19
"Ease down, girl," Verne said. "It's a present."
I kept the gun nice and steady on the center of his body. "Yeah, right."
"When you see what it is, you'll know that we aren't on his side."
"Don't pick the wrong side, puppy dog," Colin said. "Or I will make you very, very sorry."
Verne looked at the vampire. I watched his eyes bleed from human to wolf while he held that basket out to me. But he kept those angry, frightening eyes on Colin.
"You have no animal to call," Verne said, in a voice gone rough and growling low. "You dare to stand in our place of power and threaten us. You are less than the wind outside our cave. You are nothing here."
"She is not one of you, either," Colin said.
"She is lupa of the Thronnus Roke Clan."
"She is human."
"She stands between you and a werewolf. That's lupa enough for me."
Barnaby had backed off. I don't know if he thought I'd jump the gun and shoot him or if Colin had whispered a new plan in his rotting skull. I wasn't sure I even cared. There was a glob of something heavy and wet sliding down into the bra. It was like feeling a tear slide down your cheek but worse, so much worse. I'd resisted the urge to wipe it away with Barnaby staring me down. As soon as he crept back to Colin, I used my left hand to scoop the leftover part out and fling it on the ground.
"What's the matter, Anita? Too up close and personal for you?"
I wiped my hand on the leather skirt and smiled. "Fuck you, Colin."
Verne stepped into the center of the triangle alone. His wolves stayed huddled in front of the far bench. He came to stand a couple of yards in front of our bench with that basket in his hands.
I glanced at Asher. He shrugged. Richard nodded like I was supposed to go meet him. A present, Verne had called it.
I went to meet him. He knelt, setting the basket on the ground between us. He stayed kneeling. I knelt, too, because he seemed to expect it. He just kept looking at me with those wolfish eyes. He still looked like an aging Hell's Angel, but those eyes ... I wondered if I would ever get used to seeing wolf eyes in a human face. Probably not.
I raised the hinged lid of the small basket. A face, a head, looked up at me. I scrambled to my feet. The Browning just appeared in my hand. I pointed it at Verne, then the ground, then pressed the flat of the barrel to my forehead.
I found my voice, finally. "What is that?"
"You said you wanted Mira's head in a basket. That if we gave you that, it would make it right between our two clans."
I took a sharp breath and blew it out. I looked down into the basket, still standing, still holding the gun like the comfort object it was. The mouth was open in a soundless scream, the eyes half closed as if they'd caught her napping, but I knew they hadn't. Someone had simply closed the eyes after they took her head. Even dead, like this, the bones of the face were delicate, and you knew at least the face had been pretty.
I forced myself to put up the gun. It couldn't help me now. I dropped back to my knees, staring at it. I finally looked up at Verne. I was shaking my head over and over. I looked into his face and tried to read something in it that I could yell at or talk to. But the expression was alien, and it wasn't just the eyes.
You'd think after all this time, I would stop forgetting that they weren't human. But I had. I'd been pissed, and I'd spoken as if I was talking to another human being, but I hadn't been. I'd been speaking to werewolves, and I'd forgotten that.
I heard someone whispering, and it was me. I was whispering, "This is my fault. This is my fault." I started to put my left hand in front of my face, and I caught a whiff of Barnaby's rotted flesh. It was enough.
I crawled to one side and vomited. I knelt on all fours, waiting for it to pass. When I could speak, I said, "Don't any of you people understand the term? It's just a fucking expression!"
Richard was there, kneeling by me. He touched my back gently. "You told him what you wanted, Anita. She had betrayed the pack's honor. It can carry a death penalty. All you helped them choose was the method of execution."
I glanced sideways at him. I had a horrible urge to cry. "I didn't mean it," I whispered.
He nodded. "I know." There was a look in his eyes of such sorrow, of a shared knowledge of how many times you never really meant what you said, but the monsters were listening, and they always took you at your word.