Frost Burned mt-7

by Patricia Briggs

  I pressed my fingers to my cheekbones and let the pain from my injury drive my tears away. I would cry when everyone was home—everyone except for Peter. Until then I had more important things to do.

  I parked the car in Kyle’s pristine driveway. When Kyle opened his door to let Ben and me in, he did a double take.

  “Holy Hummer, Batgirl, where did you get a Mercedes AMG?” Kyle had changed out of his sweats and wore a black-and-red button-up shirt that complemented his dark hair and went with the black slacks that were so casual I knew they must have cost him a pretty penny. We all found our refuges where we could: I baked cookies, and Kyle wore expensive clothes.

  “It’s not my car,” I told him. “Marsilia left it for an oil change, and I couldn’t resist.” Kyle knew who Marsilia was. So I added, “Ben’s been bleeding all over the back seat. Do you think we can clean the blood out of the leather well enough that she’ll keep it? Who do you think should pay for the damage? Ben for bleeding on it; the bad guys for shooting Ben so he was bleeding in the first place; or me for stealing it?”

  “That is Marsilia’s car, and you stuck a bleeding werewolf in the back seat?” Kyle said, ignoring my attempted humor. “I shouldn’t have sent Loren—you’d have been safer stuck in the black hole of the justice system for a few months until something distracts the Queen of the Damned from killing you.”

  He’d picked up my name for Marsilia. I hoped he never used it around her. I noticed that the earlier red marks on his face had darkened to bruises to go with the other bruises he had. His nose had been reset, but both of his eyes were black and puffed up. I might have won the disreputable award last night, but with Kyle’s new bruises, for the first time in a long time, someone looked more beat-up than I did.

  He limped when he stepped back to let me in.

  “It’s a good thing for the guy who beat on you that Stefan killed him,” I said soberly as I walked into the entryway. Ben also limped, and I found that since my knee decided to hurt, I was limping, too. That made three of us. Kyle’s house smelled like gun oil and strangers. “Or he’d have to face Warren.”

  Kyle flinched, closing the door behind Ben. “I know. It’s going to be months before I’m not explaining my face to everyone I meet. Hello. No, I was beaten by an army of muscle-bound men who didn’t even have the courtesy to be cute. No, don’t worry about it. I’m fine now. The nose just has a little bump—like Marilyn’s mole, it emphasizes the perfection of the rest of my face.”

  He glanced down at Ben. “Both of you come into the kitchen. Ben, I’ve pulled out the remains of last night’s turkey. There’s also four pounds of roast I was going to cook tomorrow. I’ll cook Warren another turkey so he can have turkey hash. It’s on a platter on the table.”

  Ben rubbed his muzzle over Kyle’s shoulder in a way that I think was supposed to be reassuring. Kyle sucked in a breath. Either it hurt, or the reminder that the werewolf was big enough to rub his shoulder without much effort wasn’t exactly reassuring.

  “Ben, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?” asked Kyle.

  Or else Ben’s breath was really bad.

  Ben showed his teeth in a mannerly grin and started eating the food Kyle had left on the table with enthusiastic concentration.

  I slumped in one of the breakfast-bar stools and blew out a loud breath. “Did you find out if they found out anything about them?” I asked.

  Kyle gave me a look, then busied himself making me a peanut butter and huckleberry jelly sandwich. “What really bothers me is that I understood that question. You will eat this and go to sleep, so your pronouns get their antecedents back. The police haven’t gotten very far yet investigating the men who invaded my house. The bad guys have good lawyers, very good lawyers. Not as good as Loren and nowhere near as good as I am, of course, but top-notch, expensive, out-of-town lawyers. Loren tells me that he thinks the lot of them will be out on bail by tomorrow because of all the money floating around. Tough to keep them when the only dead body is one of theirs—and by my own testimony he was the only one guilty of assault.”

  I stared at him over the sandwich he put in front of me. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Kyle shook his head. “Eat that, Mercy, don’t just stare at it. Dickens has it that ‘the law is a ass,’ and a lot of the times he is right. We have them on criminal trespass. Tony is incensed, he told me, but they can’t get them for terrorist activity. Somehow, the two men downstairs were unarmed when they were arrested—so another man must have gotten away with their weapons, because the police turned my house upside down looking for guns while they were questioning us and all they found were our guns, the guns we took from the bad guys, and the Spencer in the gun safe.” I thought about the man who’d given the orders, who might or might not have been one of the men in the living room and my vague suspicion that they would have left someone on watch.

  “Then, mysteriously,” continued Kyle, “the guns belonging to the two men up in my bedroom have disappeared from the evidence room. They are holding ours, Mercy, pending further investigation. So I’m doing some shopping today because I’ll be damned if I’m going unarmed when people have kidnapped Warren.” His manner had been as confident as always until he reached that last part, and his voice broke.

  “He’s alive,” I told him. “You’d know if he weren’t. The only one they killed was Peter.”

  Kyle jerked his head up. “Peter’s dead?”

  I nodded. It was too much trouble to stay upright, so I folded my arms and put my forehead down on them. “Peter’s dead. The moron shot him because Adam let him see what Alpha meant. Now Peter’s dead, and Adam …” I shook my head.

  A hand rested on my shoulder, then Kyle’s face buried itself in my shoulder.

  “I called my father,” he said, his voice muffled by the material of the sweatshirt I wore. “Told him that if he didn’t want his friends knowing all about his gay son who was sleeping with a werewolf, he needed to release my trust to me today. In four hours, we’ll have money to throw at the problem.”

  “I’ll finish this sandwich,” I told him. I knew how much it had cost him to call his family. The only one he talked to was an older sister. “Then I’m going to sleep. Do you mind if I sleep here?”

  “Well, not here,” said Kyle, pulling away from me. He wiped his eyes and covered up the emotion with brisk efficiency. “But in a guest room. A bed will be helpful when you wake up and feel like you are going to feel after tonight. I’m going to hit the hot tub and join you in the same room.”

  He gave me an apologetic smile. “The security people say it’s the only bedroom in the house that is really securable. They’ve swept the place for bugs, and we have our own army surrounding the house. Jim Gutstein tells me this will be gratis—Adam is apparently a very good boss, and they are embarrassed to have lost him. He also expressed his desire to find Adam and assures you that the full power of the company is currently turned in that direction. They will let us know when they find out a bit more.”

  “You hired Hauptman security?” I asked. Jim Gutstein was the highest-ranking non-werewolf at Adam’s office.

  “Only the best,” he said.

  I filled him in on everything I knew that he didn’t until he tapped me on the shoulder to stop me.

  “Finish your sandwich and go to sleep in a proper bed. After sleep, we can go buy guns, then tear the Tri-Cities apart looking for our men, right?”

  Kyle was a smart man, and I followed his advice.

  I smelled him first: the musk and mint that said werewolf, the other unique scent that said mine. I was so relieved. I’d been sure he was hurt and alone and I couldn’t find him … but, silly me. Here he was, right beside me.

  “Adam,” I murmured.

  The wolf stirred and put his nose on my shoulder. He was lying on top of me and making it hard to breathe under his weight. I vaguely knew it was a dream because Adam was both human and wolf at the same time, but Adam was more real than that thought, so I discar
ded it.

  You are alive, he said, and there was a relief in his voice that shook me.

  “Of course I am.”

  Something stirred the ant’s nest, he said, nuzzling under my ear. What did you do?

  I didn’t want to think about it because then I knew I’d remember that this was just a dream, and I wanted to be safe in our bed with Adam stretched out half on top of me, touching me as I allowed no one else to touch me.

  This was a dream where he was safe, and there were no men in body armor armed with nasty weapons who were backed by someone powerful enough to put pressure on the police. Not powerful enough to suborn them entirely, or they wouldn’t have ridden to our rescue. But there was a lot of money involved and some raw power.

  Figure out who they are, ordered Adam, pulling his head back so he could look me in the eye.

  “Follow the money,” I agreed, pulling him back down. I needed his warmth against me more than I needed to see him. My body believed better than my eyes, which knew I was looking at a figment of memory. “Kyle already suggested it. Now if I can just work out a way to do that.” I could set Adam’s associate Gutstein on that, couldn’t I?

  Gutstein can look. You were talking about the police. What have you been up to that the police were involved?

  “When the bad guys took Warren, they took Kyle, too. Held him at his house.”

  Adam growled, and so did someone else. I couldn’t see him or feel him, but my nose told me it was Warren.

  “He’s okay.”

  Adam stiffened, and that other wolf who was Warren snarled.

  “I said okay, not terrific,” I grumbled at them. “I wasn’t lying. He got beaten up—Stefan killed the one who did it, though Kyle has to claim credit for it. He handled it, Warren. He’s smart and tough. He’ll be waiting, so you’d better survive this.”

  The snarl died, and Adam and I were alone in our bed in the huge house that served as pack HQ and as our home.

  “Ben and I helped Stefan,” I murmured to Adam. “They had Kyle alone and were trying to get him to speculate where Jesse and I would be likely to show up. Stefan killed the one and tied up the other. Kyle called the police, and they swarmed the house and saved the day.”

  Jesse.

  He didn’t have to say anything more. In this dream of mine I heard his terror, his fierce burning protectiveness.

  “She’s safe,” I promised him. “I hid her with Gabriel and set Tad to watch over her.”

  Adam’s body stilled, the stillness in a hunt that occurs just before something dies. Tad?

  Here in my dream, safe with it just between us, I could tell him. “Zee told me that Tad could keep Jesse safe.” Not in those words, but that was what the grumpy old fae had meant. Truths that you can read between the lines in a fae who is your friend are as far from a lie as a fae can get.

  Adam’s body softened, turning warm and melting into mine, the distance between us blurring into nothing. Then she is safe.

  His mouth sought mine. He tasted of heat and love. But he tasted also of illness born of silver, and I was crying before he was finished. They were killing him, I could feel it. Much more silver, and he would no longer be able to link with the pack and he would die while the bastards who had him were still waiting for signs of weakness.

  His chest rose and fell, and his heart stuttered against mine. I could feel how close his death hovered—too much silver, too much of the drug that slowed his reflexes.

  Jesse is safe. You are safe. It’s all right, Mercy. You didn’t think I was going to die of old age, did you?

  It was a joke, graveyard humor. Werewolves never died of old age because they didn’t age. But he had no business making a joke like that. Not now, not ever.

  Anger roared through me and carried with it a tidal wave of terror because Adam had given up.

  No. He told me. I haven’t given up anything. But the pack comes first. While they concentrate on me, the pack is working to free themselves. When I die, I can take the poison with me, and our pack will be strong enough to protect themselves. I love you, Mercy.

  I absorbed what he said. He’d found something he could do. I’d seen him draw upon the pack to force silver out of his body. Apparently it worked in reverse. He was drawing the silver from that damned concoction Doc Wallace’s son had created. When he was finished, he’d be dead—but the pack would be free.

  I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t respond. Adam intended to die.

  Are you not my daughter, whispered another voice, Coyote’s voice, so quiet I almost missed it. Had I not been caught in that first moment of shock when everything goes quiet before the pain begins, I would not have heard it.

  Coyote never loses, Coyote told me. Because I change the rules of the games my enemies play. What are the rules of your game?

  Adam hadn’t heard that other voice. I knew because he still hovered over me, his mouth soft with our kiss, a terrible good-bye in his eyes. He’d found a solution to the game that his enemies played, found a way to win, because Adam was competent like that. The cost was too high.

  “Find another way to win,” I said, my voice hoarse.

  There is no other way, he said. I love you.

  But I’d been talking to myself and not to him. I pulled him back down to me.

  He cooperated because he had no idea I was changing the rules of the game on him. I was not Coyote’s daughter, not quite. But that was okay because being almost Coyote’s daughter in my dream would be enough.

  Adam’s lips came down upon my own and I opened my mouth. Looking into his eyes, I pulled the things that were killing him into me, swallowing down the silver that was poison to him and nothing to me.

  He didn’t understand at first, but when he did, he struggled, but it was my dream, not his. In this dream, I wasn’t a coyote shapeshifter trying to hold a werewolf, I was Coyote’s almost daughter, and I had all the strength of the world in my arms.

  “Mine,” I told him, though my mouth was still fastened to his. “Mine.”

  I meant that he was mine, but also that the silver he took from the pack to save them was also mine to bear, not his. I also used the word to call the silver from his body into my own, the silver and the ketamine and all the rest of the harm that had been done to him.

  But he was an Alpha werewolf, and he was more than a match for me, even in my dream.

  He roared, ripped free of my hold and off of our bed—in my dreams it was still our bed at home, not the one in Kyle’s spare bedroom. It wasn’t anger in Adam’s voice when he spoke. Mercy, you don’t know what you’re doing. It was fear.

  I started to go after him, but had to stop, kneeling on the edge of the bed because I was sick to my stomach. Either the silver or the ketamine wasn’t sitting well. Heck. Maybe it was the DMSO for all that I knew. Adam … he was better, I could feel his strength, could feel the pack stir in alertness because they could feel it, too.

  Don’t do that, he ordered retroactively, coming to his feet. He knew how well I followed orders. He looked away, took a deep breath, and reached out toward me. If you die …

  I didn’t think it would kill me, no matter how much my stomach hurt. But I wasn’t going to show him that it had affected me. “Not my day to die,” I told him.

  He stared at me, and I lifted my chin and stared back at him. There wasn’t a pack around who needed to see me bow down to the Alpha. He could have made me drop my gaze anyway. I wasn’t immune to his dominance, just stubborn. I could see the moment he gave up.

  I remembered that there were other things I needed to know.

  “Did you find out where you are being held?” I asked, then, seeing the answer on his face, I continued, “Any clues at all? Do you smell anything? The river? Sagebrush? Diesel?”

  Dust, Mercy. His voice was quiet. Then he looked around himself. I don’t think he was seeing our bedroom like I was. Dust and Peter’s blood.

  I’d heard that kind of rage in Adam once before. He’d torn the corpse of a man I’d alr
eady killed into small pieces. The men who had made themselves our enemy had no idea what they had done.

  They are sending a helicopter to pick up Darryl and me. Soon.

  “They’re still sending you out after the senator?” I thought that our call to the police would have preempted the attack.

  Yes.

  We’d told the police about why Adam and the pack had been taken. They seemed to be taking our word seriously.

  They know. They told me it would be more difficult now, but they didn’t seem to be really bothered. Either the attack itself is what they want—or there is something else I am not seeing.

  He sat back down on the bed and put his hand against my forehead. Are you okay?

  I smiled at him. “Ariana is going to see if she can contact Bran. Maybe he can ride to the rescue.”

  Adam considered that. What about the vampires? he asked.

  I stared at him. “Marsilia hates me, and Ben bled all over the back of her Mercedes.”

  The AMG?

  Something distracted me. Something terrible. “What is that smell?”

  I woke up with Ben licking my face as earnestly as a cat—which hurt. His breath made my eyes water—and I have a high tolerance for nasty odors.

  “Jeez, jeez,” I said, scrambling away from him. I hit something hard, then kept moving away from Ben when whatever it was fell to the floor with a thump and freed up some space on the bed.

  My stomach hurt. Not like the flu or even bad food. More like I’d swallowed something that was eating me alive. The truly vile smell of Ben’s breath didn’t help. “Ben, your breath stinks. Have you been eating roadkill?”

  “Ow. Ow. Ow,” moaned Kyle from the floor where I’d knocked him. I’d forgotten he was in the bed with me—that he’d told me he’d be sleeping here—because even getting myself into the bed was a blur. “Remember, a guy who didn’t even have the decency to be cute hit me a lot yesterday. And this room doesn’t have a rug.”

  Ben laughed at me, and I covered my nose with both hands. But I was awake now and remembered where I’d smelled breath that bad before. “DMSO from the tranq, right? DMSO gives you bad breath.” Then I saw the clock on the chest next to the bed.