Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  I waited in the bookstore until I realized I was waiting for Samuel to say something. But Samuel wasn’t here: it was just Sam and me.

  “Okay, that’s enough make-believe for me.” I dusted off my jeans. I’d have been hoping that I was wrong, but the way my life had been going the past year—this almost sounded tame. No vampires or ghosts, right? No Gray Lords who terrified even other fae. If I was wrong, I was afraid that it was only because the reality was even worse. “Let’s keep looking. I’d feel really dumb if Phin turns out to be hidden in the basement.”

  Sam found a door behind about three bookcases. Happily, it opened away from us, so we just had to scramble over the top to drop to a landing. Straight ahead was a brick wall; to the right of the door we’d entered through was a set of narrow and steep stairs that led down into a pit of inky blackness: the bookstore had a basement.

  I didn’t think that anyone would notice if I turned on the lights here because I was pretty sure that there weren’t any windows in the basement. I’d have noticed.

  It took me a minute to find the light switch. Sam, apparently unfazed by the darkness, had already continued down on his own when my hand found the right place.

  With light to guide my way, I could see that the basement was mostly a storage facility with cardboard boxes set in piles. It reminded me of the hospital’s X-ray storage room in that there was obvious order to the stacks. The ceiling height was deeper than usual for basements this near the river, but I could detect no trace of dampness.

  Just to the right of the stairway, a section had been used as an office. A Persian rug delineated the space and stretched out beneath an old-fashioned oak desk complete with clamp-on desk lamp. There was a large framed oil painting of an English-type garden placed just in front of the desk, where someone sitting might use it as a mock window.

  At one time the desk had held a computer monitor. I could tell because the monitor was lying in pieces on the cement floor next to the rug. There were more broken things on the ground—what looked to be the remains of a scentless jar candle, a mug that might have held the pens and pencils that had scattered when they hit the cement, and an office chair minus a wheel and the backrest.

  “Be careful,” I told Sam. “You’ll end up with glass in your paws.”

  The stack of boxes nearest the desk was the only one that had been disturbed. Five or six boxes had been knocked around, spilling their contents on the floor.

  “No blood here,” I told him, and tried not to be relieved. I did not want to discover Phin’s body. Not while I was alone with Sam, the wolf. “They were just looking—and not very seriously at that. Maybe they were interrupted, or this is how far they got when Phin finally broke down and started to talk.”

  “Fee fie foe feral,” said a man’s voice, hitting my ears like the blast of a barge’s horn. “I smell the blood of a little girl.” He rhymed “girl” with “feral,” something only possible because of his cockney-accented English. “Be she hot, be she cold, I’ll wager this, me lads—she won’t get more old.”

  All I could see was two feet on the stairs. I’d had no warning that the man was in the building at all—and from Sam’s sudden movement, he hadn’t heard or smelled anything either. I had no idea that fae could hide themselves like that. No telling whether he’d been there all the time, or if he’d followed us in.

  The fae was wearing big, black boots, the kind that should go clomp-clomp-clomp. And he was in no hurry to come down and kill us—which told me that he was one of the kind that enjoyed the hunt.

  He wasn’t a giant, despite my facetious naming of the two forest fae, because the giants were beast- minded, more instinct than intelligent. The beast-minded fae who had survived the rise of metal-wielding humans had died at the hands of the Gray Lords. Instinctive behaviors weren’t good enough to make sure you’d hide your nature from the humans, and for centuries the fae had tried to pretend that they had never existed outside of folklore and fairy tales. But from the size of those feet, he was big enough.

  Sam caught my attention by bumping his head against my hip—then ducked under the desk. He planned on taking the fae by surprise. Good to know Sam was still with me.

  “That’s possibly the worst doggerel verse I’ve heard since I was thirteen and wrote a poem for an English assignment,” I told the waiting fae as I walked around so I could look up the stairs.

  The one who stood at the top of the stairs was maybe six feet or a little under, though his feet were five inches longer than I’ve ever seen on any normal human. He had curly red hair and a pleasantly cheerful face—if you didn’t look too hard at his eyes. He was wearing slacks and a red shirt with a blue tie that matched the red canvas apron that covered his clothes. Embroidered across the top of the apron was the name of a grocery store.

  In his right hand he held a butcher knife.

  He smelled of the iron and sweetness that was blood, with an undertone that made him the second of the Jolly Green Giants who’d trashed the place. The damned strong one who’d hefted a filled bookcase.

  “Ah,” he said, “a hintruder. How droll.” He loosened his neck by pulling his head to one side, then the other. His accent was so heavy it was hard to decipher. Intruder, I thought, not hintruder.

  “Droll?” I tried it, then shook my head. “Fateful, rather. At least for you.” When in doubt, sound confident—it confuses the guys who are about to wipe the floor with you. It helped that I had a secret weapon. “What have you done with Phin?”

  “Phin?” He came down three steps and paused with a smile. I think he was waiting for me to run—or, like a bored cat, drawing out the pleasure of the kill. A lot of fae are predators by nature, and among the things they like to eat are people.

  “Phin is the owner of this bookstore.” My voice was steady. I don’t think I was getting braver, but after all the things that had happened lately, being frightened had lost its novelty.

  “Maybe oye et ’im.” He smiled. His teeth were sharper than a human’s—and there were more of them.

  “Maybe you’re a fae and can’t lie,” I told him. “So you should stick to the facts instead of trying my patience with ‘maybes.’ Like where is Phin?”

  He raised his left hand and gestured at me. Faint green sparkles stretched out between us and hung in the air for a moment until one touched me. It fell and took the others with it. They glittered on the floor, then winked out.

  “What are you?” he asked, tilting his head like a puzzled wolf. “You ain’t witch. Oi can feels witches in moy ’ead.”

  “Stop right there,” I said, pulling the SIG from its holster.

  “Are you threatening me with that?” He laughed.

  So I shot him. Three times over the heart. It knocked him back but not down. I remembered, from my reading of Phin’s book, that not all the fae have their organs in exactly the same places that we do. Maybe I should have aimed for his head. I raised the gun to make certain of my target and watched him sink through the wooden stairs like a ghost. He left the butcher knife and his apron behind.

  Stone hands rose from the floor and grabbed my ankles, pulling my feet out from under me. I fell too fast to react.

  I WOKE UP LYING IN THE DARK AND HURTING ALL OVER, but especially on the back of my head. My ankles were also sore when I tried to move them. I blinked, but I still couldn’t see anything—which is very unusual for me.

  I smelled blood, and felt something ridged under my shoulder. Old sensory memory, left over from late-night studying in college, told me it was a pen. I waited for more recent memory to kick in—the last thing I remembered was the fae grabbing my ankles. When nothing more made itself known, I decided that there were no memories to come back. I must have been knocked out when my head hit the cement.

  Odd as it might seem, I was still alive even though I’d been lying helpless before the fae.

  I almost sat up, but there was a sound I couldn’t place, a wet sound. Not a drip, but a slop, slop, slop. Rip. Slop, slop, slop.<
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  Something was eating. Once I worked that out, I could smell death and all the undignified things it brought to a body. I waited a long time, listening to the sounds of something with sharp teeth feeding, before I forced myself to move.

  It didn’t really matter who had died. If it was Sam, I stood no chance against something that could kill a werewolf after I shot him three times in the chest—whether his heart was there or not, it still should have hurt him.

  If it wasn’t Sam . . . either he would kill me, too, or we’d both walk out of the basement. But I had to wait until I’d considered every possibility before I rolled stiffly to my feet.

  The sound didn’t change as I shuffled around, crunching glass under my feet until the edge of my shoe caught the edge of the rug. I used the rug to find the desk and fumbled around until I could turn on the desk light.

  It wasn’t very bright, but it showed me that the lighting fixtures on the ceiling had been torn loose and were dangling by wires. The neat stacks of boxes were mostly gone, leaving tumbled books, ripped-up cardboard, and shreds of paper in their place. There was also blood. A lot of it.

  Some of the fae bleed odd colors, but this was all a dark red that pooled black in the dim light a yard or so from the edge of the rug where the kill had been made. It hadn’t been too long because the edge of the pool of fluid was still wet. But the victor had dragged the body over a pile of book boxes and found a secluded place hidden behind several leaning stacks in the far corner of the basement where the weak light I held wouldn’t penetrate.

  “Sam?” I asked. “Sam?”

  The sound of feeding paused. Then a shadow darker than the things around it flowed over the stacks and crouched on top of the remaining piles of books, flattened to keep from bumping into the ceiling. For a moment, I thought it was the fae, because the wolf was so drenched in blood that he was almost black. Then white eyes caught my desk light, and Sam growled.

  “SO,” I ASKED SAM AS WE HEADED BACK TOWARD KENNEWICK, “what do you think we can do to resurrect the love of life in your human half? Because I don’t think that this is working. You almost lost it there, my friend.”

  Sam whined softly and put his head on my lap. I’d cleaned both of us in Phin’s bathroom as best I could. His white fur was more pink than white still, and he was soaking wet. Thank goodness the Rabbit had a powerful heater.

  “Well, if you don’t know,” I muttered, “how am I supposed to figure it out?”

  He pressed his head harder on my thigh.

  He’d almost killed me tonight. I’d seen the intent in his eyes as he’d raised his hindquarters—and knocked over the boxes he was perched on, already precariously tipped during his battle with the fae.

  It was the kind of mistake that Samuel would never have made, and it had thrown off his attack. He’d landed short of me, on top of the broken office chair. He’d put a foot through the space between the arm and the seat and during the struggle to free himself had remembered that we were friends.

  From the lowered tail and head, I think he’d scared himself almost as much as he’d scared me.

  We’d spent a long time in that bookstore, so the traffic had subsided somewhat, though it was still pretty busy.

  I took my right hand off the steering wheel and ran my fingers through the fur behind Sam’s ears. His whole body relaxed as I rubbed. “We’ll manage it,” I told him. “Don’t you worry. I’m a lot more stubborn than Samuel is. Let’s go home and dry us both off. Then I think . . . it’s time to call Zee—”

  MERCY!

  Adam’s voice in my head screamed at such volume that I couldn’t move. A blasting yet soundless noise that grew and grew until . . . there was nothing at all. The cry left me with a headache that made the one I’d woken up with in Phin’s basement seem like a pinprick.

  “Sam,” I said urgently, both hands on the wheel again—for all the good it was going to do me. I’d only just barely kept from hitting the brakes as hard as I could, which doubtless would have caused a big pileup on the busy highway behind me. On the other hand, I could hardly keep traveling the way I was. “Sam. Sam, I can’t see.”

  A mouth closed on my right wrist and tugged down and then back. As soon as he was guiding me straight, I put on my brake, gently, and rolled to a stop.

  The Rabbit shook as cars blasted past us, but no one honked, so we must have made it to the shoulder. After some indefinable amount of time, the pain faded finally and left me shaken and sweating and feeling as if I’d been run over by a semi.

  “We have to get home,” I said, restarting the car. My hands were shaking as I put the Rabbit in gear and made a beeline toward Finley.

  I’d left Adam to deal with his pack. If something had happened to him, I’d never forgive myself for my cowardice.

  8

  WE WERE ON CHEMICAL DRIVE, THE HIGHWAY THAT LED out of the city to the countryside, when the ambulance passed us going the other direction, lights flashing but sirens off. I almost turned to follow.

  No. Better to find out exactly what’s happened first. Sam isn’t a doctor today, and I can’t help anyone better than the hospital where they’re taking the victim. And maybe it wasn’t anyone I knew in the ambulance at all.

  As soon as I turned down my road, I put my foot down on the gas pedal and forgot about speed limits. Ahead of us, something was billowing black smoke. There were red flashing lights—fire engines at my house, which was well on its way to becoming so much kindling.

  Adam would have thought I was in there. I hadn’t told him I was leaving—because he’d have sent someone with me, someone he trusted, and I wanted him to have all of those with him.

  Adam’s cry suddenly made sense, but I was terrified of what he’d done when the connection had blown. It might have felt like I had died or fallen unconscious. I should have called him instead of waiting until I could drive here.

  Adam’s pack surrounded the trailer, staying out of the way of the fire department. The fire must have started while the meeting was still taking place or shortly thereafter—I firmly squelched the notion that they might have set it on fire in effigy. My eye slipped over familiar faces—there was Darryl, Auriele, Paul—and some not so familiar—Henry and George. I couldn’t find Adam anywhere in the bunch. My stomach clenched in fear at his absence.

  I parked by the side of the road as close as I could get with the fire trucks everywhere, but it was still well back from the fire.

  I sprinted up to the closest of Adam’s pack and grabbed her by the arm—Auriele.

  “Where is Adam?” I asked.

  Her irises widened in shock. “Mercy? Adam thought you were in there when it blew.”

  Blew? I looked around and realized that it did look as though the trailer had simply exploded. Bits of siding, glass, and trailer were scattered a dozen yards from the burning hulk that used to be my house. The trailer had gas heat; maybe there had been a leak. How long would it have had to leak before blowing up? If it had been leaking when I left, I would have smelled gas.

  Tomorrow, I’ll feel bad about losing my home and the things that are important, like my photos . . . poor Medea. I left her locked in because I always lock her in at night so she’ll be safe. I don’t want to think about what happened to her. Tonight, I have more urgent fears.

  “Auriele,” I said slowly and clearly, “where is Adam?”

  “Mercy!”

  Arms snagged me hard and pulled me close. “Oh God, oh God, Mercy. He thought you were effing dead. Went through the side of the bloody trailer to find you.” Ben’s voice was hoarse from the smoke and almost unrecognizable. If it hadn’t been for the British accent, I wouldn’t have been certain it was him.

  “Ben?” I peeled myself out of his embrace with some difficulty—and care, because the hands that clutched me convulsively were burned and blistered—but I had to be able to breathe. “Ben. Tell me where Adam is.”

  “Hospital,” said Darryl, trotting over to us from where he’d been talking to some of the fi
remen. Darryl was Auriele’s mate and Adam’s second. “Mary Jo was able to ride in with him on the strength of her job.” Mary Jo was a werewolf whose day job was as a fireman and a trained EMT. “I’ll take you.”

  I was already running back to the Rabbit. Sam somehow slithered past me when I was getting in, and when the passenger door opened, he hopped into the backseat so Ben could sit down.

  “Warren’s on his way,” Ben said. His teeth were chattering with shock, and his eyes were bright wolf eyes. “He was working, couldn’t get off in time for the meeting. But I called him and told him that Adam was at the hospital.”

  “Good,” I said, pulling out in a storm of gravel. “Why didn’t they take you to the hospital, too?”

  Away from the fire, the scent of burnt flesh and his pain was impossible to miss. The little car’s engine roared as I opened it up on the highway. Ben closed his eyes and braced himself against the seat.

  “I was still in the building,” he said. He coughed, rolled down his window, and hung out the side, choking and hacking for a while. I handed him a half-empty water bottle, and he rinsed his mouth out and spit.

  He rolled up the window and took a drink. “Adam went for your bedroom, and I went for Samuel’s.” His voice was even rougher than it had been.

  “How bad are you?”

  “I’ll be all right. Smoke inhalation sucks.”

  WE THREE BARGED INTO THE EMERGENCY ROOM. Even for a place that was used to odd things, we must have looked a sight. I glanced at Sam. He’d rolled on the ground when I wasn’t looking, covering up the remnants of bloodstains with dirt. All of us looked bedraggled, but at least I didn’t think Sam and I looked as if we’d been killing fae. Of course, we didn’t look like we’d been fighting a fire, like Ben did, either. I’d come up with some story if someone asked.