Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(83)

Honey was a fighter, born and bred. Adam had spent the better part of three decades teaching her martial arts, but she’d had a good foundation before that. Lenka had no style, but, like some of the men he’d known in the Rangers, she showed every sign of having killed a lot of people. Honey moved prettier—but Lenka moved faster.

His people started toward them as soon as Lenka pulled her knife. But they stopped when Adam waved them away. “Honey was attacked. She has the right to finish this. Lenka broke the guesting laws.” The rest of them could interfere, but then the expectation would be that they subdue Lenka. If he left it as Honey’s battle, she could take it all the way to the death because Lenka had struck the first blow.

Bonarata moved around his desk. “Let me put a stop to this.”

But Adam stepped in front of him. “No. She attacked Honey unprovoked. This is a legal fight by guesting law.”

Bonarata snarled at him, “She’ll kill your wolf.”

Adam took a step backward and turned at the same time, putting some distance between him and the vampire and allowing him a clear view of the fight. Let Bonarata see for himself how likely Honey was to die in a fight with any werewolf, let alone one who was underweight and broken.

Lenka was changing, her facial bones moving subtly under the scarless skin of her face. She took a kick in the ribs and let her body move with it as her hands snaked down to grab Honey’s leg. But Honey saw it coming and dropped her body into a shoulder roll that brought her back into the outer circle of combat.

Honey was holding back.

Adam told her the words the wolf was whispering in his head. “Kill her, Honey. The woman you knew is not in that body anymore and cannot be brought back.”

Honey didn’t look at him, though he could tell from the stiffness of her shoulders that she had heard him and didn’t like what he’d said. Across the room, Smith met his eyes and nodded agreement. He, too, understood what Adam’s wolf had known instinctively.

Bonarata turned to Adam with a hiss. “She is mine.”

Adam assumed he meant Lenka, but given his addiction, he could have meant either one of them.

“Then you should have kept better control of your wolf,” Adam told the vampire. “If she had not attacked Honey, we would have left her alone.”

Bonarata growled soundlessly, but Adam heard it just the same. The vampire turned to the fighters and said, “Lenka, kill her for me.”

Adam was pretty sure that Lenka was doing her best to do just that. Those words had been aimed at Adam.

After that, everyone was silent, only moving to get out of the way—and Elizaveta was both quick and graceful for a woman of ahem years.

The room was mostly empty of furniture except for the small desk Bonarata had been using. And the desk didn’t last. Lenka ripped off a delicately carved leg and broke it over Honey’s thigh—a hit that was meant for her knee.

It was the table leg that got Honey’s head on straight. Up until that point, despite Adam’s order, she had been fighting defensively, unwilling to seriously hurt the other wolf. Honey tore off a second leg. When it broke off with a sharp point, instead of using it as a club, she used it as a modified lance.

“Good,” Adam said quietly. She’d hear him. “That’s it.”

She lost the table leg eventually. She brought it up as a shield when Lenka struck with her knife, taking advantage of an opening Honey had lured her into. The knife sank deeply into the wood. Honey twisted, and Lenka couldn’t keep her grip on the weapon. Honey threw the table leg, knife and all, through one of the plate-glass windows, shattering the glass and leaving the knife out of play unless and until someone decided to go through a window after it.

“She is beautiful,” Bonarata said, mesmerized, his desire scenting the room. “Like a tigress. All muscle and speed.” Lust had changed his eyes, and not even the most mundane human would have looked into that feral face and thought anything but vampire. Even though vampires didn’t need to breathe, he was sucking in great gulps of air, air now scented with blood and sweat and need. His need.

Across the room, Marsilia was watching Bonarata with sad eyes. Not hurt or brokenhearted or anything like that, just sad. The way someone would look at a fallen Ajax or Hercules.

She was wrong. Bonarata wasn’t even down yet, let alone out. But there was no question that his hunger for Honey—for any female werewolf’s blood—was driving him now.

He wouldn’t like having Adam and his people see him like this. He’d remember it later. But so would Adam.

It took her a while—because Lenka was a hell of a fighter—but Honey pinned the other wolf to the floor in a wrestler’s hold. Panting, blood dripping from her mouth and her nose, Honey looked, not at Adam, but at Elizaveta.

“Can this be fixed? I smell witchcraft on this band around her neck,” Honey said.

Adam was starting to think that he should find out more about Bonarata’s witches. According to Bonarata, he had a healer who had mended Mercy’s near-fatal wound. Healing was not something black witches are supposed to be good at, and no white witch would have that kind of power. He’d had someone who’d made a gris-gris that had impressed Elizaveta—Adam knew how to read that old witch.

Elizaveta walked to where the werewolf was pinned to the floor. She sank to her heels and examined the metal band around the werewolf’s neck.