Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson, #9)(76)

“Who is going to pay for this?” Pastor White whispered. “We’d been saving up for a new roof. It’s taken us two years to raise half the money we need.”

“You should wait until the morning and call someone to board up the windows,” said Zee.

“What happened to the bodies?” Sherwood asked. Because neither the woman Sherwood had killed nor the one Zee had beheaded were in the sanctuary.

“Bodies?” asked Pastor White.

“We fade when we die,” Zee told Sherwood. “At least, most of us do. There aren’t any bodies.”

“Look what you’ve done,” said Pastor White. There were tears in his eyes. “This stained glass cannot be replaced. Look at the pews.”

While he took inventory of the destruction, I tried to call Adam and got a “this customer is not available” message. I tried to contact him through our mating bond, but it was being obstreperous again. I could feel him, but I couldn’t contact him.

“We need to go,” I said. And I let my actions follow my words.

—

As we drove up to the house, the first thing that I noticed was that there were no lights. No house lights, no yard lights, nothing. It wasn’t just our home. The nearest house was a twenty-acre field away, and it was vacant, with a FOR SALE sign out front. I guess living next to a werewolf pack was too exciting for some people. But that didn’t explain the darkness that had swallowed the rest of the homes along our road.

Or Mary Jo’s car pulled mostly out of the road and empty. About a hundred yards beyond that, a black SUV that was a near match to Adam’s down to the elegant HAUPTMAN SECURITY hand-lettered on the driver’s side was parked—Adam was here.

I pulled into the crowded driveway and stopped the car. No one was dead, I reassured myself. I’d felt it when Peter died. If someone else in the pack died, I’d know it.

The three of us got out of the SUV and shut the doors quietly.

There was a howl and a crunching noise from the back of the house—at the same time the big glass window in the front room shattered, a dark shape hurtling through it. It smelled of rotting bog and salt and looked a little like a horse—it had four feet and hooves—but its head was more reptilian than equine. Its body was shaggy with fronds that made a slithery sound, like a wet hula skirt. The Fideal screamed when it saw me—long yellow-white teeth flashing for a moment in the still-lit SUV headlights.

I pulled out my Sig and shot the Fideal in the body twice as it galloped toward us. It reared and screamed again—but not because of the bullets. Sherwood threw the ax and hit it in the head. The ax dislodged from the Fideal’s head and slid down to his shoulder before it bounced off to the grass. The touch of iron left a brown gap in the plantlike hair from the top of the Fideal’s neck and down his chest.

Zee hopped onto the hood of the nearest car, ran to the top, and launched himself into the air, his sword raised. He seemed to linger in the air—but that couldn’t have been true because his sword flashed down on the Fideal before Sherwood could pick up the ax.

The Fideal shifted to human shape, a sword in his left hand that met Zee’s black blade with a noise fit to wake the dead. Sparks flew like fireflies and disappeared into the darkness. It wasn’t magic, I don’t think, just a bit of physics.

I heard Jesse scream, and the distinctive crack of my .444 Marlin rifle as it fired four times in succession. A moment later, there was a flash of fire I could see clearly through the broken window. I left the Fideal for Zee and Sherwood and bolted up the porch stairs. The front door was unlocked, and I opened it with a bang.

Jesse was on the second floor, at the top of the stairway, the rifle ready to fire. Cookie was pressed against her leg, growling ferociously. Their attention was focused toward the living room.

“Stay down there,” she said. “I won’t let you have him.”

Something the size of a car boiled out of the living room. My eyes didn’t want to focus on it because it was so ugly or beautiful. It had a lot of insectoid legs and some sort of flowing, luminous, blue-green carapace that moved like silk blown in the wind. But when Jesse shot the fae again, the bullet ricocheted off the carapace, hitting the wall two feet from my head.

“Stop firing,” I shouted, and raised my Sig.

I dropped to one knee on the ground, aiming under the carapace at an angle that wouldn’t allow me to bounce a bullet up to the top of the stairs. I emptied the gun into the fae, and blue-green blood sprayed onto the white carpet. That was good, because some of the fae can’t be hurt with lead bullets.

The fae creature whirled on me in a snakelike motion. I got a confusing glimpse of a beautiful woman’s face with skin of amber and eyes of ruby. I surged to my feet, running toward her even though I was weaponless. Running away would only have caused her to charge me. As it was, she hesitated, doubtless reasoning that, if I was running toward her, I must have some sort of an attack in mind.

I tripped on the walking stick and rolled with the fall. I used the momentum to power my thrust, and the walking stick’s sharp spearhead slid into the amber fae’s mouth. It wasn’t exactly unexpected that the walking stick would show up—but I hadn’t counted on it. I’d been planning on running past the fae creature and luring it away from the kids to the backyard, where I could hear a battle raging.

The fae creature dropped to the ground, the light fading from its carapace. I held the walking stick at the ready, but the fae stayed where she was, not breathing.