The Mercy Thompson Collection

by Patricia Briggs

  “Eat,” I told him as I set out for the bathroom to change into work clothes. “Save me one—the rest are for you.”

  All but one were gone when I came back.

  “Thank you,” he told me, watching my feet.

  “You’ll work it off. Come on, help me get the garage doors up.” I led the way through the office and into the garage. “There’s nothing pending today so we can work on my project Bug.”

  The Beetle was unprepossessing at the moment, but when I was finished it would be painted, polished, and purring like a kitten. Then I’d sell it for twice what I had put into it and find another car to resurrect. I made almost half my income refurbishing old VW classics.

  We’d worked a few hours in companionable silence when he asked to use the phone to make a long-distance call.

  “Long as it’s not to China,” I said, coaxing a bolt held in place by thirty-odd years of rust.

  I didn’t sneak over to the office door to listen in. I don’t make a practice of eavesdropping on private conversations. I don’t have to. I have very good hearing.

  “Hello,” he said. “It’s me.”

  My hearing was not so good, however, that I could hear the person he was talking to.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine,” he said quickly. “Look I can’t talk long.” Pause. “It’s better you don’t know.” Pause. “I know. I saw a news report. I don’t remember anything after we left the dance. I don’t know what killed her or why it didn’t kill me.”

  Ah, no, I thought.

  “No. Look, it’s better just now if you don’t know where I am.” Pause. “I told you, I don’t know what happened. Just that I didn’t kill her.” Pause. “I don’t know. I just want you to tell Mom and Dad I’m okay. I love them—and I’m looking for the ones who killed her. I have to go now.” Pause. “I love you, too, Joe.”

  There were a dozen stories that could account for the half of his conversation that I heard. Two dozen.

  But the most prevalent of the cautionary tales werewolves tell each other is what happens the first time a werewolf changes if he doesn’t know what he is.

  In my head, I translated Mac’s half of the conversation into a picture of a boy leaving a high school dance to make out with his girlfriend under the full moon, not knowing what he was. New werewolves, unless they have the guidance of a strong dominant, have little control of their wolf form the first few times they change.

  If Mac were a new werewolf, it would explain why he didn’t notice that I was different from the humans around. You have to be taught how to use your senses.

  Here in the US, most werewolves are brought over by friends or family. There is a support structure to educate the new wolf, to keep him and everyone around him safe—but there are still the occasional attacks by rogue werewolves. One of the duties of a pack is to kill those rogues and find their victims.

  Despite the stories, any person bitten by a werewolf doesn’t turn into another werewolf. It takes an attack so vicious that the victim lies near death to allow the magic of the wolf to slip past the body’s immune system. Such attacks make the newspapers with headlines like “Man Attacked by Rabid Dogs.” Usually the victim dies of the wounds or of the Change. If he survives, then he recovers quickly, miraculously—until the next full moon, when he learns that he didn’t really survive at all. Not as he had been. Usually a pack will find him before his first change and ease his way into a new way of life. The packs watch the news and read the newspapers to prevent a new wolf from being alone—and to protect their secrets.

  Maybe no one had found Mac. Maybe he’d killed his date and when he’d returned to human shape he’d refused to believe what he’d done. What he was. I’d been operating under the impression that he had left his pack, but if he was a new wolf, an untaught wolf, he was even more dangerous.

  I broke the rusted-out bolt because I wasn’t paying attention. When Mac returned from his phone call, I was working on removing the remnant with an easy out, the world’s most misnamed tool—there is nothing easy about it.

  I hadn’t planned on saying anything to him, but the words came out anyway. “I might know some people who could help you.”

  “No one can help me,” he replied tiredly. Then he smiled, which would have been more convincing if his eyes hadn’t been so sad. “I’m all right.”

  I set down the easy out and looked at him.

  “Yes, I think you will be,” I said, hoping I wasn’t making a mistake by not pushing. I’d have to let Adam know about him before the next full moon. “Just remember, I’ve been known to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

  His mouth quirked up. “Lewis Carroll.”

  “And they say the youth today aren’t being educated,” I said. “If you trust me, you might find that my friends can help you more than you believed possible.” The phone rang, and I turned back to my work. “Go answer the phone, please, Mac,” I told him.

  That late in the year it was dark out when we finished at six. He stood and watched me as I locked up, obviously thinking about something. I deliberately fumbled with the lock to give him more time, but he didn’t take advantage of it.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, instead.

  “All right.” Then, impulsively, I asked, “Do you have a place to sleep tonight?”

  “Sure,” he said with a smile, and started off as if he had somewhere to be.

  I could have bitten off my tongue because I pushed him into a lie. Once he started lying to me, it would be harder to get him to trust me with the truth. I don’t know why it works that way, but it does—at least in my experience.

  I kicked myself all the way home, but by the time I had fed Medea and made myself some dinner, I’d figured out a way around it. I’d take him a blanket tomorrow and unlock Stefan’s VW bus, which was patiently awaiting brake parts from Oregon. I didn’t think Stefan would mind Mac camping out for a night or two.

  I called Stefan to make sure, because it’s unwise to surprise vampires.

  “Sure,” he said, without even asking who I wanted to let sleep in his van. “That’s all right with me, sweetheart. How long until my bus is roadworthy again?”

  For a vampire, Stefan was all right.

  “Parts are supposed to be in day after tomorrow,” I told him. “I’ll call you when they get here. If you want to help, we can get it done in a couple long evenings. Otherwise, it’ll take me a day.”

  “Right,” he said, which was apparently good-bye because the next thing I heard was a dial tone.

  “Well,” I told the cat, “I guess I’m headed out to buy a blanket.” It had to be a new blanket; mine would all smell like coyote—and a werewolf who hardly knew me wouldn’t be comfortable surrounded by my scent.

  I spent several minutes looking for my purse before I realized that I’d left it locked in the safe at work. Happily, my garage was on the way to the store.

  Because it was dark, I parked my car on the street behind the garage where there was a streetlight to discourage any enterprising vandals. I walked through the parking lot and passed Stefan’s bus, parked next to the office door, and gave it an affectionate pat.

  Stefan’s bus was painted to match the Mystery Machine, which said a lot about the vampire it belonged to. Stefan told me that he’d briefly considered painting it black a few years ago when he started watching Buffy, but, in the end, he’d decided the vampire slayer was no match for Scooby Doo.

  I opened the office door, but didn’t bother turning on the lights because I see pretty well in the dark. My purse was where I remembered leaving it. I took it out and relocked the safe. Out of habit, I double-checked the heat to make sure it was set low. Everything had been turned off and put away. All was as it should have been, and I felt the usual sense of satisfaction knowing it was mine—well, mine and the bank’s.

  I was smiling when I left the office and turned to lock the door behind me. I wasn’t moving quietly on purpose, but having been raised by a pack of werewolv
es makes you learn to be quieter than most.

  “Go away.” Mac’s voice came from the other side of Stefan’s bus. He spoke in a low, growling tone I hadn’t heard from him before.

  I thought he was talking to me and spun toward the sound, but all I saw was Stefan’s bus.

  Then someone else answered Mac. “Not without you.”

  The bus had darkened windows. I could see through them well enough to see the side door was open, framing the vague shadowy forms of Mac and one of his visitors. The second one I couldn’t see. The wind was right, blowing gently past them to me, and I smelled two other people besides Mac: another werewolf and a human. I didn’t recognize either one.

  Although I know most of Adam’s wolves by scent, it wouldn’t be odd if he had gotten a new wolf without my hearing about it. But it was the human that told me something was up: I’d never known Adam to send a human out with one of his wolves on business.

  Stranger yet was that no one showed any sign they knew I was around. I was quiet, but even so, both werewolves should have heard me. But neither Mac nor the other wolf appeared to notice.

  “No,” said Mac, while I hesitated. “No more cages. No more drugs. They weren’t helping.”

  Cages? I thought. Someone had been keeping Mac in a cage? There was no need for that, not with Adam around. Though some Alphas had to depend upon bars to control new wolves, Adam wasn’t one of them. Nor did Mac’s comments about drugs make sense: there are no drugs that work on werewolves.

  “They were, kid. You just need to give them a chance. I promise you we can undo your curse.”

  Undo his curse? There was no drug in the world that would undo the Change, and darn few werewolves who considered their state a curse after the first few months. Eventually most of them felt that becoming short-tempered and occasionally furry was a small price to pay for extraordinary strength, speed, and senses—not to mention the fringe benefit of a body immune to disease and old age.

  Even if the werewolf belonged to Adam, I doubted he knew that one of his pack was telling wild stories. At least I hoped he didn’t know.

  Mac seemed to know these two, though, and I was beginning to feel that his story was more complicated than I had thought.

  “You talk like you have a choice,” the third man was saying. “But the only choice you have is how you get there.”

  These weren’t Adam’s men, I decided. The mention of curses, cages, and drugs made them the enemy. If Mac didn’t want to go with them, I wouldn’t let them take him.

  I took a quick glance around, but the streets were empty. After six the warehouse district is pretty dead. I stripped out of my clothes as quietly as I could and shifted into coyote form.

  As a human I didn’t stand a chance against a werewolf. The coyote was still not a match—but I was fast, much faster than a real coyote and just a hair quicker than a werewolf.

  I jumped onto the railing and vaulted from there to the top of Stefan’s bus for the advantage of the higher position, though I was giving up surprise. No matter how quietly I moved, a werewolf would hear the click of my nails on the metal roof.

  I readied myself for launch, but paused. From atop the bus I could see Mac and the two men. None of them seemed to be aware of me. Mac had his back to me, but all the others would have had to do was look up. They didn’t. Something wasn’t right.

  Behind the two strangers was a big black SUV, the kind of car you’d expect bad guys to drive.

  “I don’t believe there is any way to undo what you did to me,” Mac was saying. “You can’t give me back my life or give Meg back hers. All you can do is leave me alone.”

  The human’s hair was in a crew cut, but it was the big black gun I could see peeking out of his shoulder holster that first made me think military. Both of the strangers stood like military men—Adam had the posture, too. Their shoulders were just a little stiff, their backs a little too straight. Maybe they did belong to Adam. The thought made me hesitate. If I hurt one of Adam’s wolves, there would be hell to pay.

  “The moon’s coming,” said the longer-haired man, the werewolf. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “How’re you planning on surviving the winter, kid?” It was Short-hair again. His voice was kindly. Fatherly. Patronizing even. “It gets cold ’round December, even in this desert.”

  I stifled a growl as I tried to determine the best way to help Mac.

  “I’m working here,” Mac said, with a gesture at the garage. “If it gets colder, I think she’ll let me sleep in the garage until I find somewhere to live if I ask her.”

  “Ask her?” Short-hair looked sympathetic. “She kept you here for us. She’s one of us, kid. How else do you think we found you?”

  Mac smelled of shock first, then defeat. Emotions have a smell, but only in my coyote form is my nose good enough to distinguish more than the strongest feelings. My lips curled back over my teeth—I don’t like liars, especially when they are lying about me.

  The werewolf’s voice was dreamy. “When the moon comes, you can’t stop the change.” He swayed back and forth. “Then you can run and drink the fear of your prey before they die beneath your fangs.”

  Moonstruck, I thought, shocked out of my anger. If this wolf was so new that he was moonstruck, he certainly wasn’t Adam’s, and whoever had sent him out was an idiot.

  “I’m not coming,” said Mac, taking a step away from them. He took another step back—putting his back against the bus. He stiffened, drew in a deep breath, and looked around. “Mercy?”

  But neither of the men paid attention when Mac caught my scent. The werewolf was still held in his moon dreams, and the human was drawing his gun.

  “We tried to do this the easy way,” he said, and I could smell his pleasure. He might have tried the easy way first, but he liked the hard way better. His gun was the kind you find in military catalogues for wanna-be mercenaries, where what it looks like is at least as important as how well it performs. “Get in the car, kid. I’m packing silver bullets. If I shoot you, you’ll be dead.” He sounded like a thug from a fifties gangster movie; I wondered if it was deliberate.

  “If I get in the car, I’ll be dead anyway, won’t I?” Mac said slowly. “Did you kill the other two who were in the cages by me? Is that why they disappeared?”

  None of them had noticed that the werewolf was starting to change, not even the werewolf himself. I could see his eyes gleaming brightly in the darkness and smell the musk of wolf and magic. He growled.

  “Quiet,” snapped the human, then he looked. He paused, swallowed, and turned his gun, ever so slightly, toward his erstwhile partner.

  As a human, the werewolf probably weighed in at about two hundred pounds. Werewolves, fully changed, weigh upward of two hundred and fifty pounds. No, I don’t know where the extra weight comes from. It’s magic, not science. I’m a little large for the average coyote—but that meant that the werewolf was still five times my weight.

  I’d been trying to figure out a way to turn my speed to advantage, but when the werewolf, his elongating jaws stretching around sharp, white fangs, focused on Mac and growled again, I knew I’d just run out of time.

  I threw myself off the top of the car and onto the werewolf, who was still slowed by his ongoing change. I snapped at him to get his attention and caught his throat, still barren of the thick ruff designed to protect him from such an attack.

  I felt my eyeteeth snag flesh, and blood spurted, pushed by his heart and the increased blood pressure that accompanies the change. It wasn’t a mortal wound—werewolves heal too fast—but it should slow him down, giving me a head start while he bound the wound.

  Only he didn’t stop.

  He was hot on my heels as I dashed past Stefan’s bus, across the alley that allowed access to my garage bays, and leapt over the chain-link fence surrounding the Sav U More Self-Storage facility. If he’d been in full wolf form, he’d have cleared the fence easier than I did, but he was hampered by his awkward shape and had to stop and t
ear through the fence instead.

  Spurred by hunting-rage, he was faster than I was, even on two legs. He shouldn’t have been. I’ve outrun my share of werewolves, and I knew I was faster than they were; but no one had told him that. He was catching up to me. I jumped back over the fence because it had slowed him down the first time.

  If there had been homes nearby, the impatient, frustrated whines the werewolf made as it was forced to stop and rip the chain-link fence again would have had the police on their way, but the nearest residences were blocks away. The thought reminded me that I needed to worry about innocent bystanders as well as Mac and myself.

  I reversed my direction, running down the road back toward the garage, intent on leading the werewolf away from town rather than into it. But before I reached the garage, my pursuer tripped and fell to the street.

  I thought at first that the change had taken him completely, but no werewolf rose on all fours to continue the chase. I slowed, then stopped where I was and listened, but all I could hear was my heart pounding with fear.

  He was almost finished with the change, his face entirely wolf though his fur had not yet begun to cover him. His hands, lying limply on the blacktop, were distorted, too thin, with an inhuman distance between his fingers and his thumb. His nails were thickened and had begun to come to a point at the tips. But he wasn’t moving.

  Shaking with the need to run, I forced myself to approach him. I waited for him to jump up and grab me the way they always do in the late-night movies, but he just lay there, smelling of blood and adrenaline.

  A trail of liquid stretched out behind him as if he were a car that had blown a radiator hose and slung antifreeze all over the road—but the liquid that glistened under the streetlamp was blood.

  Only then did it occur to me that I did not hear the thrum of his heart or the whisper of his breath.