Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson, #10)

by Patricia Briggs

retroterra

Vampires, like werewolves, had their origins in Europe. Among the vampires, being American was a confession of youth and weakness—so none of them was too eager to lose their accent.

I was right. No matter how dominant Pretty Vampire was, it was Thug Vampire who was running the show. Radiating nothing in the presence of power is a sign of even more power. Thug Vampire pushed Pretty Vampire all the way out of the room without touching him. Pretty Vampire bowed and kowtowed apologetically as he backed up.

Vampires weren’t fae, who always had to tell the truth. I could tell when a human was telling a lie—but, in general, the older the creature, the better liar they were. If he wanted to negotiate with my pack, any kind of negotiate, kidnapping me had been the wrong move. If he was who I thought he was, doing it wrong was highly unlikely. So maybe negotiation wasn’t what he was after.

There were two puncture wounds in my neck. I hate vampires . . . I hate vampires . . . I hate them. This was the reason that vampires would never, ever be able to let the humans know about them. If a powerful enough vampire bit someone, especially more than once, that vampire could control them. They called it the Kiss. It was what allowed the Mistress or Master of a seethe to control the fledgling vampires who could not maintain sentience without feeding from a more powerful vampire. It is what allowed the maker to control his fledglings. A human who had been given the Kiss was a pet. Thug Vampire had tried to make me his pet when I was unconscious and unable to defend myself.

Iacopo Bonarata, the Lord of Night, head of the Milan, Italy, seethe, once lover of Marsilia, was the de facto leader of the European vampires—and probably anywhere else he chose to travel. He wasn’t the Marrok, who ruled because that was the best way to protect his people. He was just a scary bastard that none of the other vampires chose to challenge. He’d been unchallenged by anyone, as far as I could find out, at least since the Renaissance, when he rose to power as a very young and ambitious monster. And he was jealous of my imaginary relationship with the Queen of the Damned, Marsilia.

For all that he wasn’t pretty, he exuded a sexual bonhomie that was very powerful. The only thing I’d felt that was anything like it was when the fae tavern owner, Uncle Mike, turned on the charm. For Uncle Mike it was magic, and it had nothing to do with sex. The Lord of Night was all about sex and earthy things—but it was also magic. He’d been using it on me subtly from the moment Pretty Vampire had left my cell, but when he laughed, the magic simply boiled out of him like an invisible fog. I caught the shadow of its effect, intended or not. This magic should have enhanced the sexual pull of the Lord of Night. It brushed over me without affecting me overly much.

For my part, I sat stiff and sore—and very worried about what he would do if he realized his magic had no effect on me. Would he attribute it to my tie with another vampire, or my tie to Adam and our pack, or would he figure out what I really was?

I really wasn’t myself. I am generally very good about accommodating megalomaniacal egomaniacs and waiting until it was safe to torment them. I had grown up doing that. But my head hurt, and he was creeping me out. “Epic failure,” I told him. “I’ll have you know that I expect my archenemies to be competent.”

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.

“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.”

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 ground 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.

She was wearing slacks and some sort of silk top that left her arms and shoulders bare, covering her adequately otherwise while leaving no doubt that she wore no bra. She could have appeared on a news program or a Hollywood premiere in her outfit without attracting comment. She wore it like a woman who habitually used her body as a weapon rather than someone aiming a weapon at him personally.

“Iacopo Bonarata has spider silk throughout the world. He owns corporations based in New York and Texas as well as Buenos Aires and Hong Kong. He has owned four of the last six presidents, though they did not know it. Any other vampire rising to power is a threat, and he does not deal well with threats.” “He is a Renaissance prince,” said Marsilia, almost apologetically. “The last of his house, the rest of whom died during the Black Death. Control everything or die: it is how he was raised, how he thinks. I do not know that he understands words like ‘content’ or ‘enough.’”

“You Made him,” she said. Wulfe snorted. “I haven’t been his Master for a very, very long time. Any more than he is yours.” “Why did you put Mercy forth as the most powerful of us?” asked Adam tersely. Wulfe’s silly grin returned. “Because it was funny.” He sobered. “Because it was true.” He looked at Marsilia. “Because if I’d answered the question the way he meant it, he’d have taken Adam. And he would have killed Adam, he couldn’t have helped himself. Mercy . . . he won’t see the threat Mercy is until she has his head on a pike. He doesn’t understand that kind of strength. He cannot use his most powerful weapons on her because of what she is, and he has no experience to understand what she is.”

“My seethe is stronger than it has been in years. We have had some new-made vampires and some who have come here, drawn by your declaration. It is not only the fae who are tired of fighting. But there are only three Master Vampires—those of us who do not need to obey our maker or the Mistress of the seethe. I am the first. Stefan is the second. And Wulfe is third. I know Iacopo.”

“To keep Bonarata from coming here,” she said, “and taking over my people and yours. Do not doubt that he could. He stole the mate of an old and dominant werewolf and made her his mindless slave. When her mate tried to save her, he destroyed the whole pack except for the Alpha. I have heard that Iacopo keeps that one alive still.” “Jacob,” said Wulfe. “You keep forgetting. And the old Alpha is dead. Jacob lost his witch and doesn’t know where to find her. Without her, he couldn’t keep the old wolf around, so he killed him. It. Actually. I think the wolf was an it when it died.”

“If you are taken by your enemies,” he said, “don’t wait to escape. The hour you are taken is when you will be at your strongest. Time gives them the opportunity to starve you, to torture you, to break you and make you weak. You have to escape as soon as you can.”

I wondered if he’d had some prescience, some vision of me in my present circumstance—or if he’d just been passing on advice because everyone should know what to do if they were kidnapped. With Charles, it was hard to tell.

I’d grown up hearing the old wolves talk about how much more satisfying it was to eat something while its heart pumped frantically from terror. Some of the old wolves who came to live out their last years in the Marrok’s pack were not kind.

I really was certain that Marsilia was involved somehow. There had been something about the way he’d looked at me when he told me he hadn’t wanted to kill Marsilia, so he hadn’t broken the bond I shared (supposedly) with her.

all magical bonds are formed from the same sort of magic. Humans have those kinds of bonds, too—but theirs are softer and more fragile. Breakable.

The bond between a vampire and his victim (I say his because the vampire who owned me—and that was exactly the right word—was a him) put the vampire in the driver’s seat. The vampire could, if he so chose, make his pet do anything, feel anything. Whenever the vampire decided to, he could take away his victim’s free will—and the victim might not even know. The Kiss doesn’t always work. Stefan told me that it was almost impossible to take a werewolf the way they could take humans because of the pack bonds.

I trusted Stefan. Even so, Stefan owned me. He had saved my life by claiming me, and I’d agreed to it. But I’d thought it was broken, gone. Thought my ties to Adam and the pack had erased it, because Stefan had wanted me to believe it. Apparently, because I’d taken the bond willingly, it wasn’t something Stefan could break even if he wanted to. Knowing Stefan as I did, I was willing to believe that. The Lord of Night had tried to break it and failed. Or so he said.

What if he hadn’t wanted me to die at the fangs of his pet werewolf as I’d first thought? What—what if this was his plan? That I’d escape, think I was free, get back to the pack—and destroy them because I belonged to Bonarata. That story, unfortunately, made better sense than some sort of unrequited jealousy as a motivation.

A fine silver chain lay in my hands—and once I saw it, I could see that it led to the hands of the version of Stefan I had on my stage. It looked so fragile—I tried to break it, but it wouldn’t break or bend, not with anything I could bring to bear on it in my mind. I fought and fought, pulling frantically on the necklace collar around my neck until blood stained the chain, running down it from my neck and from my fingers. Shhh, said a cool voice. Shhh, you’re breaking my heart, cara. I froze, then looked up from the now-heavy chain to my image of Stefan, which crouched next to me on the stage. I promised, he told me. I promised not to tug on the leash. I promised. Don’t hurt yourself so. I keep my promises, Mercy.

Stefan was a vampire. He killed people to survive. It was true that he tried his best to keep them alive. It was true that he was funny and honorable. It was true that I liked him. But he was a vampire, and he owned me. The thought of that was enough for me to have to open my mouth and pant out my fear. But at least it was still Stefan and not Bonarata, not the Lord of Night. Stefan’s bond had saved me again. Had I been free, I would probably belong to the other vampire right now. He could have used me to get whatever it was that he wanted from our pack and Marsilia. I could have been his Trojan horse.

The overall effect was an exuberant, almost boisterous, eclectically historical architecture. Here and there, aggressively plain buildings squatted between the beautiful, centuries-old masterpieces like defiant toads set between swans, hinting that this city had spent some time behind the Iron Curtain.

The first thing that came to mind was that Prague citizens had a habit of throwing powerful officials out of windows—the Second Defenestration of Prague began the Thirty Years War in 1618. There wasn’t another capital city with a First Defenestration that I knew of, let alone a second one. Prague was full of my kind of people.

I’d lived more than half my life essentially alone. Sometimes in the past few years, I had longed to be alone, just for an hour or two. And here I was. Alone. Sometimes getting your wish really sucks.

Six hundred years old. I stared at it and tried to imagine how it would feel to be Bran or the Moor and look at such things and remember before they were built. To look around the city and realize that the oldest thing in this old city was probably you.

Ghosts are mostly bits and pieces of people, of emotions, left behind—so it was like being followed by zombies. They want me to do something for them, but there isn’t enough of them left to communicate exactly what that is.

“To break a werewolf’s mating bond,” Elizaveta said, “this is something very difficult—but to block it?” She laughed gently and patted his cheek. “Such a thing is child’s play to such as I. Witches like me and werewolves like you have existed in the same places for centuries. Much werewolf lore has been passed down in my family and others.”

The monster inside him didn’t want to fly to Italy and treat with a vampire. It wanted to go to Italy and kill all the vampires. All of them everywhere. Then find Mercy, take her home, and barricade her in their home so that no one else could take her from them. Part of Adam’s trouble in bringing the wolf under control was that he pretty much felt the same way. Only his intellect could see how disastrous that might be. Still, his heart fought on the side of the monster.

To prove that no matter how old Adam got he would never understand women, telling Honey he was using her as bait for the nastiest vampire on the planet made her happier with his decision.

Submissive wolves—and their mates—were welcome in any pack they chose to honor with their presence. Alpha werewolves practically needed a treaty drawn up to move around.

Aiden represented too much possible power, and the absence of both Adam and Mercy would be a tempting time for some independent fae to make a play. Especially since Mercy had been kidnapped, which made them appear weak. Like the werewolves, the fae were predators, and weakness would be an almost irresistible draw.

They weren’t a long-lived race, as fae went, but they were clever and more powerful than most people gave them credit for. Adam liked that they were often underestimated. Marsilia liked that they were old allies of hers. They were, Adam had found, more reliable and oddly honorable for one of the fae folk.

I don’t mind them as noncombatants, but I’d just as soon keep them off the field. You don’t know who they’ll decide to kill first, your enemies or you.”

The goblins didn’t consider themselves fae, though the reverse wasn’t true. Most of the fae looked upon the goblins as sort of lowborn, weak, stupid cousins. Some of the fae looked upon them as food—and the goblins never forgot that.

If Mercy were playing a man like that, Adam would know she was about to stab that man in the back. His wolf settled. Mercy wasn’t above playing roles and fighting dirty when the odds weren’t in her favor. As long as she felt she stood on the side of the angels, she wasn’t particular about how her enemies fell. Marsilia was no more ethical in that way than Mercy—and far more vindictive.

He let his wolf rise just a bit—rage and lust smelled very similar. In his experience, vampires weren’t good at sorting through emotions, though they could smell them very nearly as well as a wolf. But the vampires’ emotions were skewed, they were selfish creatures by definition, and it left them in trouble when it came to sorting someone else’s out.

So Bonarata could get and give information through his minions—at least through this minion. Adam would remember that.

Bonarata didn’t like making mistakes—though he didn’t mind hiding behind an apology and the claim of a mistake that wasn’t really a mistake.

he was staring at Harris’s copilot, who had been doing a pretty good job of being unnoticeable. “That one is a werewolf,” he said abruptly, as if he’d just figured it out. Harris frowned irritably. “I was told that this involved vampires. I have five people who can fly this bird from the US to Europe, excluding me. Four of them are humans, so I brought the werewolf. He doesn’t belong to Hauptman’s pack. I cleared it with Hauptman.” He turned his frown to Adam. “I was told a pilot and copilot were acceptable,” said Adam coolly. “What race or species they belonged to was not specified.”

“Are you Charles Cornick?” the vampire asked the man standing just behind Harris. The werewolf’s jaw dropped. “Oh, hell no, sir,” he said in a shaky voice, his shoulder bumping into Harris’s. He might as well have screamed “I’m a victim” to the biggest predator in Europe. Adam could see the urge to attack slide into the bodies of all the vampires in the area—including Marsilia and Stefan.

Harris’s copilot continued to babble, the smell of his panic filling the air. “Have you ever seen Charles? He’s about twenty feet tall, and he’s Native American. Do I look Native American to you?” “Leave him alone, Bonarata,” said Adam. “He’s not your food. He is . . .” Adam surveyed the trembling wolf without affection, but sighed. “He is under my protection.” “I thought you said he wasn’t one of yours,” the vampire observed. “He doesn’t belong to my pack,” Adam said. “But for the purposes of this trip, he put his neck on the line for me. That means he is mine to protect.”

Libor, the Alpha of Prague, was a big man, not so much tall as massive. There was something more leonine than lupine about him. His features were of average attractiveness. He was neither beautiful nor ugly. It was a strong face and intelligent. He reminded me, superficially, of Bonarata, in that people would look at him and expect brutality and risk missing the intelligence altogether.

I don’t know how Zack had become a bone of contention between Libor and Bran—but I would bet all the money I didn’t have at the moment that he was at the bottom of their feud.