Dead Heat (38 page)

One of the times Hephzibah had dumped Kage, she’d gone after his hat, which had rolled off his head when he hit. She’d chomped down on it, tore three or four times around the ring carrying it in her mouth. Then when she had everyone’s attention, she dropped and trampled it until there wasn’t anything left except a sad bundle of straw. Mostly, though, after she dumped her rider, she either ran for freedom or went after the person who’d had the gall to get on her back in the first place.

Joseph would be ready for either of those.

Charles bolted the rest of the way across the big arena when he heard the fae scream from somewhere in front of him. He thought she said, “Where are you?” but he couldn’t be certain. As soon as he was past the open space, he dropped to the slinking walk he used when he was hunting deer. His body lowered and his fur served to hide some of the movement that might attract the wary eye.

He turned into the corridor that ran between the rows of stalls and immediately quit moving. He found a place in the shadows of a pair of rubber barrels set right at the corner where he could gather the pack magic around and disappear. He saw Ms. Edison striding back into the barn from the big white truck parked in plain view through the big opening at the end of the run of stalls.

Ms. Edison had Mackie slung over her shoulder. The child was as still as a brace of dead ducks, and the fae was hopping mad, snapping her teeth together in a way distinctly inhuman. She paused as she passed a stable.

He could smell Joseph. He was in here somewhere. Was he in the stall?

She growled,
“Horses.”
Spat on the walkway. Then dumped Mackie on the ground. She fell limply and Charles had a flash of Maggie in a limp mound on the floor of the house. His lips curled to expose his fangs, but he kept the growl silent.

Ms. Edison grabbed a bridle and slid open the stall door. She wasn’t in there very long before she led out a horse saddled with a worn western saddle.

Who had saddled the horse and left her in the stall?

And such a horse. Her pale tail dragged on the ground, and her thick mane—it was unusual for a chestnut to have such a thick mane—hung six inches below her slender, well-shaped neck. Huge dark eyes looked out at the world with an air of gentle sweetness. Her legs were strong and square-jointed. This was a mare who could run a hundred miles and emerge from the ride entirely sound and ready to go again.

Why wasn’t this horse at Scottsdale or in the breeding barn? He’d seen a lot of horses in his long life, and this mare was among the top three or four. Maybe even the very best.

The fae grabbed Mackie and tossed her back over her shoulder. Ms. Edison crawled onto the horse with enough competence that he could see it wasn’t the first or the twentieth time she’d been on a horse. That made sense. Until the twentieth century the horse was the prevalent method of transportation.

The horse snorted at an open stall door.
That’s where you are, Joseph. Stay quiet. You’ve done your part, forcing the fae to stay until I could get here. This isn’t a good place for a fight when there’s an innocent bystander or two. We need a nice open place.
The arena or the dirt lot behind the barn. Either would do.

The fae jerked hard at the bit and Charles winced for the mare’s soft mouth. The sweet-natured mare just lifted her head and started obediently for the arena. She walked right past Charles without pause, but he was hidden, so that wasn’t strange. Even if she’d noticed him, Hosteen and his pack ran all over this farm in wolf form. She wouldn’t view him as a predator.

He was just getting ready to leave his place when Joseph emerged from the stall and, moving like a young man, started after the mare.

Charles let the magic fall and trotted out to block his way.

Joseph stopped, gave him a tense smile, and pointed out to the arena with five fingers open.
Five,
he mouthed.
Four. Three.

He didn’t know what the countdown was for, but he trusted Joseph and followed the horse out into the arena and planned on something happening in two seconds. An explosion. The big arena lights turning on suddenly. A loud noise.

Well, the explosion was pretty close.

That sweet-faced mare stretched her neck and pulled herself about six inches of slack in the reins. Then she levitated without gathering herself. Charles, horseman though he was, didn’t even see her move until she was four feet in the air with her front end going sideways one direction and her rear end the other in a catlike twist. When she landed, she planted one front foot, dropped her shoulder, and launched her rear end so high he’d have sworn it was briefly in front of her front feet before it snapped back down.

Mackie flew off one direction, and the fae fell the other. Without making a sound, without anything that might warn the thing that had been Mackie’s principal, Charles landed on her and dug his jaws and his claws into her flesh. He ripped, holding her body down with his paws while he jerked back his head.

She screamed, the noise starting as low as a big cat’s growl and then reaching a pitch that was a weapon in and of itself. High-pitched and sharp, sound traveled painfully from his ears right down his spine. He released the torn meat and bit down again—or he meant to. His jaws didn’t work. When she rolled, he fell off her as limp … as limp and unmoving as Mackie and Amethyst before him.

His first reaction was disbelief. Never had his body failed him before, not like this. His magic—wolf, witch, and shaman—had never left him defenseless. Charles felt a breath of panic that was knocked aside by the storm of Brother Wolf’s frenzied rage. He lost a moment or two to Brother Wolf. He hadn’t allowed the wolf to take over to the extent of losing time since he had been a child. When he took hold of Brother Wolf and dragged control back, the fae was already on her feet again. Her left shoulder drooped until she grabbed her left arm with her right and made a sharp movement. With a snap, the shoulder slipped into place and reknit itself.

She dropped the appearance of being human entirely then. Green mottled skin crawled up her body—
his
body, demonstratively, for he wore no clothes. Limbs elongated and, as if someone had put a hook in the back of his neck, his body jerked upward, unfolding into a form that was seven or eight feet tall.

He stood upright like a gorilla stands upright, with his knuckles dragging the ground. He twisted the upper part of his body until he could look at Charles, his face now covered with knobbly green skin and populated with tiny red eyes and a mouth that opened like a leech’s, complete with narrow, long, sharp teeth and a yellow-and-red-spotted tongue.

And Charles was helpless. His frustration and anger burned and sizzled, a tithe on Brother Wolf’s fury. Charles sought to push that emotion, all of that power, into magic that might combat the spell that held him helpless.

The fae creature roared at him; this time there was no magic at all in its cry, only triumph and rage. At that moment, two werewolves landed on the creature’s back, one from each side as if these two had fought together before.

Charles recognized the raccoon-masked face of the leftmost one as a wolf who’d belonged to Hosteen when he had come to see the Alpha of the Salt River Pack the first time, near enough to a century ago. His fur was dark with dried blood. Evidently this was not the first encounter that wolf had had: Ms. Edison had not driven up to the house unchallenged.

The fae grabbed one wolf with a move that proved him to be double-jointed. His hand was big enough to surround the wolf’s head and tear him off, flinging him out of Charles’s line of sight. He simply touched the other wolf and that one dropped like a stone. Like Charles.

Charles realized that it hadn’t been sound that had echoed through his body earlier, it had been magic. The second wolf landed half on Charles, half off. The remaining wolf, the one who’d been thrown, was back. He moved like a cattle dog working an angry bull, nip and run and nip and run.

For a moment, Charles thought that wolf had a chance. But he went for a throat grab. The fae’s joints didn’t work like a human’s joints—or those of any other animal Charles had seen. His head just moved with the wolf’s motion, neck emerging from his shoulders like a Slinky pulled out of a box. He swiveled and bit down on the wolf’s neck. The wolf cried out, red blossoming around the fae’s closed mouth.

Charles broke out in a sweat and curled his paw.

Joseph let Charles take the lead. He was amazingly glad to see Charles. The relief of it left him light-headed. Watching Hephzibah, the Evil One, dump the fae on her head was just the icing on the best zucchini bread he’d ever had.

But the fae didn’t follow the script. Charles just collapsed. A pair of his father’s wolves cleared the arena fence and joined in the battle. Two werewolves, and one was down in under a minute. That was when he knew his role wasn’t finished here.

He had no idea why Hephzibah hadn’t taken one of her famous exits. The arena gates were open at both ends, but she just kept circling around at a leisurely canter, her eye on … Mackie, he thought. He waited until Hephzibah started around again, and used her body to hide when he entered the arena. He ran beside her, keeping her between him and the fae.

He caught her reins and was grateful that it was Hephzibah he had to work with. Any other horse in the stable wouldn’t go anywhere near a thing that looked as deadly as the creature Ms. Edison had turned into. Hellbitch she might be, but Hephzibah had yet to meet something she was scared of.

She eyed Joseph warily but had no objection to him running at her side, not even when he started pushing her to get closer. A glance under her neck told him that the second werewolf was down, with the fae chomping on his neck.

Joseph thanked goodness that he’d tightened the cinch himself and that Hephzibah had the withers to hold the saddle straight as he pulled the old trick of jumping halfway into the saddle. One foot in the stirrup, one hand holding the horn. He pulled her nose tight, aiming her right at the fae as he kicked her in the haunch with his free toe. All of it at the same time, or none of it would work.

She launched herself sideways at the fae, landing smack on top in an ungraceful movement she’d never have made if he hadn’t knocked her off balance. The fae was shoved off the wolf. The horse scrambled hard to keep her feet and kicked the monster good a couple of times in the process.

Joseph, unnoticed, dropped to the ground behind the creature’s back. He pulled out his knife and with his full weight behind the blow, just as Charles had taught him, punched the blade through the fae’s back while it was still disoriented from Hephzibah’s surprise attack.

The fae-thing’s arm swung around improbably and hit Joseph in the chest. He heard the ribs crack before he felt them, and then he was down on the dirt next to a wolf who was bleeding out from the wound in his throat.

He had failed.

When the chestnut mare charged the fae, Charles felt a moment of stunned disbelief. There was no reason … and then he saw Joseph. It was an old Indian trick, hanging off the side of your horse so you could get close to your enemy.

He spared an instant of admiration. There was nothing Joseph couldn’t do with a horse. The horse landed on the fae, both of them equally surprised by it. And the fae’s hold on Charles weakened.

He pulled himself to all four feet, snarling silently with the effort. As Joseph stuck his knife into the fae’s back, Charles took two stumbling steps forward as the magic released him—just for a moment. Then the magic was back and his body was once again unwilling to follow his command.

But the fae’s hold wasn’t as strong as it had been. He couldn’t pay attention to the way Joseph was lying on his back, blood foaming from his nose and mouth. Charles had to get to his feet, had to kill the fae while it was still down.

The chestnut mare ran up toward Joseph, stopped about ten feet away, and then snorted, gave a half jump sideways, and trotted off again.

Joseph had severed the fae creature’s spine with the knife. As Charles dragged himself closer, he watched it try to reach the blade. But Joseph had, by luck or intent, found a place it couldn’t get its hands. The flesh around the knife moved as though there were something under the mottled and bumpy green skin that was both repelled by and attracted to the steel.

The fae gave up trying to reach the knife. Instead it focused on … Mackie. It levered itself up on its arms and began crawling toward the helpless girl at a speed roughly twice what Charles could manage.

The chestnut mare whinnied shrilly and galloped between the fae and the girl. She’d been running all over the place, so Charles didn’t pay her any more attention than the fae did. Until she did it a second time, blasting past with more attitude than speed, ears pinned and feet hitting the ground with extra force.

She did a pretty little rollback, her left rear planted in the sand as she rotated her body around, crossing her right front leg over her left in approved reining style. Then she trotted back across the fae’s path, her tail flagged over her back, her head up, and her tiny ears sharply forward. She did a rollback in the other direction.

And this time she planted herself between Mackie and the fae, pinned her ears flat, and ran past it. She snaked her long neck down, snapped her teeth at the creature, spun, and caught it with a nasty full-force kick right under its shoulder blade.

The fae let out a high-pitched cry, falling away—and the mare was back. This time she struck with her front feet. She pulled the fae underneath her and stomped it twice before hopping over it and bolting away with a triumphant squeal.

She came back again, snorting and side-passing until she stood between that thing and Mackie. Then she flipped her head in the classic warning that meant
go away or die
. She half reared and squealed—like a mare protecting her baby. Protecting Mackie.

Anna didn’t need to go to the house. She could feel Charles in the barn and she sent Bella that direction. The big mare was laboring; by Anna’s reckoning they’d run about four miles. But she ran willingly through the dark doorway that opened into the arena, and she cleared the huge arena fence by six inches.