Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “You’re using aikido?” I asked, backing away after a brisk exchange.

  Aikido is a kinder, gentler method of fighting. It can be used to break people, too, but most of the moves have a milder version. So you can lock the elbow and immobilize your opponent, or put a little more force behind it and break the joint instead.

  “Running a security business with a bunch of ex-soldiers, I’ve found it necessary to do a little sparring once in a while. Clears the air,” he said. “Aikido lets me take them down without hurting them or—before this year—advertising that I’m not exactly human anymore.”

  He closed with me again, grinning as he caught my strike and guided it past his shoulder. I dropped down and swept his leg, forcing him to roll away from me before he could do anything nasty. When he regained his feet, I noticed he was panting, too. I took it for the compliment it was.

  Though we fought at full speed, we were both still careful about how much force we used. Werewolves heal fast, but their bones still break and a punch still hurts. If Adam hit me full force, I suspected I wouldn’t get up soon, if ever.

  “You wanted me to pull the guards I set on you?” Adam asked in the middle of a quick exchange of soft-blocked punches.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “The sorcerer thinks I am a coyote,” I explained impatiently. “He’s not going to come looking for me.”

  “No.”

  I landed a blow that forced him off balance, but didn’t fall into the trap of getting too close to him. Grappling with a werewolf is really stupid—particularly one trained in aikido.

  “Look, I didn’t mind Warren or Mary Jo. Mary Jo even knows one end of a wrench from another and helped out. But Honey…doesn’t her mate desperately need her to sit and be pretty for his customers?”

  Honey’s mate-and-husband was a plumbing contractor, Peter Jorgenson. He was a wiry, homely, quiet man who did more work in an hour than most people did in their entire lives. Despite being a bimbo with no appreciation for anything except what she could see in a mirror, Honey loved her husband. Though when she said so, she always prefaced it with how she didn’t care that—unlike herself—he wasn’t a dominant wolf. Not that she ever talked to me: she didn’t like me any more than I liked her.

  “Peter follows my orders,” Adam told me.

  Adam was Alpha, so Peter followed his orders. Honey was Peter’s wife, so Peter gave her orders—which she followed. Male werewolves treat their mates like beloved slaves. The thought set my back up.

  It wasn’t Adam’s or Peter’s fault that werewolves had yet to come out of the Stone Age. Really. It was just a good thing I wasn’t a werewolf or there would be a slave rebellion.

  I aimed a kick at Adam’s knee that he caught and used to drag me forward and off balance. Then he did something complicated and I ended up face down on the mat twisted like a pretzel while he held me there with one hand and a knee.

  He smelled like the forest at night.

  I slapped the mat quickly and he let me up.

  “Adam. Close your eyes and envision Honey in my shop. She wore three-inch heels today.” The thought of her was like a dash of cold water in my face—which I needed.

  He laughed. “Out of place, was she?”

  “She spent the whole day standing up because she didn’t want to risk staining her skirt on any of my chairs. Gabriel has a crush on her.” I frowned at him when he laughed again. “Gabriel is a sixteen-and-a-half-year-old male. If his mother finds out he’s flirting with a werewolf, she’ll quit letting him work at the shop.”

  “She won’t find out Honey is a werewolf. Honey isn’t out yet. And Honey’s used to male attention, she won’t take Gabriel seriously,” Adam said, as if that was the point.

  “I know that, Gabriel knows that—his mother won’t care. And she will find out. That’s just the way my luck runs. If Gabriel leaves, I’ll have to do my own paperwork.” I hadn’t meant to whine, but I hated paperwork and it hated me back.

  Sylvia, Gabriel’s mother, had just found out that Zee was fae. She’d been okay with that, because she already knew and liked Zee when she found out. But I doubted she’d be so accommodating about werewolves, especially pretty female werewolves who might be after her boy.

  “I don’t want to lose Gabriel just because you’re paranoid. No more guards, Adam. It’s not like Honey would be much of a defense anyway.”

  He sighed unhappily. “Stefan is hunting out this sorcerer full-time. With Warren, Ben, and a few other wolves helping him, it shouldn’t be too much longer before they take care of him and you’re free. As far as Honey’s suitability as a guard goes—she fights mean. She’s taken Darryl down a time or two in training.” Most packs don’t have “training.” Sometimes Adam’s background as a soldier really shows. “If Honey weren’t a woman she’d be someone’s second or third.”

  I wasn’t surprised that Honey fought mean. I was a little surprised she fought well enough to take down Darryl, even a time or two. As second, he’d have had plenty of experience in real fights, not just training.

  I knew why Adam was only sending female guards—for the same reason he sent Warren and Ben to accompany me to the seethe. Warren wouldn’t make sexual overtures toward me because he wasn’t interested—and Adam knew how much I disliked Ben.

  Werewolves are very territorial. Since, supposedly for my protection, Adam had claimed me as his mate before the pack, I was his territory. As far as the pack was concerned, Adam’s word was law. Just because I hadn’t agreed, didn’t change what the pack took as truth. Adam had managed to come to some agreement about it with Samuel. I didn’t really want to know what it was because it would only tick me off.

  So I got Honey because Mary Jo was working twenty-four hour shifts at the fire department and Darryl’s mate Auriele, the only other female in Adam’s pack, was in Ellensburg taking a class to keep up her teaching certification. Complaining about Honey wasn’t going to get me a different guard—there wasn’t anyone else Adam could send.

  “Littleton is a vampire,” I said, trying to infuse a little logic into the situation. “He’s not going to attack during the daytime. I could make sure to be home before dark until he’s caught. He can’t get into my home unless I invite him. Not that he would, since he has no reason to think I was anything but a prop for Stefan’s costume.”

  “I had a talk with the Marrok about sorcerers,” said Adam gently. “He’s the one who told me to put a guard on you, day and night. No one knows what kind of monster a demon-ridden vampire is going to be, he said.”

  “I know that,” I snapped—if Bran had ordered me guarded, I was doomed. Adam knew it, too.

  “Elizaveta told me you called her and asked about sorcerers,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, you should be happy. All she told me was that you had given her orders not to tell me anything.” Which wasn’t exactly true.

  What the witch had said was, “Adamya says you are to leave it alone. He is a smart man, that one. Let the wolves hunt this sorcerer, Mercedes Thompson. A coyote is no match for a demon.”

  “Warren and Stefan will take care of Littleton,” Adam said. There was sympathy in his voice. He could afford to be sympathetic because he knew he’d robbed me of any chance of argument.

  “Stefan and Warren are both out hunting tigers with slingshots,” I told him. “Maybe they’ll get a lucky hit, and maybe the tiger will turn and kill them both—while Honey wears white slacks and watches me tune up cars.”

  I walked over to one of the hanging sandbags and began practicing punches. I hadn’t intended to say that, hadn’t realized how worried I was. Adam could be confident, but he hadn’t been in the same room with that thing.

  “Mercy,” Adam said after watching me a while.

  I switched to sidekicks.

  “A screwdriver is a very useful tool, but you don’t use it when what you need is a blowtorch,” he said. “I know you are frustrated. I know you want to be in on the kill after what you saw
Littleton do. But if you went out with them, someone would get killed trying to protect you.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” I snapped. It was scary that he knew me well enough to understand it was waiting while others went after Littleton that bothered me the most. I stopped kicking and stared at the swinging black bag, fighting the urge to kick Adam instead.

  I could change into a coyote. I was faster than a human. I was partially immune to some of the vampire’s magics, but I wasn’t even sure which ones. That was the extent of my preternatural abilities. It wasn’t enough to go after Littleton.

  If I’d been able to break the harness that night, the sorcerer would have killed me. I knew that, but it didn’t diminish the guilt I felt for watching the maid struggle alone. I wanted to go after the sorcerer myself.

  I wanted to feel his neck under my fangs and taste his blood. I took a deep shuddering breath. What I really wanted, what I hungered for, was to kill that smiling, cadaverous son of a bitch.

  “Elizaveta won’t go after him,” Adam said. “Demons apparently have an odd effect on witchcraft. You’re not the only one sitting on the sidelines.”

  “You know, today one of the TV stations interviewed the sister of the man the vampires framed for the murders.” I kicked the sandbag twice. “She cried. She admitted that her brother had been having marital problems, but she’d never imagined he would do something like this.” I kicked again, grunting with the effort. “You know why she’d never imagined it? Because the poor bastard didn’t do anything except be in the wrong place at the wrong damn time.”

  “None of us can afford for the vampires to come out now,” Adam said.

  I could tell the lies bothered him, too. Adam was a straightforward person—but he understood necessity. So did I. That didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “I know the vampires have to hide their presence,” I told the sandbag. “I know people aren’t ready to find out about all the things that hide in the darkness. I understand keeping them hidden saves us all from mass hysteria that would lead to a lot more people dying. But…that trucker—you remember, the one who was set up as the murderer—he had kids. They’ll have to grow up with the idea that their father killed their mother.” I’d written down their names. Someday, when it was safe, I’d see they knew the truth.

  Their pain, the murders, and every time I woke up with the memory of the smell of the poor woman’s death, and the sound of Littleton’s taunting laugh, all of those things were on the sorcerer’s account. I wanted to be on the collection committee.

  “He played with her.” I sent the bag swinging with a roundhouse, my best kick, hoping if I spoke the worst of that night, it would stay out of my dreams. “I bet she knew that he’d already killed those other people. I bet she knew he was going to kill her. He tortured her, cutting her a little at a time so that it would take her longer to die.”

  “Mercy,” Adam’s voice was a purr, ready to offer comfort, but I wasn’t going to fall down that hole. Everything meant too much to werewolves, and too little. If I let Adam comfort me, he could, and probably would, take it as an admission that I acknowledged him as my leader—maybe as my mate. It wasn’t his fault, werewolf instincts are very strong. Samuel was safer, though he was a powerful dominant, because he wasn’t Alpha of a pack.

  Being Alpha was more than dominant. There is magic in the bindings of a pack that gives power to their leader, he can draw on their strength and give some of it back to them. I’d seen Adam’s pack heal him and give him the power to force his dominion on another group of werewolves.

  Being Alpha also gives a wolf the need to protect—and control—everyone they believe falls under their command. I didn’t. But Adam had declared me his mate so he disagreed with me. I couldn’t afford to soften my position at all.

  I backed up the length of the garage, then ran hard toward the bag. A jumping, spinning back-kick is one of those moves that my sensei said had one purpose—to intimidate. Sure, if it hit, the kick was devastating, but any martial artist who was any good wouldn’t allow one to hit because flashy kicks are too slow. Usually.

  I launched as hard as I could, spinning fast enough to leave me dizzy. The heel of my foot caught the bag just below the top edge, as it was supposed to. If the sandbag had been a person I’d have broken his neck. I might even have landed on my feet.

  The chain that suspended the bag kept it from falling back the way a person would have, and I hadn’t expected the force I generated: I landed bruisingly hard on my butt.

  I lay back quickly, flat on the floor, but Adam caught the bag before it could swing back and hit me. He whistled softly as sand started sifting down from a small tear in the seam of the bag. “Nice kick.”

  “Adam,” I said staring up at the ceiling, “he saved her for dessert.”

  “What? Saved whom?”

  “The maid. Littleton saved her like a kid hoarding his chocolate Easter bunny. He put the maid in the bathroom, out of sight, because he didn’t want to kill her too soon. He was waiting for Stefan.” There were other reasons he could have stashed her in the bathroom—like he’d fed already on the other people he’d killed—but there had been something in his face when he’d brought her out that had said, “at last.”

  “Was he waiting for Stefan in particular? Or for whoever Marsilia sent?” asked Adam, seeing the important part of it before I did.

  I thought of how much Littleton seemed to know about Stefan, intimate things, though Stefan had never met him. But it was more than what he’d said that made me certain, it was the way he’d seemed so pleased—as if everything was happening as expected.

  “For Stefan,” I said, then continued to the obvious question. “I wonder who told him Stefan was coming?”

  “I’ll call Warren and tell him you think someone told Littleton Stefan was coming for him,” Adam said. “Stefan will have a better idea how Littleton might have found out, and if it means he has a traitor in his camp.”

  I stayed where I was while Adam got the phone off the wall and began punching buttons.

  We’d spent years as adversaries, two predators sharing territory and a certain, unwelcome attraction. Somehow, during all those years I spent outwardly acquiescing to his demands while making sure I held my own, I’d won his respect. I’d had werewolves love me and hate me, but I’d never had one respect me before. Not even Samuel.

  Adam respected me enough to act on my suspicions. It meant a lot.

  I closed my eyes and let the flow of his voice surround me and drive away the frustration. Adam was right. I wasn’t suited for going after a vampire, any vampire, and certainly not one aided by a demon. I’d just have to be satisfied when Warren or Stefan did it. If Ben killed Littleton, though…I didn’t know if that would satisfy me. I hated to owe Ben any more than I already did.

  Adam hung up the phone. I heard the quiet sound of his feet walking toward me on the padded floor, and the hiss as the mat gave way when he sat beside me. After a moment he untied the top of my gi and pulled it off, leaving me in my T-shirt and white gi pants. I let him do it.

  “Passive isn’t like you,” he said.

  I growled at him, though I didn’t open my eyes. “Shut up. I’m wallowing in misery, here. Have a little respect.”

  He laughed and rolled me over until my face was pressed into the sweat-scented mat. His hands were warm and strong as they dug into the tense muscles of my lower back. When he dug into my shoulders, I went boneless.

  At first he was all business, finding the knots left by sleepless nights and days of physically demanding work. Then his hands softened and the brisk rubs became light caresses.

  “You smell like burnt oil and WD-40,” he said, a smile in his voice.

  “So plug your nose,” I retorted. To my dismay, it came out with more sugar than vinegar.

  I was so easy. One back rub and I was his. My susceptibility to him was the reason I’d been avoiding him. Somehow, lying on my face with his hands on my back, it didn’t seem l
ike a good enough reason.

  He didn’t smell of burnt oil, but of forest, wolf, and that exotic wild scent that belonged only to him. His hands slipped under my tee and spread wide over my lower back then feathered over my bra strap. I could have told him that sports bras don’t have clasps, but then I’d have to take an active part in my own seduction. I wanted him to be the aggressor—a small part of me, the very small part of me that wasn’t turning to jelly under his hands, wondered why.

  I didn’t want to delegate responsibility, I decided lazily. I was more than willing to accept responsibility for my own actions—and allowing him to slide his warm, calloused hands into my hair was certainly an action on my part. I loved a man’s hands in my hair, I decided. I loved Adam’s hands.

  He bit the nape of my neck and I moaned.

  The door between the garage and the house popped open suddenly. “Hey Dad, hey Mercy.”

  Ice water couldn’t have been more effective.

  The hands on my butt stilled as Adam’s daughter’s quick steps paused. I opened my eyes and met her gaze. She’d changed her hairstyle since last time I’d seen her, going from startling to even more startling. It was no more than a half-inch long and yellow—not blond yellow, but daffodil yellow. The effect was charming, but a little bizarre. Not what a rescuer ought to look like.

  Her face went blank as she realized what she’d interrupted. “I’ll, uh, go upstairs and watch a show,” she said, not sounding like herself at all.

  I scooted out from under Adam. “And Jesse saves the day,” I said lightly. “Thank you, that was getting out of hand.”

  She paused, looking—surprised.

  I wondered uncharitably how many times she’d walked in on her mother in similar situations and what her mother’s response had been. I never had liked Jesse’s mother and was happy to believe all sorts of evil about her. I let anger at the games her mother might have played surround me. When you’ve lived with werewolves, you learn tricks to hide what you’re feeling from them—anger, for instance, covers up panic pretty well—and, out from under Adam’s sensuous hands, I was panicking plenty.