Once A Wolf (48 page)

belly shot wouldn't kill him instantly. A few seconds was all he needed.

The gun jabbed harder into the muscles of his stomach. His body tensed. At first he thought the

fierce drumming in the soles of his feet was his own heartbeat, but then he heard the

unmistakable sound that accompanied it: hoofbeats, drawing rapidly nearer. Cole turned his

head sharply. The other men noticed just as the two horses burst in among them.

Their riders might have been Amazons, or the Valkyrie of old-world legends. Rowena sat

astride, hair whipping loose behind her, hand raised as if it held an invisible spear. Esperanza

rode at her side.

"Stop!" Rowena cried. She all but leaped from her horse's back. "Cole, what are you doing?"

Cole seemed transfixed, caught maskless by her sudden appearance. She strode toward him,

taking in the scene with one keen glance.

"So this is how you keep your bargains," she said furiously. "You promised to let him go, if I

obeyed you. But you intended to kill him all along." Her gaze sought Tomás. "I thought you'd

have the sense to go away," she said, her anger unabated. "You knew it was impossible. It was

always impossible."

"Rowena," Tomás whispered.

"Is that the best you can do, my dear?" Cole said, regaining his composure. "Where are the

ardent declarations of love and self-sacrifice?" He stepped away from Rowena and took the gun

from Beck's hand. "Isn't it touching, Randall? She was so devoted to you that she would have

been my willing slave simply to extend your paltry existence. I thought there was something of

value in what you'd left of her, but I see that I was wrong. Look at her!" He flung out his arm in

a gesture of disgust. "Behold the Lady Rowena Forster!"

It was clear what he saw in her: a sullied creature bereft of beauty or honor or dignity, a fallen

woman, a virago, the object of any proper male's contempt… the very things she had most

feared becoming. Yet she didn't shrink beneath his scorn. She raised her head higher, dirty and

clothed in near-rags as she was, and held her ground. Tomás wanted to shout with pride. Or

weep.

"You've ruined her for anything but life as a beast among beasts," Cole said. He smiled at

Rowena with coaxing charm. "No words of courage for your lover? Perhaps you'll beg on your

knees as you did before. I might agree to make his death quick and relatively painless."

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Rowena stared at him. Something remarkable was happening, something beyond the

comprehension of the humans who watched. Tomás understood. What passed between Cole

and Rowena was the silent challenge of wolf to wolf, a struggle on levels of instinct that had

remained unchanged for millennia.

Tomás's imagination tormented him with thoughts of what had happened in the hours since

Rowena had gone back to Cole. She'd returned to MacLean to save him, but she'd made an

error. She'd revealed too much of her relationship with Cole's enemy.

How Cole must have made her suffer. "She would have been my willing slave," he'd said. Had

he proposed the bargain, humiliation and perpetual servitude in exchange for her lover's life?

Rowena had accepted. It was an action Tomás had utterly failed to predict, and he hated

himself for that failure and the irremediable flaws in his nature.

And now, after fighting so long to remain human, she loosed the wolf for his sake. She had

finally accepted the source of limitless strength hidden beneath that veneer of aristocratic

hauteur and disciplined propriety—and for what?

He had brought her to this moment, he alone. But there was one consolation: Cole wouldn't

master her again. She'd thrown off the last of her shackles. Her courage and strength made

Tomás burn with humility and gratitude and love.

Love.

This was love. He loved her. How strange: He'd thought to teach her the ways of passion and

enjoy her body while seizing his revenge, or at least that was what he'd believed. Now he saw

how much he'd deceived himself. Stealing Rowena from Cole was an open challenge to death

itself, his last grand adventure. He'd meant to give nothing to Rowena but pleasure, take

nothing from her but the same, until Cole and his minions brought about the inevitable end.

Rowena had turned the tables on him completely. He had nothing to teach her. All the lessons

were his to learn. His control of her had always been illusion. His whole life was illusion except

for this one thing.

This love.

It told him that what he did was right. As he watched Rowena stare Cole down like the

magnificent lady she was, he knew that she would not simply survive but flourish when he and

Cole were gone.

The time had come. He pulled his handcuffs apart and moved with uncanny speed, thrusting

Cole's men aside like so many brittle cornstalks. Cole had no chance to turn. Tomás grabbed

him around the neck in a grip that would snap his spine with only the slightest shift of his

weight.

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Cole froze. The gun fell from his hand. His men moved as if to intervene and stopped suddenly,

falling silent. Seconds moved like hours. And in those seconds Tomás had a clear opportunity to

act, to kill, to twist Cole's neck with a brutal sideways tug and break his spine beyond any hope

of healing.

He did not. He could not. Death mocked him with his failure. He felt himself being torn in two

by warring impulses: oblivion and life. Peace and suffering. Hate… and love.

As if in a dream, Esperanza appeared at Rowena's shoulder. Something passed between the

two women, a sharing that excluded the men with their guns and violence. An expression of

wonderment transfixed Rowena's face. Esperanza nodded gravely and looked into Tomás's

eyes.

She was no longer the fearful, mute child he'd known, clinging tenaciously to Rowena's side.

Her face was veiled in an aura of remote benevolence that made her seem as ancient as a

crone. She gazed at Tomás with more than ordinary vision. He felt her spirit brush his own,

warm and full of compassion and sorrow… and a profound surrender.

Hear me, Tomás Alejandro Randall, she said. No words were spoken, yet he heard them. I know

your pain and your guilt. I know how you seek death.

He tried to hide his amazement and shock behind laughter, but his heart was too heavy to let

him draw a deep enough breath. "You shouldn't be a part of this, señorita," he said hoarsely.

"Rowena, take her away. I beg you. Go from this place—"

"No," Rowena said quietly. "I won't leave you."

"You think you are guilty of murder," Esperanza said aloud, "and now you would end your own

life by taking another."

Abruptly Weylin pushed out from among Cole's men, his gun ready in his hand. "He is guilty,"

he said. "He killed my father." He took aim at Tomás's head. "Let my brother go."

Esperanza looked at Weylin. "You seek truth, Weylin MacLean. Was it not you who would bring

him to justice, where all truth will be revealed? Or are you yourself afraid to face it?"

Weylin blinked. Esperanza did not know him. They had never met. And yet…

And yet she walked freely in Tomás's mind. Why not Weylin MacLean's?

He lowered his revolver. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Nobody," she said. "Nothing." She turned back to Tomás. "It is time for truth, Tomás Alejandro

Randall. You cannot run away any longer. You must choose. Life, or death."

Cole trembled with rage in Tomás's grip. "Kill him, Weylin!"

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Weylin didn't move. No one so much as twitched. Tomás closed his eyes, and released the black

knot of despair he had denied for so many years.

"Weylin brought me here to meet justice," he said. "There is no need for a trial." He gazed at

Rowena, as if they were alone. "Once you asked me how many men I had killed. There was only

one. I killed Frank MacLean, just as the corridos say. I saw my mother's pelt among his men

after they raided our hacienda, and I gave way to my hatred. I was strong and young, and he

was an old man. He could not match me." He swallowed. "Near the end, my hatred died, and I

left him, believing he might live. But when I returned to find him, I saw what I had done."

"You beat him to death," Cole said. "There was nothing left—"

"And who killed your mother?" Weylin said, his voice without emotion. "Do you have proof that

it was my father?"

Tomás turned his head to meet Weylin's gaze. "I know that your father led those who raided

Los Valerosos, and my mother tried to defend her land and people. She died fighting them." He

looked once again to Rowena. All this was for her, to make her understand. "I was in the East,

at school, when my mother began raiding the MacLeans with her Comanchero allies. She had

learned how my father was killed by the MacLeans, and swore vengeance by stealing all she

could from their holdings in New Mexico. She never told me. But she didn't realize that I knew

about the ancient feud, and that my father had admitted to killing Kenneth MacLean in the

War. He said… he had no choice."

"He shot Kenneth in the back," Cole snarled.

"He told me that he had come west to leave the old feud behind, but when he and the

MacLeans met on opposite sides of the War, he thought it would start all over again. My father

took Kenneth and Cole MacLean prisoner. They attempted escape. My father found Cole gone

and Kenneth standing over the bodies of their guards. He… shot Kenneth for the murder of the

soldiers."

"He was the murderer—" Cole began.

"Was that how it happened, Cole?" Weylin asked. "Did you run away and leave our brother to

face your enemies alone?"

Cole stared at Weylin. "He's lying. It didn't happen that way. Randall only wanted an excuse—"

"No," Esperanza said. "Your lies are strong, Cole MacLean. They are so strong that they feel like

truth. The truth you fear."

"You," Cole said. "You're the servant girl. How dare you speak to me? I'll have you whipped—"

"You'll do nothing," Tomás said softly, tightening his hold on Cole's neck. "The girl is right. It's

time to throw away our masks."

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"I'll see you in Hell."

Tomás pushed Cole down to his knees. Esperanza knelt before him and extended her hand to

touch his wrist. She stiffened, convulsed, almost let him go. But then she straightened and

gazed at him as she'd done to Tomás, and spoke in that same voice of ageless wisdom.

"Cole MacLean, you have caused much suffering."

He tried to snatch his hand away, but Esperanza laced her small fingers through his like a lover.

"Can you feel me, Cole MacLean? We are together. I know all your fears and your hates and

how they devour you. We… are one."

His eyes held the beginnings of panic. "Let me go. I'll kill you."

"No." She touched his face. "Would you kill yourself?"

"Get out," he said, panting. "Get out!"

Rowena cast Tomás an anguished look and fell to her knees beside Esperanza. "I don't

understand what you're doing," she said, "but I know it can hurt you. Stop, Esperanza. Please."

"I cannot." She focused on Cole again. "I will not harm you, Cole MacLean. That is what you fear

most, that others will have power over you. I have none. But I cannot leave you. I cannot let

you kill again."

Cole knew what it was to be intoxicated, to feel the firm reality of the world slip away. As a boy

he'd drunk himself into a stupor, until he realized that it made him vulnerable. As a man, he'd

felt the inebriation that only victory could bring.

This was different. He felt reality and control slide away from him at the hands of this child,

who spoke to him as if he were helpless to defend himself. As if she dared to think herself his

master.

No man or woman, human or werewolf had ever mastered him—not Randall, not Kenneth, not

his father, certainly not Weylin. His will was too strong. And yet this girl had breached all his

defenses before he even recognized the threat.

But she was not a werewolf. She hadn't the ability to manipulate his thoughts, as he had done

with so many humans in his climb to the top. Somehow, by some unknown path, she had come

inside his mind. She insinuated herself into his emotions and laid them bare. She knew what he

was feeling. And he felt her thoughts, her essence in a way he'd never managed with any other

human; her consciousness was soft and sickeningly compassionate, stripped of anger or

viciousness, like that of some angel sent to save him from damnation.

He wanted nothing more than to kill her. But he knew instinctively that what she'd said was

true; if he killed her, he ran the risk of damaging himself.