10

Adam

Adam’s story continues, at daybreak of the first morning he spent in Milan. At about this time, I got to my feet, put on my clothes, and went out to find the café that had free Wi-Fi so I could try to contact someone. Adam and his people have retreated to their assigned rooms.

ADAM KNEW A DOZEN WAYS TO DEAL WITH A TIME-ZONE shift, but mostly he’d found that staying up when he had to stay up and sleeping whenever he could took care of fatigue eventually. He hoped not to be in Europe long enough to adjust.

Since their host was a vampire, that meant they went to bed at dawn. The good news was that since his inner clock was already screwed up from the time change to Europe, adding the whole switch from functioning in the night rather than the day was just a blip.

He didn’t like that their party was split up, but there had been no way to include Harris and Smith without indicating that he didn’t trust Bonarata’s ability to keep his people safe. Adam was pretty sure Bonarata could keep his vampires under control if he wanted to. He just didn’t trust that Bonarata wanted to keep Adam’s people safe.

He also wasn’t sure that letting Bonarata think they were all one big traveling sex orgy was helping their cause. The meal they’d spent with the vampires made him suspicious that Marsilia’s act was mostly because of matters between her and Bonarata and had nothing to do with consolidating the sleeping space for defensive reasons.

He was pretty sure that Bonarata—for all that he was as jealous as a cat whose owner had two dogs—knew they weren’t sleeping together in any but the most mundane sense of the word. Any werewolf worth his salt could have figured it out. There was something about body language and scent that made such things obvious.

At least her machinations had reduced his patrol area to two. His two outliers were only down a short hall and up a staircase from them. Adam wasn’t happy; it was too far for tactical safety. Smith’s victim-like demeanor made him a target in this house of predators.

If something happened in Harris’s room, Adam was pretty sure he’d hear the screams from the big suite. It didn’t make the beast who lived in his heart content—or Adam, either—but it was the hand he had been dealt.

“Dawn is coming,” said Marsilia as Stefan closed the door of the suite. The two vampires had volunteered to escort the pilots to their room. “There isn’t much time.”

“Rest well,” Adam said, though he knew that it wasn’t a rest at all—the vampires died with the rising of the sun.

Stefan, who had followed Marsilia as she walked rapidly toward their room, paused to give Adam a wry smile. “Stay safe,” he said, then disappeared through the doorway behind Marsilia.

Larry rubbed his hands together thoughtfully, staring at the door that had just closed behind their vampires. But when he spoke, it wasn’t—directly—about Marsilia or Stefan.

“I think that went about as well as could be expected,” he said. Then he said what Adam had just been thinking. “I’m not sure anyone but a love-struck fool, which Bonarata isn’t quite, would think there was anything between you and Marsilia. But the Lord of Night was plenty jealous anyway, for what it’s worth. I heard you open Bonarata’s eyes about the relationship between the Marrok and your wife. Is it true? Would the Marrok still go to war for her?”

If the goblin had heard all of that, he not only could hear as well as any werewolf Adam had ever met, he also had a larger capacity to sort through data than Adam had. The conversations in the dinner hall had blurred to incomprehensible for Adam.

He nodded in response to the goblin’s question. “Bran would not be pleased if something happened to Mercy. Very not pleased.”

Larry tilted his head in a way that was neither human nor quite wolflike. “Bran was Grendel?”

He thought about Larry the goblin king and how everyone underestimated goblins. He decided it would be a good thing if the goblin king knew something of what the Marrok was.

“Not quite,” Adam said. “As I understand it, Beowulf was written down a long time after the events it purports to tell. The purpose of the story as it was recorded was to recite the final deeds of Beowulf, a great hero. Somewhere along the way, someone put him up against the scariest monsters they’d ever heard of instead of the terrible monsters who did kill him. That tale then blended back to the original.”

On one remarkable night, not long after Adam had been Changed, the Marrok’s son Samuel had sung (then translated) several versions of the tale of Beowulf.

“Beowulf,” Adam told the goblin, “isn’t any more accurate than any story told by mouth for centuries before it was written down, which is not very. Bran’s story is that a long time ago, he was broken. It had something to do with protecting his son. For a very long time afterward—decades and maybe longer—Bran was a mindless monster who killed every living thing in his territory.”

“When you were talking to Jacob, you said Bran’s mother was a witch,” said Elizaveta.

He hadn’t. She was fishing. So he said, “Bran has never said so. I’ve heard the rumors, though. So has Bonarata.”

Samuel had told him that Bran’s mother was a witch, and Adam figured that, being Bran’s son, Samuel had been in a position to know. But he didn’t have to tell Elizaveta who his source was. If Bran had wanted it to be known that he was witchborn, he’d have told everyone himself. Since he hadn’t, Adam wasn’t going to do it for him. But everyone had heard the rumors, and those Bran encouraged. Adam just didn’t need to confirm them.

“Interesting,” she said thoughtfully. “It would explain some things if it were true.” She smiled wickedly at Adam. “Some things that others have tried to do to Bran Cornick and failed miserably.”

He didn’t want to know, especially because she wanted to tell him. Elizaveta was one of his, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know what she was—witch and all that entailed. He wouldn’t invite her to bring her brand of horror to their suite—and it did not matter to him in the slightest that it was only Larry and Honey here, and they could protect themselves.

“Be that as it may,” Elizaveta said when it became clear he wasn’t going to question her. He could tell she was disappointed with him for spoiling her fun, though she knew him better than to have expected him to allow her to play her games here. “I am an old woman, and I’ve been up for far too long. I’m going to bed and going to sleep.”

“Wait,” he said impulsively. “Can you help me contact Mercy again?” It was maddening the way the faintness of their bond told him nothing except that she was alive.

Elizaveta sighed. “I can. But it is not easy, Adya. And I do not think that it is wise to do not-easy magic in the home of one such as Bonarata unless it is necessary. Especially since such an effort will weaken me in this place where we might need every bit of power all of us can muster. Is there something that makes you think this is necessary?”

He gave her a tight smile. “Nothing more than that she is on her own, without friends or money, alone in Europe.”

“Your mate is good at finding friends wherever she goes,” Elizaveta said with a little acid. Elizaveta was not herself a friend of his mate. “She escaped Bonarata. I expect she can look after herself for a day or two.”

Looking after her is my job, he thought. But he said, “I expect you’re right. But even so, I might ask it of you at a later time.” If the wolf demanded it.

She nodded. “That is fine, so long as you know what you risk. I bid you all good night. Wake me, Adya, if anything interesting happens.”

“I will if I can,” he promised.

After Elizaveta’s door closed, Larry gave Adam a measured look, then waved casually at Adam and Honey before he went into the room Elizaveta had picked for him. He closed his door, too, leaving Honey and Adam alone.

Adam considered staying in human guise. After daylight, it was unlikely that he’d run into trouble from the vampires. But vampires have allies—and this one had a werewolf under his thumb. His wolf form was the better one to face a true attack. Unlike less dominant wolves, he could shift back and forth several times in a day—though having the pack so far away would limit that a bit.

He began stripping out of his clothes. Honey made a sound as he pulled off his suit jacket, and he looked at her.

“Is it legal for you to carry that in Italy?” she asked. “And what did you do to the scent? I didn’t smell it—still don’t.”

“Not legal, no,” he said, taking off his shoulder holster and the HK P2000 that was his usual concealed carry. “But who is going to try to arrest me? If they do, they’re going to be more worried about the werewolf than the gun.”

“So they should,” she conceded. She frowned. “Your shaving-lotion smell is different. Does that have something to do with my not picking up the gun scent?”

“Elizaveta,” Adam said. “Not much magic, mostly just something that smells a little like gunpowder and oil that isn’t.”

Honey took a deep breath. She nodded and didn’t say anything else. Honey was like that. She didn’t mind quiet and only said what she had to say.

He stripped off the rest of his clothing, laying the suit across a chair for the night. Everything else he folded on the chair seat. When he was naked, he changed.

Honey followed his example without a word. When the whole painful business was over, he curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace, checked that somewhere Mercy was still tethered to him, and settled in to wait. Honey hopped on the couch and put her head on the arm with a deep sigh.

He drifted into the light doze that would leave the wolf on alert to any changes but still allow him to rest. It was something that he’d learned to do in Vietnam, when he had been a soldier and not a werewolf. The wolf just made it more effective.

It was late morning when his phone rang. Grumbling, he rose to his feet and stalked to the table where his satellite phone rested. He knocked it to the floor where it would be easier to see and looked at the display.

Ben.

The phone quit ringing, and a few moments later, a text message popped up. URGENT.

He checked his bond, and Mercy was still there. He could breathe again without his chest hurting. The URGENT didn’t go away—it just became more manageable.

So he could breathe, but worry still hung on. A host of possibly urgent things popped into his mind. Maybe something had happened to the children. And when had Aiden become one of his children? Aiden, who was older than . . . well, probably older than Bran for all that he looked like he belonged in elementary school.

Speaking of Aiden, maybe he’d finally succeeded in burning the house down. It was bound to happen one of these days.

Change with speed, then, he decided. It hurt more when he forced it—especially without the pack to draw upon. Honey whined, and he realized that he was automatically pulling energy from her. He stopped that, and his change slowed. Growling, he redoubled his efforts, and in something under ten minutes by his phone’s reckoning, he was in human form: naked, covered in sweat, shivering from pain and shock that made the warmish room feel chilly, but human.

He picked up the phone without bothering to dress and called Ben. “Yes?”

“Hey,” Ben said cheerfully. “We are sodding and shagging in honey, Adam. Mercy stole an e-book reader from the Dark Ages and used it to contact me via Gmail. She’s in the Czech Republic. I think they call it Czechia for short now. Prague.”

And it took a moment for Adam to breathe again, but when he did, the air was sweet. He collected himself, aware of Ben waiting patiently on the other side of the phone connection.

“Prague?” He did a quick check of his mental map of Europe and blinked. “That’s what, five hundred miles from here?” That was some bus ride, Mercy. No wonder his bond was so weak. Without the pack, he was surprised he could touch her at all.

“About that,” agreed Ben blandly. “I contacted Charles, and he told me to put her in touch with Libor of the Vltava Pack. I haven’t heard back from her, but the e-reader was out of juice, and she apparently didn’t steal the charger when she took the reader.”

Prague. Adam took a deep breath. He’d have to wait for Marsilia and Stefan to wake up; he couldn’t abandon them in Bonarata’s care. He took another breath and tried to subdue the wolf, who wanted to go right-the-hell-yesterday.

“She’s okay?” he asked.

“She’s okay,” Ben assured him. “I told her you were hot on her ass to Europe. She’ll hunker down with Libor for a couple of days.”

Adam pinched his nose—a habit he’d gotten from watching Bran do it one too many times. “Tell me about Libor.”

“Alpha of the Vltava Pack. Been around since the Middle fucking Ages. Apparently a baker—of all the sodding things for a fearsome Alpha to be. We are all glad we don’t have to tell people our Alpha is a motherhumping baker.”

Adam made an encouraging sound and waited for Ben to quit distracting himself. As the other wolf got back to matters at hand, Adam filtered out the expletives that were Ben’s attempt to shrug off an upper-crust but hellish upbringing—Adam was able to assume from Ben’s casual attitude that various people weren’t really pedophiles nor did they do interesting and unlikely things with animals and/or machinery. When Ben was finished, he left Adam with something worth worrying about.

“Libor has a legendary grudge against Bran,” Adam said slowly. “Charles doesn’t know what it was about. Did you try Samuel?” Surely one of the two would have the story.

“Sorry,” Ben said regretfully. “I did try. Since it was I sending Mercy into the mouth of the monster, I decided I was on the need-to-know list. Took an act of God to get in touch. Samuel doesn’t know. Charles says he doesn’t know what it was. All he has is a couple of comments Bran made once upon a time—and Bran won’t say anything more. Apparently there was an oath involved, and you know how Bran is about that.”

Adam cursed under his breath.

“How many years in the army, and that’s all you’ve got?” Ben said. “I thought the army guys really know how to swear.”

Despite everything, Adam grinned at the phone. “We didn’t swear in my day,” he lied. “We just killed people.”

“There is that,” said Ben. “What can I do? Samuel says he can head to Prague, but it will take him a couple of days to get there. Apparently he’s in Africa.”

“I thought he and Ariana were in the UK?” Adam said.

“He said he was doing a favor for an old friend,” Ben said. “Medical, I think, and not werewolf or fae business. They’re not in a civilized area, and it will take a day to hike out.”

Adam thought about that. “Tell Samuel no. It sounds like the crisis is mostly over. Does Charles have a way for me to contact Libor?” Trouble between the Prague Alpha and Bran or not, the vampires were a real threat. Though he, like Larry, thought he’d convinced Bonarata that killing Mercy would be a mistake. Still, he’d be happier to put Mercy with allies just in case.

“I can get that,” Ben promised. “I’ll text it to you in the next fifteen minutes. That work?”

“That works,” he said.

He ended the call and paced restlessly, waiting for Ben’s text message. Eventually, he put clothes on.

As soon as Ben sent over the information, Adam called the Alpha of the Vltava Pack, the Alpha of Prague. It took a few minutes to get Libor on the phone, which was only to be expected. Adam happened to pace by a mirror as he was waiting and stopped when he noticed that his eyes were bright gold.

It would be a mistake to let his wolf do the negotiations with another Alpha. He practiced the breathing exercises he’d learned to help his control. By the time Libor came to the phone, he was under control.

It took a while to negotiate a language to speak in. Libor pretended not to speak English because English was Adam’s native tongue. They both spoke Russian, but Libor still held a grudge against the Russians. German was out of the question for the same reason—for which Adam was grateful because his German wasn’t good enough for delicate negotiations.

Finally, Adam said, in English, “Look. I’m an American; you’re lucky I have two languages I’m fluent in. We can do this in English or Russian, or I can find a translator. That will complicate things worse than they already are, especially since, where I am, the most likely translator I can find will be a vampire.” He could do basic Vietnamese and Mandarin, but he bet that neither of those were in Libor’s repertoire. And Adam hadn’t used either language in several decades.

“Russian,” conceded Libor without pause. He’d probably already come to the same conclusion Adam had voiced, but he’d waited for Adam to point out his inadequacies.

That was fair, because it was Adam who was going to ask for a favor.

Ben had said that Libor was a man of his word, but he was as slippery as a Gray Lord. Adam preferred to work with straightforward people, even if they were enemies, instead of subtle, slippery allies. But that wasn’t his choice to make at this point. Bonarata and Mercy between them had brought him to this pass.

That didn’t mean Adam needed to follow Libor’s game. Instead of working up to what he wanted, he just said, “My mate is in Prague by herself on the run from Bonarata, with whom I am currently in negotiations. She needs a safe place to await help. I should be able to be there—”

An hour, said the wolf. Probably two. We could fly to her in a couple of hours.

Adam closed his eyes and forced himself to remember that two of his people were currently vulnerable until nightfall. That he was in negotiations with Bonarata, which were not going to benefit from a hasty departure. Those negotiations were necessary to keep his family and his people safe. Bonarata and Adam still hadn’t come to any kind of agreement about the situation, whatever it really was, that had made Bonarata decide to take a shot over the bow at Mercy.

He wasn’t going to see Mercy today. Not today.

“Early tomorrow morning at the latest,” he said.

“You lost your mate?” said Libor in an amused voice.

Across the room, the mirror showed gold flooding Adam’s eyes, and he bit back a growl.

“I know exactly where she is,” Adam said carefully. “I will come for her shortly. It would be useful to have a quiet place for her to rest until I can come.” There. He’d backed down from “need” to “it would be useful to.”

“I need more detail than what you have given me,” Libor said. “I have to protect my pack first.”

So Adam went through the whole scenario from the moment the vampires had hit Mercy in his car right up to their current situation. Edited, but still most of the story.

“I see,” said Libor, when Adam had finished. There was a long silence, presumably as Libor weighed what Adam had told him. Then he said, “You managed to let your mate get kidnapped by the most ruthless vampire on the planet, and now you need my help.”

Yes. That “need” had been a mistake. Hard to judge words when he wasn’t face-to-face with the other werewolf. If it had been Bran he’d been talking to, “need” would have been the key word. Bran didn’t turn away werewolves who needed him.

Libor had just downgraded himself in Adam’s book of evaluation. But Adam hadn’t spent his formative years in the Army Rangers for nothing: he knew how to manipulate arrogant asses even better than he could manipulate competent commanders—the former having been much more common in his experience than the latter.

“If you are afraid of the vampires,” Adam said, “I understand. Mercy can take care of herself just fine.” He fiercely believed that. It was the only reason he was still here, doing his duty and protecting those who’d trusted him enough to follow him into the den of the boogeyman of the vampires, instead of grabbing one of the pilots and making a beeline for Prague. “She got away from Bonarata with nothing more than her brains and determination. She won’t have any trouble surviving your streets for a day. I’m not so sure if your streets will survive, though.”

He thought of Marsilia’s rubbing Mercy’s escape in Bonarata’s face and said, “My mate hit Bonarata’s pet werewolf with a bus. I wonder what she’ll do to your territory on her own?”

The other werewolf growled and bit out, “I do not fear the vampires. Bonarata was a child when I was an old, old wolf, and his territory is far from here. Very well, we will protect her from Bonarata’s vampires until you come for her. Where shall I find your mate?”

“Mercy will find you,” Adam said, satisfied at having goaded the other into defending himself. They were both aware that whatever the limits of Bonarata’s territory, his fingers were in the business of every town in Europe. Libor’s words were hollow, and they both knew it. Anyone within a thousand miles of Bonarata should feel a healthy amount of fear. But Adam chose to be conciliatory. “I appreciate your aid in this situation.”

Libor disconnected without further words.

Adam stared at the phone. For two cents, he’d drop everything and go find Mercy. Now.

Mercy could take care of herself. She’d survived just fine before he’d married her. Afterward, both he and she had done all that they could to ensure that continued to be true. He could trust her to take care of herself. But when he started to make another call, he knew the wolf was in his eyes again. He didn’t bother trying to calm down.

“David,” he said as soon as the other side of the phone call was picked up. “I need to land a private jet in or very near Prague. Do you know somewhere I can do that?”

David Christiansen, the werewolf on the other side of the conversation, was a mercenary with contacts all over the world. He was also one of Adam’s oldest friends.

“How are you, Adam?” David said with mock cheer. “It’s good to talk to you. Even ‘hi, hello, how’s it going’ would have been okay.”

“Mercy’s loose in Prague. I’m in Milan, and I need to get to Prague tomorrow morning. Very early. Money is no problem, but if the price is too high, we might need to wire some.”

David wasn’t stupid. He heard “Milan” and that Mercy and Adam were separated. He added those two together and came up with Bonarata because he said, “Messing in vampire business isn’t for wusses. Try to look unimportant, Sarge; maybe they’ll be low on ammo.”

“Too late,” Adam said with an involuntary grin. He hadn’t heard that phrase since ’Nam, when officers were favorite targets of the enemy. “But there aren’t any bullets flying right now.” In the background, he could hear the scratch scratch as David wrote something on a piece of paper.

“What kind of plane?”

Adam gave him the specs, and David wrote those down, too.

“Give me a minute, my people are on it,” David said. “If you kill that old bastard in Milan, I’ll treat you to the biggest steak in Chicago. Or Seattle, if you don’t want to come my way.”

“Doesn’t look like murdering vampires is in my near future,” admitted Adam. “Much as I’d enjoy it.”

David murmured something to someone else, then was back on the phone. “Got it. Do you have something to write with or do you want me to text you?”

“Text me,” said Adam. “Thanks.”

“I still owe you, I figure,” David responded. “Do you need some backup? I can be in Prague with a crew or two in about seventeen hours.”

Adam considered it. But if the people he had with him weren’t enough, he reckoned he’d need a nuclear strike and not more people to die trying to rescue him and Mercy.

“I think it’s handled,” he said. Though he’d have been happier if Libor had been the same kind of polite liar that Bonarata was—odd that he trusted the vampire further than his own kind. But he’d met Bonarata, and he figured he had his measure. No telling whether Libor was just being a pain for the sake of annoyance—or if he was a problem.

“Let me know if that changes,” said David. “Keep your head down.”

“You, too.”

They disconnected, and Adam was left with a whole day to get through and nothing to do. Sleeping was out of the question.

Honey was awake and watching him. She’d have heard everything. She wagged her tail and smiled hopefully.

Adam ran his hands through his hair. “Right. This is good news. Mercy is safe. I’m pretty sure Bonarata believed me about Bran—and put a call out to his hunters before he went down for the day. He isn’t interested in the kind of war Bran would bring him.” The kind where everyone loses. He smiled at Honey, because he knew she’d understand. “It’s just that now that I know where she is, I’m not sure I can find the patience to wait. And talk and talk and talk without killing someone.”

Honey’s ears flattened with amused agreement. She wasn’t fond of talk and talk and talk, either.

“I’m going to go notify the pilots that we’re flying to Prague before morning tomorrow,” Adam said, because it would give him something to do besides pace restlessly. He’d wake them up when they should be getting sleep—but he was paying them enough money that he didn’t feel too bad about that.

“Stay alert,” he told Honey.

She put her nose down on the couch and watched as he put his shoulder holster back on and resettled his suit. He took a good look at himself in the mirror to check for wrinkles, lopsided tie, or the gun printing too obviously.

Satisfied that he was as put together as he was likely to get, he left the room. He couldn’t lock it behind him without locking himself out—they hadn’t been issued keys. He opened the door again and looked at Honey.

“Remember the door won’t be locked until I get back. Keep an ear out,” he said.

Then he left his chicks safe in her care. His mouth turned up as he thought about what any of the people in that suite would think of his considering them in need of his care. Except for Elizaveta, of course—she would accept his concern as her due, if only a small part of her considerable defenses.

Adam climbed briskly up the hardwood stairs, turned the corner, and knocked on the door. Movement exploded within.

“It’s me,” he told them low-voiced—which is probably what he should have done in the first place.

“A moment,” said Harris tightly. “I’ve got some safeguards in place. Give me a moment.”

Good, thought Adam.

The door opened, and Adam stepped inside, closing himself inside. It wasn’t a suite, or even a good hotel room, but there was room for two twin beds, two chests of drawers, and a TV. It was clean, and there was a big window looking out on the same courtyard the main room of the suite did. From up here, he could see over the wall and out to the villa next door. Matt Smith was sitting cross-legged in his bed with his back to the wall. He looked interested but not particularly concerned.

“We’ve found Mercy,” Adam told them.

Harris’s eyebrows climbed. “How did you manage that? Bonarata’s people are asleep now, surely.”

Adam shook his head. “I should have said Mercy found us. She evidently stole an e-book reader with Wi-Fi, found a café with free Wi-Fi, and spent the next ten minutes in frantic conversation via e-mail with one of my wolves before the battery in the e-reader died. She’s in Prague.”

“Prague?” said Smith.

Adam nodded. “Since I was out of reach, Ben consulted the Marrok’s son Charles, who told him to send her to the local Alpha for protection.”

“Libor?” said Smith. “I’ve . . . heard things about Libor of the Vltava.”

“Charles recommended him,” said Adam.

“Oh, sorry,” Smith said. “Probably okay, then, right? Charles doesn’t make mistakes.”

Harris looked back and forth between the two werewolves. “Trouble?”

“I called Libor and confirmed he’d provide safe space for Mercy until I could get there tomorrow morning,” Adam said when Smith didn’t say anything. “If that’s dangerous, if you know something, Smith, this would be the time to let me know.”

Smith shook his head. “No. Libor is a man of his word. If he told you she’d have safety with him, she will.”

“We could be in Prague in an hour and a half,” said Harris. “Maybe a little longer. Do you have a place I can set down there? If not, I have a place to land in Brno and another in Dresden, and it’s only a couple of hours by car from either one to Prague. We could use the main airport, but that might be more public than we want to be.”

“I have a place for you to land in Prague,” Adam said.

“Not a good idea to offend Bonarata,” suggested Smith quietly. “If you leave without clearing it with him, you are putting him in a corner in which he has no choice but to call you an enemy for breaking guesting custom.”

Harris gave his copilot a sharp look.

Adam smiled at the goblin’s surprise. “Remember that werewolves can live a long time, and just because one is submissive doesn’t make them stupid. My experience has suggested the opposite. We have a saying, ‘Listen when the soft ones speak.’”

Smith smiled with only a little irony. “Your mate has a reputation of her own,” said Smith. “Do you think she needs your help? My feeling after the dinner was that Bonarata intends to diplomatically forget about Mercy.”

“Did you overhear something?” Adam asked alertly.

Smith ran his hands though his hair. Glanced up at Adam and then away. “He told one of his vampires, the woman with red-and-gold hair, to call off the hunt. Unless he’s found someone else to hunt, I suspect that’s the hunt for your wife.”

“I heard that, too,” said Harris. “Didn’t make the connection. He said the hunting had lost its joy this season—or something flowery like that. Decided to cancel the hunt. My Italian is pretty bare-bones.”

“I should have said something,” Smith said after a glance up at Adam’s face.

Yes, but there hadn’t been a very good time to do it. It wasn’t anything that he hadn’t expected—it was just a relief to hear.

“All right.” Adam let out his breath. “Mercy should be fine until we can get her. We’ll talk to Bonarata tonight—and then we’ll go find my wife.”

Smith said, “There are some stories you should know that I’ve heard about Prague.”

“Like the stories about Libor?” asked Harris.

Smith shook his head. “Libor is difficult, but there’s not an Alpha on the planet who isn’t difficult one way or the other.” He paused. “Present company excepted, I’m sure.”

Adam snorted.

Smith continued, “At any rate, there are two vampire seethes in the heart of Prague.”

Adam frowned. “They’re even more territorial than we wolves. Is there room for two seethes in Prague?”

“Exactly,” Smith said. “Nothing really wrong but . . . I think it would have been better if your mate had found her way to Munich or Paris. London, even.”

“Up to you, Hauptman,” Harris said. “We could fly to Prague, collect your mate, fly back. Depending upon how long it takes to find her, we might make it back before dark.”

Adam considered it. But it would still mean abandoning Marsilia and Stefan—and that was wrong.

Smith said, in a low voice, “You’d be bringing your mate back into his clutches. He’d see your going as an insult or a challenge. It might make him do something interesting. If you leave her in Prague—and let him know you have her location—he’ll know you respect her ability to take care of herself. It will leave you in a more powerful position in the end.”

“Mercy can take care of herself,” Adam growled, because it was his privilege to take care of her anyway. He took a deep breath and turned to Harris. “Be ready to leave anytime after nightfall tonight. I’ll let Marsilia handle the negotiations. She knows how the bastard’s mind works.”

“No one knows how Bonarata’s mind works,” murmured Smith. “That’s why he’s still around.”

“Get some sleep,” said Adam. He was starting to feel the long day, too. He hadn’t done anything more than catnap since Mercy had been taken. He had a course in front of him now, and even if the monster inside him wasn’t happy with his decision, it was made.

He closed the door and started down the stairs but paused because someone was walking down the hallway from another wing of the villa. He couldn’t see him, but he heard his footsteps. Inside him, Adam’s wolf alerted, because the other was walking softly, like a trained fighter who doesn’t want to be noticed.

He trotted back up the stairs he’d just come down. Unlike the other man, Adam made no sound. He timed his approach so that he stepped into the hallway about five feet in front of the other man.

In front of the vampire.

Guccio’s pretty face broke into a pretty smile that didn’t show his teeth. “Adam,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Were they on a first-name basis? Adam’s wolf said no, but Adam swallowed it because all he knew was the vampire’s first name.

He managed a casual raised eyebrow when the wolf wanted to eliminate the threat to his people.

“Vampire,” Adam said, tipping his head toward Guccio in something that the vampire was welcome to read as greeting. “Should you be out in the day?”

There were vampires who could move about in dusk or twilight, but Adam reckoned they were close upon midafternoon.

Even though the inner halls of the villa were windowless and lit by artificial lights, it was the sun that mattered. When the sun rose, a vampire’s spirit or soul or whatever left their body and no longer animated it. The corpse left behind smelled and felt like a corpse. Vampires were dead every day; wolf noses don’t lie.

Guccio’s smile widened. “The Lord of Night once had a very powerful witch.” He held up a hand-stitched cloth bag tied around his neck.

It appeared, to Adam’s Southern-bred eyes and nose, like a gris-gris bag. He smelled a number of herbs, but the main scent was something organic decaying. Maybe Bonarata’s witch followed voodoo or hoodoo practices. Or maybe she (because strong witches were mostly women) was African, which was where the practice of making gris-gris originated.

Adam had never heard of a witch who could let a vampire walk in the daytime. Maybe because there weren’t any witches who would want to do so.

“It only allows me to walk when otherwise I would have to rest,” Guccio said, letting the bag settle back against the hollow of his throat. “It cannot protect me from sunlight.”

Adam wondered if Guccio knew how much longing was in his voice when he said “sunlight.” The vampires called it “sun-sickness” when their kind became obsessed with the sun. Without intervention, vampires affected by sun-sickness died within a year or two—walking out into the dawn of their own volition. Suicide of sorts. If they hadn’t already been dead.

Guccio was one of those people who liked hearing his own voice so much that he thought everyone felt the same way. He kept talking, but all Adam paid attention to was the threat he represented. Adam made answers that Guccio probably took as polite and wondered if he was going to have to kill Guccio before going to Prague.

And Adam waited at the top of the stairs until Guccio turned back the way he’d come and kept going, following the hall as it took a sharp turn. He had never said what he was doing over by Adam’s pilots’ room.

His wolf furiously disturbed, Adam knocked on Harris and Smith’s door for a second time.

“Get your things,” he said shortly when Harris finally opened the door. “There are vampires wandering around in the daytime here. I’m not leaving you here alone.”

—

HE GAVE THE PILOTS THE COUCHES. HE AND HONEY, both in wolf form, curled up on the throw rug in front of the cold fireplace. Honey slept, but Adam only managed to doze off and on, his wolf restless.

He found himself checking the bond with Mercy over and over. All he could tell was that she was there, but for a few minutes it would quiet the wolf. He hoped it was just the wolf’s reaction to the meeting with Guccio and not something about Mercy that the wolf could feel and the man could not.

No one in the bedrooms stirred, not even to his wolf ears. Smith slept like the dead. Harris . . . Harris snored. Just enough that it made Adam worry that it would cover a noise that might warn him of an attack.

People started stirring out in the hallways as the light outside bloomed into a glorious sunset. Adam shifted into his human shape, gathered his luggage, and went into the vampires’ room to use their bathroom to shower, shave, and change.

By the time he was done, both vampires were awake. They didn’t speak—maybe they couldn’t. Adam could see their hunger—just as they could see his wolf.

They had better get things tied up here tonight, or Bonarata might not be the one they had to worry about. He hadn’t thought about the vampires’ need to feed. He didn’t know much about it. It was a touchy subject for Stefan, though maybe not for all vampires. Should he have suggested that they bring one of their willing donors—what did Mercy call them?—one of their sheep with them?

But he didn’t think he could have stood back and watched, not knowing that the human’s willingness might not be anything more than a strange and strong addiction.

They were adults. More than adults, they were powers in their own right, he decided as he nodded to them and kept going out the door to the main room of the suite. He would do his best to keep them safe, but they could find their own food.

In the common room, Harris and Larry were up, dressed in keeping with their differing roles in this play. Elizaveta was wearing a slate-gray suit with a diamond brooch. She looked like someone’s sweet and expensive grandmother. Soft. He wondered whom she was planning on blindsiding.

There were two people showering. By process of elimination, that would have to be Honey and Smith.

A polite knock sounded at the door.

Adam started to get it, but Harris waved him back.

“I believe that’s my job, sir,” he said deferentially, then flashed Adam a cheery grin.

He opened the door to a male and female vampire, each pushing a trolley.

“Good morning,” said the woman with a friendly smile and downcast eyes. “With my Master’s compliments, we have sustenance for your bloodborn. For the rest of your party, there is tea, coffee, and drinking chocolate. First meal will be served in an hour in the main dining room. It is generally less formal than last meal—no ties required. My Master requests that a half hour before the meal, you attend him again in the receiving room. If you would like a guide, one will be provided you.”

“The receiving room is the old library?” Adam asked.

She gave him a surprised look before dropping her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“It still smells of books,” Harris explained, touching his nose. “The wolves pay more attention to the scents of things than most people do. We won’t need a guide.”

The servants withdrew. Adam claimed the cart that held a tea service with a large, elaborately fashioned black-and-gold teapot that did not, according to his nose, hold anything like tea.

“I’ll take it in to them,” he said. He trusted that Marsilia and Stefan had enough control not to attack anyone even with their hunger riding them, but he wouldn’t send anyone else in. Just in case.

He knocked once—they would have heard the exchange with Bonarata’s servants—and went in. Marsilia was dressed and putting a diamond drop earring on. Stefan was buttoning his white silk shirt.

“Thank you,” Marsilia said.

There was no trace of the Hunger in either of their faces, but Adam knew what he’d seen. He pushed the cart all the way into the room and turned to leave them to it.

Marsilia said, “Wait.”

He stopped and looked at her.

“Please,” she said. Then she nodded to Stefan, who closed the door.

As soon as the door shut, she approached him. “Did you meet with a vampire in this house between the time we retired and awakened?”

“Guccio,” he said. “Mercy contacted Ben via e-mail using a stolen e-reader. She’s alive in Prague and likely to stay that way until we get there. I went to talk to Harris to let him know we’d be wheels up tonight as soon as you figure out what a proper leave-taking of Bonarata consists of. Sooner rather than later if you can manage.”

Marsilia absorbed all of that. While she did, Stefan said, “Guccio? In the day?”

“He had some sort of magical bag. Witchcraft. I want to ask Elizaveta about it.”

Stefan considered that. Then he said, “Did he do anything odd?”

“No bite marks,” Adam said. “I checked.” And he had. He knew about vampire mind tricks—and his wolf was even more agitated than it had been when he found out about Mercy.

Stefan nodded slowly. “Okay. Okay. You should be okay, then. You just—” He glanced over at Marsilia, who sighed.

“Vampires have scent markers,” she told him. “It’s not quite a secret, but not something we tell everyone about. We leave them involuntarily when we feed off a human, but we can also do it deliberately—a touch, a brush of skin on skin. A way of marking someone as ours. As soon as you walked into the bedroom, Stefan and I could tell you’d been marked by someone. I didn’t know Guccio well enough to remember how his scent marker smells.”

Adam sniffed himself, but he couldn’t detect anything different. It made him uneasy that the vampires could smell something he couldn’t, but that might be why his wolf was so upset.

“I showered,” he said, “and it’s still here?”

Stefan grinned. “Don’t worry, Mercy won’t smell it, either. Some kind of vampire magic designed to keep some poor fool from taking a bite of a Master Vampire’s prey. Vampires can smell it from the newest hatchling to the oldest doddering geriatric.” His smile was real, but his eyes were solemn. “It’s considered rude, unless it’s one of your own . . . people, someone who has to go out and about among our kind, and you want to protect them from other vampires.”

“What an interesting thing to do to a guest of Bonarata,” said Marsilia. “I wonder what it means?”

Adam felt his mouth quirk up. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Marsilia narrowed her eyes at him.

“Come on out to the main room,” he said. “I have a few things to talk over with everyone.”

But when they made it to the main room, Honey was still getting dressed in Elizaveta’s room. Smith was in the suite, and from the wide-eyed look he gave Adam, he’d heard about the vampire scent-marking him. Adam was pretty sure there was a glint of something in Smith’s eyes, too, but the other wolf dropped his head like a good submissive, so Adam couldn’t be sure.

Given that there were no bite marks, Adam could see why they found it funny that he, a werewolf, had been marked as prey by the stupid vampire.

The two goblins were pointedly looking at the window, their backs to the room. Presumably so that Adam couldn’t see their wide grins.

Elizaveta looked from Adam to Smith to the goblins and said, in a voice with virtually no Russian accent at all so that Adam knew she was really angry, “Please tell me the joke so that I know what you and the vampires were conversing about. It seems that I am the only who did not hear what went on.”

Adam bowed to her and said in Russian, “My apologies. It is a joke on me, I am afraid. Please let us wait until Honey is here, and I will tell everyone some information I’ve gotten while you’ve slept. And I think you may provide us with important information about what I have to say.”

She arched an eyebrow at him, but he knew that by addressing her in Russian—which everyone here did not understand—he had given her a sop to her pride, because, in that case, she was not the one left out of the information flow. And letting her know she held vital information was a boost to her ego. She knew he was manipulating her, but she decided to allow it.

“Very well,” she said in English, her accent back in place. “I can wait for Honey.”

Honey came out, her short hair a little damp and her face freshly made up. She smelled, just a little, of rose petals. A human might not catch it, but the vampires would. She wore a rose-colored tank top without a bra and jeans that looked as though she wouldn’t be able to draw a deep breath. Around her neck was a gold chain with a small wolf charm. He knew that Peter, her dead mate, had gotten her the necklace, because Adam had gone with him to pick it out for her birthday.

She looked like bait.

He smiled at her, and she gave him a toothy smile back. He was glad he’d brought her, fierce and strong. She was a good wolf to have at your back.

He told them about Mercy. Told them that Guccio had been walking around the villa with a spell bag that allowed him to roam during the day. And he told them that he’d been marked so that all the vampires would think that he was Guccio’s food.

Honey stepped closer and sniffed him. “I don’t smell anything?” She gave the vampires a suspicious look.

“I don’t, either,” said Larry. “But I know that vampires have a way of marking their prey. It’s seen as crude, because usually, unless it’s a Master Vampire, it’s an accident. Proof that a vampire lost control when he”—he glanced at Marsilia and said—“or she found some food that appealed to her. Sort of like spitting into a drink that isn’t yours.”

Adam smiled grimly at the goblin. “Thank you. I’ll store that image.” He turned to Elizaveta. “The bag Guccio wore around his neck—it looked and smelled like a gris-gris bag. He said it gave him the ability to stay awake during the day, but it wouldn’t protect him from the sun.”

He closed his eyes and described it in as minute detail as he could manage, including a list of herbs and the other things he had picked up. “Whatever was rotting in the bag smelled vaguely rodent-like to me, but it had been dead and covered in herbs for too long. Mostly it just smelled rotten. He claimed that a witch Bonarata had once had made it and that it allowed him to walk during the day.”

Elizaveta grunted. “Such a thing could be managed that way.”

“Oh?” said Marsilia, a little too neutrally.

“I can do it for you for a fee,” she acknowledged. “But such things are limited. A certain amount of time per day—and only for so many days.”

“Could you do one for sunlight?” asked Stefan, but he didn’t sound hungry, just thoughtful. “It would really suck eggs if Bonarata has access to something that allows him to run around in the sunlight.”

He’d gotten that “suck eggs” expression from Mercy.

Elizaveta gave Stefan a shrewd look. “I can make you a gris-gris that will allow you to walk in the sun,” she said gently. “Would you wear it?”

Stefan gave her an arrested look. “Never,” he said slowly. “No tarnish to your honor, donna, but I would have to trust you a lot further than I trust anyone to venture out into the sunlight with a gris-gris.”

Not at all insulted, Elizaveta gave him a slow smile. “That is good, Soldier. You are wise. I think that any vampire who has lived as long as Bonarata has lived would feel the same.” She looked thoughtful. “Truthfully, I don’t know that it could be done in any case. I would have to understand more about why sunlight—and not, say, full-spectrum light from lightbulbs—is fatal to your kind. The other—allowing you to walk during the daytime—would be a variant on part of zombie animation.”

“So the gris-gris is a consumable,” Adam said.

Elizaveta smiled at him. “A very expensive consumable, I think. It would take time to make, and its maker would have to be of a certain level of power. A lot of power and a lot of skill—you said the vampire claimed that Bonarata no longer has access to this witch?”

“That’s what it sounded like,” Adam said. “If this is a nonrenewable consumable and valuable magic item, then Guccio was not casually strolling by Harris’s room.”

“No,” agreed Marsilia. “It is a good thing that you were there, and a good thing you brought them back with you. Or maybe we wouldn’t have had pilots to take us home.”

“On Bonarata’s orders?” asked Adam.

She shrugged. “Maybe. Guccio might just be trying to curry favor. Iacopo—Jacob—Jacob has always had a fondness for innovation.”

“He probably marked you for spite,” said Stefan. “It was a dumb thing to do, though. And dumb people don’t tend to last long enough around Bonarata to climb the power hierarchy.”

“A gris-gris such as the one he carried can affect people adversely,” Elizaveta observed. “That is true black magic, and it tends to stain the user as well as the one who casts it.” She glanced at her watch. “If we are to meet with Bonarata at the time specified, we should leave.”