Hunting Ground

“Try and relax into it,” he told her.

Alan sat on the bed, too, swiveling until he was facing A

“Did you see?” A

“See what?” Charles asked.

“The one-armed vampire. Wonder what he did with the arm?” She hissed then as Alan pulled another pellet free.

“I don’t know.” He kissed the top of her head.

A

TWELVE

ANNA was sweating and swearing-and Charles was fit to be tied and a fair bit on his way to needing restraint himself. Alan had nerves of steel, because his hands were steady even though Charles couldn’t keep his growls to himself. Finally, Alan dropped the forceps into the bowl.

“All right,” he said. “There is still lead in there. I can smell it, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. At least it is not silver. An X-ray machine would be able to locate the rest.”

“We have one of those in Aspen Creek,” Charles said.

“Or you can let the remainder fester out. There isn’t a lot-I don’t think it’s enough to make her sick.”

“That’s where my vote goes.” A

Charles slid out from behind her. “You’ll change your mind when they start festering,” he predicted. “But you can wait if you’d like.”

“I’ll do that.” She huffed indignantly. “Festering. What a lovely thought.”

He kissed her lightly, then took a good look at the manacles they’d used on A

“Go look,” A

Charles was smiling when he left the room, shutting the door behind him. While she was hurting, and he had to get her help, he hadn’t even thought about her nudity. But he didn’t want Arthur walking in on her, so he shut the door.

The house was dark, and he thought Arthur must have gone back to bed-morning was still a while away. He wasn’t going to sleep again, not in Arthur’s house-and he wasn’t going to move A

He went to the kitchen and opened drawers to see if he could find anything useful.

“Charles?” Arthur’s voice. It came from the room that he kept his treasures in.

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m looking for something to get the manacles off A

“I probably have something that would work,” Arthur said.

Charles stopped sorting through the kitchen implement drawer, lifting his head. There was something… odd about the other man’s voice.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe. He removed a fillet knife from the block and slid it into his jeans pocket.

“That would be cool.” He was careful to keep his throat loose, so Arthur wouldn’t have any reason to think Charles had noticed anything different. “She’s tough, she’d handle it-but I want them off.” He moved unhurriedly through the dark living room… and caught Su

Poor thing. He hadn’t known her well enough to do more than feel sorry for her. No wonder Arthur was off. Oddly, the sympathy he felt for Arthur was far more sincere than any mourning he could do for Su

He tried not to think about how much worse tonight could have been. A

Their taking her made him angry, so angry that not even killing three of them soothed him. Or Brother Wolf, either.

If they had killed her… he would have joined her. He paused, not having worked that out before. But it didn’t particularly bother him. If she died, he would follow. Just as he would have followed her wherever they had pla

“Charles?”

His phone rang. “I’ll be right there. Angus is calling.”

He opened the phone, “Yes?”

“Your A

“Trap sprung too late,” said Charles-aware that Arthur had come out to listen.

“Yes.” Angus paused. “And your scent? Moira found clothes in one of the… well, in the mess of body parts. As best we can figure, someone snitched the clothes you wore to the hunt, dragged them around the room, and dumped them.”

“Deliberate.”

“Absolutely. And not even the fae can pin it on you now. I know you left the hunting grounds in a completely different set of clothes.”

“Good.”

“On another interesting news front… that van? The local vampires who were doing the cleanup on it recognized the stick you poked through one of the bad guys. She called it a spellcatcher.”

Charles frowned. “Spellcatcher?”

“Vampire hocus pocus, apparently. Very secret-the vampires here really don’t want trouble with your father over this to tell us this much. Only a couple of vampires can make them-and they charge a lot for them. If our team of out-of-town vamps were hired guns, they were successful and expensive to be able to purchase such a thing. Apparently this stick can absorb up to four spells, and the person it’s tuned to can use it to cast them, even if that person wouldn’t normally be able to do magic.”

“That would explain the shadows spell and the Look-Not-At-Me the vampires used when they attacked A

“The thing to remember is that it can only absorb spells given to it voluntarily by the spell caster. Means a wolf gave them the shadows spell and the Look-Not-At-Me.”

“Confirming A

“Is A

“She’ll be fine as soon as a few more chunks of lead fester out, and I get some locks picked so she doesn’t have to explain her interesting choice in jewelry.”

Arthur was leaning against the door frame of his treasure room, making no effort to pretend he wasn’t listening.

“Good.” Angus cleared his throat. “You did good, son.”

The “son” made Charles smile. He was older than Angus by a few decades. “I think so. She’s-she completes me.”

“Tell her that,” Angus advised humorously. “Women like to hear their men get all tongue-tied.”

“I’ll do that.”

He shut the phone.

“Cleanup crew?” asked Arthur.

And Charles realized that there was a lot Arthur didn’t know. “Chastel was killed last night in a particularly bloody fashion that required some quick action.”

“Was it you who killed him?”

“No. Vampires.”

“Ah.” Arthur looked away. “Chastel. Odd to think of him being dead at last. It couldn’t have happened to a better person.” He looked back and gave Charles a broken smile. “And I guess it did, didn’t it? Poor Su

Charles considered offering sympathy-and decided it wouldn’t help. “A