Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(92)

Each and every member of our pack was caught in a single frame of their lives. Some of them, like Mary Jo and George, were in their wolf form. Joel was, surprisingly, his human self, and part of me knew that I’d been worried about him, but I couldn’t remember why just then.

All of those strands ended in my mate’s right hand. And they reappeared in his left hand, which was extended to me. His head was turned toward me. The half of his body nearest to the pack was his own, strong and true. The half of his body nearest to me was the body of the monster. His head was his own human self—his expression caught midscream. The clear glass that was his shell was spiderwebbed with fractures.

The smoke filled the cave rapidly, first covering the floor and then rising to waist height. It curled around Adam like a cat at the cream.

Ooo, it said. Pretty. And broken.

At that moment, I realized that the smoke didn’t belong to the weaver. It was familiar, though. Underhill. I had invited Stefan to my otherness, and he had come alone. But when I’d come here, filled with the power of the weaver’s bite, power that was a gift from Underhill, the power had come with me, leaving the weaver behind.

As I watched, she started to penetrate the fractures in my mate’s altered body.

I needed to stop that—but I was trapped where I was by the bonds that allowed me to keep my feet and resist that smoke. I strained helplessly, but I could not reach Adam.

And that was when that niggling presence I’d felt—that presence that was not pack, not Stefan, but bound to me anyway, by thin spidersilk that smelled of fae magic—that presence whispered in my ear.

Let me Be. I can help you, if you will only let me Be.

I chose not to answer it because taking up that new bargain felt dangerous. Instead I addressed the interloper.

“Go home, Tilly. You are not welcome here,” I said firmly.

Tilly’s voice was much louder than that other, secret whisper. The sound echoed in the hollow cave when she asked, How can I be unwelcome when you brought me here yourself?

“Not willingly or knowingly,” I said firmly. “Go home.”

You can’t make me go, she said, and the smoke near Adam became nearly solid and formed Underhill’s human avatar. Here, her hair was not dirty and her clothes were not tattered. She turned to Adam’s form and bent to the ground, picking up a rock from the cavern floor.

I held out my left hand, which was empty, as if I had known from the beginning that I would need it for something other than holding the ties to my beloveds. And I understood who and what that small secret voice was, and why what I was about to do was dangerous. Maybe I should have thought it over, but Underhill had a rock and my mate was already a little broken.

I said, “Come.”

And in my hand a familiar weight settled, so light for the power it represented in this place where love and hatred meant more than earthly forces like gravity or magic. I pointed Lugh’s walking stick toward the smoke assaulting Adam’s battered form. Light traced through the runes on the old gray wood and lingered on the silver on the blunt ends of the walking stick.

Find your way home, the walking stick told Underhill as lightning arced into the center of her chest. Its voice was still a whisper, but somehow it rang through the air as definite as and bigger somehow than the lightning that preceded it.

Momentarily, almost as if altered by a stray breeze, Tilly’s face softened, then formed a grimace of rage. But as I stepped forward, able at last to move, pointing the walking stick toward her as if I were an extra on a Harry Potter film with an unusually big wand, her body became smoke. Then the smoke retreated, first folding in upon itself and then disappearing altogether.

As the smoke vanished, the glass figures vanished, too. The cave gave way to open air. Between one instant and the next, I stood in the dark heart of a small grove of oak trees. I could feel the ties, but I could not, in this moment, see them. I was alone, except for the walking stick, which was very pleased with itself.

“Mercy.” Adam’s voice recalled me to the real world.

Breathing heavily, sweat pouring off me, and both hands empty, I looked down to see that the wounds on my shoulder no longer bled. I blinked a couple more times before I could orient myself.

I stood once more on an asphalt driveway. Adam stood between me and the enraged, ugly little man who was screaming in a voice that must have had some magic in it to sound so sharp and wrong.

“I’m here,” I said, because Adam’s back was to me. Only afterward did I realize that had probably been the wrong thing to say. To the perception of anyone watching, I had never gone away. “I’m fine. I’m still me.”

I flexed my fingers, still feeling the impression of the walking stick in my hand—but there was nothing there.

“Stole it! She stole it!” the weaver screamed.

For a moment I thought that he was talking about the walking stick—then I realized that he meant the power that had followed me to my other place and had not come back to him. I noticed that the smoke was entirely gone from the circle—although the circle, stretching over our heads like a giant snow globe made with darkened glass, was still in place.

Ben, Luke, and Kelly were on their feet. Kelly held the chain to Ben’s collar, but they were all staring at the little man and his very noisy rage.

There was no more pillar of rock. Only a cluster of people on their knees beside a very still body. That was something I would have to worry about later.