"You don't want to hurt me," the witch said, widening her chocolate eyes. "You want to stop."
Anna's run slowed until she stood motionless, so close to the witch that she could smell the mint of her toothpaste. For a moment she had no idea what she was doing or why.
"Stay there." The witch unzipped her coat and reached inside, pulling out a gun.
Omega, Anna remembered, meant she didn't have to take orders-and as easily as that she could move again. With a precision that she'd learned from a brother who'd boxed in high school, and the speed and power she owed her werewolf nature, she punched the witch in the jaw. She heard the pop as the witch's jawbone broke and she fell face-first on the ground, unconscious.
She took a deep breath and looked at the battle raging between Charles and his father. For a moment they were moving too swiftly for her eye to follow, then Charles stood motionless, except for the rapid rise and fall of his breath, just out of reach of his father, his body both ready and relaxed. Blood oozed from slices on his shoulder and thigh. A single rip, running from under his left arm across his abdomen to his right hip, looked to be more serious. The Marrok stood to one side shaking his head very slowly, shifting his weight from side to side.
She should kill the witch and free the Marrok.
She turned back and looked down at the limp body. The girl looked so innocent, so young to have caused such harm.
Anna had killed someone before, but that had been almost an accident. Killing in cold blood was different.
Walter knew how to kill. Instinctively, she looked for him, but he hadn't moved...except his eyes. Surely they had been closed when she'd left him. Now they were open, and a whitish film coated them.
Anna found herself kneeling beside him without really knowing how she had gotten there. No heartbeat, no breath. This man had survived a war and over thirty years of self-imposed isolation, and he'd died for her. She fisted her hands-one gloved, one not-in his fur.
Then she walked over to the unconscious witch, grabbed her chin and the top of her head and twisted with more than human strength. It was easy, just like in the movies. One crack, and the witch was as dead as Walter.
She released the witch, stood up, and took one step back, breathing far too hard. It was so quiet in the forest, as if the whole world had taken a deep breath and not let it out. As if she were the only living creature in the whole world.
Numbly, she turned on her frozen feet to see the Marrok standing over Charles's body.
She'd been too late.
As the sun slowly set, setting the sky aflame behind the dark mountains, Asil held Sarai, still unconscious, in his arms. He buried his nose against her neck, breathing in the familiar scent he'd never thought to smell again. She was so beautiful.
They weren't so far that he couldn't hear the fight, but out of the witch's sight, she'd have a harder time controlling him.
Asil waited. He'd done all he could to take them both out of the battle since they'd only be on the wrong side if they fought. It was the best he could do.
So he held Sarai on his lap and tried to forget that it was the last time.
If Mariposa succeeded, she would kill him. He'd taken Sarai away from her again, and she wouldn't stand for it. If Charles or Bran succeeded in killing Mariposa, his Sarai would be gone for good. A witch's creations did not survive their maker.
So he held her and breathed in her scent and pretended that this moment would never end. Pretended it was Sarai he held...almost he caught a hint of cinnamon.
As her scent faded into fir and pine, snow and dreary winter, he wondered if he had been able to see the future that long ago day when a frightened and bruised child had been brought to his home, would he have had the fortitude to kill her? He put his head down on his knee in bleak despair, holding tight to a small, battered scrap of buff fur.
He didn't have it in him to be glad that Mariposa was dead and Sarai's wolf freed at last.
Which would have been a premature celebration at any rate, because madness swept through him like a fire in a forest in August. He was too tired, but the rage didn't care, just gathered him in an implacable grip and demanded that he change. A wild howl echoed down the mountainside, and Asil called out in return.
The Beast had awakened. Asil opened his hand and let the wind take the last part of Sarai from him before he answered his master's call.
* * * *
Anna didn't think about running until she was halfway to Charles and sprinting.
He couldn't be dead. She could have killed that blasted witch two or three minutes earlier. It couldn't be her fault he was dead-that his father had killed him.
She brushed by the Marrok, and his power roared over her as she dashed through it and fell, sliding in the snow. She crawled the last two feet to Charles. His eyes were closed, and he was covered with blood. She reached out, but she was afraid to touch him.
She was so sure he was dead that when his eyes opened, it took a moment for it to register.
"Don't move," he whispered, his eyes focused beyond her. "Don't breathe if you can help it."
* * * *
Charles watched the wolf who was no longer his father stalk forward, madness mated to cunning in an unholy combination.
Bran had miscalculated. Maybe if the witch hadn't died and broken the control unexpectedly. Maybe if Charles had just given his father his throat at the beginning of the fight, trusting that his father couldn't kill him, even under compulsion. Maybe if it had been Samuel here, instead of him.
Or maybe it was something that would have happened no matter what anyone had done, once the witch had subjugated his father entirely-the way Bran's mother had subjugated him so many centuries ago.
"Why" didn't matter anymore, because his clever, chameleon-like da was gone. In his place was the most dangerous creature who had ever set foot on this mountain.
Charles had thought he was done in. His chest burned, and he was having real trouble breathing. One of those sharp claws had pierced a lung-he'd had that happen often enough he knew what it felt like. He was on the point of giving up, when Anna suddenly appeared-taking no more notice of his da than if he'd been a poodle.
With Anna in danger, Charles found himself much more alert-though his attention was split in his frantic need to know that she was all right.
She looked terrible. Her hair was sweat-dampened and deformed by her absent hat. Windburns reddened her face that he wouldn't have noticed was dirty, too, except for the tear tracks that ran from her eyes to her jaw in ragged lines. He whispered a warning to her, but she smiled (as if she hadn't heard a word he'd said or the danger he'd implied)-and terrified as he was, he was momentarily dumbstruck.