Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson 13)

In human form, which for me was the better shape for fighting, I had years of martial arts training backed by a recently hard-earned black belt. I carried a gun and a cutlass. But even there, Adam was a better fighter. He’d spent most of his life in battles—first as an army ranger and an LRRP (long-range reconnaissance patrol, essentially a scout) in Vietnam. After the war, he’d been Alpha of a werewolf pack and served in that role for almost half a century.

But in a fight where magic was a strong possibility, even an unpredictable immunity to magic made me less vulnerable. It made sense that I should go first.

I caught his arm. Continuing our probably useless attempt to be stealthy, I wiggled my fingers to indicate magic, tapped my chest twice, and then held up one finger by itself.

Adam’s lips tightened and a streak of white appeared on his cheek when he clenched his jaw. Given that reaction, it surprised me when he nodded. He made a downward gesture with the flat of his hand, indicating a space about knee height.

That made sense, too. I was a more difficult target in my coyote form, more unexpected and quicker than when I walked on two feet. I hadn’t managed to prove it to myself one way or the other, but I thought that my immunity might work better when I was wearing my coyote self, too.

I glanced over my shoulder at the road that ran by Stefan’s house. It was a fairly busy one, but at this time of the very early morning, when the darkness ruled, there was no one around. I stripped quickly out of my clothes and changed as I dropped my underwear on the ground. Unlike the werewolves, my shifting was both painless and virtually instantaneous.

I felt one claw catch in fabric that tore and hoped it was my underwear. I’d been wearing a new shirt my youngest sister had sent me for her birthday. I usually gave her something on my birthday, too. I don’t remember when it started or why, but it was a tradition now. This shirt was a T-shirt that said When the Zombie Apocalypse Comes, Remember That I Am Faster Than You in glow-in-the-dark lettering.

I shook myself to get rid of the last of the changing tingles and pressed my shoulder against Adam’s leg to tell him I was ready.

He fished my carry gun out of the pile of clothing, checked it, and tucked it into his waistband. He hesitated a moment, then simply drew my cutlass from its sheath, holding the blade against his body where it would not be seen by any passing motorist—though the road was still quiet.

I made a noise. The cross guard was silver.

“It’s not a cross guard,” murmured Adam almost inaudibly. “It’s a guard with a knuckle bow. Only the knuckle bow is silver. I’ll be careful.”

I paused. It wasn’t the correction. I knew the cutlass didn’t have a cross guard. A cross guard formed a cross shape with the blade. I’d made that mistake with Auriele once and been treated to a five-minute lecture that ensured I always called it a cross guard out of sheer perversity. We were getting along better these days, but now it was a habit.

I had not remembered, if anyone told me, that only the knuckle bow was actually silver. That was a good thing to know.

But I hadn’t called it a cross guard out loud. I couldn’t talk in my coyote form. He’d read my mind again.

It didn’t matter that I’d just tried to do that with him a few minutes ago. My breath hitched as if something were tightening around my throat. What if he could read my mind all the time?

“Not usually,” Adam told me softly, his attention still on the door and what lay beyond. Evidently our plans should be silent, but he didn’t think it made sense to worry about a stealthy approach. “But a few times tonight. You must be a little tired, or it might be the knock on the head. I do not lie to you, Mercy. We can talk later if you need to.”

He didn’t lie to me, that was true. Most werewolves quit bothering with lies because any other werewolf and quite a few of the other supernatural creatures can hear a lie. I could. Adam didn’t lie even about very painful things. The reminder that he would tell me what he knew allowed me to allow our bonds, pack and mating, to lie lightly upon me again. As soon as I quit struggling, I could breathe.

With me standing in front of him, Adam had to lean forward to knock on the door, three sharp knocks. When nothing happened, he rang the doorbell three times, too. Having given anyone inside a chance to welcome us, he landed a swift kick on the door, splintering the frame as if it were a movie prop.

The door swung open to an apparently empty house.

I could smell old blood, various cleaners, and personal scents that made up Stefan’s usual household smells. The fae scent that didn’t belong was present, but no stronger than it had been outside.

I padded cautiously over the cool flagstone of the entryway to crouch in the darker shadows beside the old upright piano that occupied the small space between the entryway and the living room. This allowed me to get an unobstructed view of the living room—which was apparently unoccupied. When nothing stirred, Adam stepped into the room, bringing my cutlass to guard position.

It had initially surprised me that he had chosen the blade over a gun, his or mine. But guns were loud and would attract neighbors. Whatever we were facing in Stefan’s home would not be made better by adding a bunch of human cannon fodder into the mix.

The cutlass in the hands of a werewolf who knew what he was doing would be quiet and nearly as deadly as a gun. Possibly, depending on what kind of fae we faced, more deadly. I hadn’t seen him fight with my blade, though I’d seen him fight with other swords and swordlike things. The cutlass was unlikely to give him any trouble.

I’d had time to think about the fae magic I’d been smelling. Fae had very distinctive odors, depending upon the magic they used. Some of them smelled earthy or like water. Others smelled of fire or woodlands. I used to think there were only earth, air, fire, and water, until I encountered more fae. Some of the Gray Lords smelled like hunting cats or lightning. Some of them just smelled like themselves.

This fae smelled... like nothing I’d ever scented before. Not so much a different scent, but less of a scent. It had to be magic if Adam couldn’t smell it. But it didn’t smell right even for that. I had no idea what we were facing.

Adam shut the front door behind us. Any close examination would reveal the damage to the latch, but people driving along the nearby road shouldn’t notice it—not the way they’d notice a door hanging open with light spilling out onto the porch steps.

I’d been inside Stefan’s house a couple of times before, enough to know the general layout. The entry and living room could have belonged to a 1920s craftsman, contrasting starkly with the soulless exterior that had been built to match the other houses in the area. The flagstone entry gave way to dark oak floors covered with scattered Persian rugs, Shaker-style couches, and chairs built with more dark wood and woven earth-tone fabrics.

The living room opened to a larger, more airy space that was the dining room and kitchen. The look here was modern and sleek, with lots of shiny chrome softened by earthy tiles. The two parts of the house should not have blended as well as they did, not without walls to soften the change. But the overall effect was, usually was, homey. But that wasn’t how Stefan’s home felt now.

The atmosphere reminded me of childhood expeditions to the haunted mansion at a traveling carnival, nerve-tingling but also sordid. I could not tell exactly what was causing it: the fae whose magic I could still sense, or the ghost who sat watching me from the big couch that took up the long wall of the living room.

I’d met Daniel before he became a ghost. Now the fledgling vampire sat on the middle section of the Shaker couch, absolutely motionless, as vampires often did. He sat near a big Tiffany floor lamp that was the source of the light reflected in the outside windows. That he did not cast a shadow in the light was the only real sign he was a ghost.