2

Adam

For Adam, it began during that game of The Dread Pirate’s Booty. You can decide for yourself if he handled my unexpected involuntary absence well or not.

ADAM FELT A FLASH OF PAIN THAT HAD HIM STAGGERING to his feet, heedless of the monitor that crashed to the ground, because it wasn’t his pain—it was Mercy’s. As the echo of that flash hit the pack bonds a breath later than it had hit his mating bond, he sensed the readiness that shivered through the pack as they also rose, alarmed, alert, and awaiting his orders.

“What happened? Is it an accident?” Darryl asked. “Is she okay?”

His Mercy was fragile in body if not in spirit. Fragile by werewolf standards, anyway. The whole pack was aware of her vulnerability and driven to protect her to a degree that would infuriate his wife if she knew about it.

“Not good,” Adam said decisively, used to covering terror with logic and action. He started for the stairs. “I’ll—”

Then silence fell in place of the pain.

The next thing he knew, Adam’s shoulder hit the front door, knocking the sturdy (and expensive) steel door out of its frame and sending it flying out of his way. The wolf wouldn’t allow him to stop for a car, instinctively knowing that he’d be faster on his own feet.

Adam braced himself to fight off the change—because that, too, would slow him down until he was finished shifting completely. But the wolf didn’t try to do anything but give his feet more speed as he sprinted down the driveway and onto the road toward the last place they’d felt Mercy. Dimly, he sensed the pack running flat out behind him, heard the sound of engines—some of the more practical-minded figuring that a car or two might come in handy.

Cold sweat that had nothing to do with the effort of his muscles and everything to do with the way his mate bond ended in nothingness slid down his back as he pushed his body for another ounce of swiftness. His heart beat so hard that he could barely hear the footsteps of his pack.

He smelled the accident before he could see it. Diesel fuel, air bag, her blood—

There was a moment of time that was forever blank after he smelled her blood.

He came to himself standing on the hood of the remains of his SUV, staring into the empty cab. A semi tractor had entwined itself in the glossy black body of the SUV. The glass of the SUV was shattered, and something very strong had torn out the steering wheel to get to Mercy. Her seat belt was cut, and there was too much blood in the seat. Blood, broken eggs, and chocolate chips.

His human half fumbled a second, wondering if the person who had freed Mercy had been him, because he couldn’t remember. But Mercy was gone, and his wolf knew better.

Someone had been here ahead of them.

Someone had hit Mercy with a semitruck, then stolen her away from them.

They had left her purse, small and tidy because Mercy didn’t like to be weighed down by anything big. It lay unopened on the passenger seat.

Adam leaned forward until his head was through the broken window and inhaled deeply. Along with the scent of Mercy’s blood, raw eggs, and himself, he found the scents of four vampires. Vampires. Three of them were strangers. The fourth . . .

He turned his attention to the semi that had T-boned the SUV Mercy had been driving. He jumped easily from the SUV to the semi-tractor door, finding hand- and footholds in the damaged metal side that allowed him to open the door to examine the interior. When the door proved too bent to open, he simply drove his fist through the glass, gripped the door, and ripped it off. The sting of pain as the glass sliced his hand was oddly seductive—so much less painful than what was going on in his heart and his head at the moment.

His first find was that the tractor was new despite a very bad paint job. He took a better look at the outside and saw that someone had painted the whole tractor matte black, including surfaces that had probably originally been chromed and shiny. This vehicle had been painted so that it could be used to take Mercy totally by surprise. She might have heard the engine—though since she was driving his own diesel SUV, maybe not.

He could smell the vampire who’d driven the tractor over the leather and the new-car scent. That vampire had been hurt in the crash; there was a bit of blood somewhere. But he had not been killed or seriously injured. There was no smell of stress—fear, anger, excitement. Even vampires left the scents of their emotions behind. Most of them. That meant that this vampire had done such things before.

A professional. A vampire who specialized in accidents for assassinations or kidnapping. He fought the eagerness with which he wanted to embrace the idea of a kidnapping. He had to keep to the facts—and the amount of blood in the SUV meant that unless she had gotten immediate and professional emergency care, Mercy was in serious trouble.

He snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth in helpless fury. She could be dying, and his mate bond could not tell him where she was or how she was. The only thing that kept him from surrendering to the wolf who needed something to kill, to destroy, was that he had not felt her die. She was just gone. He would assume that she was alive and needed him until there was proof that said otherwise.

“Adam,” called Darryl’s strained voice. “You should come here.”

Adam looked through the driver’s-side window and saw the pack gathered around something on the ground on the side of the road. He opened the driver’s-side door and hopped to the ground. As he approached, the wolves—most of them midchange thanks to his wild flare of emotion—backed away from him, and he got a good look at the body on the ground.

He bent his knees and examined Stefan—the single vampire whose scent he’d recognized. The wolf fought to kill their rival, but Adam reined that part of himself in with cold truth. Like him, Stefan had a bond with Mercy. Likely that was what had drawn him here. Maybe Stefan could find Mercy when Adam could not.

And Mercy, not jealousy or rivalry, is what is important.

At that firm reminder, the raging violent spirit inside of him settled. The wolf was a hunter; he understood patience. And even the wolf could not doubt that his Mercy was his. Jealousy had no place between them. Terror for her safety, yes. But not jealousy.

Stefan’s eyes opened and, for a moment, they were empty of personality, the eyes of a dead man. Then his face filled with expression, and Adam saw the mirror of his own rage and fear. The vampire exploded to his feet, turning in a circle to take in the wolves who surrounded him.

Adam rose more slowly. Stefan wasn’t going to hurt him, and it would do no harm under the circumstances to keep his own movements under control. The wolf wasn’t fighting him, but the beast was a cunning enemy, and if he had misread the wolf, Adam didn’t want Stefan paying the price.

Not when he could be the key to finding Mercy.

“Mercy?” Stefan asked Adam.

“Gone,” Adam said, fighting down despair. It wasn’t time for that yet. But if Stefan had to ask the question, then his blood bond with Mercy was doing him no more good than Adam’s own mating bond.

He gave the vampire the information he had. “They hit her car and took her. It looks well planned and professional at this point. They are vampires—and not Marsilia’s vampires.” He paused. “I’ve never heard of a professional team of kidnappers or assassins who were vampires.”

“There are some, but they keep a low profile.” Stefan rubbed his face with brisk hands, more as if something about it troubled him than a simple gesture of weariness.

“I felt the wreck,” he told Adam. “I imagine you did, too?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I came to this place immediately and found them already working to get her out of the SUV.”

Stefan could teleport—a quirk of the magic that allowed a dead man to live. The Marrok’s son Charles kept a database of vampires and their abilities. He’d told Adam that teleportation was rare. That both Stefan and Marsilia could do it might indicate that they were Made by the same vampire or vampires of the same lineage. Or not.

The vampire continued to speak. “I was focused on Mercy, or else I might have thought to look for more of the enemy. I jumped in to defend her, and someone caught me from behind with a jumped-up Taser, I think, given the results.” He rubbed his face again.

“Can you tell where she is?” Adam asked tersely, though he was pretty sure of the answer. If Adam could teleport, and he had a clear signal to where Mercy was, he wouldn’t be hanging around talking. He expected that Stefan felt the same.

The vampire raised his chin and closed his eyes, a sign of the trust he had that the wolves would not attack while he left himself vulnerable—or that he thought he could defend himself without watching his foe. Maybe some combination of the two. Though he didn’t need to, the vampire took a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes, he met Adam’s gaze with a bleak expression. “No,” he said. “I can’t feel her at all.”

“Do you know who took her?” Adam asked.

Stefan shook his head. “Vampires, but they weren’t anyone I’ve seen before. Not local.”

“What kind of vehicle did they drive?” asked Darryl.

“They had a helicopter,” Stefan said.

The wolf remembered hearing a helicopter, though Adam hadn’t paid much attention at the time. Helicopters had become less notable the past few months because the cherry farmers employed them during and after rainstorms to help dry the cherries before the rain caused the fruit to swell and split. Cherry season was just over, and in a month or two, he’d have noticed a helicopter.

“I heard it,” said Warren, who had taken his own look around the wreck. “But I only caught a glimpse of it while I was running here. They were flying without lights, boss. They were headed south, but they didn’t land before the sound of the helicopter was too faint for me to hear.”

No telling where the helicopter had been going, then. It could be five miles away or a hundred. The semi was probably stolen, but a helicopter and a team of professionals meant that someone had paid a lot of money to take his mate.

A wolf howled from the twenty-acre field on the other side of a wall of desiccated arborvitae.

“Sent them out looking for where the chopper was waiting,” Darryl said.

Ben ran up, breathless and in his human form. There were maybe four or five of Adam’s pack who hadn’t shifted to wolf.

“Looks like it had taken up a f—” Ben glanced behind Adam to Jesse and Aiden, who were huddled quietly where they weren’t in the way but could still hear everything, and cleaned up his language. “—a freaking home base. There’s a low spot behind a rise that would have kept anyone from seeing it. That chopper has been parked there often enough to leave a bare spot. More than a day or two. They’ve been waiting for a chance at Mercy for a while.”

“Might have used magic to keep people away,” Darryl suggested.

“A look-away would have done it,” said Stefan. “Most of us can cast something like that.”

“We can follow up on the semi,” said Darryl. “And I have a friend who flies out of the Richland airport. He might know something about a strange helicopter.”

It would take hours if not days to run down Mercy’s kidnappers that way. The wolf was very unhappy with hours—and Adam wasn’t cheery about it, either.

“She went to the store,” Adam said abruptly. He hopped back on his SUV and stepped through the broken windshield to pull the receipt off the seat.

He saw Mercy’s lamb first. The leather seat under the little gold lamb was scorched as if the charm had been hot when it landed there. Her necklace, broken, was on the floorboard, his dog tag from his time in ’Nam still on the chain. He found Mercy’s wedding ring eventually, hidden under the open carton of broken eggs.

He climbed out of the cab with the receipt in one hand and Mercy’s necklace components in the other.

Warren stood in front of the SUV, one hand on the hood. The old cowboy’s eyes were yellow—he saw what Adam’s other hand held. If not for his eyes, someone who didn’t know him would have thought he was relaxed.

“Stands to reason they wouldn’t let her keep that,” he said, his voice thick with wolf and Texas. “Mercy’s right deadly to vampires with that little lamb of hers. Better’n most people with crosses. If you give me the receipt, I’ll go see what it tells us.”

Adam decided that he himself should not be dealing with fragile humans who might hold some clue to who had taken Mercy just now. He frowned at Warren because he wasn’t sure Warren should be doing it, either.

“I know the owner of the store,” Warren said. “I promise I won’t kill nobody who don’t need killing, boss.” Warren only lost his grammar when he was really, really upset.

Adam handed the paper scrap over without a word. Warren glanced at the printing and held it to his nose. He nodded at Ben. Together, Ben and Warren jogged to one of the cars—Ben’s. Warren slid into the passenger seat, leaving Ben to drive.

“Is it my fault?” asked a small voice.

Adam, still on the hood of the SUV, looked down at the newest member of his family. Aiden appeared as though he should be in elementary school, but he was centuries older than Adam himself. Jesse, who treated Aiden like a little brother, had her hand on his shoulder. One of the cars parked nearby was Jesse’s.

“No,” said Adam’s daughter in a firm voice despite the stark fear in her eyes. “Even if they came looking for you, it’s not your fault. And Mercy will be okay. You remember ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ we read a few months ago? Anyone who kidnaps Mercy will regret it thoroughly before she’s done with them.” She sighed theatrically, acting nonchalant for Aiden, when Adam could feel her distress. “I suppose that Dad is too straightforward to demand payment to take her back, though I bet we could get enough money to pay for my college that way.”

She was worried, but he could hear the confidence in her voice. She was still young enough to believe her father could fix anything.

Adam didn’t tell Jesse what the pack knew. His daughter was human and couldn’t smell the blood. He knew that Mercy would tell him that he wasn’t accomplishing anything by trying to protect Jesse from the full truth. But Mercy would be wrong, because, like Aiden, he needed Jesse’s optimism. Even if it was a false optimism.

“Mercy will make them pay,” he told them, his throat tight. He looked at Aiden. “It wasn’t your fault, Aiden. We claimed this city . . . these cities, and put them under the pack’s protection because they are our home. You were the catalyst. You and Mercy were the catalyst that pushed us where we should already have been. If that was what inspired—” And he’d given that last word teeth, hadn’t he? He took a breath and tried again. “If that was what inspired someone to take Mercy, it still is not your fault.”

“I will burn them,” Aiden said, and the wolf in Adam loosened its jaws in approval and recognition of another predator, one possibly more dangerous than he.

“If there is anything left after Mercy gets done with them,” Jesse said coolly, “I might help you with that, Sprout.” She looked at Adam. “Is there anything I can do?”

He started to shake his head, then stopped. There was no hiding the accident. It was very late, but in a half hour or so, the people who had to head to work in the wee small hours would start driving past.

“Call Tony and tell him about this.” Adam was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to keep his temper long enough to stay coherent. But Tony knew Jesse well enough to listen to her. “Tell him I’ll give him the whole story as I discover it—but that it is supernatural and probably treading into too-dangerous-for-humans-to-know territory.”

Tony was a cop, the unofficial liaison between the police and the werewolf pack. There was an official liaison who was pretty competent. But Tony knew more than was safe for a human already. If he hadn’t been under pack protection, the vampires or the witches would have killed Tony by now. Adam intended to keep the official liaison safely ignorant of vampires.

Tony was trusted enough by his department that they took his word when he told them it was too dangerous to know but matters had been handled. That was satisfactory to everyone involved.

“Can do.”

Jesse dug into the small purse that went everywhere with her. A cell phone rang as she did so, but it wasn’t hers. Adam glanced in the direction of the noise.

Stefan reached into his pocket, pulled out the phone. Without looking at it, he threw it. It landed against the side of the broken SUV, denting the already battered metal. The phone exploded into powder.

The wolf thought that it was an interesting reaction in a man who appeared so calm. But then he suspected that his own aspect looked cool and controlled because soldiers learn early to hide intense emotion when among enemies—even enemies who are people you like. He and Stefan had both been soldiers.

Adam’s phone rang, and he pulled it out, half-surprised it was still in its holder. He glanced at the number and almost refused the call but stopped himself.

Vampires, he thought. They weren’t hers, but they had been vampires.

“Hello, Marsilia,” he said in a basso growl that he couldn’t stop.

There was a pause. “Either you are missing someone or I am,” she said. “I have contacted everyone who belongs to me except Stefan. You should contact your people, too.”

“Stefan is here,” he ground out. “Mercy has been taken.”

“I see,” she said, and if she’d been there, he’d have torn her throat out for the calm in her voice. “I just received an e-mail from an ex-lover of mine indicating that he has taken someone from us. From our cooperative.”

“Cooperative?” he asked softly. “What cooperative?”

If it was an ex-lover of Marsilia’s, Mercy had probably been taken because of Marsilia. Not because of the pack. The guilt he bore vanished and left him unbalanced before a rush of anger filled the empty space guilt had left behind. For a moment, the emotional wave was too wild for him to listen to her or anyone else. Wolf stepped in where the human faltered.

“This isn’t her fault,” said Stefan’s cool voice. “This is old business, and she didn’t start it, werewolf. Listen to her if you want to save Mercy.”

Adam realized he must have blanked out again because he was no longer on the hood of the SUV—and other than the vampire, there was a very large space all around him. Adam couldn’t find it in himself to care that the werewolf had taken over to the point that he could not remember what he’d done. That he didn’t care was a worse sign than losing that much control in the first place.

Stefan said, “If your people have to put you down because you choose not to control your beast, then Mercy will have one less person looking for her.”

The vampire’s words had been uttered in a cold voice, but Stefan’s eyes were hot. For some reason, that rage allowed Adam to catch his balance a little.

Adam swept his hand toward the cab of the SUV and said what his heart had been screaming since he’d first seen the damage to the cab. “Mercy is wounded,” he ground out. “Bleeding out. Vampires aren’t going to keep her alive. That’s not what they do.”

“Dad?” Jesse said in a small voice, and part of him wished he’d guarded his tongue, because he’d been trying to protect her from that knowledge. But it was mostly the wolf speaking now, even if it did it in Adam’s voice, and the wolf was an honest monster incapable of human subterfuge, even when the lie was to save his own child from pain.

“Mercy is a hostage,” said Stefan, speaking slowly, as if Adam were hard of hearing—or as if he were speaking to a creature who didn’t pay a lot of attention to mere words. “Like it or not, our two people, werewolves and vampires, are bound together here, in this place, as we must be for our mutual survival. Others have noticed this. If they wanted to leave a dead body behind, they would have already done it. This means our enemies will target you, and your enemies will target us. Murder would have been a lot easier. Vampires are pretty good at keeping humans alive.” The vampire looked a little sick as he spoke that last sentence, so it wasn’t as reassuring as he probably meant it to be.

“Why does he listen to Stefan, when none of the rest of us could get through?” Adam heard Auriele ask someone quietly.

“Because the vampire smells a little of Mercy,” Darryl replied.

Adam snarled because it was true, then took a deep breath to draw in the scent again. If the vampire still smelled of Mercy, Adam decided, it was because Mercy was still alive. Mercy was alive, and he would believe that until presented with absolute proof that she was not.

Adam bowed his head, reasserted his, the human’s, ownership of his own damned mouth, and looked at Stefan. “What does he want, this ex-lover of your Mistress?”

“Not my Mistress anymore,” said Stefan, but with more sorrow than heat. “I don’t know.” He looked around to the pack, now mostly wolves, until his gaze landed near Darryl. “Any of you have a cell phone I can use?”

And that was when Adam noticed that his phone was crushed in his hand. Some of the glass was sticking into the flesh, which had healed over the top. He busied himself picking it out with his pocketknife while Stefan used Darryl’s phone to call Marsilia.

The negotiations, conducted with Stefan as an intermediary, made Adam dangerously impatient.

Marsilia thought that inviting Adam to her house was not a good idea. Adam concurred with a grunt.

Entering the vampire’s seethe meant confusing the immediate issue with outdated manners and games that he was in no mood to play. There was no time. Dawn would arrive soon, and the vampires would retire to slumber or whatever they did during the day, taking the knowledge of who had Mercy with them.

As a compromise, Marsilia proposed Uncle Mike’s Tavern, a traditional place for hostile or nearly hostile negotiations until it closed when the fae had retreated to their reservations because they thought that Underhill had reopened to them. When she proved less welcoming than they expected, they had backed down from their initial silence and began arrangements to make peace . . . or at least not war with the humans. As part of that trend, Uncle Mike’s had reopened a few weeks ago.

Adam had no desire to involve the fae in pack business that was already ass deep in vampires, and he told them so.

“So where?” asked Stefan impatiently.

“Not my house,” Adam said. “I have no intention of inviting Marsilia over my threshold. Once you invite a vampire into your house, it is very difficult to uninvite them. Easier to kill them.”

Stefan, who had an open invitation to Adam’s house, rolled his eyes. “Could you, please, for Mercy’s sake, come up with somewhere acceptable? I might remind you that Marsilia doesn’t share our fondness for your wife. She just doesn’t like losing a chess piece, so she is cooperating. And our time is limited.”

Marsilia would shoot Mercy as soon as look at her. Adam reined his wolf in and took over.

“My backyard,” he said. Mercy had littered the backyard with picnic tables and various seating arrangements that were annoying when he mowed but otherwise aesthetically pleasing and useful.

Mercy was alive. Marsilia was offering to help. Marsilia had not hurt or taken Mercy. This was not her fault. It was time to use prudence and not rage. There was no sense in angering his allies.

To that end, he took a deep breath and prepared to be diplomatic. “While I cannot in good conscience invite Marsilia into the house, I don’t believe she means harm to me, to my family, or to the pack. I also intend no harm for her. Ex-lovers,” he said heavily, “are something I’m familiar with. I cannot blame Marsilia for the actions of hers, no matter how seductive that idea is. I do not believe this is her fault.”

“I intended no harm to your wife or any who are yours,” said Marsilia. No conversation on cell phones was private around a werewolf pack—or a vampire seethe. “We will meet in your backyard, and I will tell you what I know. It will take us twenty minutes.”

—

TONY CAME WITH ANOTHER SOLEMN POLICE OFFICER and met the wrecker who pulled the cars off the road and took photos and made a vague report Adam could turn in to his car insurance. As if he cared. The important thing was that the vague report would keep the police safe.

Tony looked worried at all the blood and glanced at Adam. Then he asked Jesse, quietly, “Mercy?”

She shook her head. “We don’t know. I’ll tell you as soon as we do.”

Warren and Ben pulled in just as the pack was leaving the scene to the police. Adam slid into the backseat and directed them home.

“The store was empty and unlocked when we got there,” Ben said grimly. “Warren called the owner. He must live pretty close because he was there in just a couple of minutes.”

“The clerk was new,” Warren said. “Hired last week. The address and ID he used were both fake—owner wasn’t looking closely because he was shorthanded. Didn’t smell like vampires in there. But vampires don’t have any trouble getting humans to do their dirty work.”

“I’d appreciate it if you keep after the clerk angle,” Adam said. “Might lead somewhere.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Warren said.

The vampires beat Adam and the pack to his house. When Ben stopped the car and he got out, he could smell them.

His wolf wasn’t happy with vampires just now, but Adam subdued the monster and walked around the house to the backyard.

Marsilia, Wulfe, and Stefan awaited him, seated in three chairs they’d pulled away from a table. Someone—probably Stefan—had moved three more chairs to face them.

Marsilia had elected to bring only those two out into the open with her, though doubtless she had other vampires scattered about. Adam lifted his head and scented the air.

Or maybe not.

He waved a hand and sent those pack members who’d come to the backyard with him into the house. Everyone obeyed except for Darryl.

Adam raised an eyebrow at the big black man who was his second. Someday in the not-too-distant future, Darryl was going to move on. He was ready for his own pack and was beginning to chafe under orders.

Adam wondered how they would manage to find a pack for Darryl when his pack had no more ties to the Marrok, who ruled the wolves. Traditional methods tended to leave bodies behind. It was a momentary thought, though, brought about because of Darryl’s disobedience.

Adam’s wolf wasn’t worried. The future was what the future was, and for now, Darryl was still his. Darryl was smart; he would have a reason.

“We can agree on Stefan as neutral,” Darryl said when he was within conversational distance. “We think that you should meet as equals, though. So you need a second with you.”

He was right. Good to have a second who could think things through when all Adam really wanted to do was hunt down the vampires who had taken Mercy and obliterate them. Killing was too clean.

Impatiently, Adam nodded his agreement and took the seat opposite Marsilia. Darryl sat at his right, and the chair at his left stayed empty.

Marsilia was a real bombshell. Blond-haired Italians were never common, and he knew that the color was natural, because Stefan had commented upon it. But her beauty wasn’t a thing of color only; it was bone- and muscle-deep.

Beautiful people, mostly, lived like everyone else. Extraordinarily beautiful people, however, usually paid dearly for their beauty. Adam was pretty sure that had been no less true in fifteenth-century Italy than it was now.

Intelligent brown eyes examined him—maybe for weapons, maybe for weaknesses. He didn’t mind because he was doing the same. Though for both of them, what they were made them pretty efficient weapons all by themselves.

She was wearing slacks and some sort of silk top that left her arms and shoulders bare, covering her adequately otherwise while leaving no doubt that she wore no bra. She could have appeared on a news program or a Hollywood premiere in her outfit without attracting comment. She wore it like a woman who habitually used her body as a weapon rather than someone aiming a weapon at him personally. To her left sat Wulfe, who’d succeeded Stefan as her second-in-command when Stefan had left her seethe. Wulfe looked like a sulky punk rocker from the eighties, though maybe that look was back. Without Jesse’s prodding, Adam tended to lose track.

Wulfe’s pale hair stuck out in chick-soft-looking tufts about an inch long, whose ends were dyed pink. Wulfe was, in Adam’s estimation, more dangerous than Marsilia if only because he was unpredictable.

Stefan, interestingly, sat on her right. Wolves pay attention to body language, and Stefan’s body language was protective and worried.

“First,” she said, “I have to apologize for the way in which my past has rained down upon you. It is no secret that Mercedes and I are not friends, but I value the role that she plays in our community, and I do not think that anyone else could balance the werewolves, the fae, and the vampires as well as she does.”

“Differently,” murmured Wulfe. “More interestingly even, but not as peacefully.”

“Are you finished?” Marsilia inquired politely.

“Excuse me, Mistress,” Wulfe said diffidently. “I was just enlarging upon what you said.”

“Who took her?” asked Adam. He wasn’t interested in apologies that she didn’t mean.

“He did not sign his e-mail,” Marsilia said. “But I recognize the wording. It was Iacopo Bonarata, the Lord of Night. He who rules the European vampires.”

As soon as she had told him it was her ex-lover, Bonarata had been Adam’s pick. First, Adam didn’t know of any other ex-lovers of hers. He suspected that if she had other ex-lovers, they either served her or they were dead. Marsilia was as pragmatic a creature as any he’d ever met.

“Why?” Adam asked. “What does he want?” How do we get my Mercy back alive? He didn’t say it because they all knew what he was asking.

“His e-mail did not say,” Marsilia told him. “Knowing him, it could be any of a dozen reasons. He could be reacting to our killing of Frost, which he might see as an elevation of my power. He sent me here to rot, not to rise up through the ranks and rule North America.”

“He knows you well enough, he should have thought of that as a possibility,” Stefan told Marsilia.

“Not his business what anyone does here,” said Adam. “He rules Europe.”

Wulfe laughed. “Innocent,” he told Adam. “I find it so droll that you are such an innocent.” Then the silly affectations left his body, and he was softly menacing as he said, “Iacopo Bonarata has spider silk throughout the world. He owns corporations based in New York and Texas as well as Buenos Aires and Hong Kong. He has owned four of the last six presidents, though they did not know it. Any other vampire rising to power is a threat, and he does not deal well with threats.”

“He is a Renaissance prince,” said Marsilia, almost apologetically. “The last of his house, the rest of whom died during the Black Death. Control everything or die: it is how he was raised, how he thinks. I do not know that he understands words like ‘content’ or ‘enough.’”

“He threw away something of great value,” said Stefan. “Something he viewed as a work of art—and he knows it. He regrets it.”

Marsilia turned her great dark eyes on Stefan. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He told me, the night we left for the New World, that if I became your lover, he would hunt me to the ends of the earth,” Stefan said.

“If Iacopo were a dog in a manger,” Wulfe said, “he would urinate and defecate in the hay. And before he would allow anyone to spread the hay on the ground to at least get use of it as fertilizer, Iacopo would light the hay on fire. And then he would sing about how wonderful the hay was and how tragic its loss.”

“You carry that analogy a little too far,” said Marsilia.

“It is accurate,” Wulfe defended himself. “The song was in a minor key—and the painting he did, I am told, was nearly as stunning as you actually are.”

“So why did he take Mercy?” Adam asked Marsilia. If someone didn’t distract Wulfe, he was likely to lead the conversation all around the mulberry bush until there was no time left.

“Because I told him that she was the most powerful person in the supernatural community of the Tri-Cities,” said Wulfe. “I think.”

Adam’s wolf lunged forward without warning, and he would have killed the vampire if Darryl and Stefan hadn’t pulled him back. No one had grabbed for Marsilia.

“Oh, don’t hold him back,” Marsilia hissed. She had, Adam noted, lost her usual composure. She was out of her chair and had Wulfe’s throat in one hand. “Much easier to explain why the werewolf killed him than if I did it.”

Wulfe dangled from her hand, though he was taller than she was. He managed it by bending his knees. He had a wide, sappy grin on his face until Marsilia looked at him, then his grin fell away, and he watched her soberly, apparently not discomforted by his position at all.

“Why did you talk to Iacopo without telling me?” she asked.

“I talk to him all the time,” Wulfe replied, his voice strained. “You know that. That’s why he let me go with you.”

Adam saw from her face that Wulfe was right. He took a step backward and shook Darryl off. Stefan let go more slowly. Marsilia would get more out of Wulfe than he could—and she might be able to restrain herself from killing him in the process. Adam wasn’t sure he could manage it.

“What did he want when he asked you who the strongest of us was?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Wulfe said. “Not exactly. I answer his questions; he doesn’t answer mine.”

“You Made him,” she said.

Wulfe snorted. “I haven’t been his Master for a very, very long time. Any more than he is yours.”

“Why did you put Mercy forth as the most powerful of us?” asked Adam tersely.

Wulfe’s silly grin returned. “Because it was funny.” He sobered. “Because it was true.” He looked at Marsilia. “Because if I’d answered the question the way he meant it, he’d have taken Adam. And he would have killed Adam, he couldn’t have helped himself. Mercy . . . he won’t see the threat Mercy is until she has his head on a pike. He doesn’t understand that kind of strength. He cannot use his most powerful weapons on her because of what she is, and he has no experience to understand what she is.”

Marsilia looked at Adam. “Are you satisfied? Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

It could, Adam knew, all be a play for his benefit, but he didn’t read it that way. Wulfe was as twisty as a carousel pole, but Marsilia was scared. She was also brave and smart, so she was facing the situation head-on, but she was scared of Iacopo Bonarata.

“You didn’t warn any of us,” Adam said softly, addressing Wulfe.

“Where would the fun be in that?” Wulfe answered. But then he said soberly, “You don’t know Iacopo the way I know Iacopo. If I had warned you . . .”

“The Lord of Night,” said Stefan reluctantly, “is the reason Wulfe is the way he is, Adam. He wasn’t always . . .”

“Crazy?” suggested Darryl.

“No,” said Marsilia with a sigh, letting go of Wulfe. He settled semigracefully onto the grass at her feet. “He was always strange. But he didn’t used to enjoy pulling wings off butterflies.”

“He wasn’t sadistic,” clarified Stefan. “Bonarata inspires loyalty by using various methods, and some of them are damaging.”

Marsilia opened her mouth, glanced down at Wulfe, then closed it again.

“Especially to those of us who loved him,” said Stefan insistently.

Darryl looked at Adam for permission and got it. He said, “Not that we don’t appreciate learning more about our enemy. But what we need to know is how are we to get Mercy back? Where did he take her? Why he took her matters only in that it will allow us to use that knowledge to get her back.”

As Darryl took the lead, Adam fought his wolf to a brutal standstill. He had to think. He had to think in order to see and plan the best way to help Mercy, to get her back. And in order to do that, his wolf spirit was going to have to . . . He had been trying to restrain the wolf, and it had put them at odds.

“I don’t know where he took her,” Marsilia answered Darryl. “He has homes in New York, Florida, and Arizona as well as South America. I don’t know why he took her—other than to catch our attention.”

We have to hunt, Adam whispered to the wild spirit who shared his body, the wild spirit he both despised and gloried in. We have to hunt, find Mercy, and destroy the one who took her from us. And teach them that Mercy is ours.

Inside him, the wolf paused, considering Adam’s argument. After a moment, the beast agreed.

Freed of that battle, though he remained wary, aware that the wolf was only biding his time, Adam turned to the more important situation. First, to make certain his allies would shoot his enemies before they would shoot him.

“Compared to Bonarata,” said Adam slowly, “Mercy matters not at all to you, Marsilia. So why did you approach us?”

She raised her chin. “I did not know it was one of yours he took at first. But even so, let us be honest, yes? Had he taken one of mine, I still would have come to you for help. I am myself a power in the vampire hierarchy. But when I was exiled . . . I quit trying. I existed, but for all intents and purposes, I did not direct my seethe other than to see to it that my people were safe and behaved themselves in such a manner as not to attract human attention. The result of my inattention is that outside of me and Wulfe, my seethe holds no individually powerful vampire. Wulfe . . .” She glanced down at the vampire, who, still sitting on the grass, had leaned his head against her knee. “I cannot in all fairness ask Wulfe to face Bonarata in person again.”

“She is kind,” murmured Wulfe. He smiled a hard, cruel smile directed at her. “But the reality is that she doesn’t know whom I serve, her or my scion who re-created me as he pleased for his own purposes before he sent me with her. To bring me under such a circumstance would be stupid.”

“Even so,” she said evenly. “My seethe is stronger than it has been in years. We have had some new-made vampires and some who have come here, drawn by your declaration. It is not only the fae who are tired of fighting. But there are only three Master Vampires—those of us who do not need to obey our maker or the Mistress of the seethe. I am the first. Stefan is the second. And Wulfe is third. I know Iacopo.”

“Jacob,” murmured Wulfe. “He goes mostly by Jacob now.”

“Jacob,” she said. “I don’t know why he took Mercy, or where he took her. But he will send us another e-mail or have a minion call and issue an invitation to come fetch our missing one. My strength is all in numbers right now, and he will not allow me to use that. I will need you and your wolves.”

“To get Mercy back,” Adam said.

“To keep Bonarata from coming here,” she said, “and taking over my people and yours. Do not doubt that he could. He stole the mate of an old and dominant werewolf and made her his mindless slave. When her mate tried to save her, he destroyed the whole pack except for the Alpha. I have heard that Iacopo keeps that one alive still.”

“Jacob,” said Wulfe. “You keep forgetting. And the old Alpha is dead. Jacob lost his witch and doesn’t know where to find her. Without her, he couldn’t keep the old wolf around, so he killed him. It. Actually. I think the wolf was an it when it died.”

Adam ignored Wulfe. Instead, he looked at Stefan. “You think Bonarata will call us to come to him?”

Mercy’s vampire nodded. “It fits Bonarata’s pattern. He will call us to come and make nice. He’ll explain this all as a misunderstanding, and if he is satisfied with what we are—neither too strong to challenge him nor so weak that we are easy prey—he is likely to return Mercy with no more than a demand for some concessions that will be within our power.” Stefan shrugged.

Marsilia smiled wearily. “It is his weakness, you see,” she told Adam. “He loves adulation, to be admired. He is man enough to understand that if that sentiment is only the result of his magic, it means less.”

“Assuming that you are right in your assumptions about why he took Mercy,” Adam growled.

“Assuming that,” she agreed. “And assuming anything about Iacopo Bonarata is dangerous. Even so, if we go meet his strength with strength, be charming and be charmed—it will not be difficult to be charmed. It is strongly possible that we will return with Mercy and a reasonable assurance that the Lord of Night will stay safely on the other side of the ocean and leave us be until we attract his attention again.”

“Go where?” asked Darryl.

“Wherever he took Mercy, I imagine,” she said. “I’ll let you know when he contacts me.”