Gideon nodded; then, with a last sympathetic look at a courageous woman, he dissolved into mist and left the house.
Dorothy stared at the place where Gideon had been standing only seconds ago. She had seen many amazing things since coming to live here, but she didn’t know which was more astonishing, watching her husband and daughter transform themselves into wolves, or seeing Gideon dissolve into a shimmering gray mist and simply disappear.
With a shake of her head, she started toward the door, only to come to an abrupt halt when Russell filled the doorway. His gaze swept the room, then came to rest on her.
“Where is he?” Russell asked.
His voice rang like thunder, echoing off the walls, filling her heart with terror. “He’s …” She took a deep breath. “I let him go.”
He glared at her, his eyes narrowed to angry slits.
“Kiya loves him.” It was a weak excuse at best.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“She deserves to be happy.”
“As her Alpha, Kiya deserves whatever I say.” He took a step toward her, fists clenched at his sides. “She belongs to me. She will do as I say, when I say, the same as any other member of the pack. I thought you understood that.” He took another step forward, towering over her, his rage a palpable thing. “Do you understand?”
She nodded, unable to speak past the lump of fear in her throat. She had never experienced his anger before, never truly understood how dangerous he could be.
Until this moment, she had never considered herself to be part of the pack, or thought of her husband as being her Alpha. It occurred to her that she was at his mercy. As Alpha, he held the power of life and death over the werewolves in the compound. None of them would condemn him, regardless of the punishment he imposed upon her.
It was a frightening thought. She wrapped her arms around her waist, chilled to her very core by the merciless expression in his eyes, the cruel twist of his lips.
This, she thought, taking a wary step backward, this is what death looks like.
* * *
Chapter 30
The night after Dorothy freed him, Gideon stood in the midnight shadows outside the Rinaldi compound. Earlier, he had tried to get inside the fence, but to no avail. It was obvious that Alissano had alerted Victor to the fact that Gideon was no longer a prisoner. And just as obvious that Diego and his family had been warned to take the necessary precautions to keep Gideon out of the compound and out of the house.
He ignored the temptation to contact Kay. Until he could come up with a plan to get her safely away from Victor, it seemed best to keep silent. No point in getting her hopes up.
Dammit! Unless he could find someone to invite him into the house—and the chances of that seemed pretty slim now that the werewolves knew he was on the loose—he would never get her out of there.
It seemed hopeless. Or was it?
A thought took him to Apache Junction and a small white house located on a quiet street.
Clad in a long white nightgown, Kusuma Ila opened the door, a rifle held rock steady in her hands, a black cat on either side of her.
Gideon blinked at her. “Who were you expecting?”
With a shrug, she took a step back, allowing him entrance. “It is late.” She closed the door behind him, then propped the rifle in the corner. “What brings you here at this hour?” she asked, and then chuckled softly. “I guess it is not late, for nightwalkers.”
She cleared a space on the sofa for him, then sat down in her rocker. “Why have you come?”
Gideon shook his head. “I didn’t have anywhere else to turn.”
“Are you still running from Verah?”
“You know about that?” He leaned back on the couch, his legs stretched out in front of him.
Kusuma Ila made a vague gesture with one hand. “I hear things.” Leaning down, she stroked the cats.
Gideon cocked his head to one side. “What things?”
“Verah is no longer a prisoner in the Rinaldi house.”
“Who told you that?”
Kusuma Ila picked up one of the cats and scratched its ears. “Does it matter?”
Gideon glanced from the cat to the witch. “The cat told you?”
“In a way.”
“What else do you know?”
“Before Verah made her escape from the werewolf ’s compound, the boy gave her a vial of your blood.”
Damn! That swine, Victor, must have helped himself to a few cc’s of his blood while Gideon was at rest.
“Why would that old crone want your blood?” Kusuma Ila asked.
“Don’t you know? You seem to know everything else.”
“I have heard rumors,” the witch replied. “Macabre rumors.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Are they true, those rumors?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what you’ve heard.” He blew out a sigh of exasperation. All he needed was another witch who wanted to bleed him dry.
Kusuma Ila snorted. “You think I am like her?” she asked indignantly.
“I sure as hell hope not,” Gideon muttered dryly. “Do you know where she is?”
Kusuma Ila put the first cat down and picked up the other one. Humming tunelessly, the witch gazed into the cat’s eyes for several minutes.
Gideon felt the old woman’s power rise, felt it coalesce around the witch and the cat. It skittered over his skin like tiny electrical sparks.
And then, abruptly, it was gone.
Kusuma Ila shook her head as if to clear it.
The cat curled up in Kusuma Ila’s lap, purring loudly.
Gideon stared at the cat.
It stared back at him, slanted yellow eyes unblinking.
Gideon leaned forward. What the hell? He raked a hand through his hair. For a moment there, while staring into the cat’s eyes, he could have sworn he saw Verah standing in a dark room, chanting softly while gazing into a bowl of dark water.
“She’s gone home, hasn’t she?” he asked.
Kusuma Ila nodded.
“And she’s still hunting me?”
The witch’s silence was all the affirmation he needed.
“She can’t track me,” Gideon muttered, thinking aloud. “So she’ll go after Kiya again.” But hell, he had known that all along, just as he knew there was only one way to protect the woman he loved, and that was to give the wicked witch of the west what she wanted.
“There is another way,” Kusuma Ila said matter-of-factly. “Kill her.”
Gideon glanced at Kusuma Ila. Sitting there, her long white hair in braids, one cat asleep in her lap and the other curled at her feet, she looked like someone’s kindly grandmother, not someone who had just suggested cold-blooded murder.