Dead Heat

by Patricia Briggs

  “She taught me to ride,” Kage said. “A fire truck with sirens and lights blazing didn’t bother her a bit, but let a piece of straw blow across her path? I learned to pay attention and stay in the saddle.”

  Kage led them through the front doors, through an airy reception room decorated Southwestern casual complete with an Old West–style wet bar. Glass double doors took them to a viewing stand that looked out over a large arena two-thirds the size of a football field. There was a tractor wetting down the arena with a water tank and spray rig. The woman on the tractor waved to Kage and continued working.

  “Pretty late for chores,” said Charles.

  Kage nodded. “Staff is usually done by five, except for the foaling managers, who rotate on twenty-four-hour shifts this time of year. But we’re gearing up for the big horse show. Lots of people come to the show specifically to buy horses. We’ll have a presentation or ten out here during the show, so we’ve got to get the barn ready and groom all hundred and sixty horses and not just the thirty we are showing. That means overtime for everyone.”

  He looked at Charles. “You ought to take her out to the show. It’s not as over-the-top as it was thirty years ago.” He grinned at Anna. “We had all sorts of celebrities and entertainment industry people then, and people came to look at them as much as the horses. Millions changed hands both in real money and on paper to dodge the tax man, and the Arab industry attracted a different crowd. But the show is still spectacular. Lots of pretty horses and horse-mad people.”

  They entered the stabling area. It smelled of cedar shavings and horses, with a faint tang of urine and leather. On the inside of the three of them, when Anna turned the corner she was next to the first stall.

  A copper-colored horse thrust his head toward her, and she found herself nose to nose with him.

  Not just any horse, either, but a fairy-tale horse. Every hair in his mane and forelock lay as though someone had separated them from each other and put them exactly where they would look best. The narrow stripe that ran from between his eyes down to between his nostrils looked as though someone had powdered it with baby powder to get it white-white, except for a small triangle of pink on the end of his nose. His chestnut coat was flame-brilliant, and, when she reached out to touch his cheek, the skin under her fingers was soft and sleek.

  “Careful,” cautioned Kage. “He’s only a two-year-old and a stallion, which means he’s lippy. He’s not mean, just looking for handouts. But he will bite if you aren’t watching.”

  “Like you, boss,” someone shouted from a nearby stall.

  “And I fire people who get above themselves, too,” Kage called back with a grin.

  “Yeah, I’m worried, boss,” said the same guy. He was hidden somewhere in the row of stalls. “If you fire me, you’ll have to muck out twenty stalls before you can go to bed. I’ve got job se-cu-ri-ty.”

  “You go on thinking that way, Morales,” said someone else. “If you want more security you can clean my stalls, too.”

  Anna petted the colt’s velvet cheek and sought out the spot just behind his ear to scratch. It was the right spot because he pressed his neck into her hand hard enough to bang it against the side of the stall opening, then twisted his neck to make her fingers hit exactly where he wanted them. His eyes closed and his lips waggled in ecstasy.

  “Why aren’t horses more afraid of us?” Anna asked. “I mean, if I were a grizzly bear he wouldn’t be asking me to rub his neck, right?”

  Charles’s stance had relaxed the moment they’d entered the stables; she didn’t think he knew it. Her man loved horses the way he loved music.

  He smiled, but it was Kage who answered. “Horses are adaptable. I mean, I go out to some poor, half-grown colt smelling like the steak sandwich I ate for lunch. I throw a piece of dead cow on his back and tell him it won’t hurt him. Pretty amazing that they’ll let us get anywhere near them.”

  He reached out and rubbed the other side of the horse’s face. “If you were in wolf form and all snarly and ready to attack, I suppose they’d freak, all right. This one might just try to trample you—he’s not got a lot of fear in him. Hosteen says they just think you smell like a funny kind of dog, and they know about dogs.” He paused. Looked at Charles. “So what do you think?”

  “Pretty horse,” he said dryly. “Tippy ears.”

  Kage choked back a laugh. “Dad said you’d do that.” He looked at Anna. “Gives a compliment that you know is an insult. Right now the Saudi billionaires are bolstering the Arabian market. They don’t care about bodies or legs, but they pay a lot for a pretty head.”

  “Not just the Saudis,” grunted Charles. “The judges are rewarding longer and longer necks, taller and taller horses. If you reward the extremes, that’s where the breed heads.

  “Long necks”—he nodded at the chestnut—“usually mean long backs. A lot of taller horses just have longer cannon bones, which weakens their legs. The Arabs I rode herding cattle with your father in the fifties and sixties would do a full day’s work for twenty years, seven days a week, and retire sound.” He snorted. “The drive now is for pretty lawn ornaments. The Arabian horses were originally bred as weapons of war, and now they are artwork. Those old Bedouins are rolling in their graves.”

  “Nothing wrong with artwork,” growled Kage, really offended now.

  Charles was doing it deliberately, Anna thought. Goading Kage into what? She narrowed her eyes at her husband, who looked back at her blandly.

  Kage reached over and snagged a halter from where it hung on the wall next to the stall door. “Yes, he’s got a pretty head and neck, and that makes him valuable. Like those little tippy ears you’re so annoyed with. But you can have your cake and eat it just fine.”

  Anna backed out of the way as Kage slid the stall door open and brought the two-year-old stallion out to stand in the broad aisle under the lights. She was watching the man, not the horse, though. He’d been wounded, she thought, from what had happened to his wife today. Stoic, but wounded. The anger burned all that away.

  And her husband said he wasn’t good with people.

  “You tell me that those old-time, round-barreled, cow-hocked Arabs had anything over this horse,” Kage growled as he somehow cued the colt to freeze in place and stretch his neck out and up. The irritation he’d demonstrated dropped away as he looked at the colt, too. Anna thought he couldn’t hold anger and the way he felt about the horse at the same time.

  Passionately, Kage said, “This one would take you over the desert sands, sleep in your tent, and stand guard over your body. You look at him and you tell me his back is too long or his legs are weak.”

  The horse looked spectacular to Anna, but she was no judge. The young stallion’s copper coat gleamed even in the artificial light. Large, dark eyes looked at them with arrogance, a healthy dose of vanity … and humor, she thought.

  His body looked balanced to her and he had a nice slope to his shoulder that was echoed in his hip. His mane was pale and thick and emphasized the arch of his neck, and his tail would have reached the ground if it hadn’t been braided and wound up in a bag.

  “What’s with his tail?” asked Anna. “Is there something wrong with it?”

  “No,” Kage said with a wary look at Charles.

  “Because even in a stall, a horse will rub and wear down his tail to a useful length instead of letting it grow long enough to trail behind him like a bridal veil,” Charles told her, but his real attention wasn’t on his words but on the horse. “Judges like a tail dragging the ground in the show ring.”

  He paced around the horse slowly, stopping to pick up a foot. The longer he looked, the more smug Kage was. When her mate finished his examination, what Charles said wasn’t a judgment, but a question. “You’re taking him in the ring at the big show?”

  “That’s our intention,” Kage said. “We didn’t show him last year because he was still going through the yearling fuglies. His butt was four inches higher than his withers. This year …
he’s got a good chance. He certainly won’t look outclassed in his age group.”

  “I don’t know about Arabian horse judging,” said Charles, raising a hand in surrender. “But I do know horses. This one is seriously good—assuming he has a brain between those tippy little ears.” He smiled at Kage. “Tragic if he ends up a lawn ornament or a piece of artwork brought out to make a rich man’s guests ooh and ahh.” He gave Kage a long look. “You’ve successfully defended him and your breeding program. Feel better?”

  Kage gave him a sharp look, hesitated, and then said, “You picked an argument with me so I’d feel better?”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “I also picked an argument with you so you could quit treating us like customers and talk to us about Chelsea. Your mother is pretty sure you won’t talk to Hosteen about her, and she thinks you need to talk to somebody.”

  Anna couldn’t help letting her eyebrows climb up. Charles had gotten a lot of information from no more than two seconds of voiceless communication with Maggie.

  Kage frowned at Charles. “She does, does she? I am very grateful to you for saving Chelsea, Mr. Cornick. But I assure you I’m fine.”

  “Chelsea isn’t,” said Anna.

  “Chelsea,” Kage said. The stallion butted him with his head, and he rubbed the horse’s forehead. He looked around and lowered his voice so that the people working around them wouldn’t hear what he said. “Her mother taught her that her witch blood taints her. And Hosteen never lets up about it. The idea that she’s a werewolf now and has to obey my grandfather, with whom she has been painfully feuding for eight years, hasn’t caught up with her yet. But it will. She is never going to forgive me.”

  “If that’s the only problem, you’ll do okay,” Anna said. “If she honestly can’t stand him, then move. There are other packs.”

  “And with your reputation you can get a job in any Arab barn in the country,” added Charles.

  “Maybe so,” Kage said. “But she’s very big on being independent. I just changed her life without consulting her.”

  “There was no way to bring her into it,” Charles pointed out. “I tried that first. If she really didn’t want to Change … It’s a lot easier to give up, Kage, than it is to fight for your life.”

  “She’s not going to buy that as an argument,” said Kage, but at the same time, for the first time since he’d picked up his cell phone and heard his wife’s messages, he looked like he’d caught his balance. “You think that she would have made that choice herself? I didn’t force it on her?”

  “If anyone forced it on her, it would be I,” corrected Charles. “But no. If I thought she really didn’t have a choice in the matter, I would not have done it even if you begged me to. She chose to die for her children, and she chose to live for all of you.”

  “What about my dad, then?” Kage asked. “By that argument you couldn’t Change him unless he secretly wanted it. Which we all know he doesn’t. So why is Hosteen still after you to Change him, anyway?”

  “Because he believes that he saw my father force a man through a Change. That man wasn’t unwilling, just unable, which is different. He thinks that I can do the same,” Charles said.

  “Can you?”

  “Chelsea needed a little help, but I did not force her,” Charles answered. “She saw a chance for survival and she wanted it.”

  He wasn’t lying, Anna knew. But there was a sick feeling in her stomach. That was what Justin had said when she’d survived the Change—as if she’d wanted what was done to her and all that followed.

  “Use that,” she told Kage, “to comfort yourself, because it is true that she had to fight to live. But don’t tell her that. Tell her you love her and need her. Tell her the kids need her. Tell her you tried to make the choice she might make. Tell her that you thought she’d want us to find the fae who did this to her so he couldn’t kill anyone else. But don’t tell her that her survival means that she really wanted this.” When she said “this” she motioned to herself. Werewolf, she meant, werewolf and all the things that went with it.

  Kage’s voice was compassionate. “The voice of experience?”

  “Yes.” Anna took in a deep breath. “Truth has many facets. Choose the ones that make her happy to be alive instead of the ones that make her want to smack you.”

  “Are you happy?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said with total conviction. “But it took a while. It might take her a while, too.”

  “Yes,” he said, but he didn’t sound nearly as upset about it as he had been when he’d started talking. “I expect it will.”

  “It could be worse,” Charles said thoughtfully. “She could be dead.”

  Kage nodded. “Yes. This may be difficult. That would have been unbearable. Difficult is better.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  “Market’s back up, is it?” Charles asked dryly, looking at the sales list Kage handed him.

  “Sort of up,” said Kage. “The very top-tier horses, the ones that will win at Scottsdale, nationals, or Paris, they sell as high as they ever did. Higher maybe. Last year a stallion sold to Saudi Arabia for five million dollars, but he was a freak of nature. The second-tier horses, good pedigree and nice horses that aren’t quite topflight—those are harder to sell and make a profit on.” He grinned at Charles. “Those are the ones I’m going to be showing you. Before we start, though, you’ll notice Hephzibah on that list.”

  “Yes,” Charles said, his eyes crinkling in humor. “Her price has a negative sign by it. Does that mean he’ll pay me to take her?”

  Kage laughed. “I won’t sell her to anyone. Hosteen put her on the list. My wife loves that mare. Only horse that Hosteen’s ever failed to ride. I think that’s why Chelsea likes her. Too crazy to sell, too healthy to put down. Beautiful enough that the temptation to breed her will someday overwhelm us all. A nastier horse I’ve never been around. She is all sweetness and goodness, until she goes after you.” He sobered. “She put two of our grooms in the hospital and nearly killed another. Only Hosteen or I handle her now. Treacherous. Her sire, to my knowledge, has never sired another horse with a bad disposition. Her dam was an old mare we got in trade, and Hephzibah was the only foal she had for us.”

  A Hispanic man came up to them. “Hey, Kage. These the folks who wanted to look at horses?”

  “Mateo—” Kage started to introduce him and paused. “Where is Teri?”

  “She’s getting the first horse saddled. You wanted them in the small ring, right? You head over there and we’ll bring them to you.”

  “Good. Mateo and Teri are going to wrangle horses while I do the salesman thing.” Kage grinned. “We’ll use the little ring because the big one is being prepped, as you saw. Mateo is our senior trainer, but like all of us, he steps in where we need him. Teri is one of our apprentices and she rides for us in shows.”

  “Lots of people working for you these days,” said Charles.

  Kage nodded. “It’s because we do the whole thing: breed, train, show. And we show in whatever class the horse is suited for. That means lots of people on the payroll, but we’re diversified. Right now the halter horses are bringing in the biggest money, but Hosteen thinks too much specialization is bad for business.”

  And Hosteen would always run this place, would never grow old and gradually let his grandson take over. Anna wondered if that bothered Kage.

  As they walked to the smaller arena, all along the barn aisle horses put their heads out over the stall doors—stalls that were both cleaner and fancier than a lot of hotels Anna had stayed at. As they walked, Kage chatted lightly—to Anna and Charles and to the horses.

  “We train our horses, but we train other people’s horses, too. Heyya, Bones, are they feeding you enough? Most of the horses I’m going to show you are ours. But a couple of them belong to other people. That’s my girl—aren’t you lovely today? No carrots, sorry. What you are primarily looking for should not be an expensive horse. Show horses, good show horses,
are expensive—so mostly what I’m going to present to you are horses unsuited, in one way or another, to the show ring. But Hosteen put a few show horses on the list, just in case. Are you my good, great beastie? Yes, you are.”

  The small pen was a round arena about a quarter of the size of the big arena they’d walked by. The fence was made from plywood sheets that were scarred and battered—though still solid. Kage ushered them inside; before he closed the gate, a tiny woman who was rawhide and leather led a smallish bay mare, already saddled with a western, silver-bedecked saddle, into the ring.

  “This is Honey Bay Bee,” Kage said. “She’s twelve. We showed her halter at the regional level when she was a yearling and then hunt seat for a year as a futurity horse. She is no longer breeding sound, so we’ve put another year of riding on her and are selling her as an amateur prospect.”

  Anna tried to look like she knew what he was talking about, but he lost her at “regional” and “hunt seat.”

  “Go ahead and ask,” said Charles.

  “Hunt seat?”

  “English saddle,” said Kage. “But horses trot long instead of high like they do in the English classes. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Teri hopped up gracefully and walked, trotted, and cantered the mare around the pen. Teri had a big smile on her face; the horse looked vaguely annoyed.

  She felt annoyed, too, when Anna mounted much less gracefully. She walked, trotted, and cantered for Anna with as much enthusiasm as a kid doing homework. Her ears weren’t pinned, but they weren’t up and eager, either. Bored, bored, bored, they said.

  At least she didn’t shy at anything.

  Charles shook his head before Anna got off.

  “She gives me a baseline,” Kage said. “But no.”

  Anna rode four horses that night. By the third horse, she lost most of her shyness about riding in front of virtual strangers who knew a lot more than she did. Which was good, because the fourth horse they brought for her was a tiny gelding who was “English pleasure but not quite a park horse,” whatever that meant. Mateo rode him for them first. Anna saw immediately what Kage had been saying when he’d told her English was up instead of out. The tiny powerhouse snapped up his knees and hocks with enthusiastic energy.