Alpha Omega 02 - Hunting Ground

know that Angus and I both know that she’s broken her word to Bran. She would have thought Charles was the only one.” She was talking to herself. “How far out is the Marrok?”
    She wasn’t even sure Bran could help. She’d learned he wasn’t infallible, just scary.
    â€œHe’ll be landing at Sea-Tac in ten minutes.”
    â€œNot soon enough,” Anna said. She ended the call.
    â€œWhat are you planning?” Tom asked.
    â€œI think that’s too cerebral a name for it,” she told him. “I’m playing it by ear. But I think this is Charles’s only chance.” It was meant to be her death. Charles was dying.
    The phone rang.
    Tom looked down at it. “Angus. He might tell us to go ahead.”
    â€œAnd if he doesn’t?”
    Tom turned his phone off. “Do we go in together, or do you want me as backup?”
    She thought about it. “She likes men. I think that this might go better if you come with me.” She looked again. “But let me borrow your jacket.” People underestimated her all the time. Maybe the Gray Lords had, too.
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    THE water was black under the floating dock, and Anna had no desire whatsoever to play. She knocked at the door, glad for Tom at her back.
    â€œWho is it?” Dana’s voice sounded as if she were standing beside them.
    â€œYou know who it is,” said Anna, not bothering to raise her voice—Dana could hear her. “I have something for you. A gift, a warning—it depends upon you.”
    â€œI’m in the studio.” The door opened.
    Anna led the way through the boat and up the stairs to the studio.
    The lights were on, and otherwise the scene was very much like the one the fae had set the first time Anna had been here. She was working on a painting that Anna could not see. The painting the Marrok had sent was hung on the left-hand wall, all by itself. A sword leaned casually against the same wall, but closer to the far side of the room than to the middle. It looked very much like the one Arthur had shown her, had claimed to be Excalibur. From what Brother Wolf told her, this one was likely to be the real thing. Its duplicate was shattered all over Arthur’s treasure room, having spent itself defending her mate.
    â€œThe Gray Lords sent me here to attempt to kill you,” Anna told the fae woman, who had not looked up from her painting.
    â€œBrother Wolf thinks I’m a messenger,” Anna continued, “sent here to warn you that if you do this again, the Wild Hunt itself will be sent to you. He believes I’ve been sent to bring you their gift. And for you to kill.” She took a deep breath. “And I think he is right.”
    The fae looked up from her painting. She was beautiful. Not a cold, flawless beauty, but striking. This was a woman who would be terrible in her anger and fierce in battle. Anna felt the same fascination for Dana that had hit her the very first time she’d seen her.
    Anna took a deep breath and closed her right hand over the steel manacle on her left wrist. When she looked again, Dana was still beautiful—but Anna didn’t feel as though she was being sucked into her beauty anymore.
    Dana smiled, as if Anna’s struggles amused her. “Who is Brother Wolf?”
    â€œA friend.” Anna didn’t want to give Dana anything she might use. “I was meant to come here and attack you—but they didn’t count on the little present Arthur’s vampires left me with.” She showed Dana one of her wrist manacles and shook one foot to make the chains jingle.
    â€œTheir failure left me with a few options—and you as well. If I had attacked you, and you killed me . . . you would be in their power, wouldn’t you.”
    â€œI am a Gray Lord—I answer to no one.”
    â€œWhen Charles dies. When you kill me—the Marrok would hunt you down. You’d be forced to die or leave this continent. To go back to Europe. To be under their thumbs.”
    Dana’s lips thinned with anger and—Anna’s nose told her—a wisp of fear.
    â€œYou said you brought me a gift?”
    Dana was just trying to change the subject, Anna judged. But Anna was in control of the conversation.
    â€œYou didn’t know,” she said, sounding, with some effort, relatively sympathetic, “when you cursed Charles, that we all knew you broke your word to protect the wolves