Charles gave up and turned his attention to something he knew how to do.
"Tell them we'll be there in an hour," he said. "I'll need to talk to Heather and Tag first. We'll head out in the morning."
"Take my Humvee," Bran said, taking a key off his key ring. "It'll get you farther in than your truck."
Aren't you just being so helpful, now? thought Charles with frustrated bitterness. Bran couldn't read minds, but the small smile told Charles that he read his son's expressions just fine.
* * * *
Charles wasn't surprised to see Heather waiting for them. She stood just outside the guest-room doorway, leaning against the wall with her gaze on her feet. She didn't look up as they approached, but said, "I killed him by bringing him here, didn't I?"
"Did Tag go home?" asked Charles.
Heather looked up at him, examining his face. "He said he'd had all the blood he could deal with for a while and went downstairs to watch a movie."
"Your Jack will be fine," Anna said, apparently impatient with Charles's neutrality. "Charles and I are going to take care of the werewolf who attacked him-and hopefully that will be good enough that your friend won't freak out to the press."
Heather stared at his Anna for a moment. "Thank goodness for someone around here who doesn't act as if information were more precious than gold. You must be Charles's Chicago Omega."
Anna smiled, but he could tell that she had to work at it. "Wolves do tend to be secretive, don't they? If it helps, I think your bringing the other wolf-Tag, was it?-was the thing that tipped the balance."
Heather glanced at Charles out of the corner of her eye, and he knew she'd hoped for that when she called her uncle for help. Still, he read the truth in her voice when she said, "He was the only one it occurred to me to call. I knew he'd come just because I asked him."
Tag was like that.
"Is it possible that we could wake your Jack up?" asked Charles.
"He's been in and out," she told him. "He's just sleeping, not unconscious now."
The human was a little older than Heather. His face was drawn and pale. As soon as Heather woke him up, the scent of his pain filled the room.
Interesting, thought Brother Wolf, seeing wounded prey. An easy meal.
Charles had never figured out if Brother Wolf was serious or being funny, since they both knew he'd never allow them to feed upon a human. He suspected, uncomfortably, it was somewhere in between. He pushed Brother Wolf back and waited until the human focused on him over Heather's shoulder.
"I am Charles," he said. "A werewolf. Heather, I'm not going to eat him."
Heather backed out from between them though he could tell she wanted to stay there and protect her friend from him.
"Why did you attack us?" Jack whispered, working to get the words out.
"Not me," Charles said. "Ask Heather. She'll tell you. We just heard about the rogue a few days ago. I was wounded, and my father wanted to wait until I was healed before sending me after him. We thought that with the hunting season almost over, there was little danger in waiting a couple of weeks."
"Wounded?"
Charles gritted his teeth to control the wolf-who was wildly disapproving-as he untucked his shirt and turned around. The burn across his shoulders was obvious, but he'd also been smelling his own blood since Anna had fishtailed, so he was pretty sure that the current bandage was bloodstained where it covered the hole in his back.
Neither Jack nor Heather was a threat-but Brother Wolf didn't care; displaying weaknesses for others was wrong. But it was important that Jack understood why they had waited. If they wanted him to keep quiet, Jack had to understand that they were capable of policing their own under normal circumstances.
"Bullet burn," said Jack.
"And two more that hit," Charles agreed, retucking his shirt.
"Jack used to be a policeman," offered Heather. She'd kept her head averted, not looking at him, and Charles appreciated it.
"I had some problems in Chicago a few days ago," Charles said.
"You'll need to heal," Jack whispered.
Charles shook his head. "Not if we have a werewolf out hunting people." He looked at Heather. "Was this unprovoked? "
She shrugged. "I don't know for sure. He just broke cover and attacked. There are a lot of reasons the rogue could have done that-maybe he's set up territory or has something or someone he is guarding. But I barely tagged him, and he ran."
"So he could be hunting," Charles concluded. "We can't afford to wait for him to find someone else to kill."
* * * *
Anna followed Charles down the stairs in a hunt for Heather's uncle Tag. The stairs ended in a narrow hall lined with steel doors, complete with thick iron bars ready to be set in the brackets on either side.
On one of the doors, the bar was in use. Whoever was in it had been making noise until they stepped out into the hall. Then he dropped into utter silence, and she could feel him listening to them as they walked by.
She might have asked Charles about it, but his face didn't invite questions. She couldn't tell if he was mad at her or just thinking. Either way, she didn't want to bother him. She had already annoyed him enough. She should have told him that she would stay behind.
But that would have meant he would go alone, wounded, to face some unknown rogue. His father seemed to think he could take care of himself, but he hadn't been there yesterday when Charles had been too hurt to move without help.
If Charles decided he didn't want her, what would she do?
There was a friendlier door at the end of the hall-no locks or bars. But as they approached it she heard the sound of an explosion.
"Hoo yah," someone said with fierce appreciation.
Charles opened the door without knocking.
Anna had a quick impression of a huge TV screen connected to a variety of sleek black boxes and speakers by a rainbow spiderweb of cables. But what caught her eye and held it was a big man stretched over the back of a couch like a giant house cat. And "giant" was the word.
Charles was a tall man, but she'd be willing to bet that Colin Taggart was taller by several inches and broader all the way around. Despite the cold, he wore Birkenstock sandals on his big feet, strapped over a pair of heavy wool socks, worn and frayed, but clean. Baggy khaki pants were topped by a tie-dyed T-shirt hanging down past his thighs. His hair was spectacularly orange-red and coarse like a pony's mane; it curled and matted in a hairstyle that might have been a deliberate attempt at dreadlocks or just lack of care. He'd pulled the whole mass away from his face with a substantial, ink-stained rubber band.
He hadn't been at the funeral, she thought. She'd have remembered him. Probably he'd been out getting his niece.
His skin was Celt-pale, with freckles dusted across his cheekbones. With his coloring and blade-sharp features he might as well have "Irish" tattooed across his forehead. He smelled of some odd incense that overlaid a pleasant earthy tone that she couldn't quite place. He looked ten or fifteen years younger than his niece, and the only thing they had in common was the clear gray of their eyes.
After a quick glance at Charles when they entered the room, Tag turned his attention back to the TV and watched the last of the explosion, then aimed the remote in the TV's general direction and paused the movie.
"So," he said in a surprisingly high voice. "You don't smell like death." It wasn't soprano, but a man that big should rumble like a bass drum. He sounded more like a clarinet. An American clarinet: his accent was pure TV announcer.
"If Heather's friend can keep his mouth shut, he'll be safe enough," said Charles. "We're going hunting bright and early in the morning. I'd appreciate if you could do a few things for me."
The relaxed pose had been a ruse, Anna realized, as the other werewolf sat up and allowed himself to slide down onto the seat of the couch and used that momentum to come all the way to his feet. All with the controlled speed and grace of a danseur noble.
Standing, he took up more than his share of the small room. Anna took an involuntary step back that neither of the men appeared to notice.
He grinned, but his eyes were wary and he kept them on Charles. "All right then, as long as you're not going to kill my little friend, I'll be happy to oblige."
"I need you and Heather to figure out exactly where they were when they were attacked-preferably on a map. See if she can pinpoint where the other werewolf victim was-and the grad student's attack, too." Charles glanced back at Anna, giving her an impersonal once-over before turning his attention back to the other man. "Then stop by Jenny's and see if she has some dirty clothes, something she's sweated in."
The wolf's eyes narrowed. "You're going to do that scent thing? Jenny's Harrison is about your size. You want me to grab something of his for you?"
"That would be good. Meet us back at my house in a couple of hours with the map and clothes."
"Bran's really not going to execute Heather's man." It was a statement, but there was a thread of uncertainty in Tag's voice.
Charles shrugged. "Not right now, anyway. Not unless he decides to do something dumb."
It didn't sound like reassurance to Anna, but Tag seemed to take it that way.
"Fine, then," he said with a nod. "See you in a couple of hours."
* * * *
Charles Sparked the Humvee in front of the house, probably because it wouldn't have fit in the garage. He was stiff and limping by that time, but when Anna tried to take the packages they'd amassed from the store, he just gave her a look. She raised both hands in surrender and let him take everything into the house himself.
He hadn't said anything personal to her since they'd left his father's study.
"Maybe you ought to take someone else," she said, finally, as she shut out the winter's cold. "Another wolf might be more helpful."