River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(24)
Author: Patricia Briggs

He pulled up to the gates and let us out. "I’d appreciate it if you folks stayed around here for a few days in case we need to ask you anything else."

"We were planning to," said Adam. "But if you need us, you have my cell."

He drove off, and I told Adam, "You’d better not let Bran see how diplomatic and reassuring you can be when you want. He’ll make you go around the country and make speeches about how werewolves are gentle and not scary at all, too." Adam smiled and picked me up. "Shh," he said.

I didn’t argue. The itching hadn’t gone away, but the pain had increased just on the short ride to the camp. Besides, carrying me wasn’t much of an effort for a werewolf.

"Hey," I said. "You’ve been playing the hero pack mule all day. First Robert, then Benny, and now me."

He set me down in front of the trailer and opened the door for me. When I sat down on the leather sofa, he turned on the interior lights and rolled my pant leg up to my knee. In the bright light of the trailer, it looked a lot worse than it had. Yellow stuff and blood crusted the cut, which was about an inch wide and deeper than I’d thought. The first hint of bruising was beginning to show up above and below the cut, and the edges had puffed up.

Adam put his nose down to my leg and sniffed again. He took a fluffy towel out of a cupboard and put that over his leg. Then he propped my calf on his thigh and poured liquid fire over the cut. I know some people claim that hydrogen peroxide doesn’t hurt. Goody for them. I hate the stuff.

I jumped when the hydrogen peroxide hit and shrank down into the couch as it continued to bubble ferociously. Adam used the damp towel to clean my leg, then he sniffed again.

"That was no rope," he growled. "There was something caustic or poisonous on whatever grabbed you–I can smell it."

"Is that why it itches?" I asked.

"Probably." He handed me a couple of pills from a bottle in the kit.

"What is this?"

"Antihistamine," he said. "In case the swelling is an allergic reaction."

"If I take these, I’ll be asleep in three minutes." I took them anyway. The need to dig my fingers into that cut and scratch was almost unbearable as soon as the burn of the hydrogen peroxide had worn off.

"We need to call Uncle Mike," I said in a small voice. I didn’t want to start an argument again.

He must have heard it in my voice because he patted my knee. "I’ll call as soon as I’m through here, but I doubt that Uncle Mike sent us here for this."

"Just to be clear," I said. "I didn’t misunderstand you, right? You and the Owenses are thinking that there is some kind of fish that ate Benny’s foot."

"Too soon to make assumptions," said Adam. "Maybe they stopped onshore for lunch and met a bear."

"Are there even bear around here?"

"Probably not here," Adam acknowledged. "But up where we were hiking there are. No telling how far Benny got his boat from the initial attack."

"So what was it that grabbed my leg?" I asked.

"That is something that Uncle Mike might know," Adam said. "How much of those otters did you see?"

I blinked, my brain already starting to haze from the antihistamine. Otters.

I sat up a little straighter. "Those weren’t river otters." Their heads were a little differently shaped. I hadn’t paid much attention to that at the time.

Adam nodded. "I saw one when I got back to the boat. What do you bet that they’re a European species? Werewolves aren’t the only shapeshifters in Europe."

"I’ve heard of selkies and kelpies," I said. "But not shapeshifting otters."

"Nor have I," said Adam, frowning at my calf. "But selkies interacted with people a lot. Kelpies are rarer, I’m told, but terrifying. You can see why there would be stories about them. Otters just aren’t scary."

So speaks the man who hadn’t been naked in the river with them. They may be small, but they are agile and mean.

There was a knock on the door, and Adam and I both stared at it in shock. The gate by the highway was shut, and it wasn’t so far from the trailer that we wouldn’t have heard someone stopping there. He glanced at me, and I shook my head–I hadn’t heard anyone coming, either. Adam reached into his luggage, quietly pulled out a handgun, and tucked it into the back of his jeans, tugging his shirt down over it.

The quiet knock came again.

"Who is it?" asked Adam.

"I am Gordon Seeker, Calvin’s grandfather, Mr. Hauptman. He said that your wife got hurt helping Benny, who is a young friend of mine."

Adam opened the door warily. He stepped back, and I saw the man at the door for the first time. His voice hadn’t sounded old, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone older outside a rest home.

Sharp brown eyes peered at me out of a face that looked as though it had been left out in the sun to dry too long. Skin like beef jerky and white hair caught back in a smooth French braid down his back. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and small gold studs in his ears. His back was bent, and his hands were curled up from arthritis, his fingers bent and knuckles enlarged. But his movements were surprisingly easy as he climbed into the trailer without invitation.

He wore jeans and a plain red T-shirt under a Redskins jacket. I’m not sure if he was a football fan, if he wore it as a statement, or if it was just something to keep out the cool night air.

Over his shoulder he carried one of those leather bags that should look like a purse but doesn’t. On his feet were the most lurid pair of cowboy boots I’ve ever seen–and that is saying something because I come from cowboy country, and cowboys wear some really gaudy stuff. The boots were bright lipstick red, each with a United States flag beaded in red, white, and blue across the top.

He smelled of fresh air and tobacco. But his tobacco hadn’t come out of a cigarette. A pipe maybe–something without all the additives that make cigarettes smell so bad. It reminded me of my father’s ghost.

"He told me about you, Mr. Hauptman," said Calvin’s grandfather. "Been a long time since I saw a werewolf. Not a lot of them in this part of the country. And this must be your wife, Mercedes–" Then he looked at me and drew in a breath.

"You," he said. "I wasn’t expecting you. Calvin said you were Blackfeet married to an Anglo werewolf. I should have asked myself how many Blackfeet women would associate with a werewolf, shouldn’t I? I had wondered what happened to you." He narrowed his eyes. "You don’t look like Old Coyote. Oh, I can see him some in your eyes and in your coloring, but you look more Anglo than I’d expected."