Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(39)

The minion started, looked at Adam, and flushed when he realized that Adam had seen his hunger. The minion closed his eyes and went very still.

“They will be our guests,” he said after maybe half a minute of blank face and quiet body. “My Master’s word on it.”

So Bonarata could get and give information through his minions—at least through this minion. Adam would remember that.

Adam glanced at Harris and the wolf again. Putting a handsome man and a vulnerable one in the middle of a seethe . . . if Bonarata didn’t have iron control of his vampires, there might be trouble.

Then he thought of Marsilia’s assertion that Bonarata didn’t like making mistakes—though he didn’t mind hiding behind an apology and the claim of a mistake that wasn’t really a mistake.

Bonarata’s vampires probably wouldn’t attack Harris and his man by accident. But if it was in the Lord of Night’s best interests to have them trapped here without a pilot . . .

Adam sighed audibly and said, “Oh, put them somewhere near us. At least that way if someone starts screaming, there’s a good chance we will hear them.”

The vampire drew himself up. “Do you doubt my Master’s honor?”

“No,” Adam said. “But I won’t trust the self-control of vampires I don’t know when presented with prey that looks like this.” He waved a hand at Harris, who raised a good-looking eyebrow.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “This is really what I look like. I don’t have enough magic to keep up glamour.”

When things might get dangerous and I might need every ounce of power I’ve got, the goblin pilot didn’t say. Probably the vampires wouldn’t hear the unspoken message—and if they did, likely they’d understand the reasoning behind it.

Harris frowned suddenly at Adam. “And you have no room to talk.”

“Yes,” Elizaveta said venomously. “We are all beautiful here. Can we get going? Or do I need to get the makeup mirror out of my purse so you two can admire yourselves a little longer?” She looked at the vampire. “I hope there are sufficient bathrooms in the suite. I don’t like to share”—she glanced at Adam, laughter in her eyes—“bathrooms.”

Bonarata’s minion nodded, but he wasn’t really paying attention to Elizaveta, which was a mistake he might regret. It didn’t do to forget that she was a power who could make even the Gray Lords of the fae back down. Instead of paying attention to someone who could make him wish she was only killing him, he was staring at Harris’s copilot, who had been doing a pretty good job of being unnoticeable.

“That one is a werewolf,” he said abruptly, as if he’d just figured it out.

Harris frowned irritably. “I was told that this involved vampires. I have five people who can fly this bird from the US to Europe, excluding me. Four of them are humans, so I brought the werewolf. He doesn’t belong to Hauptman’s pack. I cleared it with Hauptman.” He turned his frown to Adam.

“I was told a pilot and copilot were acceptable,” said Adam coolly. “What race or species they belonged to was not specified.”

The vampire was doing its mind-out-of-body thing again. When he came back, the vampire’s body language changed entirely, and the beast who lived in Adam’s heart suddenly took notice. Adam didn’t know who was looking out of the head minion’s eyes, though he had a good guess. One thing Adam knew was that it certainly wasn’t the vampire he’d just been talking to.

“Are you Charles Cornick?” the vampire asked the man standing just behind Harris.

The werewolf’s jaw dropped. “Oh, hell no, sir,” he said in a shaky voice, his shoulder bumping into Harris’s.

He might as well have screamed “I’m a victim” to the biggest predator in Europe. Adam could see the urge to attack slide into the bodies of all the vampires in the area—including Marsilia and Stefan.

Adam pinched his nose and closed his eyes briefly as the weight of responsibility fell on his shoulders. He had to keep all of these people safe—and they were going to be doing their best to get themselves killed. Some of them because he had asked it of them. The only shining thread in this whole mess was that Mercy had managed to extract herself: Bonarata did not have Mercy.

Harris’s copilot continued to babble, the smell of his panic filling the air. “Have you ever seen Charles? He’s about twenty feet tall, and he’s Native American. Do I look Native American to you?”

“Leave him alone, Bonarata,” said Adam. “He’s not your food. He is . . .” Adam surveyed the trembling wolf without affection, but sighed. “He is under my protection.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t one of yours,” the vampire observed.

“He doesn’t belong to my pack,” Adam said. “But for the purposes of this trip, he put his neck on the line for me. That means he is mine to protect.”

Bonarata’s puppet turned to Adam. “My apologies,” Bonarata said through his puppet’s mouth. “But you pricked my temper, because I am most disappointed. I was sure you’d bring the boogeyman of the werewolves. I’ve been looking forward to meeting him.”

“I did ask,” said Adam coolly. “But the Marrok forbade it. Charles is very good at ending people . . . monsters, let’s say, and the Marrok apparently thinks that bringing him here, where there are so many monsters to be slain, would be a bad idea. Maybe he believes that. Maybe he believes this is my problem, not his—and he doesn’t want to risk losing Charles. Or maybe he is reluctant to deal with the headache of the power vacuum that your death at Charles’s hands would leave in Europe. It would be nearly as large a mess as the death of Jean Chastel, the Beast of Gévaudan, left.”