Smoke Bitten: Mercy Thompson: Book 12 Page 17

  I dusted my hands off and gave her a somber look. “I like you. I think that you are too easily led by your need to protect Christy, who needs protecting about as much as a … a jaguar needs protecting.” I didn’t call Christy either a shark or viper—go me!

  Auriele gave me a look that told me that she’d heard “viper” instead of the sexier “jaguar” just fine.

  “I like you,” she told me without sounding like she was going to choke on it. “You are a Goody Two-shoes sometimes, but you’d fall on a grenade for Adam or Jesse or a member of the pack. You fell on a grenade for Christy, even. But you would also fall on a grenade for a total stranger—and that makes you a liability to the pack.”

  I thought about what she said.

  “That’s fair,” I told her. “But I don’t open other people’s mail.”

  “That’s fair, too,” she said. “Where are we going and when? Adam said he thought you’d be moving by eight.”

  It was seven and if she’d been five minutes later I’d have been gone. Normally I’d have been headed to church (although not at seven a.m.), but the garage was more urgent today.

  I grabbed my purse and said, “The garage. The fae have recalled everyone into the reservation. Without Zee and Tad there, under the circumstances, working in the garage by myself is a liability to the pack.” I deliberately chose her words.

  She nodded approvingly. “Good decision.” Implying that most of my decisions were not.

  But I was a grown-up and didn’t bring up her decision to open Jesse’s mail again.

  ________

  I USED THE SHOP COMPUTER AND PRINTED OUT SIGNS after Auriele observed that my handwritten signs looked like something her students would do if they were trying to flunk her class. I am not a computer whiz and wasn’t sure the ones I’d put together were any better than the handwritten ones, but I put them up anyway while Auriele played on her phone. And I hid the signs I’d previously scrawled with a marker for everyday use: Lunch break, back in five and Unexpected drama, will return eventually. On that sign I had initially spelled “eventually” with one “l.” In my defense I’d been in a panic when I’d written it. Tad later corrected it for me using a different color marker than I’d used. It probably said something about me that it didn’t bother me to display it for my clients, but I didn’t want Auriele to see it.

  I called and canceled the appointments for that week that I could, and streamlined the rest. I’d come in on Monday and fix a few desperately needed vehicles. I sent some of my clients with newer cars to the dealership—and a few who couldn’t afford the dealership to another garage. Fifty-fifty chance that those clients would stay with that garage afterward, because he was good and nearly as inexpensive as I was.

  “I thought you were closing the garage until further notice,” Auriele said as I locked up.

  “That’s right.”

  “But you are still coming back Monday,” she said.

  “There are some cars I can’t trust to anyone else,” I said. “And a few customers who need special handling. I’ll get one of the wolves to come in with me. People need their cars to work.”

  We got back in my Jetta.

  “We could have taken my car,” she said, not for the first time.

  “I don’t want to get oil stains on any car that Darryl half owns,” I told her seriously. “He might have a heart attack and we can’t afford to lose any more wolves until Adam succeeds in bringing the invaders into our fold.”

  She laughed. “Ah. So it is not the gas mileage, or the need to be in the driver’s seat.” Which were the answers that I’d given her the first two times she’d complained about the Jetta. “It is out of a deep and abiding concern for my husband’s health.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I like Darryl.”

  “We aren’t going back?” she asked as I turned the wrong way to head home.

  “Nope,” I said. “It’s been a rough few days. I’m going for doughnuts. Spudnuts.” Spudnuts were called spudnuts because the dough was made from potato flour. Ben loved spudnuts.

  “Okay,” she said. “I could do a doughnut.”

  Spudnuts was in the Uptown in Richland—a fair commute from my garage in east Kennewick, but it was totally worth the trip. Except when it was closed—which apparently it was.

  “Well, that’s sad,” I said. Why did I not know it was closed on Sundays? I was sure I’d come here on Sunday once or twice.

  “Safeway has good doughnuts,” Auriele offered soberly.

  I sighed. Grocery store doughnuts and spudnuts shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath. With the garage closed for the foreseeable future, it looked like I was going to have some extra time on my hands. Maybe I should try making doughnuts. My homemade bread was good. I already knew how to make fry bread—and there wasn’t a whole lot of—

  My brain lit up with information.

  I didn’t know if the other wolves saw their connections to the pack the way I did. To me, it was like a web of Christmas garland, sparkly and metallic with unexpected lights here and there, the mating bond between Adam and me a thick, glowing rope. That one changed every time I observed. Today it was a sullen red with orange light moving within, almost like a lava lamp. The orange light, I was sure, was information the bond wanted me to have but Adam was keeping from me. Under normal circumstances that bond informed me of things like Adam’s mood, where he was, what music he was listening to, or what he was thinking about.

  The pack bonds, on the other hand, very seldom told me much. Mostly I could tell when someone died. I knew that Adam got a lot more information than that. But the only time the pack bonds really gave me much was when we were on a hunt. Then it was overwhelming, as if the whole pack was one beast.

  I would have thought I’d freak out when I was consumed by the pack bonds—but it was the best feeling in the world. There was no sadness, no worry, nothing except for a wild joy that seared my nerve endings. No hesitation, no questioning, just knowing that the pack is one.

  Granted, if the bonds had done that all the time, turning us into a hive mind like the Borg from Star Trek, I’d be moving to Istanbul or Outer Mongolia or some other faraway place to get away. But once or twice a month in a planned and organized hunt? That was pretty cool.

  Today was different.

  I froze where I was, standing in the parking lot with my hand on the top of the open door of my disreputable Jetta, my head and fingertips buzzing with the urgency of the call. The power of it made the air I breathed feel electric. And as on the nights of the hunt, I knew things I had no business knowing. I knew that Kelly was down and scared and—

  “Makaya,” said Auriele, putting her butt in the passenger seat of the Jetta.

  I’d gotten that, too. Makaya was Kelly’s six-year-old daughter—and she was in trouble. We were less than two miles from Kelly’s house. I was peeling rubber before Auriele slammed her door shut.

  On the whole, ’80s Jettas looked like pedestrian cars, something built along the lines of the Chevette or Echo. Useful, but unpretty and unremarkable. My Jetta, midway through restorations, was remarkable for all the wrong reasons. But unlike my beloved Vanagon, which was lucky to attain highway speed, the Jetta was built to move, not only quick but also maneuverable.

  I was doing sixty when I took the corner from Jadwin onto Kelly’s street, and the wheels stayed on the ground when I did it. Ahead, right by Kelly’s house, I could see a large man with a small child in his hands—he was holding her above his head. Just beyond them was a large construction dumpster.

  “She’s alive,” said Auriele, her voice raspy with wolf. “She’s moving her legs.”

  “If I hit him with the car,” I asked her, “can you make the grab from the hood of the car to protect her?”

  I braked pretty hard as I spoke, slowing the car until we were going about twenty-five miles an hour. Much faster and Auriele wouldn’t have a chance. Much slower and I risked not doing enough damage to the werewolf to get him to drop Ma
kaya. This was an old car, well-designed, but what I was planning was going to hurt me, too, because it didn’t have airbags. That thought was a rueful one, and didn’t change my plans. Makaya was a child. And also a smart aleck. And I adored her.

  Auriele didn’t bother to answer me. She just broke out the side window with one definite hit of her elbow and climbed out over the shattered glass. The Jetta’s windows rolled up and down manually—she’d still have been lowering the glass ten seconds after we passed Kelly’s house if she’d tried it that way.

  Being a werewolf gave her the strength to break the window efficiently and crawl outside without risk of falling on the ground. But it was her own natural grace that let her stand on the hood of the Jetta while I drove over a pothole-pocked road, aiming my two-thousand-pound weapon at the bad guy holding the little girl.

  He dropped Makaya, holding her by one leg. Apparently his intent was to scare her family, because his focus was toward Kelly’s house. I couldn’t see Kelly or his mate, Hannah, but I couldn’t imagine that they weren’t out there, just hidden from my sight by their picket fence and the neighbor’s hedge.

  I started to slow. I didn’t want to risk hitting Makaya with the car. We were barely half a block away—I was going to have to abort.

  And then he swung her up over his head again, dancing around in a circle. He didn’t even look at us—though he had to have heard the engine. He was having too much fun.

  On the hood of my car, Auriele remained crouched, knees slightly bent. There wasn’t another wolf in the pack that I would even have thought of asking to try this in human form. I wasn’t asking Auriele just to survive the accident. I was asking her to keep six-year-old Makaya safe. But I’d seen her fight a volcano god; I was reasonably certain that if anyone outside a movie could do this, it would be Auriele.

  Even so, I wouldn’t have tried it—except that even when I’d turned the corner and he’d been six blocks away, I could read madness in the enemy wolf’s body language. I’d grown up in the Marrok’s pack, where every year, people who had been newly Changed failed to control their wolf. Some of them went completely mad. I’d probably seen a dozen of them, but one would have been enough. They were scary enough to imprint on my brain the first time.

  If I’d had any doubt, the expression on the face of the man holding Makaya would have cleared it right up. Whether Lincoln Stuart—I recognized him from Adam’s photo presentation—lived or died today, he was never going to have a human heart again.

  I could see Hannah and Kelly now. Hannah, a scarlet streak across one shoulder, was frozen just inside the gate. Kelly was on the grass, elbow crawling toward her.

  And then the time for observation was over.

  Auriele launched herself, stretching out in the instant before the Jetta hit the werewolf. He was tall, so the bumper caught him just below the knee, obliterating the bone. The sound was loud, but dull as if I’d hit something soft. The velocity folded him sideways over the hood as the car crushed him into the dumpster.

  The seat belt holding me in my seat gave up the ghost—I’d been worried about that; it was on my list to fix. Even so, the car crumpled, as it had been designed to do, absorbing a good bit of the power of the collision. The seat belt held on long enough that I didn’t go through the windshield.

  The impact rang my bell pretty good—and maybe broke my nose on the steering wheel. There was enough blood for that, and my nose hurt sufficiently. Dazed, I backed the car up until it died—about six feet from the dumpster, which had not moved with the impact. I popped the door open and struggled out amid dripping glass. I had to spin around awkwardly once to get rid of the remains of the seat belt.

  The car was more damaged than I’d expected—maybe the speedometer had needed some work. I stared at the car for a moment and decided the speedometer was a moot point. I was going to be looking for another car, again.

  About that time, I realized I could hear a lot of noise—and that there were a lot more important things going on than the wreck of my car.

  I pulled out my gun and stepped around the car to point it at Lincoln, who was howling and snarling and trying to pull the remains of his left leg out of my radiator, where it was caught. That both of his legs were hideously broken did not apparently register because in among the other sounds he was making were threats. They seemed pretty undirected at the moment, but I believed him.

  I’d seen this kind of behavior before. Pain meant nothing to someone who was lost in his wolf. But then his shirt slid back—and I saw a wound on the top of his shoulder.

  My breathing was labored—because I had to breathe through my mouth because of my nose. I was starting to think, as the shock of the collision (I could hardly term it an accident) receded a bit, that I had broken a rib or two as well. Woozy as I was, I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off Lincoln. The shirt slid a little more and I saw a second scab on his skin where another tooth had penetrated. They weren’t small holes—like the rabbit bite that Ben and I had gotten. These were bigger—more like the photos that Marsilia had sent of Stefan’s wounds. As much as I wanted to go rip the shirt off to be sure, I didn’t dare go any nearer to him. He might be bitten, but he was also a werewolf.

  “Makaya?” I called. “Auriele?”

  “Safe,” said Auriele, sounding remarkably composed.

  The sounds had died down to just children crying—near and far—and Lincoln’s frenzy.

  “Injuries?” I asked.

  “Makaya looks like she has a broken wrist and maybe an ankle,” Auriele said. “Hannah has a bad cut on her shoulder that will need stitches. A lot of stitches. Kelly—”

  “Will survive,” he growled. “Changing now.”

  “Any bites?” I asked. “This wolf has been bitten like Ben.”

  Auriele said something pungent. After a moment, relief in her voice, she said, “Not Makaya. Not Hannah. Kelly?”

  “No,” said Kelly. “He hit me with a baseball bat. Then he hit me with my tool chest.”

  “And the sledgehammer,” said Hannah, sounding broken.

  “And the sledgehammer. But no bites. Will survive,” said Kelly again. “No bites, Mercy.”

  I was pretty sure the last word he said was my name, but Kelly’s voice had dropped and lost clarity because he was changing.

  Shifting to wolf and food should fix most of it over the next couple of days—as long as nothing was misaligned. I had to trust Auriele to make sure Kelly would be okay, too. My job was to figure out what to do with this wolf.

  I had my gun and my cutlass, which was still in its case in the car, but I couldn’t just kill him, not here in the open with door cameras and cell phone cameras (I could see some curtains moving at Kelly’s neighbor’s house). He hadn’t killed anyone here for anyone to see. Broken by the impact with my car, he appeared not to be an immediate threat. He was, especially with those bite marks, but the human authorities wouldn’t know that if I killed him. And if I waited until he was up on his feet—he might manage to kill me.

  “What about the other kids?” Auriele asked—not me, obviously.

  “Safe,” said Hannah. “Sean and Patrick are at a friend’s house. I locked the baby in our bedroom; she’s not happy, but she’s safe.” Sean and Patrick were their two boys, ages twelve and ten. The baby was three—so not really a baby anymore.

  A truck drove up. I didn’t look up from Lincoln, but I heard it just fine. A late-model Ford diesel, I thought from the sounds of it. It didn’t belong to any of the pack—I knew the sounds of the pack’s vehicles.

  The truck stopped across the street and a pair of doors opened. I heard three people get out of the truck and stop on the other side of the road. Three people who were werewolves, and not our werewolves. I wasn’t smelling them—my nose was definitely broken—but I could hear the werewolf in the way they moved. I knew they were our invaders because of the truck.

  “People are watching,” I told them. “Think about what you do next.” Then in a softer voice I asked,
“Auriele?”

  “They don’t look like they’re coming for a fight,” she told me, quietly. “That could change.” The enemy werewolves would be able to hear us, but not the humans in their houses.

  I needed to move, to get my back to Auriele and my front toward the new threat. The problem was I was still dizzy, my eyes were having trouble focusing, and I wasn’t sure how far I needed to keep away from the downed wolf-mad Lincoln. I had to be close enough to shoot him if he started to regain mobility.

  The new werewolves stayed where they were.

  “Kids okay?” called a man’s voice.

  “The one he manhandled has broken bones,” I said. “She is six.”

  “Seven,” said Makaya, her voice wobbly. “I am seven.”

  “I told you,” the stranger said. “I told you that he wasn’t right. But you thought you knew better.”

  “Lincoln said he was fine. He had eighty years of controlling his beast,” said a woman.

  I frowned. I’d heard that voice before. But I didn’t know Nonnie Palsic, the only woman in the group of invading werewolves, according to the data Adam had compiled. Maybe I’d only heard her voice, on the phone or something.

  I wished my nose were working. My memory for scent was much better than my memory for voices.

  “We were supposed to go out and create a little havoc today,” said the man—I think he was speaking to me. “The houses with kids were supposed to be strictly out-of-bounds.”

  I chanced a quick look at the new werewolves.

  The man was hard to focus on—as if I were a human looking at a werewolf pulling on the pack bonds to hide themself in the guise of a big dog. I didn’t have time to do more than glance at him, but it didn’t take a genius to know this was James Palsic. Standing just behind him was Nonnie Palsic. Her hair was dark brown, though in the photo Adam had shown the pack it had been lighter. Her face was thinner, but unmistakable. The third person was also a woman, both short and slight, who was faintly familiar.

  I turned my focus back to Lincoln as he finally managed to rip his leg free of the ruined front of my car. He hadn’t shown any sign of noticing me at all, up to this point. But, still without looking at me, he rolled sideways with speed, slashing at my knee with a knife I hadn’t noticed him having.