Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(42)

“After I hit the spell web, I had a . . . I think it was a dream.” I told them about it.

“Who is Daniel?” Larry asked when I was done. “There isn’t a Daniel in your pack or in the seethe.”

“You didn’t see the ghost in Stefan’s house?” Cats could see ghosts—for some reason I thought that meant that goblins might, too. “Daniel was one of Stefan’s people.” The rest seemed a little complicated, so I simplified it. “He was caught up in vampire politics—not his fault—and”—I stole Larry’s phrase—“returned to the grave. Now he haunts Stefan’s house, though so far I’m the only one who can see him.”

“He was sitting on the couch while we were fighting the spider,” Adam told me.

I didn’t know what that meant. Had Daniel gotten stronger? Or was Adam picking up abilities from me the way I could sometimes borrow his voice of command?

“You saw him, too?” Larry asked me. “At Stefan’s house just now?”

“Before, during, and after both fights,” I said. “Though he didn’t come upstairs with us when we left.”

“He was fresh in your mind when you hit the spell web.” Larry’s voice said that the conclusion was obvious.

“Yes,” I agreed, remembering opening my eyes to see Daniel’s face close up. “Very fresh. I guess seeing him in the dream was more expected than not.” Or maybe he’d been pulled into it with me.

“Was it just a dream,” mused Larry aloud, “or was it something else?”

“Her fur had frost on it, and her breath was cold,” Adam said. “As if she’d been running in an arctic forest for a while.”

“Dragons, lions, and wolves,” said Larry.

I cleared my throat. “Dragons, lions, and Wulfe, I think.”

“Does that mean something to you, Larry?” Adam asked, because the goblin king had stiffened.

“Other than a fair warning,” Larry said after a second. “It’s just . . . You know how vampires, the old ones, are given Names?”

Larry’s voice made the last word start with a capital letter, as if it meant something different to him.

“Like Bonarata is the Lord of Night and Stefan is the Soldier?” I said. “I was told it was because people hesitate to speak the true name of evil, just in case it hears you.”

“An old superstition,” Larry agreed. “Though some of those have more than a grain of truth. But a Name can also be a powerful thing, affecting how one is seen. People hear that Stefan is the Soldier—and they discount him. They only see that soldiers take orders.”

Adam grunted. He sounded amused.

I hadn’t thought of it like that. “The Lord of Night must be important and powerful,” I said.

“And the Monster terrible,” Larry agreed. “And he was.”

The Monster was dead. Had returned to the grave with my help.

“We call Wulfe the Wizard now,” Larry said. “But before he was broken, they called Wulfe the Dragon.”

Dragons, I thought. I’d had my fill of dragons. We’d had a zombie dragon, a baby zombie dragon that still made me wake up in tears and shivering terror. Then there had come the smoke dragon, who got into the heads of its victims with a smokey bite. I realized I was rubbing my shoulder where it had bitten me.

“The Dragon,” murmured Adam, giving Larry a sharp look. Me? I wouldn’t be capable of sharp anything until after I got a few hours of sleep. My bones ached with weariness.

“Do you think that Wulfe himself might be responsible for the trouble the vampires find themselves in?” Adam asked. “Not Bonarata?” He considered it. “Wulfe could hold Marsilia and Stefan so they couldn’t come to us. I could believe that. But to what end?”

Larry shrugged. “I don’t know. But Wulfe’s motivations are clear only to Wulfe. If you boil down what Marsilia said, it was a request for you to find Wulfe.”

“And a warning that if we didn’t, it would be disastrous for us—for our pack,” I murmured. “But where would Wulfe have gotten a pair of spider half-fae? Bonarata is the one who collects useful half-blooded fae.” I hadn’t dealt with those much myself because I’d been a prisoner, but Adam had been to Bonarata’s court.

“I’d rather it be Wulfe than Bonarata, too,” I added, then realized that wasn’t true.

“Would you?” Larry examined my face, then shrugged. “Where do you think Bonarata learned to court useful people and make them his own? That’s why they called Wulfe the Dragon. He hoarded treasures of all kinds. Silver and gold were the least of them. His library would have made Charlemagne weep with envy. He gathered scholars, musicians, and artisans—” Larry paused. “I grant you that he mostly let them go out into the world again rather than turning them into acolytes or serfs like Bonarata does.”

Conventional wisdom maintained that goblins’ lives were as short as humans’, or shorter. I’d questioned that before, and Larry’s distant gaze—as if he was remembering something that he greatly desired—was confirmation of my suspicions if I needed it. Larry had seen the Dragon’s treasures.

He shook himself from his brief reverie. “He found unusually beautiful women like Marsilia. Unusually dangerous men like Bonarata and Stefan. He did not usually change them into vampires, but there were exceptions.”