Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(40)

“Charles didn’t kill the Beast,” said Bonarata. The vampire’s voice wasn’t as certain as it would have been if he knew what he said was a fact.

Adam shrugged. “I wasn’t there when Chastel died.”

Charles had been, though, and rumor persisted in laying the old villain’s death at Charles’s feet—as if Charles’s reputation needed any help from killings he hadn’t performed. Whether it had been at Charles’s hand or not wasn’t the point. Adam was just reminding Bonarata that even powerful old monsters could die.

“Master,” said a soft voice. It belonged to the vampire who had been on the crew that had taken Mercy. “You asked me to remind you when you were close to harming one of your own.”

Bonarata, still possessing his minion, nodded. “Grazie, Ignatio. Hauptman, I look forward to meeting you and yours in person. My people will escort you to my home.” Then the vampire staggered, dropped to his knees, and shivered in a fit very like a grand mal seizure.

Ignatio—and Adam stored his name for future reference—waved, and a couple of the vampires picked up their fallen companion.

Ignatio bowed. “If you would be so kind as to follow me?”

As they moved toward the waiting vehicles just off the runway, Adam walked behind Ignatio and to his right. “Your scent was on my wife’s car seat along with her blood,” he murmured, though everyone in their group would hear him. Quiet, he had found, could be a lot more menacing than loud.

The wolf wanted to kill him, but Adam understood about being a soldier and taking orders. Still . . .

Adam said, “I will remember.”

“Pack remembers,” Honey added.





6





Mercy


So from now on, the timing between my part of the story and Adam’s gets tricky, and you’ll have to pay attention. This chapter begins late afternoon, the day after Adam and his people land in Milan. I’m asleep with my face plastered against the top of a metal table. Being sophisticated like this just comes naturally to me—what can I say?



I WOKE UP. MY CHEEK WAS HALF-GLUED TO THE TABLETOP from drying sweat and (probably) drool. But I didn’t pry it loose because there was a werewolf watching me, and I was still caught up in dreams that had me riding a troll over the Cable Bridge, jousting with the Golem of Prague while the drowned ghosts of a thousand werewolves climbed up the side of the bridge asking for jelly beans.

I needed a moment before I could deal with the real live werewolf. The troll I got, and the golem, of course, but I couldn’t figure out why the wolves wanted jelly beans.

“I know you are awake, Mercedes Hauptman,” growled a soft tenor voice with the seductively thick vowels that the Slavic languages are famous for. Czech was different from the Russian accents that I was more familiar with, throatier and deeper. Not so much less musical as bassier musical.

I sighed, sat up, and rolled my head, then my shoulders to ease my muscles. “Now I’ll never find out why it was jelly beans,” I said.

“Jelly beans?” he asked.

I drew a deep breath. “Just a dream,” I told him, and took a good look at Libor of Prague, the Alpha who had some sort of secret grudge against the Marrok.

He smelled of werewolf, of butter and yeast and wheat and eggs. And a little of the same fruit filling I’d eaten in the pastries he’d fed me earlier. The smell was sweet and rich: like jelly beans.

Libor looked nothing like I imagined him—at least not as I’d imagined him when I was a child. Probably that was a good thing for him.

His hair was medium brown and cut almost brutally short. His face was clean-shaven but, like Adam tended to, he already had a shadow of a beard making itself felt this late in the afternoon.

Libor, the Alpha of Prague, was a big man, not so much tall as massive. There was something more leonine than lupine about him. His features were of average attractiveness. He was neither beautiful nor ugly. It was a strong face and intelligent. He reminded me, superficially, of Bonarata, in that people would look at him and expect brutality and risk missing the intelligence altogether.

But Bonarata had been cold all the way to the bone. Any warmth I’d seen in him was an illusion created by a master manipulator.

Libor, my coyote informed me, was many things, but cold was not one of them. He smiled as I met his eyes and held them. His smile expected me to turn my gaze away and leave him in charge. His problem was that I had just had a few very bad days and was done with being vulnerable and lost. A minute passed. Two.

“You tread upon dangerous ground, Little Wolf,” he said softly.

“My apologies,” I said insincerely, without dropping my eyes. One of the cool things about my coyote is that dominance battles aren’t usually a problem for me. I could stare down just about anyone except for the Marrok himself. Libor wasn’t my Alpha, and I was just not going to give in.

After a moment, my brain kicked in. Staring down a werewolf was dumb. I’d spent my life trying not to be any dumber than I had to be.

After a few more heartbeats, during which time I acknowledged to myself that I was antagonizing someone I hoped to elicit help from, and being dumb with no end in sight, I said, “I’m trying for strong enough to pay attention to but polite enough not to cause a real fight. How am I doing?”