Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” I admitted to them both. “I’m out of my league. I think you need to get Chad out of here and into a hotel tonight.”

  Corban had listened to everything with a poker face. He got out of bed and grabbed a robe in almost the same motion. I heard him walk down the hall, but he didn’t go into Chad’s room. Just stood outside it for a moment and returned. I knew what he saw—nothing but a ripped-up comforter—and was glad he’d been there for the little toy-car demonstration.

  He stood in the doorway of his bedroom and looked at us. “First, we pack for a couple of days. Second, we find a hotel. Third, I talk to my cousin’s brother-in-law, who is a Jesuit priest.”

  “I’m headed home,” I told him before he could tell me to go away and never come back. I needed to help them do something about Blackwood, who was snacking on Amber, but I didn’t know what. And from the sounds of it, no one had ever been able to do something about this vampire. “There’s nothing I can do for you, and I have a business to run.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Amber said. She got out of bed and hugged me. And I knew what she was most grateful for was convincing her husband that Chad hadn’t been lying. I thought that was the least of her worries.

  Over her shoulder, Corban stared at me as if he suspected I’d somehow caused everything. I wondered about that, too. Something had made their ghost much worse, and I was the obvious place to look for a reason.

  I left them to their preparations, packed my own bags, and hugged Amber again before I left.

  She still smelled like vampire—but then so did Stefan and I.

  STEFAN WAITED UNTIL WE WERE MOSTLY OUT OF SPOKANE, driving past the airport, before he said anything. “Do you need me to drive?”

  “Nope,” I answered. I might be tired, but I didn’t like anyone else to drive my Vanagon. As soon as Zee and I put the Rabbit back together, the van was going back in the garage. Besides ... “I don’t think I’ll be sleeping again anytime in the next millennium. How did he bite me twice without my knowing it?”

  “Some vampires can do that,” Stefan said in the same sort of soothing voice a doctor uses to tell you that you have a terminal illness. “It’s not among my gifts—or any of our seethe except perhaps Wulfe.”

  “He bit me twice. That’s worse than just once, right?” Silence followed my question.

  Something wiggled in my front pocket. I twitched, then realized what had happened. I pulled my vibrating cell phone out without looking at the number. “Yes?” Maybe I sounded abrupt, but I was scared and Stefan hadn’t answered me.

  There was a little silence, and Adam said, “What’s wrong? Your fear woke me up.”

  I blinked really fast, wishing I was home already. Home with Adam instead of driving in the dark with a vampire.

  “I’m sorry it bothered you.”

  “A benefit of the pack bond,” Adam told me. Then, because he knew me, he said, “I’m Alpha, so I get things first. No one else in the pack felt it. What scared you?”

  “The ghost,” I told him, then let out my breath in a gusty sigh. “And the vampire.”

  He coaxed the whole story out of me. Then he sighed. “Only you could go to Spokane and get bitten by the one vampire in the whole city.” He didn’t fool me. For all the amusement in his voice, I could hear the anger, too.

  But if he was pretending, I could pretend. “That’s pretty much what Stefan said. I don’t think it’s fair. How was I to know that Amber’s husband’s best client was the vampire?”

  Adam gave me a rueful laugh. “The real question is why didn’t we suspect that’s what would happen. But you are safe now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’ll wait until you get here.”

  He hung up without saying good-bye.

  “So,” I said, “tell me what Blackwood can do to me now that he’s fed off me twice.”

  “I don’t know,” Stefan told me. Then he sighed. “If I have exchanged blood with someone twice, I can always find him, no matter where he goes. I could call him to me—and if he is near, I could force him to come to me. But that is with a true blood exchange—yours to me, mine to you. Eventually ... it is possible to force a master-slave relationship upon those you exchange blood with. A precaution, I suppose, because a newly turned vampire can get nasty. A simple feeding is less risky. But your reactions are not always the usual. There could be no ill effects to you at all.”

  I thought of Amber, who had been feeding the vampire for who knows how long, and her husband, who could be in the same condition, and felt sick. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” I said. “Damn it.” Okay. Think positive. If I hadn’t gone to Spokane at all, the vampire would still have had Amber and her husband, only no one would have known. “If I was unconscious, could he have forced a blood exchange?”

  He sighed and slumped in his seat. “You don’t remember him biting. That doesn’t mean you were unconscious.”

  I wasn’t expecting it. I hadn’t had one since leaving the Tri-Cities. But I managed to pull over, hop out of the van, and make it to the barrow pit at the side of the road before throwing up. It wasn’t sickness ... it was sheer, stark terror. The panic attack to end all panic attacks. My heart hurt, my head hurt, and I couldn’t stop crying.

  And then it stopped. Warmth ran through me and around me: pack. Adam. So much for not bothering Adam’s wolves, who were already unhappy about me, with my troubles. Stefan wiped my face off with a Kleenex and dropped it to the ground before picking me up and carrying me back to the car. He didn’t put me in the driver’s seat.

  “I can drive,” I told him, but there was no force in my voice. Pack magic had broken the panic attack, but I could still feel them all waiting and ready.

  Ready to rescue me again.

  He ignored my feeble protest and put the old van in gear.

  “Is there any reason why he’d have simply fed from me and not done a blood exchange?” I asked, more out of a morbid desire to know everything rather than any real hope.

  “With a blood exchange, you can call upon him as well,” Stefan said reluctantly.

  “How many? Just one exchange?”

  He shrugged. “It varies from person to person. With your idiosyncratic reaction to vampire magic, it could take a hundred or only one.”

  “When you say I could call him. Does that mean he’d have to come to me?”

  “A vampire’s relationship to those he feeds upon is not an equal one, Mercy,” he snapped. “No. He could hear you. That is all. If you have blood exchanges with all of your food”—he bit out the word—“the voices in your head can drive you mad. So we only do it with our own flocks. There are some benefits. The sheep becomes stronger, immune to pain for a brief time—as you know from your own experiences. A vampire gains a servant and eventually a slave who will willingly feed him and take care of his needs during the day.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to make you angry. I just have to know what I’m up against.”

  He reached over and patted my knee. “I understand. I’m sorry.” The next words came slower. “It is shaming to me, to be what I am. The man I was would never have accepted life at the expense of so many. But I am not he, not any longer.”

  He passed a semi (we were going uphill). “If he was just feeding from you because you were convenient, then he probably didn’t do an exchange ... except ...”

  “Except what?”

  “I don’t think that he could have blocked your memory so well if it wasn’t a real exchange. A human, yes. But you are strong-willed.” He shrugged. “Most Master vampires feed off their get—other vampires. Blackwood will tolerate no other vampires in his territory, and I don’t know that he has any get himself. Maybe he makes up the difference by exchanging blood whenever he feeds.”

  I mulled over what he’d told me, then dozed a little. I woke with a start as we took the exit onto Highway 395 at Ritzville. Only a little over seventy miles until we got hom
e.

  “He won’t be able to coerce you if you find another vampire to tie yourself to,” Stefan said.

  I looked at him, but he was staring intently at the road—as if we were threading through the mountains of Montana instead of gliding down an empty stretch of mostly flat and straight pavement.

  “Are you offering?”

  He nodded. “I am perilously short of food. The exchange will feed me better, and I won’t have to hunt again for a few nights.”

  I thought for a minute. Not that I was going to do it, but there was more to his offer—with vampires, I was learning, there usually was. With Stefan that didn’t necessarily mean that he was hiding some benefit to him.

  “And you’ll gain yourself an enemy,” I guessed. “James Blackwood holds Spokane, all by himself, against all the supernatural peoples, not just vampires. That means he’s obsessively possessive—and tough. He won’t be happy with you for keeping me from him.”

  He shrugged. “He probably can’t call you all the way from Spokane when you are in the Tri-Cities. He probably wouldn’t even try, if he exchanges blood every time he feeds. But if you are tied to me, that would be certain.” He spoke slowly. “We already have had one blood exchange. And I can make sure it won’t be horrible.”

  If Blackwood called me to him, if he took me as one of his sheep, Adam would bring the pack in to rescue me. Mary Jo had almost paid the ultimate price for my problems already. As long as I stayed in the Tri-Cities, he might not even realize that the reason he couldn’t call me was Stefan.

  “Adam is my mate,” I told him. I didn’t know if I should tell him that Adam had made me one of the pack. “Can Blackwood get Adam through me?”

  Stefan shook his head. “I can’t either. It’s been tried. Our old Master ... Marsilia’s maker, liked wolves and experimented. The ties of the blood operate on a different level from the werewolf pack. He took an Alpha’s mate, she was a werewolf also, to his menagerie hoping to control the Alpha and his whole pack through her, and it failed.”

  “Marsilia likes werewolf to dine upon,” I said. I’d seen it for myself.

  “From what I’ve seen, I’d say that feeding upon them seems to be addictive,” he glanced at me. “I’ve never done it myself. Not until the other night. I don’t intend to do it again.”

  I was either about to make the stupidest decision of my life or the smartest.

  “Is it permanent?” I asked. “This bond between the two of us?”

  He gave me a sharp look. Started to say something, but stopped before the words left his mouth.

  Finally, he said, “I’ve told you things tonight that other vampires don’t know. Forbidden things. If I were Marsilia’s get truly, or if she had not broken my ties with the seethe, I could not have told you that much.”

  He tapped the palm of his hands on the steering wheel and a giant RV towing a Honda Accord passed us. “These things drive like anemic school buses,” he said. “Odd that it should be so much fun.”

  I waited. If the answer had been yes, the bond is permanent, he wouldn’t be so indecisive. If it wasn’t permanent, once Blackwood was eliminated, it could be removed. A temporary bond with Stefan wasn’t as scary as, say, the more permanent bond between Adam and me.

  “Marsilia can break the bonds between Master and sheep,” he said. “She can either take them herself, or simply dissolve them.”

  “That’s not very helpful,” I told him. “I have the distinct impression that she’d just as soon kill us both as see us.”

  “There is that,” he said softly. “Yes. But I think, from a few things he’s let drop, that Wulfe can do it, too.” His voice grew very cold and un-Stefan-like. “And Wulfe owes me in such a way that even if Marsilia has declared me enemy to the seethe, he could not turn down my request.” He relaxed and shook his head. “But as soon as the bond between us was ended, you’d be vulnerable to Blackwood again.”

  I didn’t find Wulfe much of a step up from Marsilia. But then, I didn’t have a choice, did I? I’d abandoned Amber until I could regroup, but I couldn’t leave Amber to die at Blackwood’s whim.

  I wondered if Zee still felt guilty enough, because I got hurt trying to help him, to allow me use of his fae-spelled knife and the amulet I’d used to hunt vampires. Maybe even another magically virtuous stake.

  I’d never seriously considered killing Marsilia as a way to save myself. First, I’d been to the seethe. Second, she had too many minions who would kill me back.

  So why did I think I could kill Blackwood?

  I knew, I knew, that the James Blackwood I’d met was not the real face of the vampire. But I had met him, and he wasn’t too scary. He didn’t have minions. And he was using Amber without her knowledge or permission, turning her into his slave: a woman who left her child alone in a house with a ghost and an almost stranger. I couldn’t help Amber with her ghost ... maybe I’d even made it worse. But I could help her with the vampire.

  “All right,” I said. “I’d rather have to”—I nearly choked on the next word—“obey you than listen to him.”

  He watched me for a heartbeat. “All right,” he agreed.

  HE PULLED OVER AT A REST AREA. THERE WAS A ROW OF semis parked for the night, but the lot for cars was empty. He unbuckled and walked between the front seats to the back. I followed him slowly.

  He sat on the bench seat in the back and patted the seat beside him. When I hesitated, he said, “You don’t have to do this. I’m not going to force you.”

  If I didn’t have Stefan to interfere, Blackwood probably could make me do whatever he wanted. I’d have no way to help Amber.

  Of course, if Marsilia killed me first, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of it.

  “Am I putting Adam and his pack in more danger?” I asked.

  Stefan did me the courtesy of considering it, though I could smell his eagerness: he smelled like a wolf hot on the trail of something tasty. If I ran, I wondered, would he be compelled to chase me the way a werewolf would have?

  I stared at him and reminded myself that I’d known him a long time. He’d never made any move he thought would harm me. This was Stefan, not some nameless hunter.

  “I don’t see how,” he told me. “Adam won’t like it, I’m sure. Witness his reaction when I called you by accident. But he’s a practical man. He knows all about desperate choices.”

  I sat down beside him, all too conscious of the cool temperature of his body, cooler, I thought than usual. I was glad to know that this would help him, too. I was really, really tired of causing all my friends nothing but grief.

  He brushed my hair away from my neck, and I caught his hand.

  “What about the wrist?” The last time he’d bitten my wrist.

  He shook his head. “It’s more painful. Too many nerves near the surface.” He looked at me. “Do you trust me?”

  “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t.”

  “Okay. I’m going to restrain you a little because if you jerk while I’m still at your neck, you might make me cut through the wrong thing and you could bleed to death.” He didn’t pressure me, just sat on the plush bench seat as if he could stay there the rest of my life.

  “How?” I said.

  “I’ll have you fold your arms over your stomach, and I’ll hold them there.”

  I did a panic check, but Tim had never restrained me that way. I tried not to think about how he’d held me down and was only moderately successful.

  “Go up to the front of the van,” Stefan said. “The keys are in the ignition. You’ll have to drive yourself home because I can’t stay here. I have to hunt now. I’ll—”

  I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned against him. “Okay, do it.”

  His arm came slowly around my shoulders and over my right arm. When I stayed put, he put his hand over my arms in such a way that I couldn’t free myself.

  “All right?” He asked calmly, as if need hadn’t turned his eyes jewel-bright, like Christmas lights in the dark van.r />
  “All right,” I said.

  His teeth must have been razor-sharp because I didn’t feel them slice through skin, only the cool dampness of his mouth. Only when he began to draw blood did it start to hurt.

  Who feeds at my table?

  The roar in my head made me panic as Stefan’s bite had not. But I held very still, like a mouse when it first notices the cat. If you don’t move, it might not attack.

  The steady draw of Stefan’s mouth faltered for an instant. Then he resumed feeding, patting my knee with his free hand. It shouldn’t have comforted me, but it did. He’d heard the scary monster, too, and he wasn’t running.

  After a while, the ache deepened into pain—and the now-wordless roar of anger echoing in my head grew muffled. I started to feel cold, as if it wasn’t just blood he was taking, but all the warmth in my body. Then his mouth moved, and he laved the wounds with his tongue.

  “If you looked into a mirror,” he whispered, “you would not see my marks. He wanted you to see what he’d done.”

  I shivered helplessly, and he lifted me to his lap. He was warm, hot to my cold skin. He lifted me a little and pulled a folding knife out of his pocket. He used the knife and sliced down his wrist like you’re supposed to if you want to do suicide right.

  “I thought the wrist was too painful,” I managed through my sluggish thoughts and vibrating jaw.

  “For you,” he said. “Drink, Mercy. And shut up.” A faint smile crossed his face, then he leaned his head back so I couldn’t see his expression anymore.

  Maybe it should have bothered me more. Maybe if this had been a normal night, it would have. But useless squeamishness was beyond me. I’ve hunted as a coyote for most of my life, and she never stopped to cook her food. The taste of blood was nothing new or horrible to me, not when it was Stefan’s blood—and he wasn’t dying or in pain or anything.

  I put my lips against his wrist and closed my mouth over the cut. Stefan made a noise—it didn’t sound like pain. He put his free hand on my head lightly and then lifted it off as if he didn’t want to coerce me even that much. This was my choice freely made.