Page 23 of Warmongers and Wands
Stanley threw up his hands. “Come on, Bronwyn. Dallas told me to fetch you. You’re gonna get me in trouble.”
“Last time I checked, I wasn’t Dallas’s bitch,” she countered. “Now get going. If you’re afraid of Dallas, go ask Cassie for asylum, or go over to Clinton’s faction and join them. I’m sorry if you’re going to get in trouble, but I’m not coming with you.”
He eyed me, clearly sizing me up. Then he looked at the frying pan in Bronwyn’s hands. “What did you do to the pan?”
She lifted it, spinning it around. “Remember Pete’s towel?”
The werewolf flinched. “Sheesh, Bronwyn, why you gotta be like that?”
“Because you’re a werewolf, and werewolves have a habit of getting physical. Now get out of here or prepare to face a demon, a raccoon, and a witch with an enchanted frying pan. And if I were you, I’d be most scared of the raccoon.”
Stanley glanced over toward Diebin, but it was clear he was more intimidated by the frying pan than any of the other threats facing him. “Fine. But Dallas is going to be pissed.”
“Yep, and I’m just terrified of Dallas Dickskin,” Bronwyn drawled. “Go. Now.”
She waved the pan, an eerie blue light snaking up around the edge. Stanley squawked and ran out the door with inhuman speed. The moment he was gone, the light vanished. Bronwyn lowered the pan and slumped down to the bed, her face pale. I raced to her side, easing her on the bed and gently lifting her leg.
“Thought I was going to pass out or throw up for a moment there,” she said, her voice breathy and strained. “Barely got myself upright in time. I didn’t want him to know how hurt I was.”
“But you know him? It sounded as if you’re friendly with him.”
Bronwyn gasped as I settled her leg on a few pillows and covered her with the furs. “Stanley’s not a bad guy. Got a temper when he’s drinking. Likes to brawl, but he’s okay.”
“But you don’t trust him?” Clearly, she didn’t if she had refused to go with him.
“I don’t trustDallas. Right now, I don’t trust any of the werewolves.” She took a breath and leaned her head back on the pillow. “When I wrecked, when my truck went down the mountain…I don’t think it was an accident. My brakes didn’t work. My emergency brake didn’t work. I was up at the werewolf compound doing some work for them when the storm was coming in. It would have been the perfect time to screw with my truck. They could have blamed it all on the weather. Even the rockslide could have been their doing. It all would have looked like an accident.”
I sat on the bed beside her. “These werewolves want you dead, but you were doing work for them at their place of residence? Why would they want to kill you? And if they wanted to kill you, why are you helping them?”
She scowled at me. “I’m not an idiot. I didn’t know they wanted to kill me when I went up there to do welding for them. I could be wrong. It just seems like a crazy coincidence that my brakes went out in my truck during a storm when I was leaving the compound, and halfway down the mountain, that a rockslide sent me over a cliff into a remote part of the mountain where nobody ever goes.”
“But why would they want you dead? Did you screw up the welding job you did for them?”
Bronwyn glared at me. “I don’tscrew up. Not my enchantments and not my welding. As for the werewolves wanting me dead…I don’t know. Cassie definitely got on their bad side recently. She’s been coming down hard on them, making them alter pack laws so they comply with the laws of Accident. No more exceptions to werewolves. That means she’s offered sanctuary to some of them who wanted to leave the pack.”
“Sounds like a good reason to kill your sister, but not to kill you,” I countered.
“It’s not just what Cassie has done, it’s what she—what all of us Perkins witches—are going to do. We’re in favor of allowing more than one wolf pack, of allowing wolves to choose if they join a pack or not, of limiting the authority of the alphas and making them subject to the laws of Accident. Dallas doesn’t want that. Actually, Clinton doesn’t want that either, but Dallas especially doesn’t want it.”
“Again, sounds like a good reason for him to kill Cassie.”
“Except I’m the bird in the hand, right there at his compound. Opportunity. And we’re close. If I were to die in a horrible tragic accident…well, Cassie wouldn’t be as motivated to interfere with werewolf affairs. She’d be devastated. She’d be grieving.”
She wouldn’t be the only one, I thought.
“Maybe I’m just being paranoid.” Bronwyn sighed. “I mean, if Diebin took my note to them, I can see Dallas sending someone to get me and getting the honor of presenting me to Cassie like he was giving her a present or something, thinking we all owed him now for bringing me up the mountain and letting me stay the night in the compound.”
“Or he never told your sisters and never intended for you to make it off this mountainside alive,” I added. “Would Stanley kill you if this Dallas told him to?”
Bronwyn shivered. “Dallas is the alpha, and Stanley is a wolf who does what he’s told. So yes. He wouldn’t like it. He’d feel bad about it. He’d make it as quick and painless as he could. But yes, if Dallas told Stanley to murder me, he’d do it.”
I reached out to touch her cheek. “I won’t let them take you. I promise that I won’t let anyone but one of your sisters take you from me.”
She smiled. “I appreciate that, but we need to seriously think about defense. Even if we can get Diebin to deliver a message to a non-werewolf next time, we might have to face an attack before my sisters arrive. I don’t know if Dallas is going to send a dozen wolves to drag me out of here by force, or try to blow up your cabin, or something.”
“Blow up the cabin? They have weapons to do that?”
“Everyone has weapons to do that. It’s pretty much household cleaner shit nowadays. But I don’t think he’ll go that far. Dallas won’t want to risk burning down half the forest, or worse, alerting Clinton’s faction that there’s something going on on this part of the mountain. They’ve got a bit of an internal issue going on right now, a war of their own. They’ll want to do this quiet and stealthy like, and to make my death seem as much like an accident as possible.”
