Cry Wolf

“No,” she sat up, hitting her head on the dead tree they were sleeping under, but she ignored the pain and reached out to him. “Charles!”

Bran sat bolt upright in his bed, heart pounding and breathing rapidly. The cool air of his bedroom brushed over his sweating body. Witch.

“What’s wrong?” Leah rolled over and propped her chin on her hands, her body relaxed and sated.

“I don’t know.” He took a deep breath, but there had been no strangers in his room. Though his head cleared quickly, the memory of his dream eluded him. Everything except that one word: witch.

His cell phone rang.

“What’s wrong, Da?” Samuel’s voice was wide-awake. “Why did you call me?”

It took Bran a moment to understand Samuel wasn’t talking about a phone call. He rubbed his face and tried to remember. Witch. For some reason the word sent cold chills down his spine.

Maybe he’d been dreaming of the past. He didn’t do it often anymore. And when he did, it wasn’t about the witch-it was about all the people who died beneath his fangs after the witch was dead.

No, it didn’t feel like a dream of memories. It felt like a warning. As soon as he thought that, he felt again the urgency that had woken him up. Something was wrong.

“What did I say?” His voice obeyed him, sounding only calm and curious.

“Wake up,” Samuel said dryly.

“Not very helpful.” Bran ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry for disturbing you, I was asleep.”

Samuel’s voice softened, “Was it a nightmare, Da?”

As if in response to his question, Bran saw an image- part of his dream-“Charles is in trouble.”

“From a rogue?” Samuel spoke with polite incredulity. “I’ve never seen a rogue that could make Charles break a sweat.”

Witch.

But not his witch, not the witch who had turned him into a monster so long ago. Dead, but never forgotten. A different witch.

“Da?”

“Wait, let me think.”

After a moment he said, “Charles and A

“Asil came by that evening. He was angry with me for sending Charles out so soon after he’d been wounded,” Bran said.

“Asil was worried about Charles?” Samuel sounded skeptical.

“Exactly my thought. Astounding. Though he wasn’t too upset until-”

“What?”

Bran rubbed his forehead. “I’m too old. I forgot. What a stupid thing…Well, that’s explained.”

“Father?”

He laughed. “Sorry. Asil took off yesterday morning, presumably after Charles, but I just figured out why. The rogue’s description matches Sarai’s wolf-Asil’s mate.”

“She’s been dead a long time.”

“Two hundred years. Asil told me he’d burned her body and buried the ashes himself. And old as he is, he still ca

Leah rolled off of her side of the bed and gathered up her clothing. Without looking at him, she stalked out of his bedroom to her own. He heard her shut her door behind her and knew he’d hurt her by having this conversation with Samuel, instead of his mate.

But he had no time to apologize-he’d just got an odd insight.

Witch.

“Samuel,” he said, feeling his way. “Why would you burn a body?”

“To hide its identity. Because it’s too cold to bury a body. Because their religion requires it. To prevent the spread of disease. Because there are too many bodies, and no one has a bulldozer handy. Am I getting warm?”

He was too worried to be amused. “Why would Asil have burned Sarai’s body in Spain during the Napoleonic wars?”

“Witch.”

Witch.

“I dreamed of a witch,” Bran said, sure now that it was true.

“The Moor’s mate was tortured to death over days,” Samuel said reflectively. “I always assumed it was a vampire. A witch would never have been capable of holding a werewolf for days-kill her, yes. But not torture.”

“I know of one who could.”

“Grandmother’s been dead for a long time, Da,” Samuel said cautiously.

“Killed and eaten,” Bran said impatiently. “I merely pointed out that we know of one exception. Where there is one, there may be others.”

“Sarai was the Moor’s mate, and they were part of a pack. It wasn’t like it was with us. And Sarai was killed two hundred years ago. Witches live a human life span.”

“Asil told me he’d been dreaming lately. Of her. I assumed he meant Sarai.”

There was only silence on the other end of the phone. Samuel knew about those dreams, too.

“I don’t know anything,” said Bran. “Maybe Sarai was killed by a vampire, and the wolf having her coloring is just coincidence. Maybe Asil burned Sarai’s body because he couldn’t stand to think of her rotting in the grave. Maybe my dream was just that, and Charles is coming back with our rogue right now.”

“You know,” said Samuel reflectively, “you just proved your point better by arguing against it than you did arguing for it. I wonder if that says anything about how your mind works.”

“Or yours,” said Bran, smiling despite himself. “I’m going out to check on Charles.”

“Good,” said Samuel. “Do you want me to come back?”

“No. Are you staying with Adam or Mercy?”

“I am your son,” he said smugly despite the underlying worry in his tone. “At Mercy’s, of course.”

Bran smiled as he hung up the phone. Then he got out of bed and dressed for a drive.

He paused outside of Leah’s closed door, but what was wrong between them could not be changed. He didn’t even want it to change, only regretted that she was so often hurt. In the end he let her be.

He didn’t leave a note; she wouldn’t care where he was going or why.

A

He was dead, and it was her fault. She should have realized the bleeding was worse than he’d let on. She’d only had him a few days.

She levered herself off him and sat cross-legged on the cold ground, studying his exotic and handsome face. He’d lived two hundred years or more, and she knew so little of that time. She wanted all the stories. What had it been like growing up a werewolf? What mischief had he gotten up to? She didn’t even know his favorite color. Was it green, like his bedroom?

“Red. It’s red.” His voice whispered in her ear, startling her.

But that was impossible, wasn’t it?

She reached out to touch Charles’s body, but she just blinked once and was lying flat on her back underneath a Charles who was very much alive, though the left side of his face looked as if some beast had clawed him.

She was panting, and her hands hurt as they slowly changed back to human. Was she the one who’d hurt him? Her heart felt as though it had been stopped in her chest and only now started beating.

“Charles?” she managed.

His face didn’t move very much, but she saw his relief anyway, and felt it in the relaxing of his hold.

Briefly he put his face down against her neck and breathed against her ear. When he pulled back, he rolled off of her, and said, “All you had to do was ask.”

She sat up, feeling weak and disoriented. “Ask?”

“What my favorite color was.”

She stared at him. Was he making a joke of it? “You were dead,” she told him. “I woke up and there was all of this blood and you weren’t breathing. You were dead.”

A growl from behind startled her; she’d completely forgotten about Walter.

“I smell it, too, wolf,” Charles said, the gouges on the side of his face rapidly fading. “Witchcrafting. Did the witch take anything of you, A