Frost Burned: Mercy Thompson Book 7 (6 page)

I was picking up everything he felt.

I left my hand on his shoulder as I took another step back, hoping that it would give me more distance, so I could think. And then I tucked the other hand in the back of his waistband like a child in the dark—I was afraid that if I didn’t anchor myself to him in some way, I’d go back to Samuel’s house with no information at all.

It was better, though I could still only see what he saw, and his vision was oddly limited.

The silver,
his wolf said.
Too many things not working right. My eyes see, but Adam doesn’t perceive.

I patted him on the shoulder, not knowing if he could tell what I was doing or not. Words were useless. Adam had to control the wolf, and I wasn’t really there to help.

You always help,
the wolf disagreed. He tugged on our bond and took just a little more strength from me.
Always,
Adam agreed, as his wolf settled around him again.

“Mr. Hauptman, am I boring you?”

Adam moved his full attention to our enemy, and Mr. Jones flinched. That flinch satisfied me and made me hungry at the same time—I liked his fear. I liked it very much.

“No, Mr. Smith,” said Adam softly. “I find you very interesting at the moment.”

“Jones,” snapped the man behind the desk. The lie of his name smelled tainted. His angry reaction told Adam that he was weak-minded, easy prey. No less dangerous—in some ways more dangerous because he’d react with his emotions—but under real pressure, he’d break.

Someone moved to Adam’s right and into his field of view. From my perspective, it was almost violently sudden. Like Jones, he wore black. His clothes weren’t just a uniform, though; with Adam’s perceptions I knew that he wore armor. He moved better, too. Someone had trained him for hand-to-hand combat.

I had the sense that there were other people in the room, more of the enemy, but for some reason this one held Adam’s attention. He and Jones were the only ones I could see.

Soldier,
Adam told me. He showed me the bulge of a second weapon inside the cuff of the man’s pants—knife or gun, and another on the outside of the opposite leg.

Adam watched the body language between the soldier and Mr. Jones. Jones was nominally in charge, but the men (the ones I couldn’t see but Adam was aware of) followed the second man—including Jones. Adam had seen it in the army, when the commanding officer was green and leaning a little too heavily upon the skills of the men of lower rank. The soldier demanded respect, while Jones smelled and acted like prey trying, unsuccessfully, to be a predator.

Whatever this kidnapping was, Adam was on his feet, and the pack was okay. Not good, but alive and breathing. I was aware, because Adam was, that our pack were lying in heaps behind us. All of them chained hand and foot as he was, sick from the silver and the tranquilizer but otherwise okay. Adam thought that meant that this wasn’t an extermination order. They wanted something and thought that Adam and his pack could provide it. For the moment, they were safe.

“Well?” said Jones impatiently.

Adam held his silence. They weren’t friends, and Adam wasn’t going to start a conversation about the weather. They had done their best to leave Adam powerless. He wasn’t going to expose himself further. They would—eventually—tell him what this was about; and then he would have some leverage to move them. Until then, silence was his best defense.

The politician who was not named Jones, whatever he said, leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I was told you might be difficult. We have a proposition for you, Mr. Hauptman. Our information indicated that this was the best way to ensure your cooperation.”

Adam raised an eyebrow, and the soldier smiled where Not-Jones couldn’t see him. As soon as he noticed Adam watching, the smile disappeared—but they both knew Adam had seen.

“We need you to kill someone,” the politician said. “We both know you’ve killed for the government before,
Sergeant
.” Adam had been an army ranger in the Vietnam War. Not many people outside the pack knew about it. “Don’t worry. It’s no one you’ll feel bad about. US Senator Campbell, Republican from Minnesota.” He smiled again. “I see you know who I’m talking about.”

So did I. Campbell had been in office over twenty years and was one of the loudest anti-fae, anti-werewolf voices in Congress. Ever since a few werewolves killed—and mostly ate—a man in Minnesota, he had been arguing for giving law enforcement the power to kill rogue werewolves or fae with only a judge’s warrant. He had a lot of bipartisan support because people were scared. He was a man with a plan, a centrist who didn’t fall neatly into either the conservative or liberal camps, and so could be cheered on by both sides.

“You aren’t the government,” said Adam.

“I assure you, Mr. Hauptman, I work for the US government. You saw my ID.”

I wrinkled my nose. He was lying with the truth—I recognized the smugness of his scent. Adam considered my conclusion.

“It will be an easy kill,” Jones told Adam. “In and out, then you and yours will be free to leave.”

“I have not killed for the government in a long time,” Adam told him. He should have stopped there, but I could feel when the quivery I-am-prey feeling emanating from Jones and the burn of the silver that was sharpening his temper drove him further. He gave Jones a feral smile, leaned forward, and said, “Now I only kill people who deserve it, Mr.
Smith
.”

Mr. Jones jerked back, and the smell of his fear made my nose wrinkle. Then he raised a Glock he’d hidden behind the desk.

Adam, slowed by silver and forgotten shackles, stumbled to his knees when he tried to move to respond. A shot rang out and the smell of gunpowder, blood, and death filled the air an instant before the earthquake in the pack bonds tried to throw me back to my own body.

I clung to Adam as tears and helpless anger wracked me, his and mine, while Honey’s agonized cry rang in my ears. I didn’t need to see it with my eyes because the pack bond and Adam told me who it was, told me it was fatal. By accident or design, Jones had killed Peter, with a clean bullet between his eyes, killed the heart of the pack, our sole submissive wolf, Honey’s mate.

Adam’s head was bowed as he absorbed the blow—Peter’s death and Adam’s failure to prevent it. All the other wolves in the pack were rivals, dominants who would move against the others should the wolf above them in the pack show weakness. But Peter was safe. Submissive wolves, rare, as precious as rubies, were not driven to be on top, so they could be trusted absolutely—cherished and protected from all harm.

Not your fault,
I told Adam urgently.
Not your fault they brought us here. Not your fault they shot Peter.
Not his fault that he’d been hampered by the tranquilizer, the silver, and the shackles.

Adam didn’t care what I thought. He was the Alpha, it was his duty to protect the pack, and Peter most of all had been his to keep safe. I could feel Adam’s wild rage, Adam’s desire to kill—balanced by the clear understanding that he had the rest of the pack to protect.

He swayed a little on his knees, as if his rage were a physical thing that tugged on his shoulders. I tightened my grip and felt his gratitude at my presence as he fought and bargained with his anger—and I felt his shame for the way he craved Jones’s flesh between his teeth.

Jones
is dead,
I promised.
He just doesn’t know it yet. But we are patient, we can wait until the time is ripe.

Adam went still. He forgets sometimes, does Adam, that I am as much a predator as he is.

Adam looked up, and we saw that Jones looked smug, the gun still in his hand. He thought that Adam’s bowed head and the way he’d not regained his feet meant that he was broken. The soldier who stood beside Jones’s desk was blank-faced but more wary.

Adam sorted through possibilities before he decided that Jones needed to be a little more afraid because that fear would slow him down if he decided a second example might be needed. And if that fear made him try something, Adam would kill him sooner rather than later and deal with the soldier instead.

Adam stood slowly, which was a lot more difficult than he made it look since his hands were chained behind his back and his ankles shackled together. It required strength and balance, and he used the movement to center himself.

He let his wolf meet Mr. Jones’s eyes, tensed his shoulders, and twisted the cuff on his left wrist. Metal screamed. I felt the burn as steel cut into his wrist before the joint of the cuff broke. He continued to watch Jones, daring him to do something, anything, as he repeated the procedure on his right wrist. He didn’t bother moving quickly, even after the handcuffs fell to the ground. As he brought his freed hands forward, Jones jerked the gun up, but the soldier slammed it down on the desk, unfired.

“You want to shoot them all and try again, Mr. Jones?” he said. “You aren’t going to be able to get another pack the same way—and Hauptman was specifically required.”

Jones fought for the gun, but the other pulled it away with contemptuous ease.

“Shut up,” the soldier gritted. “You’ve made a proper cluster of this. Just sit there and keep your mouth closed. I told him you were the wrong choice for this.”

Adam turned his attention to the manacles at his ankles. His deliberate inattention was an insult, a power play—and it scared me.
I
wanted to watch Jones and company to make sure that they didn’t shoot Adam.

They won’t,
he assured me as he pried the manacle off his right ankle with a sharp twist of his hands.
They have gone to too much trouble to get me to kill me right now. They will wait until I kill their senator and prove that the werewolves need to be eliminated. Bran warned me that I was becoming too well-known, that someone would try to make some sort of play against me.

And when you don’t kill Senator Campbell?
I asked. Adam would not do their bidding, there was no question in my mind about that.

I will do anything to keep my pack safe,
Adam corrected me gently as he pulled the second ankle restraint into two separate pieces before twisting them together.
Even kill Campbell. Make sure Bran understands that when you tell him about this, so he’s not taken by surprise.

That’s what Bran failed to see when he’d been worried that Adam’s temper meant that he should be kept out of the public’s eye. Adam had a hot temper, but he was always, always in control because he needed to protect the ones he cared about—even if it destroyed him instead.

“Understand this,” Adam said in a guttural voice, staring at the soldier, though I knew his attention was also on Jones. “If another of my pack is harmed, all bets are off. You might be able to kill me, but not before I have taken care of ‘Jones,’ you, and a fair swath of the rest of your men.”

“Understood.”

Mercy, get Samuel, get Bran. Find out where they have us. Get the pack free before I have to do what they want,
Adam told me, then sent me away from him and back to my own body in Samuel’s guest bedroom.

I opened my own eyes and realized that there was noise downstairs—a wolf growling and a woman’s singsong voice. Magic, fae magic, shivered over my skin in a rising tide.

I bolted to my feet and down the stairs, taking them six or eight at a time. Ben would have felt Peter’s death. Wounded and scared, that couldn’t have been a good thing.

Ariana was curled up in a corner of the room crooning in a language that sounded vaguely like Welsh but wasn’t because I couldn’t understand a word. Ben, in the middle of his change, was crouched on the couch, all of his attention on the stranger in the room.

Jesse and Gabriel were both standing between Ben and Ariana. Gabriel was bleeding—neither of them would be a match for Ben, three-quarters changed and raging because of the drugs in his system, the mess of the pack, Adam’s rage, and Peter’s death.

All of this I saw as I took the last leap that would have taken me to the floor if I hadn’t altered my trajectory. I twisted in the air and hit Ben instead, and we
both
hit the floor.

I pinned him like my mother had taught me to pin calves or goats when I was ten years old, and she decided that I should follow her footsteps as a rodeo queen. Her efforts were doomed—I didn’t like horses, not like she did, and she only had two weeks to visit before she had to go back to her own life. But goat tying had been fun, and I’d practiced for most of a summer. I hadn’t thought about it for a decade or two, but the motions came right back to me as soon as my hands were on the enraged werewolf. Desperation is a really good way to inspire muscle memory.

“Ben, stop,” I said, holding his head twisted and pressing a knee on his shoulder. “Ariana is not an enemy.” I glanced at her, and added, “Not unless you scare her into doing something horrible to one of us. We need to get Jesse and Gabriel safe, then find the pack. I need you, so suck it up.” He was still struggling, and I put my mouth right next to his ear.

“They killed Peter, Ben.” I whispered, but I let him hear my own grief.

Peter had once charged out with a sword and saved the pack from an enraged fae that I’d brought to their doorstep. He was a great big sweetie who loved his mate and played video games with a devastating intensity and a love of planning that led his team to victory more than once, despite his disinterest in winning or losing. He left a gaping hole in the pack that had us all reeling.

“They killed Peter,” I told Ben. “And we need to make them pay.”

Ben stilled beneath me and started to shake. I released my hold but stayed on top of him, burying my face in his fur so I could hide my tears. It wasn’t only my grief that wracked me, but Ben’s, Adam’s, Honey’s, and that of the whole pack. We had failed to protect our heart, and now he was dead.

It wasn’t fair. Ben wasn’t through his change yet, maybe halfway, and at that stage, I had been assured, his skin would hurt if someone breathed on it. But I clung to him and let the wave of emotion hit me and waited for it to ebb.

“Mercy?” asked Jesse. “Mercy, what happened? Is Dad okay? Mercy?”