Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  Andre opened his eyes and looked up.

  I expected his eyes to be glowing, as Daniel’s had been. Instead they were intent. Like Adam’s had been, his eyes were focused on Stefan.

  Littleton was muttering in Andre’s hair, his eyes closed. So I took a chance and shifted my body just a little, drawing Andre’s gaze. When he looked at me, I moved an inch more so he could see the stake.

  He closed his eyes again, then, abruptly let Littleton’s arm fall away and he rolled to his hands and knees, somehow managing to shift so that Littleton was between us, his back toward me.

  “Blood is life,” said Andre in a voice I’d never heard him use. It drifted through the room like a mist and settled on my skin. “Blood is death.”

  “Yes.” Littleton sounded dazed and I remembered how it had felt when Stefan fed from me. Until that moment I’d almost forgotten he had fed from me.

  Littleton, unconcerned by my fears, said, “Blood is the life and the death.”

  “Who commands death?” Andre asked his voice calling for a response that my mouth wanted to form.

  Littleton came up to his knees and I could see the imprint of his spine on the back of his shirt. “I do!” he shrieked. He reached over and grabbed Andre under the jaw and pulled the vampire where he wanted him. He bit down right over the top of the wounds he’d made in Andre’s neck earlier.

  It was the best chance I was going to get. I tried to surge to my feet and almost fell. One of my ankles wouldn’t hold any weight, though it didn’t hurt.

  I didn’t have far to go.

  Bent over Andre, Littleton’s ribs were clearly outlined on his shirt. Someone should tell him that thin people shouldn’t wear fabrics that cling. I picked a spot between the delicate, arching bones, just to the left of his spine, and struck with my whole body, just as Sensei had taught me to hit.

  If my ankle had been working, I might have managed it. Training worked against me and I instinctively tried to use my weight to help push the sharpened wood through. My leg collapsed under me and the stake only went in an inch before it stuck between his ribs instead of breaking through them.

  Littleton jerked to his feet with an outraged cry. He struck out blindly, just missing me because I was already rolling away as fast as I could. Luckily I was faster than the vampire. I rolled until I bumped against the car battery powering the light.

  “Bitch,” Littleton hissed.

  I felt my neck, but my sheep necklace was gone, lost when he’d thrown me across the room. While I was fumbling, the sorcerer leapt at me.

  Andre grabbed him around the middle and they both crashed to the ground just short of me. Littleton managed to put Andre on the bottom and I saw that the stake was still embedded in his back.

  I grabbed the car battery by its plastic handle and hefted it in my right hand. Grunting with the effort, I raised it above the struggling vampires and brought it down on the end of the stake.

  The light, still attached to the battery, crashed to the floor, leaving the room in darkness once more. This time I had trouble seeing clearly—the benefits of Stefan’s blood were fading.

  I twisted until I could free Zee’s knife from its sheath. It took more effort than it should have.

  Littleton had gone limp, his body flopped over faceup when Andre pushed him off. The stake had gone all the way through Littleton and protruded several inched through his chest. It had sliced into Andre, just above his collarbone, but he didn’t seem to mind. He lay flat on his back and laughed, though he didn’t sound happy.

  The pain was back with interest, making me nauseous and light-headed. I swallowed bile and sat up using my good arm to push down and lever myself into a useful position. The knife in my hand clicked on the floor.

  I’d killed mice, rabbits, and, once, a deer while running as a coyote. I’d killed two men—three, now. It didn’t help me face the next task. Bryan, my foster father, used to hunt, both as a wolf and with a gun. He and Evelyn, his wife, had butchered the meat while I wrapped it in freezer paper. I’d never had to cut up the carcass myself.

  Zee’s knife cut into Littleton’s neck with a wet slurping sound. I’d thought Littleton to be dead…deader than he’d been before, I mean. But as the knife slid in, his body began to spasm.

  The motion attracted Andre’s attention and he sat up, “What? No, wait!”

  His hand closed on mine hard enough to leave bruises, and he jerked my hand back. Littleton’s head flopped to the side. The effect was somehow more grisly than if the head had been completely severed.

  “Let go,” I said, almost not recognizing the hoarse croak as my own voice. I jerked my hand, but he wouldn’t release his grip.

  “Marsilia needs him. She can control him.”

  Metal fell with a loud crash: the sorcerer’s power was failing, allowing his prisoners to escape. Adam crouched beside me just a hair sooner than Samuel appeared on my other side. Both werewolves were snarling almost soundlessly and I knew, almost without looking at them that the human parts of them were gone, leaving only the predator behind.

  That the knowledge didn’t frighten me to death is a measure of how traumatized I was.

  “Let go of me,” I said again, this time softly so as not to alarm the werewolves who were quivering with eagerness and the smell of fresh blood. I wasn’t really sure why they hadn’t just attacked.

  Andre stared first at Adam, then at Samuel. I don’t know that he was trying to control them, but if he was, it didn’t work. Adam growled and Samuel whined eagerly and took a half step closer.

  Andre released my wrist. I didn’t wait any longer, pressing the knife through meat, gristle, and bone until Littleton’s head rolled free and the knife cut into the linoleum.

  I’d been wrong: it was worse when the head was all the way severed.

  Throw up later, I thought. Destroy the body now.

  The backpack wasn’t more than a body length from me, but I couldn’t find the energy to get to it.

  “What do you need?” asked Stefan who was crouched on the other side of the body, next to Andre. I hadn’t noticed that he’d left his cage, too—or that he’d moved at all. He was just suddenly in front of me.

  “The backpack,” I said.

  He got up like it hurt, and moved with none of his usual energy, returning with the backpack in hand. Both of the wolves stiffened when he held the pack out toward me, over Littleton’s body. Stefan was moving slowly because he was in bad shape—but it was probably a good thing. Making sudden moves around the werewolves would have been a bad idea, even if they had relaxed, just a bit, when I’d removed the sorcerer’s head.

  As I reached out to take the pack, Andre spoke again. “Marsilia needs him, Stefan. If she has a sorcerer at her beck and call, the others will have to cower in her presence.”

  “Marsilia can cow them on her own,” Stefan responded tiredly. “A sorcerer is not a comfortable pet. Marsilia has allowed greed to overcome her common sense.”

  The medallion wasn’t a very big item and it hid from my fingers. It was heavy though, so I finally managed to locate it in the bottom. I took it out and put it on Littleton’s chest.

  “What is that?” asked Stefan.

  Rather than answering him, I leaned over Littleton’s chest and whispered, “Drachen.” Burn you bastard, burn.

  The metal disk started to glow cherry red. For a moment I thought that was all it would do. But after a moment the body burst into flame, the almost-invisible blue flame of a Bunsen burner with the gas adjusted perfectly. I had a moment to wonder at the suddenness of it, then Stefan leapt over the body, grabbed me under the arms and pulled me back before I was caught up in the hungry flames.

  His grip reminded me I had an injured shoulder in the worst way. The sudden pain was so intense I screamed.

  “Shh,” said Stefan ignoring the werewolves who were eyeing him with hungry eyes. “It’ll settle down in a minute.”

  He sat me down and put my head between my knees. His hands were st
ill cold, like those of a corpse. Which he was.

  “Breathe,” he said.

  I couldn’t help a hiccoughing laugh at having a dead man tell me to breathe.

  “Mercy?” he asked.

  I was saved from trying to explain why I was laughing because the outside doors were pulled open with a screech of bending metal.

  Stefan turned to face this new threat, a werewolf on either side. Andre stood up as well. All of them kept me from seeing the doorway, but I could smell them.

  Darryl and two others. The frightened child inside my heart, unappeased by Littleton’s immolation, relaxed at last.

  “You’re late, Bran.” I told him as the light from the burning vampire flickered and died.

  It wasn’t the Marrok who answered me, but his second son, Charles. “I told Darryl he shouldn’t speed. If the police hadn’t pulled us over, we’d have been here ten minutes ago.”

  Bran walked by the vampires as if they didn’t exist. He touched Samuel and then Adam. “Charles has clothing for you,” he told them and they melted away into the darkness, presumably to change and get dressed. Bran’s presence did as much to allow them to regain enough control to change back to human as Littleton’s death had. His permanent death, I mean.

  The dim light from outside backlit Bran, so it was difficult to see his face.

  “You’ve been busy,” he said, his tone neutral.

  “No choice,” I told him. “Did you read the papers I left for you.” Do you know that all the villains aren’t ashes?

  “Yes,” Bran said, and something inside of me relaxed. He couldn’t know which of the vampires was Andre—but he’d manage, I knew.

  Uncaring of vampire dust—or whatever else of Littleton might be scattered about on the floor—Bran knelt in front of me so he could bend down and kiss my forehead.

  “It was a damned stupid thing to do,” he said in a voice so soft as to be almost inaudible.

  “I thought you couldn’t make it here until morning,” I said.

  “I hurried.” He put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Ouch,” I said, sinking farther down on the floor.

  “Samuel,” he called. “If you could manage to hurry a bit, I think you have a patient.”

  My shoulder was only out of joint and Samuel put it back as gently as he could. It still hurt like the blazes. I shuddered and shook, and managed not to throw up on anyone, while Adam, his voice harsh with barely controlled rage, told everyone what had happened after Andre and I showed up.

  Andre seemed stunned by Littleton’s death. Stefan knelt beside him with a hand on his shoulder and a wary eye on all the wolves stalking around.

  I waited until I was sure I could talk without sounding too shaky—and until Adam was finished speaking. Then I looked at Stefan and said, “Andre is the one who made Littleton.”

  Andre looked at me in shock, then threw his weight forward—I don’t know if he’d have attacked me, or just tried to run, but Stefan caught him. Before it turned into a real struggle, Charles and Darryl helped to hold him.

  “I was going to ask if you were certain,” Stefan said, releasing Andre to the werewolves who were obviously in better shape to hold the other vampire. “But Andre has answered that question himself.”

  “I have proof,” I told him.

  “I would like to see it,” Stefan said. “If only to present to the Mistress. Right now, though, is there a cell phone I might use to call my seethe? As much as I appreciate your help, Adam, I think that it would be a bad thing to bring your wolves into the seethe right now while tempers are still uncertain.”

  The vampires came and spirited Andre away. I had expected that Stefan would go with them, but he didn’t. Samuel insisted on bringing me to the hospital, though Charles and Darryl took Ben, who was in worse shape than I was, to Adam’s house in Darryl’s car.

  “How come I can’t just go home?” I whined. My shoulder ached and I just wanted to go to my bedroom and pull my blankets over my head.

  “Because you aren’t a werewolf,” Stefan said. “If your ankle is broken, you need a cast.”

  The werewolves who weren’t driving (Adam and Samuel) gave him cold looks. Bran had brought Adam’s SUV and being stuffed inside it with the three werewolves and the vampire was a new experience in testosterone. When Samuel and Adam had gotten into the back seat with me, Stefan had slipped into the front. Bran was continuing to ignore the vampire, so Stefan stayed.

  The five of us staggered into the emergency room. The only one remotely respectable was Bran, and he was carrying me. It wasn’t until we were under the intense lights of the hospital that I realized just how bad we looked. I was covered with blood, Stefan was covered in blood. His face was drawn and tired, though the expression on it was peaceful. I didn’t want to know what I looked like.

  Samuel, even in clean, fresh clothing, looked as though he’d spent a week on a wild binge and Adam…The nurse at the triage station took one look at Adam and hit the innocent-looking black button underneath her desk.

  It wasn’t the wear and tear that panicked her, but the look in his eyes. I know I was really glad that Bran was with us.

  “It’s all right, Elena.” Samuel managed a rough growl that only barely sounded human. “I’ll take them in.”

  She looked at him again and shock spread over her face. “Dr. Cornick?” She hadn’t recognized him when we’d come in.

  “Call the Kennewick police,” I told her. “Ask for Tony Montenegro. Tell him Mercy has some news for him if he can get his butt down here.”

  Samuel would be questioned by the hospital administrators, I thought. I didn’t know if he’d missed a shift or not, but they wouldn’t overlook him coming in with this crew. Police business would cover his rump—and I thought that Tony might benefit from seeing that the werewolves had taken his concerns seriously. It would also let the wolves know they had allies among the police here. People who could be trusted. That was important if they were ever to integrate into the citizenry.

  There were a few people in the waiting room and all of them stopped whatever they were doing to look at Adam. The smell of fear overpowered the scent of illness and blood. Even Bran stiffened a little under the flood of triggered scents.

  Samuel strolled right through the room, ignoring the woman who bravely came up to us to get insurance information.

  Bran paused before he followed Samuel through a pair of swinging doors. “Not to worry, my dear,” he told the woman gently. “Dr. Cornick will see to it that all the proper forms are filled out.”

  Tony walked into the emergency room as if he’d been there a time or two before. He was wearing civilian clothes, jeans and T-shirt, but the cheery-faced young man with him was in uniform.

  He strolled into my curtained cubicle and looked around. Samuel was off doing doctor stuff, but the others were all there. Stefan and I had scrubbed up. I was in one of those stupid hospital gowns, but Stefan’s clothes were still covered with blood. Bran sat on the doctor’s chair, slowly spinning it around, looking like a bored teenager. Like the people in the waiting room, Tony and his companion ignored Bran and watched Adam, who was leaning against a wall. Stefan was slumped in a corner and got a swift, assessing glance before the police both looked back at Adam.

  “Tony, this is Adam Hauptman, we were talking about him just the other day. Adam, this is my friend Tony.” I didn’t bother to introduce the others.

  Tony’s face froze and he stopped where he was. I guess he hadn’t recognized Adam from his newspaper pictures until I’d used his name. Adam’s publicity shot showed a conservative businessman. There was nothing conservative or businesslike about him tonight. Anger radiated off of him in waves even humans should be able to sense.

  “Hey, John,” Tony said casually, after quickly looking away from the Alpha. I guess the information sheet that had gone out on werewolves had explained that it was not a good idea to have a staring contest with one. “Why don’t you get both of us a cup of coffee.”
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br />   The other cop gave Tony a narrow-eyed look, but he only asked, “How long should I take?”

  Tony glanced at me. I shrugged and instantly regretted it. “This won’t take more than ten minutes.”

  When the other cop had gone, Tony pulled the curtains closed. It didn’t give us much privacy, but the cacophonous chatter of dozens of mysterious machines would mask whatever we had to say from human ears.

  “You look like death warmed over,” he told me.

  “It wasn’t at the police station,” I told him, too tired for our usual teasing. “But it wasn’t more than a half mile away.”

  “You found it.”

  “I killed it,” I said. “I think that you’ll find the nightlife will calm down a little from here on out.”

  Tony frowned. “It?”

  “Yes.” Stefan’s voice was weary. “Something that should never have been allowed to roam the streets. It was not murder, sir. It was self-defense.”

  “Don’t worry,” offered Bran meekly. “There isn’t a body.” Only because he’d noticed Littleton’s head lying around and we’d used Zee’s medallion to get rid of it, too. I’d forgotten all about it. Presumably it wouldn’t have done anything except scare the begeebers out of whoever found it—since the body was gone—but I was just as glad to have that last bit taken care of as well.

  Tony looked at Bran more closely. “Do I want to ask who you all are?”

  “No,” I told him.

  “So why did you call me in?” Tony asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer and Samuel pulled the curtains aside and stepped in, an X-ray in his hands.

  “Dr. Cornick,” Tony greeted him like an old friend—I supposed that cops might see a lot of emergency room doctors. Then something about the wariness of everyone in the room clued him in.

  “Samuel needs to have the shield of police business to hide behind,” I said before he could ask if Samuel was a werewolf, too.

  Tony frowned, taking a careful look at the people in the room—avoiding eye contact. “All right,” he said slowly. “You’re sure everything will get back to normal?”