Frost Burned mt-7

by Patricia Briggs

  The fae laughed as my weight caused him to stumble. He said something in Welsh that in less dire circumstances I might have been able to translate or at least guess at. He aimed the sharp end of his sword toward me as he caught his balance.

  “Let go,” yelled Tad—and the steel desk hit the fae with a boom that would have done credit to a cannon. Papers, bills, bits and pieces of computer parts, and office detritus flew out the previously made hole in the wall, along with the fae and me. Landing jolted me enough that I lost hold of his calf, only then realizing that Tad’s “let go” had been aimed at me.

  The desk landed right next to my head before rolling onto the fae, leaving me half-stunned on the grass.

  The fae shrieked, a pain-filled, rage-filled sound that hit my ears like a blow. If I’d heard it from a mile away, I’d have known it didn’t come from a human throat. I smelled burning flesh, and he lifted the desk off and tossed it into the road, where it bounced once and cartwheeled into a battered truck.

  He started to reach past me for his sword, which lay a dozen feet from us where it had fallen, but someone else got there first. The fae hesitated for a bare moment, his eyes on the sword, but the sound of sirens up close and personal—or maybe it was the face of the man holding his sword—made him turn on his heels and run. Tad called insults from the open hole in the wall of Sylvia’s bedroom.

  The man who stood over me tossed the fae sword aside and dropped down to sit beside me. Gentle hands moved over me, but I couldn’t focus, couldn’t breathe—hoped so hard that it took longer to regain my ability to pump air into my lungs. As soon as I did, I shifted back to human and squirmed into his lap.

  “Adam,” I said, clutching him like a ninny while something tight in the middle of my chest softened. Tears slid down my cheeks. It would have been humiliating if he hadn’t been clutching me back just as hard.

  I wiped my eyes and pulled away to look at him. He was a little the worse for wear, his beard at the scratchy stage, and his eyes were … It had been bad. However he’d escaped, it had cost him.

  He kissed me, and it was a hard, possessive kiss. He pulled back, and said, “So I went hunting you and got here just in time to see you flying out of a hole in the third story of an apartment attached to a man’s leg.”

  There were burns on his lips, and I reached up to touch them.

  “Silver,” I said. It was important, because I didn’t want to hurt Adam, but I lost track of what I was saying.

  “Hey, you two lovebirds,” said Tad dryly. “I couldn’t help but notice that Mercy is buck naked and we have police arriving. So I fetched her clothes.”

  Adam looked up and smiled at Tad, but he spoke to me. “Better get dressed, Mercy. Tad’s right.”

  I bounced out of his lap and grabbed the clothes from Tad and pulled them on with more speed than grace. Everything hurt and—I looked at Adam, who was rising to his feet—nothing hurt at all.

  Tad strode over to the blade on the grass and looked at it assessingly. “Come here, then,” he told it, and held his hand up. The sword flew into his grip, then … disappeared. He closed his hand over a small bit of metal and shoved it into his pocket.

  “That will make it a little hard to explain the bat it cut into two, but it’s too dangerous to allow it to get put into police custody,” he told me. “Dangerous for the police.”

  My head felt fuzzy, but then I’d just been tossed out of a third-story window and discovered Adam was safe. And here. And that meant I didn’t have to be in charge anymore.

  With Adam here, I had no worries left at all. None. Something happened, some magic that smelled like fae had just been waiting for that moment, but I was too happy to worry about that, either.

  I tied the drawstring at my waist, and asked Tad, “Your father made that sword, didn’t he? Out of something that isn’t iron or steel so that the fae could use it.”

  Tad nodded, looking at me closely. “I think there were five of these swords, each a little bit different from the other. Dad has one. All of them are bad news. If someone’s not using them to slaughter a crowd of people, then some damned Gray Lord is blathering about how such a fae treasure needs to be protected. The Gray Lords are amassing fae artifacts like dragons amassing gold. And if this is too dangerous for the police, it’s way too dangerous to be putting it into the hands of the Gray Lords. I’ll give this one to my dad, and he can worry about dealing with it.” He looked at me carefully and tilted his head. “Touch your nose, Mercy.”

  I put my hand on my nose, but it felt like my nose. If there was some smudge or something, I couldn’t tell.

  He looked at Adam and started to say something, but a police car stopped next to the desk in the road, lights flashing but siren thankfully silent. As if it was the signal everyone was waiting for, people started boiling out of their apartments. Two more police cars followed, and the middle one disgorged Sylvia. Tony got out of the driver’s seat and followed her.

  “Gabriel and the kids are okay,” I yelled over the sounds of people talking and exclaiming over the damaged building. “I sent them to Kyle’s.”

  Sylvia stopped and closed her eyes, crossed herself sincerely if briefly. She strode over to us, Tony in her wake. She looked up at the hole in the wall of her apartment.

  “Tad stopped them,” I told her. “And Gabriel made sure all the kids got out safely.”

  “Who did this?” asked Tony carefully; he was looking at the hole in the wall, too.

  Tad made a noise, and Adam moved behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I leaned my chin on his forearms, content in his hold. “They were professionals. Mercenaries.” There had been no fire in the woman who attacked me. No anger. No sorrow. This had been a job and nothing more.

  “I know who this one was,” said Tad unexpectedly. “Not that it’ll help us any. Hey, Tony. Long time no see.”

  “Good to see you, chico,” Tony told him. “What happened?”

  “Mercy stowed Jesse and Gabriel—you know Gabriel, right?”

  Tony looked at Sylvia and nodded. “I introduced Gabriel to Mercy in the first place.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t forgotten that,” said Sylvia, and he winced a little, looked at me, and winced again.

  Sylvia gave me a look that would have sent vampires running for cover—she was rather pointedly ignoring Adam. “You are sure that the children are safe?”

  “I sent them to Kyle’s house,” I told her. But she didn’t know Kyle. “He’s the boyfriend of one of the wolves, a lawyer. He’s got security people guarding his house, so the kids will be safe there. I’m sorry, Sylvia. If I had thought that they would know to look here, I never would have brought Jesse.”

  “You also sent this one.” She tipped her head toward Tad. “Though he looked like a boy no older than Gabriel.”

  “I’m tough,” Tad said soulfully, looking more puppylike and not very tough at all.

  I couldn’t tell what Sylvia was thinking, but she bent down and started collecting the paper that littered the ground.

  “Right,” said Tad breezily, to Tony. “So Mercy left Jesse and Gabriel with Sylvia, thinking they would be safe here from whoever was trying to grab them. But she was worried about them, and asked me to keep an eye out.”

  I saw comprehension dawn on Tony’s face. “You’re Zee’s son,” he said. “I keep forgetting that makes you half-fae.” It was easy to forget. Tad looked human, just like the purebloods do most of the time. I never have known whether Tad’s appearance is a glamour like the one his father wears or if he really does just look human. Half fae, I am told, can go either way—and some of the half fae who don’t look human also don’t have enough magic to hide what they are. A lot of those don’t make it to adulthood. The fae are a very, very practical race as a whole.

  Tad nodded at Tony. “Mercy knew I have enough oomph to cause a big ruckus if someone came calling. And someone did.” He looked up at the apartment ruefully. “If we can’t catch the bastards who did this, I
suppose I’ll have to pay to get it fixed.”

  “Not your debt,” said Adam. His voice was different, darker and harsher than usual, but he was so warm against my back. “We will take care of the expense of fixing your apartment, Sylvia.”

  I waited for her to explode, and I couldn’t blame her. No one looking at the wall that lay mostly on the postage-stamp lawn next to the apartment would think that her children had been safe.

  “It was my fault,” I told her. “These guys knew the identities of all the pack members, even the ones they shouldn’t have. I assumed that they would also know that you and Gabriel hadn’t been talking. But I think they just hunted down Gabriel’s nearest relative.”

  Sylvia stood up, tapped the handful of bills she’d gathered on her leg, and looked at the hole in her apartment. Then she looked at me. “No,” she said slowly. “It isn’t your fault. It is the fault of the people who came into my home intending to harm innocents.”

  “You are right,” Adam told her, but then added with Alpha firmness, “But the pack will still pay for the damages. They were hunting my daughter.”

  She frowned at him but couldn’t look at his face for too long. “All right,” she said, her voice a little softer than it had been.

  She looked at Tad. “You are a good young man—and, it seems, just as tough as you told me you were. Thank you for the care you took of my children.”

  “Hey, Sylvia,” a young man wearing a WSU shirt called out. “You need some help? Me and Tom can get your desk back up to your apartment and maybe some of these looky-loos can pick up the mess.” He tugged the braid of a cute girl a few years his junior, who was standing next to him.

  “Stop it,” she said, batting his hand away. “Yeah, sure, Ms. Sandoval. We can do cleanup.”

  An anxious middle-aged woman with a clipboard ran out to join the festivities.

  “I’m Sally Osterberg,” she said to one of the officers who was taking down notes. “I’m the apartment manager. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “We’re just getting to that, Sally,” said Sylvia, still unnaturally calm—maybe it was that she had all that training for working dispatch, or maybe it was just being a single parent to a herd of kids whose ages spanned the school system.

  “Do you prefer to do the repairs yourself and submit a bill, or would you rather we hire contractors to fix it?” asked Adam.

  Sally turned to him and paused before her face lit up. “Adam Hauptman? You are Adam Hauptman? Oh my goodness. I thought … I saw in the news that you had been kidnapped by some kind of paramilitary group? Did you have to fight your way out? Are they—” She stopped, and not because she’d run out of words.

  I tipped my head so that I could see Adam’s smile as he told her, “I am. I did—and this seems to be connected to whoever has it in for my pack and me.”

  “This is so exciting,” she said. “Wait until I tell my sister we had a werewolf crash through a wall—and not just any werewolf, either.” She caught herself and blushed bright red. “I sound like a dork.”

  “No,” Adam said, not bothering to correct her misapprehension about who had done most of the destruction. “You don’t. You sound like anyone would when caught up in Twilight Zone events. Can you get someone to board that hole up so Ms. Sandoval’s possessions don’t suffer from the weather?”

  “Oh yes,” she promised, “right away.”

  “Thank you.”

  He gave her another smile, which she returned until her eyes met mine. She cleared her throat. “I’ll just go do that.”

  Tony looked at her trotting off, then looked at Adam. “Next time we have a domestic disturbance, I am taking you with me.”

  Adam smiled, and I could see how tired he was. “That only works sometimes—on violent men I often have the opposite effect. Unless you want bodies on the ground, you’ll want to leave me home.”

  “So,” said an officer standing beside Tony, “is there someone here who wants to tell us what happened? Without bodies or injured, we’re not in emergency status, but the lieutenant does like us to get enough for an accurate report.”

  I opened my mouth, but Tad gave me another of those sharp looks he’d been sending me. He turned to face the policeman who’d asked, and at the same time put his body between me and the officer as his best “aw shucks” smile lit his face. “I’d spent most of the last day sitting on that fence.” He nodded toward the eight-foot concrete block fence that encircled the apartment complex. Then he saw the cop’s face. “I know, right? You’re wondering why I pulled guard duty when I look like the before picture on a gym advertisement. My dad is fae, though, and I’m stronger than I look. Anyway, Jesse was making—”

  “Jesse?”

  “Adam’s daughter, the one we were trying to keep safe from the bad guys,” said Tad, moving behind the officer so he could see his notes. “She spells it J-E?S-S?E. And I’m Tad—like ‘tadpole’—short for Thaddeus, but don’t go there, and my last name is Adelbertsmiter.” He spelled that for him, too. Twice.

  The officer turned to force Tad to give him some space, but Tad just followed him around.

  “Thank you,” the officer said firmly. “What happened to the wall?” He looked at me, but Tad answered that, too.

  “I was eating Jesse’s brownies when someone rang the doorbell. I sent Jesse, Gabriel, and the kids into one of the bedrooms and went to answer the door.”

  “So you let him in?”

  “Do I look like I’m five?” asked Tad indignantly. “No. I asked who it was and he said he was UPS and had a package for us. I told him to leave it on the porch ’cause I was naked, just out of the shower.”

  “I thought you were eating brownies,” said the officer, who seemed to have resigned himself to having Tad hanging over his shoulder.

  “I was.” Tad shook his head. “I lied to the guy. I was there to keep the kids safe, no way was I opening the door to some stranger. There are things out there who can take it for an invitation—and you don’t invite evil into your home.”

  “No,” said the officer faintly, “I can see that you wouldn’t.”

  Tony rubbed his mouth to hide a smile. Tony had seen Tad in full-blown Look-At-Me mode before. It wasn’t that Tad was lying to the police officer, but, like a good stage magician, he’d keep the police looking where he wanted them to look. I didn’t know what Tad was trying to cover up, but with Adam here and safe, I didn’t really care.

  “I thought you fae couldn’t lie?” said one of the kids who was supposed to be cleaning Sylvia’s stuff off the ground.

  Tad nodded at him. “Yeah, that’s only the true fae and some of the halfies. All that kind of stuff doesn’t apply to me. ’Cause I lie and”—he spread his arms to invite everyone to admire—“I’m still here.”

  Behind me, Adam laughed quietly.

  “Anyway,” continued Tad, now talking to the crowd instead of the police, “the supposed UPS guy, he said he needed a signature. I told him to leave a form and we’d pick the package up at the UPS office—and that’s when he unlocked the door with some kind of picklock or magic, I wasn’t paying attention because he tried to hit me with a stun gun. When that didn’t work, he drew a freaking sword and tried to take off my head.”

  “A sword?” said the officer, who was starting to look as though he was having trouble keeping up.

  Tad nodded. “I know, right? Weirded me out, too. I guess he was pretty old, ’cause he knew what he was doing with that thing. I took two years of aikido at school, and he made a monkey out of me.” I wondered if anyone would notice that although Tad was pretty banged up, there were no sword cuts. “I drew him back farther into the apartment to give the kids a chance to escape. Sometime in there, he tossed me through the wall.”

  All the people who were cleaning up the mess near him and the policemen and policewoman who were listening to his story looked at Tad—because he didn’t look like he’d been tossed through a wall. Tad wasn’t good-looking, his ears were too big and they stuck
out and his nose was flattened as if he’d gone three rounds with George Foreman, but when he wanted people to watch him, they did. It wasn’t magic; it was force of personality.

  “Half fae,” he told them again. “Sometimes it helps.” He looked up at the hole, too, and shook his head and winced. “Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. I ran back up and kept him occupied while the kids escaped. I tossed the desk at him, knocked him out the same hole he’d knocked me through, and by then you guys were pretty close. He picked himself up and ran.”

  Apparently we weren’t going to talk about Asil. I glanced around, but didn’t see Bran’s wolf anywhere. Maybe Asil was responsible for Tad’s look-at-me-not-at-what-I’m-hiding performance.

  “Adam, what can you tell me about your kidnapping?” Tony wasn’t as caught up in Tad’s performance as the other cops were.

  Adam gave him a tired smile. “I’m going to get some rest. I’ll have my lawyer get in touch with you, and I’ll give a full statement tomorrow. Okay?”

  Tony gave him a reluctant nod. “Fine. Get in touch before ten tomorrow or I’ll give you a call. Mercy, your turn.”

  I thought about the body in the back of Marsilia’s car and tried to decide where to start.

  “She didn’t see much,” Tad said, and this time I could feel his magic push past me, focusing Tony’s attention on him. “How about she takes Adam home, and they both talk to you tomorrow. I know who this guy was because he’s a spriggand—that’s a kind of fae and fairly rare, thankfully, because they are nasty, bitter mischief-makers one and all. This one is a pureblood, and that makes him a renegade because he’s not holed up in the reservations with the rest of the fae. There’s only one renegade spriggand. He goes by the name of Sliver and usually hangs out with a half-fae woman called Spice. They hire out as muscle or assassins. I didn’t see any woman, but she might have been keeping watch.”

  Spice must be the dead woman in the trunk of Marsilia’s car. It would have been a good time for me to tell the police about her—her death was self-defense. If I told them right now, it would look better than if they found out about it later. But I was content just resting against Adam and couldn’t find the impetus to say anything.