And that was when Adam noticed that his phone was crushed in his hand. Some of the glass was sticking into the flesh, which had healed over the top. He busied himself picking it out with his pocketknife while Stefan used Darryl’s phone to call Marsilia.
The negotiations, conducted with Stefan as an intermediary, made Adam dangerously impatient.
Marsilia thought that inviting Adam to her house was not a good idea. Adam concurred with a grunt.
Entering the vampire’s seethe meant confusing the immediate issue with outdated manners and games that he was in no mood to play. There was no time. Dawn would arrive soon, and the vampires would retire to slumber or whatever they did during the day, taking the knowledge of who had Mercy with them.
As a compromise, Marsilia proposed Uncle Mike’s Tavern, a traditional place for hostile or nearly hostile negotiations until it closed when the fae had retreated to their reservations because they thought that Underhill had reopened to them. When she proved less welcoming than they expected, they had backed down from their initial silence and began arrangements to make peace . . . or at least not war with the humans. As part of that trend, Uncle Mike’s had reopened a few weeks ago.
Adam had no desire to involve the fae in pack business that was already ass deep in vampires, and he told them so.
“So where?” asked Stefan impatiently.
“Not my house,” Adam said. “I have no intention of inviting Marsilia over my threshold. Once you invite a vampire into your house, it is very difficult to uninvite them. Easier to kill them.”
Stefan, who had an open invitation to Adam’s house, rolled his eyes. “Could you, please, for Mercy’s sake, come up with somewhere acceptable? I might remind you that Marsilia doesn’t share our fondness for your wife. She just doesn’t like losing a chess piece, so she is cooperating. And our time is limited.”
Marsilia would shoot Mercy as soon as look at her. Adam reined his wolf in and took over.
“My backyard,” he said. Mercy had littered the backyard with picnic tables and various seating arrangements that were annoying when he mowed but otherwise aesthetically pleasing and useful.
Mercy was alive. Marsilia was offering to help. Marsilia had not hurt or taken Mercy. This was not her fault. It was time to use prudence and not rage. There was no sense in angering his allies.
To that end, he took a deep breath and prepared to be diplomatic. “While I cannot in good conscience invite Marsilia into the house, I don’t believe she means harm to me, to my family, or to the pack. I also intend no harm for her. Ex-lovers,” he said heavily, “are something I’m familiar with. I cannot blame Marsilia for the actions of hers, no matter how seductive that idea is. I do not believe this is her fault.”
“I intended no harm to your wife or any who are yours,” said Marsilia. No conversation on cell phones was private around a werewolf pack—or a vampire seethe. “We will meet in your backyard, and I will tell you what I know. It will take us twenty minutes.”
—
TONY CAME WITH ANOTHER SOLEMN POLICE OFFICER and met the wrecker who pulled the cars off the road and took photos and made a vague report Adam could turn in to his car insurance. As if he cared. The important thing was that the vague report would keep the police safe.
Tony looked worried at all the blood and glanced at Adam. Then he asked Jesse, quietly, “Mercy?”
She shook her head. “We don’t know. I’ll tell you as soon as we do.”
Warren and Ben pulled in just as the pack was leaving the scene to the police. Adam slid into the backseat and directed them home.
“The store was empty and unlocked when we got there,” Ben said grimly. “Warren called the owner. He must live pretty close because he was there in just a couple of minutes.”
“The clerk was new,” Warren said. “Hired last week. The address and ID he used were both fake—owner wasn’t looking closely because he was shorthanded. Didn’t smell like vampires in there. But vampires don’t have any trouble getting humans to do their dirty work.”
“I’d appreciate it if you keep after the clerk angle,” Adam said. “Might lead somewhere.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Warren said.
The vampires beat Adam and the pack to his house. When Ben stopped the car and he got out, he could smell them.
His wolf wasn’t happy with vampires just now, but Adam subdued the monster and walked around the house to the backyard.
Marsilia, Wulfe, and Stefan awaited him, seated in three chairs they’d pulled away from a table. Someone—probably Stefan—had moved three more chairs to face them.
Marsilia had elected to bring only those two out into the open with her, though doubtless she had other vampires scattered about. Adam lifted his head and scented the air.
Or maybe not.
He waved a hand and sent those pack members who’d come to the backyard with him into the house. Everyone obeyed except for Darryl.
Adam raised an eyebrow at the big black man who was his second. Someday in the not-too-distant future, Darryl was going to move on. He was ready for his own pack and was beginning to chafe under orders.
Adam wondered how they would manage to find a pack for Darryl when his pack had no more ties to the Marrok, who ruled the wolves. Traditional methods tended to leave bodies behind. It was a momentary thought, though, brought about because of Darryl’s disobedience.
Adam’s wolf wasn’t worried. The future was what the future was, and for now, Darryl was still his. Darryl was smart; he would have a reason.
“We can agree on Stefan as neutral,” Darryl said when he was within conversational distance. “We think that you should meet as equals, though. So you need a second with you.”
He was right. Good to have a second who could think things through when all Adam really wanted to do was hunt down the vampires who had taken Mercy and obliterate them. Killing was too clean.
Impatiently, Adam nodded his agreement and took the seat opposite Marsilia. Darryl sat at his right, and the chair at his left stayed empty.
Marsilia was a real bombshell. Blond-haired Italians were never common, and he knew that the color was natural, because Stefan had commented upon it. But her beauty wasn’t a thing of color only; it was bone- and muscle-deep.
Beautiful people, mostly, lived like everyone else. Extraordinarily beautiful people, however, usually paid dearly for their beauty. Adam was pretty sure that had been no less true in fifteenth-century Italy than it was now.
Intelligent brown eyes examined him—maybe for weapons, maybe for weaknesses. He didn’t mind because he was doing the same. Though for both of them, what they were made them pretty efficient weapons all by themselves.
She was wearing slacks and some sort of silk top that left her arms and shoulders bare, covering her adequately otherwise while leaving no doubt that she wore no bra. She could have appeared on a news program or a Hollywood premiere in her outfit without attracting comment. She wore it like a woman who habitually used her body as a weapon rather than someone aiming a weapon at him personally. To her left sat Wulfe, who’d succeeded Stefan as her second-in-command when Stefan had left her seethe. Wulfe looked like a sulky punk rocker from the eighties, though maybe that look was back. Without Jesse’s prodding, Adam tended to lose track.
Wulfe’s pale hair stuck out in chick-soft-looking tufts about an inch long, whose ends were dyed pink. Wulfe was, in Adam’s estimation, more dangerous than Marsilia if only because he was unpredictable.
Stefan, interestingly, sat on her right. Wolves pay attention to body language, and Stefan’s body language was protective and worried.
“First,” she said, “I have to apologize for the way in which my past has rained down upon you. It is no secret that Mercedes and I are not friends, but I value the role that she plays in our community, and I do not think that anyone else could balance the werewolves, the fae
, and the vampires as well as she does.”
“Differently,” murmured Wulfe. “More interestingly even, but not as peacefully.”
“Are you finished?” Marsilia inquired politely.
“Excuse me, Mistress,” Wulfe said diffidently. “I was just enlarging upon what you said.”
“Who took her?” asked Adam. He wasn’t interested in apologies that she didn’t mean.
“He did not sign his e-mail,” Marsilia said. “But I recognize the wording. It was Iacopo Bonarata, the Lord of Night. He who rules the European vampires.”
As soon as she had told him it was her ex-lover, Bonarata had been Adam’s pick. First, Adam didn’t know of any other ex-lovers of hers. He suspected that if she had other ex-lovers, they either served her or they were dead. Marsilia was as pragmatic a creature as any he’d ever met.
“Why?” Adam asked. “What does he want?” How do we get my Mercy back alive? He didn’t say it because they all knew what he was asking.
“His e-mail did not say,” Marsilia told him. “Knowing him, it could be any of a dozen reasons. He could be reacting to our killing of Frost, which he might see as an elevation of my power. He sent me here to rot, not to rise up through the ranks and rule North America.”
“He knows you well enough, he should have thought of that as a possibility,” Stefan told Marsilia.
“Not his business what anyone does here,” said Adam. “He rules Europe.”
Wulfe laughed. “Innocent,” he told Adam. “I find it so droll that you are such an innocent.” Then the silly affectations left his body, and he was softly menacing as he said, “Iacopo Bonarata has spider silk throughout the world. He owns corporations based in New York and Texas as well as Buenos Aires and Hong Kong. He has owned four of the last six presidents, though they did not know it. Any other vampire rising to power is a threat, and he does not deal well with threats.”
“He is a Renaissance prince,” said Marsilia, almost apologetically. “The last of his house, the rest of whom died during the Black Death. Control everything or die: it is how he was raised, how he thinks. I do not know that he understands words like ‘content’ or ‘enough.’”
“He threw away something of great value,” said Stefan. “Something he viewed as a work of art—and he knows it. He regrets it.”
Marsilia turned her great dark eyes on Stefan. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He told me, the night we left for the New World, that if I became your lover, he would hunt me to the ends of the earth,” Stefan said.
“If Iacopo were a dog in a manger,” Wulfe said, “he would urinate and defecate in the hay. And before he would allow anyone to spread the hay on the ground to at least get use of it as fertilizer, Iacopo would light the hay on fire. And then he would sing about how wonderful the hay was and how tragic its loss.”
“You carry that analogy a little too far,” said Marsilia.
“It is accurate,” Wulfe defended himself. “The song was in a minor key—and the painting he did, I am told, was nearly as stunning as you actually are.”
“So why did he take Mercy?” Adam asked Marsilia. If someone didn’t distract Wulfe, he was likely to lead the conversation all around the mulberry bush until there was no time left.
“Because I told him that she was the most powerful person in the supernatural community of the Tri-Cities,” said Wulfe. “I think.”
Adam’s wolf lunged forward without warning, and he would have killed the vampire if Darryl and Stefan hadn’t pulled him back. No one had grabbed for Marsilia.
“Oh, don’t hold him back,” Marsilia hissed. She had, Adam noted, lost her usual composure. She was out of her chair and had Wulfe’s throat in one hand. “Much easier to explain why the werewolf killed him than if I did it.”
Wulfe dangled from her hand, though he was taller than she was. He managed it by bending his knees. He had a wide, sappy grin on his face until Marsilia looked at him, then his grin fell away, and he watched her soberly, apparently not discomforted by his position at all.
“Why did you talk to Iacopo without telling me?” she asked.
“I talk to him all the time,” Wulfe replied, his voice strained. “You know that. That’s why he let me go with you.”
Adam saw from her face that Wulfe was right. He took a step backward and shook Darryl off. Stefan let go more slowly. Marsilia would get more out of Wulfe than he could—and she might be able to restrain herself from killing him in the process. Adam wasn’t sure he could manage it.
“What did he want when he asked you who the strongest of us was?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Wulfe said. “Not exactly. I answer his questions; he doesn’t answer mine.”
“You Made him,” she said.
Wulfe snorted. “I haven’t been his Master for a very, very long time. Any more than he is yours.”
“Why did you put Mercy forth as the most powerful of us?” asked Adam tersely.
Wulfe’s silly grin returned. “Because it was funny.” He sobered. “Because it was true.” He looked at Marsilia. “Because if I’d answered the question the way he meant it, he’d have taken Adam. And he would have killed Adam, he couldn’t have helped himself. Mercy . . . he won’t see the threat Mercy is until she has his head on a pike. He doesn’t understand that kind of strength. He cannot use his most powerful weapons on her because of what she is, and he has no experience to understand what she is.”
Marsilia looked at Adam. “Are you satisfied? Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
It could, Adam knew, all be a play for his benefit, but he didn’t read it that way. Wulfe was as twisty as a carousel pole, but Marsilia was scared. She was also brave and smart, so she was facing the situation head-on, but she was scared of Iacopo Bonarata.
“You didn’t warn any of us,” Adam said softly, addressing Wulfe.
“Where would the fun be in that?” Wulfe answered. But then he said soberly, “You don’t know Iacopo the way I know Iacopo. If I had warned you . . .”
“The Lord of Night,” said Stefan reluctantly, “is the reason Wulfe is the way he is, Adam. He wasn’t always . . .”
“Crazy?” suggested Darryl.
“No,” said Marsilia with a sigh, letting go of Wulfe. He settled semigracefully onto the grass at her feet. “He was always strange. But he didn’t used to enjoy pulling wings off butterflies.”
“He wasn’t sadistic,” clarified Stefan. “Bonarata inspires loyalty by using various methods, and some of them are damaging.”
Marsilia opened her mouth, glanced down at Wulfe, then closed it again.
“Especially to those of us who loved him,” said Stefan insistently.
Darryl looked at Adam for permission and got it. He said, “Not that we don’t appreciate learning more about our enemy. But what we need to know is how are we to get Mercy back? Where did he take her? Why he took her matters only in that it will allow us to use that knowledge to get her back.”
As Darryl took the lead, Adam fought his wolf to a brutal standstill. He had to think. He had to think in order to see and plan the best way to help Mercy, to get her back. And in order to do that, his wolf spirit was going to have to . . . He had been trying to restrain the wolf, and it had put them at odds.
“I don’t know where he took her,” Marsilia answered Darryl. “He has homes in New York, Florida, and Arizona as well as South America. I don’t know why he took her—other than to catch our attention.”
We have to hunt, Adam whispered to the wild spirit who shared his body, the wild spirit he both despised and gloried in. We have to hunt, find Mercy, and destroy the one who took her from us. And teach them that Mercy is ours.
Inside him, the wolf paused, considering Adam’s argument. After a moment, the beast agreed.
Freed of that battle, though he remained wary, aware that the w
olf was only biding his time, Adam turned to the more important situation. First, to make certain his allies would shoot his enemies before they would shoot him.
“Compared to Bonarata,” said Adam slowly, “Mercy matters not at all to you, Marsilia. So why did you approach us?”
She raised her chin. “I did not know it was one of yours he took at first. But even so, let us be honest, yes? Had he taken one of mine, I still would have come to you for help. I am myself a power in the vampire hierarchy. But when I was exiled . . . I quit trying. I existed, but for all intents and purposes, I did not direct my seethe other than to see to it that my people were safe and behaved themselves in such a manner as not to attract human attention. The result of my inattention is that outside of me and Wulfe, my seethe holds no individually powerful vampire. Wulfe . . .” She glanced down at the vampire, who, still sitting on the grass, had leaned his head against her knee. “I cannot in all fairness ask Wulfe to face Bonarata in person again.”
“She is kind,” murmured Wulfe. He smiled a hard, cruel smile directed at her. “But the reality is that she doesn’t know whom I serve, her or my scion who re-created me as he pleased for his own purposes before he sent me with her. To bring me under such a circumstance would be stupid.”
“Even so,” she said evenly. “My seethe is stronger than it has been in years. We have had some new-made vampires and some who have come here, drawn by your declaration. It is not only the fae who are tired of fighting. But there are only three Master Vampires—those of us who do not need to obey our maker or the Mistress of the seethe. I am the first. Stefan is the second. And Wulfe is third. I know Iacopo.”
“Jacob,” murmured Wulfe. “He goes mostly by Jacob now.”
“Jacob,” she said. “I don’t know why he took Mercy, or where he took her. But he will send us another e-mail or have a minion call and issue an invitation to come fetch our missing one. My strength is all in numbers right now, and he will not allow me to use that. I will need you and your wolves.”
“To get Mercy back,” Adam said.
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