Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(48)

There were a number of counters to that move—Ben knew them, but the creature controlling his body made no effort to use any defense. My attack had been quick and instinctive, and it had taken the beast by surprise. Impossible to say how much of Ben’s knowledge the beast had access to. Earlier he hadn’t known the difference between Wulfe and a wolf, but with the evidence I had I couldn’t assume that he couldn’t fight as well as Ben.

I also didn’t know if he would feel pain occupying Ben’s body, but it didn’t matter much at that moment. The damage to Ben’s knee was a physical thing that slowed his body down.

I grabbed for a weapon and came up with my marble rolling pin, but by the time I turned to face Ben again, Adam was there. I hadn’t heard him. I missed the first move, just heard the noise as Ben’s shoulder broke from a joint lock. As Ben fell, pushed by Adam’s hold, Adam brought his knee over and landed on the small of Ben’s back. I heard those bones crack, too.

“It won’t hold him long,” said Adam, but I was already running. I jumped over them both and ran down the stairs to the cage that would be our safe room once construction wrapped it in more civilized trappings. But the cage itself was finished and the silver cuffs and chains were hanging from a hook on a post just outside it.

I dropped the rolling pin—cracking it on the exposed concrete floor. I would feel bad about that later, because it had belonged to my mother’s mother. But at the moment, I was too busy grabbing the cuffs and chains. Beast or not, the creature was wearing Ben’s body and these bindings would hold a werewolf.

I ran back up the stairs to find the tableau unchanged. Ben writhed and jerked under Adam, seemingly unbothered by the pain of the broken bones—though his lower extremities were unmoving. Adam kept him down. About ten feet from them, fitful fire wreathing his hands, Aiden watched them with wary eyes.

I bound Ben’s legs together, then closed one of the cuffs on the wrist connected to his broken shoulder. Adam took over from there. Without consideration of the pain of Ben’s broken bones, he pulled Ben’s arms behind his back and cuffed his wrists tightly together. Then Adam connected the leg manacles until Ben was effectively hog-tied with steel and silver, his skin blackening where the metal touched him.

As soon as he was held immobile, Ben’s body went limp.

“God, oh God,” he whispered. “Don’t let me go. He’s still in my head. He wants her dead. She scares him and he wants me to kill her. No more fucking around asking questions, just kill her. Find out why later.”

Ben took a deep shuddering breath. “Don’t let me go.”

“Okay,” Adam said.

“Don’t let Mercy anywhere near me,” he said. “Oh God. He’s in my head and I can’t. I can’t . . . I can’t.” He went limp again.

“Is he breathing?” I asked, panicked. “This is my fault, Adam. I sent him out there.”

“He’s breathing,” Adam said. “Pulse is strong. Takes more than a few broken bones and an uncanny thing’s possession to kill a werewolf.” He looked at me. “He was on guard duty—in harm’s way. That was his job tonight.”

I wrapped my arms around myself. “I sent him out to talk to Wulfe,” I told Adam. “I forgot about the smoke beast.”

“It didn’t forget about us,” said Adam.



* * *



? ? ?

Running water didn’t help Ben.

Warren and Kyle showed up about ten minutes before Darryl because they’d been working at Kyle’s office. Ben’s bones had mended themselves by that time and he was half sitting, half lying on the fainting couch in the living room. Adam had put him there after deciding he didn’t want to try to get him down the stairs and into the cage by himself for fear of having to hurt Ben further. Werewolves healed fast, but even Adam, drawing on the power of the pack, would have had a hard time healing the kind of damage Ben had suffered in the half hour or so that had elapsed.

I couldn’t smell the beast’s magic anymore, but I didn’t make the mistake of thinking it was gone. Ben’s periodic bouts of madness would have disabused me of that if I’d trusted my nose too much. I already knew that sometimes I couldn’t detect this magic.

“Well,” Warren told Ben, in a squeaky voice that was an obvious attempt to imitate someone, “here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten you into.”

“I suppose by that I’m to assume I’m Laurel?” asked Ben, trying to sound like himself, but his voice was tight and there was a rough growl on the edges.

“You aren’t Hardy,” said Adam.

I hadn’t made the connection. Laurel and Hardy were well before my time, before Ben’s time, too, as he was actually about my age. Adam, on the other hand, had a whole four decades more of cultural references than I did. It had never mattered to me before this moment.

I was discouraged to discover that I could be terrified for Ben—and still worried about the distance between Adam and me.

Warren glanced at me and then at Adam—so apparently I didn’t hide what I was feeling well enough.

Adam said, “We are just waiting on Darryl.”

Warren shook his head. “He’s not that heavy. You and I can carry him down to the river.”

“It’s not the carrying me that’s the problem,” said Ben, his voice shaky. “Anytime anyone comes within spitting distance I turn into that girl from The Exorcist.”