This time, she didn't try to stop him as he hauled the changeling over his shoulder and strode out, Elias by his side. The other man kept growling low in his throat until Judd dumped Dieter in the lockup and secured the door. "Does he need a healer?" Judd wanted him very alive for the questioning.
Elias's eyes were flat. "He needs to be dead, but I'll call Lara. It might be a while if there were injuries in the nursery."
Judd had forgotten the alarm in the emotional chaos of the attack on Brenna. "Are you capable of guarding him? I know he was your friend."
"I want to tear him to pieces." His claws were out. "But I won't let him die - Tim's family deserves the honor of ripping his two-faced heart from his fucking chest."
Accepting that, Judd left to return to Brenna. He found the apartment full. Surprisingly, Lara herself was looking at Brenna's cuts, while Hawke asked her questions and her brothers swore in low, continuous bursts. Outside, someone was already trying to repair the door he'd busted. He heard Sing-Liu's cool voice giving the orders.
"Judd." Brenna's face lit up the second she saw him. She went to hold out a hand but dropped it halfway.
He grabbed it anyway. Damn the consequences. "The nursery?" he asked Lara.
"Looked worse than it was," she said. "No kids hurt but that was by sheer luck. If a pup had crawled into the doorway when it came down - " She shook her head.
"A diversion," Judd said. "He had to get D'Arn away from Brenna."
"D'Arn's already beating himself up about it." Riley blew out a breath. "But Dieter knew what he was doing - I would've taken off for the nursery, too. Bren can look after herself, pups can't."
Brenna shot her big brother a smile at the vote of confidence, before returning her attention to Judd. "I was telling Hawke how it happened. I left to grab my comm equipment from my room and when I came out, he was standing here." Her voice shook, not with fear but anger. "He smirked at me, said no one's here to protect you now, little girl. He had that injector in his hand." She pointed to the small cylindrical object lying in a corner.
A wall hanging crashed to the floor, the tough plasglass cover splintering.
As everyone else turned toward the sound, Brenna squeezed his hand. The warning worked. He pulled his rage under control, but it was an uncertain control at best. "When did you remember about the van?"
"That smirk." She almost spit out the words. "It made me want to kill and then I knew why."
Hawke kicked aside a piece of debris on the floor - a large splinter from the door. "No wonder you blocked it out. One of us served you up to die." His eyes had gone pure wolf.
"Yes." Her tone softened, grew sad. "He killed Tim, tried to kill Drew, gave me up...and for what? Money."
"I'll find out what he knows." Hawke glanced at Judd. "Can you help?"
He thought of how Dieter's heart had felt in his hands, so slick, so crushable. "Give me a week. I'd kill him right now."
"It'll take him longer than that to heal the damage Brenna tells me she did." Lara's tone was without its normal gentleness. "I've got to go stitch him up now."
Hawke went with Lara. Judd looked at Drew and Riley. "Give us a few minutes."
Both men left after a short, tense silence. Judd took Brenna into her room and closed the door. She stood with her back to it as he leaned over her, palms braced on either side of her head. "You're okay." Not a question, because even bruised, she was standing strong.
"You're not." She took a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at his jaw and he realized he was bleeding from his ear canal again. Worry laid another bruise in her eyes, turning the areola of blue almost indigo. "You can't wait much longer."
Taking it from her, he finished the task and shoved the cloth into his jeans pocket. "You didn't need my help."
She smiled, teeth sharp. "I knew you'd come. That's why I fought so hard. I knew that by the time I got tired, you'd be there." Her smile faded. "Go, calm down. I'm okay."
He left her and it was the hardest thing he'd ever done. The urge to crush out Dieter's life beat in him with every pulse of his own heart, a pounding echo that knew nothing of logic or sense. It just wanted justice. In his current state, he couldn't even act on his decision to break Silence. He was too unbalanced.
Walking out into the snowy spread of the inner perimeter, he attempted to work off some of his energy by going through a number of strictly choreographed hand-to-hand combat moves. He had to wipe more blood from his nose before he began. The color was close to black - the countdown was reaching the final stages.
When Tai materialized out of the forest an hour into his session, he had to force himself not to react with unwarranted aggression. His control was still fragmented, his rage to kill a trapped beast inside him. "What are you doing here?"
"I was heading back to the den after a run. Been out since this morning." He thrust a hand through his hair. "I don't suppose you could teach me some of what you were doing."
"It requires discipline," he replied, realizing Tai had no awareness of the chaos that had ruled the den less than an hour ago. For some reason, that knowledge broke through his anger. "You can't fight instinctively - you need to think before you react."
Tai put his hands into his pockets, bunching up his shoulders. "You think I can't do it?"