Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(106)

I brought my gun up—and Bonarata slapped me in the face with the back of his free hand. It didn’t knock me unconscious, quite, but I couldn’t protest when he kicked the gun out of my hand and walked a few steps away.

I heard a soft noise, and something bumped against the tip of my nose. Cold and old and fathomless.

I rolled away from the blade of the Soul Taker, but sick and dizzy, I could only manage to come up to my knees before I sat down again. My nose bled from Bonarata’s slap, but it was the feel of the Soul Taker I tried to wipe away with the back of my wrist. Adam hadn’t meant to touch me with the sickle. I doubt Adam knew I was here at all.

The beast that held the soul of my mate was curled around himself, one arm outstretched as if to keep the sickle as far from the rest of him as he could manage. He was writhing slowly with the effort of his fight.

Bonarata was sitting on his heels about ten feet from me—which was way too close—a three-foot section of Adam’s bō tucked into the crook of his elbow. He was smiling, but his eyes were as empty as the grave.

I quickly looked at his chin. I did not want to see into Bonarata.

“I’m glad you woke up before I had to go,” he said. “I wanted to take this moment to tell you why I am here.”

“Evil overlord’s classic mistake.” My voice was tight. My face hurt where he’d hit me, and Adam’s pain was sliding through our mating bond.

He laughed. I imagined that people who didn’t know what he was would have found the sound warm and reassuring.

“Not at all, Mercedes Thompson Hauptman,” he said. “It is necessary that you understand why so many people died. Why I destroyed the Tri-Cities seethe and your pack.”

“Pack’s not destroyed,” I said grimly.

His smile widened as he nodded at Adam. “You do understand what the Soul Taker is, don’t you?” He looked a little thoughtful. “I wonder if it ever will collect enough souls to bring its god back.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, though. Because in an hour or two, it will have your mate, the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack. Through the pack ties it will own your whole pack.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It will leave you alone, though,” he said. “Coyote is a little too much like its own god for the Soul Taker to risk drawing his attention.”

That’s not what the Soul Taker believed, but I wasn’t going to take up that argument with Bonarata.

“And there are some things even the Soul Taker cannot force its wielder to do,” Bonarata continued. He shrugged. “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but in my judgment, Hauptman could not be forced to hurt you.”

He tapped Adam’s bō into the ground a couple of times, watching Adam’s shuddering body. “I expect that the Dark Smith will eventually wrest it away from him. A pity, but once you killed my Uttu and Ninhursag, my sweet spiders, I knew it was time to let the Dark Smith have his plaything. Siebold Adelbertsmiter might even free your mate rather than killing him. What do you think Adam Hauptman will do after a day, or a week, or a month of killing innocents?”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

“That’s what I think, too,” he said. “Do you suppose that he’ll drown himself like Bryan did?”

I didn’t know how he knew about my foster father, but I tried very hard not to give him a reaction. We’d been wrong, Adam and I, when we’d determined Bonarata’s motivations. This hadn’t been about Marsilia or sabotaging our neutral territory. This had been about me, a coyote shapeshifter who’d made a fool out of the Lord of Night.

“I will follow you for the rest of your life,” he said pleasantly. “It doesn’t matter if you live to be a hundred or five hundred. I understand it’s a toss-up with Coyote’s children.” He pulled out his phone and hit a button. We both listened to my phone ring for a few seconds. I thought about the crank calls I’d been getting, the ones Adam’s people couldn’t trace. The calls that had happened during the day.

“After a few months,” he said, brushing a thumb over the screen of his phone to cut the call, “I suspect that you’ll think of me every time you hear a phone ring.

“Whenever the whim strikes me, I will kill everyone you care about and anyone who cares about you.” His voice was conversational. I don’t know what he was reading in my face. “They will die, and you’ll know it is your fault.” He stood up and dropped the broken section of bō on the ground.

“I will not have it said that the Lord of Night was bested by you,” he told me. “I hear the whispers. But no more. For centuries they will talk about what happens to people who dare to thwart my will. Your fate will be a lesson for them all.”

He walked away. After a couple of minutes, I heard the helicopter lift off.

“Mercy.”

I think I was still half-dazed by the blow Bonarata had dealt me, because I’d been staring after Bonarata instead of trying to help Adam. I was sitting on the ground, and I didn’t try to get up for fear I’d just fall back down again.

I crawled to Adam.

His mouth wasn’t made for speech, and the words came out garbled, if urgent. I understood them anyway. “Get Sherwood.” “Bran.” “Run.” And then my name, over and over again. I don’t think he even realized he was doing it. His eyes were closed.