"I was in the kitchen, so I don't know exactly what happened, but from the sounds, I'd say they shot him as soon as he opened the door."
"Which was stupid," commented Samuel. "They'd know you had to hear the shots-even a tranq gun makes a pretty good pop."
Adam started to shrug-then stopped with a pained expression. "Damned if-excuse me, Mercedes-I'll be darned if I know what they were thinking."
"They didn't kill him on purpose, did they?" I said. I'd been thinking, too. A gun with silver bullets is a much more certain thing than a dart full of experimental drugs.
"I don't think so," Samuel agreed. "It looked like a massive allergic reaction to the silver."
"There was silver in the dart Mercedes found? Just like Charles thought?" asked Adam.
"Yes," said Samuel. "I've sent the dart off to the lab along with a sample of Mac's blood for proper analysis, but it looks to me as though they combined silver nitrate with DMSO and Special K."
"What?" I asked.
"Special K is Ketamine," Adam said. "It's been used as a recreational drug for a while, but it started out as an animal tranquilizer. It doesn't work on werewolves. Silver nitrate is used to develop film. What's DMSO?"
"Silver nitrate is a convenient way to get silver in a solution," Samuel said. "It's used to treat eye infections, too-though I wouldn't recommend it for a werewolf."
"I've never heard of a werewolf with an eye infection," I said, though I understood his point.
He smiled at me, but continued to talk to Adam. "DMSO-Dimeythyl Sulfoxide. It has a lot of odd properties, but the one of most interest here is that it can carry other drugs with it across membranes."
I stared at the road ahead of me and put my right hand in front of the heater to warm it. The seals on my windows needed replacing, and the heater wasn't keeping up with the Montana air. Funny, I didn't remember being cold on the way over. No room for simple discomfort when you are trying to save someone, I guess.
"There was something in chem lab my freshman year," I said. "We mixed it with peppermint oil and put a finger in it-I could taste peppermint."
"Right," said Samuel. "That's the stuff. So take DMSO and mix it with a silver solution, and presto, the silver is carried throughout the werewolf's body, poisoning as it goes so that the tranquilizer, in this case, Ketamine, goes to work without interference from the werewolf metabolism that would normally prevent the drug from having any effect at all."
"You think Mac died from the silver rather than an overdose of Ketamine?" asked Adam. "They only shot him twice. I took at least four hits, maybe more."
"The more recent exposure you have to silver, the worse the reaction," said Samuel. "I'd guess that if the boy hadn't spent the last few months in their tender care being dosed up with silver, he'd have made it just fine."
"Obviously the silver nitrate and the Ketamine are relatively easily obtainable," Adam said after a while. "What about this DMSO?"
"I could get it. Good stuff is available by prescription-I'd bet you could buy it at any veterinary supply, too."
"So they'd need a doctor?" I asked.
But Samuel shook his head. "Not for the veterinary supply. And I'd expect you could get it fairly easily from a pharmacy, too. It's not one of the drugs they'd track carefully. I'd expect they could make as much of their cocktail as they wanted to without much trouble."
"Great." Adam closed his eyes, possibly envisioning an invading army armed with tranquilizer dart guns.
"So they killed Mac," I said when it became apparent that Adam wasn't going to continue. "Then what happened?"
"I came charging out of the kitchen like an idiot, and they darted me, too." Adam shook his head. "I've grown used to being damn near bulletproof-served me right. Whatever they gave me knocked me for a loop, and when I woke up, I was locked up, wrist and ankle in cuffs. Not that I was in any shape to do anything. I was so groggy I could barely move my head."
"Did you see who they were?" I asked. "I know one of them was the human who accompanied the werewolf I killed at the garage. I smelled him in Jesse's room."
Adam shifted on the bench seat, pulling a little against the seat belt.
"Adam." Samuel's voice was quiet but forceful.
Adam nodded and relaxed a little, stretching out his neck to release the build-up of tension. "Thank you. It's harder when I'm angry. Yes, I knew one of them, Mercedes. Do you know how I became a werewolf?"
The question seemed to come from left field-but Adam always had a reason for everything he said. "Only that it was during Vietnam," I answered. "You were Special Forces."
"Right," he agreed. "Long-range recon. They sent me and five other men to take out a particularly nasty warlord-an assassination trip. We'd done it before."
"The warlord was a werewolf?" I asked.
He laughed without humor. "Slaughtered us. It was one of his own people who killed him, while he was eating poor old McCue." He shut his eyes, and whispered, "I can still hear him scream."
We waited, Samuel and I, and after a moment Adam continued. "All the warlord's people ran and left us alone. At a guess they weren't certain he was really dead, even after he'd been beheaded. After a while-a long while, though I didn't realize that until later-I found I could move. Everyone was dead except Spec 4 Christiansen and me. We leaned on each other and got out of there somehow, hurt badly enough that they sent us home: Christiansen was a short-timer, anyway, and I guess they thought I was mostly crazy-raving about wolves. They shipped us out of there fast enough that none of the docs commented about how quickly we were recovering."
"Are you all right?" asked Samuel.
Adam shivered and pulled the blankets closer around himself. "Sorry. I don't talk about this often. It's harder than I expected. Anyway, one of my army buddies who'd come back to the States a few months earlier heard I was home and came to see me. We got drunk-or at least I tried. I'd just started noticing that it took an awful lot of whiskey to do anything, but it loosened me up enough that I told him about the werewolf.
"Thank goodness I did because he believed me. He called in a relative and between them they persuaded me that I was going to grow furry and kill something the next full moon. They pulled me into their pack and kept everyone safe until I had enough control to do it myself."
"And the other man who was wounded?" I asked.
"Christiansen?" He nodded. "My friends found him. It should have been in time, but he'd come home to find that his wife had taken up with another man. He walked into his house and found his bags packed and his wife and her lover waiting with the divorce papers."
"What happened?" asked Samuel.
"He tore them to pieces." His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. "Even in that first month, if you get angry enough, it is possible to Change."
"I know," I told him.
He gave me a jerky nod. "Anyway, they managed to persuade him to stay with a pack, who taught him what he needed to know to survive. But as far as I know he never did join a pack officially-he's lived all these years as a lone wolf."
A lone wolf is a male who either declines to join a pack or cannot find a pack who will take him in. The females, I might add, are not allowed that option. Werewolves have not yet joined the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first, as far as women are concerned. It's a good thing I'm not a werewolf-or maybe it is a pity. Someone needs to wake them up.
"Christiansen was one of the wolves who came to your house?" I asked.
He nodded. "I didn't hear him or see him-he stayed away from me-but I could smell him. There were several humans and three or four wolves."
"You killed two," I told him. "I killed a third." I tried to remember what I'd smelled in his house, but I had only been tracking Jesse. There had been so many of Adam's pack in the house, and I only knew some of them by name. "I'd know the man, the human, who confronted Mac and me earlier that night, but no one else for certain."
"I'm pretty sure they intended I stay out until they'd done whatever
they came for, but their whole plan was a botch job," Adam said. "First, they killed Mac. Obviously, from their attempt to take him at your shop, they wanted him, but I don't think they meant to kill him in my house."
"They left him on my doorstep," I said.
"Did they?" Adam frowned. "A warning?" I could see him roll the thought around and he came up with the same message I had. "Stay out of our business, and you won't end up dead."
"Quick thinking for the disposal of a body they didn't know they were going to have," I commented. "Someone drove to my house to dump his body and was gone when I came outside. They left some people at your house who took off hell-bent-for-leather, probably with Jesse. I made it to your house in time to kill the last werewolf you were fighting." I tried to think about what time that was. "Four-thirty in the morning or thereabouts, is my best guess."
Adam rubbed his forehead.
Samuel said, "So they shot Mac, shot Adam, then waited around until Mac died. They dropped the body at your house-then Adam woke up, and they grabbed Jesse and ran, leaving three werewolves behind to do something-kill Adam? But then why take Jesse? Presumably they weren't supposed to just die."
"The first wolf I fought was really new," I said slowly. "If they were all that way, they might have just gotten carried away, and the others fled because they couldn't calm them down."
"Christiansen isn't new," said Adam.
"One of the wolves was a woman," I told him. "The one I killed was a buff color-almost like Leah but darker. The other was a more standard color, grays and white. I don't remember any markings."
"Christiansen is red-gold," Adam said.
"So did they come to kidnap Jesse in the first place or was her kidnapping the result of someone trying to make the best of a screwup?"
"Jesse." Adam sounded hoarse, and when I glanced back at him I could see that he hadn't heard Samuel's question. "I woke up because Jesse screamed. I remember now."
"I found a pair of broken handcuffs on the floor of your living room." I slowed the van so I didn't tailgate an RV that was creeping up the side of the mountain we were climbing. I didn't have to slow down much. "Silver wrist cuffs-and the floor was littered with glass, dead werewolves, and furniture. I expect the ankle cuffs were around there somewhere." I thought of something. "Maybe they just came to get Mac and maybe punish Adam for taking him in?"
Samuel shook his head. "Mercy, you they might leave warnings for-or try to teach a lesson. A pack of newbie werewolves-especially if they're headed by an experienced wolf-is not going to tick off an Alpha just to 'punish' him for interfering in their business. In the first place, there's no better way I can think of to get the Marrok ticked off. In the second place there's Adam himself. He's not just the Columbia Basin Alpha, he's damn near the strongest Alpha in the US, present company excluded, of course."
Adam grunted, unimpressed with Samuel's assessment. "We don't have enough information to make an educated guess at what they wanted. Mac's dead, either accidentally or on purpose. They half killed me, and they took Jesse. The human you knew implies that it has something to do with Mac's story-and Christiansen's presence implies it has something to do with me. I'll be darned if I know what Mac and I have in common."
"Mercy," said Samuel.
"I forgot to tell you that I joined the secret society of villains while I was away," I told Samuel, exasperated. "I am now trying to put together a harem of studly, muscle-bound werewolves. Please. Remember, I didn't know Mac until he dropped in my lap sometime after the villains screwed up his life."
Samuel, having successfully baited me, reached over and patted my leg.
I just happened to glance at Adam's face, and I saw his eyes lighten from chocolate to amber as his gaze narrowed on Samuel's hand before I had to return my eyes to the road to make sure the RV ahead of me hadn't slowed down again. There were four cars trailing slowly behind us up the mountain.
"Don't touch her," whispered Adam. There was a shadow of threat in his voice, and he must have heard it, too, because he added, "Please."
The last word stopped the nasty comment I'd readied because I remembered that Adam was still hurt, still struggling to control his wolf, and the conversation we'd been having hadn't been designed to calm him.
But it wasn't my temper I should have been worried about.
Samuel's hand turned until his fingers spanned the top of my thigh, and he squeezed. It wasn't hard enough to hurt. I'm not certain Adam would have even noticed except that Samuel accompanied it by a throaty half growl of challenge.
I didn't wait to see what Adam would do. I yanked the wheel to the right and slammed on the brakes as soon as the van was on the shoulder of the road. I unsnapped my seat belt and twisted around to meet Adam's yellow gaze. He was breathing heavily, his reaction to Samuel's taunt tempered by the pain my jerky driving had caused.
"You," I said firmly, pointing at him. "Stay right there." Sometimes, if you tell them firmly enough, even Alphas will listen to commands. Especially if you tell them to sit still while they're too hurt to move.
"You"-I turned my attention to Samuel-"outside, right now."
Then I jerked my leg out from under Samuel's hand and jumped out of the van, narrowly avoiding getting the door taken off as a truck passed by.
I wasn't certain either of them would listen to me, but at least I wouldn't have to try to drive with a pair of wolves trying to tear each other apart. However, Samuel opened his door as I stalked around the front of the van. By the time I walked a half dozen steps away from the van, he was beside me, and the van's doors were closed.
"Just what did you think you were doing?" I yelled at him, raising my voice over the passing cars. Okay, I was mad, too. "I thought you were here to make sure no one challenged Adam until he was well-not challenge him yourself."
"You don't belong to him," he snapped back, his white teeth clicking together sharply.
"Of course not!" I huffed in exasperation-and a little in desperation. "But I don't belong to you either! For Pete's sake, Sam, he wasn't telling you that I belonged to him-just that he felt like you were invading his territory. He was asking you for help." Someone should have awarded me a Ph. D. in werewolf psychology and counseling-surely I deserved something for putting up with this garbage. "It wasn't a challenge, stupid. He's trying to control his wolf after nearly being killed. Two unmated male werewolves always get territorial in the presence of a female-you know that better than I do. You're supposed to be the one with all this control, and you're behaving worse than he is." I sucked in air tainted by the traffic.
Samuel paused, then settled his weight on his heels-a sign that he was considering backing off from this fight. "You called me Sam," he said in an odd voice that frightened me as much as the violence I could still smell on him, because I didn't know what was causing him to act like this. The Samuel I knew had been easygoing-especially for a werewolf. I was beginning to think that I wasn't the only one who'd changed over the years.
I didn't know how to respond to his comment. I couldn't see what my calling him Sam had to do with anything, so I ignored it. "How can you help him control himself if your control isn't better than this? What is wrong with you?" I was honestly bewildered.
Samuel was good at calming the dangerous waters. One of his jobs had been teaching the new wolves control so they could be allowed to live. It is not an accident that most werewolves are control freaks like Adam. I didn't know what to do with Samuel-except that he wasn't getting back into that van until he had a handle on whatever was bothering him.
"It isn't just that you are female," he muttered at last, though I almost didn't hear him because two motorcycles blew past us.
"What is it then?" I asked.
He gave me an unhappy look, and I realized that he hadn't intended for me to hear what he'd said.
"Mercedes… Mercy." He looked away from me, staring down the slope of the mountain as if the meadows below held some secret he was looking for. "I'm as unsettled as a new pup. Yo
u eat my control."
"This is all my fault?" I asked incredulously. It was outside of enough that he was scaring the bejeebers out of me-I certainly wasn't about to accept the blame for it.
Unexpectedly, he laughed. And as easily as that the smoldering anger, the bright violence, and the dominant power that had been making the air around us feel heavier than it could possibly be floated away. It was just the two of us and the warm scent of Samuel, who smelled of home and the woods.
"Stay out here and enjoy the diesel fumes, Mercy," he said as a delivery van in need of a new engine chugged past us in a cloud of black smoke. "Give me a few minutes to clear the air with Adam before you come back in." He turned and took two steps back to the van. "I'll wave to you."
"No violence?" I said.
He put his hand over his heart and bowed. "I swear."
It took long enough that I got worried, but finally he opened the door and called me over. He hadn't rolled down the window because I had the keys and the windows were electric. For some reason I still hadn't tracked down, the windows only worked one at a time even with the car running.
I scooted in the driver's seat and gave Adam a cautious look-but his eyes were closed.
CHAPTER 8
As soon as «roaming» quit appearing on my phone, I called Zee.
"Who's this?" he answered.
"Mercy," I told him.
"Didn't tell me the part was for the vampire's bus," he said shortly.
I rubbed my face. "I couldn't afford to pay them the percentage you were," I explained, not for the first time.
In the Columbia Basin, which included Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco as well as the smaller surrounding towns like Burbank and West Richland, every business the vampires considered under their jurisdiction (meaning anyone touched by the supernatural who was too powerless to stand against them) paid them protection money. And yes, just like the mob, the vampires only protect you from themselves.
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