Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  It was so important to get this right. Now that the time had come, I was afraid I’d ruin everything.

  Swinging lazily, we watched the water flow past us, almost black in the growing shadows of the overcast sky. After a moment he rubbed his face briskly to warm it—and to wipe away incipient tears.

  “God,” he said, and I flinched. I’m not a vampire, who can’t bear to hear His name, but I don’t like it used in vain. When he continued, though, I thought perhaps it hadn’t been in vain at all.

  “I love him.” It sounded as though the words were ripped from his throat. “But he won’t let me in. People call in the middle of the night, and he leaves without telling me where he’s going.”

  A lone bicyclist, wearing the skintight uniform of the die-hard enthusiast, appeared from the way we’d come. He passed us in a blur of spokes and Superman blue lycra.

  “Nice legs,” said Kyle.

  It was an old game. Kyle and I comparing notes on men while Warren pretended exasperation.

  I leaned my head against Kyle’s shoulder. “Too small. I don’t like it when I outweigh my men.”

  Kyle leaned back until he was looking at the sky rather than the river. “When we were in Seattle last month, he drove away a group of drunken, redneck gay-bashers, just scared them off with a few words. But that Darryl treats him like . . . like dirt, and Warren just puts up with it. I don’t understand. And this stuff tonight . . .” He sucked air in to steel himself. “Is he involved with drug dealers?”

  I shook my head quickly. “No. Nothing illegal.” Not yet anyway.

  “Is he a fae, then?” he asked, as if it wouldn’t bother him much.

  “The fae all came out years ago.”

  He snorted. “You’re not that dumb. I know a few doctors and teachers who are still in the closet about being gay—and all they have to worry about is losing their jobs, not having a group of idiots burn their houses down.” I could feel him deciding Warren was fae, and his agitation dropped appreciably. “That would explain some things, like how strong he is and how he knows who’s coming before he answers the door.”

  Well, I thought feeling hopeful, being fae wasn’t quite the same as being a werewolf. But if he could accept the one, maybe the other wouldn’t be too big a stretch.

  “He’s not fae,” I said. I started to tell him just what Warren was, but the words caught in my throat.

  “Warren should be the one telling me this,” said Kyle.

  “Right,” I agreed. “But he can’t.”

  “You mean he won’t.”

  “No. Can’t.” I shook my head. “I don’t have many friends,” I said. “Not ‘come over and eat popcorn and watch a stupid movie’ friends. You and Warren are sort of it.” I don’t have many girlfriends. My work isn’t conducive to meeting other women.

  “Pretty sad,” Kyle commented. Then he said, “You and Warren are the only people I eat popcorn with, too.”

  “Pathetic.” The banter helped. I drew in a breath and just said it. “Warren’s a werewolf.”

  “A what?” Kyle stopped the swing.

  “A werewolf. You know. The moon-called, run-on-four-feet-with-big-fangs kind of werewolf.”

  He looked at me. “You’re serious.”

  I nodded. “And you’re not going to breathe a word of it.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s why Warren couldn’t tell you. That and because Adam—the pack Alpha—forbade it. If you go out now and talk to the authorities or the papers, even if they don’t believe you, the pack will kill you.” I knew I was speaking too fast, but I couldn’t seem to slow down. In Warren’s house, with only Samuel and Warren, it hadn’t seemed so dangerous. Samuel and Warren might care for me, but there were plenty of werewolves right here in town who would be happy to see me—and Kyle—dead for what I had just told him. “Warren will fight them, but there are too many of them. He’ll die, and you’ll die with him.”

  Kyle held up a hand. “Hold on. It’s a little soon for you to have Warren and me dead, don’t you think?”

  I took a deep breath. “I hope so. You have to believe me on this—they take their secrecy very seriously. How do you think they’ve remained undetected for so long?”

  “Mercy.” He caught my hand—his own felt cold, but that might have been from the wind. “A werewolf?”

  He didn’t really believe me—that might be more dangerous. “Twenty years ago no one believed in the fae, either. Look, I can prove it to you.”

  I looked at a thicket of leafless bushes. They weren’t really thick enough for me to strip and shift in, but there weren’t any boats out on the water, and as long as we didn’t get another biker at the wrong moment. . . . I could just shift in my clothes—I get smaller, not bigger—but I’d rather be given a ticket for indecent exposure. A coyote in human clothes looks ridiculous.

  “Wait here.” I gave him the trench coat so it wouldn’t get dirty, then hopped off the swing and waded through the old grass into the bushes. I took off my clothes as fast as I could and shifted as soon as I dropped the last piece of clothing.

  I stopped on the path and sat down, trying to look harmless.

  “Mercy?” Kyle had his lawyer face on, which told me how shocked he was. He really hadn’t believed me.

  I wagged my tail and made a crooning noise. He got out of the swing like an old, old man and approached me.

  “A coyote?” he asked.

  When I went down to get my clothes, he followed me. I shifted right in front of him—then scrambled back into my clothes as I heard another bicycle coming along.

  “I’m not a werewolf,” I told him, running my fingers through my hair. “But I’m as close as you’re going to get until you talk Warren into changing for you.”

  Kyle made an impatient sound and pulled my hands away, rearranging my hair himself.

  “Werewolves are bigger,” I said, feeling as though I ought to warn him. “A lot bigger. They don’t look like wolves. They look like really, really big wolves who might eat you.”

  “Okay,” he said, stepping back. I thought he was talking about my hair, until he continued. “Warren’s a werewolf.”

  I looked at his lawyer face and sighed. “He couldn’t tell you. If I tell you, and you don’t do anything stupid—you and he are both safe. But if he told you, no matter how you reacted, he would have disobeyed a direct order. The penalty for that is brutal.”

  He still wasn’t giving anything away. He was so closed off, I couldn’t sense what he was feeling. Most humans don’t have that kind of control over themselves.

  “Won’t his pack—” He stumbled over that word a little. “Won’t they think he told me?”

  “A lot of werewolves can smell a lie,” I said. “They’ll know how you found out.”

  He went back to the swing, picked up the trench coat, and held it out to me. “Tell me about werewolves.”

  I was in the middle of trying to explain just how dangerous a werewolf could be and why it wasn’t a good idea for him to flirt with Samuel—or Darryl—when my cell phone rang.

  It was Zee.

  “Business?” Kyle asked when I hung up.

  “Yes.” I bit my lip.

  He smiled. “It’s all right. I think I’ve heard enough secrets for one day. I take it you need to go back to Warren’s?”

  “Don’t talk to him yet,” I said. “Wait for it to sink in. If you have other questions, you can call me.”

  “Thanks, Mercy.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “But I think I need to talk the rest out with Warren—after his business is finished.”

  chapter 9

  Samuel and Warren were seated on opposite sides of the living room when I walked in, and the air smelled thick with anger. I couldn’t tell, just by looking at them, whether they were angry with each other or something else. But then, werewolves are always ready to be angry about something. I’d forgotten what it was like.

  Of course, I wasn’t the only one with a nose. Warren, sitting cl
osest to the door, took a deep breath.

  “She’s been with Kyle,” he said, his voice flat. “She smells like the cologne I gave him. You told him.” He swore at me, but there was more pain than anger in it. I felt a sharp twinge of guilt.

  “You weren’t going to tell him,” I said. I was not apologizing. “And he deserved to know that all the crap he has to put up with is not all your doing.”

  Warren shook his head and gave me a despairing glance. “Do you have a death wish? Adam could have you and Kyle executed for it. I’ve seen it done.”

  “Just me, not Kyle,” I said.

  “Yes, damn it, Kyle, too.”

  “Only if your lover decides to take it to the news or police.” Samuel’s voice was mild, but Warren glared at him anyway.

  “You risked too much, Mercy,” said Warren, turning back to me. “How do you think I’d feel if I lost both of you?” All the anger left him suddenly, leaving only misery behind. “Maybe you were right. It was still my job. My risk. If he was going to know, it should have been me telling him.”

  “No. You are pack and sworn to obedience.” Adam swayed at the top of the stairs, leaning a little on his cane. He was wearing a white shirt and jeans that fit. “If you’d told him, I’d have had to enforce the law or risk a rebellion in the pack.”

  He sat down on the top stair more abruptly than he meant to, I think, and grinned at me. “Samuel and I both can witness that Warren didn’t tell Kyle anything, you did. Despite Warren’s objections, I might add. And, as you keep insisting, you are not pack.” He looked over at Warren. “I’d have given you permission a long time ago, but I have to obey orders, too.”

  I stared at him a moment. “You knew I was going to tell Kyle.”

  He smiled. “Let’s just say that I thought I was going to have to come down and order you not to tell him so you would storm out the door before Kyle drove off.”

  “You manipulative bastard,” I said, with a tinge of awe. That was it, three tires were going to come off that old Rabbit.

  “Thank you.” He gave me a modest smile.

  And when we got Jesse back, she could help me with the graffiti.

  “How did he take it?” asked Warren. He’d gotten off the couch and stood staring out his window. His hands hung loose and relaxed by his side, giving nothing of his feelings away.

  “He’s not gone running to the police,” I told Adam and Samuel. I searched for something more hopeful to tell Warren, but I didn’t want to raise his expectations in case I was wrong about Kyle.

  “He said he’d talk it over with you,” I told him at last. “After this business is finished.”

  He raised his hands to his face abruptly, in a gesture very like the one Kyle had used. “At least it’s not over, yet.”

  He wasn’t talking to any of us, but I couldn’t stand the bleakness of his voice. I touched his shoulder, and said, “Don’t screw it up anymore and I think he’ll be okay with it.”

  Samuel and I headed out to meet with Zee and his informant, and I was still trying to figure out if I should have been mad at Adam for manipulating me like that. Except that he actually hadn’t done any manipulation, had he? All he’d done was claim credit for my actions afterward.

  The light turned red, and I had to stop behind a minivan a little closer than I usually did. Samuel’s hand braced itself on my dash and he sucked in his breath. I made a face at the kid in the backseat of the van who had twisted around in his seat belt to look at us. He pulled his lower eyelids down and stuck out his tongue.

  “It’s not that I object to being in a car wreck,” Samuel said. “I just prefer to have them on purpose.”

  “What?” I glanced over at him, then looked in front of us. The back of the other van made an all-encompassing wall about two feet from our windshield. Sudden comprehension made me grin. “Vanagons have no nose,” I said gently. “Our bumper is about a foot from your toes. You could walk between our cars.”

  “I could reach out and touch that boy,” he said. The boy had made another face, and Samuel made one back, sticking his thumbs in his ears and spreading his fingers out like moose antlers. “You know, one of Adam’s jobs was to make sure you didn’t run around telling the world about werewolves.”

  The light turned green, and the kid waved sadly as his van accelerated onto the interstate ramp. We were accelerating, too, but the ramp curled around in an uphill slant so it would take us a while to get to interstate speed.

  I snorted. “Kyle’s not the world.” I glanced at him. “Besides, you knew what I was going to do as well as Adam did. If you’d really objected, you could have stopped me before I left.”

  “Maybe I think Kyle is trustworthy.”

  I snorted. “Maybe the moon is made of green cheese. You don’t care. You think the werewolves need to come out in public like the fae.” Samuel had never been afraid of change.

  “We aren’t going to be able to hide much longer,” Samuel said, confirming my guess. “When I went back to school, I realized just how far forensic medicine has come. Ten years ago, when it was just the military and the FBI labs we had to worry about, having a few wolves in the right places was sufficient. But there aren’t enough wolves to infiltrate every small-town police laboratory. Since the fae came out, the scientists are paying closer attention to abnormalities they used to attribute to lab equipment failure or specimen contamination. If Da doesn’t pick his time soon, it’ll pick him.”

  “You’re the reason he’s considering it at all.” That made sense. Bran had always given close consideration to Samuel’s advice.

  “Da’s not stupid. Once he understood what we faced, he came to the same conclusion. He has a meeting scheduled for all the Alphas this coming spring.” He paused. “He considered using Adam—the handsome Vietnam war hero.”

  “Why not you?” I asked. “The handsome, selfless doctor who has been keeping people alive for centuries.”

  “That’s why Da’s in charge and you’re just a minion,” he said. “Remember, popular culture holds that all you need to become a werewolf is to have one bite you—not unlike AIDS. It will be a while before they’re comfortable rubbing elbows up close and personal. Better to leave them thinking that all the wolves are in the military and the police. You know—‘To Serve and Protect’.”

  “I’m not a minion,” I objected hotly. “Minions have to be followers.” He laughed, pleased at having gotten my goat again.

  “You don’t mind that I told Kyle early?” I asked after a while.

  “No, you were right. He has too much to lose by going to the tabloids, and he’s the kind of people we need behind us—to keep the mobs under control.”

  “Educated, well-spoken, well-bred lawyer?” I tried. Yes, that all fit Kyle. “But he’s not exactly mainstream.”

  Samuel shrugged. “Being gay has a certain cachet today.”

  I thought of the story Kyle had told me about his family and thought Samuel was mistaken, at least in some quarters. But all I said was, “I’ll tell Kyle he has a certain cachet with you.”

  Unexpectedly, Samuel grinned. “I’d rather you didn’t. He’ll just flirt with me some more.”

  “Speaking of uncomfortable,” I said, “what had you and Warren so uptight?”

  “It was mostly Warren,” he said. “I’m a stranger, a dominant wolf in his territory—and he was already upset because he thought he was losing the love of his life. If I’d realized how dominant he was, I’d have taken myself elsewhere for the night. We’ll manage, but it won’t be comfortable.”

  “He’s Adam’s third.”

  “Would have been nice if someone had seen fit to tell me that,” Samuel groused good-naturedly. “With Adam wounded and the second not there, that sticks Warren in the Alpha role—no wonder he was so wound up. I was ready to go out and take a walk myself when you showed up.” He gave me a sharp look. “Odd how you showing up let him back down. Just as if Adam’s second were there—or his mate.”

  “I’m not pack,
” I said shortly. “I’m not dating Adam. I have no status in the pack. What I did have was a long overdue conversation with Kyle—which is what distracted Warren.”

  Samuel continued to watch me. His mouth was quirked up, but his eyes were full of things I couldn’t read, as he said, “Adam’s staked his claim on you before his pack. Did you know that?”

  I hadn’t. It made me suck in an angry breath before I realized why he might have done that. “He had to keep his pack from killing me somehow. Wolves kill coyotes who are in their territory. A formal claim of me as his mate would keep me safe. I understand that was something Bran asked him to do. It doesn’t make me pack, it doesn’t make me his mate. The first is out because I’m a coyote, the second because somebody has to ask me before he can claim me for a mate.”

  Samuel laughed, but there was no amusement in it. “You can think as you please. How much time do we have before we find this bar?”

  “It’s in the far side of Pasco,” I said. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Well,” he said, “why don’t you tell me about Zee and this fae we are supposed to meet?”

  “I don’t know a lot,” I told him. “Not about the fae. Just that she’s got some information we might be interested in. As for Zee, he’s a gremlin. He gave me my first job out of college, and I bought the garage from him when he retired. He still helps out when I need him—or when he gets bored. He likes to take things apart and see what’s wrong with them, but he usually lets me put them back together again.”

  “There’s a fae reservation near here.”

  I nodded. “About forty miles away. Just outside of Walla Walla.”

  “Adam says that having so many lesser fae around has attracted more of the greater fae.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I can smell their magic, but I can’t tell how strong they are.”