Fair Game Part 18

"As they have been trying to do for longer than you've been alive," he told her dryly.

"Yes," she said, "but they didn't have you and me on the case."

They had a TV now, and satellite-mostly so Anna could watch her detective shows. She was enjoying this. Charles...He supposed he was enjoying it, too. More now that the innocents were safe, in the hospital or the morgue.

"Motive," she said in the same voice he imagined Archimedes might have said, "Eureka!" in his bath all those years ago.

"Doesn't work the same way in serial-killer cases as it does in most murders," he said. "Serial killers are addicted to the hunt and they aren't capable of stopping, most of them. Their lives are controlled by the kill."

"He's tagging his victims," Anna said. "What does that say?"

"These are less than human," said Charles, repeating what they both knew. "Animals I have killed."

"Right. Animals that he has killed. He's claiming the kill with that tag." She frowned. "Aren't serial killers supposed to try to step into the investigation? To watch people struggle and fail to solve the case-or to control the case better?"

"I've heard that," Charles agreed. "For some kinds of killers."

She grinned at him.

"All of which the FBI knows better than we do," he said. "We've probably helped the case as much as we can until someone else is taken."

Anna sobered. "It's too bad we weren't able to hurt the horned lord worse than we did. He was mostly healed by the time he hit the top of the stairs-did you notice? The police don't have a chance against him."

"We'll stay here for a while. Leslie and Goldstein seemed to be sensible people. They'll call us in if they need us."

She tilted her head and asked, "What does Brother Wolf say about all of this?"

"That these hunters didn't get what they want; we stole their prey. They're going to be hungry and even more dangerous. On the other hand, I, Charles, say that we ought to eat something, as it is long past morning and we missed breakfast and are in danger of missing lunch-and Brother Wolf is pleased to concur."

"You are always trying to feed me," she accused him without heat as she got out of bed.

"No, that's Brother Wolf." Charles smiled. "I'll cook."

CHARLES HAD MEANT to talk to her about his ghosts over breakfast, because he'd been tired last night, and then he'd been distracted. But something she had said nagged at him.

"Charles?" Anna asked patiently.

"Sorry," he told her. "Thinking."

"Do you want some more bacon, or should I put it in the fridge for later?"

There were four pieces left. He took two and ate them. Then he took the other two and held them up to her mouth. "You need more protein."

She rolled her eyes, but ate them anyway.

"I need to look something up on the Internet," he said. "Can you get the dishes?"

"You cooked; I'll clean," she said.

He took his laptop into the spare bedroom where there was a small writing desk. It was slower than his desktop at home and the screen was too small to let him pull up as many images at a time as he liked to-and the Internet connection here was not too fast, either. He growled in frustration as his fingers flew over the keyboard, as if by moving faster he could coax the machine to greater effort.

He started out with the legitimate things he had access to-Goldstein had sent him a file on the case, as he had promised-and then dug deeper. These killers, these UNSUBS, they had money-had power. Anna was right: they would not be able to stay out of the investigation.

At some point Anna brought him a pizza-though he hadn't noticed her ordering it. A little later she came in to tap him on the shoulder.

"You, Isaac, and I have been invited to a celebration for Lizzie's safe return," she told him.

"I'm waiting for two phone calls," Charles said.

"This would be an excellent time for some PR with the Boston Police Department-which is important for the Olde Towne Pack. Isaac told me they've had some issues this year."

He rolled his seat back from the desk and looked at his mate. She looked a little antsy and her brown eyes glowed slightly, highlighted with her wolf's light blue.

It was dark outside, which meant she'd been cooped up in here for hours with nothing to do but watch TV. And it was close to the full moon. It wasn't fair to make her sit around any longer.

"This may be a wild-goose chase, but I'm on to something and I'd like to finish it up," he told her. "Would you agree to letting Isaac be your escort?" Brother Wolf didn't like it, but Charles didn't want to smother her. He might be finished in five minutes-or twelve hours. And Isaac was a good fighter; Charles had seen it last night. He'd been outmatched in sheer size and strength and hampered by not being able to see their opponent, but he'd fought smart.

"I don't need a bodyguard," said Anna, not fooled for a moment by Charles calling Isaac an escort, but Charles hadn't expected to get away with it. "We're going somewhere that will be filled with cops and FBI agents and werewolves. It should be pretty safe. And isn't an Alpha above being a bodyguard?"

"Humor me," said Charles.

She sighed heavily-then ruined it with a sly grin. "I told Isaac to come pick me up-and that you were going to make him responsible for my health and well-being."

"If you knew what I was going to say, why did you come in here and bother me?" He growled with mock annoyance.

Anna laughed. "I'm going to go change."

"Let me know when you leave," he said, already caught up in his work again. Where had he been before she interrupted him?

When he next emerged, she was gone.

"HE LETS YOU out alone?" Isaac, without Charles to put him on edge, was more relaxed than Anna had thought, but also more pushy.

"I'm with you. Besides, werewolf here," she told him with a thumb to her chest. "Not exactly a frail princess in need of rescuing."

"That's not what I heard about you," Isaac said. "I asked about you. Omega. I was informed by my second that we should be honored that you were visiting our city. We should bring you gifts and see if we can get you to abandon your pack and join ours. When I pointed out that that meant Charles would come, too-and displace me-I was told that the blessing of having an Omega in the pack would outweigh even putting up with Charles."

Anna laughed. "Old wolves. Think they know everything."

"And then he wonders why I don't ask him more questions," Isaac agreed. "So do it."

Anna looked at him just as a raindrop hit her nose. The clouds had been threatening and the air smelled wet, but that was the first drop. "Do what?"

"'That voodoo that you do,'" Isaac said. At her expression he turned to walk backward so she could get the full effect of his eye roll and comic exaggeration. "What? You don't know Adam Ant?"

"'A thrill a day keeps the chill away,'" she sang, then said dryly, "Not his best song. You want me to what? Zap you with my awesome cosmic super Omega powers?"

"That's what I said." Isaac turned so he was walking beside her once more. "Only my request sounded cool, and yours sounds like it belongs on Sat.u.r.day morning cartoons."

"They are more of an anti-superpower," Anna explained as the first few drops of water became a more steady rainfall. "If I were in a comic book, I'd be the lone stupid girl in a team of awesome, powerfully charged males. Like Sue, Invisible Girl-who was invisible in so many ways-in the Fantastic Four. Which should have been called the Fantastic Three and the Cute and Clueless Girl Who Runs Around Getting into Trouble and Being Rescued."

Isaac grinned, his expression lighter, that edge that Alphas always carried with them softened. "Not even Jessica Alba could save Sue from being wimpy."

Anna sighed in a misery-shared way. "I like superhero movies. Still, it was better than Catwoman-and Catwoman had much better material to draw from."

"So are you going to whammy me?" Isaac asked again.

She waved and did something fluttery with her fingers in her best stage magician manner, though she'd already hit him while he was quoting from "That Voodoo." She contorted her face and made funny gobbling sounds, then said, in the perfectly serious voice she'd picked up from Charles, "Consider yourself whammied."

They strode along companionably for a block. "I don't feel whammied," he said.

"What do you feel?" she asked.

Isaac took three more steps before he stiffened and stopped. "I haven't been drunk since I was changed," he whispered. "What did you do to me?"

"You aren't drunk. Not impaired physically or mentally," Anna told him.

He bowed his head, working his hands; then he turned and started walking backward again, facing her. Anna followed, keeping a sharp eye out for things he might back into or over. She wondered if Isaac did this all the time-and, if so, how he avoided getting photos in the paper with captions like "Local Alpha Trips over Child" or "Wolf Versus Street Sign, Street Sign Wins."

"I'm myself again," he said, his face almost slack with wonder. "It's just me in here." He tapped his forehead. "One night before the full moon and I don't want to hunt or sink my teeth into anything." He blinked rapidly and turned back around again so she couldn't see his face anymore. After a moment he said, "It's like the wolf is gone." There was a hint of worry in his voice.

"No," Anna answered. "Just...at peace. You could start changing right now if you wanted to."

"Before G.o.d, it is no wonder my second was salivating at the thought of you," Isaac said. "Do you worry about being kidnapped?" His voice altered just a little. "I heard that Charles rescued you from an abusive situation." He glanced over at her, his eyes glowing light yellow. The other effect of being Omega was that dominant wolves tended to be overly protective of her.

She nodded her head. "Charles saved me. My first pack turned me and kept me under their thumb. One of their old ones was crazy and her mate thought I could keep her sane. When Charles got through dealing with them, he taught me how to rescue myself." Charles had helped her regain confidence in herself. But no matter how competent she was at protecting herself, Anna knew what ultimately kept her safe from wolf packs who wanted an Omega of their own. "If someone tries to kidnap me, Charles will hunt them down. Do you know very many wolves who would be willing to face that?"

"The Marrok's bogeyman?" asked Isaac with a snort. "No." He paused a moment. "Especially if they've ever seen him fight. Hally told me that he wouldn't be able to see that fae-just know when he was around. But Charles fought like he could, like he knew exactly where it was. And I've never seen anyone-not werewolf, not vampire, not anyone-move that fast."

"His gift," Anna agreed. His bane. Maybe if he hadn't been such a good fighter, his father would have sent someone else to maintain order among his packs. But that wasn't for public discussion. She needed to change subjects.

"So where are we going?" A diner would be perfect-just a little worn-down, with cracked Naugahyde seats and scuffed-up, bad-imitation wood-grain Formica tables, where coffee was served to everyone in white cups and all of the meals were cooked in unhealthy grease: a cop's hangout, the cliche of every cop film or novel.

"When Goldstein called me, I offered to host the party at The Irish Wolfhound," Isaac told her. "The pub owned by our pack. There's a big room for parties."

Anna couldn't help being a little disappointed. "I was hoping for a diner."

Isaac laughed. "The food's better at the Wolfhound, and we're less likely to have uninvited guests." Amus.e.m.e.nt died from his face, and the smile he gave Anna was tight and unhappy. "As I told you, there are members of our law enforcement community who dislike us and would love to provoke a fight under the cover of too much drink. This way it's just the people who are working on this case-and most of them are way too ecstatic about Lizzie's rescue to be fussy about how it was done."

"It seems like a lot of celebrating, when we didn't catch the killers," Anna said.

Isaac nodded. "It's like when I was in high school. My junior year our football team just had this...synergy. The year before, the year after, they were good. But that year, they not only had the players; they had the team. No one even scored against them until the last game of the season. The other team scored a field goal in the fourth quarter-and the stands erupted. You'd have thought they won the game instead of losing by thirty-odd points. What they had done was what no one else had managed to do."

"I see," Anna said.

Isaac's white teeth flashed. "We didn't win this one," he said. "But we didn't lose, either."

"You weren't on that football team, were you?" There had been something in his voice and the way he referred to his high school team as "they."

"Nope. I was the little geek the football team halfback liked to shove into gym lockers for fun when the team captain wasn't around to keep him in line. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly mean, I'd love to meet Jody Weaver again and have him try to shove me in a locker now."

Anna laughed...paused, because she didn't know football, but she had a father and brother who were football fanatics. "I know that name. Jody Weaver. He's a big deal, right?"

Isaac nodded. "Went on to get rich and famous-and he's still a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Proving once and for all that life is not fair."

"Speaking of not fair," Anna said, "have you heard anything about Lizzie? I called Leslie earlier, but all she knew was that she was listed as stable and that they already had her in the operating room for her knee."

Isaac shook his head. "You know more than I do. I left a message on Beauclaire's phone and invited him over tonight. I suspect he won't be leaving the hospital."

"Were there any clues to be had on the island?" Anna already knew that the forensic people hadn't found much from her earlier conversation with Leslie. But there was a possibility that Isaac or his witch might have found something they hadn't talked to the authorities about.

Isaac shook his head. "No. It was like they knew the island would be searched by werewolves-the whole prison area had been doused with ammonia. They found a few personal effects, enough to determine that Jacob, Otten, and a couple of the other victims had been kept there."

"If they had known we were coming, they'd have moved Lizzie," Anna said.

Isaac nodded. "Right. I suppose it was in preparation for a worst-case scenario. They've been killing werewolves. They don't want us to figure out who they are."

Isaac's explanation made sense. He was probably right. And if he wasn't, they'd figure it out when the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were caught.

THE RAIN WAS pouring down when they reached the pub. Irish pubs in Boston, Anna had noticed, were sort of like pizza parlors in Chicago: there were a lot of them and most of them served pretty good food.

Just inside the door lurked a life-sized, wooden Irish wolfhound. It was, Anna judged, only a little smaller in height than Charles, but about a quarter as broad. Around his neck was a sign that read WELCOME FRIEND.

Isaac waved one hand at the hostess and, with his other hand at the small of Anna's back, directed her to a rough-sawn wooden staircase. At the top of the stairs, just past the restrooms, was a door marked PRIVATE PARTY.

Through the door was a big room with four trestle tables with chairs and benches mixed in, filled with people, most of whom Anna didn't know. Celtic music filtered in through speakers in the ceiling, and there were pitchers of beer and water on all the tables.

A waitress came in through a door in the back of the room. She put her fingers to her mouth and whistled. Anna had plugged her ears as soon as the girl's fingers touched her lips, and the piercing noise still hurt. She could pick out the werewolves, because they were the ones with grimaces on their faces. She recognized Malcolm, of course, but there were three others in the room, too.

Quiet descended.

"All right, gents and ladies all. There's beer and water on the table and we'll keep the pitchers full until nine p.m. If you want something different to drink, our Isaac says he'll cover it, too-" She broke off, interrupted by cheers. Isaac bowed, and nodded for the waitress to continue. "Again until nine, after that your food and drink comes out of your pocket. We'll be coming around for orders for food. Our specialty is bangers and mash, but we have a great stew tonight and the fish and chips are to die for. Enjoy!"

She retreated through the door at her back to another smattering of applause, and two young men and a middle-aged woman came in through the same door and started to take orders.

Anna looked around. There were maybe thirty people in the room-if seven were werewolves, that meant that there were twenty-three police officers. Which seemed like a lot until she laid eyes on Leslie. The FBI agent was sitting beside a giant of a man who looked as though he could do his share of shoving people into lockers. He made two or maybe even three of Leslie and, while she talked to a pair of plainclothes police officers, he kept a big hand on the back of her neck. This must be the football-playing husband Leslie had talked about.

If everyone had brought a date, the numbers made more sense. She caught sight of one of the two Cantrip agents, the one who was not Heuter. His name had started with a P. Patrick...Patrick Morris. He was talking to Goldstein. So it wasn't just police officers here. She decided to avoid him if possible, just in case he shared Heuter's views on werewolves.

Leslie looked up, saw Anna, and waved her over. In the two hours that followed, Anna found herself shuffled around from one table to another, answering questions about being a werewolf. In a quiet moment, she pointed out, rather grumpily, to Leslie that there were six other werewolves-Isaac and his five pack mates-in the room. So why was everyone asking her questions?

"All the wolves are answering questions," Leslie replied. "But you're easier to talk to-women aren't as threatening as men." She thought about it. "Most women, anyway-I know a few that would scare any person with a modic.u.m of sense. But you're approachable. And you are going away soon. So if they offend you, they don't have to live with the consequences."

So Anna explained, over and over, that werewolves could control themselves when they ran as wolves-though they tended to be hot-tempered. Yes, all werewolves had to change during the full moon, but most of them could change whenever they wished it. Yes, silver could kill a werewolf-so could beheading or a number of other things. (Bran thought it important that the public not perceive werewolves as invulnerable.) No, most of the werewolves that she knew were staunch Christians and none of them that she knew of worshipped Satan. Once, she recited a few biblical verses to prove that she could do so. She'd have been more exasperated about that one, but there were things out there that couldn't quote scripture (not that she told them that).

"Your husband's a werewolf, right?" said one young man as she walked by his table.

"That's right," she told him.