Mercedes Thompson 03: Iron Kissed

by Patricia Briggs

  I didn’t want to, so I watched Nemane, because she was the only one who didn’t look horrified. It takes a bit to horrify a werewolf. I’d certainly never managed it before.

  “It’s crushed,” said Nemane, in her cool professorial voice. “And her arm broken above it, too.”

  “How can you tell that?” said Honey, returning with the blankets and clothes. “You’re blind.”

  The fae smiled. Not a happy expression. “There are other ways of seeing.”

  “How can they fix that?” said Ben, looking at my arm. He sounded a lot more shaken up than I expected from Ben. Werewolves are used to violence and its results.

  Nemane walked past Adam like a wolf on a scent. She bent and picked up the druid horse’s skin. It must have fallen off Tim when Adam ripped him to pieces.

  Those pieces might haunt my dreams for a good long time, but I was too numb to be horrified by them now.

  Nemane caressed the cloak and shook her head. “No wonder we couldn’t find him. Here, this is what she needs.” She’d found the goblet where it had rolled under my tool chest.

  “What is that?” asked Adam.

  “Orfino’s Bane, it was once called, Huon’s cup, or Manannan’s gift. It has a few uses and one of those is healing.”

  “That’s not what it does,” I told Adam in a horrified whisper.

  Nemane looked at me.

  “He made her drink from it,” Adam said. “I thought it contained some kind of drug—but it’s fairy magic?”

  She nodded. “In the hands of a human thief, it allows him to enslave another, given as a gift it will heal as well, and in the hands of the fae it will testify to truth.”

  “I won’t drink it,” I told Adam’s shoulder, shifting in his arms until I’d gotten as far from the cup as I could.

  “It will heal her?” he asked.

  We all heard a car drive up.

  “It’s one of mine,” Adam said—I assumed he was talking to the fae because the rest of us could all recognize the sound of Samuel’s car. To get here so fast he must have come from work. The hospital was only a few blocks away. “He’s a doctor. I’d like to get his opinion.”

  When he came in, Samuel’s single, awed swearword took in the whole garage: bits of Tim scattered wherever Adam had deposited them, blood all over the place, a couple of naked people (Adam and I), and Nemane in her full fae glory.

  “I need you to check out Mercy’s arm,” Adam said.

  I didn’t want him to touch it. It was numb right now, but I knew that could change at any time. It looked more like a pretzel than an arm, bending in places that it shouldn’t. It had been working when we came into the office. Sort of. Tim must have damaged it more while I was killing him.

  No one cared what I wanted.

  At first Samuel just knelt so he could look at it lying across my thighs. He whistled between his teeth. “You need to pick out new friends, Mercy. The crowd you hang out with is awfully hard on you. If things keep going this way, you’re going to be dead before the year is out.”

  He was so relentlessly cheerful, I knew it was bad. His hands were light on my arm, but the searing pain made odd flashes of light dance in front of my eyes. If Adam hadn’t been holding me, I’d have jerked away, but he held me steady, murmuring soft, comforting things I couldn’t hear over the buzzing in my ears.

  “Samuel?” It was Ben who asked, his voice sharp and clear.

  Samuel quit touching my arm and stood up. “Her arm feels like a tube of toothpaste filled with marbles. I don’t think it’s something that can be tacked back together with a hundred pins or bolts.”

  I am not a fainting kind of person, but the imagery Samuel used was too horrible and black things swam in front of my vision. It felt like I blinked twice and someone jumped events forward a minute or two. If I’d remembered about the river sooner, Samuel’s prognosis wouldn’t have made me faint.

  I knew I’d been out because gathering the amount of power that Adam was amassing didn’t just suddenly happen. I didn’t realize why he was doing it until it was too late.

  “You don’t have to worry anymore, Mercy,” Adam murmured, his head bent so that he whispered it into my ears.

  I stiffened. I tried. But tired, hurt, and terrified, I didn’t have the slightest chance to fight his voice. I didn’t really want to. Adam wasn’t angry. He wouldn’t hurt me.

  I let him pull the power of his pack over me like a warm blanket and relaxed against him. My arm still hurt, but the feeling of peace that wove over me separated me from the pain just as it did from the terror. I was so tired of being afraid.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Take a deep breath, Mercy. I won’t let you do anything that will harm you, all right? You can trust me that far.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I said “yes” anyway.

  In a very quiet voice I don’t think even the other werewolves could hear, he said, “Please don’t hate me too much when this is over.” There was no push to his voice when he said it.

  “I don’t like this,” I told him.

  He ran his chin and cheek over the side of my face in a quick caress. “I know. We’re going to give you something that will heal you.”

  That information broke through the peace he’d given me. He was going to make me drink from the cup again. “No,” I said. “I won’t. I won’t.”

  “Shh.” His power rolled over me and smothered my resistance.

  “I know the fae,” said Samuel harshly. “Why are you so eager to help?”

  “Whatever you might think, wolf”—Nemane’s voice was chill—“the fae don’t forget our friends or our debts. This happened because she was trying to help one of us. I can heal only her body, but it looks to me as if it is the least of the hurts she took tonight. The debt is still owed.”

  A cup was pressed against my lips, and as soon as I recognized the smell of it, my stomach rebelled and I retched helplessly as Adam shifted me in his arms until I wasn’t throwing up on either of us. When I was finished, he tipped me back where I’d been.

  “Plug her nose,” suggested Darryl and Samuel pinched my nostrils together.

  “Swallow fast,” Adam told me. “Get it over with quickly.”

  I did.

  “Enough,” said Nemane. “It will take an hour or so, but I swear that it will heal her.”

  “I just hope we didn’t break her doing it.” Adam’s voice rumbled under my ear and I sighed in contentment. I wasn’t all alone yet. His arms shook and I worried that holding me was tiring him.

  “No,” he told me, so I must have said something. “You aren’t heavy.”

  Samuel, used to emergencies, took control. “Honey, give me the blanket and the clothes. Go grab a chair from the office—something with a back. Darryl, take Mercy, so that—” Adam’s arm tightened around my legs and he growled, making Samuel change his mind. “All right, all right, we’ll wait for Honey to get back with the chair. Here she is. We’ll wrap Mercy in the blanket, you send her to sleep, and then go wash up and change before the police get here.”

  Adam didn’t move.

  “Adam…” Samuel’s tone was wary, his posture carefully neutral. A truck drove up and the tension in the garage dropped appreciatively. No one said anything, though, until Warren came in to the garage. He looked pale and strained, and he slowed down as he got a good look around him.

  He walked into the center of the garage and nudged a piece of meat with the toe of his boot. Then he looked at Adam. “Good job, boss.”

  His eyes went to Samuel and the blanket he was holding. Then he looked at the chair resting on the floor in front of Honey.

  Samuel’s body language told Warren what had been going on and what he wanted without saying a word.

  Warren strolled over to us and snagged the blanket from Samuel, snapping it out. “Let’s get her warm and covered up.”

  Adam let Warren take me without argument. Instead of setting me in the chair, though, Warren sat in it and pulled me snugly agai
nst him. Adam watched us for a moment—I couldn’t read his face at all. Then he leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.

  “If you called the police, they will be here shortly,” said Nemane as soon as Adam had gone to the bathroom to wash up. “I need to be gone with these before the police come.”

  “There’s a ring,” I told her, still basking in the peace that Adam had gifted me with.

  “What?”

  “A silver ring on his finger.” I yawned. “I think there are a few more things in Tim’s house. He keeps them in a cabinet in his bedroom.”

  “The Mac Owen ring,” Nemane said. “Would you all help me to look for it?”

  “Maybe Adam swallowed it,” I suggested and Warren laughed.

  “No more horror movies for you,” he murmured. “But Adam didn’t eat any of him.”

  “Here it is,” Honey said, bending down to pick something up. Instead of giving it to Nemane, she closed her hand over it. “If you go and take that cup, they’re going to prosecute Mercy for murder.”

  “Give it to me.” The temperature in the room dropped appreciatively with the ice in Nemane’s voice.

  “We have the video,” Darryl said. “It should be enough.”

  Honey laughed and turned on him. “Why? All it shows is that Mercy was drunk. She drank more every time he asked her to. She might have said no, but he never appeared to force her to drink. From the video, a prosecutor could argue that her judgement was impaired by alcohol—but that’s not enough to get her freed from a murder charge. She had him incapacitated and she deliberately got up and took a crowbar and hit him with it.”

  “Then that is what may be,” Nemane said. “It is too dangerous for humans to know we have these things.”

  “Not everything,” said Honey. “Just the cup.”

  “By itself it would answer most of the police’s questions,” said Samuel. “Though you might have to explain how a human managed to rip a man’s head off.”

  “He had bracelets,” I told him. “Called them bracers of giant strength—but they weren’t bracers. They’ll be around someplace, too.”

  “Ben,” said Adam, sounding cool and controlled as he came back into the garage bay. “Go get my laptop.” He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved gray shirt. His hair was damp. “Nemane, I will make you a deal. If you watch what happened tonight, I will let you take your toys and run away—if that’s what you still want to do.”

  “I am the Carrion Crow,” Nemane said. “I’ve seen more death and rape than you can imagine.”

  Shame slipped through the warm peace Adam had given to me. I didn’t want anyone to watch. “She’s blind,” I said. “She can’t see anything.”

  “She can use my eyes,” Samuel said.

  I saw Nemane stiffen.

  “My father is a Welsh bard as well as the Marrok,” Samuel told her. “He knows things. You can use my eyes, if Adam thinks it’s important to see this.”

  Ben brought Adam’s laptop and handed it to him. Adam set it up on the counter.

  I buried my head against Warren and tried to ignore the sounds coming from Adam’s laptop. The speakers weren’t very good so I pretended I couldn’t hear the helpless noises I made or the wet sounds…

  He let it play until the moment Nemane walked in and turned it off.

  “She should be dead,” Nemane said flatly when he was finished. “If I’d seen it first, I’d never have given her another drink so soon.”

  “Will she be all right?” Warren asked sharply.

  “If she hasn’t gone into convulsions and died yet, I don’t suppose she’s going to.” Nemane stroked the cloak she held on her arm, sounding troubled. “I don’t know how she managed to kill him while he was wearing this. It should have kept her from touching him.”

  “It only protected him from his enemies,” I told Warren’s shirt. “I wasn’t his enemy because he told me not to be.”

  A storm of police sirens was brewing up outside.

  “All right,” Nemane said. “You may have the bracelets to explain how a human killed O’Donnell. And the cup. Adam Hauptman, Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, you will take possession of them on your honor and return them to Uncle Mike when they are of no further use.”

  “Samuel,” said Warren, and I realized I was starting to shiver helplessly.

  “She needs to sleep,” Nemane told them.

  Adam knelt beside us and looked me in the eye. “Mercedes, go to sleep.”

  I was too tired to fight the compulsion, even if I had wanted to.

  Chapter 12

  I woke up with the smell of Adam in my nose and my stomach cramping. I didn’t have time to wonder about my surroundings. I dove off the bed and made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up in the toilet.

  Fairy brew tastes a lot worse the second time around.

  Gentle hands pulled my hair out of the way—though it was too late for that—and wiped my face with a damp washcloth. Someone had put a pair of underwear and one of Adam’s T-shirts on me.

  “At least you made it to the loo this time,” Ben said prosaically. And then, just so I could be absolutely sure it was really him and not some kinder, nicer clone, he said, without affection, “Good thing, too. We are almost out of sheets.”

  “Happy to oblige,” I managed before heaving up some more—so hard it came burning out my nose as well as my mouth. By the time I finished, I’d have been crying on the floor if the idea of doing that in front of Ben hadn’t been so repugnant.

  He waited until it became apparent that getting to the bathroom was as good as I was going to manage before he sighed and heaved me up with more effort than I knew he felt. He was a werewolf; he could probably pick up a piano. My weight wasn’t enough to make him sweat.

  He tucked me back in the sheets with surprising efficiency. “The fae told us you’d sleep a lot for a while. The vomiting surprised her, though. Probably something to do with your resistance to magic and how much of the stuff you had. Best thing for you is sleep.” He paused. “Unless you’re hungry.”

  I turned my head out from the pillow far enough that he could see my face.

  He smirked. “Yeah, well, I’m not excited about cleaning up another mess either.”

  It was still dark out the next time I woke up so it wasn’t too much later. I lay unmoving as long as I could. I knew Ben was still in the room and I didn’t want to attract his attention. I didn’t want anyone to look at me.

  Without nausea to distract me, the events of the evening, those that I remembered clearly anyway, rolled through my head like an Ed Wood movie: so horrible that you can’t force yourself to stop watching. Worse, I could smell it on me. The fairy liquor, blood…and Tim. The worst was knowing what I had done…and what I hadn’t.

  In the end, I crawled out of bed and slunk on my hands and knees to the bathroom door. I kept my eyes lowered so Ben would know that I understood what I’d done.

  He got to the door before me and held it open. I hesitated. Protocol would have me roll over and give him my throat and underbelly…but I couldn’t stand to be that vulnerable again. Not right now. Maybe if it were Adam.

  “Poor little bitch,” he said softly. “Go get cleaned up. I’ll keep the villains at bay for that long.”

  He shut the door behind me.

  I stood on shaky feet and turned the water to hot. I stripped off the clothing and scrubbed and scrubbed, but I couldn’t get rid of the smells. Finally I came out and searched through Adam’s cabinets. I found three bottles of cologne, but none of them smelled like him.

  Finally I splashed his aftershave on instead. It burned on the healing cuts and scrapes I’d picked up off the cement floor of the garage, but it covered up Tim’s scent at last.

  I couldn’t put on the clothes I’d just taken off because they still smelled like…everything. Even though the shirt smelled only of Adam and the underwear was a clean pair of mine and I was pretty sure that someone had scrubbed me up before they put me in them since I re
member being covered with blood…

  As soon as the thought occurred, I remembered standing in Adam’s shower and Honey’s voice in my ear. You’ll be fine. Let me just get this stuff off you—

  I began to hyperventilate so I grabbed a towel and breathed through it until the panicky feeling went away.

  So, no clothes, and I couldn’t stay in here much longer before someone came in to check.

  No one would ask the coyote questions she couldn’t answer.

  For a frightening moment I wasn’t sure I could shift, when shifting had always been second nature.

  You need to stay human, Mercy. We’re in the hospital and you need to stay with us just a little longer. Samuel’s voice.

  I didn’t care about police and this wasn’t the hospital. Fur slid over my skin at last and my fingernails turned to claws. It took longer than it ever had, but in the end I stood on four paws. I whined to myself because I still didn’t want to go out.

  The door opened before I could figure out any alternative, which was just as well as there were no good hiding places in the bathroom—not even for a coyote.

  Ben sniffed. “Aftershave? Good enough. Someone had time to run some sheets through the wash, and I put them on the bed. So the sheets are clean.”

  I realized I was looking up into his face and dropped my gaze and tucked my tail.

  “Like that, eh?” he said. “Mercy…” He sighed. “Never mind. Come on, then. Get back to bed.”

  I didn’t need to sleep, but I curled up in the clean sheets and waited for Ben to leave so I could go…somewhere. I couldn’t go home because Samuel was there and he knew.

  Everyone knew and Tim was right: I was going to be alone.

  I should go swimming…but that wasn’t right. My foster father had done that. No, I would never kill myself, never do to someone else what he had done to me.

  After a while the door opened and Adam came in. He must not have had time to wash properly, because he still smelled faintly of Tim’s blood and the stuff Tim had made me drink. I’d thrown up on him, I remembered with regrettable clarity.