River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(82)

"Adam," I said to his unconscious body. "Adam, we did it."

I put my forehead down on his side and let myself believe.

"I should let you live," a man's voice snarled, unconsciously echoing the river devil's words-- or maybe he'd heard her, too.

I looked up to see a man standing between me and the river. His features were all wrong, like a bad drawing. Almost human, but not quite. He wore a dry pair of jeans and a WSU sweatshirt, but his feet were bare. He had a ragged beard that was a slightly darker color than his hair. Though there had been all sorts of emotion in his voice, there was none on his face. It was peculiarly blank, like a particularly strong form of autism: a trait, I decided, with two examples to draw from, that must be common to all otterkin.

"What?" I asked him stupidly because his words didn't quite make sense.

"You blooded one of Lugh's creations in the heart of a creature even older and more magical than the walking stick is," he said. "I should just let you live with what you have made. But you must pay the price for killing our creature, she whom we awakened at great cost from her deep sleep."

I was too tired for this. I hurt. There wasn't any part of me that didn't hurt, but especially my hand where I'd hit the river devil's heart. Actually, both hands throbbed wickedly from grabbing the staff while it was hot. The leg that the river devil had smacked with her tentacle ached, too, that kind of deep ache that told me I'd suffered real damage. I was also bleeding from quite a collection of slices and cuts. It belatedly occurred to me that my weariness might stem from blood loss as much as the energy I'd expended killing the river devil.

"You woke her up." I could sit up, I told my body firmly. It protested, but finally managed. I was going to pull my legs up, too, but, after the first attempt to do so, I decided to leave them where they were for the moment.

"It took us two months and all our magic--and you just killed her? Arrogant vermin interfering in something that is no business of yours." He was holding something in his right hand, I thought, but I couldn't tell what because it was slightly behind him, and I couldn't make my body move again to see what it was just yet.

"That's right," I agreed. "I killed her. It seemed like the proper thing to do at the time--as she was killing a lot of people. Why did you release her?"

"She was ours," he said indignantly. "She was sleeping in our home." He paused, contemplating that, I think, though it was hard to read thought in his face. When he spoke again, his voice was a soft croon. "So beautiful and deadly, my lady was. We woke her up to see her beauty living--and, as we petitioned her to do, she hunted humans until we all fed in the wealth of her hunting. She was everything our hearts could desire. She fed us and we her. She was our weapon of perfect vengeance."

The brush next to him rattled a bit, and more people came out of the bushes. One of them was the woman who had attacked me in Wal-Mart, and she was holding her bronze knife. She was crying, which looked really odd on her blank face.

Uncle Mike said there were seven of them, but I only saw six.

"There should be one more of you, shouldn't there?" I asked.

"One was sacrificed when our Goddess came to life," said the man.

I thought of the dream I'd had, the one where I'd eaten an otter. I'd been river marked then. It never occurred to me that that dream, too, had been a true dream.

Behind him, all of the otterkin's mouths moved at the same time, as if they were mouthing his words as he spoke them. They brought with them an air of menace that was not entirely owed to the weaponry they carried.

There was one big man in the group. I noticed him because over his shoulder he was carrying a big, dark, and shiny stick shaped something like a golf club. I didn't recall ever seeing a shillelagh in the flesh before.

"He died, our brother, exalted by the gift his sacrifice brought to his people." The bearded man who was apparently the spokesman for them all paused again. It didn't seem to be an affectation for emphasis, but something integral to his speech. Maybe he was translating, or maybe his thoughts were just that slow. "And you have ruined that."

He swung whatever he'd been holding behind his back at me without much warning. But I'd been watching for something of the sort, and I surged to my feet, my weight entirely on my good leg. I caught the blade of the bronze sword on the walking stick that had been lying just under Adam's body instead of buried in the river devil because that was where I needed it to be.

It hurt. If I hadn't been so worried for Adam, who was unable to protect himself, I doubt I could have done it. Even so, I knew it was useless. There were six of them and only one battered, damaged me. But I'd made a promise in my letter to Adam, and I was determined to keep it.

The bronze sword flared with an orange light and broke. Whatever magic it had held wasn't up to dealing with Lugh's walking stick.

Then something really disconcerting happened. The walking stick buried its suddenly sharp-again end in the otterkin's throat with no help from me. The lunge it made forced me to come down hard on my bad leg. I might have blacked out a bit after that.

I opened my eyes and found myself face-to-face with the bearded otterkin, my cheek resting in the dirt and his warm blood. He was laughing at me as he died.

My ears started to work about then, and I realized that there was a battle taking place behind me. I heard Adam's baleful, softest growl, the one he uses only when he is beyond angry. The power of his rage lit my soul with its singular goal: none of the otterkin would survive this night.