Hunting Ground(21)

“Something interesting in the paper?” Charles asked politely.

“Not really, no.” Angus folded the paper back into its original shape with economical precision, then got to his feet. He kept his face averted and down. Not slow on the uptake, was the Alpha of the Emerald City Pack. Charles might have his game face on—but any wolf worth his salt would smell the frustration of a failed hunt on him from twenty feet out.

“Your mate was worried about allowing anyone in before you got here. With Tom mostly down and out, and Moira—”

“—without enough magic to light a candle,” finished Anna, opening the door. “And I’m sorry, but I don’t know Angus from Adam—I know we were introduced, but I met a lot of people this morning. And I think that our attack was engineered by one of our own kind. Opening the door just because someone said he was Angus didn’t seem smart.”

Charles gave her a sharp look—he’d smelled only vampires. Had there been a werewolf, too? He pulled the predator in him under better control once more.

He needed a few answers. And he had to make sure she didn’t guess how hard it was for him to appear calm and collected. It was a good thing she was still working on listening to her nose.

“As there was no urgent danger threatening, wisdom dictated that I wait here until someone she knew better came,” said Angus, sounding rather pleased with Anna.

“Anna,” said Charles, ignoring the urge to inspect her more closely to make sure she was all right. “This is Angus, Alpha of the Emerald City Pack. He would never, under any circumstances, have set Tom up to face a pack of vampires.”

Angus gave Charles a sharp look as Anna examined him—and Charles tried to curb his possessive instincts. She was just evaluating Angus. The Emerald City Alpha was only an inch or two taller than Anna, who wasn’t overly tall for a woman—and he didn’t weigh much more. He was wiry and whip-thin. Sandy hair and dark eyes gave him a casual handsomeness that he used ruthlessly. People who didn’t know him underestimated him all the time, which was probably one of the reasons he was so pleased with Anna’s caution. The other would be that she had taken it upon herself to protect one of his wolves.

But Anna knew Bran, who was even better than Angus at being underestimated—Bran did it on purpose.

“I’m sorry if I offended you.” Anna’s apology was sincere.

“No trouble,” Angus said. “Do I look offended? Let’s all get inside, and you can tell us what happened, so we’ll see what’s to be done. Vampires, eh?”

Anna backed away from the door. The scent of her distress and the stink of recent fear permeated the room. Her lip curled as she smelled it herself. “Sorry,” she said. Her shirt was covered with blood, and the air in the room was redolent with the rawness of open wounds.

Not hers, Brother Wolf told him hungrily. But it could have been. He couldn’t tell who had thought that last, maybe both of them. It didn’t help his control: he was having an unusually tough time keeping it together.

He had to keep his distance, just until he could get himself calm and centered. He allowed Angus to pass between him and Anna, and when it didn’t send Brother Wolf into a rage, Charles took a deep breath of relief and allowed himself to examine Anna.

Her freckles stood out on her pale cheeks, but the scent of her fear wasn’t fresh. Angus hadn’t scared her, she’d just been being cautious. Brother Wolf settled down, but only a little.

“Here,” Charles told her, and handed her the bag of shoes.

She looked at the bag blankly before her face lit up in a grin. “You are supernatural, Charles. Absolutely supernatural.”

She opened the closet and dumped the shoes in with a pile of bags that hadn’t been there this morning. There were a couple of plastic-covered dresses hanging next to the hotel’s bathrobes, too. She’d been shopping and back once before they were attacked. The vampires could have been waiting, watching the hotel, and followed them out.

A low growl in the room brought his attention back to the task at hand. The little witch, still wearing her sunglasses, was curled up on the giant pillow at the head of the bed. If Anna was pale, the witch’s face was chalk white under the inky blackness of her short hair, and she looked gaunt, as if she’d lost ten pounds since he’d seen her earlier that day.

From the dent in the bedspread, Charles could tell the brown wolf who was Tom had been settled in front of his witch, but the invasion of other wolves had sent him to his feet. One of his front legs was visibly crooked and must be hurting—but that didn’t keep him down.

Charles closed his hands on Anna’s shoulders before she could get between Angus and Tom, and he brought her back against him. “No,” he told her. “It’s all right. Angus has this in hand.”

There were Alphas he might be worried about, but Angus had been an Alpha for a long time, and he knew what he was seeing: a wolf protecting his mate from an unknown threat. Not defiance.

In a cool voice that held more than a little command, Angus said, “Tom. No harm to yours. No harm.” Angus might not be a big man, but his voice, when he chose to use it, was powerful enough to raise the dead.

The wolf’s lips curled away from impressive fangs and growled again.

“Down,” Angus said, putting serious energy into the word.

And the wolf sank instantly to his belly, his breathing harsh as he dealt with his unwillingness to allow others around his mate when he was injured while meeting his Alpha’s demand for obedience.

“Tom?” The witch sounded lost, and Charles wondered what she thought was going on. Damnable to be helplessly blind in a world of monsters.

“He’s all right,” Anna told her. “Just protective of you. He knows you can’t protect yourself right now—and he hasn’t had time to gather himself together from that rough change yet. He’s hurt and not thinking right. Everyone is going to give him just a minute to calm down.”

Slick, he thought with a secret smile. Anna slid that information to Angus as if she were just talking to Moira, so he wouldn’t think she was trying to tell him what to do. Then she’d spoiled it all by ordering everyone, Charles included, to leave Tom alone. The white flash of Angus’s teeth told him that he’d caught it, too, and had chosen to be amused.

“We’ll just do that,” Angus said, settling himself on the arm of the chair nearest to the window. “Alan called while I was in the hallway. He’s about five minutes out. While we’re waiting for him and for Tom, why doesn’t someone enlighten me as to what damaged my wolf?”

“Vampires,” said Anna. “Six of them—and they hunted like a pack.” She glanced at Charles.

“You mean as if they’d hunted together before,” he said. Charles knew his calm facade was in place because her nod was matter-of-fact.

“Exactly,” she said. “They didn’t get in each other’s way, not even when five of them ganged up on Tom after they’d knocked Moira over. They were in a basement apartment stairwell and hidden behind a shadows spell. It smelled like wolf magic to me—unless the vampires have access to the same thing. If Moira hadn’t brought the sun in, we’d be dead.”

Five on one was difficult to manage, especially with a cunning old wolf like Tom, who knew how to maximize others’ weaknesses. And a shadows spell . . . Anna was right, that sounded like a hunting pack—except they were dealing with vampires.

“There are vampiric spells that could mimic one of ours,” said Angus. “Tom’s old enough to tell the difference. When he can think again, we can ask. That’s what made you think that they were sent by a wolf?”

Anna nodded, but Moira said, “Vampires don’t lightly take on the wolves, not in this city, anyway. They were trying to kidnap Anna—and what would a vampire want with Charles’s mate?”

Angus smiled coldly. The wolves in Seattle had held the upper hand for decades. “If the vampire seethe here found themselves holding Charles’s mate, they’d escort her back with armed guards and polish her fingernails before they delivered her to me without a hair on her head out of place. I’ll certainly call their Master, but I suspect they are interlopers. He should know about them—and if so, maybe he’ll have some names for me.”

“One of them was a woman who wore a size six shoe,” Charles said. “But I don’t think she’ll be a problem to anyone again.”

Moira’s part in the story bothered him. She’d saved Anna—but . . . He frowned at her. “Witch, I’ve never heard of a white witch who could call sunlight. That’s not even something witchcraft should be able to call—witches know mind and body, not the elements.”

“I didn’t call sunlight,” she snapped, responding to his tone of voice, he thought, rather than his words. “Just made the vampire’s bodies believe in it—even the dead bodies.” She wiggled her fingers. “Sssst, and they were dust or running away.”

“That’s a lot of magic. Vampires have some resistance—and then you made your trail disappear for the better part of a mile.”