anything less than an atomic bomb. If you harm my mistress, I will hunt you down and flay the skin from your body. Then I will tan the flesh and make a horsewhip from it.”
Ayatas sighed and put the weapon away with a soft click of Kydex. The wolf plopped down beside me and dropped his enormous head in my lap. That was when I realized that I wasn’t dreaming and hadn’t been for some time. I was awake. My brother and my primo were both really here, and the wolf was asking for scritches. My life was . . . not my own anymore. Hadn’t been for a very long time. I put a hand on the wolf’s head and massaged his ears. He sighed and closed his eyes.
“My mistress acquires the strangest pets.” Ed backed out and closed the door.
“Why do I have the feeling,” Ayatas said wryly, “that I am included under the designation of pets?” I didn’t answer. He asked, “Why do you trust that werewolf?”
“He was part of a werewolf motorcycle gang. Then he was trapped in a hedge with a demon that was eating him alive. Then Hayyel appeared and saved him.” I shrugged slightly. “Approved by one who claims to be an angel. Who am I to disagree?”
Brute yawned hugely, his fangs dangerously near my hand. His breath was awful. “Holy crap, wolf, what have you been eating? Rotten meat and raw onions?” Brute didn’t answer.
Ayatas had gone immobile during my truncated story. “Motorcycle gang. I had a run-in with a werewolf gang on bikes long before they were out of the closet. Outside of Billings, Montana. In 1974.”
Brute turned his head and chuffed again, his icy blue eyes on my brother, narrowed with laughter.
“I barely got away with my life.”
A chill raced over me. I hated it when synchronicity and serendipity combined into something that was too coincidental to really be only that. And I wondered how long Hayyel had been hovering over my life, whether I was in human or Beast form, watching over my family, pulling strings, setting things in motion. I scowled at the wolf head in my lap.
“There was no white werewolf in the pack,” Ayatas said.
“Brute wasn’t white until after the encounter with Hayyel. Before that he was red and big as a fire truck.”
My brother swore under his breath, recognizing the wolf from the description.
“You and Brute have a history. Interesting, that.”
Brute yawned, showing killing teeth. He closed his eyes again and made a sound that might be a fake snore.
“Will you talk to our grandmother?”
Abrupt change of subject. “Sure. After the invading vamps are dead or neutralized. I’m too busy right now for a family reunion.” Though there was that pesky memory of the longhouse and the woman who hadn’t belonged. “Later,” I said, to Aya and to myself. “Later.”
“I’ll hold you to it.” He stopped.
I knew what else he wanted but I wasn’t going to make it easy on him. I gave him my best Beastly toothy grin.
His scent changed but his voice was smooth and unperturbed when he asked, “Are you ever going to show me how to achieve the half-form you wear?”
“Who knows. It could happen. And it might not.” Which was a lot more positive a response than the last time he asked.
He stood without using his arms or hands, twisting and pushing upright with his legs until he stood straight and tall over me. “I hope this is the beginning of peace between us, e-igido.”
I thought about peace, and how alliances were built on many things—DNA, shared history, cultural similarities, shared resources, mutual protection, change of circumstances, mutual need. I already shared some of those with Ayatas, but not all. “Are you going to help us against the Flayer of Mithrans?”
“It’s complicated. At the moment I have to say any help would be . . . unofficial. Someone in PsyLED Unit Eighteen found video of a torture scene from inside a local hotel.”
He had to mean the hacker on his Knoxville team. I waited.
Ayatas’s face was set in stone, showing no emotion as he said, “When the FBI saw the level of violence and the compulsion the Flayer of Mithrans was using, controlling all those Mithrans and humans, the interagency directors decided that PsyLED would no longer have lead on this, for fear that we would be more easily controlled and infiltrated by paranormals. I might as well have been told to stand down.”