Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(52)

We drove for a while in silence, and I worried through the past few days, trying to see if there was something I'd missed or something I should have done differently.

"Hey, Stefan? How come I couldn't smell Blackwood after he bit me? Tonight I was a little distracted, but yesterday, with the first bite, I checked."

"He would have known what you are after he tasted you." Stefan stretched, and the van swayed a little with his movement. "I don't know whether he was trying to fool you into thinking him human, or if he always cleans up after himself in that way. There were things in the Old Country that hunted us by scent - not just werewolves - or by things that were left behind, hair, saliva, or blood. Many of the older vampires always remove any trace of themselves from their lairs and from their hunting grounds."

I'd almost forgotten they could do that.

The change in the sound of the car's engine as he slowed for city traffic woke me up.

"Do you want to go to your home or Adam's?" he asked.

Good question. Even though I was pretty sure Adam would understand what I'd done, I wasn't exactly looking forward to discussing matters with him. And I was too tired to work my way through exactly what I wanted to leave out - and how I was going to kill Blackwood. I really wanted to talk to Zee before I talked to Adam, and I wanted to get a good long sleep before I did either.

"Mine."

I'd gone back to dozing when the van slowed abruptly. I looked up and saw why: there was someone standing in the middle of the road, looking down as if she'd lost something. She wasn't paying any attention at all to us.

"Do you know her?" We were on my road, just a few properties from our house, so Stefan's question was reasonable.

"No."

He stopped about a dozen yards away, and she finally looked up. The purr of the van's engine subsided, and Stefan glanced behind him, then opened the door and got out.

Trouble.

I stripped off my clothes, popped open my door, and shifted as I hopped out. A coyote may not be big, but it has fangs and surprisingly effective claws. I slipped under the van's side and out under the front bumper, where Stefan was leaning, his arms crossed casually across his chest.

The girl was no longer alone. Three vampires stood beside her. The first two I'd seen before, though I didn't know their names. The third was Estelle.

In Marsilia's seethe there had once been five vampires who had reached some sort of power plateau so that they did not depend upon the Mistress of the seethe for survival: Stefan; Andre, whom I'd killed; Wulfe, the bercreepy wizard in a boy's body; Bernard, who reminded me of a merchant out of a Dickens novel; and Estelle, the Mary Poppins of the undead. I'd never seen her when she wasn't dressed like an Edwardian governess, and tonight was no exception.

As if he'd been waiting for me to appear at his side, Stefan glanced down at me, then said, "Estelle, how nice to see you."

"I'd heard she hadn't destroyed you," Estelle said in her prim English voice. "She tortured you, starved you, banished you - then sent you to kill your little coyote bitch."

Stefan spread his hands out as if to showcase his own living... undead flesh. "It is as you heard it." There was a musical cadence to his voice, and he sounded more Italian than usual.

"Yet here you are, you and the bitch both."

I growled at her, and I heard Stefan's smile in his reply. "I don't think she likes being called a bitch."

"Marsilia is mad. She's been mad since she awoke twelve years ago, and she hasn't gotten better with time." Estelle's voice softened, and she stepped forward. "If she weren't mad, she would never have tortured you - her favorite."

She obviously waited for Stefan's reply, which didn't come. "I have a proposition for you," she told him.

"Join with me, and we will put Marsilia out of her misery - you know that she'd have urged you to do just that if she were aware of what she's become. She will see us all destroyed in her obsession with returning to Italy. This is our home - our seethe bows to no other. Italy holds nothing for us."

"No," Stefan said. "I will not move against the Mistress."

"She is your Mistress no more," Estelle hissed. She strode forward until I was pressed against Stefan's leg. "She tortured you - I saw what she did. You, who love her - she starved you and flayed the skin from you. How can you support her now?"

Stefan didn't reply.

And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was right to trust him to protect me and not turn me into his mindless slave. Stefan didn't turn on those he loved. No matter what.

Estelle threw up her hands. "Idiot. Fool. She will go down, either by my hand or by Bernard's. And you know that the seethe will do better in my hands than in that fool Bernard's. I have contacts. I can make us grow and thrive until not even the courts of Italy will rival what we build."

Stefan quit leaning against the van. He spat on the ground with deliberate slowness.

She tensed, furious at the insult, and he smiled grimly. "Do it," he said - and, with a flick of his wrist and the magic of a Highlander episode, he held a sword in one hand. It was efficient-looking rather than beautiful: deadly.

"Soldier, you'll regret this," Estelle said.

"I regret many things," he replied, his voice sharpening with a cold, roiling anger. "Letting you walk off tonight might be another one. Maybe I shouldn't do it."