River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(39)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"Why are you telling me all this?" I asked.

"So I remember," she whispered. "Tell them not to call my name. I don’t want to stay here like this. Tell Benny I’m okay. Tell him to pick a flower for me and put it on Mama’s grave this year for me."

I had never dealt with a ghost quite this coherent before. Usually, they don’t even notice me. The few that do don’t really seem to be aware that they are dead.

"I’ll tell them," I promised, helpless to do anything to make this easier on anyone.

She looked up and met my eyes–and in hers I could see a flicker of violent green, the color of the river devil’s eyes. "See that you do."

And she was gone.

Adam, watching me, dropped his hand when I met his eyes.

"Thanks," I told him.

"What the hell is that?" growled Hank. "Who were you talking to?"

"I thought that all walkers could see the dead," I said. "It’s why the vampires don’t like us."

"Vampires?" said Fred. "There are vampires?"

Jim laughed. "Not all walkers are alike, Mercy. No more than two men wear the same shirt at the same time."

I looked at Gordon.

"That is not my burden," Gordon told me. "Besides, I’m not a walker. Who did you see?"

Calvin had said that Gordon could take animal form, and he hadn’t been lying. Still, there were other people who could shift shapes in the Native American stories I’d read. Instead of pursuing what he was, I answered his question.

"She didn’t want you to use her name, but could you give me a description of Benny’s sister? Before I tell you what she told me, I’d like to make sure I’m talking about the right person."

"No," said Jim coolly. "You tell us what she looked like, and we’ll tell you if you get it right."

Okay. I could deal with that. "She’s a little shorter than I am and she has muscle. Not casual muscle but the kind that comes from some sort of hard work or sport. She has a little scar just in front of her left ear." I put my finger where the scar was.

"She has a Web site," said Hank hostilely. "Her photo is up on it."

"This," Adam said abruptly, "isn’t going to work that way. If you don’t believe Mercy saw Benny’s sister, nothing she tells you is going to convince you."

"She told Calvin that there was a woman following them at Horsethief Lake." Jim scuffed his boot in the dirt. "She told him that the woman was wearing a dark blue shirt with a pair of macaws on the back before he told her that Benny’s sister had been with him on the boat. Beyond that, I don’t see what pretending she could see Fai–" He stuttered a little as he switched words. "Benny’s sister gains her at this point." "She loved that shirt," Hank muttered. "Got herself a new sewing machine, one that could do fancy embroidery. That shirt was the first thing she made on it."

"Benny gave her a bad time about the damned parrots," said Fred. "White cockatoos." He laughed and shook his head.

I thought I would have liked Faith if I’d known her while she was alive.

"What did she say?" Adam asked.

"She said that it had a taste of Benny and wanted the rest. I told her that we could keep him safe, but she wasn’t convinced of it." I glanced at the men sitting on the bench of the picnic table. "Other than that it was just a few things–and a message to Benny. She wants him to know she’s okay, and she wants him to put a flower on her mother’s grave for her this year."

I rolled up my pant leg to show everyone the mark I had on my leg. The blood and pus were gone, but it still was a dark brown scab circling my leg. It itched mildly, but I didn’t touch it.

"River marked, you said," I told Gordon. "What does it mean?"

He crossed one scarlet boot over his opposite knee and pursed his lips. But before he could say anything, there was the sharp crack of a pistol, and, beside me, Adam jerked.

Chapter 8

HANK HELD THE GUN LIKE HE KNEW WHAT HE WAS doing with it. I bolted for him, but no matter how fast I moved, I had to cross twelve feet, and he only had to pull the trigger. But I wasn’t the only one moving–his brother hit Hank’s gun hand as he shot a second time.

Fred grabbed the gun and jerked it down toward the ground, where Hank spent his third shot. "What are you doing? Hank? Stop it."

Hank didn’t get a fourth shot because I grabbed the stick I’d almost tripped over like a baseball bat and hit him in the back of the head, knocking him cold.

I wouldn’t have cared if I killed him–and I might well have because the stick I’d grabbed was the fairy walking stick that had followed me–however it follows me–ever since I’d first encountered it.

No matter that it didn’t have feet and wasn’t alive, it was old fairy magic, and that was apparently enough for it to trail after me like a faithful dog. Though it was graceful and slender, the end was shod in silver and heavy. I might as well have hit Hank in the back of the head with a lead pipe.

Lugh never made anything that couldn’t be used as a weapon, the oakman had told me just before he’d used the stick to kill a very nasty vampire. Lugh was an ancient hero of the Tuatha de Danann–I’d looked him up later. If the oakman had been right about the walking stick’s origins, it predated Christ’s birth and then some. It might even be older than Bran.

I dropped the artifact that had been old when Columbus first set foot on the Bahamas on the ground as if it were garbage and returned to my mate’s side before anybody else moved.

Hank had shot Adam.

Adam hadn’t even moved. He’d just slumped over on the stupid camp chair. That told me it was bad. Very bad. I could smell his blood.

As I reached Adam, Gordon was on the other side, plucking Adam off the chair with an ease no old man would ever be able to imitate. Adam was solid muscle and heavy, even in his human form, and Gordon couldn’t weigh half what Adam did.

It didn’t seem to slow him down, though.

I ripped Adam’s shirt open so I could see the damage.

There was a neat hole with a sliver of bone sticking out of his chest. The good news was that his heart was still beating because the blood was pulsing. The bad news was there was no exit hole in his back, and there was too much blood.

"There’s no exit wound," Gordon muttered.

"Noticed that," I said shortly. "Got to get it out yesterday." No telling if it was silver or lead, but I had to assume the worst. They all knew Adam was a werewolf, and the silver-bullet stuff was common lore.

I bolted for the truck and the supercomprehensive-when-hell-breaks-out first- aid kit stored behind the backseat in three backpacks. One of them had a surgical kit. One had bandages of all sizes. Another had various ointments and miscellaneous first-aid paraphernalia. I didn’t stop to try to figure out which one was which, though they were color- coded. I grabbed them all and hauled them back to Adam.