Mercy was alive. Marsilia was offering to help. Marsilia had not hurt or taken Mercy. This was not her fault. It was time to use prudence and not rage. There was no sense in angering his allies.
To that end, he took a deep breath and prepared to be diplomatic. “While I cannot in good conscience invite Marsilia into the house, I don’t believe she means harm to me, to my family, or to the pack. I also intend no harm for her. Ex-lovers,” he said heavily, “are something I’m familiar with. I cannot blame Marsilia for the actions of hers, no matter how seductive that idea is. I do not believe this is her fault.”
“I intended no harm to your wife or any who are yours,” said Marsilia. No conversation on cell phones was private around a werewolf pack—or a vampire seethe. “We will meet in your backyard, and I will tell you what I know. It will take us twenty minutes.”
—
TONY CAME WITH ANOTHER SOLEMN POLICE OFFICER and met the wrecker who pulled the cars off the road and took photos and made a vague report Adam could turn in to his car insurance. As if he cared. The important thing was that the vague report would keep the police safe.
Tony looked worried at all the blood and glanced at Adam. Then he asked Jesse, quietly, “Mercy?”
She shook her head. “We don’t know. I’ll tell you as soon as we do.”
Warren and Ben pulled in just as the pack was leaving the scene to the police. Adam slid into the backseat and directed them home.
“The store was empty and unlocked when we got there,” Ben said grimly. “Warren called the owner. He must live pretty close because he was there in just a couple of minutes.”
“The clerk was new,” Warren said. “Hired last week. The address and ID he used were both fake—owner wasn’t looking closely because he was shorthanded. Didn’t smell like vampires in there. But vampires don’t have any trouble getting humans to do their dirty work.”
“I’d appreciate it if you keep after the clerk angle,” Adam said. “Might lead somewhere.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Warren said.
The vampires beat Adam and the pack to his house. When Ben stopped the car and he got out, he could smell them.
His wolf wasn’t happy with vampires just now, but Adam subdued the monster and walked around the house to the backyard.
Marsilia, Wulfe, and Stefan awaited him, seated in three chairs they’d pulled away from a table. Someone—probably Stefan—had moved three more chairs to face them.
Marsilia had elected to bring only those two out into the open with her, though doubtless she had other vampires scattered about. Adam lifted his head and scented the air.
Or maybe not.
He waved a hand and sent those pack members who’d come to the backyard with him into the house. Everyone obeyed except for Darryl.
Adam raised an eyebrow at the big black man who was his second. Someday in the not-too-distant future, Darryl was going to move on. He was ready for his own pack and was beginning to chafe under orders.
Adam wondered how they would manage to find a pack for Darryl when his pack had no more ties to the Marrok, who ruled the wolves. Traditional methods tended to leave bodies behind. It was a momentary thought, though, brought about because of Darryl’s disobedience.
Adam’s wolf wasn’t worried. The future was what the future was, and for now, Darryl was still his. Darryl was smart; he would have a reason.
“We can agree on Stefan as neutral,” Darryl said when he was within conversational distance. “We think that you should meet as equals, though. So you need a second with you.”
He was right. Good to have a second who could think things through when all Adam really wanted to do was hunt down the vampires who had taken Mercy and obliterate them. Killing was too clean.
Impatiently, Adam nodded his agreement and took the seat opposite Marsilia. Darryl sat at his right, and the chair at his left stayed empty.
Marsilia was a real bombshell. Blond-haired Italians were never common, and he knew that the color was natural, because Stefan had commented upon it. But her beauty wasn’t a thing of color only; it was bone-and muscle-deep.
Beautiful people, mostly, lived like everyone else. Extraordinarily beautiful people, however, usually paid dearly for their beauty. Adam was pretty sure that had been no less true in fifteenth-century Italy than it was now.
Intelligent brown eyes examined him—maybe for weapons, maybe for weaknesses. He didn’t mind because he was doing the same. Though for both of them, what they were made them pretty efficient weapons all by themselves.
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. To her left sat Wulfe, who’d succeeded Stefan as her second-in-command when Stefan had left her seethe. Wulfe looked like a sulky punk rocker from the eighties, though maybe that look was back. Without Jesse’s prodding, Adam tended to lose track.
Wulfe’s pale hair stuck out in chick-soft-looking tufts about an inch long, whose ends were dyed pink. Wulfe was, in Adam’s estimation, more dangerous than Marsilia if only because he was unpredictable.
Stefan, interestingly, sat on her right. Wolves pay attention to body language, and Stefan’s body language was protective and worried.
“First,” she said, “I have to apologize for the way in which my past has rained down upon you. It is no secret that Mercedes and I are not friends, but I value the role that she plays in our community, and I do not think that anyone else could balance the werewolves, the fae, and the vampires as well as she does.”
“Differently,” murmured Wulfe. “More interestingly even, but not as peacefully.”
“Are you finished?” Marsilia inquired politely.
“Excuse me, Mistress,” Wulfe said diffidently. “I was just enlarging upon what you said.”
“Who took her?” asked Adam. He wasn’t interested in apologies that she didn’t mean.
“He did not sign his e-mail,” Marsilia said. “But I recognize the wording. It was Iacopo Bonarata, the Lord of Night. He who rules the European vampires.”
As soon as she had told him it was her ex-lover, Bonarata had been Adam’s pick. First, Adam didn’t know of any other ex-lovers of hers. He suspected that if she had other ex-lovers, they either served her or they were dead. Marsilia was as pragmatic a creature as any he’d ever met.
“Why?” Adam asked. “What does he want?” How do we get my Mercy back alive? He didn’t say it because they all knew what he was asking.
“His e-mail did not say,” Marsilia told him. “Knowing him, it could be any of a dozen reasons. He could be reacting to our killing of Frost, which he might see as an elevation of my power. He sent me here to rot, not to rise up through the ranks and rule North America.”
“He knows you well enough, he should have thought of that as a possibility,” Stefan told Marsilia.
“Not his business what anyone does here,” said Adam. “He rules Europe.”
Wulfe laughed. “Innocent,” he told Adam. “I find it so droll that you are such an innocent.” Then the silly affectations left his body, and he was softly menacing as he said, “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.’”
“He threw away something of great value,” said Stefan. “Something he viewed as a work of art—and he knows it. He regrets it.”