“Kyle? I was calling to see how Warren was.”
“Sorry, Mercy,” Kyle laughed, and I heard water splash. “We’re in the hot tub. He’s fine. How are you? Ben said you were all right.”
“Fine. Warren?”
“Was passed out in the hallway, where he’d evidently been headed to the kitchen with an empty glass.”
“Wasn’t empty when I was carrying it,” Warren’s warm Southern-touched voice sounded amused.
“Ah,” said Kyle, “I didn’t notice much besides Warren. But he woke up in a few minutes—”
“Cold water in your face does that,” observed Warren, amused.
“But he was stiff and sore—thus the hot tub.”
“Tell him I’m sorry,” I told Kyle.
“Nothin’ to be sorry for,” said Warren. “Pack magic can be tricky sometimes. That’s what Adam, Darryl, and I are for, sweetheart. I don’t feel you in the pack anymore. Problems?”
“Probably not,” I told him. “Samuel says I just burned out the circuit for a while. It should come back on line soon.”
“Apparently it wasn’t necessary that I pass anything on,” said Kyle dryly.
A car pulled into the driveway—a Mercedes, I thought. But I didn’t recognize the individual car. “Give Warren a hug from me, instead,” I said. “And enjoy the hot tub.”
I hung up before Kyle could say something outrageous in response and went to the door to see who was there.
Corban, Amber’s husband was just coming up the steps. He looked disconcerted when I opened the door before he knocked. He also looked upset, his tie askew, his cheeks unshaven.
“Corban?” I said. I couldn’t imagine why he was here when a phone was so much easier. “What’s wrong?”
He recovered from his momentary hesitation and all but hopped up the last step. He put out a hand, and I noticed he was wearing leather driving gloves—and holding something odd-looking. That’s all I had time to notice before he hit me with the Taser.
Tasers are becoming commonplace among police departments, though I’d never actually seen one in the flesh before. Somewhere on YouTube there is a cameraphone video showing what happened to a student who broke some rule or other in a university library. He was Tasered, then Tasered again because he wouldn’t get up when they told him to.
It hurt. It hurt like ... I didn’t know what. I dropped to the ground and lay there frozen while Corban frisked me. He went through my pockets, dropping my cell phone to the porch. He grabbed my shoulders and knees and tried to jerk lift me.
I’m a lot heavier than I look—muscle will do that—and he was no werewolf, just a desperate man whispering, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I’d make sure he was sorry, I thought through the haze of pain. “I don’t get mad I get even” was more of a credo than a cliché to me.
The people I’d seen Tasered were only knocked out of commission for a few seconds. Even the kid in the library had been able to make noise. I was absolutely helpless, and I didn’t know why.
I tried touching the pack or Adam for help. I found where the connection should have been, but the Taser had nothing on the pain when I tried to force contact. My head hurt so badly it felt like my ears should be bleeding.
It was still daylight, so calling Stefan wasn’t going to be much help.
The second time, he got me up and took me to his car. His trunk popped with a beep, and he dumped me in it. My head bounced off the floor a couple of times. When I got out of this, Amber was going to be a widow.
Scrabbling fingers pulled my hands together behind my back, and I recognized the signature sound of a zip tie. He used another on my ankles. Prying my mouth open, he stuffed it with a sock that tasted of fabric softener and smelled faintly of Amber, then he wrapped what felt like an Ace bandage around that.
“It’s Chad,” he told me, eyes wild. “He has Chad.”
I caught a glimpse of the fresh bite mark in his neck just before he shut the trunk.
11
IT MUST HAVE BEEN AT LEAST FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE the effects wore off, and I began to function again. The first conclusion I came to was that whatever he’d hit me with had been no normal Taser. No way in Hell. Ill and shaking, I huddled in the vibrating trunk and tried to come up with a plan.
I couldn’t shift yet, but before we reached Spokane I’d be able to. And the zip ties weren’t tight enough to hold the coyote. The car was newer, and I could see the tab that would release the trunk. So I wasn’t trapped.
The realization did a lot to stop my panic. No matter what, I wouldn’t have to face Blackwood.
I relaxed into the floor of the trunk and tried to figure out why the vampire wanted me badly enough to ruin his lawyer to get me. It might be that he didn’t value Corban—but I’d gotten the feeling that their association was of long standing. Was he trying to take over the Tri-Cities as well as Spokane? Take me down and hold me hostage to force the wolves to act against Marsilia?
It had seemed like a possibility ... had it been just yesterday? But with the warfare between wolf and vampire at an end in the Tri-Cities, kidnapping me to influence Adam seemed like a stupid move to make just now. And a vampire who was stupid didn’t successfully hold a city against all comers. There was a chance, just barely, that he hadn’t heard what happened. It was that chance that meant I couldn’t dismiss the theory outright.
And Marsilia was down three of her most powerful vampires. If he wanted to move against her, now was the time to strike at her. Kidnapping me wasn’t a strike—it was, at best, an end run. Especially now that Marsilia had declared a truce with the wolves. Kidnapping me, I judged, would do nothing except send Adam to Marsilia with an offer of alliance.
See? It was stupid to take me—if his purpose was to take over Marsilia’s territory.
Since Blackwood couldn’t be that dumb, and I found myself indisputably lying in Corban’s trunk, I was inclined to think we had been wrong about Blackwood’s intentions.
So what did he want with me?
It could be as simple as pride. He’d claimed me as food—maybe as he claimed anyone who came to Amber’s house. Then Stefan came along and took me from him.
The theory had the benefit of conforming to the KISS principle—Keep It Simple, Stupid. It meant that Blackwood didn’t have anything to do with Chad’s ghost. It supposed that it was sheer dumb bad luck that I had gone blithely into his hunting ground when I went to Amber’s to look for a ghost.
Vampires are arrogant and territorial. It was not only possible but probable that having fed from me, he would believe I belonged to him. If he was possessive enough—and his holding the city for himself presupposed that Blackwood was very possessive—it was entirely reasonable that he would send a minion to fetch me.
It was a neat, simple solution, and it didn’t depend upon my being anything special. Ego, Bran liked to say, got in the way of truth more often than anything else.
Trouble was, it still didn’t quite fit.
Being alone in the trunk with nothing better to do gave me time to analyze the whole thing. From the beginning, Amber’s first approach had bothered me. Upon reflection, it struck me as even more wrong. The Amber with whom I’d had a water fight, who gave dinner parties for her husband’s clients, would be neither so thoughtless or gauche as to approach me to help her with a ghost because she’d read about my rape—the rape of a near stranger, really, after all these years—in the newspaper.
I hadn’t seen her in a long time. But, in retrospect, there had been an awkwardness in her manner that was unlike either the woman she’d been or the one she’d grown to be. It might have been explained by the odd situation, but I thought it more probable that she’d been sent.
Which left the question, why did Blackwood want me?
What could he have known about me before he required me to travel to Amber’s?
The newspapers announced that I was dating a werewolf. Amber knew I saw ghosts. I sucked in a deep breath—she also knew
I’d been raised with a foster family in Montana until I was sixteen. It wasn’t something I’d kept hidden—just the part about my foster family being werewolves, except that time when I was drunk.
But among the werewolves, the knowledge of the walker, the coyote shapeshifter, who’d been raised by Bran, was well-known. So say that he didn’t know anything about me until the newspaper articles. Say Amber looked at the newspaper, and said, “Goodness—I know her. I wonder if she might not be useful helping us deal with our ghost. She said she could see ghosts.”
Blackwood said to himself, “Hmm. A girl whose boyfriend is the Alpha of the Tri-Cities. A girl with an affinity for ghosts.” And being much older than me, he might have known more about walkers than I did. So he put two and two together and got, “Hey, I wonder if she might not be that walker who was raised by Bran a few years ago.” So he asked Amber if I was from Montana. And she told him I was raised by a foster family there.
Maybe he wanted something from a walker. Here I had an uncomfortable moment remembering Stefan telling me about the Master of Milan, who was addicted to the blood of werewolves. But Stefan had taken blood from me and hadn’t seemed to be much affected by it. Anyway, suppose Blackwood wanted a walker and so he sent Amber to find me and persuade me to come to Spokane.
I didn’t like it as well as the KISS theory. But that was mostly because it meant that he wouldn’t quit hunting me just because I’d escaped from this car. It meant that he’d just keep coming until he got what he wanted—or he was killed.
It fit what I knew. Walkers are rare. If there are other walkers around, I’ve never met one. So if he figured out what I was, and he wanted one, it would be logical for him to come after me. The question it left me was, What did he want with a walker?
The tingling in my arms and legs had faded and left only a dogged ache behind. It was time to escape ... and then I really thought about what Corban had said: “He has Chad.”
Corban had kidnapped me because Blackwood had Chad. I wondered what Blackwood would do if Corban came back, and I’d escaped him.
Maybe he’d just send him out again. But I remembered Marsilia’s indifference when she’d ordered Estelle’s man killed ... when she’d killed all of Stefan’s people. She was hurt that he was still angry with her after he’d figured out what she had done. Maybe she had no understanding of Stefan’s attachment to his people ... because humans were food.
Maybe Blackwood would simply kill Chad.
I couldn’t take that chance.
Abruptly, the sharp edge of terror made itself at home in my innards because I really was trapped. I couldn’t escape, not when it could mean that Chad would die.
Dry-mouthed, I tried to sort out my tools. There was the fairy staff, of course. It wasn’t there at the moment, but eventually it would come to me. It was accounted by the fae to be a powerful artifact—if only vampires were afraid of sheep.
I couldn’t find the pack or Adam. Samuel had said that the connections would reset. He hadn’t given me a timeline—and I hadn’t been anxious to repeat the experience, so I hadn’t asked. Adam said that distance made the connection thinner.
I remembered that Samuel had once run all the way to Texas to escape his father ... and it had worked. But Spokane was a lot closer to the Tri-Cities than Texas was to Montana. So maybe if I stalled Blackwood long enough, I could call the whole pack in to save me—again.
After dark, and it would soon be after dark, there was Stefan. I could call to him, and he’d come to me, just as he had when Marsilia had asked me to do it—but I’d have to do it before Blackwood forced me to exchange blood with him again. I assumed that what had worked to break Blackwood’s hold would work in the reverse.
And, as with calling in the pack, I would only be calling him in to die. If he didn’t judge himself to be a match for Blackwood—and he hadn’t—I could only accept his opinion. He knew more about Blackwood than I did.
If I left, I left a boy I liked to die at the hands of a monster. If I stayed ... I would be putting myself in the hands of a monster. The Monster.
Maybe he didn’t intend to kill me. I could make myself believe that easily. Less easy to dismiss was the already demonstrated desire of his to make me his puppet.
I could always leave. I shifted and told myself that it was because I didn’t want to face Blackwood while I was tied up and helpless. As coyote I wiggled out of the bonds and gag, then I shifted back, got dressed, and fingered the release tab on the trunk’s lock.
So I rode in the trunk of Corban’s car all the way to Spokane. When the car slowed and left the smooth growl of the interstate for the stop and go of city traffic, I straightened my clothes. My fingers touched a stick ... the silver-and-wood staff was tucked under my cheek. I stroked it because it made me feel better.
“You’d better hide yourself, my pretty,” I murmured in a fake pirate accent. “Or you’ll be put in his treasure room and never let see the light of day.”
Something under my ear chimed, we took a hard corner, and I lost track of where the staff was. I hoped it had listened to me and left. It wouldn’t be much help against a vampire, and I didn’t want it to come to harm while it was in my care.
“Now you’re talking to inanimate objects,” I said out loud. “And believing they are listening to you. Get a grip, Mercy.”
The car slowed to a crawl, then stopped. I heard the clang of chain and metal on pavement, then the car moved slowly forward. It sounded like Blackwood’s gates were a little more upscale than Marsilia’s. Did vampires worry about things like that?
I rolled up, crossed my legs, and bent over until my chin rested on my heels. When Corban opened the trunk, I simply sat up. It must have looked as though I’d been doing it all along. I hoped that it would draw his attention away from the contents of the trunk, so he wouldn’t notice the staff. If it was still in there at all.
“Blackwood has Chad?” I asked him.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Look,” I said, climbing out of the trunk with less grace than I’d planned. Damned Taser or stun gun or whatever it had been. “We don’t have much time. I need to know what the situation is. You said he had Chad. Exactly what did he tell you to do? Did he tell you why he wanted me?”
“He has Chad,” Corban said. He closed his eyes, and his face flushed red—like a weight lifter after a great effort. His voice came slowly. “I get you when you are alone. No one around. Not your roommate. Not your boyfriend. He would tell me when. I bring you back. My son lives.”
“What does he want me for?” I asked, while still absorbing that Blackwood had known when I was alone. I couldn’t believe someone could have been following me—even if I hadn’t detected them, there was still Adam and Samuel.
He shook his head. “Don’t know.” He reached out and grabbed my wrist. “I have to take you now.”
“Fine,” I said, and my heart rate doubled. Even now, I thought with a quick glance at the gate and the ten-foot stone walls. Even now I could break away and run. But there was Chad.
“Mercy,” he said, forcing his voice. “One more thing. He wanted me to tell you about Chad. So you would come.”
Just because you knew it was a trap didn’t mean you could stay out if the bait was good enough. With a ragged sigh, I decided that one deaf boy with the courage to face down a ghost should inspire me to a tenth of his courage.
My course laid out, I took a good look at the geography of Blackwood’s trap for me. It was dark, but I can see in the dark.
Blackwood’s house was smaller than Adam‘s, smaller even than Amber’s, though it was meticulously crafted out of warm-colored stone. The grounds encompassed maybe five or six acres of what had once been a garden of roses. But it had been a few years since any gardener had touched these.
He would have another house, I thought. One suitably grand with a professional garden and lawn service that kept it beautiful. There he would receive his business guests.
This
place, with its neglected and overgrown gardens, was his home. What did it tell me about him? Other than that he liked quality over size and preferred privacy to beauty or order.
The walls surrounding the grounds were older than the house, made of quarried stone and hand laid without mortar. The gate was wrought iron and ornate. His house wasn’t really small—it just looked undersized for the presentation it was given. Doubtless the house it had replaced had been huge and better suited to the property, if not to the vampire.
Corban paused in front of the door. “Run if you can,” he said. “It isn’t right ... not your problem.”
“Blackwood has made it my problem,” I told him. I walked in front of him and pushed open the door. “Hey, honey, I’m home,” I announced in my best fifties-movie-starlet voice. Kyle, I felt, would have approved of the voice, but not the wardrobe. My shirt was going on a day and a half, the jeans ... I didn’t remember how long I’d been wearing the jeans. Not much longer than the shirt.
The entryway was empty. But not for long.
“Mercedes Thompson, my dear,” said the vampire. “Welcome to my home at long last.” He glanced at Corban. “You have served. Go rest, my dear guest.”
Corban hesitated. “Chad?”
The vampire had been looking at me like I was something that delighted him ... maybe he needed some breakfast. Corban’s interruption caused a flash of irritation to sweep briefly across his face. “Have you not completed the mission I gave you? What harm could the boy come to if that is true? Now go rest.”
I let all thoughts of Corban drift from me. His fate, his son’s fate ... Amber’s fate were beyond my control right now. I could afford only to concentrate on the here and now.
It was a trick Bran had taught to us all on our first hunt. Not to worry about what had been or what would be, just the now. Not what a human might feel knowing she’d killed a rabbit that had never done her any harm. That she’d killed it with teeth and claws, and eaten it raw with relish ... including parts her human side would rather have not known were inside a soft and fuzzy bunny.