Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(95)

Warren was dominant and old. His change didn’t take as long as some of the others. But it wasn’t my instantaneous change, either. It took maybe ten minutes for him to complete it, but the vampire taint was gone after the first few moments of his shift. Adam stayed where he was and held Warren’s eyes until a wolf stood where the man had been.

Mary Jo cleaned my various cuts. There were a number that I didn’t even remember. Fights were like that. The worst of them was the long cut across my back. Honey produced a safety pin and rerouted my bra strap so it still worked without pressing across the cut.

I gave them an abbreviated version of what had happened.

“This was the last room we were checking,” I said. “I took the bathroom, Warren got the office. The Harvester knocked out Warren and cut the lights.”

“The Harvester?” interrupted Auriele. “Isn’t that Wulfe?”

“Yes,” I said. “Sorry that I’m being confusing. We fought.”

“And you’re still alive?” Her surprise was not flattering, but I shared it, so I didn’t take offense.

“The Soul Taker wanted to kill me,” I told her, “but Wulfe didn’t.” I decided I was too tired to run through the whole fight, and I’d only get lost babbling about the woo-woo part of it. So I said only, “Wulfe managed to break free of the Soul Taker’s hold for a moment and stabbed himself instead of me.” I waved at the blood on the floor. “Which is where you all came in. Thank you. How did your search go?”

“Marsilia is going to have to replace a lot of doors,” Auriele said with an admiring look at Darryl.

He snorted. “We didn’t find a thing. Not so much as a body. Empty room after empty room.” He looked at me. “But we did not get complacent.”

“We should get Warren home,” Adam said, rising to his feet. “We’re done here.”





14





Deciding we needed to get Warren home quickly, Adam loaded Warren, Zack, and me in his SUV and sent the rest of the wolves to ride with Honey back to the garage. Darryl took Warren’s key fob, rescued from the shreds of Warren’s jeans, and promised to deliver the Subaru.

Zack hopped back out of the SUV and went over to have a word with Darryl. I turned to Adam.

“Not now,” he suggested.

Warren, curled up on the flattened half of the back passenger seat, looked as though he were asleep. But I took Adam’s point. There were a lot of things we needed to talk about, but adding Warren and Zack into the mix just now was probably not useful.

Zack slid into the side of the backseat that hadn’t been turned into cargo space and belted himself in. “Auriele will drive the Subaru to our house,” he said, possibly to Warren. “Darryl will pick her up there.”

No one talked much on the way to the house Warren and Kyle shared with Zack. Zack must have texted, because Kyle came out as soon as we drove up.

He accepted Warren’s shredded clothing with a muttered, “Maybe he wasn’t wrong about expensive clothing and werewolves.” But his eyes were on Warren, who’d hopped out of the SUV, stretched, and then trotted up to Kyle, tail waving gently.

Kyle gave Adam an anxious look. “I couldn’t tell what happened from Zack’s text. ‘Warren got a magical whammy but he’s fine’ doesn’t really mean a lot to me.”

“Keep an eye on him,” Adam said. “The whammy was nothing to worry about, but he was bitten by a vampire. You should make sure he eats and drinks.”

“Vampire?” Kyle said, his hands closing on Warren’s fur. “It’s the middle of the day.”

“Some of them are active during the day,” I said.

“If you get worried, get Zack to take a look at him,” Adam told him. “If you get really worried, call me or”—he hesitated—“Sherwood.”

“Sherwood?” asked Zack, looking startled. “Are you sure?”

Kyle looked from one to the other and said, “Definitely not calling Sherwood. What’s wrong with Sherwood?”

“What’s not wrong with Sherwood,” I said. Weariness from the fight had started setting in. My feet and hands ached for some reason—it took me a minute to remember that Zee had dug spider bits out of them yesterday. That seemed like a long time ago. My arms hurt, my left hip hurt, and the place on my jaw where I’d caught an elbow hurt every time I moved my mouth. “But call him anyway if you think Warren isn’t right. He’s got more experience with magic than any of us.”

“I thought he didn’t remember anything?” Kyle narrowed his eyes.

I gave Kyle a look, met his gaze, and then jerked my head away. “Sometimes I wish Warren had fallen in love with one of his fluff pieces instead of a lawyer. I will answer your questions when we all have better answers. Warren needs to lie down in front of a fire and sleep. Zack can tell you about our adventures today. I need to get home and wash and change and not keep standing on your driveway answering questions I don’t know the answer to.”

There was a little silence. The air echoed and I realized I’d yelled the last few words.

“You look like you killed someone,” Kyle said. “Too late to hide it from me, I’m sad to say. But if you wash up quickly and burn those clothes, I’m sure no one will ask.” It sounded as if he were snapping back, but I knew Kyle. He was worried. But he knew better than to ask me what was wrong when I’d just asked him to stop asking questions.