Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  He left.

  I curled up on the floor and hugged my misery to me—along with the fairy staff. The oakman stirred.

  “Mercy, what is it that you have?”

  I raised one hand and waved it feebly in the air so he could see it. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it should.

  There was a little pause, and the Oakman said, reverently, “How did that come to be here?”

  “It’s not my fault,” I told him. It took me a moment to sit up ... and I realized that Blackwood had been much more in control of himself than he appeared because nothing was broken. There wasn’t much of me that wasn’t bruised—but not broken was good.

  “What do you mean?” the oakman asked.

  “I tried to give it back,” I explained, “but it keeps showing up. I told it that this wasn’t a good place for it, but it leaves for a while, then comes back.”

  “By your leave,” he said formally, “may I see it?”

  “Sure,” I said, and tried to throw it to him. I should have been able to do it. The distance between our cages was less than ten feet, but the ... bruises made it more difficult than normal.

  It landed on the floor halfway between us. But as I stared at it in dismay, it rolled back toward me, not stopping until it was against the cage bars.

  The third time I threw it, the oakman caught it out of the air.

  “Ah, Lugh, you did such fine work,” he crooned, petting the thing. He rested a cheek against it. “It follows you because it owes you service, Mercy.” He smiled, awakening lines and wrinkles in the dark-wood-colored face and brightening his black eyes to purple. “And because it likes you.”

  I started to say something to him, but a surge of magic interrupted me.

  The oakman’s smile drained away. “Brownie magic,” he told me. “He seeks to lock the other vampire out. The brownie was His before me, and she found her release just this past spring. His use of her power is still nearly complete.” He looked over at Corban. “The magic he works will leave him hungry.”

  I had one thing I could do—and it meant abandoning my word to Stefan. But I couldn’t let Blackwood kill Corban without making any attempt to defend him.

  I stripped out of my clothes and shifted. The bars in my cage were set close together. But, I hoped, not too close.

  Coyotes are narrow side to side. Very narrow. Anything I can get my head through, I can get everything else through, too. When I stood on the other side of my cage, I shook my fur straight and watched the door open.

  Blackwood wasn’t watching for me, he was looking at Corban. So I got in the first strike.

  Speed is the one physical power I have. I’m as fast as most werewolves—and from what I’ve seen, most vampires, too.

  I should have been weakened and a little slow because of the damage Blackwood had dealt me—and the lack of real food and because I’d been feeding the vampire. Except that exchanging blood with a vampire can have other effects. I’d forgotten that. It made me strong.

  I wished, fiercely, that I weighed a couple of hundred pounds instead of just over thirty. Wished for longer fangs and sharper claws—because all I could do was surface damage he healed almost as soon as I inflicted it.

  He grabbed me in both hands and threw me at the cement wall. It seemed as though I flew in slow motion. There was time to twist and hit on my feet instead of my side as he’d intended. There was power to vault off unhurt and hit the ground, already running back to attack.

  This time, though, I didn’t have surprise on my side. If I’d been running from him, he couldn’t have caught me. But up close, the advantage of superior speed lost out to the disadvantage of my size. I hurt him once, digging my fangs into his shoulder, but I was looking for a kill—and there was just no way a coyote, no matter how fast or strong, could kill a vampire.

  I dodged back, looking for an opening ... and he fell face-first on the cement floor. Standing like a victory flag, stuck deep into Blackwood’s back, was the walking stick.

  “Fair spearman was I once,” the oakman said. “And Lugh was better still. Nothing he built but what couldn’t become a spear when needed.”

  Panting, I stared at him, then down at Blackwood. Who wiggled.

  I shifted back to human because I could deal with doors better that way. Then I ran for the kitchen where, hopefully, there would be a knife big enough to go through bone.

  The wooden block beside the sink yielded both a butcher knife and a large French chef’s knife. I grabbed one in each hand and ran down the stairs.

  The door was shut and the knob wouldn’t turn. “Let me in,” I ordered in a voice I hardly recognized as mine.

  “No. No,” said John’s voice. “You can’t kill him. I’ll be alone.”

  But the door opened, and that was all I cared about.

  I didn’t see John, but Catherine was kneeling beside Blackwood. She spared a glare for me, but she was paying more attention to the dying (I fervently hoped) vampire.

  “Let me drink, dear,” she crooned to him. “Let me drink, and I’ll take care of her for you.”

  He looked at me as he tried to get his arms underneath him. “Drink,” he said. Then he smiled at me.

  With a crow of triumph she bent her head.

  She was still drinking when the butcher knife swooshed through her insubstantial head and cut cleanly through Blackwood’s neck. An axe would have been better, but with his strength still lingering in my arms, the butcher knife got the job done. A second cut took his head completely off.

  His head touched my toes, and I edged them away. A knife in either hand, I had no chance to feel triumphant or sick at what I’d done. Not with a very solid Catherine smiling her grandmotherly smile only six feet from me.

  She smiled, her mouth red with Blackwood’s blood. “Die,” she said, and reached out—

  Last year Sensei spent six months on sai forms. The knives weren’t so well-balanced for fighting, but they worked. It was a butcher’s job I made of it—and I managed it only by clinging fiercely to the here and now. The floors, the walls, and I were all drenched in blood. And she wasn’t dead ... or rather she was dead already. The knives kept her off me, but none of the wounds seemed to affect her at all.

  “Throw me the stick,” said the oakman softly.

  I dropped the French chef’s knife and grabbed the staff with my free hand. It slid out of Blackwood’s back as if it didn’t want to be there. For a moment I thought that the end was a sharp point, but my attention was focused on Catherine and I couldn’t be sure.

  I tossed it to the Oakman and drove Catherine away from Corban’s cage. He’d collapsed when I’d cut off Blackwood’s head in a motion not unlike Amber’s zombie. I hoped he wasn’t dead—but there wasn’t anything I could do about it if he was.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the oakman lick the blood-covered stick with a tongue at least eight inches long. “Death blood is best,” he told me. And then he flung the stick at the outside wall, and said a word ...

  The blast knocked me off my feet and onto Blackwood’s corpse. Something hit me in the back of the head.

  I STARED AT THE POOL OF SUNLIGHT THAT COVERED MY hand. It took me a moment to realize that whatever had hit me must have knocked me out. Under my hand was a thick pile of ash, and I jerked away. Buried in the ash was a key. It was a pretty key, one of those ornate skeleton keys. It took all my willpower to put my hand back into what had been Blackwood and pick it up. I hurt from head to heels, but the bruises the vampire had inflicted after Chad escaped were mostly gone. And the others were fading as I watched.

  I didn’t want to think about that too much.

  The oakman had a hand stretched though the bars, but he hadn’t been able to touch the sunlight streaming into the basement from the hole he’d blasted in the wall with my walking stick. His eyes were closed.

  I opened the cage, but he didn’t move. I had to drag him out. I didn’t pay attention to whether or not he was breathing. Or I tried very hard not to
. So what if he wasn’t, I thought. Fae are very hard to kill.

  “Mercy?” It was Corban.

  I stared at him a moment, trying to figure out what to do next.

  “Could you unlock my door?” His voice was soft and gentle. The sort of voice you’d use on a madwoman.

  I looked down at myself and realized that I was naked and covered with blood from head to toe. The butcher knife was still in my left hand. My hand had cramped around it, and I had to work to drop it on the floor.

  The key unlocked Corban’s door, too.

  “Chad’s with some friends of mine,” I told him. My voice slurred a bit, and I recognized that I was a little shocky. The realization helped me a little, and my voice was clearer when I told him, “The kinds of friends who might be able to protect a boy from a vampire run amok.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “You were unconscious a long time. How are you feeling?”

  I gave him a tired smile. “My head hurts.”

  “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  He led me up the stairs. I didn’t think that I should have grabbed my clothes until I stood alone in a huge, gold-and-black bathroom. I turned the shower on.

  “John,” I said. I didn’t bother looking for him because I could feel him. “You will never harm anyone again.” I felt the push of magic that told me whatever it was I could do to ghosts had worked on him. So I added, “And get out of this bathroom,” for good measure.

  I scrubbed myself raw and wrapped myself in a towel big enough for three of me. When I came out, Corban was pacing in the hall in front of the bathroom.

  “Who do you call about something like this?” he asked. “It doesn’t look good. Blackwood is missing; Amber is dead—probably buried in the backyard. I’m a lawyer, and if I were my own client, I’d advise myself to avoid trial, plead guilty, and do reduced time if I could get it.”

  He was scared.

  It finally occurred to me that we’d survived. Blackwood and his sweet grandmotherly vampire ghost were gone. Or at least I hoped she was gone. There wasn’t a second pile of ashes in the basement.

  “Did you notice the other vampire?” I asked him.

  He gave me a blank look. “Other vampire?”

  “Never mind,” I told him. “I expect the sunlight killed her.”

  I got up and found a phone on a small table in the corner of the living room. I dialed Adam’s cell phone.

  “Hey,” I said. It sounded like I’d been smoking cigars all night.

  “Mercy?” And I knew I was safe.

  I sat on the floor. “Hey.” I said again.

  “Chad told us where you are,” he told me. “We’re about twenty minutes away.”

  “Chad told you?” Stefan would still be unconscious, I’d known. It just hadn’t occurred to me that Chad could tell them where we were. Stupid me. All he’d have needed was a piece of paper.

  “Chad’s all right?” asked Corban urgently.

  “Fine,” I told him. “And he’s leading the cavalry here.”

  “It sounds like we’re not needed,” said Adam.

  I needed him.

  “Blackwood is dead,” I told Adam.

  “I thought so, since you are calling me,” Adam said.

  “If it weren’t for the oakman, it might have been bad,” I told him. “And I think the oakman is dead.”

  “All honor to him, then,” said Samuel’s voice. “To die killing one of the dark-bound evils is not a bad thing, Mercy. Chad asks after his father.”

  I wiped my face and gathered my thoughts. “Tell Chad he’s fine. We’re both fine.” I watched bruises fade from my legs. “Could you ... could you stop at a convenience store and buy a yellow toy car for me? Bring it with you when you come?”

  There was a little pause. “A yellow toy car?” asked Adam.

  “That’s right.” I remembered something else. “Adam, Corban’s worried that the police will think he’s killed Amber-and probably Blackwood, though there won’t be any body.”

  “Trust me,” said Adam. “We’ll fix it for everyone.”

  “All right,” I told him. “Thank you.” And then I thought a little more. “The vampires will want Chad and Corban gone. They know too much.”

  “You and Stefan and the pack are the only ones who know that,” said Adam. “The pack doesn’t care, and Stefan won’t betray them.”

  “Hey,” I told him lightly—pressing the handset into my face until it almost hurt. “I love you.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I LEFT CORBAN SITTING IN THE LIVING ROOM AND WALKED reluctantly down the stairs. I didn’t want to know for sure that the oakman was dead. I didn’t want to confront Catherine if she was still about ... and I thought she would have killed me if she could have. But I also didn’t want to be naked when Adam came.

  The oakman was gone. I decided that it must be a good thing. The fae didn’t—as far as I knew—turn into dust and blow away when they died. So if he wasn’t here, that meant he’d left.

  “Thank you,” I whispered because he wasn’t there to hear me. Then I put my clothes on and ran up the stairs to wait for rescue with Corban.

  When Adam came, he had the yellow car I’d asked him for. It was a one-sixteenth scale model of a VW bug. He watched as I took it out of the package and followed me down the stairs and set it on the bed in the small room where I’d first woken up.

  “It’s for you,” I said.

  No one answered me.

  “Are you going to tell me what that was about?” Adam asked as we went back upstairs.

  “Sometime,” I told him. “When we’re telling ghost stories around a campfire, and I want to scare you.”

  He smiled, and his arm tightened around my shoulders. “Let’s go home.”

  I closed my hand on the lamb necklace I’d found on the table next to the phone, as if someone had left it for me to find.

  13

  THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY WE PAINTED THE GARAGE. True to his word, Wulfe had removed the crossed bones. The least he could have done was repaint the door, but he’d managed to remove the bones and leave the graffiti that had covered them alone. I thought he’d done it just to bug me.

  Gabriel’s sisters had voted for pink as the new color and were very disappointed when I insisted on white. So I told them they could paint the door pink.

  It’s a garage. What can it hurt?

  “It’s a garage,” I told Adam, who was looking at the Day-Glo pink door. “What can it hurt?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “It makes me squint, even in the dark, Mercy. Hey, I know what I can get you for your next birthday,” he said. “A set of open-end wrenches in pink or purple. Leopard print, maybe.”

  “You have me confused with my mother,” I said with dignity. “The door was painted with cheap spray paint—as no reputable paint company had anything this gaudy in their color palette. Give it a couple weeks, and it’ll turn this sickly orangish pink color. Then I can hire them to paint it brown or green.”

  “Police have searched Blackwood’s house,” Adam told me. “They haven’t found any sign of Blackwood or Amber. Officially, they believe Amber might have run off with Blackwood.” He sighed. “I know that it tarnishes Amber unfairly, but it was the best story we could come up with and still leave her husband in the clear.”

  “The people who matter know,” I told him. Amber didn’t have any immediate family she cared for. In a few months, I was tentatively planning a trip to Mesa, Arizona, where Char was living. I’d tell her, because Char was the only other person Amber would care about. “No one is going to get into trouble about this, are they?”

  “The people who matter know,” he answered with a faint smile. “Unofficially, Blackwood scared the bejeebers out of a lot of people who are glad to see him gone. No one will take it further.”

  “Good.” I touched the bright white wall next to the door. It looked better. I hoped that it wouldn’t scare away customers. People are funny. My customers look at my run-do
wn-appearing garage and know they are saving the money I don’t put into face-lifts.

  Tim’s cousin Courtney had paid for all of the paint and labor in return for my dropping the charges against her. I figured she had been hurt enough.

  “I heard you and Zee worked out something on the garage.”

  I nodded. “I have to repay him immediately—he said so, and he is fae so it must be done. He’s going to loan me the money to do it at the same interest rate as the original loan.”

  He grinned and opened the pink door so I could precede him inside. “So you’re paying him the same amount as before?”

  “Uncle Mike came up with it, and it made Zee happy.” Amused him was more like it. All the fae have a strange sense of humor.

  Stefan was sitting on my stool by the cash register. He’d spent two nights unmoving in Adam’s basement, then disappeared without a word to either Adam or me.

  “Hey, Stefan,” I said.

  “I came to tell you that we no longer share a bond,” he told me stiffly. “Blackwood broke it.”

  “When?” I asked. “He didn’t have time. You answered my call—and it wasn’t very long after that when Blackwood died.”

  “I imagine when he fed from you again,” Stefan said. “Because when Adam called me to tell me you’d disappeared, I couldn’t find you at all.”

  “Then how did you manage to find me?” I asked.

  “Marsilia.”

  I looked at his face, but I couldn’t read how much it had cost him to ask for her help. Or what she’d demanded in return.

  “You didn’t tell me,” Adam said. “I’d have gone with you.”

  The vampire smiled grimly. “Then she would have told me nothing.”

  “She knew where Blackwood denned?” Adam asked.

  “That’s what I hoped.” Stefan picked up a pen and played with it. I must have used it last because his fingers acquired a little black grease for his trouble. “But no. What she did know was that Mercy had a message for me with a blood-and-wax seal. Her blood. She could track the message. Since it was just outside of Spokane, we were both pretty sure Mercy still had it with her.”