Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(24)

His ears flattened, and he stood up in the back seat, his sharp claws digging into the leather, even through the blanket, in a way that might have caused me to wince on any other day.

"No," said Stefan, scaring me out of what was left of my wits.

If he hadn't covered my mouth with a cool hand, I would have awoken the neighborhood. He made soothing sounds until I quit struggling - which was an embarrassingly long time. I was tired and my head had just blanked out for a little bit and it took a while to realize what had happened.

"There now," Stefan said, his voice pitched low enough that a human standing next to him might have had trouble hearing. "Better? I am sorry. I didn't want to alert anyone."

Sorry for sneaking up on me or sorry for holding my mouth shut? I couldn't tell and didn't care. He was here, and I didn't feel so alone. Stefan was smart, dangerous, and competent. I hoped that I was the first two, but it was the third I really needed for this.

"Kyle's in trouble," I whispered back. Keeping our voices down made sense. People ignore the sounds of cars, but most of them will wake up to the sound of a strange voice. I didn't want to wake the neighborhood watch and try to explain to them what we were doing. "There is a car and an SUV parked by his house that shouldn't be there and no outside light. Kyle always turns on the porch light."

Stefan released me and took a couple of steps back, leaving me to grip the open car door for balance when Ben bumped against me as he got out.

Stefan was wearing a dark polo and slacks and I missed the Scooby-Doo shirts and jeans. I hadn't seen him wear them for a while, not since he'd left the seethe. He wasn't emaciated, but he had never regained the healthy look that he'd had before Marsilia had laid waste to the menagerie of humans he fed from. Marsilia's betrayal and the destruction of his menagerie had nearly destroyed him.

"I had a few minutes to check out the house while I was waiting for you," he said. "There are two strangers in the living room opposite the kitchen. There may be more on the upper floor because the lights are on."

Now that we were not touching, I could see the awkwardness the older vampires I'd met exhibited - as if he knew how he should act but couldn't quite feel it anymore. As if by giving up his Scooby-Doo shirts and his beloved Mystery Machine, Stefan had given up his last firm anchor to his humanity. Still, the Mystery Machine, Stefan's old VW bus with the cool paint job, remained parked in his driveway, so I had hope.

"You didn't see Kyle?" I asked.

"I didn't see him. I don't have your nose to follow a scent, and I didn't want them to know I was watching. They were just a little too alert for my comfort. I could smell blood, though. I don't know whose it was."

I would. He waited, and I considered.

"Let's go around back," I said. "I can slip in through the back porch; there's a dog door Kyle put in for Warren. I can check out the house and call you in when I find him."

"I think that sending you into the house alone is the stupidest of our many options," said Stefan repressively. "Ben should be at the front door, you should go to the back - and wait in the yard, Mercy - and I will go in."

The oldest and most powerful vampires acquire names that define their most prominent characteristic. Stefan's name among his kind was the Soldier. This was the sort of situation in which he excelled. I felt the relief of having an expert make the calls.

"They are only human," Stefan said, and there was a familiar look in his face, though I was more used to seeing it on the wolves: hunger. "I will kill them, and Ben will kill any who get past me. You can let us know if anyone tries to get away out the back, and we will kill them, too."

Stefan had always liked people. I hadn't noticed before that he also enjoyed killing them. Maybe that was part of the new, more vampiric Stefan.

So much for letting someone else make the calls.

"We don't need to kill them," I pointed out reasonably. "As you said, they are only human, and there are only two."

"That we know of," he said.

"We don't know anything about them," I told him. "We aren't even certain that the two men in Kyle's living room have anything to do with the people who took the pack."

Stefan raised an eyebrow - he was right. Who else would they be?

"We don't know who is backing them or what their endgame is," I continued doggedly. "We don't even know if Kyle is there. What I do know is that we can't go in to kill."

Stefan frowned at me. "I forget that you are too young to remember the lessons of Vietnam. Go in to win, Mercy, or do not go in at all. How many people are out here who could help Adam?"

"Us," I said wretchedly, then added, "Maybe Ariana, though she was pretty freaked-out when we left." I knew what he was saying. I did.

By that logic, we should leave Kyle to his fate. But I wasn't just Adam's wife, I was his mate. That made me second in rank - and that meant I had to protect the pack. It meant that I especially had to protect the weakest members first. We had already lost Peter. Kyle needed to be protected - and we could do it without killing everyone.

"These people have taken down an entire pack of werewolves, Mercy," Stefan said coolly. "We cannot afford to take risks, or we might throw away the game trying to find out what they have done with Kyle." He lost the distant-vampire thing when he said Kyle's name. Stefan liked Kyle, who was snarky and happy to argue tactics in Scooby-Doo episodes as if defending a doctoral thesis. "If they are waiting at Kyle's, whom do you think they want? The only people important to Adam they don't have are you, Ben, and Jesse. And there is this: if they see me, if they understand what I am and do not die before they can tell their superiors over their communication devices, then we will lose more than just Kyle this night."