Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(4)

I was pretty sure.

“Most of the gourds just smoosh when we hit them,” said George, tough and confident. He’d been a police officer a couple of different times in a couple of different places. He was currently working at the Pasco Police Department and had been with them for as long as the pack had been in the Tri-Cities. He was one of the wolves who had traveled with Adam when he’d moved his pack from New Mexico.

George had just a hint of apologetic laughter in his voice as he bent to pick up the assault projectile and give it a little toss, for all the world as though it were actually a baseball. “But the hard ones are almost as good as the real thing.”

I sighed and patted Adam. I’d been hit in the head with a gourd, knocked out, and dumped in a mud puddle. As a boost for my ego, it was pretty awful. As a boost for the pack’s team spirit, it might be the best thing that could have happened, as long as Adam didn’t decide to defend me.

A dollop of mud slid out of my hair and over my cheekbone. The story of how I’d been taken out by accident was going to be told and retold until it was a pack legend. At least it hadn’t been a proper pumpkin.

I bet it is going to be a pumpkin in retellings, I thought dismally. Stories like to grow as they are passed around, becoming more exciting and less likely. I could see it now, some distant future in which a pack sat around a campfire and told stories about the stupid coyote shapeshifter who thought she was a werewolf until someone bashed her head in with a pumpkin. Or something like that, anyway.

I might have writhed in humiliation for a few more minutes, but Adam’s thigh muscles flexing under mine reminded me that he, at least, was not amused by the Pumpkin Incident. The minute I got up, Adam was going to go after the baseball team, and the whole point of this production would be lost. But if I didn’t get up soon, he was going to think I was really hurt, and that wouldn’t make things better, either.

But he was really warm. And, I have to admit, I’m a little perverse. Adam is flat-out gorgeous. It’s not my favorite thing about him—and it was one of the reasons I’d held off dating him for such a long time. He is absolutely out of my league. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy his looks. What woman wouldn’t? But when he is angry . . . yum. Just yum.

He was very angry right now. It was distracting.

I pushed my face against his neck, tipping my lips until they touched his ear, and breathed, “You and I have a hot shower in our future. Could be fun.”

I could feel him go still. I realized, even if I hadn’t meant it, I’d done the best thing I could possibly have done to change his focus.

Another soft laugh from the peanut gallery reminded me that we had an audience. We were sitting in slush—or at least Adam was—and I wanted a hot shower. I intended to do something about both of those.

To that end, I sat up, and in a loud and (this time) deliberately whiny voice, I asked, “Did you guys have to knock me into the mud?”

“If you choose to stand next to the biggest puddle in the whole ten-acre playground, you don’t get to complain when nature takes its course,” said Warren mildly, though his wary eyes brushed past me and hesitated on Adam before he looked away again. “We didn’t do it on purpose”—all of them had been careful not to name the actual culprit; Mary Jo wasn’t the only one with a makeshift bat—“but if you’re going to provide us with that much temptation—”

The team of wolves inside the corn maze had been making a lot of noise for a while. Sometimes it sounded like it was coming from just over the wall of corn and sometimes from farther away—as was consistent with wolves playing tag in a maze. Everyone was looking at Adam and me, and Adam was looking at me—so I was the only one who saw Zack burst out of the exit.

He was running at top speed, his raised fist displaying a multitude of damp ribbons that proved he’d found the waypoints scattered throughout the maze. His face was turned to look behind him and held a sort of gleeful terror that told me Sherwood (our designated maze monster) was in hot pursuit.

I didn’t even have time to open my mouth to warn anyone.

Zack’s shoulder hit George at full speed, knocking the much bigger man into the mass of the gathered people. Zack himself tumbled all the way over George’s falling body and into Mary Jo, who dropped more from the unexpectedness of the impact than its force.

Just before Mary Jo hit the ground, a giant wolf leaped over the top of the cornstalks—which was a feat that not all the wolves in our pack would have managed, because the wall of the maze was not only nearly ten feet tall but at least that wide—and this wolf did it missing one rear leg. From my vantage point on Adam’s lap, I could see the instant in which Sherwood (the three-legged wolf) took in the whole scene.

I had no doubt that he could have landed safely. But with an expression of satisfaction in his eyes, he chose to belly flop in the deepest part of the puddle I’d already fallen into. I felt just the lightest touch of magic, then everyone, including Adam and me, was doused with icy mudwater.

Zack crawled off the top of the pile of people, wiped his face with his forearm, then showed Adam and me the fistful of ribbons, now even wetter than before. “I brought out all fifteen ribbons. My whole team gets steak dinner at Uncle Mike’s, right?”

The rest of Zack’s team, Joel in the lead, emerged from the maze at a much steadier pace. They looked, if anything, even more drenched than the rest of us—but they were laughing like lunatics. Zack’s team was the last through and the only one to make it out with all the ribbons.