Adam nodded, and Stefan pulled the silver out of the wound. Almost immediately the little healer put her hands on Adam’s side, and warmth replaced the burning of the silver. A moment or two, and he could breathe again. She staggered a little as she removed her hands. Her skin was paler than it had been a moment before, and he was pretty sure she was thinner, too. She reached up toward his burning shoulder, but he caught her hands before she could touch that one. There had been magic in the dagger, but his wolf assured him that it had only caused the wound to be slow to heal; there was no corruption in it.
“Enough, little sister,” he told her. “That one won’t trouble me much. You fixed the bad one. Thank you.” He kissed her hand again because it had seemed to please her so much the first time. Then he leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Be well,” he told her.
“Niki,” called Bonarata. And when a roundish human woman came over to his call, he handed the healer into her care. “Take her to her room,” he said. “But stop in the kitchen and see if Cook has some food for her.”
People were moving about the room now, righting tables, cleaning up the glass—and the dead. Bonarata saw Adam look at Guccio’s ashes, and said, in a pained voice, “Those plates were two-hundred-year-old Limoges. It will be very expensive to find replacements.”
Adam would have said something scathing, but the woman who had led them to their table this morning stopped in front of Bonarata and dropped to her knees, spilling the tablecloths she was carrying as she did so.
“He wouldn’t let us tell,” she said in a whisper. “I tried, I tried to break his hold, Master.”
“Annabelle,” Bonarata said gently. “I know.”
She sobbed, shuddering. “You are most gracious.”
“No,” Bonarata said, his voice still soft. “You misunderstand me, child. I know.”
She froze. Bonarata sank the dagger that Guccio had been fighting with through her back and into her heart. She fell, hitting the floor as ashes rather than a body. Apparently the dagger was rather more deadly to vampires than it was to werewolves.
“Pity,” Bonarata said. “She was useful.” He looked around at his vampires, who were suddenly all actively engaged in whatever work they could find. “I trust that she will be the last I have to put down over this.”
“Did you see him pick up that dagger?” asked Smith very quietly.
Adam shook his head, but Larry, who was too far away to hear something that quiet, caught Smith’s eye and wandered over.
When he stood nearby, he said, “Elizaveta called it to her—and then gave it to Bonarata.”
“Mmm,” said Smith.
Adam looked at Elizaveta, who was seated at a table drinking a cup of tea. She met his eyes, smiled, and sipped her tea.
—
BONARATA INSISTED ON TRAVELING WITH THEM TO Prague. He had still not heard from his man there. Since they were headed that way, it would be only courtesy to allow him to travel with them.
Bonarata spent the whole time they traveled in conversation with Marsilia and Stefan. Mostly Marsilia—and it didn’t sound like business. The bits and pieces Adam overheard were more like old friends catching up.
Adam made sure that the Lord of Night stayed away from Honey. Upon being alerted that Bonarata was coming, she had dressed in jeans with an oversized baggy shirt that smelled like Smith’s. She’d scrubbed her face of makeup.
When he’d first seen her new guise, Adam said, “You could wear a bikini, and I would not let him touch you.”
She’d smiled grimly. “I’d kill the old bastard first. And we still need him alive. So I’ll keep out of sight as much as I can.”
“And if you kill him, I’ll help you bury the ashes, and we can blame Guccio,” Adam said.
Honey grinned at him and held up a fist, which he bumped with his own. But when she made explosive noises and let her fist open and drift down to her side, he just watched.
—
THEY LANDED AT THE FIELD DAVID CHRISTIANSEN HAD arranged for them. No questions were asked except those pertaining to the care and refueling of the plane. David’s contact even provided them with two vans.
When Adam asked, Smith and Harris chose to come with them.
“Are you sure?” Adam asked them.
“You don’t think Mercy is with Libor,” Smith said.
Adam shook his head. “You heard Libor on the phone.” Adam had phoned the other Alpha to tell him they were on their way. Libor had merely told Adam his address and hung up. “Did that sound like a gleeful arrogant bastard who has successfully babysat the woman another Alpha managed to lose?”
“Then you may need all the people you have,” said Harris. “We’ll come.”
Bonarata had been speaking to Marsilia. He looked at Adam.
“It is nearly dawn,” he said. “I had intended to go speak with Kocourek, since he has not seen fit to answer his phone. But people I sent here last night tell me that his seethe is abandoned—and has been for a few days. There is no one to question there.” He smiled at Marsilia. “I did let this go too long. Kocourek was one of Guccio’s making. I had forgotten, because it was so long ago. But since it is empty, there is time for me to accompany you to Libor’s bakery, and I just happen to know the way there. We are old enemies, Libor and I. I can at least spare you the usual trouble when two Alphas meet. He’ll dislike me more than he dislikes you. I will deal with the vampire issues tomorrow night. If your woman is still not found, I will help you then.”
He seemed unworried about the coming dawn. Marsilia and Stefan could teleport. Maybe Bonarata could also. And wasn’t that just a lovely thought.
Adam called Libor to warn him that he was bringing Bonarata, too. Libor was worryingly nonchalant about the Lord of Night invading his den.
—
THE BAKERY WAS CLOSED, THOUGH IT WAS NEARLY dawn, as Bonarata had noted. Adam could smell the baked goods the whole quarter of a mile they walked from where they’d had to park the vans.
Honey and Smith both looked at Adam as they neared the front door. But Mercy was somewhere else. He couldn’t talk to her through their bond, but he could feel it pulling him away.
“Let’s go see what Libor has done with my wife,” he said, and knocked on the door.
Since Libor knew they were coming, it didn’t take a minute for someone to come to the door. A less dominant wolf—not quite submissive—answered, and he went white when he saw Bonarata.
“Libor knows I’m bringing him,” said Adam. “Take us on in to him, and your part is done.”
The heart of the building was the kitchen, and that was where the wolf led them. Neither Bonarata, nor Stefan and Marsilia, had needed an invitation—which was why Adam would never make his pack’s home out of a business.
The big room was filled with people, mostly wolves but not all, mixing, rolling, and baking. Huge electric fans in the ceiling sent the warm air on out, but it was still ten degrees warmer in this room than it had been outside.
It might have been full of people, but when the broadly built man stepped out of a storeroom with a fifty-pound bag of flour on his shoulder, there was no question who the Alpha was in here. He felt them, too. He looked at them, set the flour down, and strode toward them, wiping his hands on his apron.
He took the whole of them in at one glance, his eyes lingering a little here and there. When he took his apron off, the work in the kitchen slowed. He hung it up on a hook on the wall and said, gruffly, “Get to work. There are hungry people who will be here in a couple of hours, and they expect us to feed them.” He spoke in English, then switched to another tongue and, presumably, repeated himself. When he finished, his people went back to work, with only a few surreptitious looks at their visitors.
He caught the attention of the wolf who’d been their guide. “Go get Martin and Jitka, eh? Bring them to the garden.”
Then to Adam and his people, Libor said, “Follow me, gentlemen.” He saw Bonarata and grunted. “And you’ll have to let me know how it is that the vampire who was trying to kill your wife is now traveling about with you. Though I know Iacopo Bonarata well enough not to be surprised.”
Harris, Smith, and Larry took up the rear. The goblins liked it best when no one noticed them. Smith evidently felt the same.
The garden was an unexpectedly beautiful spot of nature in the center of the bakery. The Vltava Alpha walked to the end, then turned and faced them.