woman with cancer; I won't live out the year. Give it to her."

The fae man looked at Mrs. Cullinan, then knelt on one knee before Leslie, who was holding very tightly to her father's hand. She didn't know if she was crying for her puppy, the old woman who was more her mother than her mother had ever been-or for herself.

"A gift for a loss," he said. "Take this and use it when you most need it."

Leslie put her free hand behind her back. He was trying to make up for her puppy's death with a present, just like people had tried to do after her mom had left. Presents didn't make things better. Quite the opposite, in her experience. The giant teddy bear her mama had given her the night she left was buried in the back of the closet. Although Leslie couldn't stand to get rid of it, she also couldn't look at it without feeling sick.

"With this you could get a car or a house," the man said. "Money for an education." He smiled, quite kindly-and it made him look totally different, more real, somehow, as he said, "Or save some other puppy from monsters. All you have to do is wish hard and tear up the card."

"Any wish?" Leslie asked warily, taking the card, more because she didn't want to be the focus of this man's attention any longer than because she wanted the card. "I want my puppy back."

"I can't bring anyone or anything back to life," he told her sadly. "I would that I could. But outside of that, almost anything."

She stared at the card in her hand. It had one word written across it: GIFT.

He stood up. Then he smiled-an expression as merry and light as anything she'd ever seen. "And, Miss Leslie," he said, when he shouldn't have known her name at all, "no wishing for more wishes. It doesn't work like that."

She'd just been wondering...

The strange man turned to Mrs. Cullinan and took her hand in his and kissed it. "You are a lady of rare beauty, quick wits, and generous spirit."

"I'm a nosy, interfering old woman," she responded, but Leslie could see that she was pleased.

As an adult, Leslie kept the card the fairy man had given her tucked behind her driver's license. It looked as clean and fresh as it had the day she'd agreed to take it. To the shock of her doctors, Mrs. Cullinan's cancer mysteriously disappeared and she'd died in her bed twenty years later at the age of ninety-four. Leslie still missed her.

Leslie learned two valuable things about the fae that day. They were powerful and charming-and they ate children and puppies.

CHAPTER 1.

ASPEN CREEK, MONTANA.

"Go home," Bran Cornick growled at Anna.

No one who saw him like this would ever forget what lurked behind the Marrok's mild-mannered facade. But only people who were stupid-or desperate-would risk raising his ire to reveal the monster behind the nice-guy mask. Anna was desperate.

"When you tell me you will quit calling on my husband to kill people," Anna told him doggedly. She didn't yell, she didn't shout, but she wasn't going to give up easily.

Clearly, she'd finally pushed him out to the very narrow edges of his last shred of civilized behavior. He closed his eyes, turned his head away from her, and said, in a very gentle voice, "Anna. Go home and cool off." Go home until he cooled off was what he meant. Bran was Anna's fatherin-law, her Alpha, and also the Marrok who ruled all the werewolf packs in his part of the world by the sheer force of his will.

"Bran-"

His power unleashed with his temper, and the five other wolves, not counting Anna, who were in the living room of his house dropped to the floor, even his mate, Leah. They bowed their heads and tipped them slightly to the side to expose their throats.

Though he made no outward move, the speed of their surrender testified to Bran's anger and his dominance-and only Anna, somewhat to her surprise at her own temerity, stayed on her feet. When Anna had first come to Aspen Creek, beaten and abused as she'd been, if anyone had yelled at her, she'd have hidden in a corner and not come out for a week.

She met Bran's eyes and bared her teeth at him as the wave of his power brushed past her like a spring breeze. Not that she wasn't properly terrified, but not of Bran. Bran, she knew, would not really hurt her if he could help it, no matter what her hindbrain tried to tell her.

She was terrified for her mate. "You are wrong," Anna told him. "Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And you are determined not to see it until he is broken beyond repair."

"Grow up, little girl," Bran snarled, and now his eyes-bright gold leaching out his usual hazel-were focused on her instead of the fireplace in the wall. "Life isn't a bed of roses and people have to do hard jobs. You knew what Charles was when you married him and when you took him as your mate."

He was trying to make this about her, because then he wouldn't have to listen to her. He couldn't be that blind, just too stubborn. So his attempt to alter the argument-when there should be no argument at all-enraged her.

"Someone in here is acting like a child, and it isn't me," she growled right back at him.

Bran's return snarl was wordless.

"Anna, shut up," Tag whispered urgently, his big body limp on the floor where his orange dreadlocks clashed with the maroon of the Persian rug. He was her friend and she trusted the berserker's judgment on most things. Under other circ.u.mstances she'd have listened to him, but right now she had Bran so angry he couldn't speak-so she could get a few words in past his stubborn, inflexible mind.

"I know my mate," she told her father by marriage. "Better than you do. He will break before he disappoints you or fails to do his duty. You have to stop this because he can't."

When Bran spoke, his voice was a toneless whisper. "My son will not bend or break. He has done his job for a century before you were even born, and he'll be doing it a century from now."

"His job was to dispense justice," she said. "Even if it meant killing people, he could do it. Now he is merely an a.s.sa.s.sin. His prey cling to his feet repentant and redeemable. They weep and beg for mercy that he can't give. It is destroying him," she said starkly. "And I'm the only one who sees it."

Bran flinched. And for the first time, she realized that Charles wasn't the only one suffering under the new, harsher rules the werewolves had to live by.

"Desperate times," he said grimly, and Anna hoped that she'd broken through. But he shook off the momentary softness and said, "Charles is stronger than you give him credit for. You are a stupid little girl who doesn't know as much as she thinks she does. Go home before I do something I'll regret later. Please."

It was that brief break that told her this was useless. He did know. He did understand, and he was hoping against hope that Charles could hold out. Her anger fled and left...despair.

She met her Alpha's eyes for a long moment before acknowledging her failure.

ANNA KNEW EXACTLY when Charles drove up, newly returned from Minnesota where he'd gone to take care of a problem the Minnesota pack leader would not. If she'd been deaf to the sound of the truck or the front door, she'd have known Charles was home by the magic that tied wolf to mate. That was all the bond told her outright, though-his side of their bond was as opaque as he could manage, and that told her a whole lot more about his state of mind than he probably intended.

From the way he let nothing leak through to her, she knew it had been another bad trip, one that had left too many people dead, probably people he hadn't wanted to kill.

Lately, they had all been bad trips.

At first she'd been able to help, but when the rules changed, when the werewolves had admitted their existence to the rest of the world, the new public scrutiny meant that second chances for the wolves who broke Bran's laws were offered only in extraordinary circ.u.mstances. She'd kept going with him on these trips because she refused to let Charles suffer alone. But when Anna started having nightmares about the man who'd fallen to his knees in front of her in mute entreaty before his execution, Charles had quit letting her go.

She was strong-willed and she liked to think of herself as tough. She could have made him change his mind or followed him anyway. But Anna hadn't fought his edict because she realized she was only making his job harder to bear. He saw himself as a monster and couldn't believe she didn't also when she witnessed the death he brought.

So Charles went out hunting alone-as he had for a hundred years or more, just as his father had said. His hunt was always successful-and, at the same time, a failure. He was dominant; he had a compulsory need to protect the weak, including, paradoxically, the wolves he was there to kill. When the wolves he executed died, so did a part of Charles.

Before Bran had brought them out to the public, the new wolves, those who had been Changed for less than ten years, would have been given several chances if their transgression came from loss of control. Conditions could have been taken into account that would lessen the punishment of others. But the public knew about them now, and they couldn't allow everyone to know just how dangerous werewolves really were.

It was up to the pack Alpha to take care of dispensing commonplace justice. Previously, Charles had only had to go out a few times a year to take care of bigger or more unusual problems. But many of the Alphas were unhappy with the new harshness of the laws, and somehow more and more of the enforcement fell to Bran and thus to Charles. He was going out two or three times a month and it was wearing on him.

She could feel him standing just inside the house, so she put a little more pa.s.sion into her music, calling him to her with the sweet-voiced cello that had been his first Christmas gift to her.

If she went upstairs, he'd greet her gravely, tell her he had to go talk to his father, and leave. He'd come back in a day or so after running as a wolf in the mountains. But Charles never quite came back all the way anymore.

It had been a month since he'd last touched her. Six weeks and four days since he'd made love to her, not since they'd come back from the last trip she'd accompanied him on. She'd have said that to Bran if he hadn't made that "Grow up, little girl" comment. Probably she should have told Bran anyway, but she'd given up making him see reason.

She'd decided to try something else.

She stayed in the music room Charles had built in the bas.e.m.e.nt while he stood upstairs. Instead of using words, she let her cello speak for her. Rich and true, the notes slid from her bow and up the stairway. After a moment she heard the stairs squeak under the weight of his feet and let out a breath of relief. Music was something they shared.

Her fingers sang to him, coaxing him to her, but he stopped in the doorway. She could feel his eyes on her, but he didn't say anything.

Anna knew that when she played on her cello, her face was peaceful and distant-a product of much coaching from an early teacher who told her that biting her lip and grimacing was a dead giveaway to any judge that she was having trouble. Her features weren't regular enough for true beauty, but she wasn't ugly, either, and today she'd used some makeup tricks that softened her freckles and emphasized her eyes.

She glanced at him briefly. His Salish heritage gave him lovely dark skin and exotic (to her) features, his father's Welsh blood apparent only in subtle ways: the shape of his mouth, the angle of his chin. It was his job, not his lineage, that froze his features into an unemotional mask and left his eyes cold and hard. His duties had eaten away at him until he was nothing but muscle, bone, and tension.

Anna's fingers touched the strings and rocked, softening the cello's song with a vibrato on the longer notes. She'd begun with a bit of Pachelbel's Canon in D, which she generally used as a warm-up or when she wasn't sure what she wanted to play. She considered moving to something more challenging, but she was too distracted by Charles. Besides, she wasn't trying to impress him, but to seduce him into letting her help. So, Anna needed a song that she could play while thinking of Charles.