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Well, he was good at that, too.
Rose gave a strangled cough that sounded very much like a stifled laugh, and Alex’s head came up, eyes snapping. “What did you do, Barlow? Hire yourself out to the highest bidder?”
“I don’t fight for money.”
“Then what do you fight for?”
“Whatever is worth fighting for.” Julian glanced at Rose, needing to shift the subject back to what they’d come here to learn. “I’m not seeing how my saving Joe from dying on the battlefield leads to—” He couldn’t say it, so he just twirled a finger to indicate that she should go on.
“Joe was dying and you—”
“Why Joe?” Alex interrupted. “Why not one of the thousands of other guys who died there? Or why not thousands of the guys who died there?”
“What would I do with a thousand werewolves?” Julian muttered.
“Make an army.”
He narrowed his eyes. “And what would I do with an army?”
“Rule more than Barlowsville. You could rule the whole damn world.”
“Ruling the world is highly overrated,” he said. “All I’ve ever wanted is my own little corner.” He turned again to Rose. “Continue.”
“You saved him; then you came to see me.”
Julian’s mind drifted to that long-ago day. The heat. The blood and smoke. The scent of gunpowder and death. Why had he volunteered to fight again?
Oh, yeah, because he was good at it. And he hadn’t wanted to see the Union die. Before Gettysburg, it had been.
He could have told the Yankees that when you invaded someone’s homeland, the invadees fought so much harder than the invaders. Unless you were a Viking. They just kicked ass all over the place.
The Yankees definitely weren’t Vikings—except for him and Knut. Speaking of which—
“Has anyone seen Neil?” The name Knut was using these days.
Rose and Alex stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Joe, who had
met Neil the same day he’d met Julian and Cade, understood the connection.
“He’s fishing,” Joe said. “Or maybe it was hunting.”
“Has been for a few weeks now,” Cade murmured.
The question was: Had Neil been hunting elk? Or Inuit?
It hadn’t occurred to Julian to tally the village and discover who was missing. Werewolves came and went. They weren’t prisoners. But he didn’t like it that Neil was away. He didn’t like it at all.
“I took Joe to see Cade first,” Julian said.
“But gut-shot is no good.” Joe shook his head sadly as if he was talking about someone else’s gut and not his own.
“Cade was there, too?” Alex glanced at Julian’s brother, who nodded but continued to stare out the window.
“Neil also,” Joe said.
“Who in hell is Neil?”
“The only other Viking, besides Cade, that I made like us.”
