She laughed. "No, silly. Jim was not very happy with you—I'm not going to help you escape. I'll just sleep out here. It'll be quite comfortable. Just like camping out."
"Come here," I said. I didn't know that it would work. I didn't know anything.
But she came. I didn't know if she was compelled, or just following my request.
"What do you need?" She stopped within an easy arm's reach.
I put my arm through the bars and held out my hand. She looked at it a moment, but took it.
"Amber," I said solemnly, looking into her eyes. "Chad will be safe. I promise."
She nodded earnestly. "I'll take care of him."
"No." I swallowed and then put authority in my voice. "You're dead, Amber." Her expression didn't change. I narrowed my eyes at her in my best Adam imitation. "Believe me."
First her face lit up with that horrible fake smile, and she started to say something. She looked down at my hand, then over to Corban and Chad—who hadn't noticed her yet.
"You're dead," I told her, again.
She collapsed where she stood. It wasn't graceful or gentle. Her head bounced off the floor with a hollow sound.
"Can he take her again?" asked Corban urgently.
I knelt and closed her eyes. "No," I told him with more conviction than I felt. Who knew what
Blackwood could do? But her husband needed to believe it was over for her. At any rate, it wouldn't be Amber who walked around in her body. Amber was gone.
"Thank you," he told me, with tears in his eyes. He wiped his face and tapped Chad on the shoulder.
"Hey, kid," he said, and he stepped away so Chad could see Amber's body. They talked for a long time then. Corban played it tough and gave his son the gift of the belief in the superman qualities of fathers for at least one more day.
We slept, all of us, as far from Amber's body as we could get. They pushed the bed up close to my cell and the two of them slept on that and I slept on the floor next to them. Chad reached though the bars and kept a hand on my shoulder. The cell floor could have been a bed of nails, and I would still have slept.
"MERCY?"
The voice was unfamiliar—but so was the cement under my cheek. I stirred and regretted it immediately. Everything hurt.
"Mercy, it is dark, and Blackwood will be here soon."
I sat up and looked across the room at the oakman. "Good evening." I didn't use his name. Some of the fae can be funny about names, and the way Blackwood had overused it made me think that the oakman was one of those. I couldn't thank him, and I searched for a way to acknowledge his honoring my request, but I didn't find one.
"I'm going to try something," I said finally. I closed my eyes and called to Stefan. When I felt I'd done as good a job at that as I could, I opened my eyes and rubbed my aching neck.
"What are you trying to do?" Corban asked.
"I can't tell you," I said. "I'm very sorry. But Blackwood can't know-and I'm not sure it worked." But I thought so. I never had been able to feel Stefan like I did Adam. If Blackwood hadn't managed to take me over… yet… that should mean Stefan could still hear me. I hoped.
I tried touching Adam, too. But I couldn't feel anything from him or the pack. It was probably just as well. Blackwood had said he was ready for werewolves, and I believed him.
Blackwood didn't come down. We all tried not to notice Amber, and I was grateful for the coolness of the basement. The ghosts didn't show up either. We talked about vampires until I'd told them everything
I knew in general—only leaving out the names.
Stefan also did not come.
After hours of tedium and a few minutes of embarrassment when someone had to use the buckets left for us, I finally tried to sleep again. I dreamed of sheep. Lots of sheep.
SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NEXT DAY I REGRETTED that I had not eaten the food Amber had prepared. But I was more thirsty than anything. The fairy staff showed up once, and I told it to go away and be safe, speaking softly so no one would notice. When I glanced back at the corner it had been in, it was gone again.
Chad taught me and the oakman how to swear in ASL and worked with us until we were pretty good at finger spelling. It left my hands aching, but kept him occupied.
We knew that Blackwood was paying attention to us again when Corban stopped in the middle of a sentence. After a few minutes he turned his head, and Blackwood opened the door.
The vampire looked at me without favor. "And where do you suppose I'm going to find another cook for you?" He took the body away and returned a few hours later with apples and oranges and bottled water—tossing them carelessly through the bars.
His hands smelled of Amber, rot, and earth. I supposed he'd buried her somewhere.
He took Corban away. When Chad's father returned, he was stumblingly weak and had another bite mark on his neck.
"My friend is better at that than you are," I said in a snotty voice because Blackwood had paused, with the cage door open, to look at Chad. "He doesn't leave huge bruises behind."
The vampire slammed the door, locked it, and stowed the key in his pants pocket. "Whenever you open your mouth," he said, "I marvel that the Marrok didn't wring your neck years ago." He smiled a little.
"Fine. Since you are the cause of my hunger, you may feed it."
The cause of his hunger… when I sent Amber away from her dead body, it must have hurt him. Good. Now all I had to do was get him to make a lot more zombies or whatever he wanted to call them. Then I could destroy them, too. I might weaken him enough that we could take him. Of course, the nearest available people to become zombies were us.
He opened my cage door, and I had to think really hard about the present not to panic. I fought him. I didn't think he'd expected it.
Years of karate had honed my reflexes, and I was faster than a human would have been. But I was weak—an apple a day might keep the doctor away, but it's not, by itself, the best diet for optimum performance. After a time that was too short for my ego to be happy, he had me pinned.
He left me aware this time when he bit my neck. It hurt the whole time, either a further punishment or Stefan's bites were giving him trouble—I didn't know enough to tell. When he tried to feed me in return,
I fought as hard as I could and finally he grabbed my jaw and forced his gaze on me.
I woke up on the far side of the cage, and Blackwood was gone. Chad was making noise, trying to get my attention. I rose to hands and knees. When it was quite clear that I wasn't going to get up farther than that, I sat up instead of standing. Chad stopped making those sad, desperate sounds. I made the sign he'd taught me for the «f-word» and finger-spelled, very slowly with clumsy fingers. "That's it. No more Ms. Nice Girl. Next time I scalp him."
It made him smile a very little. Corban was sitting in the middle of their cage looking at a mark in the cement.
"Well, oakman," I said, tiredly. "Is it daylight or darkness?"
Before he answered me, Stefan was there in my cage. I blinked stupidly at him. I'd given up on him, but I hadn't realized it until he was there. I reached out and touched his arm lightly to make sure he was real.
He patted my hand and gave a quick look up as if he could see through the ceiling to the floor above.
"He knows I'm here. Mercy—"
"You have to take Chad," I told him urgently
"Chad?" Stefan followed my gaze and stiffened. He started to shake his head.
"Blackwood killed his mother—but left her a zombie to do his chores until I killed her for real." I told him. "Chad has to be taken to safety."
He stared at the boy, who was staring back. "If I take him, I can't come back for a couple of nights. I'll be unconscious, and no one knows where you are but me—and Marsilia." He bit her name out as if he still weren't happy with her. "And she wouldn't lift a finger to help you."
"I can survive a couple of nights," I told him with conviction.
Stefan clenched his hands. "If I do it," he told me fiercely, "
if I do this and you survive—you will forgive me for the others."
"Yes," I said. "Get Chad out of here."
He was gone, then reappeared standing next to Chad. He started to use ASL to say something—but we both heard Blackwood race down the stairs.
"To Adam or Samuel," I said urgently.
"Yes," Stefan told me. "Stay alive."
He waited until I nodded, then he disappeared with Chad.
BLACKWOOD WAS MUCH MORE UNHAPPY ABOUT STEFAN'S presence in his house than he was with Chad's escape. He ranted and raved, and if he hit me again, I was worried I might not be able to keep my promise to Stefan.
Apparently he came to the same conclusion. He stood looking down at me. "There are ways to keep other vampires out of my home. But they are taxing, and I expect that your friend Corban won't survive my thirst." He bent forward. "Ah, now you are frightened. Good." He inhaled like a wine taster with a particularly fine vintage.
He left.
I curled up on the floor and hugged my misery to me—along with the fairy staff. The oakman stirred.
"Mercy, what is it that you have?"
I raised one hand and waved it feebly in the air so he could see it. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it should.
There was a little pause, and the Oakman said, reverently, "How did that come to be here?"
"It's not my fault," I told him. It took me a moment to sit up… and I realized that Blackwood had been much more in control of himself than he appeared because nothing was broken. There wasn't much of me that wasn't bruised—but not broken was good.
"What do you mean?" the oakman asked.
"I tried to give it back," I explained, "but it keeps showing up. I told it that this wasn't a good place for it, but it leaves for a while, then comes back."
"By your leave," he said formally, "may I see it?"
"Sure," I said, and tried to throw it to him. I should have been able to do it. The distance between our cages was less than ten feet, but the… bruises made it more difficult than normal.
It landed on the floor halfway between us. But as I stared at it in dismay, it rolled back toward me, not stopping until it was against the cage bars.
The third time I threw it, the oakman caught it out of the air.
"Ah, Lugh, you did such fine work," he crooned, petting the thing. He rested a cheek against it. "It follows you because it owes you service, Mercy." He smiled, awakening lines and wrinkles in the dark-wood-colored face and brightening his black eyes to purple. "And because it likes you."
I started to say something to him, but a surge of magic interrupted me.
The oakman's smile drained away. "Brownie magic," he told me. "He seeks to lock the other vampire out. The brownie was His before me, and she found her release just this past spring. His use of her power is still nearly complete." He looked over at Corban. "The magic he works will leave him hungry."
I had one thing I could do—and it meant abandoning my word to Stefan. But I couldn't let Blackwood kill Corban without making any attempt to defend him.
I stripped out of my clothes and shifted. The bars in my cage were set close together. But, I hoped, not too close.
Coyotes are narrow side to side. Very narrow. Anything I can get my head through, I can get everything else through, too. When I stood on the other side of my cage, I shook my fur straight and watched the door open.
Blackwood wasn't watching for me, he was looking at Corban. So I got in the first strike.
Speed is the one physical power I have. I'm as fast as most werewolves—and from what I've seen, most vampires, too.
I should have been weakened and a little slow because of the damage Blackwood had dealt me—and the lack of real food and because I'd been feeding the vampire. Except that exchanging blood with a vampire can have other effects. I'd forgotten that. It made me strong.
I wished, fiercely, that I weighed a couple of hundred pounds instead of just over thirty. Wished for longer fangs and sharper claws—because all I could do was surface damage he healed almost as soon as
I inflicted it.
He grabbed me in both hands and threw me at the cement wall. It seemed as though I flew in slow motion. There was time to twist and hit on my feet instead of my side as he'd intended. There was power to vault off unhurt and hit the ground, already running back to attack.
This time, though, I didn't have surprise on my side. If I'd been running from him, he couldn't have caught me. But up close, the advantage of superior speed lost out to the disadvantage of my size. I hurt him once, digging my fangs into his shoulder, but I was looking for a kill—and there was just no way a coyote, no matter how fast or strong, could kill a vampire.
I dodged back, looking for an opening… and he fell face-first on the cement floor. Standing like a victory flag, stuck deep into Blackwood's back, was the walking stick.
"Fair spearman was I once," the oakman said. "And Lugh was better still. Nothing he built but what couldn't become a spear when needed."
Panting, I stared at him, then down at Blackwood. Who wiggled.
I shifted back to human because I could deal with doors better that way. Then I ran for the kitchen where, hopefully, there would be a knife big enough to go through bone.
The wooden block beside the sink yielded both a butcher knife and a large French chef's knife. I grabbed one in each hand and ran down the stairs.
The door was shut and the knob wouldn't turn. "Let me in," I ordered in a voice I hardly recognized as mine.
"No. No," said John's voice. "You can't kill him. I'll be alone."
But the door opened, and that was all I cared about.
I didn't see John, but Catherine was kneeling beside Blackwood. She spared a glare for me, but she was paying more attention to the dying (I fervently hoped) vampire.
"Let me drink, dear," she crooned to him. "Let me drink, and I'll take care of her for you."
He looked at me as he tried to get his arms underneath him. "Drink," he said. Then he smiled at me.
With a crow of triumph she bent her head.
She was still drinking when the butcher knife swooshed through her insubstantial head and cut cleanly through Blackwood's neck. An axe would have been better, but with his strength still lingering in my arms, the butcher knife got the job done. A second cut took his head completely off.
His head touched my toes, and I edged them away. A knife in either hand, I had no chance to feel triumphant or sick at what I'd done. Not with a very solid Catherine smiling her grandmotherly smile only six feet from me.
She smiled, her mouth red with Blackwood's blood. "Die," she said, and reached out—
Last year Sensei spent six months on sai forms. The knives weren't so well-balanced for fighting, but they worked. It was a butcher's job I made of it—and I managed it only by clinging fiercely to the here and now. The floors, the walls, and I were all drenched in blood. And she wasn't dead… or rather she was dead already. The knives kept her off me, but none of the wounds seemed to affect her at all.
"Throw me the stick," said the oakman softly.
I dropped the French chef's knife and grabbed the staff with my free hand. It slid out of Blackwood's back as if it didn't want to be there. For a moment I thought that the end was a sharp point, but my attention was focused on Catherine and I couldn't be sure.
I tossed it to the Oakman and drove Catherine away from Corban's cage. He'd collapsed when I'd cut off Blackwood's head in a motion not unlike Amber's zombie. I hoped he wasn't dead—but there wasn't anything I could do about it if he was.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the oakman lick the blood-covered stick with a tongue at least eight inches long. "Death blood is best," he told me. And then he flung the stick at the outside wall, and said a word…
The blast knocked me off my feet and onto Blackwood's corpse. Something hit me in the back of the head.
I STARED AT THE POOL OF SUNLIGHT THAT COVERED MY hand. It took me a moment to realize that whatever had hit
me must have knocked me out. Under my hand was a thick pile of ash, and I jerked away. Buried in the ash was a key. It was a pretty key, one of those ornate skeleton keys. It took all my willpower to put my hand back into what had been Blackwood and pick it up. I hurt from head to heels, but the bruises the vampire had inflicted after Chad escaped were mostly gone. And the others were fading as I watched.
I didn't want to think about that too much.
The oakman had a hand stretched though the bars, but he hadn't been able to touch the sunlight streaming into the basement from the hole he'd blasted in the wall with my walking stick. His eyes were closed.
I opened the cage, but he didn't move. I had to drag him out. I didn't pay attention to whether or not he was breathing. Or I tried very hard not to. So what if he wasn't, I thought. Fae are very hard to kill.
"Mercy?" It was Corban.
I stared at him a moment, trying to figure out what to do next.
"Could you unlock my door?" His voice was soft and gentle. The sort of voice you'd use on a madwoman.
I looked down at myself and realized that I was naked and covered with blood from head to toe. The butcher knife was still in my left hand. My hand had cramped around it, and I had to work to drop it on the floor.
The key unlocked Corban's door, too.
"Chad's with some friends of mine," I told him. My voice slurred a bit, and I recognized that I was a little shocky. The realization helped me a little, and my voice was clearer when I told him, "The kinds of friends who might be able to protect a boy from a vampire run amok."
"Thank you," he said. "You were unconscious a long time. How are you feeling?"
I gave him a tired smile. "My head hurts."
"Let's get you cleaned up."
He led me up the stairs. I didn't think that I should have grabbed my clothes until I stood alone in a huge, gold-and-black bathroom. I turned the shower on.
"John," I said. I didn't bother looking for him because I could feel him. "You will never harm anyone again." I felt the push of magic that told me whatever it was I could do to ghosts had worked on him. So
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