Smoke Bitten: Mercy Thompson: Book 12 Read online

  “That’s off topic,” Tad said before I could ask for clarification. “Dad doesn’t know of anything that quite fits your jackrabbit. But it could be something that lived only in Underhill—and he didn’t go there much.”

  A spate of German interrupted him.

  “Though he says it could be that you just don’t know enough about it yet. Or it could be that he’s forgotten and it will take a while for him to remember. He’ll also ask around. If it is something that was imprisoned in Underhill—and it would be useful to know for certain—maybe Uncle Mike or some of the other fae will remember.”

  “It would be useful,” I said. Thanking Zee was safe enough, I was sure, but it worried him that I might forget and thank some other fae. So I tried not to do it.

  There was a hesitation and then Tad said, “Did Jesse talk to you about Gabriel’s note?”

  “No. Did she talk to you?” I asked.

  “She let me read it.” He swallowed. “Look, I think it helped Jesse, but now I’m worried about Gabriel.”

  “When did he leave the letter?” I asked.

  “He didn’t date it,” he told me. “But some of the things he said made it clear that he put it there the day he moved all of his stuff out.”

  “He has a new girlfriend,” I told him. “As of two weeks after he left that letter.” Close to that by my reckoning.

  Tad swore softly. “Bastard didn’t waste any time mending his heart.” I guess he wasn’t worried about Gabriel anymore.

  “Heartbreak can be like that, boy,” said Zee heavily. “Healthy pain invites healing. Gabriel is a good boy; he’ll be a good man. Not all relationships that end are failures.”

  Then his voice became brisk as if he’d embarrassed himself by being too sentimental. “Mercy, you will have to hurry to get the parts here in time for us to fix those cars. Otherwise they will have to wait until morning.”

  “I have to hang up before I can get going,” I told them both. “Talk to you soon.”

  I disconnected, got in my car, and drove.

  6

  THE SHOP WHERE THE PARTS HAD BEEN DROPPED off was in east Pasco, a couple of miles from Uncle Mike’s Tavern, where the fae tended to congregate. It hadn’t been a bad drive from the shop or my house when the Cable Bridge had been up and running. But a troll, with the help of one of the Gray Lords of the fae, had destroyed it.

  Construction had begun just a few days ago on a new bridge—by popular demand, a copy of the old bridge, which had been something of a landmark. It would be a year or more before it was functional, though, and in the meantime the shortest way to Pasco was over the Blue Bridge.

  For everyone.

  Before the Cable Bridge had been destroyed, I’d avoided the Blue Bridge as much as possible because of the heavy traffic. Now it was miserable, but my options were that or driving all the way through Kennewick and crossing the river on the interstate bridge and driving all the way back through Pasco.

  I took the Blue Bridge and crossed it, with all the rest of the traffic, at a walking pace. Not too bad, considering.

  Once I turned off onto Lewis Street, the main east-west artery in this part of Pasco, traffic returned to normal speeds. I wondered, briefly, if I should stop in and see if Uncle Mike would talk to me about our jackrabbit. We still weren’t sure it was the creature that Aiden thought it might be—we weren’t even sure that it was an escapee from Underhill. We were just operating on best guesses.

  I decided half a block before the turn that would take me to Uncle Mike’s not to go. If that old fae knew something, he was more likely to talk to Zee than he was to me. So I stayed on Lewis and headed toward Oregon Avenue, where a host of industrial businesses were located: heavy farm and construction machinery sales and services, metalworks, industrial fasteners, agricultural irrigation—and the auto shop where the people had dropped off our parts.

  A block or so before Oregon Avenue, a collection of train tracks crossed Lewis—and all other east-west traffic in Pasco. The trains were active here and stopped traffic on a regular basis.

  Lewis Street was the major thoroughfare on the east side of Pasco because of the short tunnel that dropped under the railroad tracks to allow the free flow of traffic from the city to Oregon Avenue.

  The tunnel itself, built around World War II, was … odd. Lewis Street narrowed from four lanes to two lanes and dropped below ground level before burrowing under the tracks with pedestrian walkways on either side. That narrowing was the root cause of the accidents that happened around the tunnel.

  The pedestrian walkways in the tunnel were creepy. They were unlit, and the decorative concrete barricades with pillars that kept the walkways safe from traffic also kept them safe from light. Even on the brightest summer day, those walkways were an invitation to trouble.

  The weirdest thing about the tunnel was the way it was just plopped into the middle of the intersection with South Tacoma Street. On the south side of the old intersection, South Tacoma took an awkward ninety-degree turn to parallel the tunnel traffic and rejoin Lewis, where it broadened to four lanes again.

  On the north side, South Tacoma dead-ended at the tunnel—which wasn’t too surprising. However, the dead end was announced by shabby but movable wooden barricades flanked by orange cones—after seventy years of not being a through street. It was as though they put in the tunnel and then forgot about finishing the project so that it looked like it belonged there—forgot about it for decades.

  Like everyone else still traveling down Lewis, I had planned on taking the tunnel to Oregon Avenue, but it was blocked off with police cars and yellow tape—and what looked like a semi that had tried to jump into the tunnel rather than take that ninety-degree turn onto Tacoma. I wasn’t sure a semi could have taken that ninety-degree turn.

  I slowed, with the rest of the traffic, with the intention of taking another, much longer route—and I would have except that my Jetta had no air conditioning. Nights might be starting to cool off, but it was ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon so I had the windows down. And through those open windows I scented the magic I’d first found on Dennis Cather.

  I pulled out of the line of traffic and looked for a parking spot. This part of Pasco was on the edge of the only-Spanish-spoken-here business district where bakeries, restaurants, and clothing shops sporting quinceañera and First Communion dresses in the windows all prospered. I parallel parked in a tight space in front of a Mexican bakery, which was emitting delicious smells that almost drowned out the scent I’d caught nearer the tunnel.

  I still didn’t have the locks working properly on my Jetta, but it looked disreputable enough that I didn’t think anyone would bother breaking into it. Towing it as an eyesore was a possibility, but not breaking into it.

  I hurried over to the mess at the tunnel and wondered how I was going to talk my way into the area—and saw a familiar face. It must be a pretty bad accident if George was here, because traffic wasn’t his usual job. And if he had been working at five in the morning …

  A wave of magic washed over me and the bite mark the jackrabbit had left on my neck burned uncomfortably. I clamped a hand to my neck and quit trying to work out George’s schedule because there were more important things to worry about.

  I waited, but I didn’t feel any homicidal or suicidal urges and my breathing was unhindered. But my head felt pressurized, there was a faint ringing in my ears—and the scent of the magic was powerful.

  Deciding that scaring myself was unproductive, I dropped my hand off my neck (because that wasn’t making it hurt any less) and started for the tunnel bridge again. I gave a sharp whistle before I got close enough for the officer directing traffic to send me on my way. George looked up and I met his gaze. He said something to the uniformed officer he was standing next to and jogged over.

  “It’s okay,” he told the traffic officer, with a hand on his shoulder. “She’s with me.”

  The officer took a second look at my face and his eyes widened. Being
the wife of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack made me something of a celebrity.

  “Of course,” he said. Then he turned his attention back to his job.

  “Did anyone catch you up on the meeting this morning?” I asked him as we walked past the police line.

  “Werewolves and a demonic jackrabbit,” he said. “And you banged happy back into our Alpha—for which not only the pack but everyone who works for him is very grateful. That last I have from both Carlos and Elliot.”

  I rolled my eyes and ignored my blush. I was getting better at that—better at ignoring the blush. “Well, the scent of that jackrabbit’s magic is all over this place.”

  “Yeah, color me not surprised,” George said, “because what we have here is an abnormal incident. I just got through texting Adam some photos.”

  “Lots of police,” I commented, looking around.

  “Yep, people are safe to speed anywhere in Pasco at the moment,” George said. “I’m off duty—and I’m not the only off-duty cop here, either. When the sheriff’s department and the fire department hear about this, we’ll be drowning in them, too.”

  The burning sensation in my neck was growing.

  “Hey, George,” I said casually.

  “Yes?”

  “If I suddenly quit breathing or”—heaven help me—“start to act really weird, throw me in the river, would you?”

  “Sure thing,” he said without hesitation. “I heard you got bitten.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I am working under the assumption that this magic is one of those that have bounced up against my coyote weirdness and failed. But still, if I try to hurt someone who doesn’t obviously deserve it—”

  “The river,” George finished for me. “I’ve got it.”

  “Okay.”

  We rounded the trailer portion, which looked pretty normal, and I got my first good look at the tractor, which had climbed up the decoratively functional concrete barrier. It hung, tilted awkwardly, the front four feet of the rig over the open roadway below. But the tractor wasn’t in any danger of falling—the bottom half of the big rig had literally melted into the concrete barrier.

  I touched the top part of the tire, which was level with my chin and somehow still holding air. I ran my fingers down the rubber and paused over the transition between rubber and concrete.

  “Huh,” I said.

  “‘Huh’ is right,” agreed George. “The accident probably happened because the guy driving the rig is high as a kite. He claims he hit the barrier to avoid killing a bunch of kids. Says his girlfriend grabbed the wheel and aimed at the kids. After the truck wrecked, she said, ‘Good luck with your beloved truck.’ Expletives deleted. Then she took off.”

  “Witnesses?” I asked.

  “Yes. We’ve got two ladies who were heading into the bakery to order a wedding cake who saw the whole thing. Truck looked like it was going to go down the tunnel—suddenly swerved to the right—and there was a group of maybe six kids walking across the street. Ladies thought for sure that truck was going to hit them, when it jerked suddenly and impacted the barricade where so many other vehicles have met their doom. They did not see the girlfriend.”

  “So do we believe the girlfriend exists?” I asked.

  “And did she have a bite mark?” He paused dramatically. “Yes, yes, she did. Our driver, who did not know his own girlfriend’s name on account of him picking her up at a gas station in Finley, said she had a—and I quote—‘weird-ass mark on her arm, man—like she’d been bitten by a vampire’—unquote.”

  It fit. Everything except the way the truck had melded with the barricade, anyway. It didn’t seem like the mind-control stuff went together with changing the bottom of a semi tractor into concrete. But my nose didn’t lie—the smoke beast had been here.

  “Is the driver still here?” I asked.

  “Nope, they took him in for questioning.”

  I’d been casually looking around. Funny how easy it was to tell the cops, in uniform and out, from everyone else—and there were a few onlookers now. It was a subtle thing—an in-crowd, out-crowd. Pasco wasn’t that big—all of the police officers knew each other and their body language gave it away.

  My eyes caught on one of the onlookers. A dark-complexioned girl wearing shorts and a pink tank top—and her expression was wrong. She was looking at the wrecked vehicle and she didn’t look amazed or worried or excited like everyone else. She looked smug.

  “George,” I asked, not taking my eyes off the girl. “Do you have a description for the missing girlfriend?”

  She looked up at me at just that moment. There were probably a dozen yards and twenty people between us—and she looked at me as if she had known exactly where I was standing.

  She smiled at me and the bite on my neck flared in a bone-shivering spike of pain that made me stagger before it died completely, like something had short-circuited. As it did, her face twisted with pain—and then malevolent anger.

  “That’s her,” said George, coming to alert as he saw who I was looking at. “Hispanic female, pink top.”

  He didn’t speak loudly, but I think, from her change of expression, she heard him, so her hearing was at least as good as ours. As we started toward her, she looked around at all the police surrounding her. Briefly she looked frustrated—and then she looked at us again. Her shoulders relaxed and she smiled—right before she ran.

  George bolted after her—and I bolted after him.

  “George,” I called out, because—wouldn’t you know it—George was one of the very few werewolves who were faster than I was. “Let her go—if she bites you, you belong to her! Then you die! George, wait!”

  I couldn’t tell if he was paying attention or not. The call of a hunt is pretty strong, and I wasn’t Adam.

  The woman fled down a side street that was edged with automotive boneyards, warehouses, and empty lots. She reeked of that distinctive magic and she was moving as fast as a werewolf. I was pretty sure we’d found our jackrabbit. George was hot on her heels, gaining a few inches with every stride.

  I was twenty or thirty feet behind them and losing ground rapidly. Neither of them seemed to be having trouble with the rough and uneven sidewalk, but it tripped me up once and I almost tumbled head over heels. I kept my feet but it slowed me down.

  The woman dropped out of sight down a narrow dirt track between a pair of industrial-looking buildings that wore an air of abandonment. When George disappeared around the corner, too, I found an extra burst of speed from somewhere.

  At the same time, I ripped at the closed bond between Adam and me. It gave in to my frantic attempt, but I’d done something to our bond … it felt wounded somehow, bleeding. But I would worry about that later. I needed to keep George safe.

  I turned the corner and saw George closing in on the woman quickly—I was pretty sure she had deliberately slowed her pace. There was a woman curled up against the building in a fetal position, her face pressed against the wall as if she were trying to hide. But she wasn’t moving and my instincts told me she wasn’t a threat, so I ran past her.

  “George, stop!” The command rang with the power of an Alpha werewolf because I had stolen it from Adam.

  George stopped in his tracks, and so did the woman—who was the smoke beast. They had run past the building and stood in what might have been, in better days, a small parking lot. I stopped, too.

  “Get back here,” I told George. In my back pocket, my cell phone started to ring. Probably Adam wondering why I’d torn at our bond. But I was busy. I told George again, “If it bites you, it will steal your will. Aiden says that once it takes you over, it will kill you.” Or he would die. Aiden hadn’t been clear on that point, so I wasn’t, either.

  When it hadn’t been able to steal my will, it had tried to kill me, though, so I thought what I’d said was a good bet. The running water had severed the connection between it and the bite—but I thought of the smoke I had swallowed. Maybe there had been enough left in me for it to
try again today. It hadn’t worked.

  George kept his eyes on the woman, but he obeyed me—backing up rapidly until we stood shoulder to shoulder.

  “George,” I said. “There’s someone on the ground against the wall of the building behind us, to my left.”

  He glanced over my shoulder and growled, “Missed that.” He strode behind me—paying me the compliment of trusting me to guard us from the creature.

  The woman stayed where she was, frowning at me.

  “Who are you?” she asked. She spoke as if English was difficult for her, and not as if she spoke Spanish. Her accent was nothing I’d heard before. If her word choice was odd, it didn’t take away from the edge of rage in her voice. “My power is big. Why are you not mine?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “What do you want?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “If the stupid man had not stopped us. There would be many dead and I would have more power. More enough to take you.”

  “You get power from the people you kill?” I asked.

  “Stupid you,” she sneered. “Death is powerful magic. My puppets kill and give me magic to be this.”

  George approached me and stood just to my right. “Dead body,” he told me—and he sounded a little freaked out. It took a lot to freak out a police officer who was also a werewolf. “Her dead body.”

  “Dead that one,” the woman said, running her hands down her body in a way that was a little obscene without being sexy at all. “I own this now. In this shape I kill you and the magic is wasted. Cannot eat death in my own body, only through puppets. Rules. Stupid rules.”

  She was giving us a lot of information, I thought—but it was almost as if she weren’t talking to George and me. As if she were clarifying her thoughts.

  This creature had lived in Underhill for who knew how long— and Underhill was a place where magic was plentiful. Maybe the rules were different here than in Underhill—and this creature was working them out aloud. It sounded like she had trouble powering her own magic and she was killing people to make up for it.