Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson 12)

“Were you injured?” asked Adam.

“No, boss,” said Warren. “Kyle kept the big bad wolves from hurting me. Even though I told him to stay inside and call you.”

“Four to one,” said Kyle clearly. “They didn’t have a chance.” He lied, but he didn’t intend anyone to believe it. “But how many times am I going to get an opportunity to shoot someone without consequences?”

Warren made a noise. I couldn’t tell if it was a growl or a purr. “Got to go, boss. Gotta talk sense into someone.”

I TRIED TO CALL STEFAN TWICE THAT NIGHT. THE SECOND time I left a message on his phone. He didn’t return my call.

7

I GOT HOME LATE FROM WORK ON SATURDAY. LUCIA had saved me dinner, which I ate by myself. That’s not to say that I was alone.

We were keeping an extra werewolf at the pack home because of the various threats—though since the night Kyle had shot one of the wolves, we had seen neither hide nor hair of the outsiders be they werewolves, smoke beasts, or vampires. Tonight our extra werewolf was Ben. He sat at the kitchen table opposite me while I ate and told me an incident in the ongoing efforts of the subversive IT personnel (which included computer programmers, system operators, and database administrators) to play mind games with the unfortunate corporate minions who were supposed to be in charge.

In this episode they’d (I was pretty sure that the unnamed perpetrator of most of these was Ben himself) adjusted the e-mail of one of the most disliked executives so that every e-mail he sent out also sent a copy to his wife and his boss. These e-mails included X-rated love letters between the executive and one of the HR people. Ben assured me—with example encounters as proof—that it couldn’t happen to a nicer pair of people. Since this had just happened today, the final outcome was yet to be determined.

He made me laugh, which was the point, I think, before he left me to go do some work he’d brought with him.

Jesse had some friends over and, after Ben left, they twice made forays into the kitchen for sustenance. They made popcorn and had to come back for it. On both incursions, Jesse’s friend Izzy kept giving me oddly apologetic looks. But I was too distracted by my own growing misery to worry about what Izzy had to apologize for.

Despite my initial victory, Adam had resumed his efforts to stay out until after I had to go to bed. He’d slept in the guest room the last few nights so as not to wake me up. My misery was complicated by my absolute conviction that if Adam didn’t want to make an effort, it didn’t matter what I did. A relationship was a two-way street. I would fight—but he had to fight, too.

Jesse’s friends went to their various homes. Jesse went to bed. And after a half an hour of internal debate, I gave up on Adam and followed her example.

I don’t know what made me glance out the window as I was getting ready to go to bed.

Wulfe was stretched out on the roof of my parts car. He’d placed small LED lanterns on the four corners of his chosen stage—all had been set to the night-vision-saving red light. The Rabbit was a small car, so Wulfe’s legs and bare feet dropped down the windshield.

And there went any chance that I was going to sleep anytime soon.

I was pretty sure he was naked, but it was hard to tell because the naughty bits were covered by a large piece of white cardboard. There was a picture drawn on the cardboard—a crudely drawn red flower with two leaves at the bottom of a long stem that looked remarkably like the pieces of anatomy that the cardboard was covering. Wulfe had died when he was still a teenager. His pale hair framed a face that would never grow old but also would never fulfill the promise of his not-quite-mature features. He looked younger than Jesse.

I wasn’t sure of the effect that he’d intended his theatrical staging to have on me—but I was pretty sure he hadn’t intended to make me sad.

The vampire saw me looking at him and blew me a kiss just as someone knocked on my door.

“A minute,” I said, grabbing my robe and wrapping myself in it.

It was Ben.

“Mercy,” he said. “Is there any legitimate reason for Wulfe to be running around outside? I’m catching his scent all over.” Apparently, he hadn’t seen Wulfe’s passion play on my Rabbit.

It was a sign of how much Wulfe bothered him that he didn’t use any swear words at all.

“He’s stalking me,” I told him. I’d forgotten that Wulfe hadn’t been one of the threats Adam had presented to the pack.

Ben’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Excuse the fuck out of me? Could you repeat that?”

And he was back to normal.

“He told us that he is stalking me,” I said again, though I knew Ben had heard me perfectly well the first time.

“Okay,” he said, then added a few sentences creatively spiced with expletives that boiled down to, “That would have been a good thing to let your security know in advance, don’t you think?”

He was right, and I had thought about it. “Adam didn’t tell the pack,” I told him. “So I didn’t know if he wanted it to be kept secret or not, and he hasn’t been around to ask.”

Ben tightened his lips and I decided without proof that he was upset with Adam, too. I knew that the pack was watching the two of us with concern. But Adam wasn’t the issue right now.

“Wulfe hasn’t made any aggressive moves so far,” I told Ben—reminding myself at the same time. “In fact, he’s the one who dumped me in the river to break the smoke demon … smoke beast’s hold on me, which saved my life.” The last thing I wanted was Ben going out and picking a fight with Wulfe. Werewolves were tough, no doubt, but Ben was not in Wulfe’s weight class. So I said, lamely, “Maybe he doesn’t intend any harm.”

“Saint Elmo’s hairy ass he doesn’t intend any harm,” Ben exploded. “If Wulfe is following you around, it’s not to sell you magazine subscriptions. Fucking hell, Mercy.”

I shrugged, though I agreed wholeheartedly with his assessment. It just wasn’t useful to run around shrieking in fear. “So far, Ben, all that he’s done is save my life.”

Ben opened his mouth, then frowned at the window. “Where’s that light coming from?” he muttered, and not to me. He pushed his way into the bedroom and stalked up to the window. He stared out for a few seconds and then pulled down the blinds. He gave me an unreadable look and pulled the blinds down on the other windows, too.

He walked back to me and, in a very gentle voice, swore for a solid thirty seconds without repeating himself once.

When he wound down, he said, “Mercy, he can walk right into this house because some damn fool brought him in when we thought he was dying.”

“I think he might have been able to come in anyway,” I said. “Even if a vampire is unconscious, you have to invite them into your home or they can’t come. Ogden says he did not invite him in, not that he remembers, anyway.”

Ben said, “I don’t know that I’m comfortable with you sleeping up here alone. Where is Adam?”

“Darned if I know,” I told him. There must have been something in my voice because his face softened.

“What is up with him?” Ben asked. “He has been a right bastard these past few weeks.”