Frost Burned mt-7

by Patricia Briggs

  Ariana’s lips turned up. “I’ve heard worse.” She pulled up Ben’s pant leg. The bandages we’d put on were bloody already. “Was this a silver bullet?”

  “It’s not healing like it should if silver wasn’t involved somehow,” I told her. “They definitely shot him with a tranquilizer dart that contained a mixture that included silver. Same stuff was used to kill a friend of mine a few years back. That’s why we wanted Samuel to take a look.”

  Ariana stepped back and half closed her eyes, holding her hands about six inches over Ben. “I have an affinity for silver,” she said. “I can sense it but not call it to me.”

  Ariana is Welsh for silver. Ironic in a woman mated to a werewolf.

  “There’s some silver in him,” she said after a moment. “But none near his wound, so it must be the dart they hit him with. If it was a silver bullet, it didn’t leave anything behind. He’ll have to wait until the silver works its way out—but I can at least treat the wound.”

  I kept my hand on Ben’s while Ariana stripped his bandages off and coated the wounds, front and back, with some herb-and-salve concoction she kept in an old pottery jar. Ben lay on his side to allow her access. He kept his eyes closed, but every muscle in his body was tense. Ariana was the next best thing to a stranger, and he was wounded. Every once in a while he would growl quietly, and Ariana would jump like a rabbit—which made Ben tense even more.

  By the time she was done, both of them were shivering like a pair of thoroughbreds before the Kentucky Derby.

  “That’s as much as I can do for him,” she said, stepping away with a sigh of relief. She headed for the kitchen sink, regaining her self-possession with every step she took away from Ben. She washed her hands with soap and dried them on a white cloth.

  When she spoke again, her voice was brisk and confident. “I don’t have Samuel’s expertise, but barring the threat of infection, which isn’t an issue for werewolves, his leg should be fine.”

  If there wasn’t too much silver, I thought. I couldn’t tell if Ben was following the conversation or not. His eyes weren’t totally shut, but now that I was the only one touching him, his body was unnaturally relaxed.

  “In any case, there’s nothing more we can do for him without Adam”—his Alpha, who could pour pack strength into him—“or Samuel,” I said. I could borrow some abilities from Adam, but I hadn’t been able to manipulate the pack bonds enough to effect healing yet.

  “Let me try to call Samuel,” Ariana offered, picking up the phone on the end table next to the couch. She stiffened, the phone to her ear, then dialed. “Phin. I am so sorry to wake you, but I had a dream—”

  Phin was Phineas Brewster, her mostly human descendant who sold used and collectible books. Why she had decided to call him instead of Samuel was the same reason she had stiffened. I wondered what she had heard or felt that had changed her mind.

  “Ari?” a sleepy voice on the other end of the phone said—I try not to eavesdrop when I can avoid it, but, like the wolves, my ears are sharp. “No,” he continued foggily. Then he cleared his throat and sounded much more awake. “I mean, not a problem. Are you all right? Do you want me to come over?”

  “No,” she said, sounding relieved. “It was really just a dream. But it left me worried about you.” The fae couldn’t lie. So she had dreamed and woke up worried about Phin—but it could have been tonight or ten years ago.

  “I’m fine.” His voice was easy, as if he was used to having her call him in the middle of the night because she was worried.

  “Stay fine.” She hung up, frowning at the phone. “There was someone listening.”

  “The phone is bugged?” Gabriel frowned.

  She shrugged. “Someone was listening. I could feel their attention. Magic or technology, it doesn’t matter. If I didn’t call anyone, they’d have wondered why I picked up the phone.”

  “No phones,” I said, pulling out my cell phone. “I forgot. Jeez how dumb can I be?” Bran had sent a message that they were using the phones to trace the pack, Ben had told me that, and we carried our phones with us here. I patted Ben’s shoulder. “Cell phone, Ben?”

  “Crushed it on the way to you,” he said, slurring the consonants. “Bran said ditch the phones.”

  “Jesse? Gabriel? Do you have your cell phones?”

  Jesse handed me hers, but Gabriel shook his head. “Mine’s next to my bed, where it won’t do us any harm.”

  I borrowed a hammer and the garage and disposed of both phones. I was pretty sure that I could have just pulled the batteries, but pretty sure wasn’t good enough, so I used a hammer.

  “Who is it?” Jesse asked me when I got back in the middle of a discussion of what happened at the house. “Is it the government? The fae?” She crossed her arms and hugged herself. “The vampires?”

  “Samuel told me that his father has been waiting for the government to quit screwing around with the fae and turn its attention to the werewolves,” Ariana said. “The Marrok is also in the middle of delicate negotiations with the fae—negotiations that are making the vampires extremely nervous because they fear what they will face if the fae and werewolves come to an agreement.”

  “The men who took the pack claimed to be government,” I said. “But Adam seemed to think they were lying. But they were human—which makes me think government anyway.”

  “Are we safe here?” asked Gabriel. “Or do we need to find a better hiding place?”

  “They could have traced our phones here,” I told him. “We need to keep moving. I was hoping to take a minute and see if I can contact Adam and figure out what’s going on.”

  “You can stay here to do that,” Ariana said. “I can’t make the apartment disappear into a hedge of blackberries, but I can make it difficult to find for a few hours.”

  “Mercy?” Jesse asked. “How much can you tell?”

  “He’s alive,” I said. I decided to trust Ariana to know her own strengths. If she could keep us hidden until I talked to Adam, it would really help. “I need to find somewhere quiet to clear my head and see if I can pick up anything more.” I wasn’t going to taint Jesse with the mishmash of dark and violent emotions I’d been picking up from him off and on all night. It was the off and on that really worried me.

  “Take a hot shower,” suggested Ariana. “Meditation is easier when you’re clean. I’ll bring you something to wear—and keep your flock safe.”

  Ben growled, and she flinched.

  I tried just sitting down on the floor of the spare bedroom—but I could smell Ben’s blood. My scalp itched. My right pant leg smelled of antifreeze from my poor deceased Rabbit. My shoulder ached where the seat belt had caught me, and my cheekbone throbbed. So I followed Ariana’s advice and showered.

  I heard the bathroom door open while I was shampooing the blood out of my hair—how had it gotten in my hair?—and there were clean clothes folded neatly on the toilet seat when I got out.

  I pulled the sweats up to my nose and shook my head. If someone had come to my house, even someone I liked, I’d have been damned before I gave them Adam’s clothes to wear—especially if it was someone he used to live with.

  I could have blessed Ariana’s generosity, though, because when I sat on the floor of their spare bedroom wearing Samuel’s oversized shirt and sweatpants, I felt safe and at home. That helped while I struggled to find my way through the strong but tangled weave that was my bond to Adam, but it still didn’t seem to be enough.

  Frustrated with my failure, I got up. Exhaustion, fury, and nagging pain that seemed generalized to my whole body rather than any one bruise fought with despair.

  Despair won and left me muzzy and sick. I’d been so sure that I could contact Adam given just a little space and quiet. It should have been easy because his emotions were buzzing around me so strongly that it had been a strain to keep track of which were my feelings and which were his.

  Only when I stood up did it become apparent that instead of plush carpet under my bare feet,
there was hard-packed dirt beneath the boots I hadn’t been wearing. They were a scuffed black, and the leather gave around my feet with the softness of long wearing. They weren’t my boots, but I knew them.

  What was I doing wearing Adam’s boots? My bleary thoughts tried to figure out the logic while I became vaguely aware of my surroundings. The air smelled dry and still. It smelled like pack, my pack who were all sick and hurting. As soon as I let my awareness seek them, their pain, their sickness drifted over me.

  “Mr. Hauptman,” a stranger’s voice said, shocking me out of my contemplation of Adam’s boots on my feet.

  I blinked and saw a man in dark clothes bare of any official insignia, though they had that sharpness that marked a military uniform. I narrowed my eyes and studied him more closely because something about the picture didn’t match: his body was soft. Not the softness of a soldier who had retired from action and moved to deskwork. This man was soft in both mind and body—he’d never served in battle.

  Paper-pusher. Gives orders for other men to die while sitting safe in home base. “We were told you’d probably be down for another hour or more. I do apologize about the restraints—rather medieval, don’t you agree? But we didn’t think you’d be feeling particularly happy with us when you woke up, and killing you after all the trouble that we’ve gone through to capture you would be unproductive. You may call me Mr. Jones.”

  He looked at us as he spoke. And I became aware that part of the heaviness that kept me from moving much was some sort of binding on my ankles and wrists. I couldn’t really see them, something was off with my eyesight, but I could feel them, just as I could feel the bite of the silver—worse than the time I’d rushed between two trees and burst through a hornet’s nest. Everything hurt.

  The “Mr. Jones” made Adam think seriously about rolling his eyes like Jesse, but it would require too much energy. Jones? Did this man not know that Adam could hear every lie out of his lips? At least it hadn’t been “Smith.”

  Adam also thought about shedding the restraints and killing the man behind the desk—but so far no one had been irreparably injured. The burn of the silver fought with the dampening effect of the tranquilizer and left his temper raw and vicious. But he had people to protect. So he held his temper and sarcastic comments and continued the parley that Mr. Jones had begun.

  “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get us here.” Adam’s voice slurred a little, and he pulled energy from the pack bonds, aware that he was taking from them what they didn’t have to give. But he needed to be strong and smart and able to fight for them. To do that, he could afford to show no weakness before the enemy. “What do you want?”

  The power cleared his head a little—and cleared mine, too. Between my desperation and whatever they’d hit him with, I had merged myself too deeply inside him.

  Experimentation had taught me that visualization worked better than almost anything for getting out of trouble when immersed in the oddity that is werewolf magic. I visualized myself stepping out of Adam’s body. It tickled and made me a little nauseated.

  Mercy?

  Yes, I told him, and received a flood of questions that slid past me wordlessly, too fast for me to grab. He might be thinking more clearly, but he was nowhere near his usual alertness. I tried to send him power through our bond and felt him snatch it and pull. I staggered and grabbed his shoulders to steady myself. He felt solid under my fingers, but I couldn’t see my own hands.

  “Mr. Hauptman?”

  Adam ignored him as he sent another burst of need toward me. This one was much more visceral than a simple need for strength. I couldn’t tell what he wanted, but I could make a pretty good guess.

  Ben found Gabriel, and they both found Jesse and me. We’re all safe at Samuel’s. Ben is hurt, but not seriously. I didn’t tell him that Samuel was gone.

  Adam straightened and took a deep breath. The pain was shivery and concentrated in his joints, making it difficult to move. He opened and closed his hands to make sure they worked. His vulnerability made it difficult to control his rage at the people who had done this to him.

  I was picking up everything he felt.

  I left my hand on his shoulder as I took another step back, hoping that it would give me more distance, so I could think. And then I tucked the other hand in the back of his waistband like a child in the dark—I was afraid that if I didn’t anchor myself to him in some way, I’d go back to Samuel’s house with no information at all.

  It was better, though I could still only see what he saw, and his vision was oddly limited.

  The silver, his wolf said. Too many things not working right. My eyes see, but Adam doesn’t perceive.

  I patted him on the shoulder, not knowing if he could tell what I was doing or not. Words were useless. Adam had to control the wolf, and I wasn’t really there to help.

  You always help, the wolf disagreed. He tugged on our bond and took just a little more strength from me. Always, Adam agreed, as his wolf settled around him again.

  “Mr. Hauptman, am I boring you?”

  Adam moved his full attention to our enemy, and Mr. Jones flinched. That flinch satisfied me and made me hungry at the same time—I liked his fear. I liked it very much.

  “No, Mr. Smith,” said Adam softly. “I find you very interesting at the moment.”

  “Jones,” snapped the man behind the desk. The lie of his name smelled tainted. His angry reaction told Adam that he was weak-minded, easy prey. No less dangerous—in some ways more dangerous because he’d react with his emotions—but under real pressure, he’d break.

  Someone moved to Adam’s right and into his field of view. From my perspective, it was almost violently sudden. Like Jones, he wore black. His clothes weren’t just a uniform, though; with Adam’s perceptions I knew that he wore armor. He moved better, too. Someone had trained him for hand-to-hand combat.

  I had the sense that there were other people in the room, more of the enemy, but for some reason this one held Adam’s attention. He and Jones were the only ones I could see.

  Soldier, Adam told me. He showed me the bulge of a second weapon inside the cuff of the man’s pants—knife or gun, and another on the outside of the opposite leg.

  Adam watched the body language between the soldier and Mr. Jones. Jones was nominally in charge, but the men (the ones I couldn’t see but Adam was aware of) followed the second man—including Jones. Adam had seen it in the army, when the commanding officer was green and leaning a little too heavily upon the skills of the men of lower rank. The soldier demanded respect, while Jones smelled and acted like prey trying, unsuccessfully, to be a predator.

  Whatever this kidnapping was, Adam was on his feet, and the pack was okay. Not good, but alive and breathing. I was aware, because Adam was, that our pack were lying in heaps behind us. All of them chained hand and foot as he was, sick from the silver and the tranquilizer but otherwise okay. Adam thought that meant that this wasn’t an extermination order. They wanted something and thought that Adam and his pack could provide it. For the moment, they were safe.

  “Well?” said Jones impatiently.

  Adam held his silence. They weren’t friends, and Adam wasn’t going to start a conversation about the weather. They had done their best to leave Adam powerless. He wasn’t going to expose himself further. They would—eventually—tell him what this was about; and then he would have some leverage to move them. Until then, silence was his best defense.

  The politician who was not named Jones, whatever he said, leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I was told you might be difficult. We have a proposition for you, Mr. Hauptman. Our information indicated that this was the best way to ensure your cooperation.”

  Adam raised an eyebrow, and the soldier smiled where Not-Jones couldn’t see him. As soon as he noticed Adam watching, the smile disappeared—but they both knew Adam had seen.

  “We need you to kill someone,” the politician said. “We both know you’ve killed for the government before, Ser
geant.” Adam had been an army ranger in the Vietnam War. Not many people outside the pack knew about it. “Don’t worry. It’s no one you’ll feel bad about. US Senator Campbell, Republican from Minnesota.” He smiled again. “I see you know who I’m talking about.”

  So did I. Campbell had been in office over twenty years and was one of the loudest anti-fae, anti-werewolf voices in Congress. Ever since a few werewolves killed—and mostly ate—a man in Minnesota, he had been arguing for giving law enforcement the power to kill rogue werewolves or fae with only a judge’s warrant. He had a lot of bipartisan support because people were scared. He was a man with a plan, a centrist who didn’t fall neatly into either the conservative or liberal camps, and so could be cheered on by both sides.

  “You aren’t the government,” said Adam.

  “I assure you, Mr. Hauptman, I work for the US government. You saw my ID.”

  I wrinkled my nose. He was lying with the truth—I recognized the smugness of his scent. Adam considered my conclusion.

  “It will be an easy kill,” Jones told Adam. “In and out, then you and yours will be free to leave.”

  “I have not killed for the government in a long time,” Adam told him. He should have stopped there, but I could feel when the quivery I-am-prey feeling emanating from Jones and the burn of the silver that was sharpening his temper drove him further. He gave Jones a feral smile, leaned forward, and said, “Now I only kill people who deserve it, Mr. Smith.”

  Mr. Jones jerked back, and the smell of his fear made my nose wrinkle. Then he raised a Glock he’d hidden behind the desk.

  Adam, slowed by silver and forgotten shackles, stumbled to his knees when he tried to move to respond. A shot rang out and the smell of gunpowder, blood, and death filled the air an instant before the earthquake in the pack bonds tried to throw me back to my own body.

  I clung to Adam as tears and helpless anger wracked me, his and mine, while Honey’s agonized cry rang in my ears. I didn’t need to see it with my eyes because the pack bond and Adam told me who it was, told me it was fatal. By accident or design, Jones had killed Peter, with a clean bullet between his eyes, killed the heart of the pack, our sole submissive wolf, Honey’s mate.