Frost Burned mt-7

by Patricia Briggs

  Zee stepped through the mirror. Tad looked up and started gathering his cards together, though his game wasn’t half-finished yet. Asil’s eyes slitted, and he rolled to the balls of his feet, ready for whatever would come. Mercy turned her head, and said, “Hey, Zee. Long time no see.”

  The Zee that stepped through the mirror wasn’t the one Adam was used to. Gone was the glamour that he’d presented to the world. He was no slender, balding old man—his sharp-featured face was both unaged and ancient, with skin the color of fumed oak. His body showed the musculature of a man who spent his days before a hot fire bending metal to his will—wide shoulders and taut flesh that knew hard work.

  “Mercedes,” he said. “What have you done to your lips?”

  Mercy touched her lips but didn’t say anything. Adam found that a hopeful sign.

  White-gold hair slicked down over Zee’s shoulders like a waterfall of pale wheat. He wore, incongruously, a pair of black jeans and a gray flannel shirt with a motor-oil stain on one cuff. On his feet were his old battered, steel-toed boots.

  Asil’s lips curled back, and he snarled softly.

  “Peace, wolfling,” said Zee in his usual impatient and crabby fashion. “It’s been a long time since I hunted your kind. And, as I recall, you got away cleanly anyway. You have no axe to grind.”

  The old fae frowned at Tad, who had set the deck of cards on the poker caddy and gotten to his feet.

  “What’s wrong, Tad, that you’ve called me here?”

  “What isn’t is a better question,” said Tad. “I’m really glad to see you. I don’t know exactly where to start.”

  “If it helps,” Zee said, “I’m caught up to where someone has apparently taken most of the wolf pack captive. Last I heard, Mercy set you to guard Jesse and Gabriel while she went off to see how Kyle fared. I see that you managed to recover at least one of the wolves, Mercy.”

  “Adam recovered himself,” Mercy told him. “The lips are from the silver.”

  Zee frowned at her and took a couple of steps nearer. Adam stood up and pulled Mercy to her feet beside him, unwilling to let this stranger with Zee’s eyes and voice approach him when he was in a vulnerable position.

  “Silver?”

  Mercy explained how Coyote told her to change the rules and so she’d drunk the silver out of Adam’s body. Adam intended on having a word or two with Coyote the next time he saw him—not that it would do any good. Mercy backtracked and began again with Stefan’s helping her free Kyle and ran all the way through to escorting Asil to Sylvia’s house.

  “So I sent Jesse and Gabriel to take the kids to Kyle’s house,” Mercy said.

  “In Marsilia’s car, which now has a dent and a dead body in the back,” said Zee.

  “It sounds worse than it is,” she assured him.

  “No,” Adam disagreed. “It is exactly as bad as it sounds.”

  “You know these assassins?” Zee asked Tad.

  “It was Sliver and Spice.” Tad leaned against the bookcase nearest him and caught the hunting knife before it fell on the ground. He frowned at it and set it back in the corner it had started in. “You stay there,” he told it.

  Zee smiled, and his face suddenly looked a lot more like the Zee Adam knew. “I wish you better luck than I have with that.” He nodded toward the knife. “It doesn’t like to stay in one place when interesting things are going on. How do you know it was Sliver and Spice? They are both skilled at hiding who and what they are.”

  “Here,” said Tad, taking out the small bit of metal that the fae man’s sword had turned into. “This is yours. Sliver was using it on Asil—who fought him off with a baseball bat from Walmart. And Sliver had to drop the glamour to keep up with him.” There was a bit of hero worship coming off Tad.

  “The Moor doesn’t need a pesky magic blade to triumph over evil,” Mercy murmured, and Adam gave her a sharp look.

  Zee took the object from Tad, and in his hands, it formed once more into a blade. This time, though, it was black as pitch but only two feet long.

  “Of course he did,” Zee said, sounding a little put out that Asil had triumphed over one of his blades. But his face smoothed out, and he said, “He outsmarted me for three weeks in high winter in the Alps. It stands to reason that a spriggand would have no chance at all, even with such a blade as this.”

  “Sliver got away,” Tad said. “But not before Adam showed up out of the blue and stole that sword from him.”

  “You didn’t bring me here to tell me this,” Zee said. He didn’t look at Mercy, but Adam could feel his attention.

  “Right,” Tad said. “Mercy, touch your toes, then turn around three times.”

  Adam understood why Tad had to do it, but he couldn’t help the unhappy sound he made. “You need to quit giving her orders,” he warned Tad. He wasn’t angry, not at Tad, anyway. But her easy compliance made his wolf want to jump out of his skin. The last time she’d been caught in this kind of magic, she’d been raped, and he remembered it, both wolf and man.

  “Peace and Quiet, also known as the Fairy Queen’s Gift,” said Zee, in a contemplative voice that made Adam think that he wasn’t the only one who was bothered by Mercy’s obedience. “I had heard that it had surfaced again. Did Sliver and Spice get away with it?”

  Adam caught Mercy’s shoulders and stopped her before she finished the second turn. “You don’t have to listen to him anymore, Mercy. Stop.”

  “No,” Asil said. “The cuffs are in the trunk with the dead woman—who it is probably safe to assume is Spice.” He grimaced. “Did she pick the name from the singing group?”

  Tad smiled. “Not unless they were around a couple of centuries ago.”

  “Sliver is alone?” Zee sounded for a moment like a hunting wolf. “Interesting.” Then he looked at Mercy again, and some of the inhumanity slid away from him.

  “Stealing someone’s willpower was always a rare and difficult fae gift,” Zee said. “It’s a spell easier to work on someone who is asleep or happy.”

  Mercy shivered, as if she were suddenly cold, again. “I don’t like being obedient.” Adam hugged her and wished he could go back and kill the man who’d done this to her last time before he’d hurt her. Wished, at the very least, he could protect her from her memories because if this was making him remember, it had to be doing the same to her. Rage choked him—and Mercy patted his arm in reassurance.

  Zee caught his eye and nodded grimly, and Adam knew he wasn’t the only one unhappy that such a spell had caught Mercy again. “Peace and Quiet was made as a gift for a fairy queen who collected the wrong fae’s son into her court.”

  They’d run into a fairy queen before. They weren’t fae royalty precisely but had a gift that allowed them to enslave humans and fae alike. Almost like a honeybee queen, they set up courts designed to both feed their power and entertain them. Not Adam’s favorite kind of fae.

  “She didn’t last long,” Zee continued, “because the cuffs only work for a short period of time on the fae, though it can be more permanent on humans.”

  Zee put his hand under Mercy’s chin and looked into her eyes. “The woman who gave the fairy queen the gift wanted her son back. Once the queen died, all the humans and fae went back to their old lives.”

  Without the glamour, his slate gray eyes were brighter and odder-colored.

  “Beware of fairy gifts,” Mercy said.

  “And Greeks bearing gifts,” agreed Zee without a pause.

  “How do we break the spell?” Adam asked. “Killing the woman didn’t seem to work.”

  “Love’s true kiss,” Mercy said, though Adam had been asking Zee. “But I can’t kiss Adam because it hurts him. Too much silver.”

  A kiss?

  Adam looked at Zee who shrugged. “Actually, a kiss from someone who loves you is an effective remedy for a number of the effects of fae magic.”

  All right then. Adam lifted Mercy’s chin and kissed her. He’d kissed her at Sylvia’s apartment, too. But this time he
didn’t let the burn of the silver distract him.

  He pictured his Mercy in his mind. Mercy holding a plate of cookies in the hope that they would make her neighbor feel better after his wife left him. Mercy baring her teeth at him because he’d annoyed her by trying to make her stay safe. Mercy pulling the damned tires off the wreck in her backyard because she was mad at him. Mercy shooting Henry before the cowardly wolf could challenge Adam while he was hurt.

  And his lips first bled, then blistered against hers.

  He accepted the pain and put it behind him, letting his body feel only the softness and warmth of hers. He took in a breath through his nose and let her scent surround him. This, this was his Mercy, and he wanted her—mind, body, and soul, she was his. And he was hers. The kiss warmed up, and he pulled her tighter into his body and let the heat of their kiss spread through his body in hopes it would catch flame in her.

  She returned his kiss, her body softening—his partner in this as in so many things. She fit against him well—all muscle with just a hint of softness, smelling of burnt oil, harsh orange-scented soap, and Mercy.

  Then every muscle in her body tensed, and she started to struggle. He held her just a little longer, to relish her fight, which told him the spell had been broken. But Mercy knew how to break the grip of someone who was larger and stronger than she was. That he didn’t want to hurt her was of more use to her than his strength was to him. She twisted her wrists to break his hold and ducked out and away.

  “Damn it, damn it, Adam,” she raged at him, while Adam caught his breath. “You don’t let me hurt you like that. You haven’t eaten since God knows when because I can see your ribs. You’ve lost twenty pounds in two days. Too much shapeshifting, not enough food—and having to heal yourself every time you touch me just makes it worse. And then you let me hurt you, you stupid, stupid …” She was so mad, the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth.

  “Or you could try to force her to do something absolutely against her will,” said Zee casually. “That works more often on this kind of magic than love’s true kiss.”

  9

  Adam’s lips were blistered, and his face looked like he had a bad sunburn. I’d done that to him.

  “You don’t ever do that.” My voice, my whole body shook from the shock of the magic breaking, from my momentary inability to stop hurting Adam. “I just got you back.” The coyote inside me wanted to take a bite out of something, anything in a frenzy of … in a frenzy. “I can’t touch you without hurting you. Don’t let me hurt you.” The last sentence came out as a whine, and I realized I was babbling. I shut up.

  Instinctively, I backed away, so I was in no danger of touching anyone. I didn’t want to contaminate anyone with the remnants of that magic—filthy magic—on me. Didn’t want to hurt Adam again. Didn’t want to touch him with my filthy skin, I was dirty, dirty. That was wrong.

  I knew that was wrong. An echo of trauma that never quite left me, though its hold was not as vicious as it had been. I tried to collect myself and center on the real issue here. On Adam.

  A trace of blood trickled down Adam’s chin, but the red flush on his skin was disappearing as I watched. Silver burns. I touched my lips. It was from the silver and not some weird taint of the magic that had robbed me of my will, or a taint that lingered from that long-ago rape. I knew that, but it still felt like the two were entwined—the fae magic and the marks on my mate’s face.

  “That silver,” said Zee, “is something I can help you with, Mercy.”

  I looked at him, my heart still pounding—with anger at Adam, with the release of a magical spell I hadn’t really believed in until it left, and with a shadow of memory. I remembered listening to Tad tell us that I’d had my will stolen away, and I had been … uninterested. I’d felt that way before.

  “The silver,” Zee told me, his eyes sad as if he knew where my thoughts were dwelling. “Just the silver. The rest is over and done.”

  “Okay.” My throat was tight, and I didn’t want him to touch me. Didn’t want anyone to touch me ever again, but I knew that made no sense.

  “Mercy.”

  Adam waited until I looked over and met his eyes. “You broke the spell the minute something happened that you didn’t want. You were never really in its power. Not once you didn’t want to be.”

  His voice gave me an anchor, and I drew my unruly thoughts back in line. He’d be okay. His lips were healing a lot more slowly than usual, but as I’d yelled at him, he’d had a rough few days. He needed to eat something soon.

  “Mercy.”

  I nodded, so he’d know I’d heard him. I wasn’t ready to risk talking right away. Too many things were raw, and Adam and I weren’t alone.

  “Why didn’t the cuff act right away?” asked Asil. Maybe he’d done it to take everyone’s attention off me, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure. “The coyote that jumped in and attacked that fae, magic sword and all, was not without willpower.”

  “It was when Adam came back,” Tad said. “It isn’t easy to steal someone’s will. With Huon’s Cup … before …” He made an unhappy sound. Looked at Asil, who might or might not know about that incident. Before. When I’d been raped because I could not resist the magic of the cup I’d drunk.

  Tad cleared his throat. “The cup that worked on Mercy before used the act of drinking out of it to imply consent, and it was a more powerful artifact in the first place. Peace and Quiet is a two-part spell, each lesser. The first is spelled to make the wearer happy and relaxed. Sort of like the best marijuana ever. That leaves the prisoner vulnerable so that the second one can work to make the person wearing it compliant. The magic continues to work after the cuffs have been removed, so they could be used to subdue more than one prisoner.”

  I rubbed the wrist the cuff had been on. I hadn’t felt anything from it—though I’d been busy at the time. If she’d used the other cuff first, would I just have let her take me? Instead, the magic had snuck up behind me and taken me without giving me a fair chance to fight it. It had waited until the euphoria of having Adam back had left me defenseless, then stolen my will.

  “Will the magic come back if I relax again?” I asked, swallowing bile. I was safe. Adam was here, had been here the whole time. Nothing bad had happened—though I remembered the feel of the weeping ghost’s attempt to take control of my body. What would have happened if Zee hadn’t built wards into the doorway that I could cross and the ghost could not? The walls of the room confined me when the coyote inside me wanted to run until I focused my eyes on Adam again. In his steady regard, I read my safety—as ridiculous as my need for it was. If the ghost had gained control, he’d have dealt with it—as he’d dealt with the fae magic that had turned me into a helpless doll.

  “No,” said Zee firmly. “It isn’t so easy to work magic upon you, Liebchen. One chance was all it had. Probably you’d have recovered on your own after a few days. The Fairy Queen’s Gift is weak, a designed weakness that brought about the downfall of the fairy queen who depended upon it too much.”

  I nodded, and the tightness in my belly eased.

  Zee looked at Tad. “It also isn’t so easy to destroy an artifact, powerful or not. I would never advocate it because it would put me in trouble with the Gray Lords.” He looked at the black blade and smiled a little, handing it back to Tad. “Hier, mein Sohn. You take this for a while. You might find it useful. Be careful, though, it is a hungry sword and likes best to eat magic—and it has a habit of betraying its wielder.”

  Tad smiled, worked whatever magic was necessary to turn it back into a steel grip with no blade in sight, and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. “I understand,” he said. “And I know the stories about this sword.”

  “Good.” Zee looked at me. “Removing the silver isn’t going to be pleasant, Mercy.” He glanced at Adam. “But we have to do it now or maybe never. I don’t know if I’ll be able to use the mirror gate again.” He frowned. “Ariana could attempt it, but her magic is not what it once
was. Tad has the magic, but he doesn’t know enough to ad-lib such a spell.”

  “Is magic ever pleasant?” I asked. “I’d rather you did it.” I’d been hoping the old gremlin could do something about my little silver problem, and I wasn’t going to let a little PTSD moment stop me. I braced myself, closed my eyes, and made sure I had control of my face.

  Zee laid his hands on my cheeks and filled me with his magic. It didn’t hurt at first. Zee’s magic had a flavor, one that spoke of oil, metal, movement, and red heat. I could feel the call of his magic, and it felt very different from the way I’d called the silver out of Adam. Gradually, my feet started to tingle, but as soon as that tingle started to travel upward, the sensation in my feet changed to a sizzle like the bite of a red ant or two that rapidly increased to a thousand. The sensation followed the tingle all the way up my body.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” I chanted.

  “It didn’t hurt when she took the silver from me,” Adam said, sounding unhappy.

  I shut up. I could deal with a little stinging; okay, a lot of stinging. I didn’t need to upset Adam.

  “Not being Coyote’s child with a mystical connection to a werewolf, I have to follow the rules of magic,” Zee told Adam. He pulled his hand away from my skin and frowned at the disk of silver he held while I caught my breath. “This is a lot of silver to have scattered in your body, Mercy—and we are not finished yet. And you said that you already rid yourself of some of it?”

  Adam nodded. “I saw the bedroom floor.” He must have gone to Kyle’s first, then, and followed me to Sylvia’s. “More silver came out than went in. They gave me five or so good shots of the stuff, but nowhere near the amount on the floor.”

  “Conservation of matter,” said Asil, “would indicate that perhaps she pulled the silver from more than just you. How bad is the pack?”

  “Conservation of matter,” said Tad astringently, “is a funny concept when expressed by a werewolf. Who knows better that magic makes science blink than a 170-pound man who turns into a 250-pound werewolf?”