Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)(56)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"Does he belong to a pack?" Mary Jo asked from the back of the room. Mary Jo was a firefighter with the Kennewick FD. She was small, tough-looking, and complained a lot because she had to pretend to be weaker than all the men on her team. I liked her.

Adam shook his head. "David is a lone wolf by choice. He doesn’t like werewolves."

"You said they had humans with them, and new wolves," Warren said.

Adam nodded, but I was still thinking about the lone wolf. What was a man who had been a lone wolf for thirty years doing running in a pack of new wolves? Had he Changed them himself? Or were they victims like Mac had been?

Samuel laid his muzzle on my knee, and I petted him absently.

"You said they used silver nitrate, DMSO, and Ketamine," said Auriele, the chemistry teacher. "Does that mean they have a doctor working for them? Or maybe a drug pusher? Ketamine isn’t as common as meth or crack, but we see it in the high school now and then."

I straightened up. "A doctor or a vet," I said. Beside me Samuel stiffened. I looked at him. "A vet would have access to all of those, wouldn’t he, Samuel?"

Samuel growled at me. He didn’t like what I was thinking.

"Where are you going with this?" asked Adam, looking at Samuel, though he was talking to me.

"Dr. Wallace," I said.

"Carter is in trouble because he can’t accept being a werewolf, Mercy. It is too violent for him, and he’d rather die than be what we are. Are you trying to say that he is involved in a plot where young wolves are held in cages while experiments are performed upon them? Have you ever heard what he has to say about the animal experimentation and the cosmetics industry?"

For a moment I was surprised Adam knew so much about Dr. Wallace. But I knew from the reactions of the people in Aspen Creek that Adam had spent time there. I suppose it only made sense that he would know about Dr. Warren’s troubles. From the murmurs around us, the rest of the pack didn’t, though.

Adam stopped arguing with me to explain to everyone who Dr. Wallace was. It gave me time to think.

"Look," I said when he’d finished. "All these chemicals for the drug they shot you with are readily available-but who would think to combine them and why? Who would want to be able to tranquilize a werewolf? Dr. Wallace is in danger of losing control-I saw it myself this week. He is worried about his family. He wouldn’t have developed a way to administer drugs to werewolves in order to kidnap Jesse, but he might have developed a tranquilizer for people to use on him-in case he lost all control, and his wolf attacked someone."

"Maybe," Adam said slowly. "I’ll call Bran tomorrow and have him ask Dr. Wallace about it. No one can lie to Bran."

"So what do they stand to gain with Jesse?" Darryl asked. "Money seems ridiculous at this point. It seems that this attack was directed at the Columbia Basin Pack’s Alpha rather than at Adam Hauptman, businessman."

"Agreed." Adam frowned at him. "Possibly someone wants control of the pack? There isn’t much I would not do for my daughter."

Control of the pack or control of Adam, I wondered, and is there a difference between the two?

"Whoever it is and whatever they want, we should know before dawn. We know where they are staying," I said, reaching into the pocket of my jeans and pulling out the paper the vampires had given me and handing it to Adam.

"Zee’s informant said that our enemies paid the vampires almost ten thousand dollars to leave them alone while they were here," I told Adam.

Adam’s eyebrows shot up even though he clutched the paper with white fingers. "Ten thousand is way too much," he said. "I wonder why they did that?"

He glanced at the paper and looked around the room. "Darryl? Warren? Are you up to another adventure tonight?"

"Nothing’s broken," Darryl said.

"Not anymore," agreed Warren. "I’m up for it."

"Samuel?"

The white wolf grinned at him.

"We can take my van," I offered.

"Thank you," said Adam, "but you are staying here."

I raised my chin, and he patted my cheek-the patronizing bastard. He laughed at my expression, not like he was making fun of me, but like he was really enjoying something… me.

"You are not expendable, Mercedes-and you are not up to facing a pack war." By the time he’d finished speaking the smile had left his face, and he was watching the people in the room.

"Listen, buddy," I said. "I killed two werewolves-that makes my kill sheet as high as yours this week-and I didn’t do so badly getting that address from the vampires either."

" You got the address from the vampires?" said Adam, in a dangerously soft voice.

"Patronizing bastard," I muttered, driving my van through the empty streets of East Kennewick. "I am not pack. He does not have the right to tell me what to do or how to do it. He has no right to yell at me for talking to the vampires. He is not my keeper."

He was, I’d finally had to concede, right about how little help I’d be in a fight with another pack of werewolves. Warren had promised to call me when they were through.

I yawned and realized I’d been up for nearly twenty hours-and I’d spent that last night tossing on a strange motel bed, alternately dreaming of Mac dying because of something I hadn’t done and of Jesse alone and crying for help.

I pulled into my driveway and didn’t bother parking the van in its usual place, safe in the pole-built garage. I’d clean out the wrappers and the socks in the morning and put it away. Zee’s dagger, which I’d put back on before I left Warren’s to make certain I didn’t just leave it in the van, got tangled in my seat belt. I was so tired I was in tears by the time I finally was free.

Or maybe I was crying like the kid who gets picked last for the softball team at school-and is told to go somewhere and not get in the way while the rest of them played ball.

I remembered to get the guns out of the van and to grab my purse. As I started up my steps, I realized that Elizaveta Arkadyevna hadn’t gotten around to cleaning the porch yet because I could still smell Mac and the distinctive scents that accompany death.

No, I decided, my lips peeling back from my teeth in a snarl, I was crying because I wanted to be in on the kill. These people had come into my territory and hurt people I cared about. It was my duty, my right, to punish them.

As if I could do anything against a pack of werewolves. I brought my hand down on the safety rail and snapped the dry wood as easily as if it had been resting on cinder blocks at the dojo. A small, soft presence rubbed against my ankles and welcomed me with a demanding mew.