Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(57)

If I’d had any doubt, the expression on the face of the man holding Makaya would have cleared it right up. Whether Lincoln Stuart—I recognized him from Adam’s photo presentation—lived or died today, he was never going to have a human heart again.

I could see Hannah and Kelly now. Hannah, a scarlet streak across one shoulder, was frozen just inside the gate. Kelly was on the grass, elbow crawling toward her.

And then the time for observation was over.

Auriele launched herself, stretching out in the instant before the Jetta hit the werewolf. He was tall, so the bumper caught him just below the knee, obliterating the bone. The sound was loud, but dull as if I’d hit something soft. The velocity folded him sideways over the hood as the car crushed him into the dumpster.

The seat belt holding me in my seat gave up the ghost—I’d been worried about that; it was on my list to fix. Even so, the car crumpled, as it had been designed to do, absorbing a good bit of the power of the collision. The seat belt held on long enough that I didn’t go through the windshield.

The impact rang my bell pretty good—and maybe broke my nose on the steering wheel. There was enough blood for that, and my nose hurt sufficiently. Dazed, I backed the car up until it died—about six feet from the dumpster, which had not moved with the impact. I popped the door open and struggled out amid dripping glass. I had to spin around awkwardly once to get rid of the remains of the seat belt.

The car was more damaged than I’d expected—maybe the speedometer had needed some work. I stared at the car for a moment and decided the speedometer was a moot point. I was going to be looking for another car, again.

About that time, I realized I could hear a lot of noise—and that there were a lot more important things going on than the wreck of my car.

I pulled out my gun and stepped around the car to point it at Lincoln, who was howling and snarling and trying to pull the remains of his left leg out of my radiator, where it was caught. That both of his legs were hideously broken did not apparently register because in among the other sounds he was making were threats. They seemed pretty undirected at the moment, but I believed him.

I’d seen this kind of behavior before. Pain meant nothing to someone who was lost in his wolf. But then his shirt slid back—and I saw a wound on the top of his shoulder.

My breathing was labored—because I had to breathe through my mouth because of my nose. I was starting to think, as the shock of the collision (I could hardly term it an accident) receded a bit, that I had broken a rib or two as well. Woozy as I was, I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off Lincoln. The shirt slid a little more and I saw a second scab on his skin where another tooth had penetrated. They weren’t small holes—like the rabbit bite that Ben and I had gotten. These were bigger—more like the photos that Marsilia had sent of Stefan’s wounds. As much as I wanted to go rip the shirt off to be sure, I didn’t dare go any nearer to him. He might be bitten, but he was also a werewolf.

“Makaya?” I called. “Auriele?”

“Safe,” said Auriele, sounding remarkably composed.

The sounds had died down to just children crying—near and far—and Lincoln’s frenzy.

“Injuries?” I asked.

“Makaya looks like she has a broken wrist and maybe an ankle,” Auriele said. “Hannah has a bad cut on her shoulder that will need stitches. A lot of stitches. Kelly—”

“Will survive,” he growled. “Changing now.”

“Any bites?” I asked. “This wolf has been bitten like Ben.”

Auriele said something pungent. After a moment, relief in her voice, she said, “Not Makaya. Not Hannah. Kelly?”

“No,” said Kelly. “He hit me with a baseball bat. Then he hit me with my tool chest.”

“And the sledgehammer,” said Hannah, sounding broken.

“And the sledgehammer. But no bites. Will survive,” said Kelly again. “No bites, Mercy.”

I was pretty sure the last word he said was my name, but Kelly’s voice had dropped and lost clarity because he was changing.

Shifting to wolf and food should fix most of it over the next couple of days—as long as nothing was misaligned. I had to trust Auriele to make sure Kelly would be okay, too. My job was to figure out what to do with this wolf.

I had my gun and my cutlass, which was still in its case in the car, but I couldn’t just kill him, not here in the open with door cameras and cell phone cameras (I could see some curtains moving at Kelly’s neighbor’s house). He hadn’t killed anyone here for anyone to see. Broken by the impact with my car, he appeared not to be an immediate threat. He was, especially with those bite marks, but the human authorities wouldn’t know that if I killed him. And if I waited until he was up on his feet—he might manage to kill me.

“What about the other kids?” Auriele asked—not me, obviously.

“Safe,” said Hannah. “Sean and Patrick are at a friend’s house. I locked the baby in our bedroom; she’s not happy, but she’s safe.” Sean and Patrick were their two boys, ages twelve and ten. The baby was three—so not really a baby anymore.

A truck drove up. I didn’t look up from Lincoln, but I heard it just fine. A late-model Ford diesel, I thought from the sounds of it. It didn’t belong to any of the pack—I knew the sounds of the pack’s vehicles.