Silver Borne mt-5 Page 19

  “I heard your voice,” he told me, pulling my eyes away from his feet and up to his face. “So I pressed my ear to the door, and even with the noise my daughter calls music blaring, I overheard what you said, Mercy.” He looked at Mary Jo, who had turned around to face him and lost her formal parade-rest stance. She just stood there, looking vulnerable.

  Had it been Samuel standing there, I’d have worried that he would be too soft on her. But Adam didn’t really see women as the weaker sex, and he knew how to organize and how to recognize organization when he saw it.

  His unreadable face was focused on Mary Jo. “So Henry was there when the fae set Mercy’s house on fire. And here I thought you were out there alone. Because I knew Henry was in the house when I had plainly told him to back you up last night. Doubtless if I asked him, he’d tell me that he thought I only meant for him to be there while the meeting was going on . . . or he’d come up with some other explanation.”

  “Henry was the one to tell you my house was on fire, wasn’t he?” I said. Like Adam, I was watching Mary Jo. I couldn’t see her face, but her shoulders tightened. A friend of mine from college, a drama major, told me that the shoulders are the most expressive part of the body. I had to agree with him. She was almost to the point of seeing the big picture, because she expected Adam to say yes.

  “I see you’ve followed this to its logical conclusion, Mercy,” he told me, but his eyes were on Mary Jo. “I wonder if she’s seen it yet—or if she’s part of it.”

  “Henry ran in and got you out to the trailer before anyone else came out of the house?” Mary Jo’s voice was stark, but she wasn’t arguing.

  “That’s right,” Adam agreed. “More or less. He wandered into the kitchen. Before I could ask him why he wasn’t out watching Mercy, he looked out the window, and said, ‘What’s that? Is that a fire? My God, the house is on fire.’ ”

  “He knew,” Mary Jo said uncertainly. “He saw them start it. He wouldn’t let me confront them because he was afraid I’d get hurt. He said Mercy and Sam were gone, what was the harm if the upstart coyote’s house went up in flames? She deserved a little hurt because of all the pain she’d caused.”

  Mary Jo looked at Adam. “He meant to me. He was really angry about how the vampires had attacked us . . . how I was hurt because they were trying to get to Mercy. He wanted to get back at Mercy.”

  “He could care less about me,” I told her. “His girlfriend didn’t like me better than she liked him. Henry was interested in Adam. He saw an opportunity to get back at Adam, and he jumped at it.” I looked at Adam. “The next time you leap into a burning building after me, you’d better make damned sure I’m in there. And wear your shoes, damn it.” I looked at his feet again. “You’re leaking nasty burn ooze on the carpet.”

  He smiled. “I love you, too, sweetheart. And thanks to the time you bled all over it, I now know a place that can clean almost anything off the carpet.”

  “He wanted Adam hurt,” I told Mary Jo. “Because if he’s hurt, then he’s vulnerable. An Alpha can be challenged at any time. Since Adam is hurt, usually he could put it off without anyone complaining, especially since the Marrok doesn’t allow fights for an Alpha position without his consent. But the pack is—” I looked at Adam. “Sorry, I know it’s my fault. But the pack is broken. Adam can’t put this off—not when the pack is in this much turmoil. If he does, he’s liable to have worse than a formal fight on his hands—he’ll have a rebellion.”

  See, I grew up in a werewolf pack. I know the dangers. Not even fear of the Marrok can completely control the nature of the pack. That’s why an Alpha will do anything in his power to hide his weakness in front of the pack.

  “Henry challenged you?” Mary Jo’s voice was shocked. “The Marrok will kill him, if you don’t manage it first.”

  “Almost right,” said Adam. “Paul is actually the one who challenged me. Climbed in the window of the bedroom about four minutes ago and challenged me in front of Ben, Alec, and Henry. Henry having volunteered to drive Ben to pick up some clothes for Mercy because Ben’s hands are still too sore for him to drive easily and suggested Alec tag along.”

  He paused, and said heavily, “Henry is helpful like that.”

  Mary Jo nodded. “And Alec is known as a neutral party. Not one of your biggest fans, but not one of the hotheads either.”

  Adam continued in a gentler voice. “They must have had some signal so that he and Paul appeared in my bedroom at virtually the same moment when neither Warren nor Darryl was there to interfere. Ben and Henry witnessed the challenge. Henry was appalled that Paul would challenge me when I was hurt.”

  “They set you up,” said Mary Jo numbly. “They used me to set you up.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” I said, then added a question casually. “Was it just you and Henry at the bowling alley, or did Paul help, too?”

  She nodded, not even noticing all the assumptions I’d made because she was too distracted by the realization that things might not have been as she’d thought they were. “Paul, Henry, and I. Paul suggested it to me. ‘Can’t have a coyote second in rank in a respectable pack.’ ” Mary Jo looked at Adam. “He said she wasn’t good enough for you—and I agreed. Henry was pretty reluctant. I had to talk him into it. He set me up, didn’t he? Both of them set me up.”

  I felt sorry for her. But I’d felt more sorry for her before I’d found out that the wolf who’d challenged Adam was Paul. Henry was a good fighter—I’d seen him play fight a time or two—but he wasn’t a tithe on Paul. Paul . . . Normally I wouldn’t worry about Paul taking Adam either, but normally Adam’s feet weren’t oozing goo on the carpet, and his hands weren’t swollen and raw.

  That was why I wasn’t sorry enough for Mary Jo that I’d let her escape blame by pointing her finger at the other two.

  “The bowling alley was you,” I said. “Oh, Paul wouldn’t cry if Adam and I broke up—but he wants to get rid of Adam more than he wants to get rid of me. Henry . . . Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Henry—you’d know better than I. Was that the first time he realized how much you wanted Adam?”

  Adam jerked his head toward me. I guess he hadn’t noticed how Mary Jo felt.

  “Paul,” began Mary Jo. Then she stopped. Closed her eyes and shook her head. “Not Paul.” She gave Adam a wry smile. “Paul is tough, and he’s not stupid—but he’s not a planner. He’d never have figured out how to force you to accept a challenge before you were ready. She’s right. It’s Henry. What can I do?”

  “Not a darn thing,” he said. “Just be smarter next time.”

  “When’s the fight?” I asked, trying to be cool, trying to be a good coyote who lets her mate go out and fight a duel to the death when it hurts him to walk. I had to do it, because sobbing and fussing wouldn’t change anything except make his job harder. If he refused the challenge, Paul would be Alpha—and if I knew Paul, his first act would be to kill Adam. Henry was hoping so, anyway.

  And the reason it was Paul who challenged and not Henry was because as soon as the Marrok heard about this—Paul was a dead man. And that would leave Darryl in charge of the pack with Warren as his second. The pack would not tolerate having a gay man in the second position because if something happened to Darryl, Warren would run the pack. So Warren would be killed or be moved by Bran—leaving Henry as the second in the pack.

  Of course, Adam would have to lose to Paul for that to happen. I felt sick.

  Adam looked at Jesse’s clock, which read 9:15. “Fifteen minutes from now in the dojo,” he said. “Would you go down and let Darryl and Warren know they’ll be wanted for witnesses? I think I’ll go lie down for another ten minutes.” He was in the hallway when he said, “If I survive, Mary Jo, we’ll have to come up with a suitable reparation for the bowling alley. You ruined a very promising evening, and I won’t forget about it.”

  * * *

  “YOUR FOOD IS COLD,” GROWLED DARRYL, AS I ENTERED the kitchen. “I hope y
our business was important.”

  Jesse was still there, drying, while Auriele washed. There was no saving this, not if Paul specified the fight be here—no chance of talking Jesse into waiting this one out somewhere safe; she was too much her father’s daughter.

  “Paul’s challenged Adam,” I told them. “Fifteen minutes from now in the dojo in the garage.”

  Darryl whirled around with a growl, and Auriele stepped between him and Jesse, though I don’t think Jesse realized it because she was staring at me.

  “How did he get to Adam?” said Auriele. “Who was supposed to be watching him?”

  “Me,” I said after a stunned moment. “I guess that would be me.”

  “No,” said Auriele. “That would have been Samuel. Ben said he left Adam with Samuel and you.”

  “Samuel’s not pack,” growled Darryl, eyes light gold in the darkness of his face.

  Sam wasn’t Samuel, I thought. In the normal course of things Samuel would have kept that challenge from happening. I wondered if Paul or Henry had realized that. Probably not.

  “My fault,” I said.

  “No.” I’d left Mary Jo in Jesse’s room, but she must have followed me down. “Not your fault,” Mary Jo said. “Maybe Warren or Darryl could have stopped Paul, but Henry was very careful to make sure they weren’t there.” She gave me an inscrutable look that would have done credit to Darryl, inscrutable but not overtly hostile. “They wouldn’t have thought Samuel would interfere. They think of him as a lone wolf, not as Adam’s friend.”

  The look, I realized, was to let me know that she wouldn’t tell them about Samuel unless I did.

  “Henry?” Darryl was shocked into dropping his anger. “Henry?”

  Mary Jo lifted her chin. “He planned it.” She looked at me, then away. “He wants Adam dead and is using Paul . . . used me, too, in order to accomplish it.”

  “Is that what they told you?” Henry himself came into the kitchen. He was a compact man, a little taller than me, with a quick smile and hazel eyes that could look either gray or gold rather than the more usual brown and green. He wore his hair in a conservative cut and almost certainly shaved with a regular razor rather than an electric because an electric never produces quite the same well-groomed look. “Mary Jo—”

  “Inconvenient,” I murmured. “Not being able to lie to another werewolf.”

  If Mary Jo hadn’t stepped in front of me, he’d have hit me. She took the hit for me and it knocked her into the center island. The granite top broke loose under the impact and slid—Jesse caught the granite slab before it overbalanced and fell on the floor, shoving it back on its base. If he’d hit me that hard, I wouldn’t have gotten up the way Mary Jo did—and she was holding her ribs.

  Auriele stepped in front of Henry when he would have gone to her. Her lips peeled back. “¡Hijo de perra!” she said, her voice alive with anger.

  Henry flushed, so the insult hit home. Calling someone a son of a dog is a good insult among werewolves.

  “Hijo de Chihuahua,” said Mary Jo.

  Auriele shook her head. “Darryl kept saying that it couldn’t be Paul behind the unrest we’ve been having for the last couple of years. No one would listen to Paul. We knew he was right, but no one else fit. I would have suspected Peter before I suspected you.”

  Peter was the lone submissive wolf in the pack. It was inconceivable that a submissive wolf would play power games. If Auriele was right, this had started long before the disastrous bowling-alley incident.

  “How long have you known that Mary Jo would have dropped you like a hot potato for Adam?” I asked.

  He snarled something rude.

  “You have no common sense whatsoever,” said Auriele. I assume she was talking to me, so I answered her.

  “He’s not going to do anything with you between us,” I told her. “He’s smart enough to be afraid of you.”

  “Since I was killed for certain,” said Mary Jo, answering the question I’d asked Henry. “Isn’t that right? The first time I regained consciousness. You kissed my forehead, and I called you by Adam’s name. But it sounds like you had a pretty good idea about it even earlier.”

  “Get out of here,” said Darryl, his voice low with anger. “Get out of this house, Henry. When you come back to see this fight, you come in from the outside door. And you’d better hope Adam wins this fight, or I’ll wipe the ground with you so hard they won’t need a box to bury you in. All they’ll need is a mop.”

  Henry flushed, went white, then flushed again. He left the room without a word. The outside door opened and slammed shut.

  Ben strolled in, looking grim, Sam right behind him.

  “Where’s Henry going in such a hurry? Darryl, good—I was looking for you. I just got through talking to Warren downstairs. Have you heard . . . ?” His voice trailed off when he saw Jesse standing there. He took a good look at all of us. “I see you have.”

  Darryl stiffened. “Samuel?” His voice was soft.

  “He’s been like this a couple of days,” offered Ben. “So far, so good. It’s a long story, and you can hear it later: we’re due in the garage in five.”

  Chapter 11

  THE ONLY REASON THE GARAGE WASN’T PACKED WITH werewolves was that there hadn’t been enough time for the word to go around.

  Instead of thirty or so, we only had eighteen, not including Sam, who wasn’t pack. But I had to keep looking around and counting because there seemed to be fewer people than my count showed. Most dominance fights, like boxing or wrestling matches, are full of jostling, cheering, jeering, and betting. This one was eerily silent, and only one person was moving.

  Paul jogged in place on one side of the padded floor, stopping every ten or fifteen seconds to stretch or do a little shadowboxing. He was a tall man with blond hair and a short red beard. His skin was the kind that is usual for redheads, pale and freckled. The excitement of the impending fight left him flushed. Like Adam, he wore only a pair of gi pants.

  There is no tradition that dictates dominance fights have to be done in human form. It is common, though, because it makes the challenge more about skill and strength. When you are armed with fangs and claws, a lucky hit can take out a more skilled opponent.

  On the far side of the mats from Paul, Adam stood in horse stance, head bowed, eyes closed, and shoulders relaxed. All signs of pain were gone from his face, but he hadn’t been able to eliminate the pain-caused stiffness in the time that he’d walked from the house to the mat. Even if he had, only an idiot would look at the broken scabs on his feet and hands and not understand that he was in trouble.

  As Alpha, even as badly hurt as he had been, he really should have been healing faster than this. Granted that werewolves, even the same werewolf, will heal wounds at different rates depending upon a number of things. He might have been hurt worse than he’d shown us, or the trouble he’d been having with his pack could be interfering with his ability to heal. I tried not to look worried.

  Jesse and I had the equivalent of ringside seats at the edge of the mat on the side where Adam stood—traditional for the family of the Alpha, but not smart when neither of us could reasonably defend ourselves if the fight rolled off the mats. Sam stood beside Jesse, and Warren stood between us, presumably to keep the combatants from hurting us.

  Adam wasn’t wearing a watch, but at exactly nine thirty by the clock on the wall, he raised his head, opened his eyes, and nodded at Darryl.

  Wolves aren’t much given to long speech-making. Darryl strode from the sidelines to the center of the mat. “Paul has chosen today to challenge our Alpha,” he announced baldly. His lips twisted as he said, “He eschewed the formality of running the challenge by the Marrok.”

  No one murmured or looked surprised. They all knew what Paul had done.

  There was the bare chance that the Marrok would look at the mess the pack was in and allow that Paul had no choice but to challenge. The chance that the Marrok wouldn’t kill Paul would have been slightly greater if Adam h
adn’t been hurt already. But Paul probably thought that he was in the right and that he could convince the Marrok of the same thing.

  I suppose anything is possible. I don’t think Paul understood just how unlikely that was. He’d never, to my knowledge, actually met the Marrok. Henry, who had, probably told Paul that it would be all right. People like Henry are good at getting others to believe them.

  Darryl looked around the audience. “My job is to see that you stay off the mats. I am willing to ensure that this is a fair fight with your life. Are we clear?”

  “Excuse me,” said Mary Jo’s voice.

  She was just this side of five feet tall so I didn’t see her until she stepped onto the mat in front of Darryl.

  “I call challenge on Paul,” she said.

  And then there was noise, a great howl of noise as the whole garage full of werewolves objected—women don’t fight in challenge fights.

  Darryl raised his hand and quiet spread reluctantly.

  “I’m within three of his rank,” she said. Her eyes were properly on Darryl’s feet, though her face was turned to him. “It is within my right to challenge him for the right to fight the Alpha.”

  I stared at her. This was not something I’d have expected of the Mary Jo who had allowed the fae to set fire to my house while she was supposed to be standing guard.

  “You’re not within three ranks,” growled Darryl.

  She held up her hand. “Paul,” she said. Then she held up one finger “Henry.” Another finger. “George and me.”

  She was right. That was where I’d have put her, too.

  “You are an unmated woman,” Darryl said. “That puts your rank at the bottom. Alec is after George.”

  “Alec,” she called, not taking her attention away from Darryl. “Who is more dominant, you or me?”

  Alec stepped around the other wolves and looked from her to Paul. I could see the answer he wanted to make, and Darryl started to relax. Adam, I noticed, was watching Mary Jo with surprised respect.