Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson 13)

The blade missed, sweeping by me and up in a strike I would never have been able to get much force behind. But Wulfe was a lot stronger than me. The pitted old blade dug into Wulfe’s own belly, spilling entrails and splashing me with blood. It was so unreal that it felt almost like I was watching a scene in a Quentin Tarantino martial arts movie.

The Soul Taker’s enraged howl rang in my aching head without making an audible sound as Wulfe laughed. My magic, it seemed, had worked after all. Though I hadn’t dreamed that this was what Wulfe would do with the moment of freedom—vampires were not built for self-sacrifice or suicide. They were vampires, in fact, because they refused to die.

Blood pooling at his feet, Wulfe tried to open his hand, fingers relaxing. But before the sickle fell to the ground, his hand moved like a striking hawk, closing around the leather-wrapped handle. He stood still, armed with the sickle, as blood continued to drip.

I tried to gather myself and managed a sort of full-body twitch. The Harvester staggered away from me, toward Warren, his footfalls heavy. Warren, who was unconscious. I was helpless to do anything to interfere as the vampire dropped to the ground and bent over the werewolf. From where I was, I couldn’t see exactly what he did, but I could hear it when he started to feed.

Feeding was how vampires were able to heal their wounds because—although I now knew, somewhat to my surprise, that vampires had souls—they were not truly alive. They did not reproduce sexually, and they could not heal using their own biological abilities. They needed to borrow healing from the living blood they fed upon.

The Soul Taker had decided to fix Wulfe’s body before sacrificing me. I looked at the blood on the floor in front of me. There was a lot of it. I wondered why it chose to feed on Warren instead of me.

“That one is dangerous,” said Coyote conversationally. If I could have turned my head, I imagined I would have seen him squatting on his heels beside me.

“Which?” I whispered.

Wulfe took no notice of my words—which meant that Coyote was keeping our conversation private.

“Both,” Coyote said. “All. But you need to destroy that weapon, Daughter. The opening it is building does not call a well-meaning god into this realm.” He considered his words. “It could be summoning a world eater.”

My brain was still not quite tracking. I could tell because I was having a conversation with Coyote while the Soul Taker used Wulfe’s body to feed upon my friend. And because the next thing I said was sort of stupid.

“We killed the river devil,” I said. I sounded offended—which I was. We’d killed that being, the world eater, at great cost. I was pretty sure that it should stay dead.

“The river devil was a conduit for great destruction,” Coyote said. “That body was a means by which our world could be devoured. A metaphor.”

“Pretty concrete for a metaphor,” I said. “It laid me up for months and put me in a wheelchair that I couldn’t move because my hands were hurt, too.”

“There is nothing in the world that says a metaphor cannot be concrete,” Coyote chided. “But if that thing—”

“The Soul Taker,” I said, and then my heart froze in my chest because Wulfe’s body stiffened and he quit drinking.

After a moment, he began feeding again.

“Don’t name it,” said Coyote kindly. “Not unless you want its attention.”

“It wants you,” I told him. “Through me.”

Coyote nodded. I couldn’t see him do it, but I knew he was nodding. “Dangerous.” He paused. “It is more likely that it is summoning something that has long since dissipated or reintegrated with the Great Spirit. Still, a summoning of that size is likely to end in disaster. You are my hands and heart in this world, Mercedes Athena Thompson.”

“Hauptman,” I said.

“Ah,” he agreed. “That is a very important part of your name. Don’t forget it.”

Warm fingers pressed against my head in farewell or blessing. Or possibly “Good-bye. You are going to die today.” With Coyote, it could be difficult to tell.

A few seconds that felt like hours later, my head cleared and I could work my arms and legs again. I didn’t think this was anything Coyote had helped me with, but I was too frantic to worry about it one way or the other.

Vampires were not supposed to kill their meals. In return, no one would tell the mortals that vampires were real. It was a pact that had stood for a very long time. It was better for all of us. The vampires followed the agreement, more or less, and were careful to hide the bodies when they “forgot,” which was often enough to leave vampires’ homes haunted by their victims. I couldn’t trust Wulfe, in his altered state, or the Soul Taker to leave Warren alive.

I reached out and grabbed the walking stick without looking for it—the best way I’d found to make sure it showed up. As soon as my fingers closed on the carved surface, I surged to my feet.

The door exploded.

Well, not really “exploded.” But it burst open with a noise that indicated bending metal and splintering wood. It felt even louder than it actually was because as soon as the door opened, the bond I shared with Adam lit up with information.

And if I had ever, once, doubted that I was loved, if I had ever doubted that my husband was a scary monster who would kill anything that threatened me, that moment disabused me of it. Which was only fair because I felt the same way.

Adam went for the vampire feeding on Warren. But without even looking up, the Harvester vanished. I hadn’t known Wulfe could teleport—though Marsilia and Stefan could, which implied an inherited gift. No reason that it could not have come from Wulfe.