Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(51)
Author: Patricia Briggs

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.