Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(83)

* * *



—

It had been a while since I’d visited the seethe. A couple of years, maybe. It was in an area of town where I didn’t have much reason to go—and maybe I’d been avoiding it. Stefan was my friend, but I was with Darryl when it came to the rest of the vampires.

I’d been aware, peripherally, that there was a lot of building going on along 395, the highway that was the demarcation line between east Kennewick and the rest of town. But I hadn’t thought about what that meant to Marsilia’s home.

The last time I’d visited, it had still been surrounded by the shrub-steppe that was the TriCities’ version of virgin wilderness. Now the seethe was surrounded by new houses.

“Didn’t there used to be these weird two-story brick pillar-thingies around here?” I asked as we turned down the paved road that had replaced the single-lane gravel drive. I could see the gates of the seethe, so we should have already passed between the brick edifices.

“Taken down as a hazard,” George said. “About the same time as this housing development was built.”

Upscale houses surrounded the still-expansive grounds of the seethe. The eight-foot cement walls that marked out the vampires’ home ground were far more substantial than the walls that surrounded the seethe the last time I was here. The huge wrought-iron gates were the same, though.

“Some people have no sodding sense of self-preservation,” Ben marveled. “Look at how close the fucking houses are.”

I saw why Adam had insisted on packing all of us into as few vehicles as possible despite the possible danger of cramming dominant wolves together. This was a neighborhood that would notice a bunch of cars driving into the seethe in the daytime.

“I wonder if all these people are trying to figure out why they’re having nightmares every night,” Mary Jo said.

Adam glanced up and down the road. We were too late for lunch and not early enough for kids to be getting home from school. There was no one in sight. That didn’t mean there weren’t people looking out from all those blank windows.

“Mercy, slide over and drive,” he said as he got out.

Adam was up and over the eight-foot-high gates in a quick movement that would have been easy to miss, even if someone was watching. He did something at the control box on the other side and the gates swung open. I drove through with Honey close on my tailpipe.

I negotiated the whole of the wide circular drive until the front of Adam’s SUV was nearly touching the gates, which were sliding shut. If we had to go fast, I didn’t want to waste time. I would have left the gates open to facilitate that, but Adam was probably thinking about not letting anyone else in.

As I turned off the engine, Adam walked up to Honey’s window and spoke to her. In response, she maneuvered her Suburban around until she was parked beside me, effectively blocking the vehicular entrance.

The main building was a two-and-a-half-story Spanish-style house that we could have fit two of our house inside—and our house was not small. Graceful arches and architectural details mostly served to hide the lack of windows. Behind the main house were extensive gardens, a swimming pool, and a guesthouse—or at least I assumed they were still there. The front drive where we were parked had been walled off from the rest of the grounds except for a single-lane paved road that followed the outer wall, presumably leading to the guesthouse, which had its own garages.

The aboveground edifices were mostly a fa?ade, a place to show guests and greet local dignitaries and politicians. Most of the seethe’s grounds were riddled with tunnels and layers of basements that truly housed the inhabitants of the seethe.

The occupants of Honey’s car burst out as if there were a swarm of bees inside. Warren’s face was flushed, his eyes yellow. Darryl looked none too happy, either. Zack caught Adam’s gaze with a wide-eyed look of alarm.

“Warren,” Adam said sharply.

Warren jerked around and met Adam’s gaze for nearly three seconds before he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and nodded once.

“Sorry, boss,” he said.

He pivoted back toward Darryl without raising his eyes—and we all saw the effort that took.

It was a pretty well-kept secret that if he wanted the post, he probably could have beaten Darryl for second, both by combat and by dominance. Adam and I knew it. Warren knew it. I was pretty sure that Darryl knew it, too (which wouldn’t have helped matters while they were trapped together in Honey’s SUV). But although Warren was more accepted by the pack than he had been a few years ago, that he was gay would still be an issue. Our pack, like most packs, was composed mostly of men born in the last century. The opinion of the pack held sway in pack magic, and his rise to second would disrupt it.

This was not the time to disrupt the pack. And Warren didn’t want to be second. Darryl was good at his job, Warren had told me a few months ago: “Why fix sumthin’ that ain’t broke?”

“I’m sorry, Darryl,” Warren said sincerely. “I’ve got some things riding my hide. But I don’t have to take it out on my friends.”

Darryl considered him a moment—which was enough unlike his usual response to make me wonder how bad the altercation in Honey’s Suburban had been. Or maybe whatever had Warren acting weird was spreading through the pack. When Darryl nodded, it was pretty obvious that he was still riled.