Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson, #7)(50)

7


Dominant werewolves are control freaks and do not enjoy being passengers in cars. Asil was no exception. He put on his seat belt, closed his eyes, and sat tense and unhappy as I drove toward Kennewick.

We’d had a brief discussion about who would be driving, and he clearly felt my argument that I knew where I was going and he didn’t was insufficient. He reluctantly agreed, however, that since Marsilia would hold me responsible for anything (more) that happened to her car, it was only fair that I drove. We couldn’t take his rental because they came lo-jacked to the max, and I didn’t want to lead anyone to Sylvia’s home if I could help it.

“Don’t worry,” I told Asil cheerfully. “I already wrecked one car this week. I have no intention of wrecking another. Really.”

He glowered at me—which was impressive since he didn’t open his eyes.

The morning sky was dark and overcast, which actually doesn’t happen all that often here. It wasn’t much lighter than it had been last night. Rain started to splatter the windshield as I pulled onto the highway back to Kennewick. The car informed me that it was thirty-four degrees F outside.

About once a winter, we get a spate of freezing rain that is unholy scary to drive in. Rain turns to ice as it hits the road, and that turns the highways into frictionless surfaces that look no different than wet pavement—until suddenly steering and brakes quit working. I’ve seen semitrucks stopped at red lights start sliding without any impetus other than the weight of their load pushing eighteen wheels sideways across the road. Freezing rain makes auto-body men happy campers as they count the wrecks using all of their fingers and toes.

But at thirty-four degrees, we were safe enough, so I didn’t have to worry about the rain.

“After you retrieve Adam’s daughter, you really still intend to contact the vampires?” Asil asked when we were nearly at our destination.

“Can’t do that until it gets dark,” I told him, then took a good look at the sky. “Nighttime dark, not daybreak dark. I don’t know what new delights this day will bring; however, if we all make it to this evening, then, yes, I do. Marsilia owes the pack. Much as she’d like to see me roast on a good hot fire for a long time, that’s personal. Business is more important. Business means that she doesn’t want to get on the bad side of the werewolves, especially right now. She’s down four of her five most powerful vampires. Two of them betrayed her to a vampire trying to take over her seethe and were kicked out. Stefan left the seethe about the same time. The one powerful vampire left to her is mostly crazy as far as I can tell. She can’t afford to offend us.”

“What if the pack isn’t a factor?” asked Asil, soft-voiced. “What if they’re all dead? Does she hate you enough to go after them? She cut her teeth in Italy during the Renaissance; a little sleight of hand is not beyond her now.”

“She knows about Bran, knows I was raised in his pack and that he is fond of me. If it turns out that she was involved, he’d wipe her seethe from the face of the earth, and she knows it. No.” I thought about it. “No, it isn’t her. There are too many downsides and no profit in it for her. She actually likes Adam, I think, and he’s pretty easy for her to deal with. Straightforward. Another Alpha might not be so accommodating.”

Though without Adam, would there be a pack here in the TriCities? He’d been brought in to deal with a lone wolf who had decided to build a pack, then started killing humans. Adam had stayed because the backbone of his business was security contracts with government contractors, and the TriCities was full of them.

That wouldn’t benefit Marsilia either, though, because weakened as she was, she counted on Adam to keep the nastier unallied supernatural creatures under control and keep others from settling here at all.

“Ah,” Asil said, as I pulled into the apartment complex. He opened his eyes as we slowed. “Disappointing. I had hoped the responsible party would be the vampires. I could kill vampires, I think, without losing control. If it is humans who are our enemies, I shall have to find another means of stopping them.” He showed his teeth. “Age catches up with us all, and I enjoy the kill too much to be allowed it. If we are to be allies in truth, Mercedes, you should know my weaknesses before they become an issue.”

Most of the werewolves who belong to the Marrok’s pack are there because they can’t function in a normal pack. Asil, it seemed, wasn’t an exception.

“Okay,” I said after discarding several versions of comments that mostly boiled down to “please, please don’t kill anyone, then.”

I drove past Sylvia’s apartment, still thinking about the likelihood that Asil would be put in a position of killing someone. There were no empty spaces to park anywhere. I guess most people were still home at seven thirty in the morning on a Saturday with rain coming down in sheets more common on the other side of the state. Go figure.

I finally found a place next to the Dumpsters a few apartment blocks down. The little Corolla that had followed us from Kyle’s house, presumably full of Hauptman Security personnel, had to keep going. I gave them a little wave as they went by.

I opened my door and got out—and something hit me in the back.

The weight dropped me flat on my face on the pavement. The suddenness of it held me still more than any hurt—though pain came right on the heels of the realization that someone had landed on me. I’d hit the ground limp, raising my head just a little to protect my face—years of karate benefiting me yet again. It set my knee and cheekbone off again. “Don’t fight me,” said the woman perched on my lower back. “I don’t want to hurt you.” She put something narrow and hard around my right wrist and reached for my left, braced for me to pull at the trapped hand.