Chapter Twelve
No.” Sebastian’s voice was flat and uncompromising. “Absolutely not.”
I don’t recall asking, I thought, but had just enough good sense not to say it.
But I guessed it was on my face anyway, because he scowled. Which was a good trick as he’d already been doing that when I came in. It was more of a glower now, which… fair.
The suite of rooms he’d taken told a tale, and not a happy one.
There were suit coats flung everywhere, papers spilling off a desk that hadn’t been there yesterday, and dry-erase boards covered with schedules and names, none of which meant anything to me.
But they were probably related to the manhunt for the top people in Rand, who were currently in open rebellion.
There were also enough paper coffee cups to fill three different trash cans and spill over the sides, because I doubted anyone had gotten much sleep lately.
If any at all, as a lot of Sebastian’s top people had taken the red eye from Jersey last night.
It wasn’t helping my chances of coming out of this with a whole skin.
But the fact that a thousand decisions had to be made hourly at this point, stressing the bardric out, didn’t change anything. I sympathized, but that wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t running the Were world or even the war; I wasn’t running anything.
I was repaying a blood debt, as he knew perfectly well.
So I worked on keeping my face impassive as I was in enough trouble as it was, drawing on my considerable experience of being blessed out by various members of the Corps.
Only Sebastian had a better glare than even Hargroves, my current boss, and he’d been the former reigning champion.
Good thing I saved his life yesterday, huh, I thought, and wished my brain would just shut the hell up.
“It’s not only the ones in the basement,” Ulmer said heavily.
He didn’t look like he’d been to bed, either, but then, he always looked like that.
“There are at least forty more who have been found since, hiding in Tartarus, and we may run across others before we’re through.
Right now, the men have orders to bring ‘em here, but—”
“And put them where?” Sebastian snapped.
“Chuck ‘em in the basement with the rest, I guess,” Ulmer said, eyeing me without favor. “Unless you plan to take ‘em out to Fireborn’s extensive compound—oh, wait.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I said tightly.
“Sure. As long as it doesn’t involve Arnou. Oh, but it will, as we were dumb enough to sponsor you!”
He kept talking, but I deliberately didn’t listen. I didn’t want to wake up my possibly insane wolf. She was happily napping after all the excitement, while my human self was dealing with the dump truck full of crap she had left behind.
Or was trying to.
Some progress had been made, mainly thanks to Dave.
I had changed back and flung on a royal blue caftan that Sienna had donated to the cause in order to organize some basic needs for my new clan members, and had discovered that he was surprisingly helpful once he had someone giving him authorization.
He had gotten his organization busy providing medical care, clothing, and bedrolls for everyone, the latter needed because Sebastian had flatly refused to pick up the tab for rooms for them.
Apparently, allowing vargulfs to redeem themselves didn’t involve any actual help.
Fortunately, there were plenty of unused storage areas downstairs, and even a shower room on that floor.
The place Arnou had decided to cage their own kind had been created by the former owner of the casino, a vampire named Gallina, who had liked to watch his misbehaving servants battle for their lives in his own private gladiatorial ring.
But at least he’d had a room next door fitted out as a bathroom, I guessed so the victors could wash off the blood after their matches, and the crowd could go to the toilet, if vamps needed such a thing.
I didn’t know and didn’t care, but it was proving useful now.
Unlike this conversation.
“I appreciate your concern, of course,” Dave was saying to Sebastian, after some comment I hadn’t heard. “However, I must point out—”
“You must be silent!” Sebastian snarled, his eyes still on me, which fazed Dave about as much as Lee’s earlier outburst had done. He was giving Zen monk vibes currently, and I was here for it.
Sebastian was not.
“No, my duty will not allow that, I’m afraid,” Dave said mildly. “These people—your people, as you mandated that vargulfs be given a chance to restore their honor—are being hunted by the dark. They must not be allowed to have them. Which means that provisions for them must be made—”
“They will be,” I said. “They’re Fireborn now—”
Sebastian said a very bad word and somehow managed to up the glare even more, something I hadn’t thought possible. “Are you completely mad?” he demanded.
“Jury’s still out,” I said, trying for levity, which—
Was not the right move, considering that I suddenly had a very unhappy bardric in my face.
I didn’t blink for some reason. I would have normally done a lot more than that, like apologizing profusely for losing my goddamned mind and maybe groveling a little on top of it, because the man had a point. But what came out of my lips instead was: “They are mine. I will protect them.”
“We can sell it to the clan council as a temporary necessity for the war,” Cyrus said, having returned from Tartarus at some point, but his eyes weren’t on Sebastian. They were on me, and a frown was wrinkling his forehead.
“We house them now or fight them later,” I agreed. “The council has to understand—”
“What the council will understand,” Sebastian retorted through clenched teeth.
“Is that the new vargulf clan, which most of them view as either a crazy experiment or a joke, has suddenly gone from a handful of members to more than 300! Three hundred former outlaws! Some of which may have ended up that way unfairly, but others are almost certainly hardened criminals—”
“Most,” Ulmer said. “Those who didn’t start that way likely learned fast, if they wanted to survive. It’s a baptism by fire out there, and the good ones don’t last long.”
“—who you will be responsible for!” Sebastian’s eyes took in both his brother and me. “You don’t even know these wolves, why they were exiled, what they may have done, yet you’re putting your reputations—”
“And ours,” Ulmer interjected.
“—on the line for them sight unseen! ‘They’re Fireborn,'” he mimicked savagely, which was so unlike him that I could only stare.
“You’re right,” Cyrus said evenly. “I don’t know what they did. But I know what they didn’t do. They didn’t run.”
He was backing me up, I realized, even though I doubted he was any happier about this than his brother—and possibly less.
Having a handful of boys to watch over, all of whom he knew and trusted, was one thing.
Suddenly getting saddled with hundreds of unknown outlaws by your crazy girlfriend is another.
I didn’t deserve him, I thought, for something like the 500th time.
“They fought for Lia when she needed them the most,” he added. “That carries a debt.”
“Yes, but why did they?” Sebastian demanded. “What did you do?”
That last was aimed at me, as I had known it would be. And he expected an answer. It was why the suite had been cleared out before Sienna, Laura, and I were ushered in, with many unhappy-looking senior members of Clan Arnou being sent off for a well-deserved lunch break.
I cleared my throat because I had no idea how this was likely to go over. Or if it was even the truth. But it was going to have to do, as it was all I had.
“It’s possible that the, uh… ability… that surfaced after Jenkins gave me his… potion… was responsible,” I said, and saw Sebastian pause, his mouth still open, because he had been about to say something.
Probably something not very nice, judging from his expression, but he swallowed it back, intellect taking over from temper, as it always did with him.
Shit. I knew this was going to happen. And so did Cyrus, who scowled.
“úlfhe?dinn,” Sebastian said, rolling the word over his tongue, and giving it the proper, Old Icelandic pronunciation of OOLF-heth-inn. “The wolf warrior.”
“úlfhéenar,” Cyrus corrected, using the plural form, which sounded like OOLF-heth-nar. “There were once said to be many—”
“But not now. Now, the skill of the great captains of our people is lost. To the point that we don’t even know why they were so renowned—and so feared.”
Shit, shit, shit.
“Or perhaps we do,” sharp blue eyes narrowed on my face. “Perhaps Lia has just shown us.”
“We don’t even know for certain that she has it,” Cyrus argued, because he didn’t seem to like my explanation. “Much less what it can do—”
“We don’t?” His brother, so angry a moment ago, was all cold intelligence now.
It was the most frightening thing about him, just how smart Sebastian was.
And how little he missed. “We saw her at Wolf’s Head use a cry no one in living memory had heard to force a Change on the wolves menacing that young girl—what was her name? ”
“Jen,” I said hoarsely.
“Yes, when the Council was under the sway of that idiot Whirlwind, to the point of allowing an attack on a child!” The child in question was technically an adult, if only barely, and as scary as anybody on the Council, but I didn’t mention that.
Because he was on a roll, his blue eyes suddenly burning with some emotion I couldn’t name.
“Lia yelled, and some of the council’s best troops Changed back into their human form, and a forced Change is often debilitating.
They couldn’t attack her student after that, not for hours, just as the úlfhéenar are said to have been able to do—”
“Which doesn’t have anything to do with today!” Cyrus said, but his brother cut him off.
“—but this… this could be even better.”