Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “Stop that!” I shrieked, and slapped his muzzle. “That’s just rude.”

  He pulled his head back and gave me a quizzical look. I took the opportunity to glance at my speedometer and make sure I wasn’t speeding.

  “You’re going to cause a wreck, Samuel Llewellyn Cornick. Just you keep your nose out of my business.”

  He snorted and put one paw on my knee, patted it twice—then stuck his nose in my belly button again. He was quicker than my slap this time, withdrawing all the way back onto his seat.

  “My tattoo?” I asked, and he yipped—a very bassy yip. Just below my naval I had a pawprint. He must have seen it while I was scrambling into my clothes. I have a couple on my arms, too.

  “Karen, my college roommate, was an art major. She earned her spending money giving people tattoos. I helped her pass her chemistry class, and she offered to give me one for free.”

  I’d spent the previous two years living with my mother and pretending to be perfect, afraid that if I weren’t, I’d lose my place in my second home as abruptly as I had the first. It would never have occurred to me to do something as outrageous as getting a tattoo.

  My mother still blames Karen for my switching my major from engineering to history—which makes her directly responsible for my current occupation, fixing old cars. My mother is probably right, but I am much happier as I am than I would have been as a mechanical engineer.

  “She handed me a book of tattoos that she had done and about halfway through was a guy who’d had wolf tracks tattooed across his back from one hip to the opposite shoulder. I wanted something smaller, so we settled on a single pawprint.”

  My mother and her family had known what I was, but they’d asked no questions, and I’d hidden my coyote self from them, becoming someone who fit their lives better. It had been my own choice. Coyotes are very adaptable.

  I remember staring at the man’s back and understanding that, although I must hide from everyone else, I could not hide from myself anymore. So I had Karen put the tattoo on the center of my body, where I could protect my secret and it could keep me whole. I’d finally started to enjoy being who I was instead of wishing that I were a werewolf or human so I’d fit in better.

  “It’s a coyote pawprint,” I said firmly. “Not a wolf’s.”

  He grinned at me and stuck his head out the window again; this time his shoulders followed.

  “You’re going to fall out,” I told him.

  chapter 12

  “The pack is coming,” I told Samuel, as we cruised slowly by Warren’s house for a look-see. “I don’t know how much you remember from while you were changing, but Warren called for help. Adam was sleeping and couldn’t be woken up—” With Samuel safe, I could worry about Adam. “Is that normal?”

  Samuel nodded, and I felt a wave of relief. Clearing my throat, I continued, “Since we can’t trust the pack, I think Warren is going to try to keep them away from Adam—which would be fine except that Darryl is Adam’s second.” Which meant a fight.

  Samuel told me once that, despite all the physical benefits they gain, the average life span of a werewolf from his first Change until his death is ten years. People, like my old friend Dr. Wallace, who had to be eliminated within their first year, accounted for some of that. But most werewolves died in dominance fights with other wolves.

  I didn’t want Warren or even Darryl to die tonight—and if one of them did, it would be my fault. Without my flash of intuition or paranoia that there was something wrong with the pack, Warren wouldn’t have been trying to keep Darryl away from Adam.

  Richland was quiet, but both sides of the street on Warren’s block were solid with parked cars. I recognized Darryl’s ’67 Mustang as I passed it: the pack was already here. I parked a block away and jogged back with Samuel at my side.

  A woman stood under the porch overhang in front of Warren’s door. Her black, black hair was pulled back into a waist-length ponytail. She folded her sleekly muscled arms and widened her stance when she saw me. She was a chemistry teacher at Richland High and Darryl’s mate.

  “Auriele,” I said, climbing up the stairs until I shared the porch with her.

  She frowned at me. “I told him that you wouldn’t do anything to hurt Adam, and he believed me. I told him you would not act against the pack. You have some explanations to give.”

  As Darryl’s mate, Auriele ranked high in the pack. Normally I’d have discussed the matter with her politely—but I needed to get past her and into Warren’s home before someone got hurt.

  “Fine,” I said. “But I need to explain myself to Darryl, not you, and not right now.”

  “Darryl is busy,” she said, not buying my argument. I’d noticed before that teaching classrooms of teenagers made Auriele hard to bluff.

  I opened my mouth to try again, when she said, “We keep the Silence.”

  Wolves have little magic, as most people think of it. Sometimes there will be one, like Charles, who has a gift, but for the most part they are limited to the change itself, and a few magics that allow them to stay hidden. One of those is Silence.

  I glanced around and saw four people (doubtless there were others if I cared to look) standing unobtrusively around Warren’s duplex, their eyes closed and their mouths moving in the chant that brought Silence upon all that stood within their circle.

  It was to keep the battle inside from disturbing anyone. It meant that the fight had already begun; the pack would not willingly break the Silence and let me through.

  “This fight is without merit,” I told her urgently. “There is no need for it.”

  Her eyes widened. “There is every need, Mercy. Darryl is second, and Warren defies him. It cannot go without answer. You can talk after he is through disciplining that one.” Her mobile brows drew together as she stared at Samuel. In a completely different voice, she asked, “Who is that? There were strange wolves dead at Adam’s house.”

  “This is Samuel,” I said impatiently starting up the stairs. “I’m going in.”

  She’d started forward to intercept me, then hesitated as she took in Samuel’s unusual coloration. “Samuel who?” she asked.

  Twice a year the Alphas met with Bran in Bran’s corporate headquarters in Colorado. They sometimes brought their seconds or thirds—but never the women. Part of that was practicality. Alphas are uncomfortable outside their own territory, and they interact badly with other Alphas. With their mates beside them, all of that discomfort and territorialism had a greater tendency to turn toward violence.

  That meant Auriele had never met Samuel, but she’d heard of him. White wolves named Samuel are not very common.

  “This is Dr. Samuel Cornick,” I told her firmly. “Let us through. I’ve got information about the people who attacked Adam.”

  I was tired and worried about Warren—and Darryl; otherwise, I wouldn’t have made such an obvious misstep: I doubt she heard anything except my command.

  She wasn’t stupid; she knew I was not Adam’s mate, no matter that he’d claimed me before the pack. I was not werewolf, not pack, not her dominant, and she could not listen to me and keep her place.

  All hesitation left her manner, and she closed with me. I was a fair bit taller than she, but it didn’t slow her down. She was a werewolf, and when she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed, I stumbled back three or four steps.

  “You are not in charge here,” she said in a voice I’m certain worked very well in her classrooms.

  She tried to push me again. Her mistake. She was a lot stronger than I, but she didn’t have any experience in fighting in human shape. I moved aside, letting her momentum do most of my work. I helped her fall down the stairs with only a gentle push to keep her off-balance and make her lose control of her landing. She landed hard on the sidewalk, hitting her head on a stair.

  I didn’t wait around to make sure she was all right. It would take a lot more than a header down the stairs to slow a werewolf down much. The wolf closest to me started to move,
but had to stop because it would have ruined the spell of Silence.

  The door wasn’t locked, so I opened it. Samuel brushed past me. The sound of Auriele’s enraged snarl sent me scrambling in after him.

  Warren’s living room was a mess of scattered books and bits of broken furniture, but both Warren and Darryl were in human form. It told me that Darryl was still trying to keep the fight from being a fight to the death—and so was Warren. Werewolves in human form might be very strong, but they weren’t half as deadly as the wolf.

  Warren took one of his dining-room chairs and broke it over Darryl’s face. The sound of the blow was absorbed by the pack’s spell casting, so I could only judge the force by the size of the pieces the chair broke into and by the spraying blood.

  In a move so quick my eyes couldn’t quite catch it, Darryl had Warren on the ground with a lock on his throat.

  Samuel darted in and closed his mouth over Darryl’s wrist—then danced back out of reach. The unexpectedness of it—Darryl hadn’t heard us come in—loosened Darryl’s hold, and Warren broke out of it, scrambling away to get some room.

  That meant Samuel could take up a position between both of them. Warren, breathing hard, sagged against a wall and wiped blood out of his eyes. Darryl had taken two swift steps forward before he recognized Samuel and almost fell over backward to keep from touching him, an expression of absolute astonishment on his face.

  As soon as I was certain neither Darryl nor Warren was going to continue the fight, I tapped Samuel on the shoulder to get his attention. When he looked at me, I pointed to my mouth and ears. There wasn’t a chance in hell that the werewolves outside would listen to me and stop their chanting—and we all needed to talk.

  I expected Samuel to go outside, but he did something else. His power rushed through the house with the force of a firestorm after some idiot opens a door to let oxygen into a room that has been smoldering for hours. The air filled with him, with his scent and power; it popped and crackled until I felt as though I was breathing the sparklers that children play with on the Fourth of July. Discharges of power sparked on my skin until it felt raw, loosening my control of my extremities. I fell helplessly to my knees. My vision began to sparkle, too. Black swirls and bright snapping lights made me drop my head on my knees as I fought to keep conscious.

  “Enough, Samuel,” said a voice I dimly recognized as Adam’s. “I think you made your point, whatever it was.”

  I left my head on my knees. If Adam was here, everything else could wait until I caught my breath.

  Footsteps came down the stairs with the light, quick movements I associated with Adam—he had been doing some rapid healing. I raised my head too soon and had to put it back down. Adam rested his hand on the top of my head, then moved away.

  “What was this about?” he asked.

  “We’ve been looking for you for two days, Adam.” Darryl’s voice sounded a little distorted. “All we had was a message on Elizaveta Arkadyevna’s answering machine that she told us was from Mercy—and your wrecked house with three dead werewolves that no one could put names to. You, Jesse, and Mercy were all missing. We’ve been watching your house, but it was sheer dumb luck that one of the pack saw Mercy riding around with Kyle earlier. When I called Warren, he wouldn’t admit you were here, but he didn’t say you weren’t either, so I called the pack and came over.”

  I looked up again, and this time the world didn’t spin. Darryl and Warren were both kneeling on the floor, near where they’d been fighting when I’d last seen them. I saw the reason for the odd enunciation problem Darryl was having—a nasty cut on his lip was visibly healing.

  “I couldn’t lie to Darryl,” explained Warren. “You were in a healing sleep, and I couldn’t wake you up. I couldn’t let any of the pack up there while you were vulnerable.”

  Samuel sat beside me and licked my face, whining softly.

  “Ish,” I said, thrusting him away. “That’s just gross. Stop it, Samuel. Didn’t Bran teach you any manners at all?”

  It was a deliberate distraction, designed to give us all a chance to decide how to handle the situation without more bloodshed.

  “Warren was acting under my orders,” said Adam slowly.

  “I see,” said Darryl, his face becoming carefully expressionless.

  “Not against you.” Adam waved his hand at chest height—don’t feel hurt, the gesture said, it wasn’t personal.

  “Then who?”

  “We don’t know,” I told him. “There was just something that bothered me.”

  “Tell them what happened that night,” Adam said.

  So I did.

  To my surprise, when I told them that I’d had a bad feeling about calling in the pack, Darryl just nodded, saying, “How did they know where Adam lived? Or when the meeting was over? How did they know he didn’t have an army at his house like some of the Alphas do? Jesse’s not stupid. When she heard the sound of the tranq guns firing, she wouldn’t have screamed—but they knew where she was anyway.”

  I thought about that. “There was just the one human they sent up after her—and he went right to her room.”

  Darryl made a sweeping gesture. “I’m not saying that there are not explanations other than a betrayal by one of the pack—but you made the right choice.”

  It shouldn’t have made me feel good—but I’m as much a sucker for a pat on the back as the next woman.

  “Go on, Mercy,” said Adam.

  So I continued the explanation as succinctly as possible—which meant I left out any details that weren’t their business, such as my past relationship with Samuel.

  The rest of the pack filtered in while I talked, taking up seating on the floor—moving broken furniture out of the way as necessary. It wasn’t the whole pack, but there were ten or fifteen of them.

  Auriele sat next to Darryl, her knee just brushing his. She had a nasty bruise on her forehead, and I wondered if she would continue to treat me with the cool courtesy she’d always extended to me—or if she, like the females in Bran’s pack, would consider me an enemy from now on.

  Warren, I thought, with Adam’s support, had just cemented his place in the pack—at least with Darryl, whose body language told the rest of the pack that Warren was not in disgrace. Darryl valued loyalty, I thought, suddenly certain it wasn’t Darryl who had betrayed Adam.

  Who then? I looked out over the faces, some familiar, some less so; but Adam was a good Alpha, and other than Darryl, there were no wolves dominant enough to be Alphas themselves.

  I got to our decision to bring Adam to Warren’s, saying only that we thought it would be a better hiding place than his house or mine, and stopped because Darryl was all but vibrating with his need to ask questions.

  “Why did they take Jesse?” he asked, as soon as I quit speaking.

  “Warren tells me there haven’t been any ransom calls,” Adam said. He’d begun pacing sometime during my story. I couldn’t see any sign he’d ever been hurt, but I suspect some of that was acting; an Alpha never admits weakness in front of the pack. “I’ve been thinking about it, but I honestly don’t know. One of the wolves who came to my house was someone I once knew—thirty years ago. We were both turned at the same time. His experience was . . . harrowing, because he Changed without help.” I saw several of the wolves wince. “He might bear a grudge because of it, but thirty years is a long time to wait if revenge is the only reason for taking Jesse.”

  “Does he belong to a pack?” Mary Jo asked from the back of the room. Mary Jo was a firefighter with the Kennewick FD. She was small, tough-looking, and complained a lot because she had to pretend to be weaker than all the men on her team. I liked her.

  Adam shook his head. “David is a lone wolf by choice. He doesn’t like werewolves.”

  “You said they had humans with them, and new wolves,” Warren said.

  Adam nodded, but I was still thinking about the lone wolf. What was a man who had been a lone wolf for thirty years doing running in a pack of new
wolves? Had he Changed them himself? Or were they victims like Mac had been?

  Samuel laid his muzzle on my knee, and I petted him absently.

  “You said they used silver nitrate, DMSO, and Ketamine,” said Auriele, the chemistry teacher. “Does that mean they have a doctor working for them? Or maybe a drug pusher? Ketamine isn’t as common as meth or crack, but we see it in the high school now and then.”

  I straightened up. “A doctor or a vet,” I said. Beside me Samuel stiffened. I looked at him. “A vet would have access to all of those, wouldn’t he, Samuel?”

  Samuel growled at me. He didn’t like what I was thinking.

  “Where are you going with this?” asked Adam, looking at Samuel, though he was talking to me.

  “Dr. Wallace,” I said.

  “Carter is in trouble because he can’t accept being a werewolf, Mercy. It is too violent for him, and he’d rather die than be what we are. Are you trying to say that he is involved in a plot where young wolves are held in cages while experiments are performed upon them? Have you ever heard what he has to say about the animal experimentation and the cosmetics industry?”

  For a moment I was surprised Adam knew so much about Dr. Wallace. But I knew from the reactions of the people in Aspen Creek that Adam had spent time there. I suppose it only made sense that he would know about Dr. Warren’s troubles. From the murmurs around us, the rest of the pack didn’t, though.

  Adam stopped arguing with me to explain to everyone who Dr. Wallace was. It gave me time to think.

  “Look,” I said when he’d finished. “All these chemicals for the drug they shot you with are readily available—but who would think to combine them and why? Who would want to be able to tranquilize a werewolf? Dr. Wallace is in danger of losing control—I saw it myself this week. He is worried about his family. He wouldn’t have developed a way to administer drugs to werewolves in order to kidnap Jesse, but he might have developed a tranquilizer for people to use on him—in case he lost all control, and his wolf attacked someone.”

  “Maybe,” Adam said slowly. “I’ll call Bran tomorrow and have him ask Dr. Wallace about it. No one can lie to Bran.”