Night Broken (Mercy Thompson, #8)

by Patricia Briggs

If she tried anything, she would be sorry. Adam was mine. She had thrown him away, thrown Jesse away—and I had snatched them up. Finders keepers.

Love means leaving yourself vulnerable, knowing that there is someone to catch you when you fall.

I am not shy or particularly body conscious, but Adam is not okay with other men seeing me naked. It makes him shorter-tempered than usual.

“Just be careful, Mary Jo. Be very careful. You’ve made mistakes before. Everyone makes mistakes. One you should not make is to imagine that Christy will ever be Adam’s mate. He is mine, and unlike her, I don’t throw away people who are mine.”

“What did I do?” I asked. “You upset Christy, and that upset Auriele—who doesn’t think that leaving Christy’s general well-being to Adam is the right thing to do,” he snapped. “I do not enjoy being put in the middle of this.” “I upset Christy?” I asked. “When?” “This afternoon. You insisted she sleep in the ground-floor suite when she has a stalker after her. She’s just a little bit of a thing—” “Darryl,” I said. “I don’t know what you were thinking,” he said, forgetting Adam entirely. “Downstairs isn’t safe. She’s human and in danger from a stalker who, Auriele tells me, may have already killed a man.”

“Look me in the eyes with no offense taken or meant, Zachary Edwin Drummond.” Zack raised his chin and met Adam’s gaze. “I see you, Adam Alexander Hauptman, Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack.” “Will you join with us, to hunt, to fight, to live and run?” “Under the moon,” Zack said. “I will hunt, fight, live and run with you and yours who shall be mine.” “We claim you,” Darryl said, and pulled out a pocketknife and opened it one-handed. “We claim you,” I said when Adam glanced at me. “I claim you,” said Adam, and he took Darryl’s knife and cut a chunk of meat the size of the tip of my little finger off his forearm with practiced ease. “Alpha’s flesh and blood you shall be.” He offered the bloody bit to Zack, who ate it off his fingers. Blood welled up from the wound on Adam’s arm. Four fat drops fell to the carpet, and then the gouge scabbed over. In less than an hour, there would be no sign of the wound at all. A simple cut would have healed even faster. “From this day forward,” Adam said. “Mine to me and mine. Pack.” “Yours to you, mine to me,” answered Zack. The smoothness of his answer told me how often he’d done this.

“She’s too busy taking care of herself to take care of anyone else, you said. That’s about the best description of Christy I’ve ever heard. You? You are too busy taking care of everyone else to take care of yourself.”

He laughed, a soft sound shared by just the two of us. “I saw,” he said. “Christy boxed you in, and you skated through as gracefully as possible. Don’t worry, love, this was just round one, and she had the advantage with that shiner on the side of her face to gather sympathy. My money’s on you for the finish.”

When I’d met Tad, a little over ten years ago, he’d only been a kid, and he’d been running this shop himself because his dad had gone on a two-month drinking binge after Tad’s mom had died of cancer. He’d been nine going on fifty then, and the only thing that had changed since was that someone had rubbed off the bright and shiny cheer that had been his gift to the world. If I ever found out who had done it, I might sic a werewolf pack on them.

If it were up to me, I’d shoot all those bastards, no trial, no nothing.” “Or make them go fight it out in the pit with each other,” Tad offered from the next bay over. “And shoot the last man standing,” I agreed. “Good for you, Joel.”

I took a breath. “Did your father really kill Lugh?” Tad went back to the job at hand, but he nodded. “As my father tells it, Lugh was old, powerful, and starting to get scary. Really scary. Started out as a hero and was turning into something a lot different.” He gave me a sly look as he pulled out the battery and set it aside. “Of course, my father wasn’t a white knight back then, either. He killed Lugh because he was more interested in making a cool weapon than killing someone who might be a danger to the world—but, as he likes to point out, it served both purposes, so he is happy to take credit. The fae world heaved a sigh of relief, shook their collective and disorganized finger at my dad, and then went about their business.”

Hank said, “Most of the coyote walkers have trouble with the law.” “At least they don’t have trouble passing elementary school like the hawk walkers,” I said because Hank liked to tease and could take as good as he gave.

“Was it Zee?” I shook my head. “Zee’s not a Gray Lord. Close, I think, but not. This was Alistair Beauclaire, the man responsible for the fae retreat to the reservations.” “Good,” she said. “I like Zee.”

“I left the gun in the safe at the shop,” I told her. “And they don’t need to know that you are a weapon.” She smiled a little, and her eyes warmed.

My first impression, skewed by too much time with werewolves, was that here in this bleak room, Laughingdog was in charge.

Gary leaned forward, licked his lips, and said, in a low, hungry voice, “Hey, little princess, what are you doing coming out to a place like this? Gotcha some kink for a man behind bars?” Honey raised an eyebrow, and said coolly, “Bodyguard for my Alpha’s mate. And, although I haven’t eaten lunch yet, I prefer cooked chicken to raw human flesh—much as your words might tempt me.”

Gary took in a deep breath and shook his head in apparent wonder. “I thought there weren’t any female werewolves.” She showed him her teeth in what someone else might have mistaken for a smile. “Ignorance is not unexpected.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but then his eyes focused just over Honey’s shoulder. I knew what he saw. I growled. A low sound that didn’t carry, but it caught Gary’s attention. “She is mine,” I told him. “You say one thing that hurts her, and I will see to it that you never get out of here.” I didn’t have that kind of power, but I meant it anyway. And he knew darn good and well what the “one thing” was that I was talking about. The mask of affability dropped off his face, and he met my eyes with a blank face. I let him see just how...

Something a vampire named Frost had done to Peter had kept Honey’s mate here for longer than usual, kept him soul-tied to earth when his body was dead. When I’d managed to release Peter and the others the vampire had harmed, Peter had lingered for a day and night before moving on to where souls go when the body is dead. But he’d left behind a lingering, sad-eyed ghost.

“Not on purpose. But there’s a change coming for you. I got a feel for change, and you’ll have a big one somewhere near you soon.”

Gary’s voice lowered an octave. “Got some choices to make, sweet Honey. Choices.”

“So, little sister,” he said to me. “What can I do for you?” “Why the change in attitude?” I asked suspiciously. “Word came only that coyote walker needs to talk to me,” he said with a shrug. “Usually my brother and sister walkers are con artists, thieves, and gamblers.” He tilted his head toward Honey. “Not too concerned with saving anyone’s hide except their own.”

“What?” I said. “Mercy cares,” Honey said in that same funny voice she’d used before. She tapped a finger on the table. “She always cares.” This time it sounded more normal.

He raised a hand in surrender. “I’m a lot older than I look, older by a damn sight than you and your bodyguard, too. Something I can tell because of this thrice-dammed useless foresight gift He left me with when I was about your age.” He nodded at Honey. “Said He’d come by and take it back, but He hasn’t.”

I had known couples, growing up, where the werewolf looked to be in his twenties, and his wife was dying of old age. I didn’t want to do that to my mate. I worried about Adam because he didn’t talk about it at all, and Adam was all about discussing problems he thought had solutions.

“She doesn’t know any other coyote walkers,” said Honey. “She is married to a man who will be young a hundred years from now. She wants to know that she is not going to leave him tied to a woman who will slowly die on him.”

“Most of Coyote’s children don’t have to worry about a long life, anyway. A fool and his life are soon parted, you know.”

“Coyote is my father. Sort of my father. He was wearing the skin of a rodeo cowboy who didn’t know that he was Coyote at the time.” Gary Laughingdog tilted his face toward me. “Really?” He grinned. “Exactly half sister in truth, then.” He let out a huff of air and shrugged. “You are the only real sibling I’ve met—but those of us closer to the magic in our heritage tend to live longer.”

“So don’t get overconfident. Knew a boy who was Raven’s child, and he died from measles when he was six years old.”

When he could breathe without laughing again, he said, “What did you do that for?” “Which?” I asked. “Give Coyote an artifact some freaking fae wants,” he said. “Because at that moment it was the best thing to do,” Honey said coolly. “Sometimes the only action you can take leads to more trouble. But she would have considered that when she did it. Mercy is no fool, no matter what her heritage. It is not for you to judge. Can you contact Coyote or tell Mercy how to?”

He looked at her. “Mercy isn’t the only one who protects her own here, is she?” He shook his head, and to me he said, “Spent all my life trying to make sure He didn’t visit me. Why would I want to know how to call Him? To say, ‘Hi, Father, could you fuck up my life any more than I already have? Gee, thanks. I think that will work’?”

Laughingdog closed his eyes. “The last time—He stopped in long enough to make sure that I’d spend a few years here in prison instead of getting safely back to my apartment when I left the bar at closing time. I was walking down the sidewalk, and there He was. He said He was pleased I was about to become interesting again.”

“Don’t do that,” he told me as the pupils in his eyes widened until the brown was a narrow ring around it. “Don’t do what?” asked Honey. But I knew. “Don’t ‘be interesting,’” I said. “Thank you for talking to me.” He shook his head, his face bleak. “Don’t thank me for that.”

“Nothing will protect you from Coyote. From . . .” His voice changed, deepened, and he said something in a language I’d never heard before. He stopped, then began again, “He is coming and his children cry his name into the world.” He threw his head back and howled, the high, whining cry of a coyote. As the guards broke into a run, he said something that sounded like Coyote’s name, but not quite, three times. It was oddly accented, making the first consonant a guttural sound and the final softer. “Guayota, Guayota, Guayota,” he repeated again in a soft chant that gave me goose bumps. “His children howl his name and hunger for blood until the night is broken with their cries.”

Something in me rebelled at leaving him here, caged like a zoo animal. My half brother, he’d said.

Honey didn’t like being dominant—she avoided situations in which her natural temperament showed through. I’d thought Honey didn’t like me at all. So why had she just decided, out loud, to squelch Luke?

“Why hasn’t she picked up her phone for the past hour?” he asked. She held the phone my direction and raised one eyebrow in inquiry. “I’ve been in prison,” I said in a sad voice. And left it at that. Honey flashed a grin at me, the expression startling because I was so used to the reserve she’d been carrying around with her.

“Christy answered your cell phone, and you thought Mercy should leave a message?” Honey’s voice let everyone know exactly what she thought of that.

“Hah.” Honey snorted with derision. “Christy is at least one thirty or one thirty-five.” “Big dog,” I said. Adam laughed.

“I know that,” I said. I glanced at Honey, then looked back at the road. “I thought you liked her.” She growled. “Helpless bitch had the whole pack—Adam included—hopping to her tune. Couldn’t mow the lawn, change a tire, or carry her own laundry up the stairs. Even Peter fell for it, and he usually had better sense. She didn’t like Warren—I thought at the time she was worried he was going to make a play for Adam, but mostly, I think, he didn’t fall over himself to be her slave. Darryl’s helpless against her, but at least he knows it. All that might not have been too bad, but she played them all off each other. I had my own private celebration when she left Adam.” Her lips twisted. “I don’t like you,” she told me, but there was a lie in her voice, and she stopped talking, looking almost surprised. She started again, her tones softer than they had been. “I don’t enjoy change,” she said. “And you are change, Mercy. I am comfortable with the old ways, and you are tossing them aside whenever they don’t suit you, while Adam looks on with satisfaction. But one thing I’ve always known is that you were trying your best to make things better. Christy, she looked out for herself first. I don’t imagine that has changed. Only a fool would say the same about you—though I frequently disagree with your methods and goals.”

“Big dogs are just dogs,” said Honey. “I am a wolf.” She looked at the Amstaffs, who returned her look unafraid and ready to defend their person if they needed to. “But you, little brave cousins,” Honey said, half-amused under their regard, “you I would take with me on a hunt.”

“You should know that Christy asked me to stay home because she doesn’t feel comfortable with the wolves if I’m not here.”

“Don’t we have another bathroom upstairs that Christy could use to store her makeup?” I asked.

Coyotes weren’t as territorial, as a rule, as werewolves, but we still had our hard lines. Having Christy flouncing in and out through my bedroom into my bathroom crossed one of my hard lines. I washed my hair and tried to let things, the ugly, unpleasant things I was feeling, slide down the drain with the rest of the grime that had covered my skin.

“And jealous,” he added. “I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I love you,” I told him. “I love the man you are. But her makeup is not staying here. I won’t have her in our bedroom. In our bathroom. But I will take care of it.” I smiled at him. “I don’t care if she calls me jealous or petty. Not your worry.

“Old-fashioned what?” I asked, letting my mouth follow my hands. “Mmmm,” Adam answered.

“Is it okay if I call in a few strippers to put on a show and charge it to the garage? I’ve been thinking it might pull in some more customers.” “Sure,” I said as I stepped out of my overalls: in the interest of time, I didn’t bother to retreat to the bathroom. I was wearing a full set of clothes underneath anyway. “Just make sure Christy makes it over in time for the show so she can tell the pack what kind of place I run here. Oh, and tell her I took off with a hot-looking man.”

“Are you a werewolf?” he asked. “I mean a werewolf who turns into a coyote. A werecoyote.” “There coyote.” I grinned at him and received a look.

There was an odd pause because by interrupting me, she’d made it clear that she felt comfortable correcting me. If we’d both been werewolves, I’d have been forced to make her back down—and then her supporters would have stepped in to defend her.

Ben, one of the four werewolf guards for the night, ate a big bite, swallowed, and said in a prissier-than-usual version of his British accent, “Mercy, when you say it gnawed on the bones, was it trying to get at the marrow or just cleaning its teeth?” “Ben,” snarled Auriele. “Didn’t you hear Christy?” Six months ago, Ben would have backed down. Auriele outranked him, both as Darryl’s mate and as herself. But he’d changed, grown stronger, so he just ate another bite and raised an eyebrow at me. Silent—but not very subservient. “Playing, I think,” I said to attract Auriele’s ire.