Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  He was answering me as if I had some authority, I realized, as if he really were talking to Adam’s mate.

  “What do you think happened?” I asked.

  “I think Adam—and Samuel if he is gone, too—figured out where the damned sorcerer is. I don’t see Adam leaving Warren alone in this bad of shape otherwise.”

  Neither did I. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That could be bad.”

  “How so?”

  “Last night, Uncle Mike told me that having a demon and a werewolf together could be very dangerous. Demons have a deleterious effect on self control, which is very, very bad for werewolves. Uncle Mike was very concerned.”

  He absorbed that for a moment. “That could be bad. It might have been nice to know that sooner.”

  “Mmm.” I sucked in a breath. There was more that he should know, but I wasn’t happy telling him. Still, with Samuel and Adam both missing, it wasn’t smart to withhold information from one of the few allies I had left.

  This was Darryl, and, since he was treating me as though I really was higher in the pack than he was—and since he was unlikely to care much about me one way or the other—he wasn’t going to forbid me anything. “I was in Uncle Mike’s meeting Marsilia. She wants me to find Littleton and kill the sorcerer for her.”

  There was a very long, telling pause. “She thinks you can do this?” His disbelief might not be flattering, but I kinda felt that way myself so it was all right.

  “Apparently. She’s got one of her higher ranking vampires helping me out.”

  “Mmm,” he said.

  “I think he’s actually okay. He’s a friend of Stefan’s.”

  “Adam wouldn’t let you do this.”

  “I know. But he’s not there. If Warren regains consciousness, I want you to call me.” I gave him my cell number, home number, and the number of the shop.

  After he’d written it all down, I said, “You need to call Bran and tell him everything.”

  “Even about you?” he asked. He knew what Bran would think about me going after a sorcerer with a vampire.

  “Yes,” I said. I wasn’t going to put him in a position that would get Bran angry with him. Bran could get angry with me—I’d had a lot of practice at dealing with that once upon a time. I supposed I could get used to it again. It helped that he was hundreds of miles away and I had caller ID on my cell phone.

  Even so…“But only if he asks,” I added hastily.

  Darryl laughed. “Yeah, I remember using that trick on my mother. Hope it works better for you than it did for me.”

  I hung up.

  Adam and Samuel had disappeared before Littleton had started his little performance at my trailer.

  Littleton had Samuel’s voice down pat. After four hours, Adam hadn’t called to check in on Warren, who was not yet out of danger—nor had Samuel.

  Littleton had them both. If Littleton was like other vampires, he would not be active in the day. There was a chance they were still alive. Littleton liked to savor his prey.

  I had to find him before nightfall.

  I called Elizaveta and got her answering machine.

  “This is Elizaveta Arkadyevna. I am unavailable. Please leave a message with your name and phone number and I will return your call.”

  “This is Mercy,” I told it after it beeped at me. “Adam and Samuel are missing. Where are you? Call me or Darryl as soon as you can.”

  I didn’t know enough about witchcraft to know if she could help or not. At the very least I could pick her brain about vampires and sorcerers—if I could convince her that Adam’s orders not to talk to me were out of date.

  I called all three of Tony’s numbers and told him to call me on my cell. I called Zee, but only got his answering machine. I left a detailed message on his phone also. That way Darryl and Zee both knew what I was up to.

  Then I took my cell phone and headed to work. I’d send Gabriel home for the day and close the shop.

  My watch said I was fifteen minutes early, so I was surprised to see Mrs. Hanna. She was hours ahead of her customary schedule.

  When I parked in my usual spot, she was next to my car. Frantic as I was, Mrs. Hanna’s very presence demanded that I be polite. “Hello, Mrs. Hanna. You’re early today.”

  There was a pause before she looked up at me, and for a moment she didn’t know me at all. A month or two more, I thought, and there would only be a little personality left.

  But for today, her face eventually lit up, “Mercedes, child. I was hoping to see you today. I have a special drawing just for you.”

  She fumbled around in her cart without success, becoming visibly more agitated.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Hanna,” I told her. “I’m sure you’ll find it later. Why don’t you leave it for me tomorrow?”

  “But it was just right here,” she fretted. “A picture of that nice boy who likes you. The dark one.”

  Adam.

  “Tomorrow will be fine, Mrs. Hanna. What brings you out so early?”

  She looked around as if bewildered by the question. Then relaxed and smiled. “Oh that was Joe. He told me I’d better change my route if I wanted to keep visiting him.”

  I smiled at her. When she’d been alive, she’d talked about John this and Peter that. I never had been sure if she really had boyfriends, or just liked to pretend that she had.

  She leaned forward confidentially. “We women always have to change for our men, don’t we.”

  Startled I stared at her. That was it exactly. I felt as though Adam was changing who I was.

  She saw that her words had hit home and nodded happily. “But they’re worth it, God love them. They’re worth it.”

  She puttered off in her usual shuffle-shuffle step that covered a surprising amount of ground.

  Chapter 10

  “No, sir, she’s not—” Gabriel looked up as I walked into the shop. “Wait. She’s here.”

  I took the phone, thinking it might be Tony or Elizaveta. “This is Mercy.”

  “This is John Beckworth, I’m calling from Virginia. I’m sorry, I forgot how much earlier you are than we.”

  The voice was familiar, but the name was wrong. “Mr. Black?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he sounded a little sheepish. “It’s Beckworth, actually. I just got off the phone with a Bran Cornick. He suggested that there is some trouble in the Tri-Cities.”

  “Yes, we have something of a…situation here.” Either Adam had called Bran yesterday, or Darryl had remembered the Blacks/Beckworths and talked to him this morning.

  “So Mr. Cornick said. He suggested that we fly to Montana early next week.” He paused. “He seemed less intense than Adam Hauptman.”

  That was Bran, quiet and calm until he ripped out your throat.

  “Are you calling to make sure he’s safe?” I asked.

  “Yes. He wasn’t on the list of men you gave me.”

  “If I had a daughter, I’d have no qualms leaving her with Bran,” I said sincerely, ignoring the question of why Bran’s name wasn’t on the list. “He’ll take good care of you and your family.”

  “He talked to Kara, my daughter,” he said, and there was a world of relief in his voice. “I don’t know what he said, but I haven’t seen her this happy in years.”

  “Good.”

  “Ms. Thompson, if there is ever anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to call.”

  I started to automatically refuse, but then I stopped. “Are you really a reporter?”

  He laughed. “Yes, but I don’t cover celebrity sex lives. I’m an investigative journalist.”

  “You have ways of finding out about people?”

  “Yes.” He sounded intrigued.

  “I need as much information as you can get on a man named Cory Littleton. He has a website. Fancies himself a magician. It would be particularly helpful if you could find out if he owns property in the Tri-Cities.” That was a long shot, but I knew that Warren had checked out all the hotels and rent
als. If Littleton was here, he had some place to stay.

  He read the name back to me again. “I’ll get what I can. It may take a few days.”

  “Be careful,” I said. “He’s dangerous. You don’t want him to know you’re looking.”

  “Is this connected to the trouble Mr. Cornick was telling me about?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell me how to contact you—probably an e-mail address would be best.”

  I gave him what he needed, and thanked him. Hanging up the phone, I noticed Gabriel’s eyes on me.

  “Trouble?” he asked.

  Maybe I should have worked harder to keep Gabriel out of my world. But he had a good head on his shoulders, and he wasn’t stupid. I’d decided it was easier to tell him what I could—and safer than if he went looking.

  “Yes. Bad trouble.”

  “That phone call last night?”

  “That’s part of it. Warren’s hurt badly. Samuel and Adam are missing.”

  “What is it?”

  I shrugged. “That I can’t tell you.” The vampires didn’t like people talking about them.

  “Is he a werewolf?”

  “No, not a werewolf.”

  “A vampire like Stefan?”

  I stared at him.

  “What? I’m not supposed to figure it out?” He shook his head reprovingly. “Your mysterious customer who drives the funky bus painted up like the Mystery Machine and only shows up after dark? Dracula he isn’t, but where there’s werewolves, there certainly ought to be vampires.”

  I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Fine. Yes.” Then I told him seriously, “Don’t let anyone else know you know anything about vampires, especially not Stefan.” Then I remembered that wouldn’t be a problem. I swallowed around the lump in my throat and continued seriously. “It’s not safe for you or your family. They’ll leave you alone as long as they don’t know you believe in them.”

  He pulled his collar aside to show me a cross. “My mother makes me wear this. It was my father’s.”

  “That’ll help,” I told him. “But pretending ignorance will help more. I’m expecting a couple of phone calls. One from Tony and the other from Elizaveta Arkadyevna, you’ll know her by her Russian accent.” I’d intended to close the shop for the day, but I didn’t have anything to do until Tony or Elizaveta called me back. If it had taken two weeks for Stefan and Warren to find the sorcerer, I was unlikely to find him by driving up and down streets at random. There are over 200,000 people living in the Tri-Cities. It isn’t Seattle, but it’s not Two Dot, Montana, either.

  I couldn’t concentrate on my work. It took me twice as long to replace a power steering pump as it should have, because I kept stopping to check my phone.

  Finally, I broke down and called Zee again—but there was no answer on his phone. Elizaveta still wasn’t answering her phone either, nor was Tony.

  I started on the next car. I’d only been working on it for a few minutes when Zee walked in. From the scowl on his face, he was upset about something. I finished tightening the alternator belt on the ’70 Beetle and scrubbed up. When I had most of the grease off my hands I leaned a hip on a bench and said, “What’s up.”

  “Only a fool deals with vampires,” he said, his face closed up into a forbidding visage of disapproval.

  “Littleton ripped Warren to bits, Zee,” I told him. “It probably killed Stefan—and Samuel and Adam are missing.”

  “I did not know about the Alpha and Samuel.” His face softened a little. “That is bad, Liebchen. But to take direction from the vampire’s mistress is not smart.”

  “I’m being careful.”

  He snorted. “Careful? I saw your trailer.”

  “So did I,” I said ruefully. “I was there when it happened. Littleton must have found out that Marsilia asked me to find him.”

  “You obviously found him last night—not that it did you any good.”

  I shrugged. He was right, but I couldn’t just sit around and wait for Darryl to call and tell me they’d found Samuel and Adam dead. “Marsilia seems to think I can deal with him.”

  “You believe her?”

  “Uncle Mike did.”

  That took him aback; he pursed his lips. “What else did Uncle Mike say to you?”

  The stuff about heroes was too embarrassing, so I told him what Uncle Mike had told me about the effect of demons on werewolves.

  “Uncle Mike visited me this morning,” Zee told me. “Then we both went out and visited some other friends.” He hefted a backpack at me.

  I caught it and unzipped the bag. Inside was a sharpened stake as long as my forearm and the knife Zee had loaned me the first time I’d visited the seethe. It was very good at slicing through things—things a knife had no business cutting at all, like chains for example.

  “I got the stake from a fae who has an affinity for trees and growing things,” he said. “It’s made from the wood of a rowan tree, a wood of the light. She said that this would find its way to the heart of a vampire.”

  “I appreciate your trouble,” I said, skirting around an outright “thank you.”

  He smiled, just a little smile. “You are a lot of trouble, Mercy. Usually you’re worth it. I don’t think that knife will do anything to the vampire when his magic is still working. But once he’s staked he will be more vulnerable to it. Then you can use it to cut off his head. Zzip.”

  I reached down to the bottom of the bag, where something else was hidden. I brought it out into the light and saw it was a flat disk of gold. On the front was a lizard, and on the back were marks of some sort that might have been letters. Both the lizard and the lettering were battered.

  “A vampire is not dead until its body is ashes,” Zee said. “Put this on its body, after you’ve cut off the head, then say the medallion’s name.” He took it, brushed his fingers over the lettering, and, though I don’t think the lettering actually changed, I could read it. Drachen.

  It had been ten years ago, but I had taken two years of German in college. “Kite?” I said incredulously.

  He laughed, the smile flashing wide on his narrow face. “Dragon, Mercy. It also means dragon.”

  “Do I say it in German or English?” I asked.

  He pulled my hand forward and put it in my reluctant palm, closing my hand upon it. “Macht nichts, Liebling.” It doesn’t matter.

  “So if someone says either word it burns whatever it’s touching to ashes?” I hadn’t meant to sound quite so appalled. How often did I really hear the word in everyday life anyway?

  “Would I give you such a thing?” He shook his head. “No. Uncle Mike has given it your name, no one else may invoke it, and even then it takes both word and desire.”

  “So I have to say it and mean it,” I said. I imagined if I was holding it against a vampire, desire to burn the creature to ashes wouldn’t be hard to come by.

  “Right.”

  I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “This will help a lot.”

  He frowned at me for the kiss. “I would like to do more, but it is verboten. Even in so much as we have managed there is risk.”

  “I understand. Uncle Mike told me.”

  “If it were just risk to me, I would go with you to fight this thing. It is the whole of the Walla Walla Reservation who will suffer.”

  Because of the violence shortly after the fae had revealed themselves, most of the fae who were not still hidden, had voluntarily relocated to one of several fae reservations, where they could live in safety. Zee lived there; I’m not sure about Uncle Mike. But I did know that the Gray Lords weren’t above killing one fae to ensure the good behavior of others.

  “I do understand,” I told him. “Besides, didn’t you tell me once that your talents are not much use against vampires?”

  His eyebrows lowered even further. “My magic would not help. But strength I have—I am a blacksmith. I worry for you who are so human-fragile.”

  “That’s why I’m taking one of Marsi
lia’s vampires with me,” I told him.

  My cell phone rang before he could say what he thought about that. I picked it up and looked at the caller ID, hoping for Tony or Elizaveta. It was Bran. I considered not answering it, but he was all the way in Montana—all he could do is yell at me.

  “Hey, Bran,” I said.

  “Don’t do it. I will be there tomorrow morning.”

  Bran said he wasn’t psychic, but most of the werewolves were convinced otherwise. Moments like this made me agree with them.

  I was tempted to feign innocence, but it was too much work. I was tired, and I doubted I was going to be able to sleep until Adam and Samuel were safe at home—or until Littleton was dead.

  “Good,” I said. “I’m glad you’re coming, but both you and Uncle Mike told me demons are very bad news for werewolves. What happens if you lose control?” It didn’t even occur to me that Bran wouldn’t know who Uncle Mike was. Bran just knew everything and everyone.

  He said nothing.

  “We don’t have enough time to wait for you,” I said. “If Samuel and Adam are still alive, I have to find them before nightfall.”

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “It doesn’t matter if you object,” I told him gently. “You can’t stop me, anyway. With Adam missing, I’m the highest ranking werewolf in town—since he declared me his mate.” Fancy that. And I wasn’t even a werewolf—not that I expected my mythological rank to stand up without Adam around. Still, Bran of all people would have to follow his own laws.

  “I’m not helpless,” I told him. “I have my very own superhero vampire/sorcerer-slaying kit, and the vampires have given me one of their own to guard my back.” Going after Littleton was probably suicidal, even with a vampire to back me up—it hadn’t helped Warren any—but I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for Adam’s body to show up in Uncle Mike’s garbage.

  “You trust this vampire?”

  No. But I couldn’t tell him that—and I knew better than to try to lie to Bran. “He wants Littleton permanently dead.” I was sure of that much, I’d heard the anger in Andre’s voice, the hunger for vengeance. “He was a friend of one of the sorcerer’s victims.” I could almost say “sorcerer’s victim” fast enough that I didn’t think, “Stefan,” or “Adam,” or “Samuel.” A victim was someone nameless and faceless.