Fair Game

them. They were supposed to stay safe where he had left them.
    Malcolm, the witch, and the FBI came charging to the rescue, bringing more noise and chaos with them than four people should have been able to manage. Goldstein and Leslie Fisher took over, and Charles, tired, aching in every bone of his body, let them.
    Leslie stripped out of her knee-length waterproof jacket and helped Beauclaire wrap it around his daughter. The witch dug through her satchel and muttered unpleasant things. Finally she found a Baggie of salt, made them take the coat and Beauclaire’s shirt back off the girl, and dusted Lizzie from head to toe in salt.
    Brutal but effective. The black magic dissipated—but the salt burned in her open wounds. She cried, but seemed to be too deeply under the influence of whatever her kidnappers had fed her to make too much noise. Charles smelled ketamine and something else.
    “We could have thrown her in the ocean and fished her back out,” Hally told them. “But the cold wouldn’t have done her any good. Better leave the salt on. A half hour should be long enough, but longer won’t hurt. It’ll also stave off infection.”
    They bundled Lizzie back up and Charles picked her up, to her evident distress, even with whatever drugs they’d given her in her system. She hadn’t been in their hands long—a little more than a full day—but she’d been tortured and who knew what else. Males were not anything she wanted to deal with.
    But Anna couldn’t change back, and Leslie, though in good shape, was human, and not capable of carrying Lizzie all the way back to the boat.
    Charles tried singing to her, the same song her father had been singing. Beauclaire—and Malcolm—joined in, and the music seemed to help.
    Goldstein had used a stick and a strip off the bottom of his cotton dress shirt to splint Beauclaire’s wrist. And when they started up the stairs, he wedged a shoulder under the fae’s arm and helped steady him, having evidently decided Beauclaire would be his personal responsibility. Beauclaire shot Charles the ghost of an amused look, and let himself be helped—possibly a little more than he really needed.
    Isaac was obviously in pain, panting with stress, but he got to his feet and followed, Malcolm walking steadily beside him. Charles kept a close eye on them for a while—wolves could be a little unpredictable when a more dominant wolf was injured. It was a good time to eliminate the dominant and take his place. It didn’t usually happen when an even more dominant wolf like Charles was around to keep the peace and protect the pack, but better to be safe. Happily, Malcolm seemed honestly concerned about his Alpha.
    Anna ranged, sometimes walking beside Charles, but mostly trotting in a wide circle around them, looking for danger. Leslie took rear guard, her gun out and ready to shoot. Hally walked in front of them, leading the way as she mostly ignored them all.
    They staggered and stumbled, wounded but triumphant, singingthe old Welsh folk song “Ar Lan y Mor.” And if there was something odd about returning from battle singing about lilies, rosemary, rocks, and—for some reason he’d never fathomed—eggs, of all things, by the sea, well, then the three of them made it sound pretty good and only he and Beauclaire knew Welsh.

CHAPTER

10
    On the boat, Charles stretched out his legs and tried to ignore the lingering ache of that last change. Anna had tried sitting several different places, but the human seats were too narrow and the wrong shape. The ledges she’d used on the way over were slick, and instead of using her claws to dig into the fiberglass, she slid around with the motion of the sea. Finally she’d heaved a huge sigh and curled up by his feet on the deck.
    Beauclaire had forbidden any questioning of his daughter until she’d seen a doctor. Goldstein and Isaac had elected to stay behind until the various agencies summoned arrived on the island. Malcolm told them that he’d decided Beauclaire and the wolves might need rescuing when he heard a boat leaving the island. Charles felt safe enough making the assumption that the horned lord they’d fought had left in that boat. Which would mean that very little danger remained—but it was good that Isaac had stayed anyway, just to make sure everything was okay.
    Charles rather suspected that Isaac had decided to put off the boattrip until he felt better, though he’d felt good enough to change back to human. Hally was