Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(22)

“You will leave her alone,” said Aiden, and his voice was no longer mild.

I looked over. Aiden might be dripping with water, but he didn’t look cold, though the night air had an edge of chill that preceded true autumn. In fact, as I watched, steam was starting to rise off him. He was standing much, much too close to the vampire.

Wulfe’s eyelids lowered and he smiled. “Make me, Fire Touched. Make me.”

Aiden was too close to the vampire, too far away from Adam and me for either of us to prevent what happened next. Aiden reached out and touched the vampire’s arm, and Wulfe was engulfed in fire.

The vampire screamed, a high-pitched, terrified sound, his body so bright with fire that it hurt to look at. He flailed his arms as if trying to put the flames out—or trying to fly. He stumbled backward, away from Aiden. Sparks started drifting from his burning body, landing among the dry leaves and weeds, which started to burn.

Still screaming, Wulfe rolled on the ground, but it did no good; the flames continued undaunted. His flesh bubbled up and blackened—the air began to smell like someone was holding a barbecue. The warmth from the fire brushed my skin.

Unlike a gunshot, screams were not common around here, but no lights went on and no dogs barked. I realized that Adam must still be holding on to the pack magic that kept people from noticing us.

And still Wulfe burned.

Adam climbed onto the bank and bumped his shoulder lightly into Aiden’s side and the boy reached over (not down, because Adam is a werewolf and Aiden is not very tall) and put his hand on Adam’s back, closing his fingers on Adam’s fur. Other than that, the boy looked unmoved by the gruesome sight of Wulfe burning.

I came up on Aiden’s other side more slowly.

Wulfe rose to his knees and reached out as if to touch Aiden—but lacked the strength to close the distance between him and us. “Please,” he said. “Please. I don’t want to die . . .”

And he lied. I had become much better at telling truth from falsehood. It used to be that vampires were difficult. It used to be that I needed scent to smell the lie. But now, sometimes, I could hear it.

I took a step forward, ignoring Adam’s growl.

Wulfe dropped to the dirt, facedown. He stopped moving, but his body still burned, flesh blackened and smelling like burned fat.

Then he turned his head and looked up at me. In an entirely normal voice he said, “Too much, right?”

The flames around him died, leaving us all in the dark as Wulfe bounced up to his feet.

I had never seen something that Aiden could not burn. I’d seen him melt metal and crack stone with his fire. A vampire was not metal or stone. Vampires are vulnerable to fire.

There were not a lot of ways to kill a vampire. Fire was the best one I knew of. I had trouble pulling air into my lungs again, but this time it wasn’t magic that caused my difficulties—it was fear. I would not have thought that anything could make Wulfe more terrifying to me before this moment. I had been wrong.

The skin and burned muscle tissue reknit itself as Wulfe dusted off the remnants of his clothing, which seemed to have fared a lot better than they should have, given all the burning that had been going on. His pants were nearly intact, if blackened and smelly. He looked at Aiden and the smile died away from his face. Aiden stepped closer to Adam.

“Child,” he said. “I gave you your chance. I won’t give you another.”

He looked at me, hugged himself, and rocked back and forth to the rhythm of my heartbeat because creepy was what Wulfe did. In a fade-away voice he said, “Well, boys and girl, I think my stalking is done for tonight. This was much more exciting than I thought it would be. Ta.”

He waved a hand, then turned on his heel and walked back down the road. We all watched him go. I didn’t think it was an accident that, at the same bunch of trees that Adam had used to disappear, before the rabbit had bitten me, Wulfe blended into the shadows and was gone.

In high-alert mode, Adam pushed us all back down the road toward home. Nothing more tried to kill us before we made it into the kitchen.

I made a beeline for Adam’s office. Emerging a few minutes later, wearing my clothes and in human form, I found Aiden waiting for me at the table. Like mine, his hair was still wet.

“Adam went upstairs,” Aiden said. “I think he’s going to change and come back down. I told him that I needed to talk.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He laughed, sounding tired. “I am never okay, Mercy. But some days I am more okay than others. This is one of the ‘other’ days. Wulfe did something to me. Look.”

He held up his hand and nothing happened. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at.

“Since Underhill made me, Mercy, I have never not been able to call up fire.” He wiggled his empty fingers and put them back down on the table. In a small voice he said, “I’m not even sure how I feel about that. I can’t protect myself. But at the same time, it might be good to be just . . . ordinary.”

“Don’t get used to it,” I warned him. “If Wulfe did something permanent, I’m pretty sure he would have bragged about it.”

“Is that what you wanted to talk about, Aiden?” asked Adam, entering the kitchen still buttoning his shirt. His skin was flushed from the change and he was barefoot.

Jeez, he was sexy.

Aiden shook his head. “I know what killed Mercy’s friends,” he said. “And it is bad.”