Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(20)

Adam just looked at me.

“Strangers to me, but Adam knows them.” And he wasn’t happy about it.

“Invaders,” said Aiden.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Is this your rabbit?” Aiden asked me, gesturing at the bits of dead cottontail he’d found. It wasn’t the jackrabbit, for sure. But we hadn’t been certain we were following the jackrabbit’s trail.

My nose isn’t as good in human shape. I glanced at Adam, who stuck his nose closer to the rabbit—and shook his head.

“No,” I told Aiden. “This isn’t our rabbit. They left this one as a challenge and a test. We’re too close to pack headquarters; they wouldn’t have killed something unless they were investigating how well we patrol our territory.” I looked at Adam for confirmation.

He growled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. He bumped me with his shoulder, pushing me toward home.

“But what about the jackrabbit?” I asked him.

He gave me an impatient huff.

“Something made Dennis kill his wife,” I said. And, damn it all, I teared up again. “That rabbit is a clue.”

“How do you know that the rabbit we’ve been chasing is the jackrabbit you saw?” asked Aiden reasonably. “It could be any old rabbit. Do you smell magic? I don’t feel any.”

I shook my head. He was right.

“Even if it was that rabbit, Mercy . . . there is not, right now, any proof that the jackrabbit had anything to do with the killing of your friends. Though parts of Underhill are infested with jackrabbits—and the creatures that feed upon them—I don’t know of any killer bunnies.”

I gave him a narrow look. “Is that a reference to Monty Python?”

He grinned. “I like Monty Python. I understand the jokes. So if there is danger out here that isn’t related to whatever it is that attacked your friends, maybe we should listen to Adam and go home to regroup.”

“Three wolves,” I muttered, though I knew better. “I’m not worried.”

Adam gave me a look and I threw up my hands. “Yes, all right. Okay. I know. Where there are three, there could be more. We could be looking at a pack. And yes, I don’t want to meet a hostile pack when it is just you, me, and the firebrand.” I glanced out toward the river in the direction that the rabbit we’d been trailing had run. “But the rabbit we’ve been following isn’t acting like a normal rabbit and I want to know why.”

Adam sneezed.

“Home,” I told Aiden, resigned.

Back in coyote form, I led the way home with Aiden in the middle and Adam following from behind. We took a more straightforward way home, but since we also went by road instead of through fields and backyards, I wasn’t sure it was any faster.

“Do you feel that?” asked Aiden almost soundlessly. “Someone is watching us.”

By the pricking of my thumbs, I thought, though in this form I didn’t really have thumbs. But Aiden was right, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck spark with the feeling that we were being observed. I glanced upward but didn’t see anything in the night sky except for stars.

Adam huffed agreement and pushed us into a jog. We weren’t running away, but the faster pace might force the person or people—or rabbits—following us to break cover. It was harder to stay hidden at speed.

We turned down the road that led to our house, and whatever or whoever was following us was still behind us. Adam waited until a small grove of big old trees hugged the road, and he disappeared into the shadows there without a sound. He must have pulled a little more pack magic out, because the ground around the trees was covered with crackling-dry leaves and even Adam wasn’t good enough to get through those without making some noise.

Aiden and I kept to our jogging pace as if nothing were wrong—and a jackrabbit leaped out of the bushes and bit me on the neck, really sinking its teeth in.

I snapped back at it and missed but gave chase as it bolted through the underbrush and into an alfalfa field. We both tunneled through the bushy stuff using the furrows where the alfalfa grew thinner. A werewolf—I could hear Adam crashing behind me—wouldn’t be able to run through this at the same rate.

Jackrabbits are built for speed. They can run as fast as an ordinary coyote. I was not an ordinary coyote—and I was determined this rabbit wasn’t going to get away from me. I felt, faintly, as though there were a pressure on my head—like an incipient headache—but the sensation was lost in the greater drive of the hunt.

I pounced and snapped my teeth on flesh and fur. I had it between my teeth, though it didn’t feel or taste quite right, not like a rabbit. And then it was gone. Not run away—gone. It turned from flesh into smoke in my mouth, an acrid-vinegary smoke that burned my lungs and tasted like the magic that had filled Dennis’s body.

I dropped to the ground gasping and choking. My eyes burned and my throat felt like I’d tried to swallow a hot coal, and I curled up into a ball with the force of my coughing. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t . . .

Cold arms picked me up and began running with me slung over a shoulder. I heard a wolf growl—and the vampire carrying me growled, too, and said words I was not able to pay attention to. I didn’t have a clue where the vampire had come from and I was too busy trying to breathe to care.