Mercedes Thompson 03: Iron Kissed
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He just didn’t act like an old werewolf. Old werewolves were uptight, easy to anger, and especially in this last hundred years of rapid changes (I’m told), were more likely to be hermits than doctors in busy emergency rooms with all that new technology. He was one of the few werewolves I knew who really liked people, human people or werewolf people. He even liked them in crowds.
Not that he would have gone out of his way to perform at a folk music festival. That took a little creative blackmail.
It wasn’t me. Not this time.
The stresses of working in an emergency room—especially since he was a werewolf and his reaction to blood and death could be a little unpredictable—meant that he took his guitar or violin to work and played when he had a chance.
One of his nurses heard him play and had him signed up for the festival before he could figure out how to get out of it. Not that he tried very hard. Oh, he made a lot of noise, but I know Samuel. If he really hadn’t wanted to do it, a bulldozer wouldn’t have gotten him up there.
He tuned the violin with one hand while he held it under his chin and plucked with the other. A few measures of a song and the crowd sat forward in anticipation, but I knew better. He was still warming up. When he really started playing, everyone would know it: he came alive in front of an audience.
Sometimes watching Samuel perform was more like a stand-up comedy act than a concert. It all depended on how he was feeling at the moment.
It happened at last, the magic moment when Samuel sucked his audience in. The old violin made a shivering sound, like an old hoot owl in the night, and I knew he’d decided to be a musician today. All the quiet whispers stopped and every eye lifted to the man on the stage. Centuries of practice and being a werewolf might give him speed and dexterity, but the music came from his Welshman’s soul. He gave the audience a shy smile and the mournful sound became song.
While getting my history degree, I’d lost any romantic notions about Bonnie Prince Charlie, whose attempt to regain the throne of England had brought Scotland to its knees. Samuel’s rendition of “Over the Sea to Skye” brought tears to my eyes anyway. There were words to that song, and Samuel could sing them, but for now, he let the violin speak for him.
As he played the last notes softly, over the top of it he began singing “Barbara Allen,” as close to a universally known song among folksingers as “Stairway to Heaven” is to guitarists. After the first few measures, he sang the rest of the first verse a capella. When he hit the chorus, he brought in the violin in eerie descant. By the second verse, invited by his smile, the audience was singing the chorus, too. The singing was tentative until one of the other professional groups who had been walking by on the black-top path stopped and sang, too.
He gave them a nod at the last verse and stopped singing, letting the other group showcase the tight harmony that was their trademark. When the song ended, we cheered and clapped as he thanked his “guest performers.” The audience had been filling in as he played and we all scooted a little closer together.
He set the violin down and picked up his guitar to play a Simon and Garfunkel piece. Not even the stupid Jet Ski that kept roaring past along the river a hundred yards away detracted much from his performance. He launched into a silly pirate song then put his guitar down and took up a bodhran—a wide flat drum played with a double-ended stick—and broke into a sea chantey.
I noticed the Cathers, the elderly couple who lived next door to me, sitting on a pair of camp chairs on the other side of the crowd.
“I hope it doesn’t rain. We wouldn’t want to miss seeing Samuel play,” she’d told me yesterday morning when I’d found her tending her flowers. “He’s such a nice man.”
Of course she didn’t have to live with him, I thought, chin on my knee as I watched him play. Not that Samuel wasn’t “a nice man,” but he was also stubborn, controlling, and pushy. I was stubborn and meaner than he was, though.
Someone whispered a polite “excuse me” and sat in the small square of grass in front of me. I found it a little too close for someone I didn’t know, so I scooted away a few inches, until my back rested firmly against Adam’s leg.
“I’m glad you talked him into playing,” murmured the Alpha werewolf. “He’s really in his element in front of a crowd, isn’t he?”
“I didn’t talk him into it,” I said. “It was one of the nurses he works with.”
“I once heard the Marrok and both of his sons, Samuel and Charles, sing together,” murmured Warren, so softly I doubt anyone else heard him. “It was…” He turned away from the stage and caught Adam’s gaze over the top of Kyle’s head to shrug his inability to find the words.
“I’ve heard them,” Adam said. “It’s not something you forget.”
Samuel had picked up his old Welsh harp while we were talking. He played a few notes to give the tech time to rush around and adjust the sound system for the softer tones of the new instrument. He ran his eyes over the crowd and his gaze stopped on me. If I could have scooted away from Adam without sitting on top of a stranger, I would have. Adam saw Samuel’s gaze, too, and put a possessive hand on my shoulder.
“Stop that,” I snapped.
Kyle saw what was happening and put his arm around my shoulders in a hug, knocking Adam’s hand away in the process. Adam snarled softly, but he moved back a few inches. He liked Kyle—and better yet, since Kyle was gay and human, he didn’t view him as any kind of threat.
Samuel took a deep breath and smiled, a little stiffly, as he introduced his last piece. I relaxed against Kyle as harp and harper made an old Welsh tune come to life. Welsh was Samuel’s first language—when he was upset, you could still hear it in his voice. It was a language made for music: soft, lilting, and magical.
The wind picked up a little, making the green leaves rustle an accompaniment to Samuel’s music. When he finished, the sound of the leaves was the only noise for a few heartbeats. Then the jerk on the stupid Jet Ski came buzzing by, breaking the spell. The crowd rose to their feet and broke into thunderous applause.
My cell phone had been vibrating in my pocket off and on for most of the song, so I slipped away while Samuel packed away his instruments and vacated the stage for the next performer.
When I found a relatively quiet place, I pulled out the phone to find that I had missed five calls—all of them from a number I wasn’t familiar with. I dialed it anyway. Anyone who called five times in as many minutes was in quite a lather.
It was answered on the first ring.
“Mercy, there is trouble.”
“Uncle Mike?” It was his voice, and I didn’t know anyone else who spoke with such a thick Irish accent. But I’d never heard him sound like this.
“The human police have Zee,” he said.
“What?” But I knew. I had known what would happen to someone who was killing fae. Old creatures revert to older laws when push comes to shove. I’d known when I told them who the killer was that I was signing O’Donnell’s death warrant—but I had been pretty sure that they would do it in such a way that blame would not have fallen anywhere. Something that looked accidental or like a suicide.
I hadn’t expected them to be clumsy enough to attract the attention of the police.
My phone buzzed, telling me that there was another call coming in, but I ignored it. Zee had murdered a man and gotten caught. “How did it happen?”
“We were surprised,” Uncle Mike said. “He and I went to talk to O’Donnell.”
“Talk?” Disbelief was sharp in my voice. They had not gone to his house to talk.
He gave a short laugh. “We would have talked first, whatever you think of us. We drove to O’Donnell’s house after you left. We rang the bell, but no one came to the door, though there was a light on. After we rang a third time, Zee opened the door and we entered. We found O’Donnell in the living room. Someone had beaten us to him, ripped his head from his body, a wounding such as I have not seen since the giants roamed the earth, Mercedes.”
“No. And as we stood there dumb and still, the police came with their lights and bean sí cries.” He paused and I heard a noise. I recognized the sound from my karate. He’d hit something wooden and it had broken.
“He told me to hide myself. His talents aren’t up to hiding from the police. So I watched as they put him into their car and drove away.”
There was a pause. “I could have stopped them,” he said in a guttural voice. “I could have stopped them all, but I let the humans take Siebold Adelbertskrieger (the German version of the name, Adelbertsmiter, Zee was using), the Dark Smith, to jail.” Outrage didn’t completely mask the fear in his voice.
“No, no,” I told him. “Killing police officers is always a bad plan.”
I don’t think he heard me; he just kept talking. “I did as he said and now I find that no matter how I look at it, my help will only make his position worse. This is not a good time to be fae, Mercy. If we rally to Zee’s defense, it could turn into a blood bath.”
He was right. A rash of deaths and violence not a month past had left the Tri-Cities raw and bleeding. The tide of escalated crime had stopped with the breaking of a heat wave that had been tormenting us all at the same time. The cooler weather was a fine reason for the cessation of the pall of anger that had hung in the air. Driving the demon that was causing the violence back to the outer limits by killing its host vampire was an even better one, though not for the consumption of the public. They only knew about a few werewolves and the nicer side of the fae. Everyone was safer as long as the general population didn’t know about things like vampires and demons—especially the general population.
However, there was a strong minority who were murmuring that there had been too much violence to be explained by a heat wave. After all, heat came every summer, and we’d never had a rash of murders and assaults like that. Some of those people were looking pretty hard at blaming the fae. Only last week there had been a group of demonstrators outside the Richland Courthouse.
That the werewolves had, just this year, admitted their existence wasn’t helping matters much. The whole issue had gone as smoothly as anyone could have hoped, but nothing was perfect. The whole ugly anti-fae thing, which had subsided after the fae had voluntarily retired to the reservations, had been getting stronger again through the whole country. The hate groups were eager to widen their target to include werewolves and any other “godless” creatures, human or not.
In Oklahoma, there had been a witch burning last month. The ironic thing was that the woman who burned hadn’t, it turned out, been a witch, a practitioner, or even Wiccan—which are three different things, though one person might be all three.
She’d been a good Catholic girl who liked tattoos, piercings, and wearing black clothing.
In the Tri-Cities, a place not noted for political activism or hate groups, the local anti-fae, anti-werewolf groups had been getting noticeably stronger.
That didn’t mean spray-painted walls or broken windows and rioting. This was the Tri-Cities, after all, not Eugene or Seattle. At last week’s Arts Festival, they’d had an information booth and I’d seen at least two different flyers they’d sent out in the mail this past month. Tri-City hate groups are civilized like that—so far.
O’Donnell could change that. If his death was as dramatic as Uncle Mike indicated, O’Donnell’s murder would make every paper in the country. I tried to quell my panic.
I wasn’t worried about the law—I was pretty sure that Zee could walk out of any jail cell, anytime he wanted. With glamour he could change his appearance until even I wouldn’t know him. But it wouldn’t be enough to save him. I wasn’t sure innocence would be enough to save him.
“Do you have a lawyer?” Our local werewolf pack didn’t have one officially, though I think Adam had a lawyer he kept on the payroll for his security business. But there weren’t nearly as many werewolves as there were fae.
“No. The Gray Lords own several firms on the East Coast, but it was deemed unnecessary for our reservation here. We are low-key.” He hesitated. “Fae who are suspected of crimes tend not to survive to need lawyers.”
“I know,” I replied, swallowing around the knot in my throat.
The Gray Lords, like the werewolves’ Marrok, were driven to preserve their species. Bran, the Marrok, was scrupulously fair, though brutal. The Gray Lords’ methods had a strong tendency to be more expedient than fair. With prejudice so loud and strong, they’d want to hush this up as soon as possible.
“How much danger is Zee in?” I asked.
Uncle Mike sighed. “I don’t know. This crime is about to become very public. I do not see how his death would benefit the fae more than his survival right now—especially since he is innocent. I have called and told Them that this death is not on his head.” Them was the Gray Lords. “If we can prove his innocence…I don’t know, Mercy. It depends upon who actually did kill O’Donnell. It wasn’t a human—maybe a troll could have done this—or a werewolf. A vampire could have, but O’Donnell was not killed for food. Someone was very, very angry with him. If it is a fae, the Gray Lords will not care who it was, just that the case is solved quickly and finally.”
Quickly, like before a trial could call more attention to the crime. Quickly, like a suicide with a note admitting guilt.
My phone beeped politely, telling me I had a second call.
“I assume you think that I can be a help?” I asked—otherwise he’d never have called me.
“We cannot come to his aid. He needs a good lawyer, and someone to find out who killed O’Donnell. Someone needs to talk to the police and tell them that Zee did not kill this scum. Someone they will believe. You have a friend on the Kennewick police force.”
“O’Donnell died in Kennewick?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll find a lawyer,” I told Uncle Mike. Kyle was a divorce attorney, but he would know a good criminal defense lawyer. “Maybe the police will keep the worst of the details out of their press releases. They’re not going to be all that interested in having the press of the world descend upon them. Even if they just tell people he was beheaded, it doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Maybe we can buy a little time with the Gray Lords if it stays out of the major papers. I’ll talk to the policeman I know, but he might not listen.”
“If you need money,” he said, “let me know. Zee doesn’t have much, I don’t think, though you can never tell with him. I do, and I can get more if we need it. But it will have to go through you. The fae cannot be more involved with this than we already are. So you hire a lawyer and we will pay you whatever it costs.”
“All right,” I said.
I hung up, my stomach in knots. My phone said I’d missed two calls. Both of them were from my friend Tony the cop’s cell phone. I sat down on the knob of a tree root and called him back.
“Montenegro here,” he said.
“I know about Zee,” I told him. “He didn’t kill anyone.”
There was a little pause.
“Is it that you don’t think he could do something like this, or do you know something specifically about the crime?”
“Zee’s perfectly capable of killing,” I told him. “However, I have it on very good authority that he didn’t kill this person.” I didn’t tell him that if Zee had found O’Donnell alive, he would most likely have killed him. Somehow, that didn’t seem helpful.
“Who is your very good authority—and did they happen to mention who did kill our victim?”
I pinched the top of my nose. “I can’t tell you—and they don’t know—just that the killer was not Zee. He found O’Donnell dead.”
“Can you give me something more substantial? He was found kneeling over the body with blood on his hands and the blood was still warm. Mr. Adelbertsmiter is a fae, registered with the BFA for the past seven years. Nothing human did this, Mercy. I can’t ta
lk about the specifics, but nothing human did this.”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t suppose you could keep that last bit out of the official report, eh? Until you catch the real killer, it would be a very good idea not to have people stirred up against the fae.”
Tony was a subtle person, and he caught what I wasn’t saying. “Is this like when you said it would be very good if the police didn’t go looking for the fae as a cause of the rise in violent crime this summer?”
“Exactly like that.” Well, not quite, and honesty impelled me to correct myself. “This time, though, the police themselves won’t be in danger. But Zee will, and the real killer will be free to kill elsewhere.”
“I need more than your word,” he said finally. “Our expert consultant is convinced that Zee is our culprit, and her word carries a lot of weight.”
“Your expert consultant?” I asked. As far as I knew, I was the closest thing to an expert consultant on fae that the Tri-Cities police forces had.
“Dr. Stacy Altman, a folklore specialist from the University of Oregon, flew in this morning. She is paid a lot, which means my bosses think we ought to listen to her advice.”
“Maybe I should charge more when I consult for you,” I told him.
“I’ll double your paycheck next time,” he promised.
I got paid exactly nothing for my advice, which was fine with me. I was liable to be in enough trouble without the local supernatural community thinking I was narking to the police.
“Look,” I told him. “This is unofficial.” Zee hadn’t told me not to say anything about the deaths on the reservation—because he hadn’t thought he would have to. It was something I already knew.
However, if I spoke fast, maybe I could get it all out before I thought about how unhappy they might be with me for telling the police. “There have been some deaths among the fae—and good evidence that O’Donnell was the killer. Which was why Zee went to O’Donnell’s house. If someone found out before Zee, they might have killed O’Donnell.”