[Mercy 03] - Iron Kissed

by Patricia Briggs

  Unlike the rest of the house, this room had been immaculate before the resident had been murdered. Underneath the rust-colored stains of the fae’s blood, the tile floor gleamed. Cracked leather-bound tomes with the authentic lumpiness of pre–printing press books sat intermingled with battered paperbacks and college math and biology texts in bookcases that lined the walls.

  This room was the bloodiest I’d seen so far—and given the first murder, that was saying something. Even dried and old, the blood was overwhelming. It had pooled, stained, and sprayed as the fae had fought with his attacker. The lower shelves of three bookcases were dotted with it. Tables had been knocked over and a lamp was broken on the floor.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have realized it if I hadn’t just been thinking about them, but the fae here had been a selkie. I had never met one before that I knew, but I’d been to zoos and I knew what seals smelled like.

  I didn’t want to walk into the room. I wasn’t usually squeamish, but lately I’d been walking in enough blood. Where the blood had pooled—in the grout between tiles, on a book lying open, and against the base of one of the bookcases where the floor wasn’t quite level—it had rotted instead of dried. The room smelled of blood, seal, and decaying fish.

  I avoided the worst of the mess where I could and tried not to think too much about what I couldn’t avoid. Gradually what my nose told me distracted me from the unpleasantness of my task. I quartered the room, while Zee waited just outside it.

  As I started for the door, I caught something. Most of the blood here belonged to the fae, but on the floor, just in front of the door, were a few drops of blood that did not.

  If Zee had been a police officer, I’d have shifted then and there to tell him what I’d found. But if I pointed my finger toward a suspect, I was pretty sure I knew what would happen to the person I pointed it at.

  Werewolves dealt with their criminals the same way. I don’t have any quarrel with killing murderers, but if I’m the one doing the accusing, I’d like to be absolutely certain, given the consequences. And the person I’d be accusing was an unlikely choice for killing this many fae.

  Zee followed me up the stairs, turning off lights and closing doors as we went. I didn’t bother looking further. There had only been two scents in the basement room besides Uncle Mike’s. Either the selkie didn’t bring guests into his library, or he had cleaned since the last time. Most damning of all was the blood.

  Zee opened the front door and I stepped out into full night where the silvered moon had fully risen. How long had I sat staring at the impossible sea?

  A shadow stirred on the porch and became Uncle Mike. He smelled of malt and hot wings, and I could see that he was still dressed in his tavern-keeper clothes: loose ivory-colored khakis and green T-shirt with his own name in the possessive across his chest in sparkling white letters. It wasn’t egocentrism; Uncle Mike’s was the name of his tavern.

  “She’s wet,” he said, his Irish thicker than Zee’s German.

  “Seawater,” Zee told him. “She’ll be all right.”

  Uncle Mike’s handsome face tightened. “Seawater.”

  “I thought you were working tonight?” There was a warning in Zee’s voice as he changed the topic. I wasn’t sure whether he didn’t want to talk about my encounter with the sea fae, or if he was protecting me—or both.

  “BFA was out patrolling looking for you two. Cobweb called me because she was worried they’d interfere. I sent the BFA off with a flea in their ear—they have no authority to tell you how long you can keep a visitor—but I’m afraid we’ve drawn their attention to you, Mercy. They might cause you trouble.”

  His words were nothing out of the ordinary, but there was something darker about his voice that had nothing to do with the night and everything to do with power.

  He looked back at Zee. “Any luck?”

  Zee shrugged. “We’ll have to wait until she changes back.” He looked at me. “I think it is time to bring this to an end. You see too much, Mercy, when it isn’t safe.”

  The hair on the back of my neck told me something was watching us from the shadows. I drew the wind in my nose and knew it was more than two or three. I looked around and growled, letting my nose wrinkle up to display my fangs.

  Uncle Mike raised his eyebrows at me, then took a look around himself. He tipped up his chin and said, his eyes on me, “You will all go home now.” He waited and then said something sharp in Gaelic. I heard a crash and someone took off down the sidewalk in a clatter of hooves.

  “We’re alone now,” he told me. “You can go ahead and change.”

  I gave him a look, then glanced at Zee. Satisfied I had his attention, I hopped off the porch and trotted toward the truck.

  Uncle Mike’s presence raised the stakes. I might have been able to talk Zee into waiting for some other evidence to confirm my suspicions—but I didn’t know Uncle Mike as well.

  I thought furiously, but by the time I made it to the truck, I was as certain as I could be without seeing him kill that the blood I’d found belonged to the murderer. I’d been suspicious of him even before I’d found blood. His scent had been all over the other houses, even the one that had been mostly scrubbed clean—as if he’d been searching the houses for something.

  Zee followed me to the truck. He opened my door, then closed it behind me before rejoining Uncle Mike on the porch. I shifted into human form and dove into my warm clothes. The night air was warm, but my wet hair was still cold against my damp skin. I didn’t bother putting my tennis shoes back on, but got out of the truck barefoot.

  On the porch, they waited patiently, reminding me of my cat, who could watch a mouse’s hole for hours without moving.

  “Is there any reason for BFA to have sent someone into all the murder scenes?” I asked.

  “The BFA can do random searches,” Zee told me. “But they were not called in here.”

  “You mean there was a Beefa in each house?” Uncle Mike asked. “Who, and how do you know him?”

  Zee’s eyes narrowed suddenly. “There’s only one BFA agent she would know. O’Donnell was at the gate when I brought her in.”

  I nodded. “His scent was in every house and his blood was on the floor in the library inside here.” I tipped my head at the house. “His was the only scent in the library besides the selkie’s and yours, Uncle Mike.”

  He smiled at me. “It wasn’t me.” Still with that charming smile he looked at Zee. “I’d like to talk to you alone.”

  “Mercy, why don’t you take my truck. Just leave it at your friend’s house and I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

  I took a step off the porch before I turned around. “The one I met in there…” I tipped my head at the selkie’s house.

  Zee sighed. “I did not bring you here to risk your life. The debt you owe us is not so large.”

  “Is she in trouble?” asked Uncle Mike.

  “Bringing a walker into the reservation might not have been as good an idea as you thought,” Zee said dryly. “But I think matters are settled—unless we keep talking about it.”

  Uncle Mike’s face took on that pleasant blankness he used to conceal his thoughts.

  Zee looked at me. “No more, Mercy. This one time be content with not knowing.”

  I wasn’t, of course. But Zee had no intention of telling me more.

  I started back to the truck and Zee cleared his throat very quietly. I looked at him, but he just stared back. Just as he had when he was teaching me to put together a car and I’d forgotten a step. Forgotten a step…right.

  I met Uncle Mike’s gaze. “This ends my debt to you and yours for killing the second vampire with your artifacts. Paid in full.”

  He gave me a slow, sly smile that made me glad Zee had reminded me. “Of course.”

  * * * *

  According to my wristwatch, I’d spent six hours at the reservation, assuming, of course, that a whole day hadn’t passed by. Or a hundred years. Visions of Washington Irving aside, presumably if I ha
d been there a whole day—or longer—either Uncle Mike or Zee would have told me. I must have spent more time staring at the ocean than I’d thought.

  At any rate, it was very late. There were no lights on at Kyle’s house when I arrived, so I decided not to knock. There was an empty spot in Kyle’s driveway, but Zee’s truck was old and I worried about leaving oil stains on the pristine concrete (which was why my Rabbit was parked on the blacktop). So I pulled in and parked it on the street behind my car. I must have been tired, because it wasn’t until I’d already turned off the truck and gotten out that I realized any vehicle belonging to Zee would never drip anything.

  I paused to pat the truck’s hood gently in apology when someone put his hand on my shoulder.

  I grabbed the hand and rotated it into a nice wrist lock. Using that as a convenient handle, I spun him a few degrees to the outside, and locked his elbow with my other hand. A little more rotation, and his shoulder joint was also mine. He was ready to be pulverized.

  “Damn it, Mercy, that is enough!”

  Or apologized to.

  I let Warren go and sucked in a deep breath. “Next time, say something.” I should have apologized, really. But I wouldn’t have meant it. It was his own darn fault he’d surprised me.

  He rubbed his shoulder ruefully and said, “I will.” I gave him a dirty look. I hadn’t hurt him—even if he’d been human, I wouldn’t have done any real hurt.

  He stopped faking and grinned. “Okay. Okay. I heard you drive up and wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

  “And you couldn’t resist sneaking up on me.”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t sneaking. You need to be more alert. What was up?”

  “No demon-possessed vampires this time,” I told him. “Just a little sleuthing.” And a trip to the seashore.

  A second-floor window opened, and Kyle stuck his head and shoulders out so he could look down at us. “If you two are finished playing Cowboy and Indian out there, some of us would like to get their beauty sleep.”

  I looked at Warren. “You heard ’um, Kemo Sabe. Me go to my little wigwam and get ’um shut-eye.”

  “How come you always get to play the Indian?” whined Warren, deadpan.

  “’Cause she’s the Indian, white boy,” said Kyle. He pushed the window up all the way and set a hip on the casement. He was wearing little more than most of the men in the movie we’d been watching, and it looked better on him.

  Warren snorted and ruffled my hair. “She’s only half—and I’ve known more Indians than she has.”

  Kyle grinned wickedly and said, in his best Mae West voice, “Just how many Indians have you known, big boy?”

  “Stop right there.” I made a play at plugging my ears. “Lalalala. Wait until I hop in my faithful Rabbit and ride off into the sunrise.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed Warren somewhere in the region of his chin.

  “It is pretty late,” Warren said. “Do you still want to meet us at Tumbleweed tomorrow?”

  Tumbleweed was the yearly folk music festival held on Labor Day weekend. The Tri-Cities were close enough to the coast that the cream of the Seattle and Portland music scene usually showed up in force: blues singers, jazz, Celtic, and everything in between. Cheap, good entertainment.

  “I wouldn’t miss it. Samuel still hasn’t managed to wiggle out of performing and I have to be there to heckle him.”

  “Ten A.M. by the River Stage, then,” Warren said.

  “I’ll be there.”

  Chapter 3

  T umbleweed was held in Howard Amon Park, right off the Columbia River in Richland . The stages were scattered as far apart as could be managed to minimize interference between performances. The River Stage, where Samuel was to perform, was about as far from available parking as it was possible to get. Normally that wouldn’t have bothered me, but karate practice this morning hadn’t gone so well. Grumbling to myself, I limped slowly across the grass.

  The park was still mostly empty of anyone except musicians toting various instrument cases as they trudged across the vast green fields on their way to whatever stage they were performing on. Okay, the park isn’t really that huge, but when your leg hurts—or when you’re hauling a string bass from one end to the other—it’s big enough.

  The bassist in question and I exchanged weary nods of mutual misery as we passed each other.

  Warren and Kyle were already seated on the grass in front of the stage and Samuel was arranging his instruments on various stands, when I finally made it.

  “Something wrong?” Kyle asked with a frown as I sat down next to him. “You weren’t limping last night.”

  I wiggled on the lumpy, dew-dampened grass until I was comfortable. “Nothing important. Someone caught me a good one on my thigh at karate practice this morning. It’ll settle down in a bit. I see the button men found you already.”

  Tumbleweed was nominally free, but you could show your support by purchasing a button for two dollars…and the button men were relentless.

  “We got one for you, too.” Warren reached across Kyle and handed a button to me.

  I pinned it on my shoe, where it wouldn’t be immediately obvious. “I bet I can attract four button men before lunch,” I told Kyle.

  He laughed. “Do I look like a newbie? Four before lunch is too easy.”

  More people gathered in front of Samuel’s stage than I’d expected, given that his was one of the first performances.

  I recognized some of the emergency room personnel who Samuel worked with near the center of the audience with a larger group. They were setting up lawn chairs and chattering together in such a fashion that I was pretty sure they all worked at Samuel’s hospital.

  Then there were the werewolves.

  Unlike the medical personnel, they didn’t sit together, but scattered themselves here and there around the fringes. All of the Tri-City werewolves, except for Adam, the Alpha, were still pretending to be human—so they mostly avoided hanging out together in public. They’d all have heard Samuel sing before, but probably not at a real performance because he didn’t do them often.

  A cool breeze came off the Columbia River, just a hop, skip, and a jump over a narrow footpath away—which was why the stage was the River Stage. The morning was warm, as early fall mornings in the Tri-Cities often are, so the slight edge to the wind was more welcome than not.

  One of the festival volunteers, wearing a painter’s apron covered with Tumbleweed buttons from this and previous years, welcomed us to this year’s festival and thanked us all for coming. He spent a few minutes talking about sponsors and raffles while the audience shifted restlessly before he introduced Samuel as the Tri-Cities’ own folksinging physician.

  We clapped and whistled as the announcer bounced down the stairs and back to the sound station where he would keep the speakers behaving properly. Someone settled in behind me, but I didn’t look around, because Samuel walked to center stage with his violin dangling almost carelessly from one hand.

  He was wearing a cobalt blue dress shirt that set off his eyes, tipping the balance from gray to blue. He’d tucked the shirt into new black jeans that were tight enough to show off the muscle in his legs.

  I had seen him just this morning as he drank his coffee and I ran out the door. There was no reason that he should still affect me like this.

  Most werewolves are attractive; it goes with the permanently young-and-muscled look. Samuel had more, though. And it wasn’t only that extra zap that the more dominant wolves have.

  Samuel looked like a person you could trust—something about the hint of humor that lurked in the back of his deep-set eyes and the corner of his mouth. It was part of what made him such a good doctor. When he told his patients they were going to be fine, they believed him.

  His eyes locked on mine for a moment and the quirk of his mouth powered up to a smile.

  It warmed me to my toes, that smile: reminded me of a time when Samuel was my whole world, a time when I believed in a knigh
t in shining armor who could make me happy and safe.

  Samuel knew it, too, because the smile changed to a grin—until he looked behind me. The pleasure cooled in his eyes, but he kept the grin, turning it on the rest of his audience. That’s how I knew for certain that the man who’d sat behind me was Adam.

  Not that I’d been in much doubt. The wind was coming from the wrong direction to give me a good scent, but dominant wolves exude power, and Adam—all apart from him being the Alpha—was nearly as dominant as they come. It was like having a car battery sitting behind me and being hooked up with a pair of wires.

  I kept my eyes forward, knowing that as long as my attention was on him, Samuel wouldn’t get too upset. I wished Adam had chosen to sit somewhere else. But if he’d been that kind of a person, he wouldn’t be an Alpha—the most dominant wolf in his pack. Almost as dominant as Samuel.

  The reason Samuel wasn’t the pack Alpha was complicated. First, Adam had been Alpha here as long as there had been a pack in the Tri-Cities (which was before my time). Even if a wolf is more dominant, it is not an easy matter to oust an Alpha—and in North America, that never happens without the consent of the Marrok, the wolf who rules here. Since the Marrok was Samuel’s father, presumably he could have gained permission—except that Samuel had no desire to be Alpha. He said that being a doctor gave him more than enough people to take care of. So he was officially a lone wolf, a wolf outside of pack protection. He lived in my trailer, not a hundred yards from Adam’s house. I don’t know why he chose to live there, but I know why I let him: because otherwise he’d still be sleeping on my front porch.

  Samuel had a way of making sure people did what he wanted them to.

  Testing the violin’s temperament, Samuel’s bow danced across the strings with a delicate precision won through years…probably centuries of practice. I’d known him all my life, but it wasn’t until less than a year ago that I’d found out about those “centuries.”