“I counted on it,” she said. “By his refusal, your rebellion is robbed of its legitimacy.” She looked at the man who’d killed Estelle. “You, of course, had no idea that your children would behave so.”
He gave her a small smile, one predator to another, “I’m not on the chair.” He pulled off the gauntlets and tossed them into Wulfe’s lap. “Not even by such a slim connection.” His hands were bloodied, but I couldn’t tell if it was from one wound or many. “I’ve heard your truths, and can only hope you’ll find them as galling as I.”
“Come, Bernard,” he said. “It is time for us to leave.”
Bernard rose without protest, shock and dismay in every line of his body. He followed his maker to the doorway, but turned back before leaving the room entirely. “God save me,” he said looking at Marsilia, “from such loyalty. You have ruined him for your whim. You are not worthy of his gift—as I told him.”
“God won’t save any of us,” said Stefan in a low voice. “We are all of us damned.”
He and Bernard stared at each other across the room. Then the younger vampire bowed and followed his maker out the door. Stefan pulled his hands free and stood up.
“Stefan—” said Marsilia, sweet-voiced. But before she finished the last syllable, he was gone.
10
MARSILIA FROZE FOR A MOMENT, STARING AT THE PLACE Stefan had been. Then she looked at me, a look of such malevolence I had to work not to step back even though there was half of a very large room between us.
She closed her eyes and brought her features back under control. “Wulfe,” she asked, “do you have it?”
“I do, Mistress,” the vampire said. He stood up and drifted over to her, pulling an envelope out of his back pocket.
Marsilia looked at it, bit her lip, then said in a low voice, “Give it to her.”
Wulfe altered his path so he came more directly to us. He handed me the envelope that was none the worse for the time it had spent in his pocket. It was heavy paper, the kind that wedding invitations or graduation announcements are engraved on. Stefan’s name was gracefully lettered across the front. It was sealed with red wax that smelled like vampire and blood.
“You will give this to Stefan,” Marsilia said. “Tell him there is information here. Not apologies or excuses.”
I took the envelope and felt a strong desire to crumple it and drop it on the floor.
“Bernard is right,” I said. “You used Stefan. Hurt him, broke him, in order to play your little game. You don’t deserve him.”
Marsilia ignored me. “Hauptman,” she said with calm courtesy, “I thank you for your warning about Blackwood. In return for this, I accede to your truce. The signed documents will be sent to your house.”
She took a deep breath and turned from Adam to me. “It is the judgement of this night that the action you took against us ... killing Andre ... has not resulted in damage to the seethe. That you had no intention of moving against the seethe was borne out by your truth-tested testimony.” She sucked in a breath. “It is my judgement that the seethe suffered no harm, and you are not an ally turned traitor. No further punishment will be taken against you—and the crossed bones will be removed ...” She glanced down at her wrist.
“I can do it tonight,” said Wulfe in gentle tones.
She nodded. “Removed before dawn.” She hesitated, then said in a quiet voice, as if the words were pulled from her throat, “This is for Stefan. If it were up to me, your blood and bones would nourish my garden, walker. Take care not to push me again.”
She turned on her heel and left out the same door Bernard had taken.
Wulfe looked at Adam. “Allow me to escort you out of the seethe so that no harm comes to you.”
Adam lowered his eyelids. “Are you implying I cannot protect my own?”
Wulfe dropped his eyes and bowed low. “But of course not. Merely suggesting that my presence might save you the trouble. And save us the mess to clean up afterward.”
“Fine.”
Adam led the way. I let the other wolves pass me and tried not to be hurt when Mary Jo and Aurielle deliberately avoided looking at me. I didn’t know what cause ... or rather which cause was bothering them—coyote, vampire prey, or causing Marsilia to target the pack. It didn’t matter, really—there was nothing I could do about any of it.
Warren, Samuel, and Darryl waited until the others were gone, then Warren gave me a little smile and went ahead. Darryl paused, and I looked at him. I outranked him, which put me at the end of the pack, to protect us from attack from behind. Then he smiled, a warm expression I couldn’t say I’d ever seen on his face, not directed at me anyway. And he went ahead.
“Oh no, you don’t,” said Samuel, amused. “I’m outside the pack, and so I can tag along with you.”
“I really need a good night’s sleep,” I told him as I fell into step beside him.
“I guess that’s what comes from fraternizing with vampires.” He put a hand over my shoulder. A cold hand.
I’d been so busy sweating with fear I’d become accustomed to both the feeling and the smell. I hadn’t noticed that Samuel was scared, too.
The last time he’d come here, Lily had taken him for a snack—and Marsilia had done worse, robbing him of his will until he was hers.
For me it would have been terrifying. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to a werewolf who lived only because he controlled his wolf. All the time.
I reached up and put my hand over his. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. And all the way through the room, I was conscious of the two still bodies on the floor, and of the vampires and their menageries, who sat silently on the bleachers, obedient to orders I couldn’t hear. They watched us leave with their predatory eyes, and I felt them on my back all the way to the door.
Just like the ghost in the bathroom at Amber’s house.
I SAT SHOTGUN IN THE SUBURBAN ADAM HAD DRIVEN over. I didn’t know if it was a rental or a new vehicle—which is what it smelled like. Paul, Darryl, and Aurielle filled the first backseat. Samuel drove his own car, a nifty new Mercedes in bing cherry red.
Mary Jo, who had been heading toward Adam’s vehicle until she saw me, abruptly changed directions and got into Warren’s old truck. Alec, trailing her around like a lost puppy, followed.
“And I thought Bran could be Byzantine,” I said finally, trying to relax in the safety of the leather upholstery as Adam drove through the gates.
“I didn’t catch it all,” said Darryl. He must have been tired because his voice was even deeper than usual, buzzing my ears so I had to listen closely to catch all of his words. “For some reason she had to convince Stefan that he was out of the seethe. Then, when her traitors approached him, he had to refuse their offers before he could witness that they’d made them?”
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” said Adam. “And only with his witness and their maker’s consent could she deal with her traitors.”
“Makes sense,” offered Paul almost shyly. “The way the seethe works, if he belonged to her—his witness is hers. If those two were imposed on her, she couldn’t have them killed at her word. She’d need outside verification.”
I wondered if I’d been set up. I thought of Wulfe’s oh-so-convenient aid when I’d killed Andre. He’d known I was looking for Andre—I’d stumbled upon his resting place before I found Andre’s. I’d thought he kept it from the Mistress for his own reasons ... but maybe he hadn’t. Maybe Marsilia had planned it.
My head hurt.
“Maybe we were suspecting the wrong vampire of trying to take over Marsilia’s seethe,” Adam said.
I thought about the vampire who had been Bernard’s maker and had stood to watch this ... trial.
I didn’t want to be sympathetic; I wanted to hate Marsilia cleanly for what she had done to Stefan. But I’d become passing familiar with evil and all its shades, and that vampire, Bernard’s maker, set off every alarm that I had. Not that all vampires weren’t evil ... I wishe
d suddenly that I could say except for Stefan. But I couldn’t. I’d met his menagerie, the ones Marsilia had killed—and I knew that for most of them, except for the very few who became vampire, Stefan would be their death. Still, the other vampire had hit pretty high on my coyote’s “get me out of here” scale. There had been something in his face ...
“Makes me glad I’m a werewolf,” said Darryl. “All I have to worry about is when Warren will lose his self-control and challenge me.”
“Warren’s self-control is very good,” said Adam. “I wouldn’t wait dinner on his losing it.”
“Better Warren as second than a coyote in the pack,” said Aurielle tightly.
The atmosphere in the car changed.
Adam’s voice was soft, “Do you think so?”
“‘Rielle,” Darryl warned.
“I think so.” Her voice brooked no argument. She was a high school teacher, Darryl’s mate, which made her ... not precisely third in the pack—that was Warren. But second and a half, just below Darryl. If she had been a man, I didn’t think she would have ranked much lower.
“Unlike vampires, wolves tend to be straightforward critters,” I murmured, trying not to feel hurt. Rejection, for a coyote raised by wolves, was nothing new. I’d spent most of my adulthood running from it.
I wouldn’t have thought that exhaustion and hurt was a recipe for epiphany, but there it was. I’d left my mother and Portland before she could tell me to go. I’d lived alone, stood on my own two feet, because I didn’t want to learn to lean on anyone else.
I’d seen my resistance to Adam as a fight for survival, for the right to control my own actions instead of a life spent following orders ... because I wanted to obey. The duty that Stefan clung to with awful stubbornness was the life I’d rejected.
What I hadn’t seen was that I had been unwilling to put myself in a place where I could be rejected again. My mother had given me to Bran when I was a baby. A gift he returned when I became ... inconvenient. At sixteen, I’d moved back in with my mother, who was married to a man I’d never met and had two daughters who hadn’t known of my existence until Bran had called my mother to tell her he was sending me home. They had been all that was loving and gracious—but I was a hard person to lie to.
“Mercy?”
“Just a minute,” I told Adam, “I’m in the middle of a revelation.”
No wonder I hadn’t just rolled over at Adam’s feet like any sensible person would when courted by a sexy, lovable, reliable man who loved me. If Adam ever rejected me ... I felt a low growl rise in my throat.
“You heard her,” said Darryl, amused. “We’ll have to wait for her revelation. We have a prophet for our Alpha’s mate.”
I waved at him irritably. Then looked up at Adam, whose eyes were, quite properly, on the road.
“Do you love me?” I asked him, pulse pounding in my ears.
He gave me a curious look. He was wolf, he knew intensity when he heard it. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“You’d better,” I told him, “or you’ll regret it.”
I looked over my shoulder at Aurielle, holding the full force of my will close to me. Adam was mine.
Mine.
And I would take up all the burdens he could give me, even as he did the same with mine. It would be an equal sharing. That meant he protected me from the vampires ... and I protected him from what problems I could.
I stared at Aurielle, met the predator in her eyes with the one in mine. And after only a few minutes, she dropped her eyes. “Suck it up and deal with it,” I told her, and I put my head on Adam’s shoulder and fell asleep.
IT WAS, SADLY NOT VERY LONG BEFORE ADAM STOPPED the car. I stayed where I was, half-awake, while Darryl, Aurielle, and Paul got out of the car. We stayed where we were until I heard Darryl’s Subaru fire up, and Adam started for home.
“Mercy?”
“Mmm.”
“I’d like to take you home with me.”
I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and sighed. “Once I go horizontal, I’m going to be out like a light,” I told him. “It’s been days”—I tried to remember, but I was too tired—“several at least since I had a good night’s sleep.” The sun, I noticed, was brightening in the sky.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I’d just ...”
“Yeah, me too.” But I shivered a little. It was all very well and good to get hot and heavy over the phone, but this was real. I stayed awake all the way to his house.
AN ALPHA’S HOME IS SELDOM EMPTY—AND WITH THE recent troubles, Adam was keeping a guard there, too. When we came in, we were greeted by Ben, who gave us an offhand salute and trotted back downstairs, where there were a number of guest bedrooms.
Adam escorted me up the stairs with a hand on the small of my back. I was sick-to-my-stomach nervous and found myself taking in deep breaths to remind myself that this was Adam ... and all we were going to do was sleep.
Repairs were in progress on the hall bathroom. The door was back up, and mostly the hall wall next to it just needed taping, texturing, and painting. But the white carpet at the top of the stairs was still stained with brown spots of old blood—mine. I’d forgotten about that. Should I offer to have his carpet cleaned? Could blood be cleaned out of a white carpet? And what kind of stupid person puts white carpet in a house frequented by werewolves?
Bolstered by indignation, I took a step into his bedroom and froze. He glanced at my face and pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer and threw it at me. “Why don’t you use the bathroom first,” he said. “There’s a spare toothbrush in the top right-hand drawer.”
The bathroom felt safer. I folded my dirty clothes and left them in a small pile on the floor before pulling on his T-shirt. He wasn’t much taller than me, but his shoulders were broad, and the sleeves hung down past my elbows. I washed my face around the stitches in my chin, brushed my teeth, then just stood there for a few minutes, gathering courage.
When I opened the door, Adam brushed by and closed the bathroom behind him—pushing me gently into his room to face the bed with its turned-down comforter.
There should be only so much terror you can feel in a night. I should have met my limit and then some. And the fear of something that wasn’t going to happen—Adam would never hurt me—shouldn’t have been enough to register.
Still, it took every bit of courage I had to crawl into his bed. Once I was there, though, in one of those odd little psychological twists everyone has, the scent of him in the sheets made me feel better. My stomach settled down. I yawned a few times and fell asleep to the sound of Adam’s electric razor.
I awoke surrounded by Adam, his scent, his warmth, his breath. I waited for the panic attack that didn’t come. Then I relaxed, soaking it up. By the light sneaking in around the heavy blinds, it was late afternoon. I could hear people moving around the house. His sprinklers were on, valiant defenders of his lawn in the never-ending battle against the sun.
Outside, it was probably in the seventies, but his house—like mine since Samuel moved in—had a chill edge to the air that made the warmth surrounding me that much better. Werewolves don’t like the heat.
Adam was awake, too.
“So,” I said ... half-embarrassed, half-aroused, and, just to round things out, half-scared, too. “Are you up for a trial run?”
“A trial run?” he asked, his voice all rumbly with sleep. The sound of it helped a lot with the halves I was feeling—virtually eliminating embarrassed, reducing scared, and pushing aroused up a few notches.
“Well, yes.” I couldn’t see his face, but I didn’t need to. I could feel his willingness to participate in my trial pressed against my backside. “Thing is, I’ve had different things happen with these stupid panic attacks. If I stop breathing, you could just ignore it. Eventually I start breathing again, or I pass out. But if I throw up ...” I let him draw his own conclusions.
“Quite a mood breaker,” he observed, his face on the back of my neck as he wrapped an arm more fully around me on top
of the covers.
I tapped his arm with my finger, and warned, only half in jest, “Don’t laugh at me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve heard stories about what happens to people who laugh at you. I like my coffee without salt, please. Tell you what,” he said, his voice dropping even lower. “Why don’t we just play for a bit—and see how far it gets? I promise not to be”—amusement fought with other things in his voice—“dismayed if you throw up.”
And then he slid down in the bed.
When I flinched, he stopped and asked me about it. I found I couldn’t say anything. There are things you don’t tell someone you’re still trying to impress. There are other things you don’t want to remember either. Panic tightened my throat.
“Shh,” he said. “Shh.” And he kissed me there, where he’d caused me to shy. It was a gentle, caring touch—almost passionless, and moved on to somewhere less ... tainted.
But he was a good hunter. Adam isn’t patient by nature, but his training was very thorough. He worked his way back to the first bad spot and tried again.
I still flinched ... but I told him a little. And like the wolf he was, he laved the wound in my soul, bandaging it with his care—and moved on to the next. He explored thoroughly, found each mental wound—and a few I didn’t know I had—and replaced them with other ... better things. And when passion began to grow too wild, too fast ...
“So,” he murmured, “are you ticklish here?”
Yep. Who’d have known it? I looked at my inner elbow as if I’d never seen it before.
He laughed, bounced over a little, and made a raspberry noise with his mouth on my belly. My knees jerked up in reflex, and I bopped him on the head with my elbow.
“Are you all right?” I pulled away from him and sat up—all desire to laugh gone. Trust me to clobber Adam while we’re making out. Stupid, clumsy idiot, me.
He took one look at my face, put both arms over his head, and rolled on his back, moaning in agony.