Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(12)

She was worried, but he could hear the confidence in her voice. She was still young enough to believe her father could fix anything.

Adam didn’t tell Jesse what the pack knew. His daughter was human and couldn’t smell the blood. He knew that Mercy would tell him that he wasn’t accomplishing anything by trying to protect Jesse from the full truth. But Mercy would be wrong, because, like Aiden, he needed Jesse’s optimism. Even if it was a false optimism.

“Mercy will make them pay,” he told them, his throat tight. He looked at Aiden. “It wasn’t your fault, Aiden. We claimed this city . . . these cities, and put them under the pack’s protection because they are our home. You were the catalyst. You and Mercy were the catalyst that pushed us where we should already have been. If that was what inspired—” And he’d given that last word teeth, hadn’t he? He took a breath and tried again. “If that was what inspired someone to take Mercy, it still is not your fault.”

“I will burn them,” Aiden said, and the wolf in Adam loosened its jaws in approval and recognition of another predator, one possibly more dangerous than he.

“If there is anything left after Mercy gets done with them,” Jesse said coolly, “I might help you with that, Sprout.” She looked at Adam. “Is there anything I can do?”

He started to shake his head, then stopped. There was no hiding the accident. It was very late, but in a half hour or so, the people who had to head to work in the wee small hours would start driving past.

“Call Tony and tell him about this.” Adam was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to keep his temper long enough to stay coherent. But Tony knew Jesse well enough to listen to her. “Tell him I’ll give him the whole story as I discover it—but that it is supernatural and probably treading into too-dangerous-for-humans-to-know territory.”

Tony was a cop, the unofficial liaison between the police and the werewolf pack. There was an official liaison who was pretty competent. But Tony knew more than was safe for a human already. If he hadn’t been under pack protection, the vampires or the witches would have killed Tony by now. Adam intended to keep the official liaison safely ignorant of vampires.

Tony was trusted enough by his department that they took his word when he told them it was too dangerous to know but matters had been handled. That was satisfactory to everyone involved.

“Can do.”

Jesse dug into the small purse that went everywhere with her. A cell phone rang as she did so, but it wasn’t hers. Adam glanced in the direction of the noise.

Stefan reached into his pocket, pulled out the phone. Without looking at it, he threw it. It landed against the side of the broken SUV, denting the already battered metal. The phone exploded into powder.

The wolf thought that it was an interesting reaction in a man who appeared so calm. But then he suspected that his own aspect looked cool and controlled because soldiers learn early to hide intense emotion when among enemies—even enemies who are people you like. He and Stefan had both been soldiers.

Adam’s phone rang, and he pulled it out, half-surprised it was still in its holder. He glanced at the number and almost refused the call but stopped himself.

Vampires, he thought. They weren’t hers, but they had been vampires.

“Hello, Marsilia,” he said in a basso growl that he couldn’t stop.

There was a pause. “Either you are missing someone or I am,” she said. “I have contacted everyone who belongs to me except Stefan. You should contact your people, too.”

“Stefan is here,” he ground out. “Mercy has been taken.”

“I see,” she said, and if she’d been there, he’d have torn her throat out for the calm in her voice. “I just received an e-mail from an ex-lover of mine indicating that he has taken someone from us. From our cooperative.”

“Cooperative?” he asked softly. “What cooperative?”

If it was an ex-lover of Marsilia’s, Mercy had probably been taken because of Marsilia. Not because of the pack. The guilt he bore vanished and left him unbalanced before a rush of anger filled the empty space guilt had left behind. For a moment, the emotional wave was too wild for him to listen to her or anyone else. Wolf stepped in where the human faltered.

“This isn’t her fault,” said Stefan’s cool voice. “This is old business, and she didn’t start it, werewolf. Listen to her if you want to save Mercy.”

Adam realized he must have blanked out again because he was no longer on the hood of the SUV—and other than the vampire, there was a very large space all around him. Adam couldn’t find it in himself to care that the werewolf had taken over to the point that he could not remember what he’d done. That he didn’t care was a worse sign than losing that much control in the first place.

Stefan said, “If your people have to put you down because you choose not to control your beast, then Mercy will have one less person looking for her.”

The vampire’s words had been uttered in a cold voice, but Stefan’s eyes were hot. For some reason, that rage allowed Adam to catch his balance a little.

Adam swept his hand toward the cab of the SUV and said what his heart had been screaming since he’d first seen the damage to the cab. “Mercy is wounded,” he ground out. “Bleeding out. Vampires aren’t going to keep her alive. That’s not what they do.”