“Rest well,” Adam said, though he knew that it wasn’t a rest at all—the vampires died with the rising of the sun.
Stefan, who had followed Marsilia as she walked rapidly toward their room, paused to give Adam a wry smile. “Stay safe,” he said, then disappeared through the doorway behind Marsilia.
Larry rubbed his hands together thoughtfully, staring at the door that had just closed behind their vampires. But when he spoke, it wasn’t—directly—about Marsilia or Stefan.
“I think that went about as well as could be expected,” he said. Then he said what Adam had just been thinking. “I’m not sure anyone but a love-struck fool, which Bonarata isn’t quite, would think there was anything between you and Marsilia. But the Lord of Night was plenty jealous anyway, for what it’s worth. I heard you open Bonarata’s eyes about the relationship between the Marrok and your wife. Is it true? Would the Marrok still go to war for her?”
If the goblin had heard all of that, he not only could hear as well as any werewolf Adam had ever met, he also had a larger capacity to sort through data than Adam had. The conversations in the dinner hall had blurred to incomprehensible for Adam.
He nodded in response to the goblin’s question. “Bran would not be pleased if something happened to Mercy. Very not pleased.”
Larry tilted his head in a way that was neither human nor quite wolflike. “Bran was Grendel?”
He thought about Larry the goblin king and how everyone underestimated goblins. He decided it would be a good thing if the goblin king knew something of what the Marrok was.
“Not quite,” Adam said. “As I understand it, Beowulf was written down a long time after the events it purports to tell. The purpose of the story as it was recorded was to recite the final deeds of Beowulf, a great hero. Somewhere along the way, someone put him up against the scariest monsters they’d ever heard of instead of the terrible monsters who did kill him. That tale then blended back to the original.”
On one remarkable night, not long after Adam had been Changed, the Marrok’s son Samuel had sung (then translated) several versions of the tale of Beowulf.
“Beowulf,” Adam told the goblin, “isn’t any more accurate than any story told by mouth for centuries before it was written down, which is not very. Bran’s story is that a long time ago, he was broken. It had something to do with protecting his son. For a very long time afterward—decades and maybe longer—Bran was a mindless monster who killed every living thing in his territory.”
“When you were talking to Jacob, you said Bran’s mother was a witch,” said Elizaveta.
He hadn’t. She was fishing. So he said, “Bran has never said so. I’ve heard the rumors, though. So has Bonarata.”
Samuel had told him that Bran’s mother was a witch, and Adam figured that, being Bran’s son, Samuel had been in a position to know. But he didn’t have to tell Elizaveta who his source was. If Bran had wanted it to be known that he was witchborn, he’d have told everyone himself. Since he hadn’t, Adam wasn’t going to do it for him. But everyone had heard the rumors, and those Bran encouraged. Adam just didn’t need to confirm them.
“Interesting,” she said thoughtfully. “It would explain some things if it were true.” She smiled wickedly at Adam. “Some things that others have tried to do to Bran Cornick and failed miserably.”
He didn’t want to know, especially because she wanted to tell him. Elizaveta was one of his, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know what she was—witch and all that entailed. He wouldn’t invite her to bring her brand of horror to their suite—and it did not matter to him in the slightest that it was only Larry and Honey here, and they could protect themselves.
“Be that as it may,” Elizaveta said when it became clear he wasn’t going to question her. He could tell she was disappointed with him for spoiling her fun, though she knew him better than to have expected him to allow her to play her games here. “I am an old woman, and I’ve been up for far too long. I’m going to bed and going to sleep.”
“Wait,” he said impulsively. “Can you help me contact Mercy again?” It was maddening the way the faintness of their bond told him nothing except that she was alive.
Elizaveta sighed. “I can. But it is not easy, Adya. And I do not think that it is wise to do not-easy magic in the home of one such as Bonarata unless it is necessary. Especially since such an effort will weaken me in this place where we might need every bit of power all of us can muster. Is there something that makes you think this is necessary?”
He gave her a tight smile. “Nothing more than that she is on her own, without friends or money, alone in Europe.”
“Your mate is good at finding friends wherever she goes,” Elizaveta said with a little acid. Elizaveta was not herself a friend of his mate. “She escaped Bonarata. I expect she can look after herself for a day or two.”
Looking after her is my job, he thought. But he said, “I expect you’re right. But even so, I might ask it of you at a later time.” If the wolf demanded it.
She nodded. “That is fine, so long as you know what you risk. I bid you all good night. Wake me, Adya, if anything interesting happens.”
“I will if I can,” he promised.
After Elizaveta’s door closed, Larry gave Adam a measured look, then waved casually at Adam and Honey before he went into the room Elizaveta had picked for him. He closed his door, too, leaving Honey and Adam alone.
Adam considered staying in human guise. After daylight, it was unlikely that he’d run into trouble from the vampires. But vampires have allies—and this one had a werewolf under his thumb. His wolf form was the better one to face a true attack. Unlike less dominant wolves, he could shift back and forth several times in a day—though having the pack so far away would limit that a bit.
He began stripping out of his clothes. Honey made a sound as he pulled off his suit jacket, and he looked at her.
“Is it legal for you to carry that in Italy?” she asked. “And what did you do to the scent? I didn’t smell it—still don’t.”
“Not legal, no,” he said, taking off his shoulder holster and the HK P2000 that was his usual concealed carry. “But who is going to try to arrest me? If they do, they’re going to be more worried about the werewolf than the gun.”
“So they should,” she conceded. She frowned. “Your shaving-lotion smell is different. Does that have something to do with my not picking up the gun scent?”
“Elizaveta,” Adam said. “Not much magic, mostly just something that smells a little like gunpowder and oil that isn’t.”
Honey took a deep breath. She nodded and didn’t say anything else. Honey was like that. She didn’t mind quiet and only said what she had to say.
He stripped off the rest of his clothing, laying the suit across a chair for the night. Everything else he folded on the chair seat. When he was naked, he changed.
Honey followed his example without a word. When the whole painful business was over, he curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace, checked that somewhere Mercy was still tethered to him, and settled in to wait. Honey hopped on the couch and put her head on the arm with a deep sigh.
He drifted into the light doze that would leave the wolf on alert to any changes but still allow him to rest. It was something that he’d learned to do in Vietnam, when he had been a soldier and not a werewolf. The wolf just made it more effective.
It was late morning when his phone rang. Grumbling, he rose to his feet and stalked to the table where his satellite phone rested. He knocked it to the floor where it would be easier to see and looked at the display.
Ben.
The phone quit ringing, and a few moments later, a text message popped up. URGENT.