Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson 7)

I couldn't help it, I laughed. "Zombie fae. That's all we needed. I don't know about you, but I'm going to get a really good night's sleep with zombie fae running around. I'll go see if I can track her."

"Mercy," Adam said.

"I won't approach," I promised. "I'll just see where she's going and come back and get you. By the time any of you wolves can change, she'll be long gone."

Since young Sandovals were beginning to filter out of the house to see what the excitement was all about, I didn't strip before changing into my coyote. Adam helped me get the sweatshirt off when my coyote-self got stuck in it - and only then did I remember that I'd shifted right in front of Armstrong and Tony, neither of whom had known what I was.

One of my foster father Bryan's favorite sayings had been, "No use crying over spilt milk." Besides, Tad must have used the distraction to get the fae cuffs out of the trunk because I caught a glimpse of him slipping Peace and Quiet under his shirt, so something good came out of it anyway.

I put my nose down and was off and running. Asil was right - she'd begun to rot, and she left a very clear trail.

Adam ran beside me in his human form. Apparently he didn't want me out zombie hunting on my own. Coyotes run a great deal faster than people can, and I run faster than most coyotes. Werewolves are good runners, but even a werewolf can run only so fast in their human form - four-footed travel is a lot quicker than two. He was keeping up with me, and moving faster than any human could have - and maybe I wasn't running at my top speed. Not even close, really.

Having Adam beside me if I had to confront a zombie fae assassin was worth slowing down for.

Chapter Ten

I thought we were going to catch her. It hadn't been five minutes since Sofia had broken into the meeting - and how fast could a zombie fae assassin run?

But when we got out to Bombing Range Road, the nearest main thoroughfare (so named because the area had been a bombing range back in WWII), the trail disappeared at the edge of the road. It was full dark, though it was only 6:00 P.M., but dark doesn't bother me much. I had a clear view in either direction for several miles, and there was no dead woman running along the side of the road. There were, however, a number of cars traveling both directions.

"She got into a car," Adam said, trying not to appear winded, as I cast back and forth with my nose to the ground. "Someone picked her up - or she hitched a ride."

Disturbing to speculate about either way, I thought, but there was nothing we could do about it now. "Disturbing" was a good word. Of all the things that had happened over the past few days, a dead fae getting up and running off might just be the most disturbing.

Still - a zombie. Maybe it would intrigue Marsilia enough she'd forget about her car. Not likely, but maybe. I wasn't sure I should feel responsible for the damage to the trunk. How could I have been expected to know that the dead fae would break out on her own?

Adam stared down the road. "If you hadn't slowed down for me, you might have caught her."

Maybe I would have - and maybe that wouldn't have been a good thing. Warren's truck pulled up, and Warren leaned over and opened the passenger door.

"No luck?" Warren asked, as we hopped in. I took the middle seat.

"No. Looks like she got in a car. Could have gone either way."

Warren turned the truck around and headed back before he said anything. "That's disturbing," he said.

Zombies or not, the press needed to be appeased.

Tony had checked in with his boss and given him the official story that Adam and Armstrong had come up with - which was basically to leave out Cantrip's involvement completely. The conveniently out-of-sight anonymous mercenaries took the majority of the blame. They had been hired to force the werewolves to act in violence and attack Senator Campbell, to get rid of the senator and to make the werewolves appear to be monsters.

Adam didn't look like a monster. He looked like a handsome, charismatic man. He was very good on camera.

The person behind the plot apparently panicked when some of his mercenaries were captured while holding Kyle Brooks prisoner. He had them killed to keep them from talking.

Armstrong had done some uncleaning to reveal the deaths of the men caught kidnapping Kyle because it was now a useful part of the story.

When they heard about the killings, the other mercenaries left, burning the winery and letting Adam and the pack break free. Officials were trying to find the mercenaries (with an implied fat chance) and the man behind the plot (also fat chance). And hopefully, everyone would leave satisfied with nothing but the truth - if not quite the whole truth.

So Adam, Tony, Armstrong, Kyle, and Warren headed for Kyle's office in Kennewick by way of Adam's house so he could dress appropriately for a press conference, leaving the rest of us to hold down the fort. The good news was that between the runaway dead woman and the upcoming press conference, no one had said anything to me about the fact that I'd changed into a coyote. Maybe they all assumed I was a half-blood fae like Tad.

When Ben came up to tell me that there was a messenger from Marsilia for me at the front door, I was in one of the upstairs bedrooms reading James and the Giant Peach to the youngest three Sandovals. Kyle's stash of emergency family-in-need supplies included a big box of books designed to appeal to a wide range of age groups.

"It's just getting to the good part," said Sofia. "We're almost to the giant bugs."

"Can you keep reading?" I asked Sylvia.

"Who is Marsilia?" she asked, taking the book from me.

"The woman who owns the car I've been driving around," I told her.

She winced - she'd seen the car.

"Is that the vampire, Mercy?" asked Sissy, who was nearly seven going on thirty.

"Vampires?" Sylvia asked. "There are vampires, too?" And then she said, "You stole a vampire's car and trashed it?"

I winced, too. "Officially, there are no vampires. If you don't believe in them, they will leave you alone. So it's best if you don't believe in them."

Maia nodded solemnly. "My best friend Penny asked me if there were vampires, and I told her, no. I did tell her I rode a werewolf, and her mama told me that lying wasn't good. I wasn't lying that time, but sometimes lying is good, right? Mercy, will you come to my house when they come over again and tell them I'm not lying?"

Maia was either going to grow up to rule the world or loose a planetwide plague upon the land. Maybe both. She had started kindergarten this year, or should have anyway, so we had a little time before we had to look for a place to hide from her.