Stefan nodded. "They work against her where they can, and she knows it. They are of another's making, given as gifts by a vampire not easily refused. She must take care of them, as she would any such gifts—but that doesn't mean she has to trust them. Wulfe… Wulfe is a mystery even to himself, I think.
You believe Wulfe engineered this as a rise to power?" He looked away and didn't speak for a minute, obviously thinking about what I'd said.
Finally, he wrapped his hands around the bars of the open cage. "Wulfe already has power… if he wanted more, it was his for the asking. But it looks like he had a part in my downfall for whatever reason suited him."
"If Marsilia knows that you helped when Mercy killed Andre, why isn't Mercy dead?" Warren asked.
"She was supposed to be," Stefan said savagely. "Why do you think Marsilia starved me until I was no more than a ravening beast, then dropped me into Mercy's living room? You didn't think I did it myself, did you?"
I nodded. "So she thought she'd get it all without cost to her or the seethe? If you'd killed me, she could have claimed you'd escaped while she was punishing you. Too bad you showed up in my house and killed me. But she underestimated you."
"She did not underestimate me," said Stefan. "She knows me." He gave me a look that let me know that my earlier dig about not knowing him had stung. "She just did not plan on you having the Alpha werewolf in your home to spoil her plans."
I'd been there—and I didn't think he would have done it.
Stefan sneered at me when he saw my face. "Don't waste your time on romantic notions about me. I am vampire, and I would have killed you."
"He's cute when he's mad," observed Warren dryly.
Stefan turned his back on us both.
"She's all by herself, and she doesn't even know it," he said in soft anguish.
He wasn't talking about me.
He'd been hurt a lot recently, and I thought he deserved a rest. So I turned to Warren, and asked, "Why aren't you upstairs at the meeting?"
Warren shrugged, his eyes veiled. "The boss will do better without me to rock the boat."
"Paul hates me more than he hates you," I told him smugly.
He threw his head back and laughed—which is what I'd intended. "Wanna bet? I kicked his ass from here to Seattle and back. He's not happy with me."
"You're a wolf. I'm a coyote—there's no comparison."
"Hey," said Warren in mock offense. "You're no threat to his masculinity."
"I'm polluting the pack," I told him. "You're just an aberration."
"That's because you called him a… Stefan?"
I looked around, but the vampire was gone. I hadn't gotten a chance to ask him about the crossed bones on my door.
"Shee-it," exclaimed Warren. "Shee-it."
"DID YOU CALL BRAN?" I ASKED ADAM THE NEXT EVENING, tugging down the short skirt of my favorite green-blue dress until it was as good a barrier between Adam's SUV's leather seats and my naked skin as it was going to be.
He hadn't told me where we were going on our date, but Jesse had called me as soon as he left and described what he was wearing—so I knew I'd need the big guns. Though we share a back fence, the distance by car is significantly longer, and I'd had time to skim into the correct dress before he pulled up at my door.
Adam does suits. He wears suits to work, to pack meetings, to political meetings. Since his hours are about the same as mine, that means six days a week. Still there was a difference between his usual work suits and the one he was wearing tonight. The first were made to announce that this was the man in charge. This one said, "And he's sexy, too." And he was.
"There's no need to call Bran," he told me irritably as he swung the big vehicle onto the highway. "Half the pack probably called Bran as soon as they got home. He'll call me when he's ready."
He was probably right. I hadn't asked, but his grim face when Warren and I emerged from the basement last night—after everyone had left except for Samuel—had told its own story.
Samuel had kissed me on the lips to irritate Adam and ruffled my hair, "There you are, Little Wolf. Still naturally talented at causing trouble, I see."
That was unfair. It had been Stefan and Adam who'd caused this. I informed Samuel of that, but only after he'd escorted me back home.
Adam called me once, earlier in the afternoon, to make sure I remembered he was taking me out. I'd promptly called Jesse with orders to let me know what her father was wearing. I owed her five bucks, but it was worth it to see Adam smiling when I hopped into his SUV.
But my mouth had soon taken care of that. His Explorer still had a heck of a dent on the fender from where one of the wolves had hit it—after being thrown by an angry fae. My fault. So I'd asked him if he had an estimate yet, and he'd growled at me. Then I'd asked about Bran.
So far our date was working out just spiffy.
I went back to playing with my skirt.
"Mercy," Adam said, his voice even more growly than it had been.
"What?" If I snapped at him, it was his own fault for getting grumpy at me first.
"If you don't stop playing with that dress, I'm going to rip it right off you, and we won't be heading for dinner."
I looked at him. He was watching the road, and both hands were on the wheel… but once I paid attention, I could see what I'd done to him. Me. With remnants of grease under my fingernails and stitches in my chin.
Maybe I hadn't screwed up the date as badly as all of that. I smoothed the skirt back down, successfully resisting the urge to pull it up farther only because I wasn't sure I could handle what might happen. I thought Adam was joking, but… I turned my head toward my side window and tried to keep the grin off my face.
He drove us to a restaurant that had just opened in the boom-town that was forming in West Pasco. Just a couple of years ago it had been barren desert, but now there were restaurants, a theater, a Lowe's and… a hugeyenormous (Jesse's word) giant-sized Wal-Mart.
"I hope you like Thai." He parked us out in the middle of west nowhere in the parking lot. Paranoia has odd manifestations. It gave me panic attacks and made him park where he could manage a quick getaway. Shared paranoia—could a happily-ever-after be far off for us?
I hopped out of the front seat and said in suitably resolute tones, "I'm sure they have hamburgers."
I shut the door on his appalled face. The locks clicked, and there he was, one arm on either side of me… grinning.
"You like Thai," he said. "Admit it."
I folded my arms and ignored the gibbering idiot who kept shrieking "he's got me trapped, trapped" in the back of my head. It helped that Adam up close is even better than half a car away. And Adam with a grin… well. He has a dimple, just one. That's all he needs.
"Jesse told you, didn't she?" I said grumpily. "Next time I see her, I'm going to expose her for the secret-sharing kid she is. See if I don't."
He laughed… and dropped his arms and backed away, proving he'd seen my erstwhile panic. I grabbed his arm to prove I wasn't scared and towed him around the Explorer toward the restaurant.
The food was excellent. As I pointed out to Adam, they did have hamburgers. Neither of us ordered them, though doubtless they would have been good, too. I could have been eating seaweed and dust, though, and I still would have enjoyed it.
We talked about cars—and how I thought his Explorer was a pile of junk and he thought I was stuck in the seventies in my preference for cars. I pointed out that my Rabbit was a respectable eighties model, as was my Vanagon—and the chances of his SUV being around in thirty years was nil. Especially if his wolves kept getting thrown at it.
We talked about movies and books. He liked biographies, of all things. The only biography I'd ever liked was Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which I'd read in seventh grade. He didn't read fiction.
We got in an argument about Yeats. Not about his poetry, but about his obsession with the occult. Adam thought it was ridiculous… I thought it was funny that a werewolf would think it so an
d baited him until he caught me at it.
"Mercy," he said—and his phone rang.
I drank a sip of water and prepared to listen in to his conversation. But, as it turned out, it was very short.
"Hauptman," he answered shortly.
"You'd better get over here, wolf," said an unfamiliar voice and hung up.
He looked down at the number and frowned. I got up and walked around the table so I could look over his shoulder.
"It's someone from Uncle Mike's," I told him, having memorized the number.
Adam threw some money on the table and we trotted out the door. Grim-faced, he threaded the Explorer through the traffic at something more than the speed limit. We had just gotten on the interstate when something happened…. I felt a flash of rage and horror, and someone died. One of the pack.
I put my hand on Adam's leg, digging in with my nails at the roiling sorrow and rage that spun through the pack. He put his foot down and slid through the evening traffic like an eel. Neither of us said a word during the five minutes it took us to reach Uncle Mike's.
The parking lot was full of big SUVs and trucks, the kind most of the fae drive. Adam didn't bother parking, just drove right up until he was near the door and stopped. He didn't wait for me—but he didn't have to. I was right behind him when he brushed by the bouncer who guarded the door.
The bouncer didn't even protest.
Uncle Mike's smelled like beer, hot wings, and popcorn, which would have made it smell like every other bar in the Tri-Cities except that it also smelled like fae. I don't know that they organize themselves that way, but fae usually smell to me like the four elements that the old philosophers proposed: earth, air, fire, and water, with a healthy dose of magic.
None of those smells bothered me… only the blood.
Uncle Mike's commanding voice was backing people up and tightening the crowd until Adam and I were blocked in. That's when Adam lost it and began tossing people around.
Not really a safe thing to do at Uncle Mike's. Most of the fae I've met are no match for a werewolf… but there are ogres and other things that look just like everyone else until they get ticked off.
Even so, it wasn't until Adam began to change, ripping his charcoal suit, that I realized something more was happening than him losing his temper.
"Adam!" It was no use, my voice was lost in the noise of the crowd. I put a hand on his back so I didn't lose him, and I felt it.
Magic.
I jerked my hand back. It didn't feel like fae magic. I looked around for someone who was concentrating just a little too much on Adam but couldn't spot anyone over the crowd.
I did, however, see a little canvas bag hanging from the rafters just behind us. About the same place Adam started using physical force to move through the crowd. The ceilings in Uncle Mike's are about fourteen feet in the air. I wasn't going to reach that bag without a ladder—and I wasn't going to be able to find a ladder anytime soon.
A slender, almost effeminate man walked under the bag as I watched. He jerked to a halt, then threw back his head and roared. A sound so huge that it drowned out all of the noise in the building, shaking the rafters. His glamour, the illusion that made him look human, shattered, and I swear I could almost see a pile of sparkling dust spread out from him.
He was huge, an unearthly mass of gray and blue, still vaguely human-shaped, but his face looked like it had melted, leaving only vague bumps where his nose should have been. His mouth was pretty easy to spot—it would be hard to miss all those big teeth. Silvery eyes, too small for that huge face, glared out from under sparkly blue eyebrows. He shook himself, and the sparkly dust scattered again, melting as it touched warmer surfaces. He was shedding snow.
In the silence that followed, a small cranky voice said, "Freakin' snow elf." I couldn't see the speaker, but it sounded like it was coming from somewhere right next to the newly emerged monster.
He roared again and reached down, hauling a woman up by the hair. She was more angry than scared and pulled a weapon out of somewhere and cut her own hair, dropping down and out of my sight again.
The thing—I'd never heard of a snow elf—shook the hair he held and threw it behind him.
I glanced back at Adam, but in the short moments since I'd last looked, he'd disappeared, leaving behind only a trail of bloody bodies, most of them still standing and ticked off. I looked at the snow elf and the bag above his head.
No one was watching me, not with a rampaging werewolf and an abominable snowman in the room. I stripped off the dress and bra, stepped out of my shoes and underwear as fast as I could. I'm not a werewolf; my coyote shape comes between one breath and the next, and brings exhilaration and not pain. The snow elf was still standing underneath the bag when I jumped up, landed on someone's shoulders, and looked for him.
The crowd was so tight it was like being at a Metallica concert, and I had a road of heads and shoulders right to the snow elf—who was ten feet tall at the very least and stuck up a whole person's worth over the rest of the people.
He saw me coming and grabbed for me, but I'm fast and he missed. Actually, he probably missed because he didn't know I was going to jump on his shoulder and launch myself at the little bag, rather than because of any speed or dexterity on my part. That damned mountain of a fae was fast, too.
The magic buzzed angrily at me as I snatched the bag in my jaws. I dangled for a moment before the string that held it broke. I fell and waited for the giant hands of the snow elf to crush me, but it was Uncle Mike himself who snatched me out of the air and tossed me toward the door.
As soon as I grabbed the bag, I knew I was right about it being some sort of vicious spell aimed at the wolves. I didn't know how Uncle Mike knew it, too, but he snarled, "Take that thing out of here," before he melted back into the crowd.
Like a Dr. Seuss poem, I scrambled under, around, and through before I got out the door. I'd have felt better if I hadn't known that someone I knew—because I knew most of Adam's pack at least by face—was dead. I'd have felt better if I had known Adam was all right. I'd have settled for just not having the towering mountain of enraged… snow elf following me at full speed.
I'd never met anyone who called himself an elf, so I supposed my view was skewed by Peter Jackson's version of Tolkien's fair folk. The thing following me like a freight train didn't fit my understanding of the word at all.
Later, if I survived, I might derive some amusement from the face of the bouncer, who suddenly realized what was coming at him—just before he broke and ran. I passed him as we both jumped the short step to the pavement outside the door. He ran with me a couple of steps before he figured out who the snow elf was chasing and took a sharp right.
The doorway slowed the monster down. He hit it with his shoulder, taking the whole entryway wall with him as he left the building. He threw the chunk of wall at me, but I hopped through the half-open doorway a second time, just before it hit the ground. I crossed the street at full speed and narrowly missed being hit by a semi on its way to the industrial district just past Uncle Mike's. Safe on the far side, I glanced behind me, then stopped.
The man the snow elf had been was on his knees at the edge of the parking lot, shaking his head as if he was slightly dazed. He looked up at me. The silvery eyes were the same.
"Are you all right?" he asked. "Sorry, so sorry. I haven't felt like that since… since my last battle. I didn't hurt you, did I?" His gaze caught on the chunks of wall and door that were left from when his missile had missed me.
The effects of the little bag were evidently limited by distance.
I dropped the bag on the ground and shook myself and gave him an "all's well" yip. I wasn't sure he got the message, but he didn't try to cross the road after me. I'd have changed back, but my clothes—my favorite dress, a pair of expensive (even at half-off) Italian sandals, and my underwear—were still in the bar somewhere. I'm not modest, but the snow elf and I didn't know each other well enough for me to want be naked in front
of him.
He was dazedly trying to pick up the mess he'd made when people started leaving. One of Uncle Mike's people, easily distinguished from the patrons by the distinctive green doublet, stood on the edge of the parking lot and waved his hands at me in a pushing motion. I thought it was the bouncer who'd been at the door, but I'd have to have seen his face frozen in terror again to be certain of it.
I picked up the bag and backed away from the road a dozen yards, until my butt hit the side of an old warehouse fifty yards from the road.
Uncle Mike's parking lot gradually emptied, with Uncle Mike's minions directing traffic and helping the snow elf with his cleanup efforts. Adam's car sat in lonely splendor.
So did Mary Jo's Jeep. The one I'd given a free tune-up to when she'd taken her shift at
guard-the-wimpy-coyote duty. I like Mary Jo. She's a firefighter, five-foot-three-and-a-half of solid muscle and solider nerve.
One of the pack was dead. In the sudden quiet of the night, I could feel the wave of mourning spreading through the pack as the others acknowledged the absence of one of their own. They knew who it was, but I wasn't familiar enough with the pack magic to be certain. I only had Mary Jo's car. There were just six cars left in the patron's parking lot when Uncle Mike strode out of the hole that used to be a door. He clapped a hand on the snow elf's shoulder and patted him before hopping over a cement parking curb and crossing the street toward me. He had my dress in his hands.
I changed and grabbed the dress and pulled it on. No bra, no underwear, but at least I wasn't naked. I kicked the bag toward Uncle Mike. "What happened?"
He bent and picked up the bag. His face tightened, and he made a low, huffing sound… rather more like a lion or big cat of some kind than anything I'd ever heard out of him before.
"Cobweb," he said, "come throw this nasty bit of magic in the river for me, would you?"
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