Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7)(35)

I didn't think it would kill me, no matter how much my stomach hurt. But I wasn't going to show him that it had affected me. "Not my day to die," I told him.

He stared at me, and I lifted my chin and stared back at him. There wasn't a pack around who needed to see me bow down to the Alpha. He could have made me drop my gaze anyway. I wasn't immune to his dominance, just stubborn. I could see the moment he gave up.

I remembered that there were other things I needed to know.

"Did you find out where you are being held?" I asked, then, seeing the answer on his face, I continued, "Any clues at all? Do you smell anything? The river? Sagebrush? Diesel?"

Dust, Mercy. His voice was quiet. Then he looked around himself. I don't think he was seeing our bedroom like I was. Dust and Peter's blood.

I'd heard that kind of rage in Adam once before. He'd torn the corpse of a man I'd already killed into small pieces. The men who had made themselves our enemy had no idea what they had done.

They are sending a helicopter to pick up Darryl and me. Soon.

"They're still sending you out after the senator?" I thought that our call to the police would have preempted the attack.

Yes.

We'd told the police about why Adam and the pack had been taken. They seemed to be taking our word seriously.

They know. They told me it would be more difficult now, but they didn't seem to be really bothered. Either the attack itself is what they want - or there is something else I am not seeing.

He sat back down on the bed and put his hand against my forehead. Are you okay?

I smiled at him. "Ariana is going to see if she can contact Bran. Maybe he can ride to the rescue."

Adam considered that. What about the vampires? he asked.

I stared at him. "Marsilia hates me, and Ben bled all over the back of her Mercedes."

The AMG?

Something distracted me. Something terrible. "What is that smell?"

I woke up with Ben licking my face as earnestly as a cat - which hurt. His breath made my eyes water - and I have a high tolerance for nasty odors.

"Jeez, jeez," I said, scrambling away from him. I hit something hard, then kept moving away from Ben when whatever it was fell to the floor with a thump and freed up some space on the bed.

My stomach hurt. Not like the flu or even bad food. More like I'd swallowed something that was eating me alive. The truly vile smell of Ben's breath didn't help. "Ben, your breath stinks. Have you been eating roadkill?"

"Ow. Ow. Ow," moaned Kyle from the floor where I'd knocked him. I'd forgotten he was in the bed with me - that he'd told me he'd be sleeping here - because even getting myself into the bed was a blur. "Remember, a guy who didn't even have the decency to be cute hit me a lot yesterday. And this room doesn't have a rug."

Ben laughed at me, and I covered my nose with both hands. But I was awake now and remembered where I'd smelled breath that bad before. "DMSO from the tranq, right? DMSO gives you bad breath." Then I saw the clock on the chest next to the bed.

"What time is it?" I asked, hopping out of the bed and stumbling over Kyle's feet. The room was dark, but there were no windows. The darkness reminded me that Adam had suggested going to the vampires. Maybe I ought to. But there was something ... Tad. Oh holy wow, I'd forgotten about Tad. I'd told him that I'd get right back to Sylvia's as soon as I made sure Kyle was okay. If it was really dark outside, he'd been watching them for a whole day, expecting me to return soon.

I took a step toward the door, which was a mistake. Every muscle hurt, my face throbbed, and I almost blacked out from the sudden way my body informed me that it wasn't happy with me. My stomach, then the rest of my muscles, seized in the worst charley horse I'd ever had.

"Mercy?" asked Kyle, rolling onto his feet with a little less than his usual grace.

Ben whined.

And I threw up silver goo all over the beautiful stone floor of Kyle's guest room.

Chapter Five

I stared at the floor - and Kyle did the same. Ben jumped off the bed and put his nose near the mess. He backed away quickly, his ears came up, and he looked at me. The expression on the wolf's face quite clearly said, "What the hell?" even if I hadn't been familiar with reading expressions on monster-sized wolf faces.

Kyle's floor was covered with silver. I licked my hand and looked at the result. My palm was gray where the saliva touched it. "I think," I told them, torn between triumph - because all that silver on the floor meant it wasn't in Adam - and terror. Having that place where Adam and I touched be something that I could drag something as physical as silver through was terrifying in its implications. "I think I'd better wash this off."

There was a bath attached to the guest room, and I staggered into it, washing out my mouth and scrubbing wherever the silver had touched. Kyle opened the sink cabinet and handed me a new toothbrush and one of those little travel toothpastes. I used it, twice. My lips were still black, like one of those thirteen-year-old goth girls who wore black lipstick.

"I used to know a couple of guys who painted their lips with silver nitrate to turn them that color," Kyle said. "I thought it was pretty stupid. Your lips weren't black when you went to sleep. What happened?"

"I'm afraid to guess," I said. Silver nitrate sounded familiar. I was pretty sure that was what Gerry Wallace had used in his tranquilizer concoction. "Give me a few minutes, and I might have something worked up that sounds vaguely coherent, okay?"