Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)(51)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Someone screamed, and I quit talking. We waited, but there were no more sounds.

"I had better attend the Signora," said Andre, and was gone, just gone.

"I’ll drive," Stefan told me. "You’ll need to ride in the back with Dr. Cornick so he has someone he trusts with him when he wakes up."

I gave him the keys and hopped in the back.

"What’s going to happen when he wakes up?" I asked as I settled onto the backseat, lifting Samuel’s head so I could scoot underneath it and sit down. My hands smoothed over his hair and slid over his neck. The marks of the vampires were already scabbed over, rough under my light touch.

"Maybe nothing will happen," Stefan said, getting in the driver’s seat and starting the van. "But sometimes they don’t react well to being Kissed. Signora Marsilia used to prefer wolves to more mundane prey-that’s why she lost her place in Italy and was sent here."

"Feeding off of werewolves is taboo?" I asked.

"No." He turned the van around and started back up the drive. "Feeding off the werewolf mistress of the Lord of Night is taboo."

He said Lord of Night as if I should know who that was, so I asked, "Who is the Lord of Night?"

"The Master of Milan-or he was last we heard."

"When was that?"

"Two hundred years, more or less. He exiled Signora Marsilia here with those who owed her life or vassalage."

"There wasn’t anything here two hundred years ago," I said.

"I was told he stuck a pin in a map. You are right; there was nothing here. Nothing but desert, dust, and Indians." He’d adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see me, and his eyes met mine as he continued. "Indians and something we’d never encountered before, Mercy. Shapeshifters who were not moon called. Men and women who could take on the coyote’s form as they chose. They were immune to most of the magics that allow us to live among humans undetected."

I stared at him. "I’m not immune to magic."

"I didn’t say you were," he answered. "But some of our magics pass you by. Why do you think you stood against Marsilia’s rage when the rest of us fell?"

"It was the sheep."

"It wasn’t the sheep. Once upon a time, Mercedes, what you are would have been your death sentence. We killed your kind wherever we found them, and they returned the favor." He smiled at me, and my blood ran chill at the expression in those cool, cool eyes. "There are vampires everywhere, Mercedes, and you are the only walker here."

I’d always thought of Stefan as my friend. Even in the heart of the vampires’ seethe I hadn’t questioned his friendship, not really. Stupid me.

"I can drive myself home," I told him.

He returned his gaze to the street in front of him and laughed softly as he pulled the van over. He got out and left it running. I loosened my grip on Samuel’s shoulder and forced myself away from the safety of the back bench seat.

I didn’t see Stefan or smell him when I got out of the van and moved to the driver’s seat, but I could feel his eyes on my back. I started to drive off, then pulled my foot off the gas and stomped on the brakes.

I rolled down the window and spoke to the darkness. "I know you don’t live there-you smell of woodsmoke and popcorn. Do you need a ride home?"

He laughed. I jumped, then jumped again when he leaned in the window and patted my shoulder.

"Go home, Mercy," he said, and was gone-for real this time.

I chugged along behind semis and Suburbans and thought about what I’d just learned.

I knew that vampires, like the fae, and werewolves and their kindred were all Old World preternatural creatures. They’d come over for the same reasons most humans did: to gain wealth, power, or land, and to escape persecution.

During the Renaissance, vampires had been an open secret; being thought one added power and prestige. The cities of Italy and France became havens for them. Even so, their numbers were not great. Like werewolves, humans who would become vampires died more often than they accomplished their goal. Most of the princes and nobles believed to be vampires were just clever men who saw the claim as a way to discourage rivals.

The Church saw it differently. When the Spanish invasion of the New World filled the coffers of the Church so they no longer had to depend upon the favor of the nobles, they went after the vampires as well as any other preternatural creature they could find.

Hundreds of people died, if not thousands, accused of vampirism, witchcraft, or lycanthropy. Only a small percentage of those who died actually were vampires, but those losses were still severe-humans (lucky for them) breed much faster than the undead.

So vampires came to the New World, victims of religious persecution like the Quakers and the Puritans-only different. Werewolves and their moon-called kindred came to find new territory to hunt. The fae came to escape the cold iron of the Industrial Revolution, which followed them anyway. Together these immigrants destroyed most of the preternatural creatures who had lived in the Americas, until at last, even the bare stories of their existence were mostly gone.

My people, apparently, among them.

As I took the on-ramp onto the highway to Richland, I remembered something my mother once told me. She hadn’t known my father very well. In my mostly empty jewelry box was a silver belt buckle he’d won in a rodeo and given her. She told me his eyes were the color of sunlit root beer, and that he snored if he slept on his back. The only other thing I knew about him was that if someone had found his wrecked truck sooner, he might have lived. The wreck hadn’t killed him outright. Something sharp had sliced open a big vein, and he bled to death.

There was a noise from the back of the van. I jerked the rearview mirror around until I could see the backseat. Samuel’s eyes were open, and he was shaking violently.

Stefan hadn’t told me what the bad reaction to the Kiss might be, but I was pretty sure I was about to find out. I was already passing the exit for Columbia Park, but I managed to take it without getting rear-ended.

I drove until I came to a small parking lot next to a maintenance shed. I parked, killed the lights, then slipped between the seats of the van and approached Samuel cautiously.

"Sam?" I said, and for a heartbeat his struggles slowed down.

His eyes gleamed in the shadows of the van’s depths. I smelled adrenaline, terror, sweat, and blood.

I had to fight not to flee. Part of me knew that so much fear must have a cause. The rest of me figured out why some werewolves had a bad reaction to the vampire’s Kiss-waking up unable to move, his last memory being something sucking his blood was bound to hit every panic button in a werewolf’s arsenal.