Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(35)

“He couldn’t change his whole body quickly enough for his purposes,” said Adam. He spoke to me, but he was looking at Sherwood. “He just changed what he needed. I can’t do it—but the Moor and a few of the other older werewolves can.”

We all absorbed that for a few minutes.

“So,” I said briskly, “we need to figure out how the zombie got in.”

Adam frowned. “We can try, but without a witch, I’m not sure we’ll get anywhere.”

“I can ask Zee to help,” I suggested. “He’s not a witch, but he’s been around a long time.” I hesitated. “I could call Bran or Charles.”

Adam shook his head. “Zee, but not Bran or Charles. There are too many eyes on us right now. I think it’s more important than ever that the supernatural community knows that we are not part of Bran’s people right now.”

Sherwood frowned at Adam. “What’s so important about right now?”

Adam looked at him for a long moment. “So,” he said, “let us leave aside why you wept over a long-dead wolf, shall we? Or how you cleansed the stink of the dark magic from our home.”

Sherwood looked away. “Please?”

“We have to figure out how they got in and planted that trap,” I said. “If Sherwood hadn’t been here, Adam—what if Jesse had found that thing? What if they plant another zombie werewolf?”

“They have no more,” Sherwood said, his eyes wolf-bright and his voice nearly guttural. The change was so sudden, his voice so powerful, that I found myself scooting back in my chair.

“The one who made that poor shadow is long dead.” The wolf in human-seeming almost glowed with power. “They have neither the learning nor the power to make him again. They would not have risked him if they had known who was here. I have made him free, my poor brother that was.”

He looked at Adam, but his eyes did not meet those of my mate. “As for other mischief—my song has claimed this place for now. No evil may enter without invitation. They cannot come in.” He glanced beyond us, behind Adam and me, toward the basement. “Not for a while.”

“Sherwood?” Adam asked.

“No,” growled Sherwood’s wolf, a hint of contempt in his voice. Then his voice gentled a bit. “Not yet. He still hides.”

“Wolf,” I asked, “who are you?”

“Witchbane,” he said. “Witch’s Spawn.” He grimaced, or maybe he smiled. “Something like that, maybe. I forget. Who are you?”

“Nothing that grand,” I said.

He bared his teeth. “Coyote’s Daughter,” he said. “We shall sing them to the great death.”

Then he shuddered, closed his eyes, and passed out cold. If Adam hadn’t been as quick as he was, he would have fallen all the way to the floor.

“Well,” Adam said, hefting Sherwood’s limp form and striding out to the living room, where he could put him down on the couch. “That was unexpected.”

“Not as unexpected as having him turn into a full-formed whatsit who obliterated a zombie werewolf,” I said.

Adam grinned at me. “That which doesn’t destroy us . . .”

“Leaves us scratching our heads and saying, ‘What’s next?’” I said. “Is he okay?”

Sherwood had already begun to stir.

“Pack bond says he’s fine,” Adam said. “Just worn-out. Maybe another couple of sandwiches?”

I made food—at this rate I was going to have to go shopping again. When I brought the food into the living room and set it on an end table, Sherwood was sitting up again.

He squinted at the food and began to eat like a . . . well, like a ravening wolf.

“I remember that,” he growled. “Whatever that was.” Then he looked a little sick and he quit eating. When he spoke again his voice was soft and uncertain. “Unsettling to have that inside me all this time. To know that it is there, all of it, waiting for me.”

I didn’t think he was talking about his wolf.

“What will come, will come,” Adam said. “That’s enough for now.”

Sherwood gave a derisive half laugh. “Right.”

“You saved the day,” Adam told him firmly. “Let it go.”

“Apparently that is something I’m good at.” Despite the self-directed bitterness of his words, when Sherwood gave another half laugh, this time it was genuine.

“Okay?” Adam asked.

“All right,” Sherwood said. To prove it, he started eating again.

Adam gave me a rueful look. “I planned on matters going a little differently, but I still have to discuss some things with you.” He turned to Sherwood. “And you, too. It feels a little anticlimactic after all of this—” He tipped his head toward the mess that started at the top of the stairway to the upstairs and continued in a trail of interesting stains and broken things down toward the basement. “But it is still important—in the long run, it might be more important.”

I swallowed, because Sherwood wasn’t the only one chowing down. Adam had not eaten—and he should because he’d changed back and forth, fought a zombie werewolf thingie, and healed himself really quickly. “You need to eat,” I told him.