Wild Card (42 page)

Maybe. I wasn’t discounting it, but was it more likely than a rogue in the pack?

I took a breath to launch into my theory, but he hadn’t finished.

“What’s happening at the trailer park?”

I clamped down on my impatience. “The rest of the Matlal weren’t there and they didn’t show last night, but it’s their marque all right; we’re sure that’s their base. I pulled the teams back. I don’t want to risk spooking them.”

“So how are we going to keep a watch?”

“Maybe we should have an Adept who can see through a crow’s eyes,” I said. “But as we don’t, I’ve put a couple of my own team in this morning. They’re not Athanate or Were, so the Matlal won’t sense them.”

Felix’s eyes came back to me thoughtfully. Not Athanate or Were. He might make that assumption that Tullah and Jofranka were Adepts, and he’d be half right. When they handed over to the next watch, Tullah was going to put in one of those masking spells, at which point, the pack would know about her. Mary had given the go ahead, so I let it pass.

“They’re connected in to my comms network. Any sign and we’ll know. Meantime, the search goes on in the planned way. We’re not just looking for Matlal Were,” I reminded him.

Felix was still watching me.

“Who’s coordinating while you’re here?”

“Bian.”

His fingers dug into his thighs. He’d already known she was my alternate on this. He didn’t like Altau coordinating his pack, but he’d agreed to it.

“Altau,” he grunted. “What about the threat you made to the Confederation? Altau working with us. Is this for real?”

“I was careful how I said it.”

Felix’s lip curled a touch. Were didn’t like double talk.

“I believe in it and I’ll push for it. But I’m going to have to go and explain it to Naryn after we’re done here. Or even before we’re done.” I pulled my Altau cell and looked at the screen, but it was still blank. On Bian’s advice, I was waiting on a summons from Naryn.

He grunted. “Well then, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“It’s about the rogue. Who he or she might be.”

“And the reason this has to be secret?”

“It could be anyone. Even him.” I jerked my head at Leatherface.

Felix looked to see if I was serious and gave a half laugh.

I preferred him angry rather than amused and dismissive, but that might come soon enough.

“You think it’s not a Were because of the increase in size, the lack of Call, the lack of marque,” I said.

He nodded. “And the length of time. A rogue escalates much quicker than your list of victims has been accumulating. The rogue spends too much time in the wolf, and the wolf is mad. The madness bleeds back into the human. It would be noticeable. He couldn’t hide that.” He juggled a stone from hand to hand. “The bites? Well, as your little spy pointed out, anyone could make a device that mimics a bite. And the pattern of bites is not what you’d expect from a rogue attack.”

“But you don’t think it’s a human?”

“This level of ability to escape detection? No. I think it’s an Adept using his powers somehow. Maybe even being paid by the Confederation to destabilize us.”

“It doesn’t seem like a very effective destabilization tactic. You didn’t even notice it happening until I told you about it.” Felix didn’t like me pointing that out. “You’d think those alleged Adepts would have moved on to a different plan long before now,” I went on. “No. I think it’s a Were. But not a rogue in the usual sense.”

“What other ‘sense’ is there?” Felix turned to look directly at me. His face didn’t change, but there was the wolf, just under the skin.

And I was trying to convince a werewolf who was over a hundred and fifty years old that there were things about Were psychology he hadn’t considered.

“Felix, have you ever heard of a sociopath becoming a werewolf?”

His eyes went flat and golden, but then he turned away and looked over the stream for a long time.

“No,” he said finally. “But we don’t become, we’re made. Who would have done that?”

“Who would know?” I countered. I’d been doing some research. “Among humans, they might be as much as 4% of the population, but most people would never believe that. Part of the deal we make with society is that the rules become subconscious. But that means when we come across someone who behaves completely outside the rules, we can’t believe it. We refuse to believe it.”

“So, you’re saying we could have a sociopathic werewolf in the pack. Someone who’s learned how to lie convincingly, even to me.”

He’d understood immediately where I was going with it. Did that mean he thought it was possible? His face gave no sign either way, but the tone of his voice wasn’t encouraging.

“I’m saying it’s a possibility I have to investigate.”

“What about the growth in size?”

“Could be measurement error, considering the level of decomposition in some of those bodies. Or, the growth could be coming from an increase in dominance.”

“I’d notice an increase in dominance.” Felix smiled thinly.

“Maybe. And maybe not, if the sociopath didn’t want you to.” I sighed. “I know it’s sounds crazy, I know I’m talking to a long-established alpha, but I’ve studied this.”

Not quite a lie, but certainly fudging the truth. I’d had a little training in the army and I’d read some articles in preparation for talking to him. I wanted to see if I could lie to Felix, and if he could tell I was doing it.

So far, no reaction, so I pushed it further. “In fact,” I went on, “I have a diploma from an online college.”

Complete lie. But if he sensed it, Felix made no sign.

I picked up a stone and threw it at another crow who was looking to land.
The pack can’t lie to the alpha.
So did this mean I wasn’t pack? Or just that I was a stronger alpha than Felix? I’d never felt anything for Felix that resembled what I thought a Were should feel for their alpha.

“I’m not promising anything,” he said, “but what do you want from me?”

“A list of members of the pack.”

“What would you do with it?”

“Cross check against known and potential victims. Places of work, addresses, club memberships. Standard investigative work. Unless it turns up something more significant. Then what we do depends on what we’ve found.”

“You realize the damage you’re doing to the pack? The damage you will do if you’re right?”

“I’m not trying to damage the pack, and what I might do is nothing compared to what would happen if the rogue is caught by the FBI.”

He stood and looked thoughtfully at the stream for a minute.

“Do you feel Were?” he said. His voice was neutral, just asking the question, but the weight of the feeling behind it was intense.

“I feel part Were,” I replied.

He shook his head. It felt like I’d misunderstood, or answered the wrong question. “Think about being a Were for a moment. What does it feel like?”

I tried. I closed my eyes. The memory that popped into my head was before Alex had infused me. It was from the evening after I’d first been up to Bitter Hooks. I’d wanted to go back up there and run naked through the pine forests, howling at the moon. I smiled. Maybe I would, one day soon.

“Cool,” As soon as I said it, the word seemed too light, but just as I’d felt I’d got the last answer wrong, Felix seemed pleased with my response this time.

“Let’s get back,” he said finally.

We walked into the woods again, Leatherface trailing behind.

I found the little cemetery preying on my mind and I was never one for subtle. “Can I ask why you never remarried?”

He frowned, concentrating the uneven ground we were crossing. “No suitable female alphas in Denver. Has to be an alpha for the pack. Got offers from outside, but I trust ’em like I trust snake spit.”

“That’s rough.” It hadn’t occurred to me before. As alpha, he’d be bound by consideration for the pack in a choice as fundamental as who he could marry.

He cast a sideways glance at me. Was he able to sense what I felt, even if he couldn’t tell if I was lying? Did that seem strange to him?

“What’s our position with the pack at the moment?” I said to cover. “Alex and me?”

He scowled.

“The pack is disturbed. That’s one reason why I agreed to go along with this hunt the way you’re running it; you’re keeping them occupied. Unfortunately, you’re also acting like an alpha. You realize that you and Alex get their attention? Especially together.”

“Not what we want—”

“What you and I want on a personal level isn’t important to the pack.”

I stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Felix, I know you’re not my alpha.” I felt awful, as if it was some kind of betrayal. But it needed saying. “Never have been. But I will do everything I can to keep your pack stable.”

“And what if the only way to keep it stable is to take over?”

“I don’t want it. Neither does Alex.”

He shook his head. “You just haven’t tasted it yet. Like I said, the pack pushes things in certain ways.”

“I can hardly understand what you want. When you start talking about what the pack wants, I fell like it’s a different language. One I can’t speak.”

“You’re right there.” He loomed over me. “It’s not simple and easy like you want it to be. When you hunted up in Commerce, you felt the Call?”

“Yeah.”

He grunted. “That’s the language you need to learn. I can’t explain it with words, but let’s try this; have you given an Athanate oath yet, ‘on my Blood’?”

“I have.”

“Felt it, didn’t you? Just like you feel Skylur’s right to be head of Altau. His right to receive your loyalty.”

“Yes.”

“The House is held together by bonds. The Athanate to each other and the House, the kin to the Athanate. You share Blood. With the Blood comes the marque. For outsiders, that makes the House distinct. For insiders, it’s what binds it together. The marque requires the members of a House to act for the good of the House.”

I shivered. This was close what Vega Martine had said to me before the Assembly, trying to stop me allying myself with Altau—
the marque knows about need
. I rejected her argument that made us simply pawns of the marque. The marque existed because of us, not the other way around. But my counter argument was more faith than logic.

“That’s like the Call. The pack is held together by bonds, and the Call is how we feel it. The Call requires us all to act for the good of the pack.”

He turned abruptly on his heel and walked off. I had to jog to catch up.

“Alexander’s an alpha, whether he wants it or not. I’ve managed to ignore the tension caused by him being in the pack, but I can’t ignore the pair of you. From the point of view of the pack, it’s like a challenge that I’m refusing. The Call will demand a resolution. If it doesn’t come from me, then from the others.”

We came out from the pines and continued down towards the ranch house.

I stopped him again. I was having enough trouble making sure I understood without having to trot alongside him.

“So, even though we’re not challenging, you’re saying either you deal with it as if we are, or someone inside the pack will challenge you. And then they’ll deal with it.”

“If they win.”

“If they lose?”

“Another, and another. But it won’t come to that. The Confederation would be in here taking advantage long before. They’d just scoop the whole pack up under a new alpha, or split it into a couple of packs, north and south. And they’d make it work. They might split the territory. They’d lose half the pack in fights, but what would they care?”

His face was bleak, and the cold, hard reality of what he was saying chilled me.

“No alternatives?”

“There are. Here’s one; you leave Denver, with or without Alex.”

He might not be able to tell I was lying, but he could read the instinctive, angry rejection that flared up in me.

He nodded, as if he’d expected exactly that.

The sun had been up enough to take the chill off the air, but the breeze whispering out from the pines was still cold as a mountain spring.

Felix’s eyes flickered off to the left; the little cemetery enfolded in its green arms; the yew trees that spoke of life and not death.

Something wounded passed behind his eyes. He reached and took my hand between his.

My breath caught in my throat.

“Or you could marry me, Amber.”

Crap! Not what I was expecting.

I didn’t trust my voice, but I could see he knew my answer from his eyes.

After a moment more, he dropped my hand and started walking again.

I stood still in shock for a minute longer. Nothing had changed. The same breeze flowed down the mountain, the same flowers nodded in the beautiful little cemetery. It felt like something had been looking at me, and I hadn’t noticed until now, when it stopped.

A large bird, a hawk probably, passed overhead, making the sun blink, before he turned and soared down the valley, barely moving his wings.

Leatherface walked past, slowly, not looking at me.

I followed Felix into the ranch and found him in his den, staring out the window.

“What makes it impossible for us to be a separate pack in Denver?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “But you risk everything trying to persuade the whole pack to accept you in their domain.”

He held up a USB.

“This is a list of the pack,” he said, turning to loom over me again. “You swear it would not be used to harm the pack?”

“I swear.” That didn’t work; it sounded flat. I lifted my head and looked him in the eye, alpha to alpha. “I swear, on my Blood, I will not use this to harm the pack in any way.”

A ripple passed his face and the wolf stared out at me.

I could feel my own wolf stir in response.

“We walked a mile today.” His voice was low, almost a growl. “Not in each other’s shoes, but still, we have a better understanding, you and I. None of which will make any difference if it comes to it, and the Call presses us to fight. We will both do what we have to. But if you misuse this information, I will hunt you down and kill you.”

“I understand,” I said, my voice husky.

The USB dropped into my hand.