Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson 7)

"Damn, damn, damn," I said, putting my hand on the dented metal. When I'd knocked her into the car, the would-be assassin/kidnapper's head had left an impression in the driver's side door - cars aren't as tough as they used to be. My old Rabbit could have taken a blow twice that hard without even noticing it. I took another step closer, and my cold bare toes bumped into warm flesh.

I looked down and met a pair of eyes that had been dark before death fogged them over. The half-fae woman had been stunning, but now, her magic gone, she looked merely ordinary. I glanced at the werewolf who had taken himself away from the body and now stood with his back toward me, facing the nearest apartment building, an apartment building with lots and lots of windows.

"We've got to get the body out of sight," I said.

I had to pull the body out of the way to open the driver's side door and pop the trunk. Asil didn't move, and I didn't ask him to. He wasn't in the way of the door - and he was still scaring me.

She jerked a little when I moved her. I was a coyote, a predator - I've killed before. I knew it was only the air left in her lungs, knew that her floppy head meant a broken neck. But her abrupt motion made me jump and drop her anyway. At least I'd moved her far enough so that I could get into the car - and I hadn't squeaked.

Only when the door was open did it cross my mind that there was a button for the trunk on the key fob in the hip pocket of the sweats. Guys' sweatpants have neat things like pockets in them.

Asil hadn't helped me move the body the first time, but as soon as the trunk was open, he picked her up without my saying anything, grabbing the gun and the cuffs she'd used on me when he bent down. Body, gun, and cuffs gave him no trouble. She was locked safely out of sight in the trunk nearly as quickly as he'd taken her from alive to dead. He stared at the trunk for a moment and flexed his hands while I stared at him, hoping he wouldn't look back at me.

I've seen a lot of wolves in human form with those bright wolf eyes. A lot of them. And none of those eyes scared me as thoroughly as Asil's had. There was something else at home in Asil's head and it had enjoyed killing the woman and would have been happy to continue the little spree. Bran's son and chief assassin, Charles, scared me, but I was confident that if Charles wanted me dead, it would be quick and painless. Asil's beast enjoyed playing with his victims.

Oh, yes, it would not be a good thing if Asil had to kill again, but I was pretty sure it would take something bigger than me to keep it from happening. After Asil's little speech in the car, I would have thought he would have tried harder not to kill anyone all by himself.

I opened my mouth to say something, and the bland little Corolla rolled past us again; the driver waved and shrugged. No parking for Hauptman Security. If I waved and shouted, would they come running or just keep looking for an empty parking space?

Empty parking space.

She'd been waiting right here for us, I thought. Right next to the only parking place, which, conveniently, had a garbage container for her to lie on top of - she'd jumped on me from above. I wondered if she'd glamoured the spot so no one tried to park in it. I wondered if she'd known Tad was here. I wondered ...

"What if she had a partner?" I asked, and started not quite running, but moving rather more briskly than a walk toward Sylvia's apartment without bothering to put on shoes. A case of frostbite I could deal with - not so much dead Sandoval girls. She'd been looking to take me alive, but hadn't hesitated to pull the gun. How did that play into our villains' plan? And if they were willing to kill me, what about Jesse? Had she already visited the Sandovals?

The only reason that I didn't flat-out sprint was Asil. If his wolf was that close to the surface, there was a chance he'd decide I was prey if I started running away.

"Why do you think there might be another one?" he asked, sounding entirely normal.

"Because so far these guys have worked in teams of more than one." But that wasn't it, not really. My instincts were chattering unhelpfully - conclusions without evidence.

He caught my not-quite lie. "The group that took Adam were human, yes? Fae and human do not work well together. Yet, you are sure she is involved."

I glanced at him. His eyes were dark again, and I was relieved.

"Mercedes? Why do you think she is part of the kidnapping plot and not of some other thing? Adam is Alpha, and you are his mate - that makes you targets for all sorts of people."

It struck me that Asil was perfectly okay with the fact that there might be two separate groups out to kill us. "I think," I said, "that adding another" - and remembered that he already thought there was more than one gun aimed at my pack even if they were all, mostly, working together - "adding yet another enemy who wants to kidnap or kill me to this soup pushes my belief in the ultimate fairness of the universe too far to one side. I just wish I knew how she knew we were coming here."

I looked up at the back windows of Sylvia's apartment. She was a smart woman who worked at a police station: her apartment was on the third floor. There was nothing to hint at a problem within. No bodies flying through the air, no broken glass, no little pink-clad Sandoval girl screaming as she ran from scary people with guns.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my dead assailant had been on her own.

"Add to that," I continued almost absently because my instincts were screaming at me. Asil's eyes were still dark, so I risked breaking into a jog. "I haven't ticked off any of the fae lately. It's not the vampires in a separate attack. If Marsilia had decided to put me out of my misery today, she would have succeeded. I wish I knew how our dead fae knew to come here. Either they overheard Tad and me talking or they somehow knew to look here - " My voice trailed off because I realized how stupid I'd been.

Someone who didn't know the soap opera of my life from close up might not realize that Gabriel's mother and he were estranged. Sylvia's apartment would be the last place I'd have looked for the kids. But someone from the outside, someone who only knew that Gabriel had gone missing with Ben and Jesse and me, someone like that might very well check out his nearest relatives. I'd overestimated our enemies, and they'd found Jesse. That's what my instincts had been telling me.

"Mercy?" asked Asil, who had sped up to keep pace with me. His beautiful accent made him sound like someone's lover instead of a man who had killed a woman with as little thought as I gave to opening a jar of mayonnaise. Maybe less thought.

Not that he scared me anymore. Not now when I was pretty sure we were going to need him soon. "I - "

The back wall of Sylvia's apartment blew out, spitting stucco, plaster, glass, insulation, and a man's body down on the sidewalk below. Some of the debris must have bounced because nearby car alarms went off. The body rolled when it hit the ground, got up, ran back at the apartment building, and did a Jackie Chan up the side. I was really happy to see him moving because I'd recognized him on the way down.