Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson, #7)

by Patricia Briggs

Adam shook his head. “No, Mercy. Coyote isn’t lucky. Coyote is rash, and everyone around him dies—including him. But when the sun rises, he’s all better and he goes out to look for new friends. Because Coyote is immortal.” And you are not. He didn’t say it, but we both heard it.

“I killed the rest of them and let Honey kill Jones.” He watched my face closely. He’d hidden what he was from his first wife, who had been entirely human, and she’d still run away from what little she’d glimpsed. “Good,” I said. “That way, I won’t have to.”

Adam. “I love you,” he said. “I know,” I told him seriously. “How could you help it?” He laughed again and rolled over until I was on the bottom, and flexed his hips against mine. “I tried,” he whispered in my ear. “But it didn’t work.” I breathed into his ear for the pleasure of feeling him shiver against me. “Of course not.” He smelled like home, like safety, like love. “Of course not.”

We loved again then, the short nap of the rug soft under my skin and the warmth of him surrounding me.

“You look better than I expected you to,” I said, and, to my surprise, he flushed. “Food,” he said with a shy smile. Adam snorted. “Kyle.” “Well, yes,” agreed Warren,

Honey had never liked me much—and since I had forced the pack to take a new look at their hierarchy, particularly the way women’s ranks were awarded, she’d liked me even less. Honey was as dominant as Peter had been submissive, and a female wolf is supposed to take her rank from her mate. She wanted the role she’d been assigned as his mate rather than the one that should have been rightfully hers as a dominant wolf. She didn’t want to be who she was; she wanted to be delicate and ladylike and feminine. She resented me for challenging that.

and only then did I remember that I’d shifted right in front of Armstrong and Tony, neither of whom had known what I was.

“Vampires?” Sylvia asked. “There are vampires, too?” And then she said, “You stole a vampire’s car and trashed it?”

“Officially, there are no vampires. If you don’t believe in them, they will leave you alone. So it’s best if you don’t believe in them.”

“My best friend Penny asked me if there were vampires, and I told her, no. I did tell her I rode a werewolf, and her mama told me that lying wasn’t good. I wasn’t lying that time, but sometimes lying is good, right? Mercy, will you come to ...

Vampires do not breathe except to talk, they do not perspire, and their hearts race only with stolen blood. So it’s very difficult to tell when they are lying and when they are telling the truth.

A walker is the name given to those of us who are descendants of Coyote, Raven, Hawk, or any of the other archetypes who once walked this land. Vampires do not like us. First, I see ghosts, and ghosts congregate around the daytime resting places of vampires, betraying the presence of the monster who killed them. I am also resistant to a lot of magic—and almost entirely resistant to the standard magic of vampires. When vampires came to the New World, they were met by my kind and nearly destroyed. I think that if disease and war had not decimated the Indians—and thus the walkers—there would be no vampires in the Americas.

“I am the boss of you,” I told her as I headed for the stairs. “You’re coming with Asil and me, so put a sock in it.” “Does the whole pack follow your orders so well, little coyote?” Asil asked, amused. “Yes.” He laughed again. I gave him a cool look. “Or they regret it for a long time.”

He fell on his knees, his face raw with pain, sorrow, and need, tears sliding down his face. “Honey. Min prinsesse. Oh, Honey, I am lost.” He reached out and touched her, his fingers making her fur move. She shook and tried to get closer, though I don’t think she could see him. Her movement only pushed her body through him.

“Peter.” And this time I called him with the part of me that could see ghosts, the part that had sent the ghost at Tad’s house away, that had forced obedience on the ghosts that had once belonged to James Blackwood, the Master of Spokane, who was now dead by my hand. I reached out to him, and said, “Come here.”

Asil touched my shoulder and abruptly lowered his head to stare at Peter. Honey leaned against my hip and froze, her body tightening until it felt like stone.

“Peter,” I said, “you belong to us, to the pack. You are mine.” The touch of pack, of Honey, helped. I brushed at the cloud of darkness, and as I touched it . . . it dissolved under my hands, but not before I caught the tingle of magic. Vampire magic.

“I like you,” Marsilia said to him. “You are pretty.” “I like you, too,” said Asil. “Vampires are an acquired taste.” He smiled, with white teeth showing. She frowned.

“She takes care of what is hers, Marsilia. You should learn from her,” Stefan said silkily.

Marsilia had just apologized to me. Hell must have been experiencing some climate change.

Hao’s nonexpression looked thoughtful, and I suddenly realized why I could read him. Charles had nonexpressions like that when his wife Anna wasn’t in the room.

A lot more powerful—if I could judge by the kind of power Elizaveta had. A necromancer witch would control the dead—and ghosts and zombies weren’t the only kind of dead. That was why Marsilia was afraid.

He has California except for San Francisco. Frost is still afraid of Hao, and Hao is the only vampire in San Francisco. Like Blackwood, Hao prefers not to have encroachers in his territory.”

“Only great love can inspire such heated rage,” agreed Stefan, and there was a glimmer of affection in his voice. “But Frost is right to be afraid. Even now, the Lord of Milan talks of you to his courtiers.”

“He said, ‘My beautiful, deadly flower, my Bright Dagger, you dare more than I can allow. I will die of sorrow and boredom without you, but it must be done.’

Frost was a Puppet Master. I actually thought the name in capital letters, which meant I’d been hanging around the vampires too long.

Adam would be surprised to find out he was her “colleague.” But I kept my face still.

The fight is to the death of the captains.” “Excuse me,” I said diffidently. “But both the captains are already dead.” Everyone looked at me. The vampires with cold, unfriendly gazes, and Honey as if I were crazy. That was okay—because I was utterly crazy. I knew Marsilia was planning on making me fight a bug-nuts vampire. The more scared I get, the faster my mouth moves. I was a smart-ass because I was terrified. Asil smiled. He was supposed to know all about crazy.

“Mercedes,” said Asil in a cheerful voice. “You are going to get me killed at last. Bran would not do it, but I believe your mate will have no trouble.”

She smiled at me. “He is not what you are, Mercedes. Do you think that I who beguiled the Marrok’s son would not be able to beguile your mate so that he would allow you to fight?”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,”

The Wizard looked like he should be worried about how to ask a girl out on his first date, checking the mirror for acne spots, deciding if he should get an ear pierced and if so, how he could hide it from his mom.

I was going to fight vampires, and my name wasn’t Buffy—I was so screwed.

Who knew that Marsilia was a bruiser—and a trained boxer, from her tidy and agile footwork? Frost had been trained in some sort of hand-to-hand, too.

“Holy symbols, Batman,” I told him. “We have help.”

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.’”

“Life is not safe. A man might spend his whole time on earth staying safe in a basement, and in the end, he still dies like everyone else.”

“He’s a good man,” he told me, looking at Adam. “Yes,” I agreed. Peter tilted his head down to look me in the eye, and he smiled. “You know he doesn’t believe that. He thinks he is a monster.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “What he thinks doesn’t change the facts.” “I told him where you were,” Peter said. “You sent me away. Sent me here. But I found Adam, and I told him where you were and what the vampires had you doing.”