Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(38)
Author: Patricia Briggs

I didn’t smell vampire, only blood – fading as the frost had faded. I had seen the ghost – not clearly, but it had been there. Still, I turned so Chad couldn’t read my lips. "Do you think Blackwood is playing ghost?"

Stefan shook his head. "No, it’s not the Monster. Wrong heritage. There was an Indian vampire in New York – " He looked at me and grinned. He pressed a finger to his forehead. "Indian with a dot, not a feather. Anyway, he and his get all could have done something like what we saw tonight… except for the cold. But only the vampires he made directly could do it – and he only made Indian women into vampires. They were all killed a century or more ago, and I think Blackwood predated him anyway."

Chad had been watching Stefan’s mouth with every evidence of fascination. He made a few gestures, and Stefan signed back, saying, "They’re dead. No. Someone else killed them. Yes, I’m sure it was someone else." He glanced at me. "Want to explain to the kid that I’m more a Spike than a Buffy? A villain, not a superhero?"

I batted my eyelashes at him. "You’re my hero."

He jerked several steps back from me as if I’d hit him. It made me wonder what Marsilia had said to him while she’d tortured him.

"Stefan?"

He turned back to us with a hiss and an expression that made Chad back into me. "I’m a vampire, Mercy."

I wasn’t going to let him get away with the morose, self-hating vampire act. He deserved better than that.

"Yeah, we got that. It’s the fangs that give it away – translate that for Chad, please." I waited while he did so, his hands jerky with anger or something related to it. Chad relaxed against me.

Stefan continued signing, and said, almost defiantly, "I’m no one’s hero, Mercy."

I turned my face until I was looking directly at Chad. "Do you think that means I won’t get to see him in spandex?"

Chad mouthed the last word with a puzzled look.

Stefan sighed. He touched Chad’s shoulder, and when the boy looked up, he finger-spelled spandex slowly. Chad made a yuck face.

"Hey," I told them, "watching good-looking men run around in tight-fitting costumes is high on my list of things I’d like to do before I die."

Stefan gave in and laughed. "It won’t be me," he told me. "So what do we do next, Haunt Huntress?"

"That’s a pretty lame superhero name," I told him.

"Scooby-Doo is already taken," he said with dignity. "Anything else sounds lame in comparison."

"Seriously," I said, "I think we’d better go find his parents." Who hopefully were sleeping peacefully despite Chad’s cry and doors banging into walls, not to mention all the talking we’d been doing. Now that I thought of it, it was a bad sign they weren’t out here fussing.

"We? You want me to come, too?" Stefan raised an eyebrow.

I wasn’t going to tell Chad to lie to his parents. And if something had happened to Amber and her husband, I wanted Stefan with me. Their room was on the opposite side of the house from Chad’s and mine, their door was thick – and they didn’t have nifty hearing like Stefan and I did. Maybe they were sleeping. I clutched my walking stick.

"Yeah. Come with us, Stefan. But, Chad?" I made sure he could see my face. "You don’t want to tell your folks Stefan is a vampire, okay? For the same reasons I told you before. Vampires don’t like people knowing about them."

Chad stiffened and glanced at Stefan and away.

"Hey. No, not Stefan," I said. "He doesn’t mind. But others will." And his father probably wouldn’t believe him about that either – and maybe he’d tell Blackwood about it. Blackwood, I was pretty sure, wouldn’t be happy if Chad knew about vampires.

So we trekked to Amber’s room and opened the door. It was dark inside, and I could see two still figures in the bed. For a moment I froze, then realized I could hear them breathing. On the bedside table next to Corban was an empty glass that had held brandy – I could smell it now that I was through panicking. And on Amber’s side was a prescription bottle.

Chad slid past me and scrambled over their footboard and into bed beside them. With his parents here, he was no longer required to be brave. Cold feet did what all the noise had failed to do, and Corban sat up.

"Chad…" He saw us. "Mercy? Who’s that with you, and what are you doing in my bedroom?"

"Corban?" Amber rolled over. She sounded a little dopey but woke up just fine when she noticed Chad and then us. "Mercy? What happened?"

I told them, leaving out Stefan’s vampire status. I didn’t, actually, mention him at all except as part of "we." They didn’t care. Once they heard Chad hadn’t been breathing, they weren’t worried about Stefan at all.

"I’ve never seen anything like it," I admitted to them both. "I’m out of my league. I think you need to get

Chad out of here and into a hotel tonight."

Corban had listened to everything with a poker face. He got out of bed and grabbed a robe in almost the same motion. I heard him walk down the hall, but he didn’t go into Chad’s room. Just stood outside it for a moment and returned. I knew what he saw – nothing but a ripped-up comforter – and was glad he’d been there for the little toy-car demonstration.

He stood in the doorway of his bedroom and looked at us. "First, we pack for a couple of days.

Second, we find a hotel. Third, I talk to my cousin’s brother-in-law, who is a Jesuit priest."

"I’m headed home," I told him before he could tell me to go away and never come back. I needed to help them do something about Blackwood, who was snacking on Amber, but I didn’t know what. And from the sounds of it, no one had ever been able to do something about this vampire. "There’s nothing I can do for you, and I have a business to run."

"Thank you for coming," Amber said. She got out of bed and hugged me. And I knew what she was most grateful for was convincing her husband that Chad hadn’t been lying. I thought that was the least of her worries.

Over her shoulder, Corban stared at me as if he suspected I’d somehow caused everything. I wondered about that, too. Something had made their ghost much worse, and I was the obvious place to look for a reason.

I left them to their preparations, packed my own bags, and hugged Amber again before I left.

She still smelled like vampire – but then so did Stefan and I.

STEFAN WAITED UNTIL WE WERE MOSTLY OUT OF SPOKANE, driving past the airport, before he said anything. "Do you need me to drive?"

"Nope," I answered. I might be tired, but I didn’t like anyone else to drive my Vanagon. As soon as Zee and I put the Rabbit back together, the van was going back in the garage. Besides… "I don’t think I’ll be sleeping again anytime in the next millennium. How did he bite me twice without my knowing it?"