Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  I wasn’t immune. I took a step forward without watching the ground and stumbled over a stick. I caught my balance, but the jerky move set off the pain in my arm—and the pain cleared my head like a dose of ammonia. I wiped my watering eyes with the back of my wrist and felt the unmistakable surge of witchcraft.

  Heedless of Adam’s magic and my arm, I started running, because, in the night air, thick with power, I felt the spell gathering death and it bore Adam’s name.

  I couldn’t take the time to find the witch; the spell was already set in motion. All I could do was throw myself in front of the spell, just as Ben had thrown himself in front of the dart.

  I don’t know why it worked. Someone told me later that it shouldn’t have. Once a spell is given a name, it’s sort of like a guided missile rather than a laser beam. It should have moved around me and still hit Adam.

  It hit me, brushed through me like a stream of feathers, making me shiver and gasp. Then it paused, and, as if it were a river of molten iron and I a magnet, all the magic flowed back into me. It was death-magic and it whispered to me, Adam Hauptman.

  It held a voice. Not Elizaveta’s voice, but it was someone I knew: a man. The witch wasn’t Elizaveta at all—it was her grandson Robert.

  My knees bowed under the weight of Robert’s voice and under the stress of taking upon myself Adam’s name so that the magic stopped with me. My lungs felt as if I were breathing fire and I knew that my interference couldn’t last for long.

  “Sam,” I whispered. And as if my voice had conjured him from thin air he was suddenly in front of me. I’d expected him to be in wolf form like everyone else, but he wasn’t.

  He cupped my hot face in his hands. “What’s wrong, Mercy?”

  “Witch,” I said and I saw comprehension in his eyes.

  “Where is she?”

  I shook my head and panted. “Robert. It’s Robert.”

  “Where?” he asked again.

  I thought I was going to tell him I didn’t know, but my arm raised up and pointed at the rooftop of the boarded-up house. “There.”

  Samuel was gone.

  As if my gesture had somehow done something, the flow of magic increased fivefold. I collapsed completely, pressing my face against the cold dirt in hopes of keeping the fire burning inside of me from consuming my skin. I closed my eyes and I could see Robert, crouched on the roof.

  He’d lost something of his handsomeness, his face twisted with effort and his skin mottled with reddish splotches.

  “Mercedes.” He breathed my name to his spell and I could feel it change like a bloodhound given a different handkerchief to sniff. “Mercedes Thompson.”

  Mercedes, whispered the spell, satisfied. He’d given death my name.

  I screamed as pain rushed through me, making the earlier agony from my arm pale in comparison. Even in the consuming fire, though, I heard a song. I realized there was a rhythm to Robert’s spell, and I found myself moving with it, humming the tune softly. The music filled my lungs, then my head, banking the fire for a moment while I waited.

  And then Samuel stopped the magic for me.

  I think I passed out for a little while because suddenly I was in Samuel’s arms.

  “They’re all here, but for one,” he said.

  “Yes.” Adam’s voice still held the moon’s power.

  I struggled and Samuel set me down. I still had to lean against him, but I was on my feet. Samuel, Adam, and I were the only ones on our feet.

  There couldn’t have been as many as it looked like. The Columbia Basin Pack is not that big, and Gerry’s pack was much smaller—but all of them were sitting on the ground like a platoon of Sphinxes awaiting Adam’s order.

  “Two of the lone wolves, older and more dominant, ran when you first called,” Samuel said. “The rest answered. They’re yours now. All you have to do is call Gerry.”

  “He won’t come,” Adam said. “He can’t leave. That much I can do. But he’s not a lone wolf. He belongs to the Marrok.”

  “Will you let me help?”

  The moon caught Adam’s eyes and, although he was still human, his eyes were all wolf. I could smell his reaction to Samuel’s question. A low growl rose over the waiting werewolves as they smelled it, too. Wolves are territorial.

  Adam stretched his neck and I heard it pop. “I would appreciate it,” he said mildly.

  Samuel reached out his hand and Adam took it. He straightened and lifted his face to the moon once more. “Gerry Wallace of the Marrok Pack, I call you to come and face your accusers.”

  He must have been very close, because it didn’t take him long. Like Samuel, he had stayed in human form. He paused at the edge of the wolves.

  “Gerry, old friend,” said Samuel. “It’s time. Come here.”

  The gentle words didn’t hide their power from me—or from Gerry. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled through the motionless wolves, his head down submissively. He wasn’t fighting anymore.

  He stopped when he neared us. I thought he’d be angry—as I would have been if someone had forced me against my will. Or maybe frightened. But I’m not a werewolf. The only emotion I could catch was resignation. He’d lost and he knew it.

  Adam crouched until he sat on his heels and put his hand on Gerry’s shoulder.

  “Why?”

  “It was my father,” Gerry said. His face was calm and his voice dreamy, firmly held in the moon’s call. “He was dying. Cancer, they said. I talked and talked. I begged and pleaded. Please, Papa, being a wolf is a wonderful thing. I think he was just tired of me when he agreed. Bran did it—because I couldn’t bear it. And at first it was perfect. The cancer went away, and he could run.”

  “I heard,” Adam said. “He couldn’t control the wolf.”

  “Wouldn’t.” It was eerie hearing that peaceful tone while tears slid down Gerry’s face. “Wouldn’t. He had been a vegetarian, and suddenly he craved raw meat. He tried to set a bird’s wing, and it died of fear of the thing he’d become. Bran said being a werewolf was breaking my father’s heart. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—embrace what he was because he didn’t want to be a predator. He didn’t want to be like me.”

  Adam frowned at him. “I thought you were trying to keep Bran from exposing us to the humans.”

  Gerry wiped his face. “Bran said if my father was not so dominant, he would not have been able to resist the wolf. But the more he resists, the less control he has. He almost killed my sister.”

  “Gerry.” Samuel’s voice was firm. “What does this have to do with Adam?”

  Gerry lifted his head. He couldn’t meet Samuel’s eyes, or Adam’s, so he looked at me. “When you fight,” he said, “the wolf and the man become one. It would only take once. Just once and my father would be whole.”

  “He didn’t want Adam to fight Bran,” I said suddenly. “Did you, Gerry? That’s why you weren’t concerned with all the silver your men were pumping into him. Did you want to kill him?”

  He looked at me with his father’s eyes and said, “Adam had to die.”

  “You don’t care about Bran’s decision to expose the werewolves, do you?” asked Samuel.

  Gerry smiled at him. “I’ve been arguing for it ever since the fae came out. But I needed money to set my plan up, and there are a lot of wolves who don’t want to come out in public view—and they were willing to pay for it.”

  It was suddenly clear. And Samuel was right. Gerry wasn’t stupid: he was brilliant.

  “Buying new werewolves from Leo in Chicago, the drug experiments, the attack on Adam’s house; they were all intended to do two things,” I said. “To show Bran that you were behind them all, and to prove to your father that you weren’t.”

  He nodded.

  “Adam had to die,” I said, feeling my way. “But you couldn’t kill him. That’s why you left him to the mercies of your werewolves when he was still drugged. That’s why you stayed away from the warehouse, hoping that your men would pump enough silver into Adam to
kill him.”

  “Yes. He had to die and not by my hand. I had to be able to look my father in the eye and tell him that I hadn’t killed Adam.”

  I was shivering because it was cold and my arm, which had been surprisingly quiet for the past few minutes, began to hurt again. “It wasn’t Adam you wanted to fight Bran, it was your father. You were counting on Bran going to your father as soon as he figured out what you were doing.”

  “My father called me this afternoon,” Gerry said. “Bran had asked him about the tranquilizer and told him that I might be behind the attacks on Adam. My father knows I want the wolves to quit hiding. He knows how I feel about animal experimentation and the way some Alphas exploit some of our new wolves. He knows I’d never try to kill Adam.”

  “If Adam died, my father would tell yours before he came here to kill you,” Samuel said.

  Gerry laughed. “I don’t think so. I think Bran would have come here and killed me for my crimes. I hoped he would. I have killed too many innocents. But when he told my father what I had done, my father wouldn’t believe him.”

  “Believing the Marrok had you executed for something you didn’t do, Carter would challenge him.” Samuel sounded almost admiring. “And my father couldn’t refuse the challenge.”

  “What if Bran talked to Dr. Wallace first?” I asked.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.” Gerry sounded certain. “Either to protect me or avenge me, my father would challenge Bran. Even before he was wolf, my father was the Marrok’s man. He respects him and trusts him. Bran’s betrayal, and Dad would see it like that, could have only one answer. Only Bran could unite my father, wolf and man, against him—Dad loves him. If Dad and his wolf face Bran in a fight, they will do it as one being: Bran told me that it would only take that one time for my father to be safe.”

  “If Dr. Wallace challenged Bran, Bran would kill him,” said Adam.

  “Witches are expensive,” whispered Gerry. “But there are a lot of wolves who want to hide and they gave me money so they could keep their secrets.”

  “You were paying Robert, Elizaveta’s son. He’d do something to ensure your father’s victory.” I’d thought Robert was doing it for money. I just hadn’t realized he would be getting it so directly.

  “They’d be looking for drugs,” said Gerry. “But no one except another witch can detect magic.”

  “I can,” I told him. “Robert’s been taken care of. If your father challenges Bran, it won’t be Bran who dies.”

  He sagged a little. “Then, as a favor to me, Samuel, would you ask Bran to make certain my father never finds out about this? I don’t want to cause him any more pain than I already have.”

  “Do you have any more questions?” Samuel asked Adam.

  Adam shook his head and got to his feet. “Is he your wolf tonight or mine?”

  “Mine,” said Samuel stepping forward.

  Gerry looked up at the moon where she hung above us. “Please,” he said. “Make it quick.”

  Samuel pushed his fingers through Gerry’s hair, a gentle, comforting touch. His mouth was tight with sorrow: if a submissive wolf’s instinct is to bow to authority, a dominant’s is to protect.

  Samuel moved so fast that Gerry could not have known what was happening. With a quick jerk, Samuel used his healer’s hands to snap Gerry’s neck.

  I handed Adam my gun so I had a hand free. Then I took out Zee’s dagger and I handed it to Samuel.

  “It’s not silver,” I said, “but it will do the job.”

  I watched as Samuel made certain Gerry stayed dead. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary. I wouldn’t lessen the moment by looking away.

  “I’ll call Bran as soon as I have a phone,” he said, cleaning the dagger his pants leg. “He’ll make sure that Dr. Wallace never knows what happened to his son.”

  A few hours later, Bran and Carter Wallace took a run in the forest. Bran said the moonlight sparkled on the crystals of the crusted snow that broke beneath their dancing paws. They crossed a frozen lake bed and surprised a sleeping doe, who flashed her white tail and disappeared into the underbrush as they ran by. He told me that the stars covered the sky, so far from city lights, like a blanket of golden glitter.

  Sometime before the sun’s first pale rays lit the eastern sky, the wolf who had been Carter Wallace went to sleep, curled up next to his Alpha, and never woke up again.

  Samuel hadn’t killed Robert, so we turned him over to his grandmother: a fate he did not seem to think was much of an improvement. Elizaveta Arkadyevna was not pleased with him. I wasn’t altogether sure that she was unhappy with his betrayal of Adam or with his getting caught.

  Samuel decided to stay in the Tri-Cities for a while. He’s been spending most of his free time on the paperwork involved in getting his medical license extended to Washington. Until then, he’s working at the same Stop And Rob where Warren works—and he seems to like it just fine.

  Bran didn’t, of course, throw his wolves to the world and abandon them there. He is not one of the Gray Lords to force people out of hiding who don’t want to come. So most of the werewolves are still staying hidden, even though Bran found his poster child.

  You can’t turn on the TV or open the newspaper without seeing a picture of the man who penetrated a terrorist camp to find a missionary and his family who had been kidnapped.

  The missionary and his wife had been killed already, but there were three children who were rescued. There’s a color photograph that made the cover of one of the news magazines. It shows David Christiansen cuddling the youngest child—a little blond-haired toddler with the bruise of a man’s fingers clearly visible on her porcelain skin. Her face is turned into his shoulder, and he is looking at her with an expression of such tenderness that it brings tears to my eyes. But the best part of the picture is the boy who is standing beside him, his face pale, dirty. When I first saw it, I thought he just looked numb, as if his experiences had been too great to be borne, but then I noticed that his hand is tucked inside of David’s and the boy’s knuckles are white with the grip he has on the man’s big fingers.

  chapter 16

  Because there isn’t much a mechanic with a broken arm can do besides get in the way, Zee sent me to the office to work on my paperwork. I didn’t get much done there either, but at least—as Zee put it—I wasn’t whining at him.

  He wouldn’t tell me anything about his dagger or who Adelbert was and why he needed smiting—and I hadn’t been able to find it on the Internet, either. When I got persistent, Zee told me he liked the modern era, with its steel and electricity, better than the old days because there was more for a Metallzauber, a gremlin, to do than build swords to kill other folk. Then he exiled me to the office and went back to fixing cars.

  I am right-handed, and it was my right arm that was broken. I couldn’t even use it to hold a piece of paper still because the doctor at the emergency room insisted I wear my arm strapped to my side. I even had to type on my computer using one hand—which made it painstakingly slow to do any work. So I used the computer to play Vegas-style solitaire and lost two thousand dollars of imaginary money, instead.

  It was probably not the best moment for Gabriel Sandoval to show up. I’d forgotten I’d told his mother to send him over Monday after school.

  He had to wait until I typed in their bill, then an hourly wage that looked fair to me. It would give him twenty hours to work off, though, and that seemed too much to me. So I added a couple of dollars an hour, until the time looked better.

  I printed it out and handed it to him. He looked it over and crossed off the salary and replaced it with the original one. “I’m not worth that yet,” he said. “But I will be by the end of the first month.”

  I reassessed him. He wasn’t tall, and he’d never be a big man, but there was something solid about him, as young as he was.

  “All right,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

  I showed him around the office, which took all of five minutes. Then I sat him
down at the computer and ran him through my inventory program and my billing system. When he seemed to have the hang of it, I gave him my stacks of paperwork and left him to it.

  I walked back into the shop and tilted my thumb at the office when Zee looked up.

  “I think I’ve found Tad’s replacement,” I told him. “I gave him my paperwork, and he didn’t even growl at me.”

  Zee raised his eyebrows. “Tad never growled at you.”

  “ ‘Damn it, Mercy, can’t you remember to give me the bills the day you get them?’ ” I quoted in my best crabby-Tad voice.

  “You’d think someone raised around werewolves would know the difference between growling and swearing,” Zee observed. He put down his wrench and sighed. “I’m worried about that boy. You know he got that scholarship so they could have their token fae to tow around and point out.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “They’ll never know what hit them.”

  “You think he’s all right?”

  “I can’t imagine a place where Tad wouldn’t be all right. Nothing scares him, nothing bothers him, and he’s frighteningly competent at whatever he chooses to do.” I patted Zee on the back. I enjoyed watching him play nervous father. This was a conversation we’d been having since Tad left for Harvard. I kept track of them and e-mailed Tad with a count once a week.

  I heard the office door open and waved Zee to silence so we could listen to how my new office lackey dealt with customers.

  “Can I help you?” he said in a smooth, dark voice that surprised me. I hadn’t expected him to flirt.

  But then I heard Jesse say, “I’m here looking for Mercy—she didn’t tell me she had someone new working for her.”

  There was a short pause, then Gabriel said in a sharp voice, “Who hit you?”

  Jesse laughed and said lightly, “Don’t worry. My dad saw the bruise, and the person who hit me is dead now.”

  “Good.” Gabriel sounded as though he wouldn’t have minded if it had been the truth. Which it was.