Iron Kissed

Wednesday night I ate dinner at my favorite Chinese place in Richland then drove out to Tim's house. Since O'Donnell's killer was almost certainly fae, I didn't know how much good it would do me to attend a Bright Future meeting - but maybe someone would know something important. I only had until Friday to prove Zee innocent or Tad would be putting his life on the line, too.



The more time I had to think about it, though, the more sense it made for Tad to come back. I certainly wasn't getting any nearer to figuring out anything. Tad, being fae, could go to the reservation and ask questions - if the Gray Lords didn't kill him for his disobedience. Maybe I could persuade Nemane that it was in the fae's best interest that Zee's son come home to help me save his father. Maybe.



Tim's address was in West Richland, a few miles from Kyle's. It was in a block so new that several houses didn't have lawns yet, and I could see two buildings under construction on the next block over.



Half of the front was beige brick and the rest was adobe the color of oatmeal. It looked upscale and expensive, but it was missing the touches that made Kyle's house a mansion rather than a house. No stained glass, no marble or oak garage doors.



Which meant that it was still several orders of magnitude nicer than my old trailer even with its new siding.



There were four cars parked in the driveway and a 72 once-red Mustang with a lime green left fender parked on the street in front. I pulled in behind it because it's not often I find a car that makes the Rabbit look good.



As I got out of the car, I waved at the woman who was peering out at me from behind a sheer curtain in the house across the street. She jerked a window shade down.



I rang the doorbell and waited for the stocking-footed person who was hopping down a carpeted staircase to open the door. When it opened, I wasn't surprised to see a girl in her late teens or very early twenties. Her footsteps had sounded like a woman - men tend to clomp, thunder, or like Adam, move so silently you can barely hear them.



She was dressed in a thin T-shirt that sported crossed bones, like a pirate flag, but instead of a human skull it boasted a faded panda head with exes for eyes. She was a little overweight, but the extra pounds suited her, rounding her face and softening her strong features. Under the distinctive aura of Juicy Fruit, I recognized her scent from O'Donnell's house.



"I'm Mercy Thompson," I told her. "Tim invited me."



She looked me over with sharp eyes and then gave me a welcoming smile. "I'm Courtney. He said you might be coming. We're not started yet - still waiting for Tim and Austin to get back with goodies. Come on in."



She was one of those women cursed with a little girl's voice. When she was fifty, she'd still sound like she was thirteen.



As I followed her up the stairs, I did the polite thing. "I'm sorry to intrude on this meeting. Tim told me that one of your members was just killed."



"Couldn't have happened to a nicer man," she said airily, but then stopped on the stair landing. "All right, that didn't need to be said, sorry. I don't mean to make you uncomfortable."



I shook my head. "I didn't know him."



"Well, he started our chapter of Bright Future and he was all right to the guys, but he only had one use for women and I was getting tired of fighting him off all the time." Her eyes really focused on me for the first time, "Hey, Tim said you were Hispanic, but you aren't, are you?"



I shook my head. "My father was an Indian rodeo rider."



"Yeah?" Her voice was mildly inquiring. She wanted to know more, but didn't want to pry.



I was starting to like her. Somewhere under all the bubbles, I was pretty sure she was hiding a sharp brain. "Yeah."



"A rodeo rider? That's pretty cool. Is he still?"



I shook my head. "Nope. He died before I was born. Left my mother a pregnant unwed teenager. I was raised w - " I'd been spending too much time with Adam's pack and not enough with real people, I thought as I hastily replaced werewolf with whitebread American. Happily she wasn't a werewolf, and didn't sense my lie.



"Wish I was Native American," she said a little wistfully as she started back up the stairs. "Then all the guys would go for me - it's that mysterious Indian thing, you know?"



Not really, but I laughed because she meant me to. "Nothing mysterious about me."



She shook her head. "Maybe not, but if I were an Indian, I'd be mysterious."



She led me into a large room already occupied with five men who were tucked into a circle of chairs in the far corner of the room. They were evidently deep into a very involved conversation because they didn't even look up when we came in. Four of them were young, even younger than Austin and Tim. The fifth looked very university professorish, complete with goatee and brown sport coat.



Even with people in it, there was an unused air to the room. As if everything had just come fresh from a furniture store. The walls and Berber carpet were in the same color scheme as the house.



I thought of the vivid colors in Kyle's house and the pair of life-sized, Greek-inspired, stone statues in the foyer. Kyle called them Dick and Jane and was quite fond of them, though they'd been commissioned by the house's former owner.



One was male, the other female, and both of their faces had a dreamy, romantic expression as they looked up toward heaven - an expression that somehow didn't quite go with the spectacular evidence that the male statue wasn't thinking heavenly thoughts.



Kyle dressed Jane's naked body in a short plaid skirt and an orange halter top. Dick generally wore only a hat - and not on his head. At first it was a top hat - but then Warren went to a thrift store and found a knitted ski cap that hung down about two feet with a six-inch tassel on the end.



In contrast, Tim's house had no more personality than an apartment, as if he didn't have enough confidence in his taste to make the house his own. Even as little as I had talked to him, I knew there was more to him than beige and brown. I don't know what someone else would think, but to me, his house all but screamed with his desire to fit in.



It made me like him more: I know what it's like to not quite fit in.



The room might have been uninspired, but it was still nice. Everything was good quality without being excessive. One corner of the room had been set up as an office. There was a dorm-sized fridge next to a well-made, but not extravagant, oak computer desk. The long wall opposite the door was dominated by a TV large enough to please Samuel with waist-high speakers on either side of it. Comfy-looking chairs and a couch, all upholstered with a medium brown microfiber designed to look like suede, were scattered in a manner appropriate to a home theater.



"Sarah couldn't make it tonight," Courtney told me as if I should know who Sarah was. "I'm glad you did, otherwise I'd have been the lone woman out. Hey, guys, this is Mercy Thompson, the woman Tim told us might be coming, you know, the one he met at the music festival last weekend."



Her voice penetrated where our entrance had not and the men all looked up. Courtney walked me up to them.



"This is Mr. Fideal," she said, indicating the older man.



Close up, his face looked younger than his iron gray hair made him appear. His skin was tanned and healthy and his eyes were a bright blue with the intensity of a six-year-old.



I didn't remember his scent from O'Donnell's house, but it was obvious that he was comfortable in this group - so he must be a regular attendee...



"Aiden," he corrected her kindly.



She laughed and told him, "I just can't do it." To me, she explained, "He was my econ teacher - and so he's forever enshrined upon my heart as Mr. Fideal."



If I hadn't shaken his hand, I don't know if I would have noticed anything odd about his scent. Though brine is not usually a fragrance I associate with people, he might have had a saltwater aquarium hobby or something.



But his grip made my skin buzz with the faint touch of magic. There are things other than fae that carry a feel of magic: witches, vampires, and a few others. But fae magic had a certain feel to it - I was willing to bet that Mr. Fideal was as fae as Zee...or at least as fae as Tad's bookstore guy.



I wondered what he was doing at a Bright Future meeting. It might be that he was here to keep track of what they were doing. Or maybe he was a part-breed and didn't even know what he was. A drop of fae blood could account for those young eyes in the older face and for the faintness of the magic I felt.



"Good to meet you," I told him.



"So you know what I do to earn my bread," he said in a gruffly friendly voice. "What is it that you do?"



"I'm a mechanic," I said.



"Righteous," declared Courtney. "My Mustang's been making odd noises for the last couple of days. Do you think you could take a look at it? I don't have any money right now - just paid for this semester of school."



"I do mostly VWs," I told her, taking a card out of my purse and handing it to her. "You'd be better off taking it to a Ford mechanic, but you can bring it by my shop if you want. I can't do it for free. My hourly rates are better than most places, but since I don't work on a lot of Fords, it'll probably take me longer to fix."



I heard the front door open. A moment later Tim and Austin arrived with a case of beer and a couple of white plastic grocery bags filled with chips. They were greeted with cheers and mobbed for food and beer.



Tim set his burdens down on a small table next to the door and escaped being buried by foraging young men. He looked at me for a moment without smiling. "I thought you might bring your boyfriend."



"He's not my boyfriend anymore," I said - and the relief of that made me smile.



Courtney saw my relief and misread it. "Oh, honey," she said. "One of those, eh? Better off without them. Here, have a beer."



I shook my head, softening my refusal with a smile. "I never learned to like the stuff." And I intended to keep my wits about me to catch any clues that came my way, though my already-not-high hopes of that had been falling by the minute. I'd thought I was going to infiltrate an organized hate group, not a bunch of beer-swilling college kids and their teacher.



I was willing to swear there wasn't a murdering bastard among them.



"How about a Diet Coke," Tim said in a friendly voice. "I used to have a six-pack of ginger ale and another of root beer in the fridge, but I bet these turkeys have already finished them off."



He got a bunch of denying catcalls back that seemed to please him. Good for you, I thought, and quit feeling sorry for him because he didn't have a purple wall or a statue wearing a hat. Find your own group to fit in with.



"Diet Coke would be great," I told him. "Your house is pretty impressive."



That pleased him even more than the catcalls had. "I had it built after my parents died. I couldn't stand to stay in that old empty place alone."



Since Tim stayed to talk, Courtney was actually the one who got the pop for me. She handed it over and then patted Tim on the head. "What Tim isn't telling you is that his parents were rich. They died in a freak car accident a few years back and gave Tim an estate and life insurance that left him set for life."



His face tightened in embarrassment at her rather bold announcement in front of a relative stranger. "I'd rather have had my parents," he said stiffly, though he must have gotten over whatever grief he'd felt, because all he smelled of was irritation.



She laughed. "I knew your father, honey. No one would rather have had him than money. Your mother was a sweetie, though."



He thought about getting mad, then shrugged it off. "Courtney and I are kissing cousins," he told me. "It makes her pushy - and I've learned to tolerate her."



She grinned at me and took a long pull of her beer.



Over her shoulder I could see that the others had pulled the chairs around into a loose semicircle and were starting to get settled down with munchies propped on a couple of small, strategically placed tables.



Tim took a seat that someone else had moved and motioned to me to sit beside him, while Courtney went to scrounge her own chair.



Since it was his house, I'd kind of expected him to take the lead, but it was Austin Summers who stood in front and let out a loud whistle.



I wish he'd warned me. My ears were still ringing when he began talking.



"Let's get started. Who has business to address?"



It only took a very few minutes to discern that Austin was the leader. I'd seen the possibilities of his dominance at the pizza party, but I'd been talking to Tim instead of watching Austin. Here his role was as established as Adam's was in his pack.



Aiden Fideal, the fae teacher, was either second in line or third behind Courtney. I had a hard time deciding - because so did they. From the uncertainness of their placement, I was pretty sure that O'Donnell had occupied that spot previously. A petty tyrant like O'Donnell wouldn't have accepted Austin's leadership easily. If Austin had been fae, I'd have put him on the top of my suspect list - but he was more human than I.



Tim faded into the background as the meeting continued. Not because he didn't say anything, but because no one listened to him unless his remarks were repeated by either Courtney or Austin.



After a while I started to put some things together from chance remarks.



O'Donnell might have started Bright Future in the Tri-Cities, but he hadn't had much luck until he'd found Austin. They had met in a class at the community college a couple of years earlier. O'Donnell was taking advantage of the BFA program that paid for continuing education for the reservation guards. Austin divided his time between Washington State University and CBC and was almost through with a computer degree.



Tim, who had no need to find work, was older than most of them.



"Tim has a masters in computer science from Washington State," Courtney whispered to me. "That's how he met Austin, in a computer class. Tim still takes a couple of classes from CBC or WSU every semester. It keeps him busy."



Austin, Tim, and most of the students had belonged to a college club - which seemed to have had something to do with writing computer games. Mr. Fideal had been the faculty advisor for that club. When Austin got interested in Bright Future, he'd preempted the club. CBC had dissociated itself with the group when it became obvious the nature of their business had changed - but Mr. Fideal had kept the privilege of dropping in occasionally.



The first bit of business for Bright Future this meeting was to send a bouquet to O'Donnell's funeral as soon as the time for it was arranged by his family. Tim accepted the assumption that he would pay for the flowers without comment.



Business concluded, one young man got up and presented methods sure to protect you from the fae, among them salt, steel, nails in your shoes, and putting your underwear on inside out.



In the question-and-answer session that followed, I finally couldn't keep my mouth shut anymore. "You talk as if all the fae are the same. I know that there are some fae that can handle iron and it would seem to me that the sea fae, like selkies, wouldn't have a problem with salt."



The presenter, a shy giant of a young man, gave me a smile, and answered with far more articulation than he'd managed during his presentation. "You're right, of course. Part of the problem is that we know that some of the stories have been embellished past all recognition. And the fae aren't exactly jumping up and down to tell us just what kind of fae are left - the registration process is a joke. O'Donnell, who had access to all the paperwork on the fae in the reservation, said that he knew for a fact that at least one in three lied when answering what they were. But part of what we're trying to do is sift through the garbage for the gold."



"I thought the fae couldn't lie," I said.



He shrugged. "I don't know about that, exactly."



Tim spoke up. "A lot of them made up a Gaelic-or German-sounding word and used that to fill out the form. If I said I was a Heeberskeeter, I wouldn't be lying since I just invented the word. The treaties that set up the reservation system didn't allow any questions asked about the way the registration forms were filled out."



By the time the meeting was wrapping up, I was convinced that none of these kids had anything to do with O'Donnell's killing spree and subsequent murder. I'd never attended the meeting of any hate group - being half-Indian and not quite human, I'd have been pretty out of place. But I hadn't been expecting a meeting conducted with all the passion and violence of a chess club. Okay, less passion and violence than a chess club.



I even agreed with most of what they said. I might like a few individual fae, but I knew enough to be afraid. Hard to blame these kids for seeing through the fae politicians and speech making. As Tim had told me, all they had to do was read the stories.



Tim walked me to my car after the meeting.



"Thanks for coming," he said, opening my door for me. "What did you think?"



I smiled tightly to disguise my dislike of the way he'd grabbed my door before I had. It felt intrusive - though Samuel and Adam, both products of an earlier era, opened doors for me, too, and they didn't bother me.



I didn't want to hurt his feelings, though, so all I said was, "I like your friends...and I hope you aren't right about the threat the fae present."



"You don't think we're a bunch of overeducated, under-socialized geeks running around yelling the sky is falling?"



"That sounds like a quote."



He smiled a little. "Directly from the Herald."



"Ouch. And no, I don't."



I bent to get in the car and noticed that the walking stick was back, lying across the two front seats. I had to move it so I could sit down.



I glanced at Tim after I moved it, but he didn't seem to recognize the stick. Maybe O'Donnell had kept it out of sight during the Bright Future meetings; maybe it had kept itself out of sight. Nor did Tim seem to see anything odd about a person who had a walking stick in the front seat of their car. People tend to expect VW mechanics to be a little odd.



"Listen," he said. "I've had a little time to brush up on my Arthurian myths - read a little de Troyes and Malory after we got through talking. I wonder if you'd like to come over for dinner tomorrow?"



Tim was a nice man. I wouldn't have to worry about him practicing undue influence via some werewolf mojo or turning control freak on me. He'd never get mad and rip out someone's throat. He wouldn't kill two innocent victims in order to protect me or anyone else from the mistress of the vampires. I hadn't seen Stefan since then, but I often went months without seeing the vampire.



For a bare instant I thought about how nice it would be to go out with a normal person like Tim.



Of course, there was the small problem of telling him what I was. And the little fact that I wasn't interested in getting into his bed at all.



Mostly, though, I was more than half in love with Adam, no matter how much he scared me.



"Sorry, no," I said, shaking my head. "I just got out of one relationship. I'm not about to start another."



His smile widened a little and grew pained. "Funny, me, too. We'd been dating for three years and I'd just gone to Seattle to buy a ring. I took her to our favorite restaurant, the ring in my pocket, and she told me she was getting married in two weeks to her boss. She was sure I would understand."



I hissed in sympathy. "Ouch."



"She was married in June, so it's been a couple of months, but I don't really feel like getting involved again either." Evidently tiring of bending down, he crouched beside the car, putting his head just a little below mine. He reached out and touched me on the shoulder. He wore a plain silver ring, the once smooth surface scratched and worn. I wondered what it meant to him because he didn't seem to be the kind of man who normally wore rings.



"So why invite me to dinner?" I asked.



"Because I don't intend to turn into a hermit. In the spirit of 'Don't let the bastards get you down. Why shouldn't we sit down and have a nice meal and a little conversation? No strings and I don't intend us to end up in bed. Just a conversation. You, me, and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur." He gave me a twisted smile. "As an added bonus, one of the things I've taken a lot of classes in is cooking."



Another evening of arguing about Arthurian writers of the Middle Ages sounded like a lot of fun. I opened my mouth to accept but stopped without speaking the words. It might be fun, but it wasn't a good idea.



"How about seven thirty," he was saying. "I know it's late, but I have a class until six and I'd like to have dinner ready when you come."



He stood up and shut my door, giving it a pat before he strolled back to his house.



Had I just accepted a date with him?



Dazed, I started the Rabbit and headed for the highway home. I thought of all the things I should have said. I'd call him as soon as I got home and could look up his number. I'd tell him thanks but no thanks.



My refusal would hurt his feelings - but going might hurt him more: Adam would not like me having dinner with Tim. Not at all.



I'd just passed the exit for the Columbia Center Mall when I realized that Aiden Fideal was behind me. He'd pulled out of Tim's house at the same time as I - and about three other people. I'd only noticed him because he was driving the Porsche, a 911 wide-body like the ones I'd always lusted after - though I preferred black or red (cliched as that was) to bright yellow. Someone around town drove a purple one that was just mouthwatering.



A Buick passed me and my headlights caught his bumper sticker: Some people are like Slinkies. They aren't really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to my face when I push them down a flight of stairs.



It made me laugh and broke the odd worry that seeing the Porsche just behind me had caused. Fideal probably lived in Kennewick and was just driving home.



But it wasn't long before the nagging feeling that I was being hunted came back to settle on the nerves in the back of my neck. He was still behind me.



Fideal was a fae - but Dr. Altman was the fae's hit man and she knew they couldn't attack me without retaliation. There was no reason for me to be nervous.



Calling Adam for help would be overkill. If Zee hadn't been in jail and if we'd been on speaking terms, I'd have called him, though. He wouldn't overreact like Adam might.



I could call Uncle Mike - assuming he didn't share Zee's reaction and that he would take my phone call.



Uncle Mike might know if I was being stupid to let Fideal panic me unnecessarily. I took out my phone and flipped it open, but there was no welcoming light. The screen on the phone was blank. I must have forgotten to charge it.



I risked a speeding ticket and took the Rabbit up a notch. The speed limit was fifty-five here, and the police patrolled this stretch of highway often, so most of the traffic was actually traveling only sixty or thereabouts. I did a little weaving and breathed a sigh of relief when Fideal's distinctive headlights slipped out of sight behind a minivan.



The highway dropped me off on Canal Street, and I slowed to city speeds. This must be my night to be stupid, I thought.



First, I'd accepted an invitation to eat with Tim - or at least I hadn't refused - and then I'd panicked when I saw Fideal's car. Dumb.



I knew better than to accept an offer to dinner from Tim. No matter how good the conversation might be, it wasn't worth dealing with Adam about it. I should just have said no right then. Now it was going to be harder.



Oddly enough, it wasn't the thought of Adam's temper that dismayed me - knowing he was going to be angry if I did something usually just encouraged me to do it. I provoked him on a regular basis if I could. There was something about that man when he was all angry and dangerous that got my blood up. Sometimes my survival instincts are not what they should be.



If I went to Tim's house for a dinner for two - and whatever Tim had said, dinner alone with a man was a date - Adam would be hurt. Angry was fine, but I didn't want Adam hurt, ever.



The Washington Street light was red. I stopped next to a semi. His big diesel shook the Rabbit as we waited for a flood of nonexistent traffic. I passed him as we started up again and glanced in my rearview mirror to make sure he was far enough behind me before I pulled into the right-hand lane in preparation for my turn onto Chemical Drive. He was far enough back - and right next to him was the Porsche, which gleamed like a buttercup in the streetlights.



Sudden, unreasoning fear clenched my stomach until I regretted the Diet Coke. That I had no real reason for the fear didn't lessen its impact. The coyote had decided I was ignoring her and insisted that he was a threat.



I breathed through my teeth as the reaction settled down to an alert readiness.



I'd been willing to believe that we might have the same path home. That little stretch of highway was the fastest way to the eastern half of Kennewick - and you could get to Pasco and Burbank that way, too, though the interstate on the other side of the river was faster.



But as I turned onto Chemical Drive, which led only to Finley, he followed me - and I'd have noticed if there were a 911 yellow wide-body in Finley. He was following me.



Instinctively I reached for the cell phone again - and when I grabbed it out of the passenger seat, it dripped water all over my hand. I realized then that the smell of brine had been getting stronger and stronger for a while. I dropped the useless phone and brought my hand to my mouth. It tasted of swamp and salt, like a salt marsh rather than seawater.



Although Adam's house and my house share a back fence, his street turns off a quarter mile before mine does. I couldn't remember if Samuel was at work tonight or not - but even if Adam wasn't at his house, there was bound to be someone there. Someone who was a werewolf.



Of course, Jesse was likely to be there, too, and Jesse could protect herself even less than I could.



I took the turn onto Finley Road to give myself a chance to think. It was the long way around and I'd have to get back onto Chemical before I went home, but I'd made so many stupid moves tonight, I had to take time to make sure bringing this fae, whatever his intentions were, to Adam's house was a smart idea.



I shouldn't have worried. Just as I was passing Two Rivers Park, where the road was nice and deserted and the houses far away, the Rabbit coughed, sputtered, and choked before it died.



There was no shoulder to the road, so I guided the car off the blacktop and hoped for the best. If I left it on the road, some poor person, coming home late, could hit it and kill himself. The Rabbit bounced over some rocks, which didn't do my undercarriage any good, and came to rest in a relatively flat spot.



The car felt like a trap, so I got out as soon as the wheels quit turning. The Porsche had stopped on the highway and sat growling its throaty song.



Full dark had fallen while I was driving back, and the lights were hard on my sensitive eyes, one of the downsides of good night vision. I turned my head away from the headlights so when Fideal got out of his car, I heard it rather than saw it.



"Odd seeing a fae drive a Porsche," I told him coolly. "They might have an aluminum block, but the body is steel."



The car made a hollow sound, as if it had been patted. "Porsche puts many coats of good paint on their cars. I have an additional four coats of wax and I find that it doesn't trouble me at all," he said.



Like the water in my phone, he smelled of rotting vegetation and salt. Not being able to see him bothered me; I needed to get away from the headlights.



I could have run, but running from something that might be faster is more of a last resort than a first action. Maybe all he wanted was that stupid walking stick. So I got onto the road and walked a big semicircle around the car until I was facing the side of his car rather than the lights in front.



As my shoes hit the blacktop, I felt a well of magic that seemed to be spreading out through the asphalt. Strong magic usually is almost painful, like touching my tongue to both sides of a nine-volt battery. Tonight there was something more, something...predatory about it.



Fideal was not as weak as he'd appeared at Tim's party.



I hissed between my teeth as sharp pains shot up my legs. I stopped on the far side of the road. My eyes were still burning, but at least I could see him standing by the driver's side door. He looked a little different than he had at Tim's. I couldn't see him well enough for fine details, but it seemed to me that he was taller and broader than he'd been.



Courteously he'd waited until I stopped moving before speaking. It is generally a bad thing when someone hunting you is polite. It means they are sure they can take you anytime they want to.



"So you are the little dog with the curious nose," he said. "You should have kept your nose to your own kind."



"Zee is my friend," I told him. For some reason the "dog" part of that offended me. It would sound stupid to say, "I'm not a dog," though. "You fae were going to let him die for someone else's crime. I was the only one willing to look elsewhere for a murderer." I thought of a reason he might be upset with me. "Am I looking at a murderer now?"



He threw his head back and laughed, a full-throated barrel-chested laugh. When he spoke again, his voice acquired a Scot's brogue and had dropped half an octave. "I didn't kill O'Donnell," he said, which wasn't quite an answer.



"I have protection," I told him quietly, careful not to put a challenge in my voice. "Killing me will start a war with the werewolves," I told him. "Nemane knows all about it."



He shook his head from side to side, like an athlete stretching out the muscles of his neck. His hair was longer, I thought, and rustled wetly when he moved.



"Nemane is not what she once was," he said. "She is weak and blind and troubles herself overmuch with humans." He inhaled and he grew. When he finished breathing in, the outline of his form was larger than any human male I'd ever seen by about a foot, and he was almost as wide as he was tall. My eyes were adjusting and I could see that size wasn't the only change.



"The call for your death has been set," he said. "It is too bad that no one told me until too late that the orders had been recalled."



He laughed again and it shook the froth of dark strands that covered him like a tattered overcoat. His lips were larger than they had been and there were long, pale shapes in the dark cavern of his mouth. "It has been so long." His voice was wet and sloppy. "Human flesh is sweet to my tongue and I have not partaken for so long that my very bowels cry out for sustenance." He roared like a winter wind as he leaped across the road in a single jump.



I was in coyote form and hightailing it at top speed down the road before he landed. Bits of clothing scattered behind me as I ran. I tripped once when my foot caught in my bra, but I rolled with it and shed the bra in my fall.



He could have had me then, but I think he was enjoying the chase. It must have been the reason he didn't just go back and get the Porsche. It might take him a minute to shrink down so he could get into it, but the car was a lot faster than I was, and it could run forever.



I had to stay on the road until it crossed the canal. Otherwise it was too far for me to jump across and I wasn't swimming anything with a water fae of some kind after me.



As soon as I was past it, I dodged down the road that paralleled the canal, running toward the river. I jumped through the fence behind the first house and tore through the field. By the time their dog noticed me and began barking an alarm, I was in the next field over and running through grass taller than I was. After a half mile of running, I slowed to a trot.



The ground was soft and there were horses and cows in the fields. A donkey chased me through its paddock with murderous intent, but I just picked up the pace until I could jump out of its paddock. Horses mostly don't care about coyotes, nor do cows. Chickens run, but donkeys hate us every one.



When I heard hoofbeats behind me, I thought maybe the donkey had jumped its fence - until the horse I'd just passed let out a terrified squeal.



Kelpies could take on the form of a horse, I thought as I moved back into top gear.



I learned that whatever Fideal was, he didn't like railroad tracks. Though he could cross them, they slowed him down and made him shriek with evident pain. Finley has lots of railroad tracks and, after that, I crossed them wherever I could without slowing down my headlong run for Adam's house.



On the flats Fideal was faster than I was, but he couldn't get through or over obstacles as quickly as I could. I scrambled over a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence that surrounded one of the big industrial compounds and wished it were iron. The barbed wire at the top made it a little interesting, but I managed.



The fence bent down under his weight and I heard the metal groan as the fence collapsed. It slowed him down. So I avoided the open gate and scrambled over the fence on the other side of the compound, too.



Though I hadn't turned, the river had, and I had to run about a half mile along the shore past several old barges that had been tied up along the shoreline. He gained on me until I found the big hedge of blackberries.



This was part of one of my usual trails and over the years I'd built a path under the bushes and so I could run almost unhindered. Fideal, being a lot bigger, didn't have that luxury.



When I cleared Adam's fence, I couldn't hear Fideal behind me so I changed as I ran. I mistimed it a bit and stumbled painfully to my knees in Adam's gravel driveway. Darryl's car was there, and Honey's Toyota. The little red Chevy truck belonged to Ben.



"Adam!" I yelled. "Trouble on the way!" My legs didn't want to work right as a single pair instead of two pairs, and I stumbled as I tried to regain my feet and run at the same time.



By the time I was on the porch, Darryl had the front door open. I fell again and this time I just rolled until I hit the outside of the house, just under the big picture window.



"Some kind of water fae," I told him, panting hard and coughing with the force of my breathing. "Might look sort of like a horse or some hooved animal. Or it could be a swamp thingy as big as Adam's SUV. A monster with fangs."



I must have sounded like a ninny, but it didn't faze Darryl.



"You keep bothering the monsters, Mercy, and someday something's going to eat you." He sounded calm and cool as he kept his eyes on the fence I'd jumped over. He had a big automatic in one hand - he must carry concealed because I hadn't noticed him holding one when he opened the door.



"Oh, I hope not," I said in between gasps. "I don't want to be eaten. I've been counting on the vampires to kill me first."



He laughed, though it wasn't that funny. "Everyone else is changing," he told me, and he didn't mean clothes. But I could feel them, so he didn't need to tell me. "How far behind you is this thing?"



I shook my head. "Not far. I led it into the blackberries, but - There! There! From the river."



Darryl shifted his aim and began firing at the thing that emerged from the black water and trailed over Adam's groomed gravel beach.



I hastily plugged my ears in an attempt to save my hearing. Even with Adam's porch light and my own night vision, I couldn't really focus on the thing that Fideal had become. It was as though his body swallowed the light and left me with an impression of marsh grasses and water.



The bullets slowed him a little, but I didn't think they were doing enough damage to stop him. I'd caught my breath, even if my legs felt like they were made of rubber, and I had no intention of sitting here like bait.



I started to get up and Darryl grabbed my arm and jerked me down as the big plate glass window over me shattered and a werewolf leaped over my head and landed on the porch railing ten feet away. He paused there, examining Fideal.



"Careful, Ben," I said. "It's as fast as I am and it has great big teeth."



The lanky red werewolf glanced back and the porch gave a warning creak. Ben sneered at me, an expression infinitely more impressive with gleaming white fangs than it was when he did it as a human. He jumped off the porch and barreled silently into Fideal.



A black wolf, tipped with silver like a reverse Siamese cat, jumped out behind him. He turned Adam's eyes to me, where I sat covered in glass shards, and then looked at Darryl.



"Right," said Darryl, though I know Adam couldn't talk to his pack while he was in wolf shape the way the Marrok could.



Darryl dropped the gun he'd been firing continuously and picked me up gingerly. "Let's get you off the glass. If you bleed to death, Adam's going to make mincemeat out of Ben."



I looked down and realized that I was bleeding from small cuts all over my bare skin. I let Darryl carry me out of the glass and into the house before wriggling free.



He let me go and started tearing off his own clothes.



Another werewolf, this one tawny and beautiful, streaked by me, knocking me a step sideways. Honey. She was followed by another pair of wolves; one was brindled and the other gray. More of Adam's pack, though I couldn't have named either of them.



"Mercy, what is that thing?" Honey's husband, Peter, was still in human form. He saw my look and said, "Adam told me to stay human. I'm to get Jesse away if things go badly."



I quit paying attention to him when I heard a yelp from outside. It would have taken a lot of pain to wring a sound out of a wolf this close to the pack's den. They were trained to fight silently so as not to attract undue attention. That yelp meant someone was badly hurt.



I'd brought it here. I had to help fight.



"Cold iron." My voice jittered with adrenaline. "Salt won't work on that one, I don't think - and I'm a little short of underwear to turn inside out. No shoes. I need something steel."



"Steel?" asked Peter.



I ignored him and ran into the kitchen and grabbed a French chef's knife and a butcher knife out of the set of Henckels that Adam had paid a large fortune for. They weren't stainless steel because regular, high-carbon steel holds a better edge. It also works better on fae.



As I charged out of the kitchen, Honey's husband landed at the base of the stairs, right in front of me. I think he'd just jumped down the whole thing - werewolves can do things like that. He held a sword in his hand.



"Mercy," he said. His voice sounded different than I'd ever heard it. His pleasant Midwest accent disappeared and he sounded vaguely German, not like Zee exactly, but close. "Adam bound me to watch over Jesse and not help."



Something hit the side of the house hard.



A sword was better than two little knives. "Can you use that thing?"



"Ja."



As Adam's declared mate, I could change his orders - though I'd have to answer for it if he got ticked off.



"Go help. I'll stay out of it and get Jesse out of here if it looks like it's going badly."



He was gone before the last words left my mouth.



I tried to look out the living room window, but the wraparound porch hid too much. Jesse's room would have a better view - and she might have clothes that would fit me.



I started up the stairs at a run, but by the time I hit the top, I was lucky to be walking. In coyote form, I can trot for hours, but sprinting is different. I just didn't have any more running in me.



Jesse must have heard me because she stuck her head out of her bedroom and then rushed over. "Can I help?"



I looked down to see what caused the consternation in her face. It wasn't my nakedness. She'd grown up with werewolves, and shapeshifters can't afford too much modesty. For the wolves, the change is a slow process and it hurts; if they are tearing up clothing as they change, it just hurts that much worse. Makes them even grumpier than usual - so mostly they take their clothes off first.



No, it wasn't my nakedness; it was the blood. I was covered with it.



Appalled, I looked behind me at the carpet that was stained with my blood all the way up the stairs. "Darn it," I said. "That's going to be expensive to clean."



I heard a roar that shook the house and quit worrying about the carpet. I let go of the railing that I'd been using to hold me up and stumbled over to Jesse's window, which was opened wide. She'd pulled the screen off the window already. With the knives still in each hand, I crawled out and down onto the roof of the porch, where I could see what was going on.



The werewolves were badly battered. Ben was crumpled against Adam's SUV and there was a huge dent in the quarter panel just above him.



Darryl circled the fae, his brindled coat fading into the shadows. If he hadn't been moving, I don't know that I'd have seen him at all. Adam perched on the fae's back, his front paws raking through the fronds like a giant cat's, but I couldn't tell how much damage he was doing. Honey and her husband were working as a team. She'd harry the fae with quick leaping nips until he turned to her and her husband would take advantage of its inattention to dive in and rake it with his sword.



From my vantage point, I could hear Peter mutter, "Can't find flesh in all this seaweed."



"I can't tell if they're winning or losing," Jesse said as she climbed through the window. She threw her comforter over me and knelt near the edge of the roof.



"I can't either," I started to say, but I stopped halfway through the last word as a wave of magic brushed painfully over me and dumped me on my rump.



"Careful," I yelled to the wolves below. I was up and on the edge of the roof as quickly as I could manage - which was just in time to see the fae make an incredibly quick move across the stretch of beach and into the inky river. Adam was still on his back.



Werewolves can't swim. Like chimpanzees, they have too little fat: they are too dense to float. My foster father had committed suicide by walking into a river.



I started to jump off the roof. I could have changed in midair, and on four legs I'd have been in the water in seconds - but I'd promised to watch Jesse. Just because a promise becomes desperately inconvenient doesn't mean you don't have to keep it.



Peter dropped his sword and waded into the river without wasting an instant. The porch light showed me his head as it disappeared under the water.



Jesse's hand closed over mine in a bone-crushing grip.



"Come on, come on," she muttered, then let out a yip of joy as Peter reemerged, towing a coughing and sputtering wolf in his wake.



I sat down and buried my face in my hands in relief.