"I came on pack business," I told them.
Charles raised his eyebrows. "You come smelling of blood and death." Charles had always had a good nose.
I nodded. "I brought the Columbia Basin Alpha here. He's been badly wounded. I also brought the body of another wolf, hoping someone here could tell me how he died and who killed him."
Bran made a soft sound, and Charles nodded. "Tell us what is necessary now. You can give us the details later."
So I told them what I knew, as succinctly as possible, beginning with Mac's story, as he had told it to me, and ending with Mac's death, Adam's wounds, and Jesse's kidnapping. By the time I was finished, my teeth were chattering, and I could barely understand myself. Even when I shifted back into coyote form, I couldn't quite warm up.
Bran glanced at Samuel, who gave a woof and took off at a dead run.
"Bran will finish the hunt with the new ones," Charles told me. "It is their first hunt, and should not be interrupted. Samuel is going back to take care of Adam-He'll take a shorter route than the automobiles can manage, so he'll be there before us. I'll ride back with you and take care of your dead."
On the tail end of Charles's words, Bran trotted off into the forest without looking at me again. Leah rose from her submissive pose, growled at me-like it was my fault she'd gotten herself in trouble-and followed Bran.
Charles, still in human form, strode off in the direction of the cars. He wasn't talkative at the best of times and, with me still four-footed and mute, he didn't bother to say anything at all. He waited politely on the passenger side of the van while I transformed again and dove into my clothes.
He didn't object to my driving as Samuel would have. I'd never seen Charles drive a car; he preferred to ride horseback or run as a wolf. He climbed into the passenger seat and glanced once behind him at the tarped body. Without commenting, he belted himself in.
When we got back to the motel, I pulled in at the office door. Carl was in the office with a red-eyed young woman who must be the missing Marlie, though I couldn't see the six-year-old I'd known.
"Mercedes needs a room," Charles told them.
Carl didn't question him, just handed me a key. "This is on the side away from the road, as far from #1 as we get."
I looked down at the #18 stamped on the key. "Don't you know that you're not supposed to put the room number on the key anymore?" I asked.
"We don't have much trouble with burglary," Carl said, smiling. "Besides, I know you spent a couple of years working here. Except for number one, there are only three different locks for all the rooms."
I smiled at him and tossed the key up once and caught it. "True enough."
Charles opened the door for me as we left. "If you'll get your luggage and give me your car keys, I'll take care of the body."
I must have looked surprised.
"Don't worry," he told me dryly. "I'll have Carl drive."
"No luggage," I told him. I pulled out my keys and gave them to him, but caught his hand before he pulled away. "Mac was a good man," I told him. I don't know why I said it.
Charles didn't touch anyone casually. I had always thought he rather despised me, though he treated me with the same remote courtesy he used with everyone else. But he put his free hand on the back of my head and pulled my forehead briefly against his shoulder.
"I'll take care of him," he promised as he stepped back.
"His full name was Alan MacKenzie Frazier."
He nodded. "I'll see that he is treated well."
"Thank you," I told him, then turned and walked toward my room before I could start to cry again.
CHAPTER 6
There was a pile of National Geographic s and a paperback mystery stacked neatly on the nightstand. As I recall, the reading material was put there originally to make up for the absence of a TV. When I'd cleaned rooms here, you couldn't get reception so far in the mountains. Now there was a dish on top of the motel and a small TV positioned so you could watch it either from the bed or the small table in the kitchenette.
I wasn't interested in watching old reruns or soap operas so I flipped desultorily through the magazines. They looked familiar. Maybe they were the same stack that had been here when I'd last cleaned this room: the newest one was dated May of 1976, so it was possible. Or maybe random stacks of National Geographic s have a certain sameness gained from years of appearing in waiting rooms.
I wondered if Jesse were lying in a hospital somewhere. My mind flashed to a morgue, but I brought it back under control. Panic wouldn't help anyone. I was doing the best that I could.
I picked up the lone book and sat on the bed. The cover was not prepossessing, being a line drawing of a Wisconsin-style barn, but I opened it anyway and started reading. I closed it before I'd read more than the first sentence. I couldn't bear sitting here alone, doing nothing.
I left the room. It was colder than it had been, and all I had was my T-shirt, so I ran to number one. I had the key in the pocket of my jeans, but when I tried the door, it opened.
Adam lay on top of the bed on his side, his muzzle wrapped with a businesslike strap. Samuel was bent over him wearing a pair of jeans, plastic gloves, and nothing else. It was a measure of my concern for Adam that my eyes didn't linger. Charles, leaning against the wall, glanced at me but said nothing.
"Shut the door," Samuel snapped, without looking up. "Damn it, Mercy, you should have set the break before you threw him in the car and drove all day-you of all people know how fast we heal. I'll have to rebreak his leg."
Samuel had never yelled at me before. He was the least volatile male werewolf I'd ever met.
"I don't know how to set bones," I said, wrapping my arms around myself. But he was right. I knew werewolves heal incredibly fast-I just hadn't thought about what that meant as far as broken bones were concerned. I hadn't even known his leg was broken. I'd been stupid. I should have just called Darryl.
"How much training does it take to set a leg?" Samuel continued with barely a pause. "All you have to do is pull it straight." His hands were gentle as they stretched out Adam's leg. "He'd have had someone with medic training in his pack. You could have called for help if you didn't have the guts for it yourself." Then to Adam he said, "Brace yourself." From my position by the door, I couldn't see what he did, but I heard a bone snap, and Adam jerked and made a noise I never want to hear again.
"I was worried that someone from his pack was involved in the attack," I whispered. "Adam was unconscious. I couldn't ask him. And they don't have anyone strong enough to control Adam's wolf."
Samuel glanced back at me, then swore. "If all you can do is snivel, then get the hell out of here."
Despite his condition, Adam growled, swiveling his head to look at Samuel.
"I'm sorry," I said, and left, closing the door tightly behind me.
I'd spent twenty minutes staring at the first page of the mystery when someone knocked on the door. My nose told me it was Samuel, so I didn't answer right away.
"Mercy?" His voice was soft, just as I remembered it, with just a touch of Celt.
If I left early in the morning, I could get a head start on looking for Jesse, I thought, staring at the door. Someone else could take Adam back when he was ready to travel. If I left early enough, I could avoid talking to Samuel altogether.
"Mercy. I know you're listening to me."
I stared at the door, but didn't say anything. I didn't want to talk to him. He'd been right. I had been useless-subjecting Adam to a six-hour drive because of a chance remark of Darryl's, a remark that I was beginning to think meant nothing. Of course, as I'd told Samuel earlier, the pack would have had to bring Adam to Montana or at least send for a dominant until Adam could control himself-but they would have set his broken leg immediately. Darryl and the pack could be out looking for Jesse with Adam safely on the road to recovery if I hadn't been so stupid.
In my own world of engines and CV joints, I'd grown used to being competent. If Adam had been a car, I'
d have known what to do. But in Aspen Creek, I'd always been not quite good enough-some things, it seemed, hadn't changed.
"Mercy, look, I'm sorry. If you didn't know first aid, and you couldn't trust his pack, there's nothing else you could have done."
His voice was soft and sweet as molasses; but my mother once told me that you had to trust that the first thing out of a person's mouth was truth. After they have a chance to think about it, they'll change what they say to be more socially acceptable, something they think you'll be happier with, something that will get the results they want. I knew what he wanted, what he had always wanted from me, even if-while he had been working on Adam's injuries-Samuel, himself, had forgotten.
"Adam tore a strip off me for being so hard on you," he said, his voice coaxing. "He was right. I was mad because I don't like hurting someone unnecessarily, and I took it out on you. Can I come in and talk to you instead of the door?"
I rubbed my face tiredly. I wasn't sixteen anymore, to run away from difficult things, no matter how attractive that option was. There were, I thought reluctantly, things I needed to say to him as well.
"All right," he said. "All right, Mercy. I'll see you in the morning."
He had turned around and was already walking away when I opened the door.
"Come in," I said and shivered when the wind blew through my shirt. "But you'd better hurry. It's colder than a witch's britches out there."
He came back and stomped his feet hard on the mat, leaving behind clumps of snow before stepping inside my room. He took off his coat and set it on the table near the door, and I saw he'd found a shirt somewhere. They kept stashes of clothes around town, in case someone needed to dress quickly; unisex things mostly, like jeans, T-shirts, and sweats. The T-shirt he wore was a little small and clung to him like a second skin. If he'd had an extra ounce of fat or a little less muscle, it would have looked stupid, but he was built like a Chippendales' dancer.
His body was lovely, but I don't know if anyone else would have called him handsome. He certainly didn't have Adam's strikingly beautiful features. Sam's eyes were deeply set, his nose was too long, his mouth too wide. His coloring in human form was much less striking than his wolf: light blue-gray eyes and brown hair, streaked just a bit from the sun.
Looking at his face, I wasn't objective enough to decide how attractive he was: he was just Sam who had been my friend, my defender, and my sweetheart.
I glanced away from his face, dropping my own so that he couldn't read my anger-and whatever other emotion was hammering at me-until I'd gotten it under control. If he read the wrong thing into it, that wasn't my fault. I hadn't let him in to argue with him.
"I didn't think you were going to talk to me," he said, with a shadow of his usual warm smile in his voice.
"Me either," I agreed grimly to my shoes-I wasn't going to get through this if I had to look at him. "But I owe you an apology, too."
"No." His tone was wary. Apparently he was too smart to believe my submissive gaze. "You have nothing to be sorry for. I shouldn't have snapped your nose off earlier."
"It's all right," I told him. "You were probably right. I found Mac dead and Adam almost in the same shape-and I panicked." I walked to the bed and sat on it, because it was as far away from him as I could get in the motel room. Only then did I dare to look at him again. " My apology is years overdue. I should have talked to you before I left. I should have told you I'd decided to go to Portland." But I was afraid I might do something stupid like shoot you or, worse, cry — but he didn't need to know that part.
The humor that usually touched his face leaked away, leaving behind neutral wariness, as if he were watching for a trap. "My father told me he'd spoken to you and persuaded you to go to your mother's house instead of running off with me," he said.
"How long did you wait for me?" After Bran had caught us necking in the woods and told me he was sending me to Portland, Samuel had decided that he'd take me away with him instead. I was supposed to sneak out and meet him in the woods a mile or so from my house. But the Marrok knew, he was like that. He told me why Samuel wanted to take me as his mate-and it hadn't been for any reason I could accept.
So while Samuel waited for me, Charles was driving me down to Libby to catch the train to Portland that morning instead.
Samuel looked away from me without answering.
In his own way, Samuel was the most honorable person I'd ever known-something that made his betrayal hurt worse because I knew that he'd never meant me to believe he loved me. He'd told me he would wait for me, and I knew he'd waited long after he'd realized I wasn't going to come.
"That's what I thought," I said in a small voice. Damn it, he shouldn't still affect me this way. I found that I was taking deeper breaths than I normally did, just to breathe in his scent.
"I should have told you I'd changed my mind," I told him, clinging by my fingernails to the threads of what I needed to tell him. "I'm sorry for abandoning you without a word. It was neither right nor kind."
"Father told you to go without talking to me again," Samuel said. He sounded detached, but he'd turned his back on me and was staring at a damp spot on the rug near his boots.
"I am not of his pack," I snapped. "That has always been made perfectly clear to me. It means I didn't have to obey Bran then. I shouldn't have, and I knew it at the time. I'm sorry. Not for leaving, that was the right decision, but I should have told you what I was doing. I was a coward."
"My father told me what he told you." His voice started calmly enough, but there was a tinge of anger weaving itself through his words as he continued. "But you should have known all of that already. I didn't hide anything."
There was no defensiveness in his voice or in his posture; he really didn't understand what he'd done to me-as stupid as that made him in my eyes. It was still good, somehow, to know that the hurt he'd caused me had been unintentional.
He turned, his eyes met mine, and I felt the zing that had once been as familiar as his face. Part of it was attraction; but part of it was the power of a dominant wolf. The attraction brought me to my feet and halfway across the room before I realized what I was doing.
"Look, Samuel," I said, coming to an abrupt halt before I touched him. "I'm tired. It's been a rough day. I don't want to fight with you over things that are long past."
"All right." His voice was soft, and he gave a little nod to himself. "We can talk more tomorrow."
He put his coat back on, started for the door, then turned back. "I almost forgot, Charles and Carl took the body-"
"Mac," I told him sharply.
"Mac," he said, gentling his tone. I wished he hadn't done that, because his sympathy brought tears to my eyes. "They took Mac to our clinic and brought back your van. Charles gave me the keys. He would have returned them himself, but you left the room too quickly. I told him I was coming to deliver an apology, so he gave them to me."
"Did he lock the van?" I asked. "I've a pair of guns in there, loaded for werewolves-" Mention of the guns reminded me of something else, something odd. "Oh, and there's a tranquilizer dart of some sort that I found near Adam when I moved him."
"The van's locked," he said. "Charles found the dart and left it at the lab because he said it smelled of silver and Adam. Now that I know where you found it, I'll make sure to look it over carefully."
"Mac said someone was using him to experiment on," I told him. "They'd found some drugs that worked on werewolves, he said."
Samuel nodded. "I remember you telling us that."
He held out my keys and, careful not to touch his hand, I took them from him. He smiled as if I'd done something interesting and I realized I shouldn't have been so careful. If I had felt nothing for him, touching his hand wouldn't have bothered me. Living among normal humans, I'd forgotten how difficult it was to hide anything from werewolves.
"Good night, Mercy," he said.
Then he was gone, and the room felt emptier for his leaving it. I'd better go in the mornin
g, I thought, as I listened to the snow squeak under his feet as he walked away.
I was busy reading page fourteen for the third time when someone else knocked on the door.
"I brought dinner," said a man's pleasant tenor.
I set the book down and opened the door.
A sandy-haired young man with a nondescript face held a plastic tray loaded with two plastic-wrapped sub sandwiches, a pair of styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, and a dark blue winter jacket. Maybe it was the food, but it occurred to me that if Bran looked that much like the cliché of a delivery boy, it was probably on purpose. He liked to be unobtrusive.
He gave me a small smile when I didn't step away from the door right away. "Charles told me that Adam is going to be fine, and Samuel made a fool of himself."
"Samuel apologized," I told him, stepping back and letting him into the room.
The kitchenette had a two-burner stove, six-pack-sized fridge, and a small, Formica-covered table with two chairs. After tossing the coat on the bed, Bran set the tray on the table and rearranged the contents until there was a sandwich and cup on each side.
"Charles told me that you didn't have a coat, so I brought one. I also thought you might like something to eat," he said. "Then we can discuss what we're to do with your Alpha and his missing daughter."
He sat down on one side and gestured for me to take the other seat. I sat and realized I hadn't eaten anything all day-I hadn't been hungry. I still wasn't.
True to his word, he didn't talk while he ate and I picked. The sandwich tasted of refrigerator, but the cocoa was rich with marshmallows and real vanilla.
He ate faster than I did, but waited patiently for me to finish. The sandwich was one of those huge subs, built to feed you for a week. I ate part of it and wrapped the rest in the plastic it had come in. Bran had eaten all of his, but werewolves need a lot of food.
My foster mother had liked to say, "Never starve a werewolf, or he might ask you to join him for lunch." She'd always pat her husband on the head afterward, even if he was in human form.
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