for the military. You like to forget who is in charge here, or what our mission is and what it means. Distraction is not useful; you know how hard he has to work to seem just like everyone else. You want him to get caught? How far would you get trying to destroy the creatures who are taking over this land of ours without Benedict? Are you trying to ruin us?"
"No, sir." Heuter's voice was subdued, but there was venom lurking below the meek tones. "Sorry, Uncle Travis."
"You aren't a kid anymore," the old man said sternly, apparently missing the undercurrents in the younger man's attitude. "Start acting like it. What are we doing here?"
"Saving our country." Heuter's voice strengthened, almost military-style - and he was telling the truth. "Making our country safe for her citizens by taking out the trash and doing the things that our government is too liberal, too soft, to do."
Anna couldn't fathom it. She remembered his little speech at their lunch yesterday; he'd been telling the truth as he believed it then - and though she'd thought him unlikable, she'd also felt a certain respect for him.
She should have remembered Bran's law: zealots are one-trick ponies. They love nothing so much as their own cause. Don't get in their way without expecting to be hurt. She'd always thought Bran had been talking about himself - but she knew better, even if he didn't. Bran was driven, but he loved his sons and he loved his pack. He was not a one-trick pony.
"Do you remember the little girl that we hung by her braid while we - " The lust in Heuter's voice as he'd urged the unseen Benedict on to a greater frenzy was more real than the sincere speech he'd given her at the lunch table.
Heuter wasn't a zealot, either, she decided. He only said he was protecting America from monsters to make himself believe that he was in the right as he satisfied his lust for power over others, his desire to cause other people pain and suffering. Murder and rape were his real cause; keeping America safe was only an excuse.
"Can I have her first, Uncle Travis?" Benedict asked. "I like the girls better. And her husband hurt me. Can I have her first?"
"That's better, boy," the older man said. "You keep your language polite. Let's go take a look at her before we decide anything. We'll have a while to play before you get to feed on her death. There will be time enough for everything."
He sounded like he was talking about going fishing instead of torturing and killing someone. The door near her cage opened and the old man turned on the light as they all walked in.
Hail, hail, the gang's all here, she thought as she got her first good look at her captors.
Even knowing what she did, Les Heuter still looked sort of all-American, like the kind of guy who helped little old ladies cross the street. The other young man, Benedict Heuter...he was big. Taller than Charles and maybe fifty pounds heavier, and Charles wasn't a beanpole. There was something wrong with his eyes and he smelled like a deer in rut. She found it uncomfortable to meet his eyes - and she could stare down Bran. It had nothing to do with dominance and everything to do with the madness in his face.
The features were different, but Benedict's expression, the thoughts that lurked behind his eyes, were classic Justin, the crazy werewolf who'd Changed her and...done all the other things that no one else had particularly wanted to do to an Omega wolf. Not long after she and Charles met, Charles had killed Justin. But even years later, she had nightmares about Justin's eyes.
Because Benedict made her so uneasy, she turned her attention to the other stranger in the mix. Clearly related by blood to both of the younger two, the old man - Uncle Travis, that was what Heuter had called him - showed her what Heuter would look like in forty years, assuming he didn't die under her fangs as she hoped. Age had not so much bent this man as clarified him. Heuter still looked a little soft around the edges; it was what gave him his wholesome appearance. This man was all rawhide and leather.
Even in his mid-sixties or early seventies, he was good-looking, with bright blue eyes unfaded by the years and sharp, clean features that might have been spectacular when