Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson #2)(54)
Author: Patricia Briggs

If I was the most surprised person in the room when Warren subsided immediately, Darryl was a close second. I’ve always thought it was stupid, the way female pack members take their rank from their mate. I thought it was one of those dumb things that the wolves’ human halves tacked onto nature to make life difficult, something the human part of the werewolves paid attention to, not the wolf.

Darryl slowly let go of Warren and sat on the end of the bed. Warren lay limply where he’d been, his splendid brown coat ragged and coated with blood, some old, some fresh.

"Well," I said, to cover up my confusion. "It’s a good sign that he can shift-and he’ll heal faster in this form." I looked at Kyle. "Did he say anything about why Samuel and Adam left?"

"No," Kyle frowned at me. "What did you do?"

I shrugged. "Werewolf politics," I told him.

"How did you do this when I could not?" Darryl asked.

I looked over and saw that his dark eyes had lightened to yellow-and he was staring at me.

"Not my fault," I told him. "Adam didn’t even ask me before he claimed me as mate before the pack-I certainly didn’t think it was anything more than a way to keep me from getting eaten. As far as dominance goes, you and Warren will have to sort things out when Adam gets back." I looked back at Kyle and asked him again, "How badly are you hurt?"

Kyle shook his head. "Just a scratch." He raised his face to me. "Am I going to howl at the moon, too?"

I shook my head. "It’s not that easy to become a werewolf. He’d have had to nearly kill you. A scratch wouldn’t do it."

Kyle was a lawyer-nothing showed on his face. I couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed. Maybe he didn’t know either.

"We’re going to have to move him down to the safe room," I told Darryl.

The safe room was a room in the basement that was reinforced to withstand a full grown werewolf. If Darryl wasn’t dominant enough to make sure Warren stayed quiet, the cell was the only alternative.

"We can leave him on the mattress," suggested Honey. "Darryl and I can carry him down the stairs."

Which is what we did. Kyle and I followed, and I explained what we were doing as quickly as I could.

Warren didn’t object to being imprisoned, but we had trouble keeping Kyle from following him.

"He didn’t hurt me on purpose," he said, standing just inside the cell door. "I was trying to help Darryl keep him down."

"It’ll get worse before it gets better," I told him.

"He didn’t hurt me before."

Which let everyone in the room, except Kyle, know just how much Warren cared about him. Even a crazed werewolf won’t harm his mate.

"I don’t want to have to explain to Warren why we let him eat you," I said. "Look, you can sit in this couch right here and stay all day."

There was a little sitting room outside the cell, with a couch, matching easy chair, and big-screen TV.

"It’ll only be for the day," Darryl said, his voice still a little growly, making me glad we weren’t closer to a full moon. "He’ll be well enough to be on his own tonight."

Warren and his wolf might have accepted me as Adam’s mate, but I doubted Darryl did-and finding out that Warren was dominant to him was going to make him touchy for a while. A long while.

We left Warren in the cell, with Kyle leaning against the silver-coated bars. It wasn’t the smartest place for him to wait, but at least he wasn’t inside.

"I have to go," I told Darryl, once we were upstairs. "I’m still trying to locate Adam and Samuel. Can you handle it from here?"

He didn’t answer me, just stared down toward the cell.

"We’ll be all right," said Honey, softly. She stroked Darryl’s arm to comfort him.

"They won’t accept him as second," Darryl said.

He was probably right. That Warren had survived being a homosexual werewolf as long as he had was a tribute to his strength and intelligence.

"You can sort it out with Adam when he gets back," I said. I glanced at my watch. I had just enough time to call Elizaveta before I left for the police station.

I didn’t leave a third message on her answering machine. It might have annoyed her.

When I got off the phone, Darryl said, " Elizaveta left town after Adam found Warren. She said it was too dangerous for her to be here. If the demon got too close to her, it might be able to jump from Littleton to her, which, she told us, would be a disaster. She gathered her family and took a trip to California."

I knew that Elizaveta wasn’t a Wiccan witch. Her powers were inherited and had nothing to do with religion. That she was so afraid of a demon told me that she had already had some dealings with the powers of darkness-otherwise the demon wouldn’t have been able to take her over without an invitation.

"Damn it," I said. "I don’t suppose you have any ideas on how to kill Littleton."

He smiled at me, his teeth very white in the darkness of his face. "Eat him," he said.

"Very funny." I turned to leave.

"Kill the vampire and the demon goes away," he told me. "That’s what the witch told Adam. And you kill a vampire by staking him, cutting off his head and then burning him."

"Thank you," I told him, though it was nothing I didn’t know. I’d been hoping Elizaveta would have some knowledge of the demon that would make it easier to kill Littleton.

After I shut the door behind me, I heard Darryl say, "Of course, eating him would work, too."

The Kennewick police station was not too far from my shop, right next to Kennewick High. There were a bunch of high schoolers crowded into the small entryway, mobbing the pop machine. I waded through them to the glass fronted booth where a young man, who looked like he’d have been more at home with the kids on the other side, sat doing paperwork.

He took my name and Tony’s, then buzzed me through the first door into an empty waiting room. I’d never been inside a police station before, and I was more intimidated than I’d expected. Nervousness always made me claustrophobic, so I paced back and forth in the air-conditioned room. It smelled strongly of whatever cleaner they’d used, though I expect that wouldn’t have bothered anyone with a less sensitive nose. Beneath the antiseptic smell, it smelled of anxiety, fear, and anger.

I must have looked a little wild-eyed by the time Tony came to get me, because he took one look and asked, "Mercy, what’s wrong?"

I started to say something, but he held up one hand. "Wait, this isn’t private. Come with me." Which was just as well, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell him.