AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I had first met him this spring—I hadn’t known I had a brother, half brother really, before that. Though maybe I should have. There are a lot of tales about Coyote marrying beautiful women, and many of the stories mention his children. Gary was older than me, probably by at least a century.
I had the feeling he’d been alone a very long time.
He hadn’t been particularly friendly when we’d first met. He was rough around the edges. But I thought he was a good person, and he could be unexpectedly kind. He reminded me, in that way, of Kyle, Warren’s boyfriend.
We weren’t friends, Gary and I. I thought about that for a moment, because there was some kind of connection. We were fellow prisoners, maybe, both of us serving out the sentence of being our father’s children. But Gary had kept in touch with me—and I’d found myself talking to him more than I’d expected. My life had been in a constant state of upheaval for a long time, and Gary knew more than I did about what I was.
The last time we talked, Gary had been training horses for a quarter horse breeder in Montana. Jobs like that tended to be mobile and seasonal, so he could simply be visiting because his job had ended. His being in the Tri-Cities was unnecessarily dangerous because he was still wanted in Washington for escaping from Coyote Ridge Corrections Center.
Adam hadn’t sounded like it was a casual visit.
My phone—face up on the passenger seat—dinged and showed a message from Jesse.
We are okay. Come home. Don’t speed. Dad says quite reading this and pay attention to your driving.
My phone dinged again as Jesse corrected herself. *quit
The light turned green while I was looking at my phone, and the car behind me honked. As I stepped on the gas, I wondered if the reason Adam hadn’t answered his phone was because he was dealing with the police. Maybe they’d figured out Gary was connected to the pack, to me, even. That didn’t make sense. Even Gary hadn’t known we were related until I tracked him down.
Maybe the police had followed him to my house?
The crime he’d been in jail for hadn’t been violent. No one should be dedicated to searching for him as long as he refrained from thumbing his nose at the justice system too hard—by, say, running around a mere forty-odd miles from the prison he’d escaped.
Proximity was why he’d relocated to Montana, where, in his words, “even if they send out bulletins or whatever they use now, one Native looks like any other Native—as long as the cop who is looking isn’t Native, too.” And he added, “Besides, no one in Montana cares about what happens in Washington anyway.”
But in the Tri-Cities, if someone recognized him, Gary’s presence in our house could expose us to criminal charges.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. We had a couple of werewolves who worked at Coyote Ridge. They told me that Gary’s breakout was legendary, that it had been elevated to urban myth. Prisoners escaped from time to time, but they always left a trail. Gary had left his locked room and disappeared without a trace. No one, I’d been assured, was seriously looking for him anymore.
But the noises I’d heard on the phone sounded a lot like combat.
There were no police cars at the house when I got there. I pretended I wasn’t relieved as I pulled into the driveway between Adam’s and Jesse’s cars. There was a battered old Ford truck with Montana plates parked somewhat askew, presumably Gary’s ride.
It had been snowing off and on all week. There were winters when we never got accumulated snow, but the snow around the house was currently a bit over ankle height. There was enough to make decent snow angels or—as demonstrated all over the porch and front yard—to leave impressions of what had clearly been a violent fight.
I inhaled deeply and did not smell blood. My nose said the only people who had been out here fighting were my brother and my mate.
I jogged up the stairs and opened the front door to a living room filled with upended furniture. Unusually for a fight involving werewolves, nothing was broken. I gave the fainting couch a frown. Sadly, even upside down, it seemed to be fine. Before I had time to wonder where everyone was, Adam called out from the basement.
“Down here, Mercy.” He didn’t sound particularly stressed, but I didn’t like the solemn note in his voice.
Downstairs I found Jesse and Tad, our neighborhood half-blood fae, seated near the cage we used to lock up dangerous wolves. Adam was standing beside the cage, looking at me with worried eyes.
Behind the silver bars of the cage, a man was curled in a fetal position, his back to the room. He reeked of sweat and fear. His hair had been French braided at one time, but the braid was disheveled, with hair sticking out every which way, as if he’d slept on it more than one night. Or maybe just engaged in a battle with a werewolf. He did not, I noticed with relief, smell like fresh blood. He wore jeans and a ripped and wet winter coat he hadn’t taken off. Huddled up like that, my brother looked smaller than I remembered.
Adam gave me a quick hug, which I returned before dropping to my knees next to the cage.
“Gary?” I said. He didn’t respond to my voice at all.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Adam told me, his hand warm on my shoulder. “He wouldn’t talk to us. It felt like he couldn’t talk.” He glanced at Jesse, who nodded.
Sometime since this morning, when I’d last seen her, Jesse had dyed her hair bright purple. I thought she’d given up on outrageous colors when she started college a couple of months ago. When Gary was sorted out, I’d ask her why she’d gone back to dying her hair.
“Who had the fight in the front yard?” I asked, just in case there had been a scent I hadn’t detected.
“Gary and I did,” Adam said. “I don’t think he’s hurt—beyond bruises. Nothing seems broken.”
He sounded defensive.
