Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  The big woman sighed as Uncle Mike stepped back and swept the fae near him away until I could clearly see the small stage where three musicians still stood. There were two guitarists and a string bass. I don’t know where the sounds of drums had come from because there were none in evidence.

  One of the guitarists grinned, hopped off the stage and motioned to the others to do likewise. Leaving the platform to me.

  I lifted my eyebrow at Uncle Mike and began walking to the stage. Andre, I’d noticed, had drawn back in the crowd. They wouldn’t bother him, not a vampire. Neither would they have bothered one of the werewolves. I, who was neither werewolf nor vampire, was fair game.

  I wondered if Uncle Mike would have let them tear me to bits if he hadn’t been aware that, pack or not, the wolves would avenge me—fat lot of good vengeance would have done me. Uncle Mike’s suspect help was of more use.

  When I stepped onto the stage, one of the guitarists tried to hand me his instrument with a flourish.

  “I appreciate the gesture,” I told him carefully, “but I don’t play.” I didn’t play anything except piano—and that very poorly. I was just lucky that the piano lessons had included voice lessons, too.

  I looked around for inspiration. The obvious answer was to pick a Celtic song, but I rejected it as fast as it came to mind. Folk songs, for the most part, have dozens of variations and dozens of people claiming that their version was true. In a group of mostly Celtic fae who were looking for a reason to kill me, singing a Celtic song would be stupid.

  There were a few German fae here, and the Germans were not nearly as picky about their music, but the only German song I knew was “O Tannenbaum,” a children’s Christmas carol that wouldn’t impress anyone—not that my voice was going to impress anyone anyway. I had pitch and volume, but no real talent.

  Which made the choice of song very important. We played a game and if I cowered too much, not even Uncle Mike could save my skin. A subtle insult would be best. Not a slap in the face, but a poke in the side.

  I also needed a power song, because my voice isn’t pretty and soft. Something that sounded good a capella. Despite the air-conditioning, the room was stifling hot and my thoughts felt sluggish—of course that might have been the fear.

  I wished it was winter and the air was cool and crisp…Maybe it was that, maybe it was the lingering thought about “O Tannenbaum,” but I knew what I was going to sing. I felt my lips curl up.

  I took a deep breath, properly supported with my diaphragm, and began singing. “O holy night, the stars are brightly shining…”

  So in the sweltering heat of a July night, I sang a Christmas carol to a room full of fae, who had been driven out of their homelands by Christians and their cold-iron swords.

  I’ve heard that song sung softly, until the magic of that first Christmas seems to hang in the air. I wish I could sing it that way. Instead, I belted it out, because that’s what my voice does best.

  I closed my eyes to my audience and let the simple belief of the words run through me like a prayer until I got to, “Fall on your knees.” Then I opened my eyes and glared at the woman who had started all of this and I sang the rest of the song at her.

  When the last note died away, the big woman threw back her head and laughed. She turned to Uncle Mike and patted him on the shoulder, sending him half a step forward.

  “Good forfeit,” she said. “Huh.” Then she stomped off back through the crowd toward a corner of the room.

  If I’d been expecting applause, I’d have been disappointed. The room settled down and the fae went back to doing whatever they’d been doing before I’d become so interesting. Still, it hadn’t been any worse than singing at the Friday night performance in front of Bran at Aspen Springs.

  One of the musicians, the one who’d offered his guitar, grinned at me as we switched places.

  “A little thin on the highest notes,” he said. “But not bad.”

  I grinned back at him, a little ruefully. “Tough crowd.”

  “You’re still alive, ducks, aren’t you then?” he said imitatingthe cadences of the woman’s voice.

  I gave him a half wave and made a direct line for the exit. I didn’t see Andre, but Uncle Mike met me at the door and held it open for me.

  Standing on the porch I caught the door and looked back at him. “How did you know I could even carry a note?”

  He smiled. “You were raised by a Welshman, Mercedes Thompson. And isn’t that a Welsh name, Thompson? Then, too, one of the names for the coyote is the Prairie Songbird.” He shrugged. “Of course, it wasn’t my life on the line.”

  I snorted in appreciation.

  He touched a finger to his forehead and closed the door firmly between us.

  Chapter 9

  Andre was waiting for me in the parking lot, standing beside one of the seethe’s interchangeable black Mercedes, ready to drive me to Stefan’s home—as if I were stupid enough to hop into a car driven by a vampire I didn’t know.

  Despite Andre’s objections, I followed him in my car rather than letting him drive me. Aside from being safer, when we were done, I could drive straight home instead of waiting for him to drive me back out to Uncle Mike’s.

  He was right, it might have been useful to talk and come up with a game plan—if I had trusted him a little more or if I hadn’t had to go to work in the morning. Bills don’t wait just because my friend was cut to hamburger and the vampire’s mistress wants me to find a sorcerer who has killed more than forty people.

  I took a tighter grip on the wheel and tried not to look at the broken dash, where Stefan, calm, quiet Stefan, had put his fist. What had made him so angry? That the sorcerer had beaten him?

  What had Stefan said? That he knew there was something wrong with his memories because he hadn’t remembered me. That I was not unimportant to him.

  Stefan was a vampire, I reminded myself. Vampires are evil.

  I reached out and touched the dash. He did it because I had been hurt, I thought.

  He wasn’t unimportant to me either—I didn’t want him to be gone forever.

  Stefan’s house was in the hills in Kennewick, in one of the newer subdivisions on the west side of Highway 395. It was a big, sprawling brick house on a large lot with a circular drive, the kind of house that should have generations of children growing up in it. Surrounded by buildings with fake columns and two-story-high windows, it should have looked out of place. Instead it looked content with what it was. I could see Stefan in this house.

  “You’d better knock on the door,” Andre said as I got out of my car. “They’ve already refused to admit me once tonight—with every justification. Stefan might forgive me Daniel, but his flock will remember.” He sounded mildly regretful, about on the level of a child who’d thrown a baseball through a window.

  Despite the late hour, there were lights on all over the house. When I thought about it, it made sense that a vampire’s people kept late hours.

  Coming here had sounded logical when Marsilia had directed us here. I hadn’t really thought about what it would mean.

  I hesitated before I knocked. I didn’t want to meet Stefan’s people, didn’t want to know that he kept them the way a farmer keeps a herd of cattle. I liked Stefan, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  The curtain in the window next to the door moved a little. They already knew we were here.

  I rang the doorbell.

  I heard a scramble behind the door as if a lot of people were moving around, but when it opened, there was only one person in the entryway.

  She looked to be a few years older than me, in her mid- to late thirties. She wore her dark, curly hair cut to shoulder length. She was dressed conservatively in a tailored shirt and slacks; she looked like a business woman.

  I think she might have been attractive, but her eyes and nose were swollen and red, her face too pale. She stood back in silent invitation. I walked in, but Andre came to an abrupt halt just outside the threshold.

&nbs
p; “You’ll have to invite me in again, Naomi,” he said.

  She drew in a shaky breath. “No. Not until he returns.” She looked at me. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “My name is Mercedes Thompson,” I told her. “I’m trying to find out what happened to Stefan.”

  She nodded her head and, without another word to Andre, shut the door in his face.

  “Mercedes Thompson,” she said. “Stefan liked you, I know. You stood up for him before the other vampires, and when you believed he was in trouble, you called us.” She glanced back at the door. “Stefan revoked Andre’s entry into the house, but I wasn’t certain that it still worked with Stefan…missing.” She looked at the door a moment, then turned to me with a visible effort at composure. Control sat more comfortably on her face than fear.

  “What can I do to help you, Ms. Thompson?”

  “You don’t sound like the kind of person who would…” There was doubtlessly a polite term for someone who willingly feeds a vampire, but I didn’t know it.

  “What did you expect?” she asked tartly. “Pale children covered with tattoos and bite marks?”

  “Mmm,” I said. “I met Daniel.”

  Her expressive eyes clouded. “Ah, Daniel. Yes. And we have a couple more like him. So, the stereotype is present here, but not all encompassing. If you went to another vampire’s flock you might find it more like you expected. Stefan is seldom typical of anything.” She took a deep breath. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen and I’ll pour you some tea while you ask your questions?”

  There were at least ten people besides Stefan living in the house: I could smell them. They kept out of sight while Naomi led me to the kitchen, but I could hear someone whispering nearby. Politely, I didn’t stick my head into the room the whispers were coming from.

  A butcher-block table that wouldn’t have fit in most of the rooms in my trailer held sway in the center of the kitchen. Naomi pulled out a tall stool and sat down, motioning for me to take a seat as well. As she did, her hair fell away from the unblemished skin of her neck.

  She saw my glance and pulled her hair back, so I could see that there were no red marks. “Satisfied?” she asked.

  I took a deep breath. She wanted me uncomfortable, but the adrenaline rush from Uncle Mike’s was gone and I was just tired.

  I pushed back my own hair and turned so she could see the bite marks on my neck. They were mostly healed, so I’d quit wearing a bandage, but the skin was still red and shiny. I’d probably have a scar.

  She sucked in her breath and leaned forward to touch my neck. “Stefan never did that,” she said, but with rather less conviction in her tone of voice than in her words.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Someone just gnawed on you,” she said. “Stefan has more care.”

  I nodded. “This was done by the thing that Stefan went hunting.”

  She relaxed. “That’s right. He’d said it attacked you.”

  Stefan talked to her, a hopeful sign.

  “Yes.” I pulled out a second stool and climbed aboard. “Do you know where Stefan went last night?”

  She shook her head. “I asked. He wouldn’t tell me. He said he didn’t want us chasing after him if he didn’t come home.”

  “He was worried about you?”

  “Yes, but not the way you think,” said a new voice behind me.

  I looked over and saw a young woman in baggy clothes and long, straight hair. She didn’t look at us, just opened the fridge and studied the contents.

  “How so?” I asked.

  She looked up and grimaced at Naomi. “He was worried that she would get the rest of us killed trying to rescue him. See, if he dies, so does she…not immediately, but soon.”

  “That’s not why I’m worried,” Naomi lied. I could hear it in her voice.

  “See, the professor here has leukemia.” The younger girl took out a quart of milk and drank out of the carton. “As long as she’s playing blood bank, Stefan’s return donations keep her cancer in check. If he quits”—she made a choking, gasping sound, then gave Naomi a faint pleased look. “In return she acts as Stefan’s business manager—paying bills, doing the taxes…shopping. Hey, Naomi, we’re out of cheese.” She replaced the carton and shut the fridge.

  Naomi slid off her chair and faced the younger girl. “If he is dead, that means no more free ride for you. Maybe you should go back to your mother and her new husband. At least until the Mistress finds you and gives you to another vampire. Maybe Andre would want you.”

  The teenager just stared at her, her gaze coolly mocking. Naomi turned to me and said, “She doesn’t know any more than I do.”

  She glared at the girl one more time, then stalked off. The girl had come out the clear winner in their engagement. I found myself thinking she’d make a good wolf.

  “I’m Mercedes Thompson,” I said, turning on the stool so I could put my elbows on the butcher-block table and lean back in a nonthreatening manner. “I’m looking for Stefan.”

  She glanced around as if looking for him, too. “Yeah, well he ain’t here.”

  I nodded my head and pursed my lips. “I know. One of the wolves he was with last night was returned to us in very bad shape.”

  She raised her chin. “You aren’t a werewolf. Stefan said.”

  “No,” I agreed.

  “Anything that could take out Stefan could wipe the floor with old Andre out there.” She jerked her chin toward the front door. “What makes you think you can help Stefan?”

  “Marsilia believes I can.” I watched the impact of the name hit her. For a moment, even with the veil of dark hair that covered her face, I caught a glimpse of the fear that rose from the depths of the house. Everyone here was very afraid. The house reeked of it.

  “If Stefan doesn’t come back,” she told me very quietly, suddenly sounding much older, “I think we’re all dead, not just Doctor Tightbritches. Sooner or later, we’re all gone. The Mistress won’t want us free to blabber about them. So she’ll farm us out to the rest of her vampires, put us in their menageries. Most of them aren’t as careful with their food as Stefan. No control when they’re hungry.”

  I didn’t know what to say that didn’t sound like a platitude, so I picked a thread out of her speech and plucked it. “Stefan keeps you alive longer than the others are able to?”

  “He doesn’t kill those of us in his menagerie,” she said. I remembered that the London Zoo had once been known as a menagerie. She shrugged with studied casualness. “Mostly, anyway. When he gets us, we have to stay a couple of years, but after that, ’cept for Naomi—and that’s hardly Stefan’s fault either—we’re free to go.”

  “Why a couple of years?” I asked.

  She gave me a “how stupid are you?” look. “It takes that long for him to establish enough of a connection to make sure we won’t go telling anyone we meet about vampires.”

  “How long have you been with Stefan?”

  “Five years this August,” she said, though she couldn’t be over twenty. I hid my shock, but not well enough because she smirked at me. “Twelve. I was twelve. Stefan’s a big step up from my folks, let me tell you.”

  Vampires are evil. Funny how I kept trying to forget that about Stefan.

  “You probably know more about vampires than I do,” I told her, changing my tack so I could get a little more information. “I grew up with the werewolves, and even though I’ve known Stefan a long time, most of our conversations are about cars. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How much do you know about the thing that he was hunting?”

  “He doesn’t talk to us much,” she told me. “Not like he used to talk to Daniel. He said it was a vampire demon thingy.”

  I nodded. “Close enough. Apparently if I can kill the vampire, the demon will just go away. No more vampire demon thingy. Marsilia told me how to kill vampires.” I stopped speaking and let her
think about that a minute. She was pretty bright, it didn’t take her long to come to the same conclusion I had.

  “Man, that’s pretty scary, going into a battle with the Mistress as your intel. Sure, I’ll tell you what you need to know.” She ran her eyes over me and was unimpressed. “She really thinks you can kill this thing?”

  I started to nod, then stopped. “I have no idea what Marsilia thinks.” Uncle Mike hadn’t thought me hunting the sorcerer was stupid. I wasn’t sure if I should trust the fae any further than I trusted the vampire. I shrugged finally and told her the truth. “I don’t really care. I’ll kill the sorcerer or die trying.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said I could kill a vampire with a wooden stake through the heart, holy water or sunlight.”

  She leaned a hip against the fridge and shook her head. “Look. The wooden stake thing works, but it’s better if it’s oak, ash, or yew. And if you kill them that way, you have to cut off their heads or burn the body to make sure they stay dead. Remember, a dead vampire is ashes. If there’s a body, it’ll come back—and it’ll come back angry with you. Cutting off their heads is pretty good, but difficult. They’re not likely to stand around and wait for the chainsaw. Sunlight’s good, too. But the stake and sunlight, they’re like kicking a guy in the balls, you know?”

  I shook my head, fascinated.

  “They all know about it. They’re not going to put themselves at risk if they can help it. And if you screw it up all it does is piss ’em off more. Holy water’s mostly out. You’d need a whole swimming pool full of holy water to kill one.”

  “So how would you kill a vampire permanently?”

  She pursed her lips. “Fire’s best. Stefan says they burn pretty well once they get started.”

  “Stefan told you all of this?” I tried to imagine the conversation.

  She nodded. “Sure.” She gave me a considering look. “Look, I don’t know where he went, but I know he was keeping a sharp eye out on the local news and the papers. He had a map of the ’Cities and he marked where there was violence. Yesterday he was pretty excited about something he’d noticed about the pattern.”