Page 119 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
“What the hell are you doing here?” Sam Smalls hissed. “I told you to stay away, Sue! This day ofalldays!”
“And it was adorable that you thought you could direct anything I do. You remember Magnus.”
“Obviously.” Sam shoved his glasses further up his nose and fixed Magnus with an unfriendly look. “Where you are, he follows.”
“They say the qualities you dislike most in others are qualities y’have yourself,” Magnus replied pleasantly. “Otherwise, why areyouhere?”
“Not to hang around a female. Is this why you moved here from Scotland, Maggie? To widen the dating pool?”
“Can you two out-asshole each other some other time?” Sue hissed. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re in big-time trouble.”
“Of course I noticed! You’re out here with me, right?”
They were. Sam had somehow scented Sue through the hundreds of other weres and all but dragged her outside. Berne had followed, because that’s what he did now, apparently.
He’d never know what Sue saw in the boy. Sam Smalls was short and wiry, with the eyesight of an aging vole; his other self barely topped 175 pounds. In a fight for dominance, the best Sam could hope for was immediate evisceration. And he was smart. To be fair, he was one of the smartest people Berne had ever met, probably the smartest on campus, but Sam Smalls needed everyone to know it, all the time. And he was majoring in English lit, for God’s sake. With a minor in media arts.Jesus wept.
Which was why it drove him crazy that Sue actually favored the worm over the Scot. Magnus hoped any kid Sam and Sue had (God fucking forbid) took after her side.
“Look, you have to leave,” Sam insisted. It was nearly dark and the temp was dropping. The three of them had left their coats inside, and Berne doubted they were going back for them. “Right now. You should, too, Maggie. Don’t look so shocked. I wouldn’t wish what’s coming on my worst enemy.”
“Didn’t know you cared,” Magnus drawled.
“It’s bad,” Sam said simply. “I don’t want to see anyone hurt, even you. None of us should be here.”
“So why are you?” Magnus asked, thinking,Oh, aye, it’s bad all right. If Sam Smalls, who wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire, thinks I should leave, then we’re in trouble.
“It’s my job. You think no one notices when a group of weres with an agenda start mobilizing? People are coming.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“God, you’re thick!” Sam hissed, then smacked Magnus in the chest with the back of his hand. If Sue hadn’t been standing there, Magnus would have pulled it off at the shoulder, then beat Sam to death with it. “They’re coming. This revolution or whatever it is will not get off the ground. Everything’s going to happen here, tonight. Everything’s going toendhere, get it? There won’t be a worldwide chain reaction. When the smoke clears, the status quo will still be the status quo.”
“But…” Sue looked stricken. “Some of them are our friends. Yours, too.”
“They were never my friends.”
“You’re not a bear,” Magnus told him. “You’re a vole.”
“I can be both,” he replied, and pushed his glasses up again. “And better a vole than a mass murderer.”
“Barely.”
Chapter 51
Now.
“Fucking traitor is what he was,” Gulo said. “It was a pleasure to pronounce him dead.”
“Um. Gulo? Saying he’s dead doesn’t actually mean he’s dead. You get that, right?”
Gulo waved away the piddling detail of falsifying evidence in a homicide investigation. “He bailed on Sue. And I don’t mean figuratively. If he didn’t die in the crash, then where is he? It’s been days. If he lived, he crawled off somewhere to die like a tabby cat hiding under someone’s porch. Some Stable who thinks shooting herbivores means they’re a Big Bad Hunter will find his bones in a few years and that will be fucking that for Smalls. Both of them.” Gulo smiled at Berne. “I haven’t seen Sue in years. She looked pretty good on my table, all in pieces. What little there was of her.”
“That’s your cue to swing at him,” Oz volunteered, “because, again, Gulo doesn’t do original thoughts. Or subtlety.”
“Aye, lad, I’m aware. Sam wasn’t my favorite person, but he wanted to save lives. And not just ours. It’s not traitorous to stop people from jumping off a cliff.”
“Spoken like the guy who ducked and ran.”
