“I will trade information for cookie dough,” Ben bargained—so it wasn’t anything bad that had kept him.
I got a clean spoon from the silverware drawer, dipped it into the dough, then held it out toward him. When he reached to take it, his long sleeve slipped down to reveal two small red marks on his wrist. And from those two marks, faint wisps of smoke emerged. Aiden had identified our foe from the smoke that had, apparently, emerged from my wounds after the rabbit had bitten me. At the time, I’d been too busy trying not to die to pay attention to much of anything else.
I now understood what Aiden had been talking about. My heart stopped. Ben had been bitten by the smoke beast.
I pretended not to see the marks, hoping that my sudden terror went unnoticed, blended as it was with the adrenaline already racing in my veins after the sight of a naked Wulfe on the roof of my old Rabbit.
I didn’t know enough to save Ben. Not nearly enough. I knew the smoke beast took over its victims’ bodies and piloted them. I knew that it used those victims to kill others to gain power—and that it then killed its puppet and could shape itself into a copy of that person. I had no idea what it wanted or why. I had no idea how to save someone bitten by the beast—and if I couldn’t figure it out, Ben was lost. And I didn’t know that I could bear a world without our foul-mouthed wolf.
First problems first, I decided. First problem was to survive the next few minutes. Ben was a werewolf. That meant he was stronger than I was—and he outweighed me. Unlike George, Ben was significantly slower than I was. Maybe I could get him to chase me into the river.
I heard Adam’s footsteps on the porch, but Ben, licking the spoon clean, seemed oblivious. I gave a hard, panicked tug on my mating bond and the sound of Adam’s approach stopped. I had to hope that he had understood that there was something wrong.
“Want some with chocolate chips?” I asked.
He handed the spoon back to me. I dumped in a bag of chips and stirred with my bigger spoon before dipping his teaspoon in the mix—ignoring sanitary issues in favor of keeping him distracted.
Adam hadn’t just come in through the door, so I had a reasonable hope that I’d warned him enough. But what would allow him to connect my warning to Ben?
Ben closed his eyes, absorbing the buttery-sweetness-and-bitter-chocolate combination. Was there a difference in his expression? Or was it just that I knew that someone else might be home inside Ben’s head that made me think so?
Could I be mistaken? Was this Ben?
“So what’s the information you owe me?” I asked when his eyes opened again.
He took a step closer to me and I had to fight my instincts that would have sent me scuttling to the far side of the kitchen.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, his voice flirty. The British accent was the same, but the rhythm of speech was wrong. And there were no swear words for me to edit out.
“Was Wulfe actually naked?” I asked.
“Wolves are usually naked,” he said as if he were joking.
“For sure,” I agreed easily.
Upstairs a soft shshing of a window sliding up. I knew it was Jesse’s window, but if someone wasn’t familiar with the sounds of the house, maybe it would just blend into the various creaks and groans that were the normal sounds of any house. I didn’t know if Ben would know what that sound meant. I didn’t know how much of Ben’s memories the beast who had bitten him would have.
Jesse’s window was accessible from the porch roof—which was a security concern, but it was also an escape path if something bad was happening in the house. Adam had decided that risk and benefit balanced out. I listened, but no further noise emerged from upstairs. Either Adam had managed not to wake Jesse up, or she had realized that there was something going on.
Ben held out the spoon to me again. I scooped up more dough and held it out. But this time he grabbed my wrist.
“I have a secret,” he said.
He wasn’t hurting me. I let my wrist lie limp in his grip.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I let you see the marks,” he told me. “I even made sure to mark this body when I was wearing the rabbit so that you would know what you were looking at.”
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
Was there a squeak on the stairs? I took a deep breath and smelled the smoke beast’s magic. It filled my lungs and I couldn’t smell anything else over it.
“I wanted to see what you would do,” he said. “Why can’t I take you? I can kill you—I almost did the other night. But I am supposed to be able to take any but the most powerful of the lords of the fae. You are not fae at all. What are you?”
“Chaos,” I told him.
His eyebrows furrowed and his eyes narrowed with the beginnings of anger. He would have said something more. But quick footsteps came up from the basement and Aiden bounded into the kitchen.
The beast’s magic surged. Visions of that semi tractor melded with the concrete of the Pasco tunnel’s safety rail danced in my head. I didn’t know that he could do that to a living being—life affects magic. We might be just carbon compounds, but there was something about the state of living that was magical.
But if the beast was amassing magic at the sight of Aiden, I wasn’t willing to wait to see what it could do. While he was distracted by Aiden, I twisted my wrist, grabbed his wrist with mine, and swiveled my hips to pull him off balance. At the same time, I kicked his knee as hard as I could. He grunted as his knee popped audibly and he released me involuntarily, and I let go and jumped back.
There were a number of counters to that move—Ben knew them, but the creature controlling his body made no effort to use any defense. My attack had been quick and instinctive, and it had taken the beast by surprise. Impossible to say how much of Ben’s knowledge the beast had access to. Earlier he hadn’t known the difference between Wulfe and a wolf, but with the evidence I had I couldn’t assume that he couldn’t fight as well as Ben.
I also didn’t know if he would feel pain occupying Ben’s body, but it didn’t matter much at that moment. The damage to Ben’s knee was a physical thing that slowed his body down.
I grabbed for a weapon and came up with my marble rolling pin, but by the time I turned to face Ben again, Adam was there. I hadn’t heard him. I missed the first move, just heard the noise as Ben’s shoulder broke from a joint lock. As Ben fell, pushed by Adam’s hold, Adam brought his knee over and landed on the small of Ben’s back. I heard those bones crack, too.
“It won’t hold him long,” said Adam, but I was already running. I jumped over them both and ran down the stairs to the cage that would be our safe room once construction wrapped it in more civilized trappings. But the cage itself was finished and the silver cuffs and chains were hanging from a hook on a post just outside it.
I dropped the rolling pin—cracking it on the exposed concrete floor. I would feel bad about that later, because it had belonged to my mother’s mother. But at the moment, I was too busy grabbing the cuffs and chains. Beast or not, the creature was wearing Ben’s body and these bindings would hold a werewolf.
I ran back up the stairs to find the tableau unchanged. Ben writhed and jerked under Adam, seemingly unbothered by the pain of the broken bones—though his lower extremities were unmoving. Adam kept him down. About ten feet from them, fitful fire wreathing his hands, Aiden watched them with wary eyes.
I bound Ben’s legs together, then closed one of the cuffs on the wrist connected to his broken shoulder. Adam took over from there. Without consideration of the pain of Ben’s broken bones, he pulled Ben’s arms behind his back and cuffed his wrists tightly together. Then Adam connected the leg manacles until Ben was effectively hog-tied with steel and silver, his skin blackening where the metal touched him.
As soon as he was held immobile, Ben’s body went limp.
“God, oh God,�
� he whispered. “Don’t let me go. He’s still in my head. He wants her dead. She scares him and he wants me to kill her. No more fucking around asking questions, just kill her. Find out why later.”
Ben took a deep shuddering breath. “Don’t let me go.”
“Okay,” Adam said.
“Don’t let Mercy anywhere near me,” he said. “Oh God. He’s in my head and I can’t. I can’t . . . I can’t.” He went limp again.
“Is he breathing?” I asked, panicked. “This is my fault, Adam. I sent him out there.”
“He’s breathing,” Adam said. “Pulse is strong. Takes more than a few broken bones and an uncanny thing’s possession to kill a werewolf.” He looked at me. “He was on guard duty—in harm’s way. That was his job tonight.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I sent him out to talk to Wulfe,” I told Adam. “I forgot about the smoke beast.”
“It didn’t forget about us,” said Adam.
* * *
• • •
Running water didn’t help Ben.
Warren and Kyle showed up about ten minutes before Darryl because they’d been working at Kyle’s office. Ben’s bones had mended themselves by that time and he was half sitting, half lying on the fainting couch in the living room. Adam had put him there after deciding he didn’t want to try to get him down the stairs and into the cage by himself for fear of having to hurt Ben further. Werewolves healed fast, but even Adam, drawing on the power of the pack, would have had a hard time healing the kind of damage Ben had suffered in the half hour or so that had elapsed.
I couldn’t smell the beast’s magic anymore, but I didn’t make the mistake of thinking it was gone. Ben’s periodic bouts of madness would have disabused me of that if I’d trusted my nose too much. I already knew that sometimes I couldn’t detect this magic.
“Well,” Warren told Ben, in a squeaky voice that was an obvious attempt to imitate someone, “here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten you into.”
“I suppose by that I’m to assume I’m Laurel?” asked Ben, trying to sound like himself, but his voice was tight and there was a rough growl on the edges.
“You aren’t Hardy,” said Adam.
I hadn’t made the connection. Laurel and Hardy were well before my time, before Ben’s time, too, as he was actually about my age. Adam, on the other hand, had a whole four decades more of cultural references than I did. It had never mattered to me before this moment.
I was discouraged to discover that I could be terrified for Ben—and still worried about the distance between Adam and me.
Warren glanced at me and then at Adam—so apparently I didn’t hide what I was feeling well enough.
Adam said, “We are just waiting on Darryl.”
Warren shook his head. “He’s not that heavy. You and I can carry him down to the river.”
“It’s not the carrying me that’s the problem,” said Ben, his voice shaky. “Anytime anyone comes within spitting distance I turn into that girl from The Exorcist.”
“Your head doesn’t spin around,” I said, trying not to sound as scared as I was.
“Don’t give it any helpful fucking ideas,” Ben scolded me.
He’d bounced around between calling the creature who controlled him by the masculine pronoun and by “it.” I was withholding judgment.
Darryl arrived eventually. “Sorry. Flat tire.”
“No worries,” said Ben. “Just sitting here possessed by an evil fae.”
The minute they touched him, Ben started to struggle. Undeterred, the three werewolves dragged Ben kicking and screaming out to the river.
I followed them, feeling sick. Kyle walked next to me, his hand on my shoulder. I almost didn’t flinch when another hand landed on my other shoulder and Wulfe, wrapped toga-style in the fuzzy red blanket, took up the space on my right.
“Nasty business,” said Wulfe conversationally.
“Yes,” I agreed. There was no way to signal to Kyle to back away—and I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t, even if I could ask him. I would just have to keep Wulfe’s attention on me and off the vulnerable human on my other side. Kyle, helpfully, kept silent.
Warren caught sight of Wulfe and got Ben’s bound feet in his stomach for his troubles. He was forced to pay attention to what he was doing.
“Interesting to see if the river works,” Wulfe continued.
“You don’t think it will?” I asked.
He pursed his lips, looking, in his toga, like an escapee from a frat party gone wrong. I knew he was older than Stefan, who had been made a vampire early in the Renaissance era, but he would never grow up to look like an adult. His feet were bare, but the rocks and tackweed didn’t seem to bother him.
“Should work,” he said, at last. “I don’t know why it would work for you but not for your little red riding wolf.” Ben’s wolf was red. I didn’t like that Wulfe knew that.
Wulfe tilted his head to watch the struggling wolves just ahead of us.
“But I have an odd feeling that it won’t,” he said in casual tones. “Shame. It was nice of him to bring me a blanket, don’t you think? Though that might have been your idea—I forget what he said.”
His hand tightened on my neck. When had he moved his hand to my neck?
I must have made some sound because Adam glanced over at me and asked if I needed help with a single look. I shook my head briefly. He needed to pay attention to Ben. I didn’t know if Ben could spread his contagion with a bite, but I’d feel better if no one had to worry about it.
Besides, I was fairly certain that Wulfe wasn’t ready to quit playing at whatever game he’d decided upon yet, so I should be safe enough. I wished Stefan would call me back. It wasn’t like him to not return my calls.
“I’m not supposed to be here, you know,” said Wulfe.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Marsilia has called all the vampires to the seethe because . . . oh. That’s why.”
I tried to make his words make sense, then realized he’d been talking to himself for the last bit. “That’s why what?”
“That’s why I don’t think running water will help your wolf. It didn’t help Stefan.”
I stopped. “Stefan?”
“We tried to dump him in the river,” Wulfe said obligingly. “But all that accomplished was getting a whole bunch of us wet. Good thing we don’t need to breathe or several members of the seethe would have drowned. He took one out anyway. But I didn’t like her, so I’m not sorry.”
I thought of all those phone calls I’d made.
I struggled to imagine Stefan caught up by the smoke beast and failed. Stefan was . . . reserved, controlled. I had a sudden memory of him in a rage, his face contorted. But even then Stefan had never moved even when the demon killed a hotel maid in front of him, and used demonic powers to inspire visceral bloodlust in my friend. There was no dignity in Ben’s desperate struggles—I didn’t want to imagine Stefan in the same condition.
“What else have you tried?” I asked, starting toward the river again. There was nothing I could do for Stefan right this moment.
Wulfe shrugged. “The usual. After the river, salt, silver, torture, fire. Nothing seems to work.”
“Do you know how to kill it? Or if killing it will save Ben and Stefan?” I asked, fighting not to visualize someone torturing Stefan. Wulfe was old—Middle Ages old. And he was a sorcerer, a witch, and a vampire. He should know something about this beast.
“I meant to ask you what you knew about it,” he responded, as if we were walking to tea instead of watching Adam, Warren, and Darryl struggle to hold on to the bound form of Ben long enough to get to the water’s edge.
I told him everything I knew. It didn’t take long.
“Smoke beast,” said Wulfe as Ben arced out over the water and entered with a splash. “Never hear
d of it. Smoking bites don’t ring any bells, either—and I know a lot about things that bite.” He snapped his teeth together.
Kyle let me go and I broke free of Wulfe so I could get a better look at Adam, Warren, and Darryl trying to drag Ben out of the water. He seemed to be trying to slip out of their fingers, and werewolves don’t float—they sink. Too much muscle, not enough fat. Or maybe it was something about the way their magic worked.
All four of them were wet by the time they dragged Ben back to shore. He choked up water in great heaving coughs that strained his bound limbs. The river had almost succeeded in drowning him.
When Adam reached for the cuffs, Ben shook his head. “No!” And after he spoke that single word, he coughed up another burst of river, only to collapse in a limp heap.
“He’s in me,” he said. Then tears leaked out as if he’d absorbed some of the river into his eyes as well as his lungs. “He’s still here. Don’t let me free.”
“Shh,” said Adam. He looked at me.
“Did you hear Wulfe?” I asked.
He nodded, then kissed the top of Ben’s head—avoiding the snap of Ben’s teeth without apparent effort. “We have a problem. Let’s get him back to the cage where I can at least get him out of the cuffs. I’ll call Marsilia and check on Stefan.”
That would work better, I acknowledged silently. She liked Adam and she really didn’t like me. Especially she wouldn’t like me asking about Stefan. She tended to view him as her property—and viewed me as the reason he’d broken free of the seethe. He was the only vampire in the Tri-Cities who did not belong to her. We could work together when we had to, but there was no reason to push it now.
And all of that gave me something to think about other than our poor Ben and Stefan caught up in the same hell. And I had nothing I could do to help.
“Where did the scary vampire go?” asked Kyle in a low voice.
“Wherever scary vampires go,” answered Warren. His voice acquired a hard edge. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back.”
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