Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson 11)

I called Kyle.

“Hey, Mercy,” he said. “Do you know when I can expect Warren to come home?”

Yep, he was still mad.

“No,” I said. “Is Zack still there?”

“Yes.”

“I think you and he should come to pack headquarters,” I said. “Please. I don’t like it that the whole pack is out of contact.”

I could practically feel the worry win out over anger. But all he said was “Okay.” Then he disconnected.

My phone rang. I looked down and saw that it was Stefan.

“Hey,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch. I was about ready to drive over again.”

“I have the information you need on Frost,” Stefan said. “But I had to go to Marsilia to get it, and it comes with a price.”

“What price?” I asked.

Marsilia’s voice gave me my answer. “Stefan needs to stay here until this is over. This family, the Hardesty family, they produce people who control the dead, Mercy. More people like Frost. I do not want to lose Stefan to them, or worse, have him turned against me as a weapon.”

Sherwood was listening intently. He made a motion and Joel, in his dog form, got up from where he’d been playing with one of Kelly’s boys and walked over to us so he could listen, too.

“Okay,” I told Marsilia. “I can agree with that reasoning.”

“I am so pleased,” said Marsilia with a bite in her voice, “that you approve. Particularly as Stefan does not. I will tell him that his pet doesn’t think that he can defend himself, either.”

I thought of all the replies I could make. I was reasonably sure that Stefan could hear me—though he wasn’t saying anything.

“Stefan is dear to me,” I said at last. “I would not have him take unreasonable risks for doubtful outcomes. If Death or the witch she brought with her can command the dead as Frost did”—and didn’t that sound stupid?—“if one of them is better at it than Frost was, I would rather that all my vampire allies stay as far away from the witches as possible. For their sakes and my own.”

“Why, Mercy,” she purred, “you’ve been spending too much time with politicians. Be careful or you’ll end up just like them.”

I didn’t respond.

Finally she said, in a brisk and businesslike fashion, “I did not connect Frost to the witch family until Stefan asked me about him.”

“They are connected, then?” I asked.

“Yes. I knew he’d come from Bonarata to monitor me, and I assumed he was one of Bonarata’s. I did not examine him closely—such things can be misunderstood. I did not want to give Bonarata reason to come boiling out of Europe so he could stick his big feet in the middle of my affairs.”

“Understandable,” I said.

“But, since matters between me and the Master of Milan have been altered in the past few months, when Stefan asked me to check into Frost, I called Jacob.” Iacopo Bonarata, she meant, the Master of Milan himself.

That was a lot more action than I’d expected. I hadn’t expected Stefan to take matters to Marsilia at all.

“Jacob assured me that Frost showed up at his doorstep twenty years ago, a full-fledged vampire. He was, I am fairly sure, though it is difficult to ascertain such things over the phone, surprised to find that Frost was young enough that we had to dispose of his body. From the condition of that body, Wulfe and I estimate that Frost was no more than seventy years old—dating from his human birth, not his vampiric rebirth.”

“Who made him?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” Marsilia said. “But I have called around to seethes where I have allies. I found that there are at least three other vampires who share his bloodline.”

“I thought Frost took over all the other seethes,” I said.

“Do you think Bonarata would have allowed that?” she said. “No. But he took over most of the seethes of the western United States, all of them except for Hao’s and mine, before he died. Hao’s probably doesn’t count, since he is the only vampire in his seethe. Seattle doesn’t count because it was the werewolves who kept him away from there, not the vampires. The vampires in Seattle barely qualify as a seethe at all.”

“Okay,” I said. “But how did you discover that there were vampires made by Frost’s maker in your allies’ seethes?”

I didn’t know if she’d answer that question. Vampires are a secretive bunch. I could feel her hesitation, but Stefan made a muffled noise.

They had gagged him.

“If Stefan doesn’t come out of the seethe as soon as we deal with the witches,” I murmured softly, “then Adam and I will have to come visit.”

“Adam and I will have to come visit,” repeated Lilly’s little-girl voice. “Adam and I will have to come visit. Yummy.”

Lilly was a special vampire, extraordinarily gifted with music, but incapable of taking care of herself. See also “homicidally inclined.”

“Lilly, what did I tell you?” Marsilia said.

“Behave,” Lilly said sullenly, “or I can’t listen in.”

“That’s it,” Marsilia said. “Now, where were we?”

“How did you discover that there were other vampires made by Frost’s maker in other seethes?”

She sighed. “I did tell Stefan I would answer all of your questions, as long as they pertained to Frost or the Hardesty witches.”

“Wow,” I said involuntarily. Both that she’d agreed to it—and that she’d told me what she had agreed to.

“We are not enemies,” Marsilia told me. “Uneasy allies, perhaps, but not enemies.”

“I agree,” I told her. “I just didn’t know that you did, too.”

“I don’t like you, Mercy—though watching Bonarata run around in circles was almost enough to change my mind—but I do like Adam. More importantly, I trust him.” She sighed again. “And, I suppose, you as well.”

I didn’t trust her at all, so I didn’t say anything.

After a moment, she answered my question. “I asked my allies and my friends if they had vampires whose makers they were unsure of. In those places where that was true, I visited their seethes myself. I knew what Frost . . . smelled like, I suppose, though that isn’t quite the way it works. A Master Vampire can tell if a vampire is made by someone other than themselves. Eventually, with practice, we learn to tell which other Master made a vampire. So I went to those seethes where there were unknowns—vampires made by someone their own Master could not identify for certain. In three of those cases, the maker was the same as the vampire who made Frost.”