He turned his attention to the semi that had T-boned the SUV Mercy had been driving. He jumped easily from the SUV to the semi-tractor door, finding hand- and footholds in the damaged metal side that allowed him to open the door to examine the interior. When the door proved too bent to open, he simply drove his fist through the glass, gripped the door, and ripped it off. The sting of pain as the glass sliced his hand was oddly seductive—so much less painful than what was going on in his heart and his head at the moment.
His first find was that the tractor was new despite a very bad paint job. He took a better look at the outside and saw that someone had painted the whole tractor matte black, including surfaces that had probably originally been chromed and shiny. This vehicle had been painted so that it could be used to take Mercy totally by surprise. She might have heard the engine—though since she was driving his own diesel SUV, maybe not.
He could smell the vampire who’d driven the tractor over the leather and the new-car scent. That vampire had been hurt in the crash; there was a bit of blood somewhere. But he had not been killed or seriously injured. There was no smell of stress—fear, anger, excitement. Even vampires left the scents of their emotions behind. Most of them. That meant that this vampire had done such things before.
A professional. A vampire who specialized in accidents for assassinations or kidnapping. He fought the eagerness with which he wanted to embrace the idea of a kidnapping. He had to keep to the facts—and the amount of blood in the SUV meant that unless she had gotten immediate and professional emergency care, Mercy was in serious trouble.
He snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth in helpless fury. She could be dying, and his mate bond could not tell him where she was or how she was. The only thing that kept him from surrendering to the wolf who needed something to kill, to destroy, was that he had not felt her die. She was just gone. He would assume that she was alive and needed him until there was proof that said otherwise.
“Adam,” called Darryl’s strained voice. “You should come here.”
Adam looked through the driver’s-side window and saw the pack gathered around something on the ground on the side of the road. He opened the driver’s-side door and hopped to the ground. As he approached, the wolves—most of them midchange thanks to his wild flare of emotion—backed away from him, and he got a good look at the body on the ground.
He bent his knees and examined Stefan—the single vampire whose scent he’d recognized. The wolf fought to kill their rival, but Adam reined that part of himself in with cold truth. Like him, Stefan had a bond with Mercy. Likely that was what had drawn him here. Maybe Stefan could find Mercy when Adam could not.
And Mercy, not jealousy or rivalry, is what is important.
At that firm reminder, the raging violent spirit inside of him settled. The wolf was a hunter; he understood patience. And even the wolf could not doubt that his Mercy was his. Jealousy had no place between them. Terror for her safety, yes. But not jealousy.
Stefan’s eyes opened and, for a moment, they were empty of personality, the eyes of a dead man. Then his face filled with expression, and Adam saw the mirror of his own rage and fear. The vampire exploded to his feet, turning in a circle to take in the wolves who surrounded him.
Adam rose more slowly. Stefan wasn’t going to hurt him, and it would do no harm under the circumstances to keep his own movements under control. The wolf wasn’t fighting him, but the beast was a cunning enemy, and if he had misread the wolf, Adam didn’t want Stefan paying the price.
Not when he could be the key to finding Mercy.
“Mercy?” Stefan asked Adam.
“Gone,” Adam said, fighting down despair. It wasn’t time for that yet. But if Stefan had to ask the question, then his blood bond with Mercy was doing him no more good than Adam’s own mating bond.
He gave the vampire the information he had. “They hit her car and took her. It looks well planned and professional at this point. They are vampires—and not Marsilia’s vampires.” He paused. “I’ve never heard of a professional team of kidnappers or assassins who were vampires.”
“There are some, but they keep a low profile.” Stefan rubbed his face with brisk hands, more as if something about it troubled him than a simple gesture of weariness.
“I felt the wreck,” he told Adam. “I imagine you did, too?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I came to this place immediately and found them already working to get her out of the SUV.”
Stefan could teleport—a quirk of the magic that allowed a dead man to live. The Marrok’s son Charles kept a database of vampires and their abilities. He’d told Adam that teleportation was rare. That both Stefan and Marsilia could do it might indicate that they were Made by the same vampire or vampires of the same lineage. Or not.
The vampire continued to speak. “I was focused on Mercy, or else I might have thought to look for more of the enemy. I jumped in to defend her, and someone caught me from behind with a jumped-up Taser, I think, given the results.” He rubbed his face again.
“Can you tell where she is?” Adam asked tersely, though he was pretty sure of the answer. If Adam could teleport, and he had a clear signal to where Mercy was, he wouldn’t be hanging around talking. He expected that Stefan felt the same.
The vampire raised his chin and closed his eyes, a sign of the trust he had that the wolves would not attack while he left himself vulnerable—or that he thought he could defend himself without watching his foe. Maybe some combination of the two. Though he didn’t need to, the vampire took a deep breath.
When he opened his eyes, he met Adam’s gaze with a bleak expression. “No,” he said. “I can’t feel her at all.”
“Do you know who took her?” Adam asked.
Stefan shook his head. “Vampires, but they weren’t anyone I’ve seen before. Not local.”
“What kind of vehicle did they drive?” asked Darryl.
“They had a helicopter,” Stefan said.
The wolf remembered hearing a helicopter, though Adam hadn’t paid much attention at the time. Helicopters had become less notable the past few months because the cherry farmers employed them during and after rainstorms to help dry the cherries before the rain caused the fruit to swell and split. Cherry season was just over, and in a month or two, he’d have noticed a helicopter.
“I heard it,” said Warren, who had taken his own look around the wreck. “But I only caught a glimpse of it while I was running here. They were flying without lights, boss. They were headed south, but they didn’t land before the sound of the helicopter was too faint for me to hear.”
No telling where the helicopter had been going, then. It could be five miles away or a hundred. The semi was probably stolen, but a helicopter and a team of professionals meant that someone had paid a lot of money to take his mate.
A wolf howled from the twenty-acre field on the other side of a wall of desiccated arborvitae.
“Sent them out looking for where the chopper was waiting,” Darryl said.
Ben ran up, breathless and in his human form. There were maybe four or five of Adam’s pack who hadn’t shifted to wolf.
“Looks like it had taken up a f—” Ben glanced behind Adam to Jesse and Aiden, who were huddled quietly where they weren’t in the way but could still hear everything, and cleaned up his language. “—a freaking home base. There’s a low spot behind a rise that would have kept anyone from seeing it. That chopper has been parked there often enough to leave a bare spot. More than a day or two. They’ve been waiting for a chance at Mercy for a while.”
“Might have used magic to keep people away,” Darryl suggested.
“A look-away would have done it,” said Stefan. “Most of us can cast something like that.”
“We can follow up on the semi,” said Darryl. “And I have a friend who flies out of the Richland airport. He might know something about a strange helic
opter.”
It would take hours if not days to run down Mercy’s kidnappers that way. The wolf was very unhappy with hours—and Adam wasn’t cheery about it, either.
“She went to the store,” Adam said abruptly. He hopped back on his SUV and stepped through the broken windshield to pull the receipt off the seat.
He saw Mercy’s lamb first. The leather seat under the little gold lamb was scorched as if the charm had been hot when it landed there. Her necklace, broken, was on the floorboard, his dog tag from his time in ’Nam still on the chain. He found Mercy’s wedding ring eventually, hidden under the open carton of broken eggs.
He climbed out of the cab with the receipt in one hand and Mercy’s necklace components in the other.
Warren stood in front of the SUV, one hand on the hood. The old cowboy’s eyes were yellow—he saw what Adam’s other hand held. If not for his eyes, someone who didn’t know him would have thought he was relaxed.
“Stands to reason they wouldn’t let her keep that,” he said, his voice thick with wolf and Texas. “Mercy’s right deadly to vampires with that little lamb of hers. Better’n most people with crosses. If you give me the receipt, I’ll go see what it tells us.”
Adam decided that he himself should not be dealing with fragile humans who might hold some clue to who had taken Mercy just now. He frowned at Warren because he wasn’t sure Warren should be doing it, either.
“I know the owner of the store,” Warren said. “I promise I won’t kill nobody who don’t need killing, boss.” Warren only lost his grammar when he was really, really upset.
Adam handed the paper scrap over without a word. Warren glanced at the printing and held it to his nose. He nodded at Ben. Together, Ben and Warren jogged to one of the cars—Ben’s. Warren slid into the passenger seat, leaving Ben to drive.
“Is it my fault?” asked a small voice.
Adam, still on the hood of the SUV, looked down at the newest member of his family. Aiden appeared as though he should be in elementary school, but he was centuries older than Adam himself. Jesse, who treated Aiden like a little brother, had her hand on his shoulder. One of the cars parked nearby was Jesse’s.
“No,” said Adam’s daughter in a firm voice despite the stark fear in her eyes. “Even if they came looking for you, it’s not your fault. And Mercy will be okay. You remember ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ we read a few months ago? Anyone who kidnaps Mercy will regret it thoroughly before she’s done with them.” She sighed theatrically, acting nonchalant for Aiden, when Adam could feel her distress. “I suppose that Dad is too straightforward to demand payment to take her back, though I bet we could get enough money to pay for my college that way.”
She was worried, but he could hear the confidence in her voice. She was still young enough to believe her father could fix anything.
Adam didn’t tell Jesse what the pack knew. His daughter was human and couldn’t smell the blood. He knew that Mercy would tell him that he wasn’t accomplishing anything by trying to protect Jesse from the full truth. But Mercy would be wrong, because, like Aiden, he needed Jesse’s optimism. Even if it was a false optimism.
“Mercy will make them pay,” he told them, his throat tight. He looked at Aiden. “It wasn’t your fault, Aiden. We claimed this city . . . these cities, and put them under the pack’s protection because they are our home. You were the catalyst. You and Mercy were the catalyst that pushed us where we should already have been. If that was what inspired—” And he’d given that last word teeth, hadn’t he? He took a breath and tried again. “If that was what inspired someone to take Mercy, it still is not your fault.”
“I will burn them,” Aiden said, and the wolf in Adam loosened its jaws in approval and recognition of another predator, one possibly more dangerous than he.
“If there is anything left after Mercy gets done with them,” Jesse said coolly, “I might help you with that, Sprout.” She looked at Adam. “Is there anything I can do?”
He started to shake his head, then stopped. There was no hiding the accident. It was very late, but in a half hour or so, the people who had to head to work in the wee small hours would start driving past.
“Call Tony and tell him about this.” Adam was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to keep his temper long enough to stay coherent. But Tony knew Jesse well enough to listen to her. “Tell him I’ll give him the whole story as I discover it—but that it is supernatural and probably treading into too-dangerous-for-humans-to-know territory.”
Tony was a cop, the unofficial liaison between the police and the werewolf pack. There was an official liaison who was pretty competent. But Tony knew more than was safe for a human already. If he hadn’t been under pack protection, the vampires or the witches would have killed Tony by now. Adam intended to keep the official liaison safely ignorant of vampires.
Tony was trusted enough by his department that they took his word when he told them it was too dangerous to know but matters had been handled. That was satisfactory to everyone involved.
“Can do.”
Jesse dug into the small purse that went everywhere with her. A cell phone rang as she did so, but it wasn’t hers. Adam glanced in the direction of the noise.
Stefan reached into his pocket, pulled out the phone. Without looking at it, he threw it. It landed against the side of the broken SUV, denting the already battered metal. The phone exploded into powder.
The wolf thought that it was an interesting reaction in a man who appeared so calm. But then he suspected that his own aspect looked cool and controlled because soldiers learn early to hide intense emotion when among enemies—even enemies who are people you like. He and Stefan had both been soldiers.
Adam’s phone rang, and he pulled it out, half-surprised it was still in its holder. He glanced at the number and almost refused the call but stopped himself.
Vampires, he thought. They weren’t hers, but they had been vampires.
“Hello, Marsilia,” he said in a basso growl that he couldn’t stop.
There was a pause. “Either you are missing someone or I am,” she said. “I have contacted everyone who belongs to me except Stefan. You should contact your people, too.”
“Stefan is here,” he ground out. “Mercy has been taken.”
“I see,” she said, and if she’d been there, he’d have torn her throat out for the calm in her voice. “I just received an e-mail from an ex-lover of mine indicating that he has taken someone from us. From our cooperative.”
“Cooperative?” he asked softly. “What cooperative?”
If it was an ex-lover of Marsilia’s, Mercy had probably been taken because of Marsilia. Not because of the pack. The guilt he bore vanished and left him unbalanced before a rush of anger filled the empty space guilt had left behind. For a moment, the emotional wave was too wild for him to listen to her or anyone else. Wolf stepped in where the human faltered.
“This isn’t her fault,” said Stefan’s cool voice. “This is old business, and she didn’t start it, werewolf. Listen to her if you want to save Mercy.”
Adam realized he must have blanked out again because he was no longer on the hood of the SUV—and other than the vampire, there was a very large space all around him. Adam couldn’t find it in himself to care that the werewolf had taken over to the point that he could not remember what he’d done. That he didn’t care was a worse sign than losing that much control in the first place.
Stefan said, “If your people have to put you down because you choose not to control your beast, then Mercy will have one less person looking for her.”
The vampire’s words had been uttered in a cold voice, but Stefan’s eyes were hot. For some reason, that rage allowed Adam to catch his balance a little.
Adam swept his hand toward the cab of the SUV and said what his heart had been screaming since he’d first seen the damage to the cab. “Mercy is wounded,” he g
round out. “Bleeding out. Vampires aren’t going to keep her alive. That’s not what they do.”
“Dad?” Jesse said in a small voice, and part of him wished he’d guarded his tongue, because he’d been trying to protect her from that knowledge. But it was mostly the wolf speaking now, even if it did it in Adam’s voice, and the wolf was an honest monster incapable of human subterfuge, even when the lie was to save his own child from pain.
“Mercy is a hostage,” said Stefan, speaking slowly, as if Adam were hard of hearing—or as if he were speaking to a creature who didn’t pay a lot of attention to mere words. “Like it or not, our two people, werewolves and vampires, are bound together here, in this place, as we must be for our mutual survival. Others have noticed this. If they wanted to leave a dead body behind, they would have already done it. This means our enemies will target you, and your enemies will target us. Murder would have been a lot easier. Vampires are pretty good at keeping humans alive.” The vampire looked a little sick as he spoke that last sentence, so it wasn’t as reassuring as he probably meant it to be.
“Why does he listen to Stefan, when none of the rest of us could get through?” Adam heard Auriele ask someone quietly.
“Because the vampire smells a little of Mercy,” Darryl replied.
Adam snarled because it was true, then took a deep breath to draw in the scent again. If the vampire still smelled of Mercy, Adam decided, it was because Mercy was still alive. Mercy was alive, and he would believe that until presented with absolute proof that she was not.
Adam bowed his head, reasserted his, the human’s, ownership of his own damned mouth, and looked at Stefan. “What does he want, this ex-lover of your Mistress?”
“Not my Mistress anymore,” said Stefan, but with more sorrow than heat. “I don’t know.” He looked around to the pack, now mostly wolves, until his gaze landed near Darryl. “Any of you have a cell phone I can use?”