Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

  His blood didn’t taste like rabbit or mouse. It was more bitter—and somehow sweeter at the same time. Mostly it was hot, sizzling hot, and I was cold. I drank as the cut under my tongue slowly closed.

  And I remembered this taste. Like eating at McDonald’s twice in a day and ordering the same meal. I had a momentary flash of memory, just Blackwood’s voice in my ears.

  I didn’t remember what he’d said or what he’d done, but brief memory of the sound had me curled up on the bench seat, my forehead on Stefan’s thigh while I cried. Stefan pulled his wrist away and used his other hand to pet my head lightly.

  “Mercy,” he said gently. “He won’t do that again. Not now. You are mine. He can’t fog your mind or force you to do anything.”

  With my voice muffled by the fabric of his jeans, I said, “Does this mean you can read my mind?”

  He laughed a little. “Only while you drink. That isn’t my gift. Your secrets are safe.” His laugh washed away Blackwood’s voice.

  I lifted up my head. “I’m glad I don’t remember more of what he did,” I told Stefan. But I thought that my desire to see Blackwood’s body burn like Andre’s might have a more personal reason than just what he was doing to Amber.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  I took a breath and evaluated myself. “Awesome. Like I could run from here to the Tri-Cities faster than the van could take us.”

  He laughed. “I don’t think that’s true ... unless we get a flat tire.”

  He stood up and he looked better than I’d seen him since ... since before he’d landed on the floor of my living room looking like something that had been buried a hundred years. I got up and had to sit down again.

  “Balance,” he said. “It’s a little like being drunk. That’ll fade fast, but I’d better drive us home.”

  I should have felt terrible. Some small voice was yammering that I should have checked with my Alpha before doing anything this ... permanent.

  But I felt fine, better than fine—and it wasn’t just the vampire’s blood. I felt truly in control of my life for the first time since Tim’s assault. Which was pretty funny under the circumstances.

  But I’d made the decision to put myself in Stefan’s power.

  “Stefan?” I watched the reflectors on the side of the road pass by.

  “Hmm.”

  “Did anyone talk to you about the thing someone painted on the door of my shop?” I’d kept forgetting to ask him about it—though subsequent events had made it more obvious that it had been some sort of threat from Marsilia.

  “No one said anything to me,” he said. “But I saw it myself.” Headlights reflected red in his eyes. Like the flash of a camera, only scarier. It made me smile.

  “Marsilia had it done?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  I could have left it there. But we had time to kill, and I had Bran’s voice in my head saying, Information is important, Mercy. Get all the facts you can.

  “What exactly does it mean?”

  “It’s the mark of a traitor,” he said. “It means that one of our own has betrayed us, and she and all who belong to her are fair marks. A declaration of war.”

  It was no more than I had expected. “There’s some sort of magic in it,” I told him. “What does it do?”

  “Keeps you from painting over it for long,” he said. “And if it stays there long, you’ll start attracting nasties who have no affiliation to the vampire.”

  “Terrific.”

  “You could always replace the door.”

  “Yeah,” I told him glumly. Maybe the insurance company would replace it when I explained that the bones couldn’t be painted over, but I didn’t get my hopes up.

  We drove for a while in silence, and I worried through the past few days, trying to see if there was something I’d missed or something I should have done differently.

  “Hey, Stefan? How come I couldn’t smell Blackwood after he bit me? Tonight I was a little distracted, but yesterday, with the first bite, I checked.”

  “He would have known what you are after he tasted you.” Stefan stretched, and the van swayed a little with his movement. “I don’t know whether he was trying to fool you into thinking him human, or if he always cleans up after himself in that way. There were things in the Old Country that hunted us by scent—not just werewolves—or by things that were left behind, hair, saliva, or blood. Many of the older vampires always remove any trace of themselves from their lairs and from their hunting grounds.”

  I’d almost forgotten they could do that.

  The change in the sound of the car’s engine as he slowed for city traffic woke me up.

  “Do you want to go to your home or Adam’s?” he asked.

  Good question. Even though I was pretty sure Adam would understand what I’d done, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to discussing matters with him. And I was too tired to work my way through exactly what I wanted to leave out—and how I was going to kill Blackwood. I really wanted to talk to Zee before I talked to Adam, and I wanted to get a good long sleep before I did either.

  “Mine.”

  I’d gone back to dozing when the van slowed abruptly. I looked up and saw why: there was someone standing in the middle of the road, looking down as if she’d lost something. She wasn’t paying any attention at all to us.

  “Do you know her?” We were on my road, just a few properties from our house, so Stefan’s question was reasonable.

  “No.”

  He stopped about a dozen yards away, and she finally looked up. The purr of the van’s engine subsided, and Stefan glanced behind him, then opened the door and got out.

  Trouble.

  I stripped off my clothes, popped open my door, and shifted as I hopped out. A coyote may not be big, but it has fangs and surprisingly effective claws. I slipped under the van’s side and out under the front bumper, where Stefan was leaning, his arms crossed casually across his chest.

  The girl was no longer alone. Three vampires stood beside her. The first two I’d seen before, though I didn’t know their names. The third was Estelle.

  In Marsilia’s seethe there had once been five vampires who had reached some sort of power plateau so that they did not depend upon the Mistress of the seethe for survival: Stefan; Andre, whom I’d killed; Wulfe, the übercreepy wizard in a boy’s body; Bernard, who reminded me of a merchant out of a Dickens novel; and Estelle, the Mary Poppins of the undead. I’d never seen her when she wasn’t dressed like an Edwardian governess, and tonight was no exception.

  As if he’d been waiting for me to appear at his side, Stefan glanced down at me, then said, “Estelle, how nice to see you.”

  “I’d heard she hadn’t destroyed you,” Estelle said in her prim English voice. “She tortured you, starved you, banished you—then sent you to kill your little coyote bitch.”

  Stefan spread his hands out as if to showcase his own living ... undead flesh. “It is as you heard it.” There was a musical cadence to his voice, and he sounded more Italian than usual.

  “Yet here you are, you and the bitch both.”

  I growled at her, and I heard Stefan’s smile in his reply. “I don’t think she likes being called a bitch.”

  “Marsilia is mad. She’s been mad since she awoke twelve years ago, and she hasn’t gotten better with time.” Estelle’s voice softened, and she stepped forward. “If she weren’t mad, she would never have tortured you—her favorite.”

  She obviously waited for Stefan’s reply, which didn’t come. “I have a proposition for you,” she told him. “Join with me, and we will put Marsilia out of her misery—you know that she’d have urged you to do just that if she were aware of what she’s become. She will see us all destroyed in her obsession with returning to Italy. This is our home—our seethe bows to no other. Italy holds nothing for us.”

  “No,” Stefan said. “I will not move against the Mistress.”

  “She is your Mistress no more,” Estelle hissed. She s
trode forward until I was pressed against Stefan’s leg. “She tortured you—I saw what she did. You, who love her—she starved you and flayed the skin from you. How can you support her now?”

  Stefan didn’t reply.

  And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was right to trust him to protect me and not turn me into his mindless slave. Stefan didn’t turn on those he loved. No matter what.

  Estelle threw up her hands. “Idiot. Fool. She will go down, either by my hand or by Bernard’s. And you know that the seethe will do better in my hands than in that fool Bernard’s. I have contacts. I can make us grow and thrive until not even the courts of Italy will rival what we build.”

  Stefan quit leaning against the van. He spat on the ground with deliberate slowness.

  She tensed, furious at the insult, and he smiled grimly. “Do it,” he said—and, with a flick of his wrist and the magic of a Highlander episode, he held a sword in one hand. It was efficient-looking rather than beautiful: deadly.

  “Soldier, you’ll regret this,” Estelle said.

  “I regret many things,” he replied, his voice sharpening with a cold, roiling anger. “Letting you walk off tonight might be another one. Maybe I shouldn’t do it.”

  “Soldier,” she said. “Remember who it was who betrayed you. You know how to reach me—don’t wait until it is too late.”

  The vampires left with preternatural speed, their human bait running after them. Stefan waited, sword in hand, while a car purred to life and one of the seethe’s black Mercedes lit up. It roared past us and disappeared into the night.

  He looked around, then asked me, “Do you smell anything, Mercy?”

  I tested the air, but, except for Stefan, the vampires were gone ... or upwind. I shook my head and trotted back to the van. Stefan, gentleman that he had once been, stayed outside until I was dressed.

  “That was interesting,” I said, as he got in and put the van in gear.

  “She’s a fool.”

  “Marsilia?”

  Stefan shook his head. “Estelle. She’s no match for Marsilia. Bernard ... he’s tougher and stronger even if he’s younger. Together, they might manage something, but it’ll be without me.”

  “It didn’t sound like they were working together,” I said.

  “They’ll work together until they’ve achieved their goals, then fight it out. But they are fools if they think they’ll even get that far. They’ve forgotten, or have never known, what Marsilia can be.”

  HE PULLED UP IN THE DRIVEWAY AND WE BOTH GOT OUT of the van.

  “If you need me, if you hear Blackwood call you again—just think of my name as you wish me at your side, and I’ll come.” He looked grim. I hoped it was the encounter with Estelle and not worry for me.

  “Thank you.”

  He brushed a thumb over my cheek. “Wait for a while before you thank me. You might change your mind.”

  I patted his arm. “Decision’s made.”

  He gave me a shallow bow and disappeared.

  “That is just so cool,” I told the empty air, and, suddenly so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, I went inside and tucked myself into bed.

  8

  ADAM WAS SITTING ON THE FOOT OF MY BED WHEN I woke up the next ... afternoon. He was leaning against the wall reading a well-worn copy of The Book of Five Rings. It was resting on Medea’s back, and she was purring, wiggling her stub tail—which she uses more like a dog than a cat.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I asked.

  He turned a page, and said in an absent voice, “My boss is flexible.”

  “Doesn’t dock your pay for shirking,” I mused. “How can I get a boss like yours?”

  He grinned. “Mercy, even when Zee was your boss, he wasn’t. I have no idea how you would ever find anyone you’d listen to ... unless you wanted to.” He marked his place and set the book beside him. “I’m sorry your foray into exorcism didn’t go well.”

  I considered it. “It depends upon your outlook, I suppose. I learned a few things ... like did you know that Stefan knew sign language? Why do you suppose a vampire would need to learn to sign? That ghosts aren’t always harmless. I always thought the only way a ghost could kill was if it scared someone to death.”

  He waited, curling his fingers over the lump my toes made in the covers. His other hand was rubbing Medea’s head, just behind her ears. Adam knows how to listen better than most people. So I told him what I hadn’t told him before.

  “I think it might have been my fault.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Until I came, it wasn’t doing much ... just standard poltergeist stuff. Moving things around. Frightening, all right, but not dangerous. Then I show up, and things change. Chad almost gets killed. Ghosts just don’t do that—even Stefan said so. I think I did something to make it worse.”

  He tightened his hold on my toes. “Has that ever happened to you before?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then maybe you’re claiming too much credit. Maybe it would have happened anyway, and if you hadn’t been there with Stefan, the boy would have died.”

  I wasn’t sure he was right, but confessing my fear made me feel better, anyway.

  “How is Mary Jo?” I asked.

  He sighed. “She’s still a little ... off, but Samuel’s sure now that she’ll be fine in a few more days.” He relaxed and smiled at me a little. “She’s ready to go out and take on the whole seethe all by herself. She also told Ben that if he’d keep his mouth shut, she’d love to get naked with him. We’ve decided we’ll know that she’s back to herself when she quits flirting with him.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Mary Jo was as liberated as a woman could get—being a werewolf had not altered that a bit. Ben was a misogynist of the highest (or lowest, depending upon your viewpoint) order with the added bonus of a foul mouth. The two of them were like flame and dynamite.

  “No more troubles with the vampires?” I asked.

  “None.”

  “But negotiations didn’t accomplish much,” I said.

  He nodded comfortably. “Don’t worry so, Mercy. We can take care of ourselves.”

  Maybe it was the way he said it ...

  “So what did you do?”

  “We have a couple of guests staying with us now. Neither of them seems to have Stefan’s ability to disappear at will.”

  “And you’ll keep them until ...”

  “Until we have an apology for the events at Uncle Mike’s and reparations paid to Mary Jo. And an agreement not to try something like that again.”

  “Do you think you’ll get it?”

  “Bran called her to deliver our request. I’m certain we’ll get it.”

  Some tightness eased in my chest. The one thing that Marsilia did care about was the seethe. If Bran got involved in a battle, Marsilia’s seethe was dead. The vampires in the Tri-Cities simply didn’t have the numbers that the Marrok could bring into play—and Marsilia knew it.

  “So she’ll have to concentrate on me,” I said.

  He smiled. “The agreement is that she will not attack the pack unless one of us newly and directly attacks her.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m pack,” I said.

  “After we get that apology and promise from her in writing, I’ll take great pleasure in informing her of that.”

  I sat up and rolled forward until I was up on all fours and my face was an inch from his. I kissed him lightly. He kept his hands on the cat.

  “I like the way you operate, mister,” I said. “Can I interest you in the pancakes I’m going to make after I shower?”

  He tilted his head and gave me a deeper kiss, though he left his hands where they’d been. When he moved away, neither of us was breathing steadily.

  “Now you can tell me why you smell like Stefan,” he said—almost gently.

  I raised my arm and sniffed. I did smell like Stefan, more than riding home in a van would have accounted for.

  “Weird.?
??

  “Why do you smell like the vampire, Mercy?”

  “Because we exchanged blood,” I told him—and then explained what Stefan had told me about vampire bites on the way from Spokane. I couldn’t remember which part was supposed to be secret and which parts weren’t—but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to keep anything from Adam, not when he’d made me part of his pack.

  Stefan was certain that neither he nor Blackwood would have been able to affect the wolves through me. But I didn’t know enough about pack magic to be certain—and I didn’t think he did either. The only thing I did know was that Adam would agree with what I had done, though I knew he wouldn’t be ecstatic about it.

  By the time I’d finished, he’d dumped Medea on the floor (for which he’d have to atone if he wanted to touch her again today) in favor of pacing the room. He kept going a few rounds. He stopped when he was across the room and gave me an unhappy look.

  “Stefan is better than Blackwood.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Blackwood after the first bite?” he asked. He sounded ... hurt.

  I didn’t know.

  He gave a short, unamused laugh. “I’m trying. I really am. But you have to bend a little, too, Mercy. Why didn’t you tell me what was going on until you were on your way back here? When it was too late to do anything about it.”

  “I should have.”

  He looked at me with dark, wounded eyes. So I tried to do better.

  “I’m not used to leaning on people, Adam.” I started slowly, but the words came faster as I continued. “And ... I’ve cost you so much lately. I thought—a vampire bite. Ick. Scary ... But it didn’t seem too harmful. Like a giant mosquito or ... the ghost. Frightening but not harmful. I’ve been bitten before, you remember, and nothing bad happened. If I’d told you—you’d have made me come home. And there was Chad—you’d like him-this ten-year-old kid with more courage than most grown-ups, who was being terrorized by a ghost. I thought I could help. And I could stay out of Marsilia’s hair so she would listen to you. It wasn’t until Stefan was so worried—and that was right before we came home, after the second bite—that I realized that there was something more dangerous about them.”