"They came to help me," I said.
"And who are you?" She cocked her head to the side and I realized that I didn't sound like myself. My voice was hoarse, as if I'd been smoking for a dozen years—or screaming all night. And Nemane was blind.
"Mercedes Thompson," I said.
"Coyote," she said. "What mischief have you been making tonight?" She took a step forward, into the room, and all the werewolves stiffened. "And whose blood is feeding the night?"
"I found your murderer," I told her tiredly, resting my face against Adam's bare skin. His scent washed over me in a falsely comforting wave: he didn't love me. I was so weary that I accepted the comfort while I could. I would be alone soon enough. "And he brought his own death upon himself."
The tension in the air went down noticeably as Nemane's magic quit scenting the air. But the wolves waited for Adam to tell them the danger was over.
"Darryl, call Samuel and see if he can come," Adam said quietly. "Then call Mercy's policeman. Honey, there's a blanket and some spare clothes in the back of the truck. Fetch them."
"Should we call Warren, too?" asked Ben, looking away from Nemane so he could see Adam, but his eyes stopped on my arm. "Bloody hell. Look at her wrist."
I didn't want to, so I watched Nemane, because she was the only one who didn't look horrified. It takes a bit to horrify a werewolf. I'd certainly never managed it before.
"It's crushed," said Nemane, in her cool professorial voice. "And her arm broken above it, too."
"How can you tell that?" said Honey, returning with the blankets and clothes. "You're blind."
The fae smiled. Not a happy expression. "There are other ways of seeing."
"How can they fix that?" said Ben, looking at my arm. He sounded a lot more shaken up than I expected from Ben. Werewolves are used to violence and its results.
Nemane walked past Adam like a wolf on a scent. She bent and picked up the druid horse's skin. It must have fallen off Tim when Adam ripped him to pieces.
Those pieces might haunt my dreams for a good long time, but I was too numb to be horrified by them now.
Nemane caressed the cloak and shook her head. "No wonder we couldn't find him. Here, this is what she needs." She'd found the goblet where it had rolled under my tool chest.
"What is that?" asked Adam.
"Orfino's Bane, it was once called, Huon's cup, or Manannan's gift. It has a few uses and one of those is healing."
"That's not what it does," I told Adam in a horrified whisper.
Nemane looked at me.
"He made her drink from it," Adam said. "I thought it contained some kind of drug—but it's fairy magic?"
She nodded. "In the hands of a human thief, it allows him to enslave another, given as a gift it will heal as well, and in the hands of the fae it will testify to truth."
"I won't drink it," I told Adam's shoulder, shifting in his arms until I'd gotten as far from the cup as I could.
"It will heal her?" he asked.
We all heard a car drive up.
"It's one of mine," Adam said—I assumed he was talking to the fae because the rest of us could all recognize the sound of Samuel's car. To get here so fast he must have come from work. The hospital was only a few blocks away. "He's a doctor. I'd like to get his opinion."
When he came in, Samuel's single, awed swearword took in the whole garage: bits of Tim scattered wherever Adam had deposited them, blood all over the place, a couple of naked people (Adam and I), and Nemane in her full fae glory.
"I need you to check out Mercy's arm," Adam said.
I didn't want him to touch it. It was numb right now, but I knew that could change at any time. It looked more like a pretzel than an arm, bending in places that it shouldn't. It had been working when we came into the office. Sort of. Tim must have damaged it more while I was killing him.
No one cared what I wanted.
At first Samuel just knelt so he could look at it lying across my thighs. He whistled between his teeth. "You need to pick out new friends, Mercy. The crowd you hang out with is awfully hard on you. If things keep going this way, you're going to be dead before the year is out."
He was so relentlessly cheerful, I knew it was bad. His hands were light on my arm, but the searing pain made odd flashes of light dance in front of my eyes. If Adam hadn't been holding me, I'd have jerked away, but he held me steady, murmuring soft, comforting things I couldn't hear over the buzzing in my ears.
"Samuel?" It was Ben who asked, his voice sharp and clear.
Samuel quit touching my arm and stood up. "Her arm feels like a tube of toothpaste filled with marbles. I don't think it's something that can be tacked back together with a hundred pins or bolts."
I am not a fainting kind of person, but the imagery Samuel used was too horrible and black things swam in front of my vision. It felt like I blinked twice and someone jumped events forward a minute or two. If I'd remembered about the river sooner, Samuel's prognosis wouldn't have made me faint.
I knew I'd been out because gathering the amount of power that Adam was amassing didn't just suddenly happen. I didn't realize why he was doing it until it was too late.
"You don't have to worry anymore, Mercy," Adam murmured, his head bent so that he whispered it into my ears.
I stiffened. I tried. But tired, hurt, and terrified, I didn't have the slightest chance to fight his voice. I didn't really want to. Adam wasn't angry. He wouldn't hurt me.
I let him pull the power of his pack over me like a warm blanket and relaxed against him. My arm still hurt, but the feeling of peace that wove over me separated me from the pain just as it did from the terror. I was so tired of being afraid.
"That's it," he said. "Take a deep breath, Mercy. I won't let you do anything that will harm you, all right? You can trust me that far."
It wasn't a question, but I said «yes» anyway.
In a very quiet voice I don't think even the other werewolves could hear, he said, "Please don't hate me too much when this is over." There was no push to his voice when he said it.
"I don't like this," I told him.
He ran his chin and cheek over the side of my face in a quick caress. "I know. We're going to give you something that will heal you."
That information broke through the peace he'd given me. He was going to make me drink from the cup again. "No," I said. "I won't. I won't."
"Shh." His power rolled over me and smothered my resistance.
"I know the fae," said Samuel harshly. "Why are you so eager to help?"
"Whatever you might think, wolf" — Nemane's voice was chill—"the fae don't forget our friends or our debts. This happened because she was trying to help one of us. I can heal only her body, but it looks to me as if it is the least of the hurts she took tonight. The debt is still owed."
A cup was pressed against my lips, and as soon as I recognized the smell of it, my stomach rebelled and I retched helplessly as Adam shifted me in his arms until I wasn't throwing up on either of us. When I was finished, he tipped me back where I'd been.
"Plug her nose," suggested Darryl and Samuel pinched my nostrils together.
"Swallow fast," Adam told me. "Get it over with quickly."
I did.
"Enough," said Nemane. "It will take an hour or so, but I swear that it will heal her."
"I just hope we didn't break her doing it." Adam's voice rumbled under my ear and I sighed in contentment. I wasn't all alone yet. His arms shook and I worried that holding me was tiring him.
"No," he told me, so I must have said something. "You aren't heavy."
Samuel, used to emergencies, took control. "Honey, give me the blanket and the clothes. Go grab a chair from the office—something with a back. Darryl, take Mercy, so that—" Adam's arm tightened around my legs and he growled, making Samuel change his mind. "All right, all right, we'll wait for Honey to get back with the chair. Here she is. We'll wrap Mercy in the blanket, you send her to sleep, and then go wash up and change before the police get here."