Cool Hand

by Mark Henwick

  “No!”

  Shit! If they thought Evans and I were down here on pack business, they’d leap straight to the assumption I would have in their place—we were spying in preparation for an attack on them.

  “Evans was expelled from the Denver pack,” I said. “Felix suspected he might head to the border packs, but it’s nothing to do with us where he chose to go.”

  “What deal did Larimer make with the Confederation?” he shouted. He was still up against the wall of the confessional. I could see it quivering.

  “None!” My wolf growled, too angry to hide now. “We kicked them out and we’ll fight them.”

  Cameron grunted. Hell, it was almost as if he liked me snarling back.

  Was he testing me, like Zane? Or would he come through that panel and go for my throat if I said the wrong thing?

  “And Altau and this new House, Amaral,” he said. “What association do they have?”

  “None. Romero broke the old association by kidnapping Diana. Now he’s dead and Amaral has her. I have to get her back. It’s urgent. I thought Zane understood that,” I said, and swallowed. “What the hell has happened?”

  “Why did Altau send you alone? Isn’t Diana important?”

  “We didn’t know what had happened until today. Altau will be coming.”

  He grunted again. “They will indeed.”

  I wouldn’t say he’d calmed down, but the ferocity of his aura was no longer pounding against me like storm surf.

  My wolf lay back down, muttering unhappily. Fight. Fight. If he was trying to put me off balance, he was succeeding.

  I closed my eyes and tried again. “What’s happened?”

  There was a creak as Cameron sat.

  His voice was still distorted, but at least the level was normal. Now the anger was replaced by sarcasm: “This morning, ‘acting in response to an appeal from their associates, Gold Hill’, a team from the Confederation took out the Ute Mountain alpha and three of his lieutenants. The Ute Mountain pack is now part of Gold Hill.”

  Shit! And part of the Confederation.

  “I need to call—” I was on my feet.

  “Sit down. Larimer knows now, if he didn’t know beforehand.”

  “He wouldn’t have known beforehand,” I sank back down onto the seat. “I’ve spoken to him about Gold Hill and he thinks they’re scum. He won’t talk to the Confederation.”

  “He didn’t think badly enough of Gold Hill to clean them out.”

  “They’re in New Mexico, not Colorado,” the demon in my throat snapped. “Why haven’t you dealt with them?”

  I heard him come to his feet again.

  Oh, shit. Shit. Shit.

  In the quiet, I could hear our hearts beating rapidly. Had I just lost all chance of getting help from the Santa Fe Were?

  “Something’s wrong with this timeline,” I said hurriedly, to cover it.

  “What?”

  “It makes no sense. There hasn’t been enough time for Iversen to make a deal with Gold Hill,” I said.

  “Unless there was already a deal.”

  “No. At the Calle, Iversen didn’t know about any deal with Gold Hill, and neither did Fuller.”

  “Or they fooled Zane while he was distracted.” Cameron was shouting again.

  Distracted by me. He suspected I was part of it—diverting Zane’s attention at the critical time.

  My wolf gathered herself like a coiled sping.

  “No,” I said. “Definitely Fuller didn’t know, and anyway, Gold Hill can’t be smart enough to manage something like that.”

  “So, you tell me, little alpha,” he said. “You tell me how they made a deal and sent a team to gut Ute Mountain, in the time they had.”

  “Just wait a second,” I said. My brain was racing to catch up. “Look, you found Confederation teams in place while Iversen was talking to Zane. One near Albuquerque, one near Santa Fe.”

  “Yes?”

  “What if there were more you didn’t find? And what if the Confederation hasn’t really made a deal with Gold Hill, but—”

  “They broadcast it, for fuck’s sake.”

  My wolf came back out snarling and I leaped to my feet. “They’re telling you what you’re going to think anyway!” I yelled. “I say Amaral’s the one who’s making the deals. He organized this.”

  “Shit, you’re crazier than me, bitch,” Cameron yelled back.

  We were both standing now, and shouting at each other through the thin wooden panel.

  “Where’s Amaral gone? Tell me,” I said.

  “Taos.”

  Seventy, eighty miles north. Zane had said Amaral wouldn’t dare go to ground in Santa Fe’s territory.

  “So Taos is outside your territory?” I said.

  The growl nearly broke the voice distorter. “No, but it was part of the deal with Romero that we kept clear of Taos. We have no one there yet.”

  We both shut up for a moment.

  I was panting with the effort to keep my wolf harnessed.

  Cameron’s breath bubbled through the distorter.

  “The Confederation has teams slipping into the state,” he said finally. “We thought they were all heading for Gold Hill, but there’s nothing up there but a few houses and cabins. They could be heading for Taos.”

  That was as close as I was going to get to a concession that I might have a point.

  There was a murmur of voices in the church.

  Someone ran across to the confessional and opened Cameron’s door.

  Silence. Another pack who used sign language.

  The messenger left and Cameron spoke again: “Gold Hill has just broadcast, claiming a territory from Taos to Alamosa, north-south, and Clayton to Durango, east-west.”

  A large rectangular shape sprawling along the border between New Mexico and Colorado, overlapping by what, thirty miles to the north and forty south? Gold Hill and Ute Mountain were just a couple of drops in that sea.

  A deliberate provocation?

  “I know I’m right,” I said. “Amaral’s made a deal with the Confederation. Gold Hill’s just doing what they’re told in return for the territory.”

  “Maybe,” he growled. “Or maybe this talk of plots and conspiracies is to distract me. Zane says I should believe what you say, but if he made a mistake reading Iversen, who’s to say he didn’t make a mistake about you? He thinks with his balls. Not something I’ve ever been accused of.”

  He beat his fists against the sides of the confessional, as if he was on the point of changing to wolf, and the pain would help him stave it off. Any harder and he’d splinter the wood.

  The confessional groaned as he thrashed from side to side, fighting the change. If he shifted, he was going to explode through that panel in an avalanche of wolf—claws and fangs.

  I put my hands on the wooden panel separating us. I could feel him, just on the other side of it, growing angrier and angrier. The shock of his blows quivered through my fingers.

  And right along with the vibration and noise, his dominance flared through the partition, pressing on me until I wanted to squeeze myself against the far wall.

  It ramped up and up, pushing, streaming through, battering down on me until it was a physical effort to keep my head up and my back straight. In the dark little cubicle, it felt like the wooden walls were bowing inwards to crush me. No light. No air. No space.

  In Ops 4-10, I’d done the high-G training they use for fighter jocks. I’d been spun in a sadist’s version of a fairground ride until my world collapsed into a narrow, gray tube of pain and I was grunting with the effort to keep conscious. This was just like that.

  But I’d handed dominance over to Felix, and Alex was my alpha. Cameron could go screw himself if he thought he was the biggest bully on the block. Anger was my fuel, and there was a point where I was pressed back as far as I would go.

  He had home turf advantage. I wasn’t going to beat him, but I wasn’t going to cower.

  My senses went strange. Co
lors blurred. Sounds and smells came at me like a flood. A million separate things and one thing, one thing, one thing pounding in my head. I would not bow to him.

  What I pushed back against seemed like a mirror image of myself, but bigger, distorted. Immensely strong.

  I’d lost my voice and I snarled instead.

  My body shook. Tears ran down my face and my knees wanted to buckle.

  And suddenly, it stopped. There was nothing pushing me, nothing to push against.

  I was standing with my hands still on the wood separating us, listening to my heart beating like a trip hammer. Hands. Not paws. My lungs were laboring and sweat ran down my face. My eyes blurred and I slowly, slowly focused on the fine grain of the wood right in front of me.

  With the pressure released, I felt light-headed, as if I’d run a race at high altitude.

  “Impressive, little alpha.” The voice distorter rendered a shaky chuckle into the sound of a ripsaw cutting through old, dry board.

  The little slot between cubicles slammed shut and I felt the confessional flex as Cameron stepped out.

  He’d fought off his mania. His voice was suddenly steady again.

  “I don’t know where in Taos they’re holding your friend. And I don’t know much about Athanate politics, but I think you’ve got no more than a day to get her out. We’re still monitoring some Amaral communications. He’s called a meeting of Panethus Houses in the US that aren’t yet associated with Altau.”

  “Thanks.” My voice was level. Quiet but level. A meeting. Not a Convocation. “Will you help us? I mean Altau. It’s very important to get Diana back. For everyone. Human, Adept, Were and Athanate.”

  The distorter bubbled quietly.

  “We have our hands full with the Confederation. If you’re right, that will mean we’re helping you, by attacking Amaral’s allies. And in exchange, I’ll expect Altau and Larimer to allow me the right to visit Denver.”

  My mouth opened and closed a few times.

  It was an argument as complex as a maze, the sort of thing I expected from Athanate, not Were.

  If Amaral was supported by the Confederation, and Cameron’s attack gave assistance to Altau…

  If Gold Hill was supported by the Confederation…

  I couldn’t argue. It was help of a kind.

  “Just call ahead,” I said faintly. Naryn wouldn’t care about a visit, but Felix was going to string me up and leave me for the crows.

  “Good! Wait in there, please,” he said, suddenly polite. It jarred. “Since I invited you into Santa Fe, your welfare is my responsibility while you’re here,” he went on. “There might be Confederation teams in the area. I’ve assigned you a bodyguard who’ll stay with you until you leave the city. She’ll come pick you up in a minute.”

  The floor creaked slightly and paused.

  “You interest me,” he said. “We’ll speak again, but right now, I have a war to run.”

  His footsteps moved away surprisingly quietly.

  I swayed and blew out an unsteady breath.

  What the frigging hell was all that about?

  Fine, Cameron was entitled to wonder if Zane hadn’t been thinking clearly when he’d interrogated me. But the key questions about whether Felix was in any way involved with Gold Hill, or whether Skylur had a deal with Amaral had been asked and answered. Felix certainly thought he could catch me in a lie, so I assumed Cameron did, too.

  So what was all the dominance-flexing about?

  All that craziness?

  He couldn’t be as crazy as he made out he was and still run a pack, let alone a group of packs.

  So why? To keep me off balance and more worried about setting him off than getting information from him?

  Well, it worked, said Tara. More or less.

  And why not let me see him? Why the voice disguise? Someone I might recognize? Was he an anchor on the news or something? A politician?

  Jeez!

  Rita had told me alphas try it out on each other. I hadn’t believed it then, and I didn’t now. Cameron had been testing me. Pack Deauville wasn’t of interest to him. We were a side note. The only reason I could think of was Cameron might want to go up against Felix someday, and he thought he could estimate Felix’s strength from mine.

  You did take the challenge, Tara pointed out.

  Clearly, attacking Felix was not something he was going to try something in the near future, but the more I saw of the New Mexico Were, the more I understood the craziness hid a group with long-term plans that weren’t at all crazy. And my gut was starting to tell me this alpha was probably the least crazy of them all. I’d have to warn Felix.

  A bodyguard to escort me around the city, keep me safe?

  Bullshit.

  Cameron just didn’t want me looking too closely at anything sensitive.

  As if I had time.

  Where the hell was this guard?

  I needed to be on my way.

  At least I had an indication of where Diana was. If Amaral was there and he was gathering his allies, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find his headquarters.

  I was beginning to see what I needed to do. Step by step.

  The question was, could I do it?

  Chapter 45

  “Amber?” a familiar voice spoke. “Ready to go?”

  Rita. My bodyguard was Zane’s freaking Were-cougar lieutenant.

  And his executioner.

  No. They wouldn’t need a cougar to come all the way to kill me sitting in a little wooden box.

  I opened the door and came out.

  She was dressed in anonymous work clothes—dull brown jacket, cargo pants and tough boots.

  I snorted. “Cameron had you come up to Santa Fe for interrogation instead of Zane?”

  She shrugged, not denying it. “Wanted a different perspective.”

  She meant Cameron wanted to hear from someone who I hadn’t been seducing across the table while we would both have been better occupied interrogating Iversen.

  I could see the point. The Confederation envoy might not have known everything, but he had to have some idea about what was poised to happen.

  Gone. Get over it.

  There was no sign of the priest outside. Rita gave me the HK back and we walked into the cool Santa Fe evening. She also handed Mary’s bouquet to me, still sealed in the little zip bag I’d used when I went to the Calle.

  “We never got around to talking about this, but you left it in your pants pocket.”

  “Thanks. Completely forgot.”

  “We understand the principle of it now,” she said. “We’re looking forward to speaking with your Adepts when we come to see you.”

  “They’re not ‘my’ Adepts, and I can only ask them.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What about the GPS I gave to the young guy who was watching us at the bus station? It might have had some places the Warders were using. Was it any use?”

  “It was.” She smiled and got that dreamy look on her face again. “Oh, yes.”

  I didn’t have time to dig any further. My brain was still going flat out. The shouting match with Cameron had done some good. My thinking felt clearer than it had in days. Nothing like someone crazier than you to make you feel sane. I had to suppress the giggle that threatened to surface. Rita probably thought I was crazy enough as it was.

  “I need to buy some things,” I said.

  “Give me the list.”

  “Running clothes, shoes, backpack, ski hat, all dark, LED flashlight with head strap, water bottles, maps…” I ran through my list. “And I need to hurry. I have to get back to my friend.”

  Rita waved a cab down to take us to a mall near I-25. Inside, I borrowed her cell and called one of Tullah’s burn phones.

  “Mike Papa Two, in ninety,” I said when she responded and I ended the call. She’d be at the second of our chosen meeting places in ninety minutes.

  I handed the cell back to Rita, who smiled. “Someone just tossed a burn phone into the trash
, somewhere in Santa Fe.”

  I smiled back and said nothing.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” she said. “You have Cameron’s authority to be here. We’re not going to chase after your companion.”

  My expression didn’t change. I liked Rita. But I didn’t trust her, or any Were from New Mexico. Not yet.

  “So,” she said to fill the silence between us. “What’s it like being hybrid? Two alphas pulling you two ways?”

  I snorted. “Yeah.” Skylur wasn’t anything like an alpha, but I knew what she meant. I glanced at the cabbie, but he was singing along to the radio and I doubted he could hear us.

  “You screwing both of them?” she said.

  I coughed in surprise.

  “I’m assuming Altau’s already been there when he bit you,” she went on. “And you and Larimer—an alpha pair? Gotta make sense.”

  Rita had the tact and diplomacy of a Mack truck.

  “Ah…look, I’ve been bitten twice. Neither of them was Skylur, and neither of them involved sex.”

  “Oh.” she thought that over. “And Larimer?”

  “No.”

  “Why? He hasn’t got an alpha mate at the moment, has he?”

  “Because I have an alpha mate already. Why are you asking?”

  “Just making conversation.”

  My impression was the Were-cougar made conversation for the same reason her cat sniffed trees—to gather information.

  “So, Larimer still doesn’t have a mate, then?”

  I nodded. I didn’t think that was a secret, or tactically threatening.

  I was saved from more questions by our arrival at the mall.

  Eighty-five minutes and one more mall later, the place which happened to be where I was due to meet Tullah, I had what I thought I needed and I tried to persuade Rita to leave me.

  “I promise, I’m leaving Santa Fe immediately,” I said.

  “Cameron will have my hide,” she replied. “Probably while I’m still alive.”

  I sighed. It was time for a little experiment.

  I opened my eukori and touched Rita’s.

  She tensed. The Were don’t use eukori like the Athanate do, but they’re fully aware of what the Athanate might do through it and they can sense when it’s used.

  I wasn’t trying to influence her or compel her directly. Yelena said I could boost my range with power drawn from another’s eukori.