I could see that as I looked into him. I could feel the pack bonds the way he did, as connections to each of us. Through those bonds I felt their frantic effort to help Adam—and I felt when Sherwood stepped in, his power sweeping through every wolf. I only barely managed to shield myself from being pulled in.
The power that pulsed into Adam was more focused, more useful, with Sherwood directing it from his end. But I could feel the Soul Taker’s triumph as Adam began to lose the battle anyway.
So I opened myself up to Adam, let him see me the way the Soul Taker had forced me to see others. Let him see how the Soul Taker worked so that he could take the power that Sherwood fed him and—burn the bond the Soul Taker was building.
Ours, roared the pack magic, our Alpha, our mate, ours.
Adam opened his hand and released the Soul Taker.
16
Adam put his hands over mine, where they still rested on either side of his face. He closed his eyes, breaking the searing, jumbled knowing that flowed between us.
It was through the pack bonds that I felt him gently stem the flow of power, feeling his gratitude and reassurance slide back down those channels. And I knew, because the pack knew, that everyone would be heading toward us as soon as they could.
My phone rang and I flinched. Adam’s rang, too, as his body spasmed with his change. Normally I would have let him go—changing was painful, and his change from the beast to human was much worse than the change from wolf to man. But I needed to touch him, and he made no effort to back away. Maybe he needed me to touch him, too. In due course, the sounds of his bones reshaping themselves died away.
The flesh between my hands smoothed and softened until it was Adam’s human face I held. I bowed my head until my forehead rested against his collarbone. After a moment I felt the first sobs rise up.
Eventually I ran out of steam and just lay there. At some point he’d sat up and pulled me into his lap.
“Stupid,” I said into his shoulder. I pulled back so that I could swipe at my snot-and-tear-wet face with the corner of my T-shirt. I got half of it done, but the other half of my face was too sore to touch.
“What’s stupid?” he asked, his voice a little hoarse.
“I should have known that you were too pigheaded for a mere ancient artifact to swallow down.”
He put his head on the top of mine and said, “Swear to God, Mercy. Best two out of three. Best two out of three.”
After a while, we helped each other to our feet and staggered back to the SUV.
His clothes were trashed, but that was a common hazard of being a werewolf, so we always kept spares in his SUV. While he dressed, I called Zee.
“Hello, Mercy,” he said.
“Hey.” My throat closed. I looked over at the Soul Taker and thought about how much power it represented.
“Liebchen?”
I thought of the night that Zee had come out to fight zombies with me. I thought of the collection of blades and other weapons he had once made that now resided in a secret room inside his home, where they would do no more killing. If Zee wanted to go out and slaughter people, he didn’t need the Soul Taker to do it.
“I have a bargain for you,” I said.
Mary Jo brought her first-aid kit and supplied me with painkillers and an ice pack. She didn’t comment about tear tracks or snot while she gently cleaned the sore side of my face. When I insisted on sitting on the ground next to the Soul Taker to make sure that no one touched it, she and Honey stayed to guard me.
Adam had taken a lot more damage than I had, but he was already mostly healed by the time the first of the wolves had found us. Once assured that I wasn’t going to die anytime soon, he took the rest of the wolves to see what Bonarata had done to our vampires.
Zee came about fifteen minutes later, walking through the pack vehicles to get to us. I expected him to go straight to the Soul Taker, but he stopped and squatted across from me first.
He scowled at me. “I have decided,” he said, “that the bargain you offered me still left me in your debt.”
I might have said something smart-mouthed, but it hurt to talk. I only managed an “Oh?”
He nodded almost angrily. “To regain the balance between us, I give you this.”
He touched his index finger to my forehead and coolness washed over me, taking with it the pain of the last week. I shivered with sudden exhaustion and only just remembered not to look him in the eye.
I opened my mouth and he put his finger on my lips. “Do not,” he said sourly, “even think about thanking me.”
I nodded. Then he stood up, dusted off his hands, and grabbed the Soul Taker. As soon as he touched it, I felt the blood bond I shared with it become muted.
He walked off without another word. As soon as she judged him to be out of earshot, Mary Jo said, “I didn’t know he could heal people.”
“Me, neither,” I said.
I went to work the next day because I was a small-business owner and Friday was a business day.
I took my Vanagon, begrudging every mile I put on her. Part of me knew that was stupid—cars needed to be driven. But I wanted to choose when I drove her. It had taken me a long time to find the Jetta I’d totaled in August. Old VWs were scarce. I’d have to get serious about running down a replacement. Maybe I’d see if Adam wanted to take a weekend and head to Seattle.
About nine in the morning, I was underneath the greasiest engine compartment I’d seen for a couple of weeks, trying to find an electrical wire hidden in a half inch of mud-grease. I knew—from my own investigations on the upper part of the engine compartment—that terrible mechanics (or ham-handed amateurs) had worked on the wiring in this lovely cabriolet a number of times in its four decades of life. That meant the wire I was looking for could be anywhere.
Aubrey crawled under the car and scared the bejeebers out of me, and I shoved most of my face into the greasy mass above me before I realized what had happened.
He laughed, then apologized for it because he’d been a sweet young man. “Hey, Mercy,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you thank you—and tell you good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” I asked.
He smiled again—and it looked like the one Wulfe had given me yesterday: sweet with a hint of wickedness. “I get to go,” he said, sounding excited.
“Yeah?” I asked, smiling back at him.
He nodded. When he hit his head on the car, there was no noise and the grease fairy didn’t cover his face. “But they said I could tell you thank you.”
“Time to go, boy,” said a familiar voice, sounding kinder than he usually did when talking to me. That’s fathers for you.
I skittered out from under the car, but quick as I was, Aubrey and his guide-to-wherever-dead-souls-go were gone.
About a half hour later I’d managed to get the grease off my face and most of my hair—and also found the wire about two inches from where it should have been. I was trying to decide how to bill a job that cost four dollars in parts and took me fifteen minutes to fix after I’d spent two and a half hours looking for a short. Two and a half hours was pretty good for chasing down an electrical fault, actually.
Once, Zee and I together had spent three days on a Vanagon, trying to find an intermittent short. We’d come out disagreeing on which wire was the problem, replaced them both—and had it come back in the next day. Tad, who was manning the shop while I went for lunch, had fixed it in ten minutes.
I’d just worked out the taxes on the invoice when I felt an odd tug inside my head. I grabbed the top of the counter, because I was sitting on a very tall stool, and held on while someone pulled a spiritual octopus out of me complete with a million arms loaded with suction cups. When it was finished, I was sitting on the floor, curled up in a ball with a bloody nose.