"I'm sorry you're so stubborn," he said. But before he could get the gun up for a final, painful-if-not-fatal shot, Stefan appeared from somewhere and jerked the gun out of his hands. He swung it by the barrel into a rock, then handed the not-so-useful remains back to Bernard.
I waded out of the water and shook off over both of thembut neither reacted.
"What do you want?" asked Stefan coolly. I padded over to him and sat at his feet. He looked down at me and before Bernard could answer his first question, he said, "I smell blood. Did he hurt you?"
I opened my mouth and gave him a laughing look. I knew from experience that the couple of birdshot in my backside weren't deep, probably not even deep enough that they would need to be dug outfur has many advantages. I wasn't all that happy about it, but Stefan didn't have a wolf's understanding about body language. So I told him I was fine in a way he couldn't mistakeand my rump hurt when I wagged my tail.
He gave me a look that might, under other circumstances, have been doubtful. "Fine," he said, then looked over at Bernard, who was twirling the broken shotgun.
"Oh," said Bernard. "Is it my turn? You're through coddling your pretty new slave? Marsilia was certain that you were so fond of your last flock that you wouldn't have the stomach to replace them soon."
Stefan was very still. So angry he had even stopped breathing.
Bernard braced the shotgun on the ground and gripped it one-handed, butt upleaning on it as if it were one of those short canes that Fred Astaire used to dance with.
"You should have heard them screaming your name," he said. "Oh, I forgot, you did."
He braced himself for an attack that never came. Instead, Stefan folded his arms and relaxed. He even started breathing again, for which I was grateful.
Have you ever sat around while someone held their breath? For a while it doesn't bother you, but eventually you start holding your breath with them, willing them to breathe. It's one of those automatic reflexes. Fortunately, the only vampire I associate with much likes to talkso he breathes.
I sat at his side, trying to look harmless and cheerfulbut looking around for more vampires. There was one in the trees; she'd let herself be silhouetted briefly against the sky. There was no way to communicate what I'd seen to Stefan as there would have been with Adam. He'd have read the tilt of my head and the paw on his foot. Bernard's verbal attack hadn't had quite the effect he'd expected or at least been ready for. But that didn't seem to faze him. He smiled, showing his fangs. "She had only you left," he told Stefan. "Wulfe's been ours for months, and so was Andre. But he was afraid of you, so he wouldn't let us do anything." There was a world of frustration in the last two words, and he jerked up the gun, threw it casually over his shoulder, and began pacing.
For the first time, he looked to me like what he was. Somehow, before, he'd always looked like an extra from a Dickens moviesomeone full of pomp and circumstance and nothing more. Now, in motion, he looked like a predator, the Edwardian facade nothing but a thin skin to hide what was beneath.
Estelle had always unnerved me, but I discovered I hadn't been afraid of Bernard until just then. Stefan stayed silent while Bernard ranted. "He was worse than Marsilia, in the end. He brought that thing that uncontrollable abomination among us." He paused and stared at me. I dropped my eyes immediately, but I could feel his attention burning into my skin. "It is good your sheep killed it, though Marsilia couldn't see it. It would have brought upon us our doomand she did us the second favor by killing Andre."
He stopped speaking for a moment, but his eyes were still on me, digging through fur to see me. It was uncomfortable and scary.
" We would let her liveand if Marsilia has her way, she is deadjust like your last flock." Bernard waited for that to sink in. "Marsilia has minions who work in the day Hell. With the crossed bones on your coyote's business proclaiming her a traitor to all of us, how long do you think she'll survive? Goblins, harriers, the carrion feedersthere are a lot of Marsilia's allies who hunt in the day."
"She is the Alpha's mate. The wolves will keep her safe when I cannot."
Bernard laughed. "There are some of them who would kill her faster than Marsilia ever would. A coyote? Please." His voice softened. "You know she will die. If Marsilia wanted to kill her for slaying Andre, how do you think she'll feel now that you've taken the coyote for your own? She doesn't want you, but our Mistress has ever been jealous. And you protected this one for years when you should have told us all that there was a walker living among us. You took chances for herwhat would have happened if another vampire had noticed what she was? Marsilia knows you care for her, more than you ever did the sheep you fed off. Eventually, Mercedes will die, and it will be your fault."
Stefan flinched at that. I didn't need to look at his face to see it, because I felt him jerk against me.
"You need Marsilia to die, or Mercy will," Bernard said. "Whom do you love, Soldier? The one who saved you or the one who abandoned you? Whom do you serve?"
He waited, and so did I.
"She was a fool to let you go alive," Bernard murmured. "There were two others she trusted with the place she sleeps. Andre is dead. But you know, don't you? And you rise a full hour before she does. You can keep this from being a bloody battle with many casualties. Who will die? Lily, our gifted musician, almost certainly. Estelle hates her, you knowshe is talented and beautiful when Estelle is neither. And Marsilia loves her dearly. Lily will die." Then he smiled. "I'd kill her myself, but I know that you care for her, too. You could protect her from Estelle, Stefan."
And he went on naming names. Lesser vampires, I thought, but people Stefan cared for.
When he finished, he looked at Stefan's stubborn face and shook his head in exasperation. "Stefan, for God's sake. What are you doing? You belong nowhere. She doesn't want you. She couldn't be more plain if she had killed you outright. Estelle is foolish. She thinks she can rule when Marsilia is gone. But I know better. Neither of us is strong enough to hold the seethe unless we could work togetherbut we will not. There are no ties between us, no love, and that is the only way two nearly equal vampires can work together for long. But you could. I would serve you as faithfully as you have served all these years.
We need you if we are to survive." He had begun pacing again. "Marsilia will see us all dead. You know that. She is crazyonly a crazy woman could put her trust in Wulfe. She'll have the humans hunting us again, not just this seethe but all of our kind. And we will not survive. Please, Stefan."
Stefan went down on one knee and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. He bowed his head and whispered to me. "I am sorry." Then he stood up. "I am an old soldier," he told Bernard. "I serve only one, even though she has forsaken me." He stretched out his hand, and this time I felt him pull something from me as his sword appeared in his hand. "Would you try me here?" he asked.
Bernard made a frustrated noise, then threw up his hands in a theatrical gesture. "No. No. Please, Stefan. Just stay out of it when the fight begins."
And he turned and ran. It wasn't like the way Stefan could disappear, but it would have pushed me to keep with himand I'm fast. It was fast enough that he probably didn't hear Stefan say, "No."
He stood beside me and watched Bernard until the vampire was out of sight. And he waited a little more. I watched the female slip out of the trees and found another one as he left his cover. That one Stefan raised a hand to and got a salute in return.
"It will be a bloodbath," he told me. "And he is right. I could stop it. But I won't."
I wondered suddenly why Marsilia had let him live. If he knew where she slept, and no one else did, if he rose before her and could take himself wherever he chose, then he was a threat to her. She surely knew that if Bernard did.
Stefan sat on a likely boulder and linked his hands over a knee. "I meant to come to you when darkness fell," he told me. "There are things I need to tell you about this link between us" He gave me a shadow of his usual smile. "Nothing dire."
He looked out at the water. "But I thought I'd clean up my front porch a little first. The newspapers have been piling up because no one is living there now." I had the sinking feeling I knew where this was going.
"I was thinking I'd have to call and have the newspaper stoppedand then I read the newspaper. About the man you killed. So I went to Zee and got the full story."
He looked at me. "I'm sorry," he said.
I stood up deliberately and shook as if my fur was wet.
He smiled again, just a quirk of his lips. "I'm glad you killed him. Wish I'd been there to watch."
I thought of where he'd been, tortured by Marsilia, and wished I could watch him kill her as well. I sighed and walked over to him, then put my chin on his knee. We both watched the water flow under the sliver of moon. There were houses nearby, but where we sat it was only us and the river.
CHAPTER 9
I LEFT STEFAN FINALLY I NEEDED TO GET UP EARLY TO get back to work, and it might be nice to have some sleep. When I glanced back over my shoulder for a last, concerned look, he was gone. I hoped he hadn't gone back to his housethat didn't seem like the smartest place for him to hang outbut he would do as he pleased. He was like me in that way.
The lights were on at home, and I redoubled my pace as soon as I saw them. I dove through the dog door and found Warren pacing in the living room. Medea sat on the back of the couch and watched him with an annoyed look on her face.
"Mercy," Warren said with relief. "Get changed; get dressed. We're attending a peace powwow with the vampires, and you were specifically requested."
I ran into my room and shifted back to human. What with one thing and another, I had a roomful of dirty clothes and nothing more. "We're talking peace-treaty time?" I asked throwing dirty pants over my shoulder.
"We hope so," Warren said, following me into the room. "Who shot you?"
"Vampire, no biggie," I said. "He wasn't aiming to kill. I don't even think any of the shot stuck."
"Nope, but you won't be happy about sitting down tonight."
"I'm never happy sitting down when there are vampires aroundStefan usually excepted. What did Marsilia say?"
"She didn't call us, and we couldn't get a lot of sense out of the vampire who did. She read a note, then giggled a lot."
"Lily?" I looked at Warren.
"That's what Samuel said." He pulled a shirt off his shoulder, where I must have thrown it, and dropped it on the floor.
"She called him, too?"
He shrugged. "Yes. Marsilia wanted him there, too. No, I don't know what it's about, and neither does Adam. However, it's unlikely that she's going to annihilate us once we get there. Adam sent me here to bring you when you got back. I think he wanted you dressed, though."
"Smart aleck," I told him, hopping into my jeans. I found a decent bra and put that on. I finally found a clean shirt folded in the shirt drawer. I wondered who'd but it there.
It's not that I'm not neat. In my garage, every tool is exactly where it belongs at the end of the day. Sometimes there's a little friction when Zee has been in there because he and I have a different idea of where some of the tools should be.
Someday, when time presents itself, I'll clean my room. Having a roommate forces me to keep the rest of the house reasonably clean. But no one cares about my room, and that puts it pretty far down on my list of to-dos. It's below, for instance, keeping solvent, saving Amber from Blackwood, and attending the meeting with Marsilia. I'll almost certainly get to it before I get around to planting a garden, though.
I pulled on the clean shirt. It was dark blue and emblazoned with BOSCH GENUINE GERMAN AUTO PARTS. Not the shirt I'd have picked out to pay a formal call on the Vampire Queen, but I supposed she'd have to take it or leave it. At least it didn't have any oil stains.
Warren picked up a handful of jeans and unburied my shoes. "Now all you need is socks, and we can go."
His cell phone rang, and he tossed the shoes at me and answered. "Yes, boss. She's here and almost dressed."
Adam's voice was a little muffled, and he was talking very quietlybut I still heard him. He sounded a little wistful.
"Almost, eh?"
Warren grinned. "Yep. Sorry, boss."
"Mercy, get a wiggle on," Adam said in a louder voice. "Marsilia's holding things up until you're heresince you were a material part of the recent unrest."
He hung up.
"I'm wiggling. I'm wiggling," I muttered, pulling on socks and shoes. I wished I'd had a chance to replace my necklace.
"Your socks don't match."
I marched out the door. "Thank you. Since when did you become a fashionista?"
"Since you decided to wear a green sock and a white sock," he said, following me. "We can take my truck."
"I have another pair just like it, too," I said. "Somewhere." Except I thought I'd thrown out the mate to the green sock last week.
THE WROUGHT-IRON GATES AROUND THE SEETHE WERE open, but the driveway was clogged with cars, so we parked off the gravel driveway. The Spanish-style adobe compound was lit with orangish lantern-style lights that flickered almost like the real thing.
I didn't know the vampire at the door, and, very unvampirelike, he simply opened the door, and said, "Down the hall to the stairway at the end and downstairs to the bottom."
I hadn't remembered there being a stairway at the end of the hall when I'd been here before. Probably because the huge, full-length-and-then-some painting of a Spanish villa had been in front of it instead of leaning against a side wall.
Although we'd entered on the ground floor, the stairway we were on took us down two full flights. I can see in the dark almost as well as a cat, and the stairwell was dark for mea human would be almost helpless. As we descended, the smell of vampire clogged my nose.
There was a small anteroom with a single vampireanother one I didn't recognize. I didn't actually know more than a handful of Marsilia's vampires by sight. This one had silvery gray hair and a very young-looking face, and was dressed in a traditional black funeral suit. He'd been seated behind a very small table, but as we came down the last three steps, he stood up.
He ignored Warren entirely, and said, "You are Mercedes Thompson." He wasn't quite asking a question, but his statement was far from certain. He also had an accent of some sort, but I couldn't place it.
"Yes," said Warren shortly.
The vampire opened the door and swept us a short bow.
The room we entered was huge for a housemore a small gymnasium than a room. There were stands of seatsbleachers really, on either side of the long side of the room. Bleachers filled with silent watchers. I hadn't realized that there were so many vampires in the whole of the Tri-Cities, then I saw that a lot of the people were humanthe sheep, I thought, like me.
And in the very center of the room was the huge oak chair festooned with carvings and accented with dull brass. I couldn't see them, but I knew the brass thorns on the arms of the chair were sharp and dark with old blood some of it was mine.
That chair was one of the treasures of the seethe, vampire magic and old magic combined. The vampires used it to determine the truth of whatever poor being had the brass thorns stuck in its hands. It's gruesomely appropriate that a lot of vampire magic has to do with blood.
The presence of the chair raised my suspicions that this wasn't to be a negotiation for peace between the vampires and the werewolves. The last time I'd seen that chair, it had been at a trial. It made me nervous, and I wished I knew exactly what the words were that had been used to invite us here.
It was easy to pick out the werewolvesthey were standing in front of two rows of empty seats: Adam, Samuel, Darryl and his mate, Aurielle, Mary Jo, Paul, and Alec. I wondered which ones Marsilia had specified and which were Adam's choice.
Darryl was the first to notice us because the door was almost as silent as the crowd of vampires. His eyes swept over me from head to toe and for a moment he looked appalled. Then he glanced around the crowdall the vampires and their menageries were dressed up in their finest, be that ball gown or double-breasted suit. I thought I saw at least one Union army jacket. He looked at my T-shirt, then relaxed and gave me a subtle smile.
It seemed he decided it was okay I hadn't dressed up to meet the enemy. Adam had been talking rather intently with Samuel (about the upcoming football game, I later found outwe don't discuss important matters in front of the bad guys) but looked at his second, then looked up as we walked over to him.
"Mercy," he said, his voice ringing in the room as if it were empty. "Thank goodness. Maybe now we can get some business done."
"Maybe," Marsilia said.
She was right behind us. I knew she hadn't been there a moment ago because Warren jumped when I did. Warren was more wary than I wasno one snuck up on him. Ever. The side effect of being hunted by his own kind for most of his century-and-a-half-long life.
He turned, shoving me behind him, and snarled at hersomething he wouldn't have normally done. All the vampires in the room rose to their feet, and their anticipation of blood was palpable.
Marsilia laughed, a beautiful, ringing laugh that stopped a second before I expected it to, making it more unsettling than her sudden appearance. Her sudden, businesslike appearance. The only other times I'd seen her, she'd worn clothing designed to attract attention to her beauty. This time she wore a business suit. The only concession to femininity was the narrow skirt instead of pants and the rich wine color of the wool.
"Sit," she saidas if she were talking to a poodleand the roomful of vampires sat. She ever looked away from me.
"How kind of you to make an appearance," she said, her abyss-dark eyes cold with power.
Only Warren's warmth allowed me to answer her with anything approaching calm. "How kind of you to issue your invitations in advance, so I could be on time," I said. Perhaps not wiselybut, hey, she already hated me. I could smell it.
She stared at me a moment. "It makes a joke," she said.
"It is rude," I returned, taking a step to the side. If I got her mad enough to attack me, I didn't want
Warren to take the hit.
It was only when I stepped around him that I realized I was meeting her gaze. Stupid. Even Samuel wasn't proof against the power of her eyes. But I couldn't look down, not with Adam's power rising to choke me. I wasn't just a coyote here, I was the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack's matebecause he said so, and because I said so.
If I looked down, I was acknowledging her superiority, and I wouldn't do that. So I met her eyes, and she chose to allow me to do so.
She lowered her eyelids, not so far as to lose our informal staring contest, but to veil her expression. "I think," she said in a voice so soft that only Warren and I heard her, "I think that had we met at a different place and time, I could have liked you." She smiled, her fangs showing. "Or killed you."
"Enough games," she said, louder. "Call him for me."
I froze. That's why she wanted me. She wanted Stefan back. For a moment all I could see was the blackened dead thing that she'd dropped in my living room. I remembered how long it had taken me to realize who it was.
She'd done that to himand now she wanted him back. Not if I could help it.
Adam hadn't moved from where he'd been standing, telling the room he trusted me to take care of myself. I wasn't sure he really thought soI knew I didn'tbut he needed me to stand on my own two feet. "Call whom?" he asked.
She smiled at him without looking away from me. "Didn't you know? Your mate belongs to Stefan."
He laughed, an oddly happy sound in this dirge-shadowed room. It was a good excuse to turn my back on Marsilia and quit playing the stare game. Turning my back meant that I didn't loseonly that the contest was over.
I tried not to let the sick fear I felt show on my face. I tried to be what Adamand Stefanneeded me to be.
"Like a coyote, Mercy is adaptable," Adam told Marsilia. "She belongs to whom she decides. She belongs everywhere she wants to, for just as long as she wants to." He made it sound like a good thing.
Then he said, "I thought this was about preventing war."
"It is," said Marsilia. "Call Stefan."
I lifted my chin and glanced at her over my shoulder. "Stefan is my friend," I told her. "I won't bring him to his execution."
"Admirable," she told me briskly. "But your concern is misplaced. I can promise that he won't be hurt physically by me or by mine tonight."
I slanted a glance at Warren, and he nodded. Vampires might be hard to read, but he was better at sensing lies than I was, and his nose agreed with mine: she was being truthful.
"Or hold him here," I said.
The smell of her hatred had died away, and I couldn't tell anything about how she felt. "Or hold him here," she agreed. "Witness!"
"Witnessed," said the vampires. All of them. All at exactly the same time. Like puppets, only creepier. She waited. Finally, she said, "I mean him no harm."
I thought of earlier tonight, when he'd turned down Bernard even though I was pretty sure he agreed with Bernard's assessment of her continued rule of the seethe. In the end, he loved her more than he loved his seethe, his menagerie of sheep, or his own life.
"You harm him by your continued existence," I told her, as quietly as I could. And she flinched. I thought about that flinch and about the way she'd let him live even though he, of all her vampires, had reason to see her deadand had the means to do so. Maybe Stefan wasn't the only one who loved.
It hadn't kept her from torturing him, though.
I closed my eyes, trusting Warren, trusting Adam to keep me safe. I only wished I could keep Stefan safe. But I knew what he would want me to do.
Stefan, I called, just as I had earlierbecause I knew he would want me to. Surely he knew where I was calling from and would come ready to protect himself.
Nothing happened. No Stefan.
I looked toward Marsilia and shrugged. "I called," I told her. "But he doesn't have to come when I call."
It didn't seem to bother her. She just noddeda surprisingly businesslike gesture from a woman who would have looked more at home in a Renaissance gown of silk and jewels than she did in her modern suit.
"Then I call this meeting to order," she said, strolling to the old thronelike chair in the center of the room.
"First, I would call Bernard to the chair."
He came, reluctant and stiff. I recognized the pattern of his movementhe looked like a wolf called against his will. I knew he wasn't of her making, but she had power over him just the same. He was still wearing the clothes I'd last seen him in. The harsh overhead fluorescent lights glinted off the small balding spot on the top of his head.
He sat unwillingly.
"Here, caro, let me help." Marsilia took each hand and impaled it on the upthrust brass thorns. He fought. I could see it in the grimness of his face and the tenseness of his muscles. I couldn't see that it cost
Marsilia anything at all to keep him under her control.
"You've been naughty, no?" she asked. "Disloyal."
"I have not been disloyal to the seethe," he gritted out.
"Truth," said a boy's voice.
The Wizard himself. I hadn't seen himthough I'd looked. His light gold hair had been trimmed close to his skull. He had a vague smile on his face as he strolled down from the top of the bleachers across from us. He used the bleacher seats as stairs.
He looked like a young high school student. He'd died before his features had had a chance to grow into maturity. He looked soft and young.
Marsilia smiled when she saw him. He hopped over the last three seats and landed lightly on the hardwood floor. She was shorter than he was, but the kiss he gave her made my stomach hurt. I knew he was hundreds of years old, but it didn't matterbecause he looked like a kid.
He stepped back and reached out a finger and ran it over Bernard's hand and down to the chair arm.
When he picked it up it dripped blood. He licked it off slowly, letting a few drops roll down the palm of his hand, over his wrist, until it stained the light green sleeves of his dress shirt.
I wondered who he was performing for. Surely the vampires wouldn't be bothered by his licking bloodand I was sort of right but mostly wrong. Bothered might not be the word, but there was a generalized motion from the stands as vampires leaned forward and some of them even licked their lips. Ugh.
"You have betrayed me, haven't you, Bernard?" Marsilia was still looking at Wulfe, and he held out his hand. She took it and traced the drying blood, letting her mouth linger over his wrist while Bernard quivered, trying not to answer the question.
"I have not betrayed the seethe," Bernard said again. And though she grilled him for ten minutes or more, that was all he would say.
Stefan appeared beside me. His eyes were on the sleeve of his white dress shirt as he casually fixed a cuff link, then he pulled the sleeve of his subtly pin-striped gray suit over it with a just-right tug. He looked at me, and Marsilia looked at him.
She waved her hand at Bernard. "Get upWuife, put him somewhere obvious, would you?"
Shaking and stumbling, Bernard rose, his hands dripping on the pale floor all the way to the stands, where Wulfe cleared out space on the bottom tier of seats for them both. He began cleaning Bernard's hands, like a cat licking ice cream.
Stefan didn't say anything, just ran his eyes over me in a quick survey. Then he looked at Adam, who nodded regally back, though he smiled a little, and I realized that he and Stefan were wearing the same thing, except that Adam wore a dark blue shirt.
Mary Jo saw the resemblance and grinned. She turned to say something to Paul, I thought, when a surprised look came over her face, and she just dropped. Alec caught her before she hit the floor as if this wasn't the first time she'd done something like that. Leftovers from the close brush with death, I hoped, not something the vampires were doing.
Stefan left me for Mary Jo. He touched her throat, ignoring Alec's silent snarl.
"Relax," Stefan told the wolf. "She will take no harm from me."
"She's been doing that a lot," Adam told him. That he didn't step between his vulnerable pack member and the vampire was an unsubtle message.
"She's waking up," Stefan said just before her eyes fluttered open.
And only after Mary Jo was clearly awaken did Stefan look at Marsilia.
"Come to the chair, Soldier," she told him.
He stared at her for so long that I wondered if he would do it. He might love her, but he didn't like her very much at the momentand, I hoped, didn't trust her either.
But he patted Mary Jo's knee and walked out to where Marsilia waited for him.
"Wait," she told him before he sat down. She looked at the stands across from us, where the vampires and their food sat. "Do you want me to question Estelle, first? Would that make you happier?"
I couldn't tell who she was speaking to.
"Fine," she said. "Bring Estelle here."
A door I hadn't noticed opened on the far side of the room and Lily, the gifted pianist and quite insane vampire who never left the seethe and Marsilia's protection, came in carrying Estelle like a new groom carried his bride over the threshold. Lily was even dressed in a frothy white mass of lace that could have been a wedding dress to Estelle's dark suit. Though I'd never seen a bride with blood all over her face and down her gown. If I were a vampire, I think I'd only wear black or dark brownto hide the stains.
Estelle hung limp in Lily's arms, and her neck looked like a pack of hyenas had been chewing on her.
"Lily," Marsilia chided. "Haven't I told you about playing with your food?"
Lily's sapphire eyes glittered with a hungry iridescence visible even in the overly brightly lit room.
"Sorry," she said. She skipped a couple of steps. "Sorry, 'Stel." She smiled whitely at Stefan, then she plopped Estelle's limp form on the chair, like a doll. She moved Estelle's head so it wasn't flopped to the side, then straightened her skirt. "Is that good?"
"Fine. Now be a good girl and go sit next to Wulfe, please."
Lilly had been in her thirties, I thought, when she was killed, but her mind had stopped developing far earlier. She smiled brightly and skipped over to Wulfe and bounced down to the seat beside him. He patted her knee, and she put her head on his shoulder.