Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(35)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"Are you threatening me with that?" He laughed.

So I shot him. Three times over the heart. It knocked him back but not down. I remembered, from my reading of Phin’s book, that not all the fae have their organs in exactly the same places that we do. Maybe I should have aimed for his head. I raised the gun to make certain of my target and watched him sink through the wooden stairs like a ghost. He left the butcher knife and his apron behind.

Stone hands rose from the floor and grabbed my ankles, pulling my feet out from under me. I fell too fast to react.
* * *

I WOKE UP LYING IN THE DARK AND HURTING ALL OVER, but especially on the back of my head. My ankles were also sore when I tried to move them. I blinked, but I still couldn’t see anything – which is very unusual for me.

I smelled blood, and felt something ridged under my shoulder. Old sensory memory, left over from late-night studying in college, told me it was a pen. I waited for more recent memory to kick in – the last thing I remembered was the fae grabbing my ankles. When nothing more made itself known, I decided that there were no memories to come back. I must have been knocked out when my head hit the cement.

Odd as it might seem, I was still alive even though I’d been lying helpless before the fae.

I almost sat up, but there was a sound I couldn’t place, a wet sound. Not a drip, but a slop, slop, slop. Rip. Slop, slop, slop.

Something was eating. Once I worked that out, I could smell death and all the undignified things it brought to a body. I waited a long time, listening to the sounds of something with sharp teeth feeding, before I forced myself to move.

It didn’t really matter who had died. If it was Sam, I stood no chance against something that could kill a werewolf after I shot him three times in the chest – whether his heart was there or not, it still should have hurt him.

If it wasn’t Sam . . . either he would kill me, too, or we’d both walk out of the basement. But I had to wait until I’d considered every possibility before I rolled stiffly to my feet.

The sound didn’t change as I shuffled around, crunching glass under my feet until the edge of my shoe caught the edge of the rug. I used the rug to find the desk and fumbled around until I could turn on the desk light.

It wasn’t very bright, but it showed me that the lighting fixtures on the ceiling had been torn loose and were dangling by wires. The neat stacks of boxes were mostly gone, leaving tumbled books, ripped-up cardboard, and shreds of paper in their place. There was also blood. A lot of it.

Some of the fae bleed odd colors, but this was all a dark red that pooled black in the dim light a yard or so from the edge of the rug where the kill had been made. It hadn’t been too long because the edge of the pool of fluid was still wet. But the victor had dragged the body over a pile of book boxes and found a secluded place hidden behind several leaning stacks in the far corner of the basement where the weak light I held wouldn’t penetrate.

"Sam?" I asked. "Sam?"

The sound of feeding paused. Then a shadow darker than the things around it flowed over the stacks and crouched on top of the remaining piles of books, flattened to keep from bumping into the ceiling. For a moment, I thought it was the fae, because the wolf was so drenched in blood that he was almost black. Then white eyes caught my desk light, and Sam growled.
* * *

"SO," I ASKED SAM AS WE HEADED BACK TOWARD KENNEWICK, "what do you think we can do to resurrect the love of life in your human half? Because I don’t think that this is working. You almost lost it there, my friend."

Sam whined softly and put his head on my lap. I’d cleaned both of us in Phin’s bathroom as best I could. His white fur was more pink than white still, and he was soaking wet. Thank goodness the Rabbit had a powerful heater.

"Well, if you don’t know," I muttered, "how am I supposed to figure it out?"

He pressed his head harder on my thigh.

He’d almost killed me tonight. I’d seen the intent in his eyes as he’d raised his hindquarters – and knocked over the boxes he was perched on, already precariously tipped during his battle with the fae.

It was the kind of mistake that Samuel would never have made, and it had thrown off his attack. He’d landed short of me, on top of the broken office chair. He’d put a foot through the space between the arm and the seat and during the struggle to free himself had remembered that we were friends.

From the lowered tail and head, I think he’d scared himself almost as much as he’d scared me.

We’d spent a long time in that bookstore, so the traffic had subsided somewhat, though it was still pretty busy.

I took my right hand off the steering wheel and ran my fingers through the fur behind Sam’s ears. His whole body relaxed as I rubbed. "We’ll manage it," I told him. "Don’t you worry. I’m a lot more stubborn than Samuel is. Let’s go home and dry us both off. Then I think . . . it’s time to call Zee – "

MERCY!

Adam’s voice in my head screamed at such volume that I couldn’t move. A blasting yet soundless noise that grew and grew until . . . there was nothing at all. The cry left me with a headache that made the one I’d woken up with in Phin’s basement seem like a pinprick.

"Sam," I said urgently, both hands on the wheel again – for all the good it was going to do me. I’d only just barely kept from hitting the brakes as hard as I could, which doubtless would have caused a big pileup on the busy highway behind me. On the other hand, I could hardly keep traveling the way I was. "Sam. Sam, I can’t see."

A mouth closed on my right wrist and tugged down and then back. As soon as he was guiding me straight, I put on my brake, gently, and rolled to a stop.

The Rabbit shook as cars blasted past us, but no one honked, so we must have made it to the shoulder. After some indefinable amount of time, the pain faded finally and left me shaken and sweating and feeling as if I’d been run over by a semi.

"We have to get home," I said, restarting the car. My hands were shaking as I put the Rabbit in gear and made a beeline toward Finley.

I’d left Adam to deal with his pack. If something had happened to him, I’d never forgive myself for my cowardice.

Chapter 8

WE WERE ON CHEMICAL DRIVE, THE HIGHWAY THAT LED out of the city to the countryside, when the ambulance passed us going the other direction, lights flashing but sirens off. I almost turned to follow.

No. Better to find out exactly what’s happened first. Sam isn’t a doctor today, and I can’t help anyone better than the hospital where they’re taking the victim. And maybe it wasn’t anyone I knew in the ambulance at all.

As soon as I turned down my road, I put my foot down on the gas pedal and forgot about speed limits. Ahead of us, something was billowing black smoke. There were red flashing lights – fire engines at my house, which was well on its way to becoming so much kindling.