Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(82)

11





Adam


I could wish that Adam were more concerned with his own life than with saving everyone else’s. Since it is a wish Adam has expressed (often) about me, I suppose I have no grounds to complain. I do anyway, of course.



BONARATA WAS DRESSED IN SLACKS AND A TURQUOISE silk shirt that had been made for him. He was seated, doing paperwork, at a desk Adam had barely noticed the first time he’d been here. “A moment, please,” he said, without glancing up.

Adam’s dad had liked to do that when Adam had transgressed in some way. Invite him into his study, then sit down and do some other work for a while so that Adam could think very hard about whatever it had been that he (or one of his brothers) had done to get called into the study. And let him know that neither he nor his transgressions were as important as whatever else his father was working on.

It had worked quite well on Adam when he was eleven.

Adam strolled over to the desk and stood, looking down upon the vampire, Honey at his shoulder.

Marsilia gave him a horrified look. Stefan flashed him a quick smile before turning his attention to a painting hanging some distance away. It was not the painting of Marsilia. From his position, Adam couldn’t see the subject other than there was a lot of blue, maybe a seascape. Elizaveta found an oil painting done in the classical style, the rape of Leda, Adam thought, because there was a muscled and naked woman grappling with a human-sized swan. The two goblins and Smith were on the far side of the room speaking softly—very softly if Adam couldn’t hear it. If he couldn’t, then neither could Bonarata.

Bonarata figured out what had happened pretty quickly, Adam thought. His intimidation tactic had been turned on its head. The minute Bonarata looked up, Adam had the upper hand.

Adam was fighting down amusement when the door next to the desk opened—and his wolf recoiled with horror and pity and revulsion as a dark-haired woman came in.

She could have been beautiful or ugly or anything in between, and Adam would not have noticed. Every hair on his body, every sense belonging to the werewolf and Alpha and pack understood that the werewolf who came into the room was wrong.

“Jacob,” she said in a perfectly unremarkable tone as she set a large envelope on the desk in front of Bonarata. “Annabelle gave me this for you. She says that the architect has redrawn the section in the house in Seattle.” She turned to look at Adam and stared blankly at him.

Her wolf was dead. And not dead. And so was the woman. Or not. Whatever she was confused his wolf and sent him into a frenzy of horror.

“Good,” Bonarata said. “I’ve been waiting for these.”

Adam thought that he was supposed to be nervous that the vampire was building a home in Seattle, but he had no emotion to spare for the vampire; his wolf was too focused on the damaged wolf. She wore a silver collar, though there was no marring of the skin where it rested—so it was not real silver. White gold, maybe. Her neck was covered with scars of bite marks and so was every bit of skin he could see that wasn’t on her face. Her clothing had been chosen to display as much of that scarred skin as possible without being tacky.

Adam wasn’t the only one reeling. On the far side of the room, Smith forgot himself far enough to utter a low growl.

“Lenka,” said Honey, in a low voice that held the same horror that Adam felt.

While Adam had been paying attention to the broken werewolf, Bonarata had come to his feet, effectively putting an end to the dominance issue he’d begun. Adam was very far from caring about whether he or Bonarata had the upper hand.

“Lenka,” said Honey again, taking a step toward the wolf, who looked at her without recognition.

Honey said something in a tongue that had a nodding acquaintance with German, her voice taut and frantic.

The broken wolf said something in reply in the same language, then turned to Bonarata. “I am sorry. You told me to speak only in English. You must punish me.”

She sounded . . . eager, though her scent carried bitter horror.

Bonarata smiled. “It is of no matter. You were accommodating our guest.” And then Bonarata made a mistake. He turned to say something to Honey.

Distracted by Marsilia, Bonarata had not paid much attention to Honey the day before, and he hadn’t paid any attention at all to her while indulging himself trying to get one up on Adam. Honey was worth looking at normally—dressed as she was to attract attention, she could stop traffic.

“You—” said Bonarata, and that’s as far as he got, because as well as traffic, she apparently was pretty good at stopping speech. But mostly because Bonarata was an addict—and Honey fit his craving like a bespoke suit.

Honey, uncharacteristically, didn’t see Bonarata’s reaction. She was only paying attention to Lenka. Adam wasn’t entirely certain Lenka saw it, either, since he was watching Bonarata and Honey, but there wasn’t a werewolf in the room who wouldn’t have smelled Bonarata’s sudden interest. Lust had a very distinctive scent, be it a human, werewolf, or vampire.

“Honey,” Bonarata said slowly, his voice deepening. “Honey Jorgenson, correct?”

Lenka looked at Bonarata. Then she drew a knife from somewhere and struck Honey. Or rather she struck at Honey, who moved and thus caught only a thin slice across the front of her shoulder.

Kill that one, said Adam’s wolf as clearly as he’d ever heard anything. He’d heard other werewolves say that sometimes their wolf spoke to them—and a couple of those he respected too much to discount their word. But in the nearly five decades he’d been a werewolf, he’d never had it happen to him. She is broken. Kill her.