Moon Called

CHAPTER 13

I was in no mood for working on the Beetle after talking to Bran, so I closed up shop and went home. Bran had thought my ideas had merit, which was all well and good, except it did not answer the tightness in my belly that told me I should have gotten a call by now. My nose had told me that Adam hadn't found Jesse at the empty house in West Richland, but it didn't tell me where they'd gone afterward.

I paused again on my porch at the smell of death that still lingered there. I decided Elizaveta Arkadyevna was punishing me for not telling her what was going on. I'd have to clean the porch myself or be reminded of Mac's death every time I walked in my house for the next few months.

I opened the door, still thinking of Mac, and realized what else my senses had been trying to tell me a moment too late. All I had time to do was drop my chin so that the man who'd been standing behind the door didn't get the chokehold he'd gone after, but his arm was still tight around my head and neck.

I twisted around sharply in his grip until I faced him, then threw everything I had into a short, sharp punch into the nerve center on the outside of the big muscle of his thigh. He swore, his grip loosened, and I pulled free and started fighting in earnest.

My style of karate, Shi Sei Kai Kan, was designed for soldiers who would be encountering multiple opponents-which was good because there were three men in my living room. One of them was a werewolf-in human form. I didn't have time to think, only react. I got in some good hits, but it rapidly became apparent that these men had studied violence a lot longer than I.

About the time I realized the only reason I was still up and fighting was because they were being very careful not to hurt me, the werewolf hit me once, hard, square in my diaphragm, then, while I was gasping for air, tossed me on the floor and pi

"Broke my f-"

"Ladies present," chided the man who held me in an implacable grip that was as gentle as a mother holding her babe. His voice had the same soft drawl that sometimes touched Adam's voice. "No swearing."

"Broke my freaking nose then," said the first voice dryly, if somewhat muffled-presumably by the broken nose.

"It'll heal." He ignored my attempts to wriggle out of his hold. "Anyone else hurt?"

"She bit John-Julian," said the first man again.

"Love nip, sir. I'm fine." He cleared his throat. "Sorry, sir. It never occurred to me that she'd have training. I wasn't ready."

"It's water under the bridge now. Learn from it, boy," my captor said. Then he leaned down and, in a voice of power that vibrated down my spine, said, "Let us chat a little, hmm? The idea is not to hurt you. If you hadn't struggled, you wouldn't even have the bruises you do now. We could have hurt you much worse if we had wanted to." I knew he was right-but it didn't make him my best friend.

"What do you want?" I asked in as reasonable a tone as I could manage, flattened, as I was, on the floor beneath a strange werewolf.

"That's my girl," he approved, while I stared at the floor between my couch and end table, about two feet from my left hand, where Zee's dagger must have fallen when I went to sleep last night.

"We're not here to hurt you," he told me. "That's the first thing you need to know. The second is that the werewolves who have been watching your house and the Sarge's have been called off-so there's no one to help you. The third is-" He stopped speaking and bent his head to take a deeper breath. "Are you a were? Not a werewolf. You don't smell right for that. I thought it might just be the cat-never had a cat-but it's you that smells like fur and the hunt."

"Grandpa?"

"It's all right," the werewolf answered, "she's not going to hurt me. What are you, girl?"

"Does it matter?" I asked. He'd called Adam "Sarge"-as in "Sergeant"?

"No," he said. He lifted his weight off me and released me. "Not in the slightest."

I rolled toward the couch, and grabbed the dagger, shaking it free of sheath and belt. One of the intruders started forward, but the werewolf held up a hand and the other man stopped.

I kept moving until I was crouched on the back of the couch, the dagger in my hand and my back to the wall.

The werewolf's skin was so dark the highlights were blue and purple rather than brown. He knelt on the floor where he'd moved as soon as he let me up. He wore loose khaki pants and a light blue shirt. At another gesture, the two men backed up farther, giving me as much room as they could. They were lean and tough-looking and like enough to be twins. Like the werewolf, they were very dark-ski

"You're Adam's army buddy," I told the werewolf, trying to sound relaxed, like it made me think he might be on my side, like I didn't know that he'd been involved in the debacle at Adam's house. "The one who was Changed with him."

"Yes'm," he said. "David Christiansen. These are my men. My grandsons, Co

"Mercedes Thompson," I told him. "What do you want?"

David Christiansen sat down on the floor, making himself as vulnerable as a werewolf could get.

"Well, now, ma'am," he said. "We've gotten ourselves into something of a fix, and we're hoping you can help us out of it. If you know who I am, you probably know I've been a lone wolf by choice since the Change."

"Yes," I said.

"I never finished high school, and the military was all I knew. When an old buddy recruited me for a mercenary troop, I was happy to go. Eventually I got tired of taking orders and formed up my own troop." He smiled at me. "When my grandsons resigned their commissions and joined us, I decided to quit fighting other people's wars for them. We specialize in extracting kidnapped victims, ma'am. Businessmen, Red Cross, missionaries, whatever, we get them out of the hands of the terrorists."

My legs were getting tired, so I sat down on the back of the couch. "What does this have to do with me?"

"We find ourselves somewhat embarrassed," the werewolf said.

"We're on the wrong side," said the man who'd answered to John-Julian.

"Gerry Wallace came to you," I whispered, as if a loud noise would destroy my sudden comprehension. It was David's talking about being a lone wolf that had done it. Lone wolves and Dr. Wallace meant Gerry, the Marrok's liaison with packless wolves. "He told you that Bran intended to tell the world about the werewolves." No wonder Gerry was too busy to spend time with his father.

"That's right, ma'am," agreed David. He frowned at me. "You aren't a werewolf, I'd swear to it, so how do you know so much about us-" He broke off his speech as a look of sudden comprehension came into his face. "Coyote. You're the girl who turns into a coyote, the one raised by the Marrok."

"That's me," I said. "So Gerry talked to you about Bran's decision to bring the werewolves out into the public?"

"Bran is abandoning the wolves to the humans, just like the Gray Lords did their people," said Co

"So you suggested Adam?"

"No, ma'am." David's voice was mellow, but I bet if he'd been in wolf form, his ears would have been pi

"Bran is not one of the Gray Lords. He would never abandon his wolves. I suppose it never occurred to you to call Adam on the phone and talk to him-or even Bran, for that matter," I said.