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'Alpha and Omega'

Somehow she managed to keep her spine straight. She wasn't ready to fall into a puddle at his feet quite yet.

"You've lost enough blood today. The bandages don't advertise your weakness any more than bleeding all over would. At least this way, you aren't going to rain the carpet."

Data pierwszego wydania: 2007

Seria: Alpha and Omega
Tom 1 (nowela poprzedzająca)

'Cry Wolf'

“I hope you’ve got a good surface on this floor,” she murmured to help distance herself from the wound. “Be a shame to stain it.”
His blood had spread all over the fancy patterning on the floor. Fortunately, the Persian rugs were too far away to be in danger.
(...)
“Blood won’t bother it,” he answered as if he bled on his floor all the time.

“Is there a doctor? Or a medical person who knows more than I do around here somewhere? Like maybe a ten-year-old Boy Scout?”

He hadn’t had to kill a witness for a long time. Mostly they could rely on general disbelief in the supernatural and, in the Pacific Northwest anyway, Big Foot stories. One of the Oregon packs had made it a hobby to create Big Foot sightings ever since the damage one of their new wolves had done to a car had been attributed to Big Foot.

“I don’t want to send anyone in to get killed.”
“Just me.” Charles could use a dry tone, too.
“Just you,” agreed Bran blandly.

The first pew on the left was entirely empty except for Bran. He sat looking for all the world as if he was waiting for a bus rather than a funeral, despite the designer charcoal suit he wore. His arms were spread to either side of him, elbows hanging over the back of the pew; his legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankle, eyes focused either on the railing in front of him, or on infinity.

“Shortly after we moved back here, Carter Wallace came to my house at two in the morning to hold my wife’s hand when our retriever had her first litter of puppies. He wouldn’t charge me because he said if he charged for cuddling pretty women, he’d be a gigolo and not a vet.”

Werewolves and violence, werewolves and death: they went together like bananas and peanut butter.

Charles belted in. He’d probably survive a wreck, but the way his da drove, the belt was useful in keeping him in his seat.

“Hey, ’Sil. You’re smiling—someone die?”

“Samuel,” he said, feeling his way. “Why would you burn a body?”
“To hide its identity. Because it’s too cold to bury a body. Because their religion requires it. To prevent the spread of disease. Because there are too many bodies, and no one has a bulldozer handy. Am I getting warm?”

“You know,” said Samuel reflectively, “You just proved your point better by arguing against it than you did arguing for it. I wonder if that says anything about how your mind works.”
“Or yours,” said Bran, smiling despite himself.

(...) Walter flattened himself on the ground at her feet, just as if he were her devoted pet dog…who weighed about the same as the average black bear and was capable of considerably more destruction.

Bran was always a deceptive bastard, gentle and mild right up until he ripped your throat out. He had many other fine qualities as well.

Charles was a thug, a killer. He didn’t say much, just lurked silently behind his father to inspire the terror that Bran should have been able to cause by himself if he weren’t so concerned with looking like a harmless boy.

Bran was watching them as a cat waits for a mouse to do something interesting — like run.

Data pierwszego wydania: 2008

Seria: Alpha and Omega
Tom 2