Silver

by Rhiannon Held

“I’m hungry,” Silver said with the bouncy tone she’d used the last time she used the announcement as a stone thrown to disrupt the growing tempest of people’s moods. “I’m going to get some dinner. Do you want some?”

  “Go ahead.” Andrew tipped his chin to the door and she let herself out. Someone downstairs could certainly find her something. He didn’t want to deal with people in his current mood. He couldn’t hear anyone in the adjoining rooms, so the pack must be giving him privacy, which was nice given the turn the phone conversation had taken.

  Andrew stared at his phone for a while and then threw it down on the bed. Benjamin was right, of course. Not about wanting permission for cowardice, but about the necessity of it. That’s what he had been promising himself earlier, wasn’t it? He’d do anything to save Silver the trip home. Well, this was part of that anything. He glowered at the phone.

  Silver returned with takeout Chinese. The bag looked deflated around the three or four cartons inside, so Andrew assumed she’d taken the remains of the household’s larger order. She left the bag on the floor, selected one carton, and settled herself cross-legged on the middle of the bed. She drew out food piece by piece with her fingers. She licked her fingers after a broccoli chunk and made a forestalling noise when Andrew picked up his phone.

  “Eat first.” She left her carton where it was and leaned perilously over the edge of the bed to grab him another. He came to take it quickly so she didn’t fall.

  “What, now you’re telling me to put it off?” Andrew opened the carton and looked inside. It wasn’t the highest quality Chinese food but it did smell edible at a time when his instincts were waking up to remind him that his last meal had been breakfast several shifts ago.

  He rustled in the bag for a plastic fork, too concerned with speed to bother with the chopsticks, and dug into the sweet-and-sour pork. Silver had chosen well. No extraneous vegetables to slow him down in that. He sat on the edge of the bed.

  Silver grinned and returned to her carton. She sat cross-legged facing him and continued eating with her fingers. “You’d have been gnawing on my leg soon, the way you were acting. Not the mood to go into a tricky conversation with.” She wiped up a drop of sauce on her thigh with one finger. John’s bedspread was doomed. “Besides, eating helps nearly all bad moods.”

  “You sound like my mother,” Andrew said, pausing for breath now that his tines scraped the container’s bottom. He checked the other cartons to find the rice and then levered in a thick raft to soak up the sauce. “She was always pushing food on people any time it looked like there might be a fight.” He frowned in memory. “It worked more often than not, too, I suppose. I was a morbid kid so I was more interested in watching the fight happen. I stomped off to find my own pack fairly early.”

  “Like my brother,” Silver agreed. Andrew caught himself before he tensed, worrying about the memory’s effect on her, but she seemed mellowed by the food also. “He started planning his rise to alpha before our Lady ceremonies.” She paused a beat and then laughed. Andrew presumed that Death had offered some comment.

  Andrew moved on to the remaining General Tsao’s. “I was a little shit, really.”

  “Not little anymore,” Silver said, and then leaned backward when he made a threatening movement with his fork.

  As pleasant as it was feeling full and relaxed, it didn’t take much longer to finish up all the food and clear the cartons into the wastebasket. Andrew picked up his phone and stared at his in-laws’ address book entry for a while, making sure the number was correct. He checked his watch. Five P.M. That would make it one A.M. in Spain. Pushing it a little, but Andrew suspected Arturo would still be awake.

  Enough delay. He punched in his brother-in-law’s number. When Arturo answered in Spanish it took Andrew’s brain a moment to dig out a long-disused fluency. The pause stretched long enough the man growled in annoyance.

  “Yes? Who is this?” Arturo asked again.

  “I am out of practice,” Andrew said in Spanish, feeling out the words. “It has been a long time.”

  This time, the silence was resounding. Andrew grimaced, wishing that he had Arturo’s scent to clarify his reaction. Was it rage? Indifference?

  “Dare?” He pronounced it with Spanish vowels, dah-ray. Still no hint of his emotions in his voice.

  “I need your help.” It didn’t bode well for the conversation ahead that even those simple words were hard to say. At least his Spanish was coming back to him. “We have a killer—”

  “And it’s somehow our fault? Not all evil comes from Europe, Dare.” The hostility in Arturo’s voice was almost a relief to hear.

  “It does when he’s so well-versed in the more perverse uses of silver, Arturo.” He flattened the name with ugly American vowels, a familiar swing in a half-remembered pattern of blows. That was the way it had always been with his brother-in-law.

  “Try Alaska. They’re too crazy to care about the morality of it.”

  “Injected silver.”

  Stunned silence. Andrew couldn’t have said how he knew without the scent, but he was suddenly sure that Arturo knew something. “You’ve seen it before. Who? Where?”

  “There was a man.” Arturo hesitated. “Early twentieth-century Eastern Europe somewhere.”

  Andrew waited several seconds. “And?”

  “The monks who did it were all slaughtered, of course. There was talk of mercy killing him, but his mate was powerful and so got him locked up instead. He’s still there.”

  “Is he?”

  “Of course he is. I suggest you book your flight if you want to talk to him.” Arturo’s voice grew smooth and oily. He was undoubtedly desperate to have Andrew at least on the right continent so that Arturo could have another chance at beating him up. “He won’t make much sense in person, but it’s not like he’s going to be able to come to the phone.”

  “You’re lying.” Something was off about how smoothly Arturo had agreed the man was still there. If it had happened so long ago, how would Arturo know for sure without checking?

  Arturo hesitated just too long, and Andrew knew for sure. Another dead end. He couldn’t even ask this other victim for information if he had disappeared. Frustration twisted in his stomach, but his mind kept going, prodding at the information. Another victim, at large. At large, smelling like silver—

  The realization hit him all at once. There had been another lone, smelling of the metal, before Silver herself. Male. And now Boston’s people were chasing a lone in the area once more. What if it had been more than those monks? What if the other victim had come to North America and led trouble here?

  “He escaped, and I suppose none of you thought to warn the North Americans? Who knows what followed him over here.” Andrew trailed off into a snarl.

  “He was never Madrid’s problem.” Arturo hung up. Andrew could only hope he was feeling a little guilt. How could they? Even if the victim hadn’t brought trouble with him, why had no one hunted him down to help him? He had to be in pain, as Silver had been.

  Andrew turned, searching for something to destroy that wouldn’t cost too much for him to replace later when he handed the pack back. Nothing suggested itself to him. John had removed all the small items, leaving only the solid furniture.

  Silver caught his hand, squeezing. He tried to yank away, but she had a werewolf’s strength, and he would have to put his whole body into it if he was going to succeed. He squeezed back, and it devolved into something of a mini arm-wrestling contest. The angle gave her enough of an advantage that he didn’t win immediately.

  “There’s another victim. We have to find him, help him, see what he knows.” Andrew clenched Silver’s hand so hard she squeaked.

  He opened his again quickly, leaving hers lying across his palm. The angry red finger marks weren’t ripening to purple and then brown and yellow with the speed they would have with a healthy werewolf, and he drew in a breath of anger with himself. “Why didn’t you stop me?” He pressed her hand flat between his
. Had he broken any bones?

  “Another.”

  The moment Silver spoke, Andrew realized that she was gone. Far gone. He hadn’t considered the effect his words might have once he switched back to English. “Silver? Yes, another victim. He was injected like you.”

  Her eyes wouldn’t focus on his. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Stronger. Purified. Purified of the Lady. Not the children. They weren’t strong enough. He killed them first. Kinder. Put them out of their misery. Put her out of her misery, Dare.”

  It took Andrew a moment to recognize the cadence of Rory’s words. That conversation seemed so long ago now. “No.” He gave it the weight of absolute certainty, every ounce of authority he had ever held or pretended to. “No.” He scooped her up into his arms, feeling the way she was shivering. Not a seizure, but she showed no signs of snapping back to lucidity again.

  It would have taken too much juggling to get her under the covers on the bed, but he managed to pull the comforter out from under her and lay it on top. She still shivered, but lapsed into silence. Her hair had fallen over her face, and he brushed it away. She seemed to calm with the stroking motion, only to begin to shiver again when his touch left her.

  Instincts, canine or human, urged him to extend that calming touch more widely, and Andrew sat down on the bed’s edge and pulled off his shoes before the problem there occurred to him. He put his hand over hers, and she grasped it tightly. Could you cuddle without ulterior motives? Silver was too out of it, but his body was already giving him signals that it wouldn’t end up being so pure and innocent on his side.

  Her shivers were subsiding even with just that handclasp as comfort, at least. Andrew let her keep the hand and thought hard about the minutia of flight plans. He needed to get a flight to Boston as soon as possible. If he couldn’t buy a ticket directly, he’d go and see about standby. He’d have to be careful, too. Rory could come after him if he realized he was on Roanoke territory.

  Silver turned over to get more comfortable. She took his arm with her, trying to settle it over her hip so he would be pulled into spooning her.

  Andrew jerked away. Silver made a protesting noise and tried to hold him, but she couldn’t do anything about it when he actually decided to break her hold. After a moment she went still and her back took on an accusing tenseness.

  “Silver. You’re hurt. I can’t. Too much temptation—” He swallowed. “We can talk about it later when it wouldn’t be taking advantage.” When would that be? a little voice at the back of his mind asked. It didn’t look like she would ever heal entirely, whatever her progress lately. How could anyone with a conscience be with her when she was like this?

  “Fuck you,” Silver said. She jerked the coverlet over her head, muffling her voice. “Isn’t that my decision?”

  Andrew leaned over and stopped with his hand short of her shoulder’s lump in the blanket. It seemed disrespectful to touch her comfortingly now. “Not when you can’t stand to hear your own name, no.” Silver maintained a sullen silence, and Andrew straightened after a moment.

  Flight plans. He needed to keep his mind on making flight plans. Hopefully before he left for the airport he’d have time for a cold shower.

  18

  Her world had changed, Silver realized as she searched for anything to focus on besides Dare’s lingering scent in her nose. At one time, she’d had trouble telling dream from reality, but for the fact that she sometimes felt the Lady’s light when she wished hard enough for it in the dreams. She never felt it when she was awake. In both places, she walked through misty landscapes, unsure of their form and landmarks. Or at least she had.

  But the real world was not like that anymore. The Lady was not always full above her, filling the mist with diffuse light. Was that hopeful? It seemed the Lady waning should not be, but it was nice to walk on ground that was solid and not changeable as the mist and be able to speak so that Dare could understand.

  If he hadn’t already decided to ignore her on a topic. Infuriating man. Infuriating, irresistible man.

  “If you could forget your urges long enough, we need to talk, you and I.” Death paced to stand before her, but did not fold down to sit on his haunches. His refusal to relax made Silver uncomfortable, along with his use of her brother’s voice. Her brother had always said that: we need to talk.

  “It’s not my fault I’m still distracted by them. If he’d just stop being so damn stubborn and—gentlemanly—” Silver sighed. Was that a compliment or a complaint?

  Death snorted. “So hold him down.” That was in his usual voice, not Silver’s brother’s, and she laughed. “But do it later. You have something more important to do now. You no longer have time to avoid it.”

  Silver ran her fingers along the ground, smoothing out a wrinkle in a fold of it. She supposed she shouldn’t pretend that she didn’t have an idea what Death was talking about, but not thinking about it was easier. “I told you—”

  Death leaned over and snapped his teeth so close to where her injured arm lay, she felt the movement of air. The helpless feeling of being unable to jerk her hand away almost brought tears to her eyes. She aimed a smack at his head instead, and actually brushed an ear tip with her palm.

  “So you’re content to continue to let him fight your battles alone? The monster is close. You know he is. And if you sit back and do nothing, or only play at finding his name, he’ll free your warrior’s voice for me too. You know this.” Death’s voice had a growl now. His eyes appeared disquietingly dark and deep, as if by looking too far she would see all the way back to the first voices that he had collected when he betrayed the Lady.

  Silver lifted her bad arm with her other to hold it in her lap. “So you’ve said before. But what good can I do? I’m in no shape to fight him.” She swallowed, mouth feeling dry. She did know what she could do. Knew, but almost couldn’t make herself say it. “I could lead him away. If the monster chases me, Dare can take him from behind, with much less danger.”

  Death let his silence be his agreement.

  Dare’s scent and that of food reached Silver, carried by the den’s air currents, but she ignored him. She didn’t feel like speaking to him yet. “I know. I know. Just—give me time. I’ve been trying to work myself up to it. We spent so long running—” It was strange that Death had been so much a part of the journey she thought of him as participating in it now, even though in the beginning he’d helped chase. “I wanted this to be the end of it. To be able to rest.”

  Death whuffed, like the matter was settled, though she could have sworn she hadn’t actually agreed to the plan. Silver rubbed her face once more, running her fingers through her hair to straighten it. Lady help her.

  * * *

  Andrew put off getting his bag from the room where Silver was resting as long as he could, but it didn’t take that long to inform the pack where he was going, book exorbitantly expensive tickets online, and get directions to the airport. Even beyond the recent awkwardness, he didn’t want her to figure out he was leaving without her until it was too late for arguments.

  He heard her steps on the stairs when he was taking his boarding pass out of the printer in John’s office. He froze, but she turned deeper into the house instead. Maybe she would join the others in the kitchen. Andrew didn’t wait to see. He jogged up the stairs to grab his bag. He took a moment to check everything was there and tuck the boarding pass away, but it wasn’t like he’d had time to unpack in the first place.

  Someone came up to the doorway and Andrew turned to find Silver there with a plate with a dozen or so brownies. “For your journey,” she said, holding it out with all appearance of being calm.

  Andrew stayed where he was, expecting a trick. That was it? No objections? What was she up to? Silver just raised her eyebrows like she couldn’t imagine what he was so suspicious about. He reached for a couple of the gooey rectangles, but Silver moved the plate away. “Greedy! One’s for you. The rest of these are mine.”

  Andrew snor
ted in amusement. “Alpha’s share.” He made another grab and Silver darted past him into the room and out of range. So that was it. She hoped the game would delay him. Andrew checked his watch. Not a bad strategy, but as long as he kept an eye on the time, he figured he’d be safe to indulge her. It would be nice to leave on a laughing note and the game appealed.

  Silver went to sit on the empty waist-high bookshelf beside the bed. She set the plate in her lap and picked up a brownie for herself. Andrew snatched one in his first raid, but Silver thwarted his grab for the next one. She stuffed the last of hers into her mouth and stood up on the shelf, lifting the plate out of his reach.

  Andrew grabbed her around the waist and lifted her to the center of the room. She shrieked with laughter and held the plate even higher, though it was tipping badly. “I think your cunning plan has backfired,” she told him.

  “I’m not done yet.” Andrew shifted his hold so it was more stable under her ass, then tossed her. Only about an inch, and his arms were around her the whole time, but she shrieked again and dropped the plate. It landed brownies-down, saving the plate but not the dessert or the carpet. Silver wiggled and clamped her legs around his waist so he couldn’t try the trick again, leaving him with—rather than brownies—a generous armful of female Were. His body seemed to think it was more than a fair trade.

  Andrew’s phone rang, and he dropped Silver to her feet, glad of the distraction. Dammit. What had happened to watching the time and not getting caught up in her game? Where the hell was his control? It hadn’t been that long since the last time he’d had someone in his bed, even if that had been one of the ill-fated flings with human women.

  The phone identified the caller as Laurence, and Andrew frowned at it for a few seconds before answering. The lingering distraction of Silver’s presence made it hard to think. What was Roanoke’s beta doing calling him? Did he want to crow about his bump in status since Andrew left?

  “Dare.” Laurence’s voice was barely a whisper, ragged with fury and fear. “He’s here. He’s got Ginnie.”