Night Broken (Mercy Thompson, #8)

by Patricia Briggs

If her stalker didn’t kill Christy soon, she might just drive me to it. At this point, I wasn’t even certain how much of it was her fault and how much of it was me being jealous. Not of Adam, Adam belonged to me, soul and wolf. If it were just Adam, I’d have more control. It was the pack. Pack magic, I’d learned, was real. And if enough of the pack wanted you to do something, it was difficult not to do it. When I hadn’t been aware of it, some members of the pack had made Adam and me have a fight. They couldn’t do that anymore, but I could feel them pressing upon me. I suspected that if enough of them wanted me out of the pack badly enough, they would succeed. What I didn’t know was what that would do to Adam, but I was certain it wouldn’t be good.

The engagement ring had a single, large, pear-cut diamond. My wedding ring was plainer, just two small yellow topazes Adam said were the same color as my eyes when I went coyote. The rings had been brazed together so that the topazes flanked the diamond.

“Samuel told me that when she tried to bring her case to Bran, Charles swore, in front of most of the pack, that you were with him all day working on cars during the only time the switch between the star and the shoe could have been made. No one could hear the lie, so she had to leave it or challenge Charles first.” “He lied?” I said, shocked. Thought about it, and said in a hushed voice, “He lied, and no one could tell?” “It’s Charles,” Adam explained as if that was enough—and it was. “You handled Bran, and you handled Leah. So don’t tell me you couldn’t put a stop to Christy’s taunts and teach her to behave herself until she goes home.”

I went limp against him, and said, dramatically, “I’m helpless against your kisses.” He laughed like a villain in a cartoon. “Aha. So that’s how it’s done. Well, there’s no help for you, then.” “No,” I said in a faint voice, putting an arm over my forehead as I arched back over his arm in the classic pose of the helpless ingénue. “I guess you’ll just have your wicked way with me again.” “Cool,” said my husband, a wicked growl in his voice. “Don’t worry. You’ll enjoy every minute of it.”

“And Dad is iron-kissed, a master of metals.” He tucked his thumbs under his imaginary collar and grinned with lots of cheese. “I’m just a chip off the old block and safe from arsenic attacks of all kinds.”

“Christy,” I interrupted her, and let menace color my voice because I refused to let her hear the fear, “if you don’t give Adam the phone right the hell now, so help me, I will put you out with the rest of the trash in the morning.”

If Adam was movie-star handsome—this man was porn-star material.

“Your fault,” I said coolly, aiming steadily at him and not looking at the poor dog. “You signaled, and he gathered himself for attack. I warned you.” “My children are immortal,” he told me in a breathless hiss and with theatrics that belonged onstage rather than in the mundane environment of my garage.

“Tied to flesh that can be killed, but that mortal flesh is easily replaced. My son will not die but rise again, and so your efforts to defeat me and mine fail. Even so, you will suffer for this before you die.” “Your children are immortal?” I asked, repeating the important part of his words for the camera to catch. The first security system had had sound, but when Adam had updated, he’d traded sound for better video. “Tied to mortal flesh. Who are you?” “Guayota,” he said. “Coyote?” I asked, and I know my eyes widened. He wasn’t Coyote. “Guayota,” he said again, and I heard once more the odd pronunciation that Gary Laughingdog had used in the middle of his vision. Not Coyote with a weird accent but another name altogether. “With a ‘g,’” I said.

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.

“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.

“It should look dashing,” he told me. “Just a pale streak, and you can make up all sorts of stories about how you got it. Frostbite on your third polar expedition. Dueling scar. Knife fight in the ghetto.”

“So,” Laughingdog said as we came into the room, “do you swing the same way as your host, Zack? I usually go for women, but you’re cute enough I could do you if you want.”

“I’d do you, too.” He wasn’t lying. “Almost-Sister, you picked a real catch.”

“I told you to back the fuck off,” Kyle snarled. “You are a temporary guest in my house, and I am done with you.”

“Ah, damn it all,” Laughingdog said, sitting up. “I didn’t catch it. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up and not notice what my nose tells me. I know what ‘no’ means, kid. No always means no.” “Mercy,” Adam said. “You and Kyle take Laughingdog somewhere else and let me talk to Zack. Evidently ‘no’ doesn’t always mean ‘no.’”

“Nah, kid,” said Laughingdog. “Not overreacting when you don’t know me. But someone needs to teach you to do something more effective than just locking down.” He frowned at me. Apparently it was my fault that he’d scared Zack.

“You know,” he said, “I can do a little rough since that seems to be your thing—and you look like a man who likes the boys rather than the girls.” “Not interested,” said Kyle shortly. “See,” said Laughingdog to the room at large, though there was no doubt to whom he addressed his words. “That’s how it’s done. ‘Go soak yourself in oil and light a match’ in two short words.”

“Hey, I’m not pointing fingers, man,” said Laughingdog. “Just explaining why my thoughts went right to look at Zack, but a deaf and blind man could tell that there is nothing between them. So his partner is this other werewolf.” He breathed out through his nose in a huff of amusement. “A gay werewolf. I never thought I’d see the day that a pack let a gay werewolf live.”

She gave the men a cautious look. “This is Gary Laughingdog,” I told her. “My half brother.” That was a simpler explanation for his presence than any other I could come up with on short notice, and it had the additional benefit of being true. I could feel his eyes boring holes in my back, but he didn’t comment.

My brother here knows a little about the kinds of spirits that dwell in mountains.” Gary kept reacting when I claimed him as a relative. I wasn’t sure whether he was happy, unhappy, or just surprised by it. I just ignored him and continued on.

“As far as I know, Native Americans are no more psychic than anyone else,” I told her. “My father, though, he was . . .” Was what? Coyote? “A bull rider in rodeos, but in his spare time he hunted”—vampires—“demons. He was something of a shaman, and some of that followed his children.” “You don’t have visions?” “No.” I turned into a coyote and saw ghosts.

He grimaced. “Just so you know, kid,” he said. “I usually run when the bad things start happening.” “Me, too,” said Lucia, and Gary and I exchanged quick grins because she was lying.

Nothing alive in here. Tell her to get her things, and we’ll go back to the kennels. Adam’s voice slid into my head like warm honey. I’d never told him how much I liked it, because, like telling him how sexy it was when he did sit-ups when I could see his bare stomach, it could never be unsaid. He had enough power over me already. He didn’t need to know how weak I was. I love it when you talk this way to me, too, Adam told me.

“I hate it when the dog dies at the end,” said Gary, his voice tight. He slapped the chain-link wall of a kennel. “I tore up my copy of Old Yeller and threw it away.”

He said, ‘Niña, most people are good people. Take this dog. A lot of good people worked to save her. People noticed, they called the police. The police brought in the Humane Society, and they took her—risked getting bitten so that she could have a better life. Lots of people working to undo the work of one bastard. You know what that means? Lots more good people out there than bad.’” “It also means bad people’s works are stronger than good people’s,” murmured Gary, but he spoke quietly.

“Damn, lady,” said Zack, looking at me from the corner of his eye. “Damn, but you don’t have any quit in you at all.” “Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’,” said Warren. “That’s our Mercy.”

“Do them good to see it again,” Honey said as we started down. “They like to dismiss you as a liability. Let them see you fight.” “I’d have lost if Adam and Tad hadn’t shown up,” I told her. “That lot, most of them, would have lost when the dog started his attack,” she said, unperturbed. She gave me a laughing glance. “What I really wish, though, is that there had been a camera at your house when Adam tore a strip off Christy when she wasted time playing stupid games with his phone when you were calling for help. I’d pay a lot of money to have gotten to see that.”

She led the way back into her kitchen and did a double take when she saw Gary. “I thought you were in—” Honey hadn’t been with us when we’d discussed his jailbreak and my seeing him at the crime scene in Finley. Apparently no one had mentioned it to her. “I decided to follow you,” he broke in with a good-old-boy smile before she could say the “prison” word. “The most intriguing, most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I thought, if she would just look at me, I would never need to eat again because that look would sustain me for the rest of my life.”

“You’d better cool your jets,” I told him, because although he might have interrupted her to stop her from blurting out where she’d last seen him, there had been real intent in his flirting—as there hadn’t been when he’d been messing around with Kyle and Zack. “Honey will wipe the floor with you.” His eyes went half-mast, and his voice dropped in evident pleasure. “I know.”

“We have pizza coming in about fifteen minutes,” Honey said briskly, returning to the kitchen on the heels of Gary’s words. She’d probably heard Adam, too. “Eat. Stay the night—and then no one will stop you from running as far and as fast as you want.” “I’m not a coward,” he said defensively. “Just prudent.”

He hadn’t cared what Adam and I thought of him. Honey’s eyebrows rose. “I never said you were. I also don’t think you are stupid. Eat. Sleep. Run. Works better in that order because you can run faster on a full stomach and a real night’s sleep.” “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll leave tomorrow, thank you.” It had been Honey, I thought, who had made him decide to stay. She was too smart not to see it, but she chose to ignore him.

Christy went right for Adam as if none of the rest of us were there. “This is your fault,” she said viciously. “I felt so horrible, bringing my troubles here, and it was your fault.” “Careful,” I murmured, but she didn’t pay any attention to me—which was foolish of her. “I should have known when Troy was killed.” It took me a second to figure out who Troy was, I’d never heard the name of her boyfriend who’d been killed. “The only time bodies start appearing around me is when there are werewolves involved,” she continued. “Juan Flores isn’t a werewolf,” I said, but again I spoke quietly, and she didn’t appear to have heard me. Adam didn’t say anything. He took a deep breath and just—accepted what she said. It was the first time I’d ever seen a real fight between them. Watching him as she spewed guilt all over him, I realized that he enjoyed our fights almost as much as I did. When we fought, he roared and stalked and fought back. He didn’t let his face go blank and wait to be hit again. Being willing to accept responsibility for the well-being of others was part of being Alpha, part of who Adam was, and she was very, very good at using that against him.

Tears leaked artfully down her face. “I tried. I tried, then I had to run. But I can’t get away from you, can’t get away from the monsters. They follow me wherever I go, and it is your fault.” Adam wasn’t going to defend himself. Honey wrapped her arms around her stomach and turned away. Honey believed herself to be one of the monsters, too, and so Christy’s venom spread over Honey as well.

“Adam didn’t make you go sleep with some complete stranger because he was handsome and rich,” I said coolly, but this time at full volume. There wasn’t a wolf in the house who hadn’t heard Christy, so they could listen to me, too. “Stay out of this,” she snapped at me, wiping futilely at her cheeks. “This isn’t your business.” “When you blamed Adam, whose only fault that I can see is that he has poor taste in wives, you made it my business,” I told her. Honey cleared her throat. “You do know you are o...

“He approached me,” she said defensively—not to mention falsely. “Are you stupid? How long did you live with the wolves?” I asked her incredulously. “You do know that most of the people in this room can tell that you are lying, right?” Stupid. She wasn’t stupid, just self-absorbed and unwise. She didn’t like people thinking badly of her, so she lied.

“The only thing Adam has to do with this is that you bragged about being an Alpha werewolf’s ex-wife to catch Juan’s attention.”

On the far side of the werewolf pack trying to comfort Christy, Ben shared a cynical smile with us. He wasn’t petting Christy, either.

I like it when you defend me. I haven’t gotten a lot of that.” “That voice,” I said, and he laughed happily, though even his laugh held that rough sexual overtone. He rolled until he was on top of me, and he nibbled along my jawline. “You like my body,” he told me, “you like me sweaty, and watching my belly when I do sit-ups.” “Hey,” I said, trying for indignation, “I never told you that.” He laughed again. “Sweetheart, you tell me that every time you can’t look away, and you know it. But”—he laughed again, then said, in that deep growly voice that was his own personal secret weapon—“you really like it when I talk to you, like this.” “No door,” I squeaked. “She’ll walk in on us and make sure Jesse is with her.”

He began to strip, not bothering to hide his arousal.

Coyote laughed. “That one has been trying to avoid me for most of his life.”

“I don’t understand why you are so determined to hang around with werewolves. They are all about rules. And you”—he slanted a laughing glance at me—“like me, are all about breaking them.”

He nodded like I had said something smart. Then he said, “And when rules don’t keep them safe, we break the rules.” I could agree with that—and almost did. If it weren’t for that little bit of smugness on his face, I would have. I wonder what rules he was contemplating breaking.

He looked at me, then away. “One of your wolves saw me looking at Honey and told me about her husband. That’s who she’s got following her around, right? She’s not going to be able to see anyone else until she lets him go.”

“She’s interested in me,” he said. He flashed me that grin again, but I saw behind it to how alone he was. “I’m not just being vain, though I own that as well. But it hurts her that she’s interested, and I think she’s been hurt enough. It was time for me to leave.”

“It knows how to hide itself better,” Coyote murmured, sounding like a proud parent. I watched the dogs, but they didn’t seem to hear him as he continued talking. “I taught it a few tricks and gave it an education. It helped me out of a few jams.”

“Do you remember what the walking stick’s original magic was?” asked Coyote. “Makes sheep have twins,” I told him. The dogs didn’t react to my voice, either. “And?” “That was it,” I told him. “Lugh made three walking sticks. This one makes twin lambs. One of them helps you find your way home, and the third allows you to see people as they really are.” “Hmm,” said Coyote. “Are you sure your source was reliable?” “Yes,” I told him. “I think,” said Coyote, “that you should recheck your source. Maybe there were three staves that all did the same thing, or maybe there was only ever one. Or maybe”—he gave me a sly look—“I was just able to teach it to ape its brethren. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Look at the dogs.”

“Gary,” said Coyote conversationally as he turned around and raised his butt in the air until he was crouched like a runner in a sprint at the Olympics. “You should stay until the end of this story. Sometimes the end of the adventure is much better than the beginning. Besides, you might be more useful than you know if you stick around.”

Under my hand, the staff warmed, and I realized it was happy to be back with me.

Coyote slipped back, grabbed my ankle, and dragged me backward, out from under the hedge like I was a rabbit he’d caught. He dropped my ankle, grabbed my elbow, and hauled me to my feet. Before I could catch my balance, he all but threw me down the cliff face we’d come up. I managed to stay on my feet, using the bottoms of my shoes like skis and leaning my weight back on the walking stick for balance in a mockery of glissading.