Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(15)

"We were surprised," Uncle Mike said. "He and I went to talk to O'Donnell."

"Talk?" Disbelief was sharp in my voice. They had not gone to his house to talk.

He gave a short laugh. "We would have talked first, whatever you think of us. We drove to O'Donnell's house after you left. We rang the bell, but no one came to the door, though there was a light on. After we rang a third time, Zee opened the door and we entered. We found O'Donnell in the living room. Someone had beaten us to him, ripped his head from his body, a wounding such as I have not seen since the giants roamed the earth, Mercedes."

"You didn't kill him." I could breathe again. If Zee hadn't killed O'Donnell, there was still a chance for him.

"No. And as we stood there dumb and still, the police came with their lights and bean si cries." He paused and I heard a noise. I recognized the sound from my karate. He'd hit something wooden and it had broken.

"He told me to hide myself. His talents aren't up to hiding from the police. So I watched as they put him into their car and drove away."

There was a pause. "I could have stopped them," he said in a guttural voice. "I could have stopped them all, but I let the humans take Siebold Adelbertskrieger (the German version of the name, Adelbertsmiter, Zee was using), the Dark Smith, to jail." Outrage didn't completely mask the fear in his voice.

"No, no," I told him. "Killing police officers is always a bad plan."

I don't think he heard me; he just kept talking. "I did as he said and now I find that no matter how I look at it, my help will only make his position worse. This is not a good time to be fae, Mercy. If we rally to Zee's defense, it could turn into a blood bath."

He was right. A rash of deaths and violence not a month past had left the Tri-Cities raw and bleeding. The tide of escalated crime had stopped with the breaking of a heat wave that had been tormenting us all at the same time. The cooler weather was a fine reason for the cessation of the pall of anger that had hung in the air. Driving the demon that was causing the violence back to the outer limits by killing its host vampire was an even better one, though not for the consumption of the public. They only knew about a few werewolves and the nicer side of the fae. Everyone was safer as long as the general population didn't know about things like vampires and demons - especially the general population.

However, there was a strong minority who were murmuring that there had been too much violence to be explained by a heat wave. After all, heat came every summer, and we'd never had a rash of murders and assaults like that. Some of those people were looking pretty hard at blaming the fae. Only last week there had been a group of demonstrators outside the Richland Courthouse.

That the werewolves had, just this year, admitted their existence wasn't helping matters much. The whole issue had gone as smoothly as anyone could have hoped, but nothing was perfect. The whole ugly anti-fae thing, which had subsided after the fae had voluntarily retired to the reservations, had been getting stronger again through the whole country. The hate groups were eager to widen their target to include werewolves and any other "godless" creatures, human or not.

In Oklahoma, there had been a witch burning last month. The ironic thing was that the woman who burned hadn't, it turned out, been a witch, a practitioner, or even Wiccan - which are three different things, though one person might be all three.

She'd been a good Catholic girl who liked tattoos, piercings, and wearing black clothing.

In the Tri-Cities, a place not noted for political activism or hate groups, the local anti-fae, anti-werewolf groups had been getting noticeably stronger.

That didn't mean spray-painted walls or broken windows and rioting. This was the Tri-Cities, after all, not Eugene or Seattle. At last week's Arts Festival, they'd had an information booth and I'd seen at least two different flyers they'd sent out in the mail this past month. Tri-City hate groups are civilized like that - so far.

O'Donnell could change that. If his death was as dramatic as Uncle Mike indicated, O'Donnell's murder would make every paper in the country. I tried to quell my panic.

I wasn't worried about the law - I was pretty sure that Zee could walk out of any jail cell, anytime he wanted. With glamour he could change his appearance until even I wouldn't know him. But it wouldn't be enough to save him. I wasn't sure innocence would be enough to save him.

"Do you have a lawyer?" Our local werewolf pack didn't have one officially, though I think Adam had a lawyer he kept on the payroll for his security business. But there weren't nearly as many werewolves as there were fae.

"No. The Gray Lords own several firms on the East Coast, but it was deemed unnecessary for our reservation here. We are low-key." He hesitated. "Fae who are suspected of crimes tend not to survive to need lawyers."

"I know," I replied, swallowing around the knot in my throat.

The Gray Lords, like the werewolves' Marrok, were driven to preserve their species. Bran, the Marrok, was scrupulously fair, though brutal. The Gray Lords' methods had a strong tendency to be more expedient than fair. With prejudice so loud and strong, they'd want to hush this up as soon as possible.

"How much danger is Zee in?" I asked.

Uncle Mike sighed. "I don't know. This crime is about to become very public. I do not see how his death would benefit the fae more than his survival right now - especially since he is innocent. I have called and told Them that this death is not on his head." Them was the Gray Lords. "If we can prove his innocence...I don't know, Mercy. It depends upon who actually did kill O'Donnell. It wasn't a human - maybe a troll could have done this - or a werewolf. A vampire could have, but O'Donnell was not killed for food. Someone was very, very angry with him. If it is a fae, the Gray Lords will not care who it was, just that the case is solved quickly and finally."