Iron Kissed mt-3

by Patricia Briggs

  They'd watched, I thought, remembering the technician telling me that Adam was recording from the cameras, too. They'd seen it: I was so ashamed I wanted to die. Then I remembered that I was going to and took comfort from the thought of the river, so cool and inviting.

  "Mercy?" Adam turned in a slow circle. I tucked my nose into my tail and held very still, closing my eyes and trusting my ears to tell me if they got too close. "Everything is all right, now. You can come out."

  He was wrong. Nothing was all right. He didn't love me, nobody loved me, and I would be all alone.

  "You could call her," suggested Darryl.

  There was a thud and a choking sound. Unable to resist, I looked.

  Adam held Darryl against the wall, his forearm across his throat.

  "You saw," he whispered. "You saw what he did to her. And now you suggest I do the same? Bring her to me with magic that she cannot resist?"

  I knew the drink from the fae goblet was still affecting me: my stomach was burning, my body shaking like a meth addict's. But something bothered me. I still should have been able to understand Adam's reactions, right? He'd been so concerned…angry for me. But if he'd seen…

  He'd know I'd been unfaithful.

  Adam had declared me his mate before his pack. And if I was just learning that there were other, paranormal results, I did understand the politics involved.

  A werewolf whose mate is unfaithful is seen as weak. If it is the Alpha…well, I knew that there had been one Alpha whose mate had slept around, but she did it with his permission. By not accepting Adam, I had already weakened him. If his pack knew that Tim had…that I'd let Tim…

  Adam dropped his arm, freeing Darryl. "Did you hear that?"

  I'd quit whining as soon as I realized I was making noise. But it was too late.

  "It came from over there," said Honey. She stepped over a few pieces of Tim on her way to my side of the garage, followed by Darryl and Ben. Adam stayed where he was, his back to me, his hands braced shoulder high against the wall.

  So it was him that the fae attacked when she came through my office door.

  Nemane looked very little like the woman who had come to my office with Tony. Her dark hair glowed with silver and red highlights and floated about her as if held away from her body by the power of her magic. She blasted Adam with a wave of magic that knocked him halfway across the garage to land flat on his back in a puddle of dark blood. He rolled to his feet as soon as he hit and went for her.

  War, I thought. If he killed her or she him, it would be war.

  I was off my shelf and sprinting as fast as my three legs could manage before the thought had completed itself.

  Though there was no uncertainty in his movement, she must have hurt him because I reached her before he did.

  I shifted so I could talk, but I didn't get a chance because Adam hit me like a football player, his shoulder in my stomach. I don't think he meant to hit me, because he rolled under me, jerking me down with him. I never hit the ground.

  Diaphragm spasming, I sprawled all over him in an awkward position that left one of my knees in his armpit and my good arm caught under his opposite shoulder. In another instant he was on his feet and I was cradled against him, all three of the other werewolves between us and the enraged fae.

  I tried to talk, but he'd knocked the wind out of me.

  "Shh," Adam said, never taking his eyes off the enemy. "Shh, Mercy. You'll be all right now. I've got you safe."

  I swallowed against the bleak sorrow. He was wrong. I would always be alone now. Tim had told me so. He had had me, and now I would be alone forever. No, not forever because there was the river flowing nearby, almost a mile wide and so deep that it could appear black. My shop was close enough that sometimes I could catch a scent of the water from the Columbia.

  Thoughts of the river calmed me, and I could think a little better.

  The werewolves were waiting for Nemane to attack again. I don't know why Nemane waited, but the pause gave me a chance to talk before anyone got hurt.

  "Wait," I said, getting my wind back. "Wait. Adam, this is Nemane, the fae who was sent here to deal with the guard's death."

  "The one who was willing to let Zee die rather than find the real murderer?" He lifted his upper lip in contempt as he spoke.

  "Adam?" Nemane said coolly. "As in Adam Hauptman? What is the werewolf Alpha doing with our stolen property?"

  "They came to help me," I said.

  "And who are you?" She cocked her head to the side and I realized that I didn't sound like myself. My voice was hoarse, as if I'd been smoking for a dozen years—or screaming all night. And Nemane was blind.

  "Mercedes Thompson," I said.

  "Coyote," she said. "What mischief have you been making tonight?" She took a step forward, into the room, and all the werewolves stiffened. "And whose blood is feeding the night?"

  "I found your murderer," I told her tiredly, resting my face against Adam's bare skin. His scent washed over me in a falsely comforting wave: he didn't love me. I was so weary that I accepted the comfort while I could. I would be alone soon enough. "And he brought his own death upon himself."

  The tension in the air went down noticeably as Nemane's magic quit scenting the air. But the wolves waited for Adam to tell them the danger was over.

  "Darryl, call Samuel and see if he can come," Adam said quietly. "Then call Mercy's policeman. Honey, there's a blanket and some spare clothes in the back of the truck. Fetch them."

  "Should we call Warren, too?" asked Ben, looking away from Nemane so he could see Adam, but his eyes stopped on my arm. "Bloody hell. Look at her wrist."

  I didn't want to, so I watched Nemane, because she was the only one who didn't look horrified. It takes a bit to horrify a werewolf. I'd certainly never managed it before.

  "It's crushed," said Nemane, in her cool professorial voice. "And her arm broken above it, too."

  "How can you tell that?" said Honey, returning with the blankets and clothes. "You're blind."

  The fae smiled. Not a happy expression. "There are other ways of seeing."

  "How can they fix that?" said Ben, looking at my arm. He sounded a lot more shaken up than I expected from Ben. Werewolves are used to violence and its results.

  Nemane walked past Adam like a wolf on a scent. She bent and picked up the druid horse's skin. It must have fallen off Tim when Adam ripped him to pieces.

  Those pieces might haunt my dreams for a good long time, but I was too numb to be horrified by them now.

  Nemane caressed the cloak and shook her head. "No wonder we couldn't find him. Here, this is what she needs." She'd found the goblet where it had rolled under my tool chest.

  "What is that?" asked Adam.

  "Orfino's Bane, it was once called, Huon's cup, or Manannan's gift. It has a few uses and one of those is healing."

  "That's not what it does," I told Adam in a horrified whisper.

  Nemane looked at me.

  "He made her drink from it," Adam said. "I thought it contained some kind of drug—but it's fairy magic?"

  She nodded. "In the hands of a human thief, it allows him to enslave another, given as a gift it will heal as well, and in the hands of the fae it will testify to truth."

  "I won't drink it," I told Adam's shoulder, shifting in his arms until I'd gotten as far from the cup as I could.

  "It will heal her?" he asked.

  We all heard a car drive up.

  "It's one of mine," Adam said—I assumed he was talking to the fae because the rest of us could all recognize the sound of Samuel's car. To get here so fast he must have come from work. The hospital was only a few blocks away. "He's a doctor. I'd like to get his opinion."

  When he came in, Samuel's single, awed swearword took in the whole garage: bits of Tim scattered wherever Adam had deposited them, blood all over the place, a couple of naked people (Adam and I), and Nemane in her full fae glory.

  "I need you to check out Mercy's arm," Adam said.
r />   I didn't want him to touch it. It was numb right now, but I knew that could change at any time. It looked more like a pretzel than an arm, bending in places that it shouldn't. It had been working when we came into the office. Sort of. Tim must have damaged it more while I was killing him.

  No one cared what I wanted.

  At first Samuel just knelt so he could look at it lying across my thighs. He whistled between his teeth. "You need to pick out new friends, Mercy. The crowd you hang out with is awfully hard on you. If things keep going this way, you're going to be dead before the year is out."

  He was so relentlessly cheerful, I knew it was bad. His hands were light on my arm, but the searing pain made odd flashes of light dance in front of my eyes. If Adam hadn't been holding me, I'd have jerked away, but he held me steady, murmuring soft, comforting things I couldn't hear over the buzzing in my ears.

  "Samuel?" It was Ben who asked, his voice sharp and clear.

  Samuel quit touching my arm and stood up. "Her arm feels like a tube of toothpaste filled with marbles. I don't think it's something that can be tacked back together with a hundred pins or bolts."

  I am not a fainting kind of person, but the imagery Samuel used was too horrible and black things swam in front of my vision. It felt like I blinked twice and someone jumped events forward a minute or two. If I'd remembered about the river sooner, Samuel's prognosis wouldn't have made me faint.

  I knew I'd been out because gathering the amount of power that Adam was amassing didn't just suddenly happen. I didn't realize why he was doing it until it was too late.

  "You don't have to worry anymore, Mercy," Adam murmured, his head bent so that he whispered it into my ears.

  I stiffened. I tried. But tired, hurt, and terrified, I didn't have the slightest chance to fight his voice. I didn't really want to. Adam wasn't angry. He wouldn't hurt me.

  I let him pull the power of his pack over me like a warm blanket and relaxed against him. My arm still hurt, but the feeling of peace that wove over me separated me from the pain just as it did from the terror. I was so tired of being afraid.

  "That's it," he said. "Take a deep breath, Mercy. I won't let you do anything that will harm you, all right? You can trust me that far."

  It wasn't a question, but I said «yes» anyway.

  In a very quiet voice I don't think even the other werewolves could hear, he said, "Please don't hate me too much when this is over." There was no push to his voice when he said it.

  "I don't like this," I told him.

  He ran his chin and cheek over the side of my face in a quick caress. "I know. We're going to give you something that will heal you."

  That information broke through the peace he'd given me. He was going to make me drink from the cup again. "No," I said. "I won't. I won't."

  "Shh." His power rolled over me and smothered my resistance.

  "I know the fae," said Samuel harshly. "Why are you so eager to help?"

  "Whatever you might think, wolf" — Nemane's voice was chill—"the fae don't forget our friends or our debts. This happened because she was trying to help one of us. I can heal only her body, but it looks to me as if it is the least of the hurts she took tonight. The debt is still owed."

  A cup was pressed against my lips, and as soon as I recognized the smell of it, my stomach rebelled and I retched helplessly as Adam shifted me in his arms until I wasn't throwing up on either of us. When I was finished, he tipped me back where I'd been.

  "Plug her nose," suggested Darryl and Samuel pinched my nostrils together.

  "Swallow fast," Adam told me. "Get it over with quickly."

  I did.

  "Enough," said Nemane. "It will take an hour or so, but I swear that it will heal her."

  "I just hope we didn't break her doing it." Adam's voice rumbled under my ear and I sighed in contentment. I wasn't all alone yet. His arms shook and I worried that holding me was tiring him.

  "No," he told me, so I must have said something. "You aren't heavy."

  Samuel, used to emergencies, took control. "Honey, give me the blanket and the clothes. Go grab a chair from the office—something with a back. Darryl, take Mercy, so that—" Adam's arm tightened around my legs and he growled, making Samuel change his mind. "All right, all right, we'll wait for Honey to get back with the chair. Here she is. We'll wrap Mercy in the blanket, you send her to sleep, and then go wash up and change before the police get here."

  Adam didn't move.

  "Adam…" Samuel's tone was wary, his posture carefully neutral. A truck drove up and the tension in the garage dropped appreciatively. No one said anything, though, until Warren came in to the garage. He looked pale and strained, and he slowed down as he got a good look around him.

  He walked into the center of the garage and nudged a piece of meat with the toe of his boot. Then he looked at Adam. "Good job, boss."

  His eyes went to Samuel and the blanket he was holding. Then he looked at the chair resting on the floor in front of Honey.

  Samuel's body language told Warren what had been going on and what he wanted without saying a word.

  Warren strolled over to us and snagged the blanket from Samuel, snapping it out. "Let's get her warm and covered up."

  Adam let Warren take me without argument. Instead of setting me in the chair, though, Warren sat in it and pulled me snugly against him. Adam watched us for a moment—I couldn't read his face at all. Then he leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.

  "If you called the police, they will be here shortly," said Nemane as soon as Adam had gone to the bathroom to wash up. "I need to be gone with these before the police come."

  "There's a ring," I told her, still basking in the peace that Adam had gifted me with.

  "What?"

  "A silver ring on his finger." I yawned. "I think there are a few more things in Tim's house. He keeps them in a cabinet in his bedroom."

  "The Mac Owen ring," Nemane said. "Would you all help me to look for it?"

  "Maybe Adam swallowed it," I suggested and Warren laughed.

  "No more horror movies for you," he murmured. "But Adam didn't eat any of him."

  "Here it is," Honey said, bending down to pick something up. Instead of giving it to Nemane, she closed her hand over it. "If you go and take that cup, they're going to prosecute Mercy for murder."

  "Give it to me." The temperature in the room dropped appreciatively with the ice in Nemane's voice.

  "We have the video," Darryl said. "It should be enough."

  Honey laughed and turned on him. "Why? All it shows is that Mercy was drunk. She drank more every time he asked her to. She might have said no, but he never appeared to force her to drink. From the video, a prosecutor could argue that her judgement was impaired by alcohol—but that's not enough to get her freed from a murder charge. She had him incapacitated and she deliberately got up and took a crowbar and hit him with it."

  "Then that is what may be," Nemane said. "It is too dangerous for humans to know we have these things."

  "Not everything," said Honey. "Just the cup."

  "By itself it would answer most of the police's questions," said Samuel. "Though you might have to explain how a human managed to rip a man's head off."

  "He had bracelets," I told him. "Called them bracers of giant strength—but they weren't bracers. They'll be around someplace, too."

  "Ben," said Adam, sounding cool and controlled as he came back into the garage bay. "Go get my laptop." He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved gray shirt. His hair was damp. "Nemane, I will make you a deal. If you watch what happened tonight, I will let you take your toys and run away—if that's what you still want to do."

  "I am the Carrion Crow," Nemane said. "I've seen more death and rape than you can imagine."

  Shame slipped through the warm peace Adam had given to me. I didn't want anyone to watch. "She's blind," I said. "She can't see anything."

  "She can use my eyes," Samuel said.

  I saw Nemane stiffen.
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br />   "My father is a Welsh bard as well as the Marrok," Samuel told her. "He knows things. You can use my eyes, if Adam thinks it's important to see this."

  Ben brought Adam's laptop and handed it to him. Adam set it up on the counter.

  I buried my head against Warren and tried to ignore the sounds coming from Adam's laptop. The speakers weren't very good so I pretended I couldn't hear the helpless noises I made or the wet sounds…

  He let it play until the moment Nemane walked in and turned it off.

  "She should be dead," Nemane said flatly when he was finished. "If I'd seen it first, I'd never have given her another drink so soon."

  "Will she be all right?" Warren asked sharply.

  "If she hasn't gone into convulsions and died yet, I don't suppose she's going to." Nemane stroked the cloak she held on her arm, sounding troubled. "I don't know how she managed to kill him while he was wearing this. It should have kept her from touching him."

  "It only protected him from his enemies," I told Warren's shirt. "I wasn't his enemy because he told me not to be."

  A storm of police sirens was brewing up outside.

  "All right," Nemane said. "You may have the bracelets to explain how a human killed O'Donnell. And the cup. Adam Hauptman, Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, you will take possession of them on your honor and return them to Uncle Mike when they are of no further use."

  "Samuel," said Warren, and I realized I was starting to shiver helplessly.

  "She needs to sleep," Nemane told them.

  Adam knelt beside us and looked me in the eye. "Mercedes, go to sleep."

  I was too tired to fight the compulsion, even if I had wanted to.

  CHAPTER 12

  I woke up with the smell of Adam in my nose and my stomach cramping. I didn't have time to wonder about my surroundings. I dove off the bed and made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up in the toilet.

  Fairy brew tastes a lot worse the second time around.

  Gentle hands pulled my hair out of the way—though it was too late for that—and wiped my face with a damp washcloth. Someone had put a pair of underwear and one of Adam's T-shirts on me.