Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson 11)

Paul grabbed the key out of the air and saluted Adam. He opened the door for me to precede him.

I would have preferred either Kelly or Luke. Paul was one of the wolves who would rather I were not his Alpha’s mate. When Adam had told the pack he would no longer tolerate anyone dissing me, Paul had been very quiet around me. Paul had gotten a divorce a couple of months ago—and that hadn’t sweetened his temperament even a little bit. I wasn’t afraid of Paul, but he wasn’t someone I wanted to hang out with, either. That was probably why Adam had sent him with me, to force us to deal with each other.

“At least you didn’t suggest Uncle Mike’s,” Paul said acerbically when we were far enough down the hall that Adam wouldn’t hear him.

Before I could respond, we turned a corner and found ourselves in the middle of a wild rumpus of the first order. A tourist bus had evidently arrived while we’d been twiddling our toes in the boardroom. The check-in desk and the surrounding room were full of dozens of well-to-do retirees, a pizza delivery guy with a big box, and four people from a local flower shop pushing in carts of bright-colored mini-bouquets in small clear vases.

I dropped back to let Paul take point. He was a big man and people moved to let him through. I trailed in his wake through the crowd and out the revolving door into the fresh air.

“Don’t worry,” said Paul as we cleared the hotel, “I won’t attack you or anything.”

I rolled my eyes. “As if you could.”

He started to say something, shook his head, and muttered, “Let me try this again.”

“Try what?” I asked.

Instead of answering me, he stopped dead and turned in a slow circle. “Do you smell that?”

Having sharp senses is one thing. Paying attention to them so they do some good is another. I inhaled. The hotel was in the middle of town; there were a lot of scents in the air. One of those scents just didn’t belong.

“Gunpowder?” I asked. “Why are we smelling gunpowder?”

I looked around but there weren’t any people outside the hotel who were near enough that the scent could be coming off them even if they’d spent the morning out shooting—even if they had rolled in gunpowder.

Paul focused on the cars, which made more sense because they were closer.

What we had were two minivans, a battered car with a pizza sign on the top, and, closest to us, a tour bus.

The silver bus purred at rest, her big luggage doors open to expose the belly of the beast. I took two steps toward her, but as soon as I did, the smell of her diesel engine overpowered the smell of gunpowder.

The diesel, being a volatile organic, would travel farther than the gunpowder. If I was smelling gunpowder outside the range of the diesel, it could only be because the gunpowder smell was coming from somewhere other than the bus.

Meanwhile, Paul had examined the first of the minivans. He shook his head at me and took a step toward the little battered car with a local pizza sign on the roof. Frowning, he tilted his head.

I ran up to him and got hit in the face with a wash of garlic, tomatoes, cheese, pepperoni—the usual. He looked at me and shrugged; his stomach rumbled. He grinned, a boyish expression he’d never turned on me before, then shook his head.

We both tried the second minivan, but it smelled of flowers and baby’s breath. The baby’s breath made Paul sneeze.

He gave half a growl, stalked back to the pizza car, and pulled open the driver’s-side door. He stuck his head in.

“Pizza is strong, but it shouldn’t smell like gunpowder,” he said to me. But by then I could smell it, too, wafting out of the open door. I saw him in my mind’s eye, the pizza delivery boy carrying one of those big vinyl pizza bags designed to carry multiple boxes of pizzas.

Paul and I both ran, leaving the door of the pizza car open.

When two people run into a crowded room, a lot of drama happens—shouts and shuffling and people with mouths agape. One of the things that doesn’t happen is a miraculous clearing of pathways. Paul did that all by himself.

I hoped that the old woman he shoved to the ground would be okay, but I didn’t hesitate when I jumped over her. Time enough to apologize and feel guilty after we hunted down the threat.

We ran for the boardroom. Once out of the crowd, I was faster than Paul, so I was in front when we turned the last corner.

“Adam,” I yelled. “Gun.”

The pizza man, one hand raised to knock at the closed door, turned a startled gaze at me. I supposed he hadn’t heard us until I yelled.

“Bomb,” corrected Paul, who had spent ten years in the SWAT unit of a large city back east. He’d never told me which one—we just didn’t talk that much.

The pizza man screamed, “Open the goddamned door, you freaks!” And, with a panicked look at my rapid approach, he did something with the pizza box.

The world stopped in a roar of sound and light.

One moment I was upright and running, the next I was facedown on the rough hotel carpet, struggling to breathe. The air was full of dust and my lungs didn’t want to work because of the heavy weight on top of me. Pain and loss shivered down the pack bonds with the even heavier weight of our dead.

Our dead.

“Paul,” I tried to say.

Though the lifeless weight of him on my back didn’t move, I felt the touch of his fingers on my cheek. They were warm, which I knew was weird.

They should have been cold. The touch of the dead is usually cold.

“Heyya, lady,” Paul said, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. “You’ll tell him, right?”

“Paul,” I said. “No.”

He laughed. “Yes, you will. You’re fair like that.” There was a little pause and he said a bit wistfully, “Tell Mary Jo that I loved her, okay?” Then he made a sharp sound. “No. No. That wouldn’t be right. Just make sure they all know what I did. So they will think well of me. I’d like that.”

And then Paul was gone, even though his body lay on top of me, the smell of him, of his blood, all around me.

7

It took Adam, Kelly, and Luke a while to dig me out of the debris. By that time, Paul’s extremities had cooled and his blood had stopped flowing over my skin. When they pulled Paul’s body off me, we were stuck together with his blood.

Maybe it was shock or the shot the EMT people gave me, but I was pretty loopy. I remember the faces of the EMT people dealing with two unhappy wolves (Kelly and Luke had both shifted to dig rubble), which varied from terror to fascination. But other than that, I don’t remember getting from the hotel to the hospital.