Medea scolded me in cat swear words and jumped off the couch in a huff.
" Shh, Mercy." All the menace left Samuel's voice as he crooned to me and knelt beside the couch. His gentle, competent hands glided over my sore body.
I opened my good eye and looked at him warily, not trusting the tone of his voice to indicate his mood. His eyes were in the shadow, but his wide mouth was soft under his long, aristocratic nose. I noted absently that he needed a haircut; his ash brown hair covered his eyebrows. There was tension in his wide shoulders, and now that I was fully awake, I could smell the aggression that had been building in the room. He turned his head to follow his hands as they played delicately over my hind legs and I caught sight of his eyes.
Pale blue, not white, like they would be if the wolf was too close to the surface.
I relaxed enough to be sincerely grateful to be lying, however battered and miserable, on my own couch and not dead-or worse, still in the company of Cory Littleton, vampire and sorcerer.
Samuel's hands touched my head and I whimpered.
As well as being a werewolf, my roommate was a doctor, a very good doctor. Of course, I suppose he ought to be. He'd been one for a very long time and had at least three medical degrees gained in two different centuries. Werewolves can be very long-lived creatures.
"Is she all right?" Stefan asked. There was something in his voice that bothered me.
Samuel's mouth tightened. "I'm not a vet, I'm a doctor. I can tell you that there are no broken bones, but until she can talk to me, that's all I know."
I tried to shift so I could help, but all I got was a burning pain across my chest and around my ribs. I let out a panicked little sound.
"What's wrong?" Samuel ran a finger gently along my jaw line.
It hurt, too. I flinched and he pulled his hands away.
"Wait," said Stefan from the far side of the couch.
His voice sounded wrong. After what the demon-possessed vampire had done to him, I had to make sure Stefan was all right. I twisted, whining with discomfort, until I could peer at the vampire with my good eye.
He'd been sitting on the floor at the foot of the couch, but, as I looked at him, he rose until he was on his knees-just as he'd been when the sorcerer had held him.
I caught Samuel's sudden lunge out of the corner of my eye. But Stefan melted away from Samuel's hand. He moved oddly. At first I thought he was hurt, that Samuel had already hit him, then I realized he was moving like Marsilia, the Mistress of the local seethe-like a puppet, or an old, old vampire who had forgotten how to be human.
"Peace, wolf," Stefan said, and I realized what had been wrong with his voice. It was dead, empty of any emotion. "Try taking the harness off of her. I think she was trying to shift, but she can't while she wears the harness."
I hadn't realized that I was still wearing it. Samuel hissed when he touched the buckles.
"They're silver," Stefan said without moving closer. "I can undo them, if you'll let me."
"You seem to have a lot to say for yourself, now, vampire," growled Samuel.
Samuel was the calmest, most even-tempered werewolf I knew-though that's not saying much-but I could hear the promise of violence in the undertones of his voice that made my ribcage vibrate.
"You asked me questions I cannot answer," said Stefan calmly, but his voice had warmed to more human cadences. "I have every hope that Mercedes will be able to satisfy your curiosity and mine. First, though, someone needs to remove the harness so she can return to her human form."
Samuel hesitated, then stepped back from me. "Do it." His voice was more growl than tone.
Stefan moved slowly, waiting for Samuel to move aside before he touched me. He smelled of my shampoo and his hair was damp. He must have taken a shower-and found clean clothes somewhere. Nothing in that motel room had escaped the murdered woman's blood. My own paws were still covered in it.
I had an immediate, visceral memory of the way the carpet had squished, supersaturated with dark, viscous fluid. I would have thrown up, but the sudden sharp pain in my head cut through the nausea, a welcome distraction.
It didn't take Stefan long to unbuckle the harness, and as soon as it was off, I changed. Stefan stepped away and let Samuel resume his place at my side.
Anger tightened the sides of Samuel's mouth as he touched my shoulder. I looked down and realized that my skin was bruised and raw where the harness had rubbed, and everywhere were small rust-colored spots of dried blood. I looked like I'd been in a car wreck.
Thinking about cars reminded me about work. I looked out the window, but the sky was still dark.
"What time is it?" I asked. My voice came out in a hoarse croak.
It was the vampire who answered. "Five forty-five."
"I need to get dressed," I said standing up abruptly, which was a mistake. I clutched my head, swore, and sat down before I fell down.
Samuel pried my hands away from my forehead. "Open your eyes, Mercy."
I did my best, but my left eye didn't want very badly to open. As soon as I had both of them opened, he blinded me with a penlight.
"Damn it, Sam," I said, trying to squirm out of his hold.
"Just once more." He was relentless, this time prying my sore eye open himself. Then he set the light aside and ran his hands over my head. I hissed as his fingers found a sore spot. "No concussion, Mercy, though you have a sizeable goose egg on the back of your head, a hell of a shiner, and, if I'm not mistaken, the rest of the left side of your face will be purple before daylight. So why does the bloodsucker say you have been unconscious for the past forty-five minutes?"
"Closer to an hour now," said Stefan. He was sitting down on the floor again, farther from me than he had been, but he was watching me with predatory intenseness.
"I don't know," I said, and it came out shakier than I meant it to.
Samuel sat beside me on the couch, pulled off the small throw blanket that hid the damage Medea had done to the back of the couch, and wrapped me in it. He started to reach for me, and I pulled away. A dominant wolf's desire to protect was a strong instinct-and Samuel was very dominant. Give him an inch and he'd take over the world, or my life if I let him.
Still, he smelled of the river, desert, and fur-and of the familiar sweet scent that belonged only to him. I quit fighting him and let my aching head rest against his arm. The resilience and warmth of his flesh against my temple helped my headache. Maybe if I didn't move, my head wouldn't fall off. Samuel made a soft, soothing noise and ran his clever fingers through my hair, avoiding the sore spot.
I hadn't forgotten or forgiven him for the flashlight, but I'd get even with him when I felt better. It had been a long time since I'd leaned on anyone, and, even knowing it was stupid to let Samuel see me so weak, I couldn't force myself to move away.
I heard Stefan go to the kitchen, open my refrigerator, and mess around in the cupboards. Then the vampire's scent drifted nearer and he said, "Get her to drink this. It will help."
"Help with what?" Samuel's voice was a good deal deeper than usual. If my head had hurt a little less, I would have moved away.
"Dehydration. She's been bitten."
Stefan was lucky I was leaning against Samuel. The werewolf started to his feet, but stopped halfway up when I whimpered at his sudden movement.
Okay, I was playing dirty, but it kept Samuel from attacking. Stefan wasn't the villain. If he'd fed off of me, I was sure it had been necessary. I wasn't in any shape to step between them, so I chose to play helpless. I only wished I'd had to act a little harder to do it.
Samuel sat back down and moved my hair away from my neck. His fingertips brushed a sore spot on the side that had just blended in with my other aches and pains. Once he touched it, though, it burned and ached all the way down to my collarbone.
"It was not me," Stefan said, but there was something uncertain in his voice-as if he wasn't entirely sure of it. I un-buried my head so I could see him. But whatever had been in his voice hadn
't touched the bland expression on his face.
"There is no danger to her beyond anemia," he told Samuel. "It takes more than a bite to change a human to a vampire-and I'm not certain Mercy could be turned anyway. If she were human, we'd have to worry that he could call her to him and command her obedience-but walkers are not so vulnerable to our magic. She just needs to rehydrate and rest."
Samuel gave the vampire a sharp look. "You're just full of information now, aren't you? If you didn't bite her, what did?"
Stefan smiled faintly, not like he meant it, and handed Samuel the glass of orange juice he'd tried to give him earlier. I knew why he handed it to Samuel and not me. Samuel was getting all territorial-I was impressed that a vampire could read him that well.
"I think Mercy would be a better narrator," Stefan said. There was a thread of uncharacteristic anxiety in his voice that distracted me from worrying about Samuel's possessiveness.
Why was Stefan so anxious to hear what I had to say? He'd been there, too.
I took the glass Samuel handed me and sat up until I wasn't leaning against him anymore. I hadn't realized how thirsty I'd been until I started drinking. I'm not usually fond of orange juice-Samuel's the one who drank it-but just then it tasted like ambrosia.
It wasn't magic, though. When I finished, my head still hurt, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my head, but I wasn't going to get any rest until Samuel knew everything-and Stefan apparently wasn't going to talk.
"Stefan called me a couple of hours ago," I began. "I owed him a favor for helping us when Jesse was kidnaped."
They both listened raptly, Stefan nodding in places. When I reached the part where we entered the hotel room, Stefan sat on the floor near my feet. He leaned his back against the couch, turned his head away from me and covered his eyes with a hand. He might just have been getting tired-the window shades were starting to lighten with the first hints of dawn as I finished up with my botched attempt at killing Littleton and my subsequent impact with the wall.
"You're sure that's what happened?" asked Stefan without uncovering his eyes.
I frowned at him, sitting up straighten "Of course I'm sure." He'd been there, so why did he sound as if he thought I might be making things up?
He rubbed his eyes and looked at me, and there was relief in his voice. "No offense meant, Mercy. Your memories of the woman's death are very different from mine."
I frowned at him. "Different how?"
"You say that all I did was kneel on the ground while Littleton murdered the hotel maid?"
"That's right."
"I don't remember that," he said, his voice a bare whisper. "I remember the sorcerer brought the woman out, her blood called to me, and I answered it." He licked his lips and the combination of horror and hunger in his eyes made me glance away from him. He continued in a whisper, almost to himself. "Bloodlust has not overcome me in a long, long time."
"Well," I said, not sure if what I had to tell him would help or hurt, "you weren't pretty. Your eyes glowed and you showed some fang. But you didn't do anything to her."
For a moment, a pale reflection of the ruby glow I'd seen in the hotel room gleamed in his irises. "I remember reveling in the woman's blood, painting it on my hands and face. It was still there when I brought you home and I had to wash it off." He closed his eyes. "There is an old ceremony… forbidden now for a long time but I remember …" He shook his head and turned his attention to his hands which he held loosely looped around one knee. " I can taste her still."
Those words hung uncomfortably in the air for a moment before he continued.
"I was lost in the blood"-he said that phrase as if the words belonged together and might mean something more complex than their literal meaning-"when I came to myself, the other vampire was gone. The woman lay as I remember leaving her, and you were unconscious."
He swallowed and then stared at the lightening window, his voice dropped an octave, like the wolves' voices can sometimes. "I couldn't remember what had happened to you."
He reached out and touched my foot, which was the body part nearest him. When he spoke again, his voice was almost normal. "A memory lapse is not inconsistent with bloodlust." His hand moved until it closed carefully around my toes; his skin was cool against mine. "But bloodlust usually only dulls unimportant things. You are important to me, Mercedes. It occurred to me that you were not important to Cory Littleton. And that thought gave me hope while I drove us here."
I was important to Stefan? All I was to him was his mechanic. He'd done a favor for me, and last night I'd returned it in spades. We might possibly be friends-except that I didn't think vampires had friends. I thought about it a moment and realized that Stefan was important to me. If something had happened to him tonight, something permanent, it would have hurt me. Maybe he felt the same way.
"You think he tampered with your memory?" Samuel asked while I was still thinking. He'd scooted closer and slid an arm around my shoulders. It felt good. Too good. I slid forward on the couch, away from Samuel-and Stefan let his hand fall away from my foot as I moved.
Stefan nodded. "Either my memory or Mercy's is obviously wrong. I don't think he could affect Mercy's, even being a sorcerer. That kind of thing just doesn't work on walkers like her, not unless he made a real effort."
Samuel made a hmm sound. "I don't see why he'd want to make Mercy think you were innocent of murder-especially if he thought she was just a coyote." He looked at Stefan who shrugged.
"Walkers were only a threat for a couple of decades, and that centuries ago. Littleton is very new; I would be surprised if he's even heard of anything like Mercy. The demon might know, one never is quite sure what demons know. But the best evidence that Littleton thinks Mercy was nothing more than a coyote is that she is still alive."
Goody for me.
"All right." Samuel rubbed his face. "I'd better call Adam. He needs to get his clean-up crew to the hotel before someone sees the mess and starts shouting werewolf." He raised an eyebrow at Stefan. "Although I suppose we could just tell the police it was a vampire."
It had been less than six months since the werewolves had followed the fae in coming out into the public view. They hadn't told the human population everything, and only those werewolves who chose to do so came out in the open-most of those were in the military, people already separated from the general population. So far we were all holding our breath waiting to see what would come of it, but, so far, there had been none of the rioting that had marked the fae's exposure a few decades earlier.
Part of the quiet reaction was the Marrok's careful planning. Americans feel safe in our modern world. Bran did his best to protect that illusion, presenting his public wolves as victims who took their affliction and bravely used it to protect others. Werewolves, he wanted the public to believe, at least for a while yet, were just people who turned furry under the full moon. The wolves who had come out first were heroes who put their lives on the line to protect the weaker humans. The Marrok, like the fae before him, chose to keep as much of the werewolves' darker aspects as carefully hidden as he could.
But I think most of the credit for the peaceful acceptance of the revelation belongs to the fae. For more than two decades the fae had managed to present themselves as weak, kindly, and gentle-and anyone who has read their Brothers Grimm or Andrew Lang knows just what a feat that is.
No matter what Samuel threatened, his father, the Marrok, would never agree to expose the vampires. There was no way to soft-pedal the fact that vampires fed on humans.
And once people realized there really were monsters, they might just realize that werewolves were monsters, too.
Stefan knew what the Marrok would say as well as Samuel did. He smiled unpleasantly at the werewolf, exposing his fangs. "The mess has been taken care of. I called my mistress before I brought Mercy home. We don't need werewolves to clean up after us." Stefan was usually more polite than that, but he'd had a bad night, too.
&
nbsp; "The other vampire gave you false memories," I said to distract the men from their antagonism. "Was that because he was a sorcerer?"
Stefan tilted his head, as if he were embarrassed. "We can do that with humans," he said, which was something I didn't want to know. He saw my reaction and explained, "That means we can leave those we casually feed from alive, Mercedes. Still, humans are one thing, and vampires another. We're not supposed to be able to do it to each other. You don't have to worry, though. No vampire can remake your memory-probably not even one who is a sorcerer."
Relief climbed through me. If I were going to pick things I didn't want a vampire to do to me, messing with my thoughts was very high on the list. I touched my neck.
"That's why you wanted me with you," I sat up straighten "You said he'd done it to another vampire. What did he make the other vampire think he'd done?"
Stefan looked wary… and guilty.
"You knew he'd kill someone, didn't you?" I accused him. "Is that what he did to the other vampire? Make him think he'd killed someone?" The memory of the slow death I hadn't been able to prevent made me clench my fists.
"I didn't know what he would do. But yes, I believed that he had killed before and made my friend think he had done it." He spoke as if the words left a bitter taste in his mouth. "But I could not act without proof. So more died who should not have."
"You're a vampire," said Samuel. "Don't try to make us believe you care when innocents die."
Stefan met Samuel's eyes. "I have swallowed enough death in years past that more sickens me, but believe as you wish. So many deaths threaten our secrets, werewolf. Even if I cared nothing for any human's death, I would not have wanted so many to die and endanger our secrets."
So many to die?
His sureness that noise wouldn't disturb anyone in the hotel when Littleton had invited us in became suddenly clear. The thing I'd seen kill the woman would not have hesitated to kill as many people as he could. "Who else died tonight?"
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