Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(99)

If she had let them witchbond people to her, she was already in their power. I didn’t exactly know what she meant by the term, but I knew witches.

“Kent told you what happened with the smoke weaver?” I asked her. It didn’t matter to me, but I needed to keep her attention on me. “Bastard. I trusted him.” True enough to keep her from reading a lie. But the bite in my voice was fake—I didn’t want her knowing that I was wasting time.

Something rose silently from the place where Adam had been lying. Something too big.

Oh, my love, what did you do?

But I knew. He’d had to pull everything he could to wash the silver and ketamine out of his system. He would not have been able to pull more to increase the speed of his shift usefully. Not to mention that she would have noticed if he had tried to shift to his wolf form—it was not a subtle thing. An unarmed human form against a werewolf with his own gun—the odds were not optimal. He’d have taken them, but he had another option.

I did not think it had taken him ten seconds to change from human to monster.

“Fucking Rumpelstiltskin,” Fiona said. “What is the world coming to when you have to make deals with a damned fae and he turns out to be Rumpelstiltskin?”

“Rumpelstiltskin” was the last word Fiona ever said. A giant nightmarish monster landed on her from fifteen feet away and ate her neck in the same motion. The gun went off because she’d had her finger on the trigger. She was dead by then, but the gun had been pointed at me and the bullet hit me in the arm.

The monster that had been Adam dragged Fiona’s body back into the corner with all the useless surveillance electronics and settled in to feed. Growling defensively, as if I might try to take his prey away.

I didn’t need to see his eyes to know that Adam wasn’t home. Adrenaline is the enemy of control for a werewolf, and Adam had had to build up adrenaline to fight the tranquilizer, even with the pack’s help. He’d changed without a moment to spare for gathering his thoughts, centering himself. If he had changed to his wolf, I would have been surprised if Adam had managed to hang on to control under the circumstances. But that would have been okay. I was the mate of Adam and his wolf; neither of them would ever hurt me.

I did not think I shared that link with the monster.

I shifted to coyote and lost the wrist and ankle cuffs, but my neck was pretty much the same size in either form. I shifted back and found that the monster was staring at me. The sound of the cuffs hitting the floor must have attracted his attention.

He inhaled, nostrils flaring. I didn’t know if he could smell my blood over the scent of gasoline. I met his eyes briefly—silver and bright like the moon—then quickly looked away and down.

He didn’t make any sound, but I felt him come over to me. His nose touched the top of my head and trailed to my neck. I raised my chin and tilted my head, giving him free access to the pulse that beat wildly there. I was breathing in shallow, openmouthed pants because I was so scared.

I could smell Adam on him—but I could not smell the wolf. Just a sour musk that smelled like rage and hatred and witchcraft. It had grown stronger since I’d last met it. I had made a mistake in not calling Bran sooner.

Something warm and wet hit the top of my shoulder. Drool.

He bit my neck. If I hadn’t been wearing that collar, I’d have been dead. I think there must have been silver in it because he yipped and then roared at me. I kept my eyes closed because I didn’t want my last sight to be this creature, born of witchcraft and self-hatred. But he retreated back to his meal.

He was so precise in his movements, the chair hadn’t even skidded on the floor. He’d bent the collar and it restricted my breathing now. The arm that had been shot wouldn’t obey me. But I raised my free arm and felt around the collar. I found the latch—and the lock.

With two good hands and a lockpick I could have opened that thing up in a few seconds. If wishes were horses . . .

I could feel the stirring in the pack bonds—the rise of alarm. They would come here soon, and they would be able to take this monster down—if they worked together. If they didn’t hesitate because it was Adam. But some people would die.

And I would be dead before they got here, because though he was eating again, his face was toward me, his eyes focusing on my exposed abdomen.

Blow up the bond, Bran had told me. And then refused to explain what he meant. And he’d given me that advice without a full explanation of the extent of the problem.

It wasn’t like I had a lot of options.

I closed my eyes again, because I couldn’t do this with the monster staring at me. Then I put myself in the place where I could see the bonds.

The pack bonds exploded into sound, as if I’d stepped into a firehouse in the middle of an all-hands three-alarm fire. I told them, “Not now—hush.” And the otherness quieted.

I stood ankle-deep in a creek so cold it made my feet ache; the bond I shared with Stefan was still wrapped around one ankle and I felt his attention on me even though it was daylight and he should be dead for the day. I could have called him to me, I thought. Stefan would not hesitate when faced with the monster my mate had become.

“No,” I told him. “Not now.”

The bond around my waist was grotesque and repulsive, the red skin cracked open in places and oozing green slime.

I opened my mouth and pulled out a diamond the size of a baseball. It had been faceted into a princess cut and was clear and flawless—and cold.