“Good,” Sam says. “So who the hell was this?”
“I have an idea,” I reply, “but I don’t know for sure. He looks like someone Siodhachan told me about. Might be the guy who put him in the hospital in Toronto.”
I squat down and pat through the shreds of his coat until I discover an Austrian passport. “Werner Drasche,” I read aloud. “Yeah. This is the guy. Supposed to be the lover of the really old vampire, Theophilus.”
“Why is he here?”
“I don’t think he’ll be fecking telling us.”
“He lost the privilege of conversation when he started shooting.” Sam crouches down and picks up Drasche’s gun, checking the ammo. “Damn.” He drops it as if stung. “He’s got silver. The others don’t.”
He’d know, I suppose. I see a hole in Sam’s side, and if that was a silver bullet he’d be at death’s door himself instead of walking around. Someone would have to dig that out of him before his skin closed over it; accelerated healing can have that drawback against these modern weapons.
“Doesn’t make sense to come in here with only one clip of silver rounds,” Ty says.
“It does if you’re traveling in a hurry and expecting only one werewolf instead of fourteen,” I tell him. “I don’t think ye were the target. I think they were after me and knew that Greta would be here.”
“Oh. You think this is that vampire war against Druidry?”
“Aye, that’s what I figure. Siodhachan told me he was going to go around blowing shite up and something like this might happen. I have wards on the house, but they never got close enough to trip them. And I didn’t expect firearms. I’m sorry.”
“Ffffuck,” Sam swears. “I have phone calls to make and a memorial service to arrange. And this isn’t over. Killing a well-loved pack leader like that is going to have consequences.”
“Wait,” I says. “Let me help you with that bullet, at least. And anyone else who got shot. I can maybe pull it out of there without digging around too much.”
The iron content makes it a challenge to bind those bullets to me palm, but not an insurmountable one, and it’s better and faster than going in with tweezers. Nobody was facing the window directly when the bullets started flying, so most of the wounds are in the sides, arms, and legs, and a few glanced off ribs.
They’ll all be fine in a few days, but no one’s worried about that. We have to get dressed and look presentable before we bring the kids up out of the basement. And it falls to me and Ty to tell Meg and Tuya—through a translator—that Nergüi got killed. It’s really on me, but Ty feels some responsibility too. The pack, he says, should be represented and reassure them that they are still welcome and will be taken care of.
I expect I’ll lose Tuya as an apprentice; even if she wants to continue, I’m not sure that’s something Meg would want. People understandably want to avoid pain, and I think this house—especially the basement—will always be a source of pain for them. They might decide to forgo the company of wolves and Druids from now on, and I would not blame them. And Greta, when she comes back, might not be too fond of Druids either. I’ve failed them all so miserably, I’m not sure I want to keep me own company anymore.
CHAPTER 21
I’m not even a quarter of the tracker that Flidais is, and I didn’t want to ask for her help finding Theophilus again but I saw no other choice. She flatly refused to help, however, for the very good reason that, shortly after helping me earlier, she heard that Fand had escaped her prison and Manannan Mac Lir was most likely responsible.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s not good at all.”
“No. Finding her is my priority now.” It would be Brighid’s priority too, no doubt, and most likely Owen’s, since he had a hand in imprisoning her. If I knew him at all, he was incandescently pissed at himself right now. He couldn’t go around calling other people cock-ups if he made such a huge one himself.