Dead Heat (Alpha and Omega) - Patricia Briggs Page 0,122

broke the door frame so the heavy old door swung free. He staggered a couple of steps and saw Maggie.

She was crumpled up against the wall, a small figure for such a big personality. It took no time at all to see that she was already gone.

Her knuckles were split; she’d hit her attacker at least once. He took one hard breath that hurt—but there was Joseph and Mackie to think about. He would mourn Maggie later, when her loved ones were straightened out.

He wasted a minute checking out the house and when he didn’t scent the fae anywhere except the living room, he followed Joseph’s trail out a window in the back of the house. When he encountered the disabled vehicles he thought, as he had once before, You’ll do to ride the river with, Joseph.

Following the scent trail the fae had left, Charles ran for the barn.

It was hard to hide in the shadows and listen to Mackie scream. Joseph bit his lip and hunkered down in the empty stall. The staff had been busy and this stall hadn’t been properly cleaned. He was pretty sure that if the fae did have a good nose, the scent of horse urine would disguise the scent of one old man.

He caught a glimpse of them as the woman hauled Mackie out of the barn to the truck. He’d flattened the tire on the far side so she had to go all the way out to see. He heard the door of the truck open, and suddenly Mackie wasn’t making any noise.

The little girl had been like that when Charles and Anna had found her, he knew. It was magic, not death, that had silenced his Mackie. He held that thought close to him. He … she … it. He could think of the fae as it. It didn’t want to hurt Mackie, yet—not until it could use her. Left to its preferences, it kept its victims for a year and a day, Charles had told him.

Shaking and sweating, tucked behind the door of the horse stall, Joseph prayed that magic was why Mackie had quit screaming. After a few minutes a new noise filled the air, a woman’s frustrated cry.

“Where are you?” She—she sounded like a she—roared the words out.

Yeah. Sure he was coming out, like he was still that dumb-shit kid in that bar in Phoenix. He’d learned a lot that day; some of it Charles had taught him. But most of it he’d learned from those World War II veterans who’d risked their lives for their country and came back to learn that their promises had to mean that they changed how they treated people who didn’t happen to look like them. They hadn’t learned that lesson until he’d taken them on and Charles had come to his rescue. His fists hadn’t taught them anything, but that soft-spoken, laconic Charles? His words, what few there had been, had flattened them and left them bleeding by the wayside. He’d bet that they never beat up on someone because they were a different color or different anything again.

Charles had had words for Joseph, too.

If you’re going to face someone bigger and stronger than you, kid, make damn sure you are better armed. He could hear Charles’s dry voice as though it were yesterday instead of seventy-odd years ago.

The only weapons he had were the knife in his hand and the brain in his head, and the knowledge that Charles would be coming as fast as he could. Between the knife and Charles, Joseph was well armed, as long as he picked his fight.

That woman came back into the barn with Mackie slung over her shoulder like a leg of beef. He tightened his hand on the knife but stayed still. She paused beside Hephzibah’s stall and growled, “Horses.” She didn’t sound happy, and she didn’t sound very female anymore, either.

He had a pretty good view of her as she dropped Mackie to the ground—his granddaughter’s staring eyes met his through the crack of daylight between the half-open stall door and the door frame.

The fae grabbed the bridle he’d left hanging on the hook and opened the door. “Come ’ere, nag,” the thing growled.

He’d worried a little about making Hephzibah a target—what if the fae had been one of those who could ride anything? Hephzibah was quick and strong. If that fae could ride her, they’d have had a fine time trying to run her down—since he’d effectively disabled all the