“Mercy,” I said.
“Stay away—”
“Pastor?” I said. “Pastor White. Is that you?”
He cried out, and the connection was reset.
I turned on my turn signal, hit the gas, and headed to church. Maybe they were at Pastor White’s house, but I didn’t know where he lived. The best I could do was the church.
“What’s up?” asked Sherwood.
“That’s my pastor,” I told him. Pastor White was new; our last pastor had left to take over his father’s church in California. Pastor White wasn’t quite as engaging or accepting, but his faith was real. “Somebody wants me to go to church,” I said.
I hit a button on the stereo, and said, “Call Adam.” Sherwood and I listened to his phone ring. When the voice mail picked up, I said, “Someone attacked slash kidnapped my pastor, and I’m heading to the church right now. It is eleven fifty-four.” I disconnected. Whom to call? Ben and Paul were home with Jesse and Aiden.
“Call Honey,” I said. And got her answering machine. I didn’t leave a message. “Call George.” Another answering machine. I pounded a fist on the steering wheel. “What the heck good does it do me to be a pack member when there’s never anyone home?”
“I do not understand ‘what the heck good,’” said the stereo. “Please say a command. Some commands you might find useful are ‘call’ or ‘search address book.’”
I growled, then said, “Call Mary Jo.”
She picked up immediately. “Hey, Mercy,” she said, her voice wary.
“I need you to gather anyone you can find who is not guarding the house,” I told her, “and bring them to the Good Shepherd on Bonnie.” I gave her terse directions because it was hard to find, even with the address.
“Got it,” she said.
I hit the END CALL button and settled in to drive.
“I’m not much good in a fight,” said Sherwood tightly. “My leg.”
“You can pick up a three-hundred-pound bar of steel, you can fight,” I told him, not looking away from the road. I was driving too fast, and I didn’t want to hit anyone.
There was a pause.
“I guess that is so,” he said, like it was a revelation. “Okay.”
The church was small. It had been a house that someone converted into a church about twenty years ago. It was tucked unobtrusively into the most mazelike section of Kennewick, a little residential area on the north side of the railroad that ran along the Columbia. There were only two ways in or out, one on the far east side, one on the west. The east-side entrance was the easiest to navigate.
The church grounds backed up to the railway, and between a couple of empty lots and the parking lot, it was half a block from the nearest house. There were two cars in the lot, parked next to the handicap parking. One of them was Pastor White’s. The other was a Ford Explorer that had seen better days.
I parked Adam’s SUV on the side of the lot farthest from the cars and the church building. I gathered the Sig’s two spare magazines from my purse and stuck them in the back of my waistband because my stupid jeans didn’t have pockets. Sherwood scrounged around and came up with a tire iron. I shook my head at him, opened the rear hatch, and pushed back the mat to expose the big locked box. My handprint released the lock. I opened the box and revealed Adam’s new treasure chest. Inside was a collection of guns and various bladed weapons.
“Any idea what we’re facing?” Sherwood asked, examining the contents of the box.
I shook my head. “Probably fae, but it could be one of the anti-supernatural groups or Cantrip or anyone. If they are here, in the church, it probably won’t be vampires.” Sherwood had spent a few years in the Marrok’s pack. He’d know how to fight whatever we’d face as well as I did. “If you figure it out first, let me know.”
He picked up an ax and checked it for balance. “This works for the fae,” he said. Then he picked up the HK45 compact, checked it. (It was loaded.) “This will do for anything else.” He decocked it and put it in the pocket of his jeans. “Compact” was an optimistic label for that gun.
“That’s a dangerous place to carry it,” I told him.
He grinned at me. “Nah, that’s my bum leg. Can’t shoot my foot off ’cause someone already did that. What does the interior look like?”
“The church was a house, once upon a time,” I told him. Then I described it the best I could.
—
We paused for a moment by the cars. By now, the scent of fae magic lingered in the air, so I was pretty sure that was whom we were facing. However, the Ford Explorer belonged to a human male who did a lot of smoking.
“Do you recognize him?” asked Sherwood in a voice that wouldn’t carry.