River Marked (Mercy Thompson, #6)

by Patricia Briggs

Stefan was resilient, smart, and ... just Stefan—able to talk Pokémon in ASL with deaf boys, defeat nasty villains while locked up in a cage, then drive off in his VW bus to fight bad guys another day. He was like Superman, but with fangs and oddly impaired morals.

Adam is a very good man to have beside you in a fight, even if all you are fighting is a bad memory.

“Your ability to survive anything that gets thrown at you sometimes leaves the rest of us swallowing ulcer medication for days afterward. I don’t like the taste of Maalox.”

At one point, watching Stefan’s intent face, I said, in a stage whisper, “You know, you are a vampire. You aren’t supposed to be scared of them.” “Anyone,” said Stefan with conviction, “who ever met Max Schreck would be scared of vampires for the rest of their lives. And they’ve got him dead to rights.”

“Pup,” he said into the sudden silence, “today, I’m giving you one of my treasures. You see that you take proper care of her.”

Mating is a lot more permanent than marriage. Partly, I think, it’s that usually if you find your mate, he’s not going to be someone you need to divorce. Abuse is almost not possible when two people are connected by a mating bond, and it gives you insight into your mate that allows you to avoid the nastier fights that snowball into cold distance. And partly it is that magic is somewhat harder to deal with than legal paperwork, and the mating bond is pack magic.

Maybe his problem was rooted in his first marriage. She’d been big on personal freedom—as long as it was her freedom. She’d been jealous of the pack; jealous, also, I thought, of Jesse, their daughter. She didn’t love him, but she had wanted to be the center of his world and would tolerate nothing else.

I nipped his ear lightly. “If it were socially acceptable to tattoo my name across your forehead, I’d do it.” “I only see my forehead when I look in a mirror,” he said. “I see my hand a lot more often.” “It wouldn’t be for you,” I told him. “You know who you belong to. It’s for all the other women. Only fair to warn them when the wrong word might get them hurt. This coyote has fangs.”

He’d died before I was born. But I hadn’t suffered. I’d been raised by Bryan and Evelyn, my foster parents, and they had loved me. When they died, Bran and the rest of his pack had stepped in—and then my mother. I’d never been unloved, never mistreated. I was an adult—so why did the sight of a ghost who looked like my father make me feel so raw?

He dropped a second rabbit at my feet and lay down in front of me, nose on his paws and his ears flattened. Nothing says you’re sorry like a dead bunny.

I wiggled my hips into a more comfortable position and tried to think like Adam—a very smart person poisoned by testosterone.

I saw the man at the door for the first time. His voice hadn’t sounded old, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone older outside a rest home. Sharp brown eyes peered at me out of a face that looked as though it had been left out in the sun to dry too long. Skin like beef jerky and white hair caught back in a smooth French braid down his back. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and small gold studs in his ears. His back was bent, and his hands were curled up from arthritis, his fingers bent and knuckles enlarged. But his movements were surprisingly easy as he climbed into the trailer without invitation.

Sometimes there are words, but Gordon Seeker didn’t use any. The music flowed up from his chest and resonated in his sinuses—as had the music made by the dancing ghost of my father. Still singing, Gordon Seeker took out a homemade honeycomb wax candle and lit it. It looked as though he lit it with magic, but I can usually sense when someone uses magic. I didn’t see a match though I could smell sulfur.

“Not a skinwalker but a shapechanger, you are. Coyote, right? Ai.” He shook his head. “Coyote brings change and chaos.” His head tilted sideways, and he looked as though he was listening to someone I couldn’t hear. I glanced at Adam, but he was frowning at the old man. Gordon Seeker laughed. “Better than death and destruction, surely—but those often follow change anyway. Very well.” The eyes he turned to me were fever-bright.

“River marked. It meant for you to be its servant—good thing for you that coyotes don’t make good servants. But it means more than that. It tells me that tomorrow you need to go to Maryhill Museum. Enjoy the art and the furniture built by the foreign queen—and then go see what they have in their basement. At noon, you meet my young grandson at Horsethief Lake, and he’ll take you to see She Who Watches.”

I knew what She Who Watches was though I hadn’t ever actually seen her in person. She was the most famous of the...

That night I dreamed I was encased in stone. No matter how hard I struggled, no matter how hard I fought, I could not move. I grew hungry, and there was no surcease, no ease of the great appetite of my captivity. I dreamed that I was freed at last, and I feasted on an otter that filled me more than an otter should, appeasing my hunger for a moment. So I didn’t eat the other otters who swam around me.

The drive through the park took us past an Indian graveyard that was still being used—I could tell from all the balloons and items left on the graves. It looked almost like a birthday party had gone on there, and all of the guests had departed without taking away their presents.

So why had they sent Calvin out with us? Unless they wanted us to share their secrets. And the reason they might want us to know was tied up with Gordon Seeker, Yo-yo Girl Edythe’s prophecy, and whatever had happened to Benny and his sister that Calvin wanted to wait until later to tell us.

“Change is hard,” said Adam. “And it doesn’t much matter whether it is change for good or ill.”

“This one is the one my uncle told me to point out to you,” Calvin said. The rock had been broken, but the two pieces had been fit together carefully. The creature’s face looked a little like a fox—a mutant fox with very big teeth and tentacles. Its body was snakelike. It was like a cross between a Chinese dragon and a fox with the teeth of a wolf eel.

“This monster,” he said, “ate all of the first people who lived in the river. It ate up all the first people who fished in the river. Eventually, no one was willing to go near the river at all, so they asked the Great Spirit for help. He sent Coyote to see what was to be done. “Coyote went down to the river and saw that nothing lived near the river. While he was watching, he saw a great monster lift out of the water. ‘Ah,’ it cried, ‘I am so hungry. Why don’t you come down so I can eat you.’ “That did not sound like a good idea to Coyote. So he went up into the hills where he could think. ‘Hee, hee,’ said his sisters, who were berries in his stomach.” “They were what?” I asked, surprised out of my panic over a pair of hungry green eyes in a stupid dream. “This is the polite version,” Calvin told me. “You can ask around if you want to find out the rude version. It is also rude to interrupt the storyteller.” “Sorry.” I tried to figure out how berries who were sisters in Coyote’s stomach could have a rude version. “‘Why are you laughing?’ asked Coyote. “‘We know what you should do,’ his sisters said. ‘But we won’t tell you because you’ll just take all the credit like you always do.’ “But they were his sisters, and Coyote was very persuasive. He promised that this time he would tell everyone who was responsible for such a clever plan. At last they told him what to do. Following their advice, he took nine flint knives, a pouch of jerky, a rock, a torch, and some sagebrush and w...

“I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll find out. Warning her without more information won’t help, either. People don’t tend to take warnings about monsters who are going to eat them very seriously. Especially when they come from total strangers.”

“It is why those who know things must sound mysterious. It is like fishing. The mystery the bait, the truth the hook—which is why it sometimes hurts.”

He looked at Gordon. “Thanks for the surgery. That felt like the fastest extraction I’ve had.” Gordon raised an eyebrow. “Do you find yourself saying that often? If so, I advise a different lifestyle.”

“Here’s what we need to figure out about whatever is in the river. How much harm is this creature doing? We don’t really have a lot of data to go on other than a lot of scary talk about monsters. As the sole representative of monsters here, it is my . . . obligation to make certain we are looking at this with a balanced perspective. I am sorry that Benny’s sister was killed and Benny injured. However, people are injured by”—he hesitated—“bear attacks, too. Just because something is dangerous does not make it evil. Was it defending its territory? Are we correct that it is a single beast? How intelligent is it? Can we bargain to keep people safe? Should we kill the last or near last of its kind because it has killed a woman and hurt her brother? Is there a way to salvage this situation with no more deaths?” When you are a werewolf, I thought, it’s a little hard to point at another predator, and shout, “It’s a scary monster, kill it! Kill it!”

“You watched Star Wars?” I asked. “Joe did,” he answered as if that made sense. “Loved it. A cowboy-and-Indian story where the Indians are the good guys and everyone fights with swords.” “Cowboys and Indians?” I asked while I chewed on the first part of the sentence. He grunted. “Think about it. Good versus evil. The foe has better armament and seems impossible to defeat—the invading Europeans. The good guys are few in number and restricted to a few bold heroes with an uncanny connection to the Force. Indians.”

“Joe was a person you became.” I said it as if I were certain, and he nodded. “Exactly.” “So you were Joe Old Coyote but Joe wasn’t you.” “Sort of.” Coyote tapped the soil with his hands. “This explaining stuff isn’t where my talents lie. I created Joe, then I lived in him until he died. He wasn’t me, and I wasn’t him, but we occupied the same skin for a while. As long as Joe walked this earth, I walked it with him—though he never knew that. There were just things he didn’t worry about very much—like his childhood. When he died, I was reborn as me—and he was dead.”

Like that bug-thing in the Men in Black movie, Coyote had worn a Joe suit. Unlike the bug’s human suit, Coyote’s had had a life of his own. “Joe was real?” Coyote nodded. “And so is his ghost—even though that is me as well.”

If someone could have settled Joe down, it would have been Marji. He thought she was the one, anyway.” “But coyotes don’t mate for life, do they?” I tried to keep my voice neutral. “He would have,” said Coyote. “Oh, he would have. He loved her so much.” His voice, sincere and deep, hit me hard. I had to rub my eyes. “If he’d known about her sooner, he wouldn’t have killed the vampire nest over in Billings,” he said after a while. “But they needed killing, and he was there. Joe always thought of himself as a hero, you know—not the kind of hero I am, but the Luke Skywalker sort. Rescue the princess, kill the evil villains.”

Though her body resembled a giant snake’s, the overall impression I had was, as it had been looking at the petroglyph, of a Chinese dragon. A huge, ginormous, towering, and ticked-off Chinese dragon. Her head could certainly have inspired the petroglyph. It was triangular like a fox’s, with huge green eyes. Encircling her head at the base of her skull, like a ruff of snakes or petals of a flower, long tentacles twisted and writhed like a wave, not precisely in unison, but not independently, either. On the very top of her head were two shiny black horns, twisted and rolled back, like a mountain sheep’s. From the front, it looked very much like she had a pair of ears. The full impact of her coloring was muted by the moonlight, and though I could see here and there a hint of green or gold, mostly she just looked silver and black.

“The land is mine,” said Coyote. “Here you do not reign. Not yet, and not ever.” He stepped between us and her, long, saw-toothed knives suddenly in his hands. “Just you try it. Just you try it.”

I’ll tell him what he needs to do, but he’s not going to believe in me. Sad that a medicine man will believe in werewolves, ghosts, and vampires and won’t believe in Coyote, but that’s what it is these days.”

“My life used to be normal,” I told his shoulder. “I got up. Went to work. Fixed a few cars, paid a few bills, and no one tried to kill me. My father was dead; my mother was six hours away by car—I could even manage to make that trip last eight or nine hours if I worked at it.” “Argued with your back-fence neighbor,” Adam said, his voice very gentle. “And watched him when he wasn’t looking,” I agreed. “Because every once in a while, especially after a full moon hunt, he’d forget that I could see in the dark, and he’d run around naked in the backyard.” He laughed silently. “I never forgot you could see in the dark,” he admitted. “Oh.” I thought about it for a while. “That’s pretty good. Not quite up to my slowly eroding Rabbit, but you get points for that.”

No-pocket jeans are only slightly less irritating than thong underwear.

Glamour has never made sense to me. It is a kind of magic the fae use to change their appearance. According to Zee, the ability to use glamour is what makes a fae a fae instead of some other kind of thing that uses magic. Glamour is an illusion—but not. Because with glamour, a twenty-five-pound otter is a hundred-and-forty-pound woman.

The otterkin woman screamed—not in terror but in anger. Then she turned into an otter and ran up the wall into the ceiling and was gone.

I gave him a wary look, but he honestly didn’t appear upset. “Mercy,” he said, “in a fair fight between near equals, I’ll back you every time. It’s the demons, vampires, and river devils I worry about, and I’m working on that.” I could live with that if he could.

“Ley lines, huh? Feels like someone stroking my hair in the wrong direction.” “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked. He snorted. “No flirting. We’re here on business.” We’d come early; my husband, the eternal tactician, had determined that would be the better course. I liked those two words together. “My” and “husband.”

“You’re calling the others like you?” I asked. “There are no others like me,” he returned. “None as handsome or strong. None as clever or skilled. None with so many stories told about them. Who was it brought fire down so people could roast their food and keep warm in the winter? But I’m hoping to call the others, yes.”

I used my history degree about twice a year whether I needed to or not.

“Are your sisters really berries in your stomach?” I asked him. “Ah,” he said delightedly. “You need to find someone to teach you the rude versions of my stories. They are much more entertaining. Modesty prevents me from telling stories about myself.”

To my surprise, Coyote bowed his head as well. “I like this man, your husband,” he told me. Maybe it was an explanation. “He would have attacked me for putting you in danger—even though the wolf knew exactly what I was. And yet, when you asked him to have patience, he did. It is proper that men listen to the counsel of women.” “Like you listen to your sisters?” I said, as the wolf put his nose just under my ear. I tilted my head to give him my throat. Sharp teeth brushed against my skin, and I shivered. “Wise women,” Coyote agreed. “But sometimes pushy and easy to rile. I think they need to develop their sense of fun. They do not agree with me, so maybe they are not so wise as all that, eh?”

“River Devil is Hunger because living between worlds for those without a hold in either is costly. She must consume food for both her aspects: meat for the flesh and for the spirit.”

“River Devil feeds on possibilities.” Inuit Woman reached up to place her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “She feeds on the death of those possibilities. For this reason, she must feed upon people rather than animals, animals rather than plants. But best of all, she loves to feed upon children.” “She feeds on the end of possibilities,” corrected the Plains woman—Shoshone,

“Coyote and his kind—Hawk, Bear, Salmon, Wolf, Thunderbird, and others—they have more possibilities than even a newborn child.” The Cherokee woman turned in a graceful circle as if to encompass all that Coyote and those like him were. “If Coyote can persuade enough of them to allow River Devil to consume them, they may be enough to force the river devil to overeat. And she will be helpless until she digests them all.” “While she is helpless, someone needs to kill her.” The Inuit sister looked at me with her big dark eyes, and I knew, with a sinking feeling, who they were talking about.

“No. Modern weapons will not harm her. Only the most simple thing, a symbol of the earth that opposes her water: a stone knife.”

“Coyote is like the river devil,” I said. “Right? He walks in both places. So why doesn’t he eat everything in sight?” “Coyote walks in one world at a time,” Cherokee Woman told me. “He can do this without being trapped because we wait for him here, and you and his other descendants anchor him there.”

“Do not worry about that which cannot be changed.” Hopi Woman sat on the ground and patted my tennis shoes. “Even if Coyote is not reborn with the morning sun, there is always hope of a new dawn.

“Werewolf.” Wolf frowned. “I had thought it an abomination when I heard it first. Wolf trapped in the same skin as a human—always in opposition with each other. And in some ways it is abominable. But look at you. You are beautiful.” I thought so, too. “How is that different from our walkers?” asked Coyote in an interested tone. “They carry both spirits, too.” “No,” said Wolf absently, still lost in his examination of Adam. “In our descendants, there is only one spirit that expresses itself as either human or animal. This is different. The wolf is mine, and the man not at all. And yet it works.”