Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(10)

He narrowed his eyes at her and snarled. The glimpse of the fangs in his mouth tightened her stomach and left her light-headed.

“You knew what I wanted,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed, finding that the light-headedness had brought with it a sort of sereneness—or maybe that had come from the earlier feeling that this meeting had been fated for them. He would kill her. Hopefully, it would not hurt too much, but there was nothing she could do to prevent it. “You knew that I did not want to build what you wanted. The strictures you gave me were loose enough that I could slide around them.” Her father was powerful but not clever, not like her mother had been or Haida.

“You will make me another artifact, then,” he said. “Or fix this one.”

She shook her head. “The bird is finished. It is an artifact sealed and immutable. And I?” She smiled at him. “Artifacts demand a price. I do not have enough magic left in me.”

Artificers were rare, even among the most powerful of the fae. He would not find another he could bend to his will before the terms of his agreement with one more powerful than he would come due. She closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun; she didn’t expect to live long enough to see another day. Her only satisfaction was that he had not won: her magic would not destroy the fae—and her father would not outlive her by long.

Her father picked the bird up off the ground and rolled it around in his hand—and she saw that his right arm ended in a rough and bloody lump of bandaging.

“Father,” she said before she considered the wisdom of it, “what did you do to your hand?”

SIX

Samuel

My father ran his fingers through Adda’s unhealthy brown coat, and growled, “I thought you said she demanded the forest lord’s hand to power the spell.”

The witch had called Adda as soon as the forest lord—one arm wrapped in bandages—had left. She kept him until late in the afternoon, then dumped him outside when she was finished with him. As soon as he fell, my father and I had changed back to human. Adda needed help no wolf could render.

I brought the bowl of water to the weakened wolf and fed the water to him, one handful at a time. I made no answer to my da’s accusation. His anger wasn’t directed at me, and there was no way to answer the anguish in his eyes. Words didn’t come to me as they once had, anyway.

Instead, I crooned to the suffering beast as he swallowed. Da patted my shoulder in mute apology for his sharpness, and I nodded an acknowledgment.

She’d mutilated Adda again.

His left front paw had not regrown from the last time; moreover, it was festering despite all I could do. I’d noticed that the wounds she made to feed her magic were more likely to rot than other, naturally acquired wounds, more difficult even for werewolves to heal.

To work the spell for the fae, tonight she’d taken Adda’s right front paw, too. He could not walk in wolf form and he had not the strength to try to take on a human form, even if he knew how, which I was not certain of.

The wolf in my father’s arms whined at him, and Da bent his head. “It will be well,” he murmured. He looked at the cottage and the corners of his mouth whitened.

My mother’s voice whispered in my ears. Look now to your da. If you’ve never seen rage on his face, you have now. Those old fools won’t know what hit them.

I couldn’t remember what long-ago conflict she’d been talking about, but I knew that she’d been right. Then. But this was a fight he could not win, and we all knew it. I began changing back to wolf. There was nothing more to do for Adda that my da wouldn’t do, and I would be more use to him in my wolf form than as a weak human.

Dafydd made a soft sound, as gentle as I’d ever heard out of his mouth. The rest of the wolves hovered uncertainly.

“And a fat lot of help you have been,” snarled my father at Dafydd. “He is your son, and you watch as she kills him.”

Though Dafydd had always been quick to punish any sign of disrespect before, this time he didn’t take any action at all. I couldn’t read his emotions—of all the wolves, Dafydd was the most difficult to read. It was as though the only thing he ever felt was anger or fear of the witch, nothing else.

Adda woofed, catching Da’s attention.

“I,” my father said, “am through watching.” He kissed Adda on the forehead, then broke the wolf’s neck with a quick jerk of his hands.

It was so fast. One moment Adda had been panting in pain and the next he was gone.

That was when Dafydd finally growled, and the heat of his anger swept through the air.

Da stood up, let the dead wolf roll off his lap and onto the ground. He started the change that would turn him back to wolf. Dafydd and my da had disagreed before, even fought a time or two—and Da had always backed down before matters grew serious. But in my da’s eyes, I could tell that he’d reached his breaking point. He was done.

I stepped between them, so Dafydd could not attack Da until Da was fully wolf. I didn’t think it would happen, Dafydd was usually fair. But I stepped in anyway, just in case I was wrong.

A horn blew in the distance, a clear soft note that wrapped itself around my throat and tugged. The forest lord’s call was more than any of us could resist, and I found myself running beside Dafydd, shoulder to shoulder. Da finished his change while we ran.

We would answer the fae’s call and do his bidding if he could control us, and kill him if he couldn’t—and I didn’t much care which. When we were finished, there would be a reckoning either for my father’s defiance or for Dafydd’s complicity. The battle had only been delayed, not halted. Dafydd was huge and violent—only a little smaller than I was. My da was a little less than three-quarters of Dafydd’s weight, but he was canny, my da. I did not know who would win.