Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(20)

The small train station shared space with a bus terminal. There was, not ten feet from where I’d emerged from the tidy bushes surrounding the whole space, a bus with the luggage doors open on both sides. Even as I noticed it, attendants closed the doors on the far side.

I jumped in the near side and scrambled over bags and suitcases before dropping into an empty space and stillness. I lay there panting as quietly as I could until the doors closed. Five minutes later, the bus lumbered forward in a wave of diesel fumes, and I took a deep breath.

Safe.

Relief washed over me, and I put my head down. I slept.

—

I DREAMED OF ADAM.

I sprawled awkwardly over a chair shaped for a person in my coyote body, my muzzle on Adam’s lap. His strong hand rested on my back. I moved so I could see his face: he looked tired. I think we were on an airplane—which made no sense at all. But it was only an impression. Everything except for Adam was pretty vague in the way that dreams sometimes are.

“There you are,” he said. “What in . . . what did you get yourself into this time?”

Coyotes can’t talk.

“Mercy,” he said.

Sometimes I have been known to use the not-talk thing to my advantage. He sounded like he was mad at me. I was tired. The pads on the bottom of my feet, tough enough to run over the desert, had not fared so well running over blacktop all night. My shoulder hurt, my jaw hurt, my heart hurt. I was stuck in a luggage compartment without food. My stomach was pretty sure my throat had been cut.

I put my muzzle back on his lap and closed my eyes.

He was very still for a moment.

“Not doing so good, huh?” he said softly, running his hands over my sides gently before he touched both sides of my face in a caress that was both soothing and possessive. “Sorry. I’ve been fuc . . . very worried.” Adam doesn’t swear in front of women or children if he can help it—a product of a childhood in the fifties or abnormally good manners, take your pick.

He bent over me, put his head down on top of mine, and I heard him inhale as if he were breathing me in. “Are you okay?”

I wiggled a little closer to him, but I didn’t open my eyes.

Apparently that was enough of an answer, because he exhaled and relaxed. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know.”

He sat up, but his hands stayed on me. “You just disappeared, sweetheart. We found the SUV and the stolen semi that hit it. Found your blood on the seat—that was rough, because, Mercy, it was a lot of blood. But we couldn’t find you. The gas station was deserted. We think the clerk belonged to the vampires. That they had been waiting for you to go there by yourself. It was so close to home, you’d feel safe—and that would give them a chance to act.

“We might have been at a dead end, but things really got interesting when we talked to Marsilia.”

I raised my head and looked at him, but he was staring at something I couldn’t see.

“She’d gotten an e-mail,” he told me. “Implying that you were being held to persuade her to present herself before the . . .” He stopped here. “I am informed that speaking his name or title might allow him to eavesdrop because we are speaking via a witch’s spell rather than our bond. Do you know who I mean?”

I nodded, disconcerted by the idea of a witch spell. Adam’s hands tightened painfully.

“Does he have you?” Adam asked urgently, and I shook my head.

“You got away? Where are you? Are you all right? Are you safe?” he asked.

I would have said something then. But I was in coyote form—and I didn’t have the faintest idea how to answer any of his questions.

His nostrils flared, and he frowned at me. “I smell diesel. I thought it was just you . . . but, Mercy, are you on a bus?” he asked.

But he was gone before I could answer, the quiet dream blown to bits by the abrupt sound of hissing brakes. The noise and rough jolting brought me back to the dark underbelly of the luggage compartment, which was a cold substitute for Adam’s lap. I stood up. My legs had trouble compensating for the wallow as the bus rolled over speed bumps, curbs, bodies, or something that lifted up one side, then the other a couple of times.

I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep. Not very long, I thought. I would have been stiffer if it had been more than a half hour or so—not long enough to be safe from the Lord of Night. I waited, and when the bus stopped, I readied myself.

When the luggage doors opened, I dashed out as quickly as I could. The bus attendant cried out as I ran by him, but this was a huge station, and I quickly lost myself among the buses and passengers towing luggage.

A man reading a book crossed my path, and I slowed down, walking at his heel for a dozen yards until the pack magic settled lightly around me and I became less interesting. I could feel the lessened pressure at the back of my neck as people quit looking at me. Pack magic would help, but I’d have to do my best to blend in because it was weak.

We moved past a bright yellow bus just as a woman reached up to close the cargo area but paused as something caught her attention. It was too good a chance to miss. I broke smoothly away from the man I’d been trailing and slipped unseen into the luggage compartment. I found a pair of big beige duffel bags and stretched out between them, just another beige lump to human eyes. The luggage-bay doors closed.