Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(93)

Guccio smiled, showing white fangs. Then, instead of attacking, he began a slow, backward dance designed to keep Adam on the wet floor and allow Guccio to pick his strike.

Adam thought the fangs were intended as some sort of threat display, but, since they were only slightly longer than those of Mercy’s cat Medea, they didn’t do much to intimidate him. Guccio had kept the tablecloth in his left hand, gripped lightly near the fabric’s center. More interesting was the dagger Guccio held in his right hand.

Adam knew weapons. This one was old and well made. The blade bore designs in bright silver, and Adam assumed it was real silver. He was also pretty sure that the designs were probably a sign that the blade was—

“Careful,” Elizaveta called. “There is magic in that dagger. Old and corrupted. I can’t tell what it does.”

Yes. That’s what he’d thought. Probably it wasn’t a problem—ensorcelling blades, no matter what D&D had taught a generation or two of young people, was no easy matter. That’s why smiths like Zee had been so prized and feared.

—

THE FIGHT STARTED BEFORE MATT COULD PUT A WORD in Adam’s ear—and he wasn’t sure what it would have been, anyway. Everyone else got up from their tables, too. The little healer’s people got her out of the room, though she didn’t look too upset by the fight and kept turning around to get a look.

And it was a pretty thing, this fight. Matt thought of himself as a peaceful man. But he couldn’t deny that there was beauty in violence, a battle between two well-trained warriors.

Guccio was typical of noblemen of his era. Flash and pretty words that sought to disguise just how dangerous he was. Becoming a vampire hadn’t slowed him down or given his blows less power. He had been fighting for hundreds of years, and every moment of that showed, both in his movements and in the choreography that he gave this fight.

—

ADAM LET GUCCIO GUIDE THE FIGHT WHILE HE PAID attention to the vampire’s fighting style. The most notable thing about it so far was how much the vampire liked to talk.

“How did you manage to slip my leash?” Guccio asked. He held the dagger low and centered, its tip pointed at Adam’s heart. But he was being careful, choosing his strike, because even though Adam was bare-handed, he was still a werewolf.

Adam didn’t answer, so Guccio found his own answer. “You belong to Marsilia,” he said sagely. And also incorrectly.

Adam, who’d been thinking about ending this quickly, decided that maybe the vampires here needed a demonstration of what a werewolf could do. Bonarata didn’t need to believe that Adam could take on a Gray Lord—but maybe he should know that Adam wasn’t a weakling, either.

“No,” he said softly. “I belong to Mercy.”

Adam knew a little something about fighting with a blade. The Army had begun his education, but he’d had half a century to add to what he knew. The best knife fighter Adam had ever encountered held a knife just like Guccio did. Guccio was the product of an earlier age, with all of those years to practice.

While most of his attention was on his opponent, Adam was aware that the room had burst into motion as soon as the tablecloth had announced the beginning of the battle. Bonarata had taken control and was ushering his people out of the room as quickly as possible.

—

MATT HELPED THE NONCOMBATANTS—HUMAN, VAMPIRE, and other—get out of the room. Interestingly enough, Bonarata was doing the same thing.

When they both helped a young woman to her feet, Bonarata tried to catch his eye—Matt supposed he couldn’t help himself. There was always a lot of debate about what advantages the vampires might have over werewolves. Matt had always felt that it was the need most wolves had to establish dominance by meeting eyes. It was handy with other wolves, quite often preventing bloodshed or misunderstandings. But doing it with a vampire was a mistake.

Matt’s beast was cannier than that. Matt said something to the sobbing woman and handed her over to another woman—and the two hurried out of the dining hall.

A vampire who’d been pulling a table out of harm’s way bumped into Bonarata—and the Lord of Night grabbed the other vampire and broke his neck. Reaching out with a casual hand, Bonarata broke off a chair leg—there was getting to be a lot of broken furniture around—and stabbed the helpless vampire through the heart.

A second assassin launched himself from the top of a nearby table. But before he got close to his target, Larry the goblin, in a very ungoblin-like public display of why one should never underestimate goblins, leaped on top of the diving vampire and beheaded him with a garrote. The body, both parts, dropped to the floor just behind Bonarata, with Larry crouched on top of the biggest part.

Bonarata spun, already poised to kill whoever was behind him. Seeing the tableau there, the canny old vampire came to the right conclusion and stopped his attack before Harris had to give up his life by being stuck through with a chair leg that would otherwise have impaled Larry. Bonarata gave both goblins a shallow bow of thanks and turned his attention back to clearing the room of nonessential personnel.

—

ADAM’S ATTENTION WAS ON HIS OPPONENT, BUT HE was aware when some sort of scuffle around Larry erupted in blood, but Larry was still on his feet at the end of it. Adam had to trust he could take care of himself.

One of the diners, a human, passed by Guccio too closely. He casually backhanded her with his left hand. She collapsed to the floor in a broken heap. Dead, Adam judged grimly, before she hit the floor.