Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)(47)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"How far down are we going?" I asked, trying to fight off the claustrophobic desire to run back the way we’d come.

"About twenty feet from the surface." Stefan’s voice echoed a little-or else something below us made a noise.

Maybe I was just jumpy.

Eventually the stairway ended in a pad of cement. But even with my night vision, the darkness was so absolute I could see only a few yards in any direction. The smell of bleach danced around several scents I’d never encountered before.

Stefan moved and a series of fluorescent lights flickered to life. We stood in an empty room with cement floors, walls, and ceilings. The overall effect was sterile and empty.

Stefan didn’t pause, just continued through the room and into a narrow tunnel that sloped gently upward as we walked. Steel doors without knobs or handles lined the tunnel at even intervals. I could hear things moving behind the doors and scooted up until I could touch Samuel’s shoulder for reassurance. As I passed the last door, something slammed against it, ringing with a hollow boom that echoed away from us. Behind another door someone-or something-began a high-pitched hopeless cascade of laughter that ended in a series of screams.

By the end of it, I was all but crawling up on top of Samuel, but he was still relaxed, and his breathing and pulse hadn’t even begun to speed up. Damn him. I didn’t take a deep breath until we’d left the doors behind.

The tunnel took a narrow turn, and the floor became a steep upward set of twelve stairs that ended in a room with curved plastered walls, wooden floors, and soft lighting. Directly opposite the stairway was a sumptuous mocha leather couch whose curves echoed the walls.

A woman reclined on two overstuffed tapestry-covered pillows braced against one of the couch’s arms. She wore silk. I could smell the residue of the silkworms, just as I could smell the faint scent I was learning to identify with vampire.

The dress itself was simple and expensive, revealing her figure in swirling colors ranging from purple to red. Her narrow feet were bare except for red and purple toenail polish. She had them braced so her knees came up and provided backing to support the paperback she was reading.

She finished the page, dog-eared one corner, and set it carelessly on the floor. She swung her legs off the couch and shifted so that her face was toward us before she raised her gaze to look at us. It was so gracefully done that I barely had time to drop my own eyes.

"Introduce us, Stefano," she said, her voice a deep contralto made the richer by a touch of an Italian accent.

Stefan bowed, a formal gesture that should have looked odd with his torn jeans, but somehow came out gracefully old-fashioned instead.

" Signora Marsilia," he said, "May I introduce you to Mercedes Thompson, auto mechanic extraordinaire and her friend Dr. Samuel Cornick, who is the Marrok’s son. Mercy, Dr. Cornick, this is Signora Marsilia, Mistress of the Mid-Columbia Seethe."

"Welcome," she said.

It had been bothering me how human the two women upstairs had seemed with their wrinkles and imperfections. Stefan, himself, had a touch of otherness that I could see. I had known him for inhuman the first time I’d seen him, but, except for the distinctive scent of vampire, the other two women would have passed for human.

This one would not have.

I stared at her, trying to nail down what was making the hair on the back of my neck rise. She looked like a woman in her early twenties, evidently having died and become vampire before life had marked her. Her hair was blond, which was not a color I associated with Italy. Her eyes were dark, though, as dark as my own.

Hastily, I jerked my gaze from her face, my breath coming more rapidly as I realized how easy it was to forget. She hadn’t been looking at me though. Like the other vampires, her attention was on Samuel, and understandably so. He was the son of the Marrok, Bran’s son, a person of influence rather than a VW mechanic. Then, too, most women would look at him rather than me.

"I have said something to amuse you, Mercedes?" Marsilia asked. Her voice was pleasant, but there was power behind it, something akin to the power the Alphas could call upon.

I decided to tell her the truth and see what she made of it. "You are the third woman tonight who has virtually ignored me, Signora Marsilia. However, I find it perfectly understandable, since I have trouble taking my attention off Dr. Cornick, too."

"Do you often have such an effect on women, Dr. Cornick?" she asked him archly. See, her attention was still really on him.

Samuel, unflappable Samuel, stuttered. "I – I haven’t…" He stopped and sucked in air, then, sounding a little more like himself, he said, "I expect that you have more luck with the opposite sex than I do."

She laughed, and I realized finally what it was that bothered me. There was something off about her expressions and her gestures, as if she were only aping humans. As if, without us here to perform for, she would not appear human at all.

Zee told me that modern advances in CGI allowed filmmakers to create computer-animated people who seemed very nearly human. But they found that after a certain point, the closer the characters looked to real, the more they repelled their audience.

I knew now exactly what he meant.

She had everything almost right. Her heart beat, she breathed regularly. Her skin was flushed slightly, like a person who has just finished walking in the cold. But her smiles were just slightly wrong: coming too late or too early. Her imitation of a human was very close, but not quite close enough to be real-and that small difference was giving me the creeps.

Generally, I don’t have the control problems that the werewolves do-coyotes are adaptable, amiable beasts. But at that moment, if I had been in coyote form, I’d have been running away as fast as I could.

"My Stefano tells me that you want to know about the visitors who paid me so nicely to leave them alone." She had gone back to ignoring me again-something I wasn’t really unhappy with.

"Yes." Samuel kept his voice soft, almost dreamy. "We will eventually find them ourselves, but your information would help."

"After I give you this information," her voice rumbled in her throat like a cat’s, "we shall talk a little about the Marrok and what he will give me for cooperation."

Samuel shook his head. "I am sorry, Signora, I do not have authority to discuss this matter. I will be happy to forward any messages you might have to my father."

She pouted at him, and I felt the impact of her intent upon him, could smell the beginnings of his arousal. The scary things making noise behind steel doors hadn’t caused his pulse to increase, but the Mistress of the seethe could. She leaned forward, and he closed the distance between them until her face was only inches from his groin.