Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “We can’t find a pattern either,” he said. “Not an overall pattern. But the incidences do tend to come in clusters. Yesterday it was East Kennewick. Two fistfights and a family disturbance that roused the neighborhood. The night before it was West Pasco.”

  “He’s moving around,” I said. That wasn’t good. Where was he keeping Adam and Samuel if he was moving around? “Is there a time of day that the violence is the worst?” I asked.

  “After nightfall.”

  I looked at the pins again, silently counting the red ones. They were short of Uncle Mike’s count—and I don’t think either of them knew about the family who died during Daniel’s experience with Littleton.

  “Did you learn anything?” he asked.

  “Hunting serial killers is easier on TV,” I said sourly.

  “Is that what we’re dealing with?”

  I shrugged, then remembered Littleton’s face when he killed the woman at the motel. “I think so. Of a sort. The incidental violence is really bad, Tony, but this monster likes to kill. If he decides he doesn’t need to hide anymore, it would be very bad. What can you tell me about serial killers?”

  “I haven’t seen one here,” he said. “Doesn’t mean we don’t have one we don’t know about—but there are things we watch for.”

  “Like what?”

  “Most of them start with easy victims for practice.”

  Easy like Daniel? I thought.

  “I have a friend in the Seattle PD who tells me his whole department is waiting for someone to get killed. For three years they’ve had neighborhood pets turn up dead. They’re patrolling extra heavily near their at risk populations: the homeless, runaways, and prostitutes.”

  I shivered. Had Littleton been a killer before he became a sorcerer and a vampire? Had he been a vampire first or a sorcerer? Had he been evil, or had he been made evil? Not that it mattered.

  Someone knocked on the door. Tony reached past me to open it.

  “Come on in, Sergeant,” he said. “We’re finished here. Sergeant, this is Mercedes Thompson. Mercy this is Sergeant Owens, our watch commander. This is his office.”

  Sergeant Owens was lean and fit, an older, more cynical version of the smiling young man in the wedding photo. He held out his hand and I shook it. He kept mine a moment, examining the traces of grease I could never quite get out from under my nails.

  “Mercedes Thompson,” he said. “I hear that you had trouble last night. I hope there is no recurrence.”

  I nodded. “I expect they got it out of their systems,” I told him with a faint smile.

  He didn’t smile back. “Tony tells me that you have ties to the werewolf and fae communities and you’ve agreed to help us out.”

  “If I can,” I agreed. “Though I’m probably more qualified to tune up your cars than to give you advice.”

  “You’d better be a very good mechanic,” he said. “My people put their lives on the lines. I don’t need bad advice.”

  “She fixed Sylvia’s car,” Tony said. In addition to being Gabriel’s mother, Sylvia was a police dispatcher. “She’s a very good mechanic, her advice will stand up.”

  In point of fact, Zee had fixed Sylvia’s car, but that was beside the point.

  The Sergeant relaxed. “All right. All right. We’ll see how it goes.”

  We were back in the hall, when I stopped.

  “What?” Tony asked.

  “Take off the pins for the incidents at night. We need the daytime violence,” I told him. His very presence would cause violence. “This thing moves around at night, but I don’t think he can move during the day.”

  “All right,” he said. “It’ll take a while. I’ll get a rookie on it. Do you want to wait?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t afford to. Would you call me?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought he’d drop me back at the waiting room, but he escorted me all the way out. This time the little entryway was empty of students.

  “Thank you,” I said as I got in my car.

  He held my door opened and saw what Stefan had done to my dash.

  “Somebody hit that,” he said.

  “Yep. I have that effect on people.”

  “Mercy,” he said somberly. “Make sure he doesn’t hit you like that.”

  I touched the broken vinyl where Stefan had put his fist. “He won’t,” I told him.

  “You’re sure I can’t help you?”

  I nodded. “I promise that if that changes, I’ll call you right away.”

  I stopped at a fast food restaurant and ordered lunch. I ate a couple of cheeseburgers and a double order of fries, though I wasn’t particularly hungry. I hadn’t had any sleep, so staying alert meant fueling up—the large, caffeinated soda would help, too.

  When I was through eating, I got in my car and drove around, thinking myself in circles. I just didn’t have enough information to find the sorcerer, and I needed to find him before dark. Before he killed Samuel and Adam—I refused to believe they might already be dead. He hadn’t had time to play with them yet.

  Why had Marsilia sent me after Littleton knowing I was too stupid to find him?

  I jerked my car over to the side of the road and parked it abruptly, too busy thinking to be safe driving.

  Never trust a vampire. It was the first thing I’d ever learned about vampires.

  Despite her performance at Stefan’s trial, Marsilia claimed she had believed Stefan when he told her there was a vampire who was a sorcerer loose in the Tri-Cities. She could have sent the whole seethe after him—instead she’d sent Stefan and Daniel. No, Stefan had chosen Daniel. She’d expected Stefan to pick Andre. As had Andre, for that matter.

  Even after she believed Stefan dead, she still didn’t send the seethe after Littleton. Instead she sent me with Andre. Me. I was suppose to find Littleton, or so she said. Andre was to keep me alive while I did so—or follow me around so Marsilia knew what I was doing.

  Andre thought that Marsilia meant to see if she could take control of Littleton rather than kill him. Was that what Marsilia wanted him to do? Was that what he’d been supposed to do if he’d gone hunting with Stefan?

  If Marsilia told him not to kill Littleton, he wouldn’t. She was his maker and he couldn’t disobey her—though apparently Stefan could.

  I rubbed my face and tried to clear my thoughts. Knowing what Marsilia was up to might be important in the long run, but it wasn’t going to help me find Littleton.

  Littleton wasn’t leaving any traces for me to follow.

  “So what do you do when you’re out hunting and you can’t find any tracks or scent?” I asked aloud. It was a basic question, one that Samuel used on new werewolves who were ready to go for their first hunt.

  “You go to places that will attract your prey,” I answered. “Come on Samuel, that’s not going to help. I don’t know what attracted the sorcerer here in the first place.”

  To know how to find them, you have to understand your prey.

  Some little thought nudged at me. Littleton was not from the Tri-Cities. He’d been traveling though when he ran into Daniel. He’d come back, and Stefan and I had found him. He’d been waiting for Stefan. Why?

  Then it hit me.

  I’d read the Faust story in several versions, from Benét’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster” to Marlowe and Goethe. Sorcerers sell themselves to demons for knowledge and power. There was nothing in Littleton’s actions that I could see as a search for knowledge or power.

  Demons crave chaos, violence, and death. Littleton brought that in abundance, but if the demon were directing his actions wholly, there would be more bodies. Demons are not patient creatures. The demon would not have let Warren go, would not have let Stefan and me go that first night.

  But Littleton was a new vampire, and new vampires do what their makers tell them to do.

  So what would a vampire get from Littleton’s actions?

  Littleton had almost certainly killed Stefan and Ben, and near
ly killed Warren—but I was pretty sure that the wolves were collateral damage. No one would have predicted that the werewolves would get involved at all.

  So, what could Daniel’s disgrace and Stefan’s death gain a vampire? Stefan had been Marsilia’s favorite. Was the sorcerer an indirect attack on Marsilia?

  I drummed on the steering wheel. If the seethe had been a wolf pack, I’d have been able to interpret her actions better. Still…she sent Stefan out and pretended it was punishment. Pretended for whose benefit? If all of the seethe were her get, obedient to her will as Andre told me vampires had to be, she wouldn’t have had to pretend at all. So maybe she was having trouble controlling her people.

  Maybe someone sent Littleton here to destroy her, to take over the seethe. How did a vampire become the leader of a seethe? Could Littleton’s maker be in the Tri-Cities? If he was, could he hide from the other vampires?

  I needed more information. More information about Marsilia and her seethe. More information about how vampires worked. And I knew only one place I might get it.

  I started the car again and headed for Stefan’s menagerie.

  Chapter 11

  There was a gleaming red Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the driveway that hadn’t been there last night. I pulled in behind it and stopped my car. The poor old Rabbit looked out of place in such an upscale neighborhood.

  I rang the doorbell and waited a long time. My mother had taught me to be polite and part of me felt guilty for disturbing them during a time when they were probably used to sleeping. Guilt didn’t keep me from ringing the doorbell again.

  It was Rachel who opened the door—and like me, she looked like she’d had a hard night. She wore a thin, bright yellow T-shirt that left a four inch gap between its hem and the top of her low-rise jeans. Her navel was pierced and the sapphire-colored stone in the ring twinkled when she moved. It drew my eye and I had to force myself to look at her face—which was sporting several blue bruises along her jaw that hadn’t been there last night. Her upper arm bore a purple handprint where someone had grabbed her.

  She didn’t say anything, just let me look my fill as she did the same to me. Doubtless she saw the puffy skin and dark circles that showed my lack of sleep.

  “I need more information,” I told her.

  She nodded and backed away from the door so I could come inside. As soon as I was in the house I could hear someone crying: a man. He sounded young and hopeless.

  “What happened here?” I asked following her into the kitchen, the source of the sobs.

  Naomi was sitting at the butcher-block counter, looking ten years older than she had last night. She was wearing the same conservative clothes—and they looked the worse for wear. She looked up briefly as we walked in, but then turned her attention back to the mug of coffee she was sipping with deliberate calm.

  Neither she, nor Rachel, paid any attention to the young man curled up in the corner of the room, next to the sink. I couldn’t see his face because he had his back to all of us. He was rocking, the rhythm of the motion interrupted by the infrequent sobs that made his shoulders jerk forward. He was muttering something just under his breath, and even my ears couldn’t catch exactly what he said.

  “Coffee?” asked Rachel, ignoring my question.

  “No.” The food I’d eaten was sitting like a lump in my stomach as it was. If I added coffee to it, I wasn’t sure it would stay down.

  She got down a mug for herself and poured some coffee out of an industrial-sized coffeemaker on the counter. It smelled good, French vanilla, I thought. The scent was soothing, better than the taste would have been. I pulled up a chair next to Naomi, the same one I’d used last night, and, glancing again at the man curled up in the corner I asked again, “What happened to you?”

  Naomi looked at me and sneered. “Vampires. What happened to you?”

  “Vampires,” I replied. Naomi’s sneer sat oddly on her face, and seemed out of character—but I didn’t know her enough to be sure.

  Rachel tugged a chair around so she was opposite Naomi and me. “Don’t take it out on her. She’s Stefan’s friend, remember. Not one of them.”

  Naomi looked back at her cup and I realized that she wasn’t calm at all, she was in that place beyond fear where nothing you do matters because the worst has already happened and there’s nothing you can do about it. I recognized that look. It’s an expression I see a lot around the werewolves.

  It was Rachel who told me what had happened.

  “When Stefan didn’t come back yesterday morning, Joey—that’s short for Josephine—decided to leave while she could.” Rachel didn’t drink her coffee, just turned her cup this way and that. “After you left, though, I heard her motorcycle in the driveway. Can’t mistake the sound of Joey’s hog.” She moved her hands away from the mug and wiped them on her thighs. “I was stupid. I know better—especially after Daniel. But it was Joey…”

  “Joey has been here the longest,” Naomi said, when it became obvious Rachel was finished speaking. “She was bound to Stefan already.”

  She saw my puzzlement because she explained, “That means she’s almost one of them already. Everything except the actual changeover. The longer they stay bound before they die, the better the chance they’ll rise again. Stefan is patient, his people almost always rise because he waits for years longer than most vampires.”

  She was telling me all this so she wouldn’t have to go on with the story.

  “Daniel?”

  She nodded. “He was bound, just barely. It doesn’t happen to all of us—but Daniel was still too new for the changeover to be certain. It was a miracle he survived. Stefan was so angry.” She took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “I hate cold coffee.” She took another sip anyway. “Andre did it on purpose, you know. One of those stupid one-upmanship games. He was terribly jealous of Stefan because Marsilia favored him—and at the same time he loved Stefan like a brother. So when he was angry he attacked one of us instead. Vampires don’t usually care too much about the sheep in their menageries. I don’t think Andre realized just how angry Stefan would get.”

  “What happened to Joey?” I asked.

  “She’s dead,” Naomi told her coffee cup.

  “Permanently dead,” Rachel said. “I thought it was her on the motorcycle. She was wearing a helmet, and she doesn’t let anyone, not even Stefan, touch the hog. When I finally realized the rider wasn’t tall enough to be her, I tried to run back to the house.”

  “She grabbed your arm?” I suggested. It wasn’t a difficult guess, with the armband of bruises she wore.

  Rachel nodded. “And covered my mouth so I couldn’t scream.” About then, a car drove up—one of the seethe cars.”

  Like the one Andre had driven last night. I worked on them from time to time in lieu of making a cash payment to the seethe. All the businesses in the greater Tri-Cities who weren’t affiliated with more powerful groups paid protection money to the vampires. That’s how I first met Stefan. He had helped me negotiate my payment from cash (which I couldn’t afford) to work—mostly on his van, as it turned out, though I did the upkeep on the seethe’s cars as well. They were Mercedes and BMWs, big, black sedans with dark, dark windows—just what you’d expect a bunch of vampires to drive.

  “They popped open the trunk—and I thought they were going to shove me in, but it was worse than that. They already had Joey in there.” She jumped up abruptly and ran from the room. I heard her throwing up.

  “They killed Joey, cut off her head so she wouldn’t ever become one of them.” Naomi spoke evenly, but had to set down her coffee so she wouldn’t spill it. “They told Rachel that we were to stay inside this house until they decided what to do with us. They didn’t have to kill Joey to deliver that message. They could just have brought her back here—or one of them could have brought her over, the way Andre brought over Daniel.”

  “Rachel said ‘she’. Was it Marsilia?” I asked.

  Naomi shook her head. “It was the Teacher. Marsi
lia…Stefan was a favorite of hers. I don’t think she’d have killed one of us.”

  “The Teacher?” I asked.

  “Her real name is Estelle—she reminds me of an evil Mary Poppins.”

  I knew the one she meant.

  “They all have names among themselves,” she explained. “Stefan was the Soldier, Andre is the Courtier. Stefan said it had to do with an old suspicion that if you spoke evil’s name, you drew its attention. Stefan didn’t believe in it, but some of the older vampires won’t use real names when they talk of others.”

  “So Estelle,” I said her name deliberately, “went against Marsilia’s wishes?”

  “No. Well, probably, but not against her orders.”

  “I’m trying to understand how the seethe works,” I told her. “That’s why I came here.”

  Rachel came back in the room looking even more pale than she had before. “I thought you were looking for Stefan?”

  I nodded. They wouldn’t care about Samuel and Adam. “I think…I think that there is more going on than just a vampire turned sorcerer. I wonder, for instance—who turned the sorcerer into a vampire.”

  “You think there’s another vampire involved?” Naomi asked.

  “Stefan said that the sorcerer was a new-made vampire. It occurred to me that his maker might be pulling the monster’s strings. But I don’t really know enough about vampires to make an educated guess.”

  “I do,” Naomi said slowly, straightening in her chair. Something shifted in her face and I saw yesterday’s competent woman take control. “I can help you, but there’s a price.”

  “What price?” I asked.

  I somehow doubted that she wanted me to sing for her; she didn’t have Uncle Mike’s sense of humor. And as the thought occurred to me, I finally figured out that once Uncle Mike claimed me as his guest, the fae couldn’t do anything bad to me without challenging him—which was why the big woman had sighed in disappointment when Uncle Mike told them I was his guest, even as he condemned me to sing in front of the whole lot.