Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(97)

“Witch and wizard and mage and vampire and something fae that’s mostly gone now.” It had been a wisp I could sense but not put my finger on. “Riding all of those magics was a balancing act, but he managed, mostly.” He’d killed his progenitors and wandered the world haphazardly for longer than I’d realized. He might be as old as or older than Bran. “He found Marsilia first, then Stefan, and finally Bonarata. They took care of him. He knew so much, understood so much, and was so lost. Bonarata persuaded Wulfe to turn him. Wulfe was old even then, but Bonarata was his first—the first vampire he made.”

“Who have you been talking to?” Adam asked.

I shook my head. “Bonarata didn’t understand what Wulfe was. Didn’t understand what maker meant—that Bonarata would have to obey Wulfe. He dealt with it until one day Wulfe scared him. Bonarata doesn’t deal well with fear, so he set out to destroy Wulfe.” I paused. “And I think he was jealous, too—of Marsilia’s feelings for Wulfe. That’s why Wulfe let Bonarata be the one to turn Marsilia. But Wulfe doesn’t understand jealousy very well.”

“Mercy?” asked Adam, sounding wary. “Do I need to take you to Sherwood? Or Bran?”

I reached out and he caught my hand. His was very warm or mine was very cold.

“I think we just need to get rid of that damned artifact,” I said in a normal voice that made me realize how singsongy and dreamy I’d been. I cleared my throat. “Coyote is affiliated with the soul and with death—and I think that is playing with the effect the Soul Taker is having on me.”

“Okay,” Adam said, his hand still holding mine.

“Let me tell you about Wulfe, because it’s important and I don’t know if I’ll remember the important bits later.” Or I might be dead and you need to know about Wulfe. If you, my love, are the one left to face him and that artifact.

“Okay,” he said.

“And I don’t know things until I say them out loud,” I said. “So some of the out-loud parts aren’t going to be important.” I had looked into Wulfe’s eyes for a very short period of time, and that had been in a dream. And I had seen everything. My head ached worse than the cut along my shoulder blade where it pressed against the SUV seat.

“Okay.” Adam’s voice was very soft.

“Bonarata set out to break him, but he didn’t really understand what he was dealing with—because Wulfe never told him. Bonarata knew Wulfe could wield magic and that he was a little wrong, but he didn’t connect the two. I don’t know why Bonarata doesn’t kill Wulfe. Or rather, Wulfe doesn’t know why. I think it’s because Bonarata is scared of Wulfe, and killing him would be an admission of that.”

Adam nodded. “That’s how Marsilia reads it, too,” he said. “She thinks that if Wulfe dies before Bonarata conquers that fear—then Bonarata will be afraid of Wulfe forever.”

“I don’t know why Wulfe hasn’t killed Bonarata,” I said.

There was something, some reason, but I could not find it in my mental image of what I’d seen when I looked at Wulfe.

I just knew there was a reason, something Wulfe had kept hidden from me as soon as he knew that I was seeing into him.

“Is it important?” Adam asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “But other things are. Bonarata tried to break Wulfe—but Wulfe was already broken. Wulfe isn’t stubborn, he is like . . .” A kite in the wind, and Bonarata was the wind. But what I said was “Like the lizard with the two dark spots on its rump that look like eyes, to fool predators. Wherever your enemy thinks you are, be somewhere else.” That was all I could tell him. There were other things he should know, but I couldn’t put them into words.

“You think that the Soul Taker doesn’t have as strong a hold on Wulfe as it assumes,” Adam said, because he was good at reading between the lines.

That was it. I nodded, then shook my head. “None of them do. Not the Soul Taker, not Bonarata, and not Marsilia.”

The SUV was very quiet; I realized we’d stopped at a red light. We were near the turn that led to my garage.

“Now why don’t you tell me why you aren’t looking at me?” Adam asked. “I thought maybe you had a headache, but you’re deliberately not looking at me.”

“Remember how I told you that I was tied to the Soul Taker somehow?” My voice was tight.

“Yes,” he said.

“Today, while we fought, it cut me. Tasted my blood. And now when I look into someone’s eyes, I see them. I saw Mary Jo when she was cleaning me up at Marsilia’s. I saw Kyle.”

“You saw them,” Adam said cautiously, turning onto Chemical Drive. “You don’t mean with your eyes?”

“Yes, with my eyes,” I snapped at him. “Sorry, sorry. It’s with my eyes the same way I smell magic. Only I can smell magic without my nose. With this I have to meet their eyes.”

That wasn’t quite true. I’d seen Wulfe and he didn’t have physical eyes to look into. He’d had to use a dream for that.

“Mercy?”

“Wait, I’m having a revelation.” Had Wulfe meant me to see him? Was that why he’d bitten me—blood magic—and pulled me into a dreamscape?