The last steep bit I managed by ignoring my tiredness and occupying myself with the very important decision of whether to continue straight or turn left or right. My life hung in the balance, but I had nothing to draw upon to make the decision an informed one. The high hedge lined both sides of the road I was traveling on, and I could not even see the new road.
I hesitated a moment . . . one second and two, right at the intersection. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the satisfaction in her eyes. My indecision had given her the hunt. She was still stronger than I was, and the long uphill stretch had eaten most of the lead that the vineyard had given me.
She was so busy seeing me as her prize, she didn’t pay attention to anything else. So when I bolted across the intersection, she did, too—and the bus that I’d waited for hit her and rolled over the top of her with both sets of wheels.
I turned right, the direction the bus had come from, and kept going. Behind me, I heard the bus slow and stop. I hoped that she was dead—or dead enough to leave the bus driver and the people riding in it safe.
After a while, I heard the engine sound change as the bus pulled out again and headed away on its original course. I dropped from a sprint to a jog. She might still be alive, but she wasn’t going to be chasing me again until she’d had time to heal. Without a pack, it was going to take her a few hours at least.
It was still dark, though, and there was the possibility that the vampire hadn’t left his—what? lover? food?—to kill me on her own. I needed to find a safe place. I needed to contact Adam. I needed to eat something. Not necessarily in that order. Water, the most immediate need, I found in a trough set out for some cows. They watched me curiously, but I didn’t alarm them.
I thought about cutting through their pasture and into more vineyards, but I wanted to go home. Following the road until I found a familiar setting seemed to be a better choice. The road I followed was, other than the small cow pasture, bordered on either side by vineyards until civilization crept very slowly back in, but not in any useful fashion.
I traveled for another hour or four, until the first rays of the next day dawned, without finding anyplace that seemed safe. I think if I hadn’t been so tired, I might have done something smart, like changing into a human and going looking for help. Though maybe not. Bonarata would not be kind to any human who thwarted his will and helped me—that was his reputation, anyway. Instead of looking for help, I found railroad tracks and followed them for a while, exhaustion leaving me very focused on putting more miles between me and the vampires. On getting away safely. A train seemed like a very good idea.
In the end, I didn’t take a train. I found the station, right on the edge of where village turned into tight-packed city. As I was trying to figure out just how to jump on a train without anyone’s seeing me—pack magic could make people not pay attention to me only as long as I didn’t do anything too interesting—I realized that there was an easier ride to be had.
The small train station shared space with a bus terminal. There was, not ten feet from where I’d emerged from the tidy bushes surrounding the whole space, a bus with the luggage doors open on both sides. Even as I noticed it, attendants closed the doors on the far side.
I jumped in the near side and scrambled over bags and suitcases before dropping into an empty space and stillness. I lay there panting as quietly as I could until the doors closed. Five minutes later, the bus lumbered forward in a wave of diesel fumes, and I took a deep breath.
Safe.
Relief washed over me, and I put my head down. I slept.
—
I DREAMED OF ADAM.
I sprawled awkwardly over a chair shaped for a person in my coyote body, my muzzle on Adam’s lap. His strong hand rested on my back. I moved so I could see his face: he looked tired. I think we were on an airplane—which made no sense at all. But it was only an impression. Everything except for Adam was pretty vague in the way that dreams sometimes are.
“There you are,” he said. “What in . . . what did you get yourself into this time?”
Coyotes can’t talk.
“Mercy,” he said.
Sometimes I have been known to use the not-talk thing to my advantage. He sounded like he was mad at me. I was tired. The pads on the bottom of my feet, tough enough to run over the desert, had not fared so well running over blacktop all night. My shoulder hurt, my jaw hurt, my heart hurt. I was stuck in a luggage compartment without food. My stomach was pretty sure my throat had been cut.
I put my muzzle back on his lap and closed my eyes.
He was very still for a moment.
“Not doing so good, huh?” he said softly, running his hands over my sides gently before he touched both sides of my face in a caress that was both soothing and possessive. “Sorry. I’ve been fuc . . . very worried.” Adam doesn’t swear in front of women or children if he can help it—a product of a childhood in the fifties or abnormally good manners, take your pick.
He bent over me, put his head down on top of mine, and I heard him inhale as if he were breathing me in. “Are you okay?”
I wiggled a little closer to him, but I didn’t open my eyes.
Apparently that was enough of an answer, because he exhaled and relaxed. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
He sat up, but his hands stayed on me. “You just disappeared, sweetheart. We found the SUV and the stolen semi that hit it. Found your blood on the seat—that was rough, because, Mercy, it was a lot of blood. But we couldn’t find you. The gas station was deserted. We think the clerk belonged to the vampires. That they had been waiting for you to go there by yourself. It was so close to home, you’d feel safe—and that would give them a chance to act.
“We might have been at a dead end, but things really got interesting when we talked to Marsilia.”
I raised my head and looked at him, but he was staring at something I couldn’t see.
“She’d gotten an e-mail,” he told me. “Implying that you were being held to persuade her to present herself before the . . .” He stopped here. “I am informed that speaking his name or title might allow him to eavesdrop because we are speaking via a witch’s spell rather than our bond. Do you know who I mean?”
I nodded, disconcerted by the idea of a witch spell. Adam’s hands tightened painfully.
“Does he have you?” Adam asked urgently, and I shook my head.
“You got away? Where are you? Are you all right? Are you safe?” he asked.
I would have said something then. But I was in coyote form—and I didn’t have the faintest idea how to answer any of his questions.
His nostrils flared, and he frowned at me. “I smell diesel. I thought it was just you . . . but, Mercy, are you on a bus?” he asked.
But he was gone before I could answer, the quiet dream blown to bits by the abrupt sound of hissing brakes. The noise and rough jolting brought me back to the dark underbelly of the luggage compartment, which was a cold substitute for Adam’s lap. I stood up. My legs had trouble compensating for the wallow as the bus rolled over speed bumps, curbs, bodies, or something that lifted up one side, then the other a couple of times.
I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep. Not very long, I thought. I would have been stiffer if it had been more than a half hour or so—not long enough to be safe from the Lord of Night. I waited, and when the bus stopped, I readied myself.
When the luggage doors opened, I dashed out as quickly as I could. The bus attendant cried out as I ran by him, but this was a huge station, and I quickly lost myself among the buses and passengers towing luggage.