Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(62)

He shook his head from side to side, like an athlete stretching out the muscles of his neck. His hair was longer, I thought, and rustled wetly when he moved.

"Nemane is not what she once was," he said. "She is weak and blind and troubles herself overmuch with humans." He inhaled and he grew. When he finished breathing in, the outline of his form was larger than any human male I'd ever seen by about a foot, and he was almost as wide as he was tall. My eyes were adjusting and I could see that size wasn't the only change.

"The call for your death has been set," he said. "It is too bad that no one told me until too late that the orders had been recalled."

He laughed again and it shook the froth of dark strands that covered him like a tattered overcoat. His lips were larger than they had been and there were long, pale shapes in the dark cavern of his mouth. "It has been so long." His voice was wet and sloppy. "Human flesh is sweet to my tongue and I have not partaken for so long that my very bowels cry out for sustenance." He roared like a winter wind as he leaped across the road in a single jump.

I was in coyote form and hightailing it at top speed down the road before he landed. Bits of clothing scattered behind me as I ran. I tripped once when my foot caught in my bra, but I rolled with it and shed the bra in my fall.

He could have had me then, but I think he was enjoying the chase. It must have been the reason he didn't just go back and get the Porsche. It might take him a minute to shrink down so he could get into it, but the car was a lot faster than I was, and it could run forever.

I had to stay on the road until it crossed the canal. Otherwise it was too far for me to jump across and I wasn't swimming anything with a water fae of some kind after me.

As soon as I was past it, I dodged down the road that paralleled the canal, running toward the river. I jumped through the fence behind the first house and tore through the field. By the time their dog noticed me and began barking an alarm, I was in the next field over and running through grass taller than I was. After a half mile of running, I slowed to a trot.

The ground was soft and there were horses and cows in the fields. A donkey chased me through its paddock with murderous intent, but I just picked up the pace until I could jump out of its paddock. Horses mostly don't care about coyotes, nor do cows. Chickens run, but donkeys hate us every one.

When I heard hoofbeats behind me, I thought maybe the donkey had jumped its fence - until the horse I'd just passed let out a terrified squeal.

Kelpies could take on the form of a horse, I thought as I moved back into top gear.

I learned that whatever Fideal was, he didn't like railroad tracks. Though he could cross them, they slowed him down and made him shriek with evident pain. Finley has lots of railroad tracks and, after that, I crossed them wherever I could without slowing down my headlong run for Adam's house.

On the flats Fideal was faster than I was, but he couldn't get through or over obstacles as quickly as I could. I scrambled over a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence that surrounded one of the big industrial compounds and wished it were iron. The barbed wire at the top made it a little interesting, but I managed.

The fence bent down under his weight and I heard the metal groan as the fence collapsed. It slowed him down. So I avoided the open gate and scrambled over the fence on the other side of the compound, too.

Though I hadn't turned, the river had, and I had to run about a half mile along the shore past several old barges that had been tied up along the shoreline. He gained on me until I found the big hedge of blackberries.

This was part of one of my usual trails and over the years I'd built a path under the bushes and so I could run almost unhindered. Fideal, being a lot bigger, didn't have that luxury.

When I cleared Adam's fence, I couldn't hear Fideal behind me so I changed as I ran. I mistimed it a bit and stumbled painfully to my knees in Adam's gravel driveway. Darryl's car was there, and Honey's Toyota. The little red Chevy truck belonged to Ben.

"Adam!" I yelled. "Trouble on the way!" My legs didn't want to work right as a single pair instead of two pairs, and I stumbled as I tried to regain my feet and run at the same time.

By the time I was on the porch, Darryl had the front door open. I fell again and this time I just rolled until I hit the outside of the house, just under the big picture window.

"Some kind of water fae," I told him, panting hard and coughing with the force of my breathing. "Might look sort of like a horse or some hooved animal. Or it could be a swamp thingy as big as Adam's SUV. A monster with fangs."

I must have sounded like a ninny, but it didn't faze Darryl.

"You keep bothering the monsters, Mercy, and someday something's going to eat you." He sounded calm and cool as he kept his eyes on the fence I'd jumped over. He had a big automatic in one hand - he must carry concealed because I hadn't noticed him holding one when he opened the door.

"Oh, I hope not," I said in between gasps. "I don't want to be eaten. I've been counting on the vampires to kill me first."

He laughed, though it wasn't that funny. "Everyone else is changing," he told me, and he didn't mean clothes. But I could feel them, so he didn't need to tell me. "How far behind you is this thing?"

I shook my head. "Not far. I led it into the blackberries, but - There! There! From the river."