The dog who had been Flores, who was evidently the Guayota my half brother had warned me about, stopped and tilted his head. The dog’s skin looked like it had when it was a human shape wearing it. On the dog, the charred, blackened crust resembled fur, fur that dripped molten and glowing bits of stuff onto the cement floor.
“No?” Guayota said, his voice an odd whispering hum that was almost soothing to listen to. “You are wrong. I found my love, who had been taken from me, and I celebrated the sun’s countenance, warmth, and beauty. I gave her all that I was, all that I had been, all that I could be.”
The hum rose to a hiss, and I shivered despite the heat because there was something horrible in that sound. It mutated into a howl that made my bones vibrate like wind chimes. The sound stopped abruptly, but I could feel the air pressure build up as if we were in an airplane climbing too rapidly.
“Then she left.” He sounded like the man who’d first come into the garage, almost human. Sad. But that didn’t last. “She left me, when I swore that would never happen again. Swore that never, once I finally found her, would I let her leave me.”
“That’s not a choice you get to make,” said Adam. “You are scaring her, and you need to leave her alone. I and my pack are sworn to defend her from danger. You don’t want to put yourself in my path, Flores.”
“I tremble,” Guayota said, smiling, his teeth white in the red heat of his mouth. “See?”
A low, groaning noise rumbled through the garage, and the floor rocked beneath me, making me stumble awkwardly to keep my feet. The cement floor cracked, and I could hear a crash of epic proportion as the earthquake sent one of the lighter-weight racks in the office area over in a crash of miscellaneous VW parts.
Guayota laughed and didn’t sound even vaguely human this time. “We all tremble witnessing the might of the Alpha of werewolves.” There was a popping sound, and steam escaped from one of the fissures in his back. Red glop dropped from his half-open mouth like slobber, but slobber didn’t hit cement and score it.
Adam scooped up the wasserboxer engine I’d just put together and threw it. The wasserboxer engine is a lot heavier than the old Beetle engine had been, and he threw it more at bowling-ball speed than baseball.
Guayota rose on his hind legs to meet the engine when it hit, and this time it only pushed him back two or three feet, and he stayed upright and in control of the slide. Like my gun and the mop handle, the engine sank into him and stuck there, metal glowing.
Then I felt a wave of fae magic, and the engine became a shining silver skin that flowed swiftly over whatever Flores had become and covered him entirely before he had a chance to move.
“Zee?” I asked, coughing as the acrid smoke of the garage finally became too strong to ignore. I kept my eye on Guayota, but the fae-struck aluminum of the engine block seemed to be capable of staying solid around a creature who had melted hardened steel. The metal flexed a bit before settling into a motionless shape approximately the size of the creature Guayota had become. Within the shiny skin, Guayota made no sound. My science background wasn’t all that strong, but I was pretty sure the only thing keeping the aluminum from melting was fae magic.
“Nope, just me,” Tad called, his voice a little strained. “Nice throw, Adam.”
“Thanks,” Adam said, sounding a little breathless himself.
Tad walked out from behind Adam—and he looked a little odd. The stick-out ears that had always given him an almost-comical appearance were now pointed, the bones of his face subtly rearranged to beauty as real and as human as Adam’s. His eyes … were not human at all: polished silver with a cat’s-eye pupil of purple. He was a little taller than usual, a little buffer, a little more graceful, and a lot scarier. I wasn’t used to thinking of Tad as being scary.
I opened my mouth to thank them both but all I did was cough. I trotted to the garage controls to raise the garage-bay doors to let the smoke out and some fresh air in. Adam grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and started putting out fires. Both Adam and I were choking on the foul smoke, but Tad seemed to be unaffected by it.
As the adrenaline faded, pain took over. I’d evidently hit my right knee on something, and my cheek felt like it was, figuratively I hoped, on fire. Despite my fears, my hip was fine, just a bit achy. There was a hole burned through my jeans and underwear, but the skin beneath looked okay. The burns on my arm, hand, and collarbone hurt like fiends.
Sirens sounded in the distance, either police summoned by Adam or the fire department summoned by someone who saw all the smoke.
I put my hands on my hips, standing just outside to stay out of the smoke. “You guys better have some explanation for coming in just when I’m about to wipe the floor with him and stealing my victory.”
Adam smiled, but his eyes were dark as he finished putting out the last fire. He set the fire extinguisher on the floor and stalked over to me. “Complain, complain, that’s all I get. Aren’t you the least bit happy to see me?”
I stepped into his arms, turning my head so the wine-dark silk shirt he wore pressed against my unhurt cheek and twisting so only the unburnt part of my collarbone touched him.
“I thought this was it,” I confessed in a whisper, and his arms tightened on me until I had to tap on his arm. “Too tight, too tight, too tight … better.”
“How long can you hold him?” Adam asked Tad, though his arms didn’t slacken.
“Longer than you can hold her,” Tad said dryly. “He quit struggling—probably lack of air. I could keep this up for an hour or two. If he fights like he was before, then a half hour, maybe a bit more. Aluminum is easier than steel. What are we going to do with him?”
“Jail’s not an option,” Adam said. “I’ll call Bran—but I expect we’re not going to have a choice but to call on the fae.”
Tad grunted unenthusiastically. “If someone told them I’m not as powerless as most of us halfies, they would want me to join them. Maybe someone can contact my dad, and he can take credit for this.” There was a metallic sound as if he’d tossed something at the metal prison he’d created from my nice wasserboxer engine.
“Hey, Mercy? Did you know there is a finger in the backseat of this Passat?” Tad asked.
I broke free of Adam and went into the garage to check out the Passat as I started to add up the damage. I’d need to get another wasserboxer engine to replace the one that melted. The Beetle engine had been no loss … but the Passat was going to need some bodywork.
The finger had melted all the way through the roof, through the lining, and dropped onto the off-white leather, where it left a small puddle of blood and black ash. It looked like anyone else’s finger.
“He pulled off his finger and threw it at me,” I told Tad. “Do you know of any fae that pull off body parts and throw them at people?”
“I think there are some German folktales about disembodied heads,” he said doubtfully. “And then there’s always Thing on The Addams Family.” He opened the back door of the car and touched the finger. “It’s not moving.”
I hugged myself and fought the urge to giggle. “Thank the good Lord for small favors.”
Adam moved Tad gently aside and used a hanky to pick up the finger and bring it to his nose.
“I don’t smell magic as well as you do, Mercy,” he said, setting it back on the seat. “But this finger smells human, not fae.”
“Human fingers don’t—”
Tad interrupted me. He jerked his head around until he faced his metal sculpture and made a pained sound. He staggered off balance, and Adam caught his elbow to steady him.
Sweat broke out on Tad’s brow, and he said, in a guttural tone, “Watch out. Something is wrong.”
The whole building shook again. There was a thunderous crash as a transmission fell off the top shelf of a Gorilla Rack. Adam grabbed my hand and held on to me. It was the hand I’d burned, but I just grabbed him back. Some things are more desperate than pain.
It lasted less than a second, a
nd it left the cement floor of my shop buckled, car parts and boxes of car parts strewn all over. The high-pitched wail of the office smoke detector went off. It went off with some frequency when I showered too long, or someone cooked bacon in the microwave, but it had ignored all the smoke and fires in the garage. Apparently, it had decided that enough was enough.
Adam dropped his hold on Tad and me, grabbed his ears, and snarled. I knew exactly how he felt—and I knew what to do. I dashed into the office, hopped onto the counter, and snagged the stool as I jumped. I set the stool on the counter and climbed on top with speed and balance hard won with practice. Reaching up to the ceiling, I popped the battery out of the alarm.
Blessed silence fell. Relative silence, broken by things that were still rolling onto the floor and the sirens that were closer now. In the parking lot, a car engine purred to life, then revved hard as someone drove off with a squeal of rubber on asphalt. I looked out the window and saw Juan Flores’s rental car speeding away.
Tad was swearing in German. Some of the words I recognized, but even the ones I didn’t echoed my own sentiment exactly.
“Stupid,” he said to me, his eyes horror-struck. “I am so stupid. Er war Erd und Feuer.”
“English,” murmured Adam.
“Earth and fire,” said Tad without pause. “Earth and fire—and I trapped him and forgot what he was.”
Earth.
Tad clenched his fist and pulled at something invisible with enough force that it caused his muscles to stand out on his arms. With an almost-human shriek, the aluminum that had encased Flores peeled back, revealing a cavernous hole where the cement floor of my garage had once been.
Adam’s head came up, and he measured the sound of the sirens. “Stay here,” he said, and hopped down into the hole. He was gone less than a minute before he was back.
He looked at Tad. “You need to be out of here before those sirens get close. Can you change your appearance so no one will recognize you?”
Tad nodded.
“Change shape, then,” Adam said. “You understand that it won’t just be the police coming here. Even the dumbest cop is going to see that there was magic afoot here. We’re going to have government agents, and if they get a glimpse of what you can do, they are going to want you. You are too powerful for anyone to let you run around loose: human, shapeshifter, or fae. No one but your dad knows exactly how powerful you are—let’s leave it like that.”
Tad changed like I do—between one breath and the next. He was a little taller than usual and a lot handsomer. He looked clean-cut and real. I wondered if he’d stolen the appearance from someone or if he practiced in front of a mirror.
“That’s good,” said Adam. “Go.”
“Thank you,” I told him.
He grinned, and Tad’s grin looked odd on the stranger’s face. “You aren’t supposed to thank the fae, Mercy. You’re just lucky I like you.” Then he strolled casually outside and away.
Adam pulled out his cell phone. “Jim. Get rid of all copies of the feed to Mercy’s garage after I hit Flores with the engine. Blur or get rid of anything that shows Mercy’s assistant after he left when she closed up.”
“Got it.”
He hung up the phone and looked at me. He’d seen it faster than I had. Tad was incredibly powerful to do what he’d done. He was also young, and with his father locked away in Fairyland (the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation’s less respectful nickname), he was vulnerable: no one but family could know what he was. I looked at the sheet of aluminum, now crumpled and torn aside. It could have been an airplane or a tank or … We needed to keep him safe.
“The hole goes underground out to the parking lot.”
“He told me his name was Guayota,” I said—and that’s when I saw the naked dead man lying on the floor where a dead dog should have been.
I blinked twice, and he was still there, belly down, but his head turned to the side so I could see the single bullet hole in his forehead. My bullet hole.
“Adam?” I said, and my voice was a little high.
He turned his head and saw the man, too. “Who is that?”
“I think,” I said slowly, “I think that’s the dog I shot.” I remembered that too-intelligent, ancient gaze.
“I saw it on my laptop on the way over,” Adam said. “You shot a dog.”
“It wasn’t a dog.” I gave a half-hysterical hiccough. “They’ll arrest me for murder.”
“No,” Adam said.
“Are you sure?” I sounded a little more pathetic than usual. My face hurt. My garage was in ruins that would make my insurance company run to find their “Acts of God not covered” clause. I’d killed a dog that had turned into a naked dead guy, and someone had thrown a finger at me.
“Flores essentially ate your gun, so no weapon for ballistics,” Adam said. “And you were attacked in your garage.” He didn’t say any more out loud, but I heard what he left unspoken. There wasn’t a member of the local police department who hadn’t seen or at least heard of the recording of what had happened to me in this garage before, if only because the imagery of Adam’s ripping apart the body of my assailant left a big impression.
His arms closed around me, and we both looked at the dead man. He looked like someone’s uncle, someone’s father. His body was spare and muscled in a way that looked familiar. Werewolves don’t have extra fat on their bodies, either. They burn calories in the change from human to wolf and back, and they burn calories moving because a werewolf doesn’t have the proper temperament to be a couch potato.
“Sweetheart,” Adam said, his voice a sigh as the first official car pulled into my parking lot. “It was clear-cut self-defense.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against him.
“Hands up,” said a shaky voice. “Get your hands up where I can see them.”
Adam let go of me and put his hands up. I turned around, stepping away from Adam so they could tell I wasn’t armed. The man approaching us wasn’t in uniform, but his gun was out. His eyes weren’t on me, all of his attention was for Adam. Of course, it didn’t take a genius to figure out which one of us would be the bigger threat. If I looked like I felt, I looked tired, scared, and hurt—I put my hands up anyway.
“Mr. Hauptman?” said the armed man, stopping just inside the bay door but in the middle of the open space so that the Passat didn’t interfere with his ability to cover both of us. He was younger than me, and he was wearing slacks and a jacket and tie, which only made him look even younger. I noticed almost absently that true night had fallen in the short time between when I’d first thrown open the bay doors and now.
“Adam Hauptman?” he said again. His voice squeaked, and he winced.
“Keep your hands where we can see them,” said another, calmer voice. This one was dressed in a cheap suit and held his gun as though he’d shot people before. His eyes had that look that let you know he’d shoot right now, too, and sleep like a baby that night. “Agent Dan Orton, CNTRP. This is my partner, Agent Cary Kent. You are Adam Hauptman and his wife, Mercedes?”
Feds. I felt my lip curl.
“That’s right,” Adam agreed.
“Can you tell me what happened tonight?”
“You’re here in response to my call?” Adam asked instead of answering him.
“That’s right.”
“Then,” said Adam gently, “you already know some of it. I think we’ll call my lawyer before the rest.”
I’d have spent the night repeating what happened endlessly to a series of people who all would hope for the real story. I’ve done it before. With Adam present, neither of us said anything because they weren’t letting Adam call the lawyer.
Agent Orton of CNTRP, better known as Cantrip, and Agent Kent, the nervous rookie, wanted to arrest us on general principle because Adam was a werewolf, and there was a dead body on the ground. And, possibly, because they weren’t happy with our not talking to them.
Luckily, we were under the local police jurisdict
ion, barely, because Adam’s initial call had only told them that there was a man who might have been responsible for murder and arson trying to break in to my garage. Human attacking human, even if she was the wife of a werewolf, was not enough to allow Cantrip to take over the case.
We didn’t correct them when they speculated that our intruder was the dead man. We said nothing about a supernatural creature who could turn into a volcanic dog and cause earthquakes because Cantrip was dangerous. There were people in Cantrip who would love to see us just disappear, maybe into Guantanamo Bay—there were rumors, unsubstantiated, that a whole prison block was built to hold shapeshifters and fae. Maybe they would just report that we had escaped before they could question us and hide the bodies. Adam, because he was a monster, and me because I slept with monsters. When I’d shifted to coyote in front of Tony a few months ago, I’d also shifted in front of a Cantrip agent named Armstrong. He’d told me he wouldn’t say anything about it, and apparently, based on these two, he had not.
There were good people in Cantrip, too; Armstrong was a good person, so I knew that it wasn’t just a pretend thing—like Santa Claus. But a growing number of incidents between Cantrip and werewolves or the half fae who’d been left to defend themselves when the full-blooded fae disappeared indicated that the good agents were in a minority.
The fire department arrived on the heels of the Feds, took a good look around for hot spots (none), marveled at the “damned big hole in the floor,” and left with the promise of sending out someone to evaluate the scene in daylight. EMTs arrived while the fire department was still there.
One guy sat me down and looked me over with a flashlight while the younger Cantrip agent took it upon himself to make sure I didn’t make a break for it.
The EMT made a sympathetic sound when he looked at my burns. “I bet those hurt, chica,” he said. “I have good news and bad news.”
“Hit me,” I told him.
“Good news is that these all qualify as minor burns no matter how nasty they feel.”
“Bad news?”
“I think your cheek is going to scar. There’s some chance that it will fade, but you’ve got dark skin like me, and dark skin and burns aren’t a happy combination. Also, there’s nothing to do for the burns. If the air bothers them, you can try wrapping them, but that will only be easy to do with the burns on your hands. If you see any sign of infection, take yourself down to your regular doctor.”