She sniffed her arm. “Not to my nose. It smells like roses.”
“There are no roses,” I told her, “that smell like formaldehyde.”
She grinned at me, then bounced off to my bathroom to scrub up.
“So,” she said when she returned, “since we’re both under house arrest until the vamps settle down, and since I was an ace student today and got my homework done at school—how about you and I make some brownies?”
We made brownies, and she helped me change the oil in my van. It was getting dark by the time we set up my air compressor to blow out the water in my very small underground sprinkler system for the winter when Samuel appeared at the door bleary-eyed and growly, a brownie in one hand.
He made some grumbles about twittering girls who made too much noise. I looked up at the darkening sky and thought the lateness of the hour had more to do with his rising than the roar of my air compressor.
He made Jesse laugh with his snarls. He made a pretense of being offended and turned to me. “Are you finished?”
He could see I was rolling up cords and hose, so I rolled my eyes at him.
“Disrespect,” he told Jesse, shaking his head sadly. “That’s all I get. Maybe if I take you out and feed you, she’ll start treating me with the respect I deserve.”
But he grabbed the compressor before I could start rolling it to the pole barn.
“Where are you taking us?” Jesse said.
“Mexican,” he said positively.
She groaned and suggested a Russian café that had just opened nearby. The two of them argued restaurants all the way to the pole barn and back and into the car.
In the end, we went out for pizza, a place on Columbia with a playground, noise, and great food. Adam was waiting, watching the little TV in my kitchen, when we got back. He looked tired.
“Boss run you ragged?” I asked sympathetically, handing him a brownie.
He looked at it. “Did you make this, or did Jesse?”
Her indignant “Dad” got her an unrepentant grin. “Just kidding,” he said as he ate.
“I’ve been staying up nights,” he told me. “Between the vampires and the Washington bigwigs, I’m going to have to start taking naps like a two-year-old.”
“Trouble?” asked Samuel carefully.
He meant, trouble over me—or rather over that nifty video I’d never seen of Adam in a half-wolf form, ripping up Tim the Rapist’s dead body.
Adam shook his head. “Not really. Mostly just the same old, same old.”
“Have you called Marsilia?” I asked.
“What?” Jesse had been getting a glass of milk for her dad, and she set it down a little too hard.
“Mercy,” growled Adam.
“Part of the reason you’re here is that your dad has a pair of vampires in his holding cell,” I informed her. “We’re in negotiation with Marsilia so she’ll quit trying to kill everyone.”
“I only get told half of what goes on,” said Jesse.
Adam covered his eyes in a mock-exasperated fashion, and Samuel laughed. “Hey, old man. This is the tip of the iceberg. Mercy’s going to be leading you around with a ring in your nose.” But there was something in his eyes that wasn’t amusement.
I didn’t think anyone else noticed or heard the odd note of unhappiness in his voice. Samuel didn’t want me, not really. He didn’t want to be an Alpha ... but he wanted what Adam had, Jesse as much as me, I thought—a family: kids, a wife, a white picket fence or whatever the equivalent had been when he was a kid.
He wanted a home, and his last home had died with his last human mate long before I was born. He glanced at me just then, and I didn’t know what was in my face, but it stopped him. Just stopped all the expression, and for a moment he looked amazingly like his half brother, Charles—one of the scariest people I’ve ever met. Charles can just look at raging werewolves and have them whimpering in the corner.
But it was only for an instant. He patted me on my head and said something funny to Jesse.
“So,” I said. “Did you call Marsilia, Adam?”
He watched Samuel, but said, “Yes, ma’am. I got Estelle. She’s supposed to give Marsilia my message and have her call me back.”
“She’s playing one-upmanship games,” observed Samuel.
“Let her,” Adam said. “Doesn’t mean I need to do the same.”
“Because you have the edge,” I said with satisfaction. “You have a bigger threat.”
“What?” asked Jesse.
“The Big Bad Boogeyman vampire of Spokane,” I said, sitting on the table. “He’s coming to get her.”
It wasn’t a sure thing, but it didn’t have to be as long as we could convince Marsilia of it. If I had been Marsilia, I would’ve been worried about Blackwood.
ADAM AND JESSE WENT HOME. SAMUEL WENT TO BED, and so did I. When my cell phone rang, I was in the middle of a dream about garbage cans and frogs—don’t ask, and I won’t tell.
“Mercy,” Adam purred.
I looked down at my feet, where Medea slept. She blinked her big green-gold eyes at me and purred again.
“Adam.”
“I called to tell you that I finally got in touch with Marsilia herself.”
I sat up, suddenly not sleepy at all. “And?”
“I told her about Blackwood. She listened all the way through, thanked me for my concern, and hung up.”
“She’s hardly going to panic over the phone and swear to be forever friends,” I said, and he laughed.
“No, I don’t think so. But I thought I’d do my bit for goodwill and let her two baby vamps go.”
“Besides, now that Jesse knows they’re there, you’re not going to be able to keep her away.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Anytime. Hostage-holding is for the bad guys.”
He laughed again, this time faintly bitterly. “You obviously haven’t seen the good guys in action.”
“No,” I told him. “Maybe you were just mistaken on who the good guys were.”
There was a long pause, and he said in a soft, midnight voice, “Maybe you’re right.”
“You’re the good guy,” I explained to him. “So you have to cope with all the good-guy rules. Fortunately, you have an exceptionally talented and incredibly gifted sidekick ...”
“Who turns into a coyote,” he said, a smile in his voice.
“So you don’t have to worry about the bad guys very much.”
And we settled into some serious, heart-accelerating flirting. Over the phone, passion brought on no panic attack.
I hung up eventually. We both had to get up in the morning, but the call left me restless and not sleepy in the slightest. After a few minutes I got up and took a good look at the stitches in my face. They were tiny and neat, individually tied and set so when my face altered, they wouldn’t pull. Trust a werewolf to give me stitches so I could shift with them.
I stripped out of my clothes and opened my bedroom door. And as a coyote, I popped out of the newly installed dog door and dashed out into the night.
I covered several miles before heading out to the river and my favorite running ground. It wasn’t until I stopped to get a drink from the river that I smelled vampire—and not my vampire. I stood in the shallows of the river and lapped at the water as if I hadn’t sensed a thing.
But it didn’t matter because this vampire had no desire to remain unseen. If I hadn’t smelled him, the distinctive sound of a shotgun shell jacked into place was quite an announcement of intentions. He must have followed me from home. Or maybe his sense of smell was werewolf good. At any rate, he knew who I was.
Bernard stood on the bank, the gun held with obvious familiarity with the barrel pointed at yours truly. Vampire with shotgun—it seemed a little like Jaws with a chain saw, too much of a good thing.
I’d have preferred a chain saw in this case. I hate shotguns. I have scars on my butt from a close-range hit, but that wasn’t the only time I’d been shot—just
the worst. Montana ranchers don’t like coyotes. Even coyotes who are just passing through and would never attack a lamb or chase a chicken. No matter how much fun chasing chickens is ...
I wagged my tail at the vampire.
“Marsilia was so certain he’d kill you,” Bernard told me. He always sounded to me like one of the Kennedys, his a’s broad and flat. “But I see that he fooled her. She’s not as smart as she thinks—and that will be her downfall. I need you to call your Master so I can talk to him.”
It took me a moment to remember who the Master he was referring to was. And then I didn’t know how to do it. I had so many new ties, and I didn’t know how to use any of them. What if I tried to call Stefan and ended up with Adam here?
I took too long. Bernard pulled the trigger. I think he meant to miss me—unless he was a really bad shot. But several of those stupid pellets hit, and I yipped sharply. He had the next shell in the gun before I finished complaining.
“Call him,” Bernard said.
Fine. It couldn’t be that difficult, or Stefan would have told me more about how to do that. I hoped.
Stefan? I thought as hard as I could. Stefan!
If I’d thought he’d be in any danger, I’d never have tried it, but I was pretty sure that Bernard, like Estelle, was going to try to recruit Stefan for his side in the civil war Marsilia had brewing in her seethe. He wouldn’t try anything right away, and after the way Stefan had dealt with Estelle, I wasn’t worried about Bernard as long as the element of surprise wasn’t a factor.
Bernard was wearing jeans, running shoes, and a semicasual button-front shirt—and he still looked like a nineteenth-century businessman. Even though his shoes had a glow-in-the-dark swoosh on them, he wasn’t someone who would blend in with the crowd.
“I’m sorry you’re so stubborn,” he said. But before he could get the gun up for a final, painful-if-not-fatal shot, Stefan appeared from ... somewhere and jerked the gun out of his hands. He swung it by the barrel into a rock, then handed the not-so-useful remains back to Bernard.
I waded out of the water and shook off over both of them—but neither reacted.
“What do you want?” asked Stefan coolly. I padded over to him and sat at his feet. He looked down at me and before Bernard could answer his first question, he said, “I smell blood. Did he hurt you?”
I opened my mouth and gave him a laughing look. I knew from experience that the couple of birdshot in my backside weren’t deep, probably not even deep enough that they would need to be dug out—fur has many advantages. I wasn’t all that happy about it, but Stefan didn’t have a wolf’s understanding about body language. So I told him I was fine in a way he couldn’t mistake—and my rump hurt when I wagged my tail.
He gave me a look that might, under other circumstances, have been doubtful. “Fine,” he said, then looked over at Bernard, who was twirling the broken shotgun.
“Oh,” said Bernard. “Is it my turn? You’re through coddling your pretty new slave? Marsilia was certain that you were so fond of your last flock that you wouldn’t have the stomach to replace them soon.”
Stefan was very still. So angry he had even stopped breathing.
Bernard braced the shotgun on the ground and gripped it one-handed, butt up—leaning on it as if it were one of those short canes that Fred Astaire used to dance with.
“You should have heard them screaming your name,” he said. “Oh, I forgot, you did.”
He braced himself for an attack that never came. Instead, Stefan folded his arms and relaxed. He even started breathing again, for which I was grateful.
Have you ever sat around while someone held their breath? For a while it doesn’t bother you, but eventually you start holding your breath with them, willing them to breathe. It’s one of those automatic reflexes. Fortunately, the only vampire I associate with much likes to talk—so he breathes.
I sat at his side, trying to look harmless and cheerful—but looking around for more vampires. There was one in the trees; she’d let herself be silhouetted briefly against the sky. There was no way to communicate what I’d seen to Stefan as there would have been with Adam. He’d have read the tilt of my head and the paw on his foot. Bernard’s verbal attack hadn’t had quite the effect he’d expected ... or at least been ready for. But that didn’t seem to faze him. He smiled, showing his fangs. “She had only you left,” he told Stefan. “Wulfe’s been ours for months, and so was Andre. But he was afraid of you, so he wouldn’t let us do anything.” There was a world of frustration in the last two words, and he jerked up the gun, threw it casually over his shoulder, and began pacing.
For the first time, he looked to me like what he was. Somehow, before, he’d always looked like an extra from a Dickens movie—someone full of pomp and circumstance and nothing more. Now, in motion, he looked like a predator, the Edwardian facade nothing but a thin skin to hide what was beneath.
Estelle had always unnerved me, but I discovered I hadn’t been afraid of Bernard until just then.
Stefan stayed silent while Bernard ranted. “He was worse than Marsilia, in the end. He brought that thing ... that uncontrollable abomination among us.” He paused and stared at me. I dropped my eyes immediately, but I could feel his attention burning into my skin. “It is good your sheep killed it, though Marsilia couldn’t see it. It would have brought upon us our doom—and she did us the second favor by killing Andre.”
He stopped speaking for a moment, but his eyes were still on me, digging through fur to see me. It was uncomfortable and scary.
“We would let her live—and if Marsilia has her way, she is dead—just like your last flock.” Bernard waited for that to sink in. “Marsilia has minions who work in the day ... Hell. With the crossed bones on your coyote’s business proclaiming her a traitor to all of us, how long do you think she’ll survive? Goblins, harriers, the carrion feeders—there are a lot of Marsilia’s allies who hunt in the day.”
“She is the Alpha’s mate. The wolves will keep her safe when I cannot.”
Bernard laughed. “There are some of them who would kill her faster than Marsilia ever would. A coyote? Please.” His voice softened. “You know she will die. If Marsilia wanted to kill her for slaying Andre, how do you think she’ll feel now that you’ve taken the coyote for your own? She doesn’t want you, but our Mistress has ever been jealous. And you protected this one for years when you should have told us all that there was a walker living among us. You took chances for her—what would have happened if another vampire had noticed what she was? Marsilia knows you care for her, more than you ever did the sheep you fed off. Eventually, Mercedes will die, and it will be your fault.”
Stefan flinched at that. I didn’t need to look at his face to see it, because I felt him jerk against me.
“You need Marsilia to die, or Mercy will,” Bernard said. “Whom do you love, Soldier? The one who saved you or the one who abandoned you? Whom do you serve?”
He waited, and so did I.
“She was a fool to let you go alive,” Bernard murmured. “There were two others she trusted with the place she sleeps. Andre is dead. But you know, don’t you? And you rise a full hour before she does. You can keep this from being a bloody battle with many casualties. Who will die? Lily, our gifted musician, almost certainly. Estelle hates her, you know—she is talented and beautiful when Estelle is neither. And Marsilia loves her dearly. Lily will die.” Then he smiled. “I’d kill her myself, but I know that you care for her, too. You could protect her from Estelle, Stefan.”
And he went on naming names. Lesser vampires, I thought, but people Stefan cared for.
When he finished, he looked at Stefan’s stubborn face and shook his head in exasperation. “Stefan, for God’s sake. What are you doing? You belong nowhere. She doesn’t want you. She couldn’t be more plain if she had killed you outright. Estelle is foolish. She thinks she can rule when Marsilia is gone. But I know better. Neither of us is strong enough to hold the seethe unless we could work together
—but we will not. There are no ties between us, no love, and that is the only way two nearly equal vampires can work together for long. But you could. I would serve you as faithfully as you have served all these years. We need you if we are to survive.” He had begun pacing again. “Marsilia will see us all dead. You know that. She is crazy—only a crazy woman could put her trust in Wulfe. She’ll have the humans hunting us again, not just this seethe but all of our kind. And we will not survive. Please, Stefan.”
Stefan went down on one knee and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. He bowed his head and whispered to me. “I am sorry.” Then he stood up. “I am an old soldier,” he told Bernard. “I serve only one, even though she has forsaken me.” He stretched out his hand, and this time I felt him pull something from me as his sword appeared in his hand. “Would you try me here?” he asked.
Bernard made a frustrated noise, then threw up his hands in a theatrical gesture. “No. No. Please, Stefan. Just stay out of it when the fight begins.”
And he turned and ran. It wasn’t like the way Stefan could disappear, but it would have pushed me to keep with him—and I’m fast. It was fast enough that he probably didn’t hear Stefan say, “No.”
He stood beside me and watched Bernard until the vampire was out of sight. And he waited a little more. I watched the female slip out of the trees and found another one as he left his cover. That one Stefan raised a hand to and got a salute in return.
“It will be a bloodbath,” he told me. “And he is right. I could stop it. But I won’t.”
I wondered suddenly why Marsilia had let him live. If he knew where she slept, and no one else did, if he rose before her and could take himself wherever he chose, then he was a threat to her. She surely knew that if Bernard did.
Stefan sat on a likely boulder and linked his hands over a knee. “I meant to come to you when darkness fell,” he told me. “There are things I need to tell you about this link between us—” He gave me a shadow of his usual smile. “Nothing dire.”
Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly Page 107