Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  I gave her a sharp look, and she smiled past the worry in her eyes. “Vampires, Mercy? I thought they were made-up.”

  She had always been good at making me feel guilty, which was more than Bran had ever managed. “I couldn’t tell you,” I said. “They don’t like it when humans know about them. It would have put you in danger.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Besides, Mom, I’ve never actually seen any in Portland.” And had been very careful not to look when I smelled them. Vampires like Portland—lots of rainy days.

  “Can all of them just pop in wherever they want to?”

  I shook my head, then reconsidered. “I only know of two, and Stefan’s one of them.”

  Adam was watching Stefan feed; he looked worried. I hadn’t realized he and Stefan were more than casual acquaintances.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Mom asked.

  Adam was pale but healing just fine. Other wolves would have taken longer, but Adam was an Alpha, and his pack gave him more power than other wolves had. But if Stefan gnawed on Peter the way he’d chewed up Adam, it would take Peter a while longer to heal.

  She looked at me, and her dimples peeped out. “I was speaking of the vampire. You do have it bad, don’t you?”

  I’d been trying not to dwell on Stefan’s condition and why it was so bad—and how it was my fault. “I don’t know, Mom,” I leaned against her, just a little, before straightening to stand on my own. “I don’t know that much about vampires. They’re hard to kill, but I’ve never seen one as bad as this who survived.” Daniel, Stefan’s ... what? Friend hadn’t quite covered it. Maybe just Stefan’s. Daniel had quit feeding because he believed he had run crazy and killed a whole bunch of people. He’d looked bad, but not as bad as Stefan.

  “You care about him, too.”

  She didn’t sound surprised, but she would have been if she knew as much as I did about vampires.

  I knew Stefan kept a bunch of people virtual prisoners to feed from—though none of them had seemed to mind. I’d had my rose-colored glasses ripped off when he’d killed two helpless people, people I’d rescued, in order to protect me. It might have been the enigmatic vampire Wulfe who’d twisted their necks, but Stefan had been the director of that macabre little conspiracy.

  But it hurt to see him like this.

  “Yes,” I told Mom.

  “You can let him go now,” Adam told Darryl. “He’s feeding.”

  Darryl dropped Stefan’s arm and stepped back as if fearing contamination. There wasn’t a lot of room left in my living room, but he bumped his back up to the counter that separated the larger room from the kitchen and curled his lip. Adam gave him a considering look before turning his attention to the other wolf.

  “Are you all right, Peter?” Adam asked.

  I looked at the werewolf and saw that there was sweat gathering on his forehead and he’d closed his eyes and turned them away from the vampire, who was sprawled across his lap and fastened to his arm. Judging from the difference between his reaction and Adam’s, it might have been better to find a more dominant wolf to feed to Stefan.

  Peter didn’t answer, and Adam walked behind him so he could put a hand on the skin of his neck. Almost immediately I could see the impact of that touch as Peter relaxed against his Alpha with a sigh of relief.

  “I’m sorry,” Adam said. “If there’d been someone else ... Ben should be here soon.”

  There had been Darryl, who was staring at his shoes. Adam’s remark hadn’t been pointed, but Darryl looked like he’d been slapped.

  Peter shook his head. “No problem. It was bad for a minute, though. I thought it was supposed to be a myth that vampires could trap your mind.”

  That was one of the problems with the vamps. Like the fae, there was so much misinformation out there it was hard to sift truth from fact.

  “He’s not himself,” I found myself saying. “He wouldn’t do it on purpose.” I wasn’t entirely sure that was truthful, but it sounded good. He’d taken me over once. It had all worked out just fine, but I’d rather it never happened again.

  My mother looked at me. “Do you have orange juice or something else with sugar in it for the blood donors?”

  I should have thought of that. I hopped over Stefan’s legs so I could go to the kitchen and look. Once my roommate had declared me completely unadventurous in my food choices, he’d taken over shopping. I had no idea what he’d managed to stuff into the fridge.

  I found a half-full bottle of low-pulp orange juice and poured two glasses. I handed the first to Adam and held the second in front of Peter.

  “Do you need help?”

  Peter gave me a half smile, shook his head, and took the glass, downing it in quick time and handing me back the glass.

  “More?”

  “Not now,” he said. “Maybe when it’s over.”

  MOM AND I SAT ON THE COUCH, ADAM TOOK A CHAIR, and Darryl stayed where he was, pointedly not looking at the vampire.

  There was a sharp knock on the door, and Darryl said, “Ben.”

  He made no move to answer it, but it popped open anyway and Ben stuck his head in. His blond hair looked almost white illuminated by the porch light. He glanced at Stefan and said in his nifty British accent, “Bloody hell. He’s in bad shape.”

  But his attention was all for my mother.

  “She’s married,” I warned him. “And if you call her a rude name, she’ll shoot you with her pretty pink gun and I’ll spit on your grave.”

  He considered me a moment and started to open his mouth.

  Adam said, “Ben. Meet Mercy’s mother, Margi.”

  Ben paled, closed his mouth, and opened it again. But nothing came out. I didn’t think Ben was used to meeting mothers.

  “I know.” I sighed. “She looks like my younger, better-looking sister. Mom, this is Ben. Ben is a werewolf from England, and he has a foul mouth when Adam’s not around to ride herd on him. He’s saved my life a couple of times. Against the wall is Darryl, werewolf, genius, Ph.D., and Adam’s second. Peter, also a werewolf, is the nice man feeding Stefan.”

  And after that, the awkwardness set in. Darryl wasn’t talking. Ben, after one more bemused look at Mom, kept his head down and his mouth shut. Peter was obviously distracted by the feeding vampire. Adam was staring at Stefan with a worried frown.

  He knew what Stefan’s first words had meant, too. But he couldn’t talk to me about it in front of my mom until I did. And I wasn’t going to let her know that Marsilia and her vampires were after me. Not unless I had to.

  Mom wanted to ask me about ... about the incident last week. About Tim and how he died. But she wouldn’t ask me about anything until everyone else was gone.

  Me? I’d just as soon not talk about any of it. I wondered how long I could keep everyone together, awkwardness being better than the stomach-churning panic that conversation with Adam or my mother was going to cause.

  “I’m done in,” Peter said.

  Stefan wasn’t any happier about changing donors this time. But having an additional wolf did the trick and, with only minor damage done to my end table, he was soon feeding off Ben. But only a few minutes later, Stefan went limp, his mouth falling away.

  “Is he dead?” Peter asked and took a sip of his second glass of orange juice.

  “Him?” asked Ben, extracting his wrist. “He’s been dead for years.”

  Peter grunted. “You know what I mean.”

  Truthfully, it was difficult to tell. He wasn’t breathing, but vampires didn’t, not unless they needed to talk or pass for human. His heart wasn’t beating, but again, that didn’t mean much.

  “We’ll take him to my house,” Adam said. “The...” He glanced at Mom. “My basement has a room without windows, where he’ll be safer.” He meant the cage where they locked up werewolves when they had control issues. He frowned. “Not that that will stop whoever dumped him in the middle of your living room, Mercy.” He knew “whoever” all right.

  Marsilia, I thought, though ma
ybe it had been Stefan himself. Or maybe some other vampire. The one who’d explained that Marsilia and Stefan were the only ones who could teleport like that was Andre, the one I’d had to kill. Hard to trust his information too far.

  “I’ll be careful,” I told Adam. “But you have to be careful, too. There was a vampire watching the back of the house when I was out talking to Amber.”

  “Who’s Amber?” Adam’s question was just a hair faster than my mother’s “Amber? Charla’s friend Amber from college?”

  I nodded at Mom. “She read about ... I’ve apparently made national news. She decided that she should look me up to check into her haunted house.”

  “That sounds like Amber,” Mom said. Char and Amber had spent a number of weekends at my parents’ house in Portland while I was in college. “She always was self-centered, and I don’t suppose that would change. Though why would she think that you could help her with a haunted house?”

  I had never told Mom about seeing ghosts. I hadn’t really thought it was anything unusual until recently. I mean, people see ghosts all the time, right? They just don’t talk about it much. Having a daughter who turned into a coyote was bad enough, so anything else I could keep quiet about, I had.

  This didn’t seem like the time to tell her about it either. I hadn’t told her about last week. I hadn’t told her about vampires. I had no intention of informing her of any other secrets I’d been keeping.

  So I shrugged. “Maybe because I associate with werewolves and the fae.”

  “What did she expect you to do about it?” Adam asked. He’d have listened in on the whole conversation with Amber; werewolves have very good hearing.

  “Beats me,” I told him. “Do I look like an expert at laying ghosts?” Seeing them was a long way from sending them away. I wasn’t even sure it was possible. I thought about what Amber had said. “Maybe she just wanted me to go tell her that her house really is haunted. Maybe she just needs someone to believe her.”

  Adam knelt on the floor and picked up Stefan. “I’ll take him home now.” Though Stefan was obviously taller than he was, Adam’s supernatural strength wasn’t apparent—he just looked like someone who could carry a great deal of weight without effort.

  It should have been Darryl who picked up Stefan, not Adam. The Alpha just didn’t do the heavy lifting when there were capable minions about. Ben and Peter had both fed the vampire, but Darryl didn’t have that excuse. He must have a real thing about vampires.

  Adam didn’t seem to notice anything wrong with Darryl. “I’ll send someone back to watch your house, tonight.” He looked at my mom. “Do you need a place to stay? Mercy’s”—he glanced around—“a little short on space.”

  “I’m staying at the Red Lion in Pasco,” Mom said to Adam. To me she said, “We left in a hurry and I couldn’t find anyone to watch Hotep. He’s in the car.” Hotep was her Doberman pinscher, who liked me even less than I liked him.

  Adam nodded solemnly though I didn’t remember telling him that my mom’s dog hated me.

  “Adam,” I said. “Thank you. For saving Stefan.”

  “No thanks necessary. We didn’t save him for you.”

  Ben gave me an expression that might have been a smile if his face hadn’t been so tight. “You weren’t there in the basement with that thing.” Andre’s demon-possessed vampire, he meant, the first vampire I’d killed. He had captured several of the wolves and Stefan and ... played with them. Demons like causing pain.

  “If it hadn’t been for Stefan ...” Ben shrugged, as if letting a memory die away unspoken. “We owe him.”

  Adam glanced at Darryl, who opened the door. I thought of something.

  “Wait.”

  Adam stopped.

  “If I talk to Mom ... does that count?” He’d told me I had to talk to someone, and my mother wouldn’t go away until I told her everything. It seemed like I should be able to kill two birds with one stone.

  He handed Stefan to Ben and walked to me. He touched my jaw, just below my ear, and, as if our fascinated audience wasn’t watching, he kissed me, touching me with nothing more than his fingertips and his mouth.

  At first the heat flushed through me ... followed by a horrible choking fear. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move ...

  When I came back to myself, I was sitting on the couch with my head between my knees, Adam crooning to me. But he wasn’t touching me, and neither was anyone else.

  I sat up and came face-to-face with Adam. His face was still, but I could see the wolf in his eyes and smell the wild on his skin.

  “Panic attack,” I said needlessly. “I haven’t been having them as often.” I lied and saw from the expression on his face that he knew it. This one made four today. Yesterday, I’d done better.

  “Talking to your mother counts,” he said. “We’ll take things slowly ... see how it goes. You talk to your mother or anyone else you’d like. But it’ll all keep until kissing me doesn’t cause a panic attack, all right?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, just strode out of the house followed by his entourage. Darryl waited until both Ben and Peter were out the door before closing it gently behind them all.

  “Mercy,” said my mother thoughtfully, “you never told me your werewolf neighbor was quite that hot.”

  “Mmm,” I said. I appreciated her effort, but now that the time was at hand, I just wanted to get it over with. “And you didn’t get to see him rip Tim’s corpse to pieces.”

  I heard Mom suck in a hard breath. “I wish I had. Tell me about Tim.”

  So I did. And she didn’t say a word until I was finished. I hadn’t meant to tell her everything. But she didn’t say anything, didn’t move, didn’t look at me. So I talked. Just barely, I managed to keep Ben’s name out of it—his secrets were his to reveal—but everything else roared in jagged bits or choked roughly out of someplace dark and vile. It took a while to get it all out.

  “Tim reminded you of Samuel,” she said when I was through.

  I jerked my head off her lap.

  “No, I’m not crazy.” She handed me a wad of tissues from the box that sat on an arm of the couch. “That’s why you didn’t see it coming. That’s why you didn’t see what he was. Samuel was always a bit of an outcast, and it left you with a soft spot for outcasts.”

  Samuel? Cheery, sweet-tempered (for a werewolf) Samuel an outcast?

  “He was not.” I grabbed a handful of tissues and wiped snot and salt water from my face. My nose runs when I cry.

  She nodded. “Sure he was. He likes humans, Mercy—and most werewolves don’t.” She shivered at some memory or other. “He listened to heavy metal and watched Star Trek reruns.”

  “He was the Marrok’s second before he came here to lone wolf it for a while. He wasn’t an outcast.”

  She just looked at me.

  “Lone wolf doesn’t mean outcast.” I set my jaw.

  The door popped open, and Samuel, who’d been sitting out on the porch for a while, came in. “Yes, it does. Hey, Margi—why’d you bring that dog with you? He’s creepy-looking.”

  Hotep was black with reddish brown eyes. He looked like Anubis. Samuel was right, he was creepy-looking.

  “I couldn’t find a sitter for him,” she said, standing up to get hugged. “How have you been?”

  He started to say fine ... then looked at me. “We’ve been taking our knocks, Mercy and I. But, so far, we’ve gotten back into the ring.”

  “That’s all you can do,” said Mom. “I need to go. Hotep will be fit to burst by now, and I need to get some sleep.” She looked at me. “I can stay for a few days—and Curt wanted me to tell you that you’re welcome to come home for a while.” Curt was my stepfather, the dentist.

  “Thank you, Mom,” I told her, and meant it. Horrible as it had been, I thought spilling it all might have helped. But I had to get her out of town before Marsilia made her next move. “That was exactly what I needed.” I took a deep breath. “Mom, I need you to go back to Portland. I worked t
oday. It was better, doing what I always do. I think if I just stick to my normal routine, I’ll put it behind me.”

  My mother narrowed her eyes at me and started to say something, but Samuel had reached into his pocket and handed her a card.

  “Here,” he said. “Call me. I’ll tell you how she’s doing.”

  Mom raised her chin. “How is she doing?”

  “Fair to middling,” he told her. “Some of it’s an act, but not all of it. She’s tough—good genes. She’ll make it fine, but I think she’s right. She’ll make it better after folks quit running around with sympathy and pity and staring at her. And the best way to do that is to get back to work, back to normal until other people forget about it.”

  Bless Samuel.

  “All right,” Mom said. She gave Samuel a stern look. “Now, I don’t know what’s going on between you and my daughter and Adam Hauptman—”

  “Neither do we,” I muttered.

  Samuel grinned. “We have it pretty well worked out as far as the sex goes—Adam gets it—someday—and I don’t. But the rest is still up for negotiation.”

  “Samuel Cornick,” I sputtered in disbelief. “That is my mother.”

  Mom grinned back at him and pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. “That’s how I was reading it as well. But I just wanted to check.” She sobered, and, after a glance at me, said to Samuel, “You take care of her for me.”

  He nodded solemnly. “I will. And Adam has his whole pack on it. Let me walk you to your car.”

  He came back in the house, and I heard my mother’s car drive off. He looked as tired as I felt.

  “Adam has a couple of wolves on stakeout at the Red Lion, just waiting for your mother to get there. She’ll be all right.”

  “How was the emergency?” I asked.

  He lit up. “Some poor fool took his pregnant wife across the country to visit her mother two weeks from her delivery date. I got there just in time to play catcher.”

  Samuel loved babies. “Girl or boy?”

  “Boy. Jacob Daniel Arlington, six pounds four ounces.”

  “Did you go to Adam’s and see Stefan?” I asked.