Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(50)

All four of them were wet by the time they dragged Ben back to shore. He choked up water in great heaving coughs that strained his bound limbs. The river had almost succeeded in drowning him.

When Adam reached for the cuffs, Ben shook his head. “No!” And after he spoke that single word, he coughed up another burst of river, only to collapse in a limp heap.

“He’s in me,” he said. Then tears leaked out as if he’d absorbed some of the river into his eyes as well as his lungs. “He’s still here. Don’t let me free.”

“Shh,” said Adam. He looked at me.

“Did you hear Wulfe?” I asked.

He nodded, then kissed the top of Ben’s head—avoiding the snap of Ben’s teeth without apparent effort. “We have a problem. Let’s get him back to the cage where I can at least get him out of the cuffs. I’ll call Marsilia and check on Stefan.”

That would work better, I acknowledged silently. She liked Adam and she really didn’t like me. Especially she wouldn’t like me asking about Stefan. She tended to view him as her property—and viewed me as the reason he’d broken free of the seethe. He was the only vampire in the TriCities who did not belong to her. We could work together when we had to, but there was no reason to push it now.

And all of that gave me something to think about other than our poor Ben and Stefan caught up in the same hell. And I had nothing I could do to help.

“Where did the scary vampire go?” asked Kyle in a low voice.

“Wherever scary vampires go,” answered Warren. His voice acquired a hard edge. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back.”



* * *



? ? ?

We settled Ben in the cage with a mattress on the floor and the chains and cuffs off.

Releasing him from the cuffs had almost resulted in disaster. If Kyle hadn’t been carrying a stun gun and been unafraid to use it, Ben would have broken free.

Adam called Marsilia and she confirmed what Wulfe had told us. The beast had indeed gotten Stefan, though when asked, she said the bite marks on his shoulder were more akin to a big snake—a very big snake—than to a rabbit. She sent photos. Two red marks, the size of a dime, marred the white flesh of his left shoulder. According to the measuring tape, the marks were four and three quarters of an inch apart.

“That’s the size of a horse’s mouth,” Warren said. “More or less.”

“Does he know what bit him?” Adam asked.

“He has not been able to share coherent information with us,” said Marsilia. “We can keep him . . . indefinitely, I suppose. But I would not keep anyone I cared about in this state for long.”

“No,” agreed Adam, watching Ben, who stared back at him with eyes that were not Ben’s. “But we are working on it.”

“Except for Wulfe—with whom it is not practical—I have brought all of my people and their flocks to our seethe and locked us in,” Marsilia said. “I understand that you think that you need to do something about this, but I advise you to do the same. Think about what the news organizations will do when one of your wolves is bitten and goes on a killing spree.”

“Is that what Stefan did?” I asked. Then I had a panicked thought: “What about his people?”

Vampire hearing was good, too. She said, “All of his sheep are safe.”

I did not add “those who survived,” but I wanted to. Marsilia had killed some of Stefan’s people (he had never, in my hearing, referred to them as sheep or his flock) in order to perpetrate some desperate scheme or other. He had never forgiven her.

She blamed me. Not for her having to kill his people, but for his lack of forgiveness. It didn’t make sense, but emotions don’t have to make sense.

“How did you discover what had happened?” Adam asked.

“Wulfe brought him in,” she said. “It was not pretty—and there was no doubt that something or someone else was controlling him. He did not try to blend in. At all.”

“Thank you for the information,” Adam said. “If we find out anything useful, I’ll make sure you get word.”

“I would appreciate that,” Marsilia told him.

Warren and Kyle left to go home and sleep. Darryl settled in as our guard, since Ben had been retired from the field. Adam and Darryl were still discussing how to patrol safely when I went up to bed. I was pretty sure that Adam wouldn’t come up to bed until I was safely asleep, so I left them talking and went upstairs.

I paused in front of Jesse’s door, then gave in to my need to see someone safe tonight and cracked the door. She was curled up on the bed with a stuffed elephant that I knew Gabriel had gotten her. I shut the door again and left her to her dreams.

I was just pulling the bedding up to my chin when my phone rang. Caller ID said the number was unavailable. I hesitated—but it was the wrong time of night for a robocall.

“Mercedes,” said Beauclaire, son of Lugh and Gray Lord of the fae. “Uncle Mike asked me to call you tonight. A few days ago, he informed me that Underhill created a door to her realm in your backyard and in the process, she released a predator, one that Aiden told you was called the smoke beast.”

“Yes,” I told him.

“I know of that one,” Beauclaire told me, and I felt a shiver of relief.