Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(39)
Author: Patricia Briggs

So while Samuel scrubbed the dead skin and almost-healed scabs off Adam with a stiff-bristled brush, I talked and talked. The burns had killed tissue that had to be removed. Once it was gone, the raw wounds would heal cleanly and without scars.

Adam kept going into coughing fits. When they’d happen, everyone backed off and let him cough until he spit up blood with great hunks of black in it. Ben had a few of those fits, too, but he rode them out while still keeping his weight on Adam.

Every so often, Samuel would stop and dose Adam with more morphine. The worst of it was that Adam never made a noise or struggled against the people holding him down. He just kept his eyes on mine while he sweat and his body shook with small tremors that grew and subsided with whatever Samuel did.

"I thought you were dead," he said, his voice a bare rasp while Samuel moved from his hands to his feet. It didn’t seem to hurt as much – at a guess there weren’t a lot of nerves left. He’d jumped into a burning building barefoot to save me.

"Stupid," I said, blinking hard. "As if I’d die without taking you with me."

He smiled faintly. "Was it Mary Jo who betrayed us at the bowling alley?" he asked, proving he hadn’t been entirely unaware of what had been going on while he was changing.

Both of us ignored the pained sound Mary Jo made.

"I’ll ask her later."

He nodded. "Better – " He quit talking, and his pupils contracted despite the morphine he’d been given.

He arched up and twisted so he could press his face into my belly, making a noise somewhere between a scream and a growl. I held him there while Samuel snarled at Ben and Mary Jo to hold him still.

Another shot of morphine, and Samuel moved us all around. Ben across Adam’s legs – "And don’t think I haven’t noticed your hands, Ben. You’re next up." Mary Jo on one arm, just above the elbow. Me on the other.

"Can you hold him?" asked Samuel.

"Not if he doesn’t want me to," I told him.

"It’ll be all right," Adam said. "I won’t hurt her."

Samuel smiled tightly. "No, I didn’t think you would."

When Samuel started on Adam’s face with the brush, I had to close my eyes.

"Shh," Adam comforted me. "It’ll be over soon."
* * *

WARREN ARRIVED NOT LONG AFTER THAT. TOO LATE to help with Adam, but he and Mary Jo held on to Ben while Samuel scrubbed his hands free of black skin and blisters. He hadn’t changed twice and started healing wrong, but it was still bad enough.

Adam had closed his eyes and was resting while I stood with my hands wrapped around his upper arm, one of the places where he hadn’t lost any skin. The connection between us hadn’t reset yet, and I had to rely on my senses to tell me what he felt. It surprised me, given how unhappy I’d been with that bond, that I missed the connection when it was gone. My ears told me that he wasn’t fully asleep, just catnapping.

Ben wasn’t as quiet as Adam had been, but he was obviously doing his best to keep his cries down. Finally, he sank his teeth into Warren’s biceps and dug in.

"Attaboy," Warren drawled without flinching. "Go ahead and chew some if it helps. Too far from the heart to do me much harm. Dang, but I hate fires. Guns, knives, fangs, and claws are tough – but fires are the worst."

Adam’s hands looked like raw hamburger, but at least they didn’t look like burnt hamburger – and one of them reached over and closed over my fingers. I tried to let go of him, but he opened his eyes and held on to me.

"Okay, that’s it," Samuel said, and he stepped back from Ben. "Sit him down on the stool and leave him alone a bit."

"I brought an ice chest filled with beef roasts," Warren said. "It’s out in the truck, so we can feed them."

Samuel jerked his head up. "Your Alpha was in trouble, and you stopped and went grocery shopping?"

Warren smiled with cool eyes while blood dripped to the floor from the arm Ben had gnawed on. "Nope."

Samuel stared at him – and Warren gazed at the wall beyond him without backing down a bit. He might like Samuel, but Samuel wasn’t his Alpha. He wouldn’t cede the lone wolf the right to question his actions.

I sighed. "Warren. Why do you have an ice chest filled with roast on hand?"

The cowboy turned to me and gave me a wide smile. "Kyle’s idea of a joke. Don’t ask." A light blush bloomed on his cheekbones. "The freezer and the fridge are already full at Kyle’s house. We put them in the ice chest out in the garage to take back to my apartment, where I have an empty freezer, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet." He looked toward Samuel. "Bit snappy, aren’t you?"

"He’s waiting for Mercy to start in on him," said Adam. His voice was faint, but, hey, we all had good hearing. "And Mercy is wondering if she should do it with all of us listening in or not."

"What’s Mercy got on you?" asked Warren. When it was obvious Samuel wasn’t going to answer, Warren looked at me.

I was watching Samuel.

"I just can’t do it any longer," he said, finally. "It’s better to go now, before I hurt someone."

I was too tired to put up with his garbage. "The hell you can’t. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ Samuel. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ " He’d helped me memorize that poem when I was in high school. I knew he’d remember.

" ‘Life’s but a walking shadow,’ Mercy, ‘a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.’ " He countered my Dylan Thomas with Shakespeare, spoken with as much weary bleakness as any stage actor ever managed. " ‘It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying . . .nothing .’ " He said the last word with a bite of bitterness.

I was so angry I could have hit him. Instead, I clapped my hands in mock appreciation.

"Very moving," I said. "And stupid. Macbeth killed his overlord and followed his ambition, bringing misery and death to everyone involved. Your life is worth more, I think, than his was. More to me – and to every patient who crosses your path. Tonight, it was Adam and Ben."

"Count me in on that," said Warren. He might not have been in on the cause of the conversation, but any wolf would have caught the gist of what we were talking about. "If you hadn’t been here when that demon got ahold of me not so long ago, I’d be dead."

Samuel’s reaction was not what I expected. He ducked his head and snarled at Warren, "I am not responsible for you."

"Yes, you are," said Adam, opening his eyes.

"That chap your hide?" suggested Warren gently. He shrugged. "People die. I know that; you know that. Even wolves like us die. Fewer people die when you are around. Those are the facts. Being upset about them don’t make them false."