Adam's body softened, turning warm and melting into mine, the distance between us blurring into nothing. Then she is safe.
His mouth sought mine. He tasted of heat and love. But he tasted also of illness born of silver, and I was crying before he was finished. They were killing him, I could feel it. Much more silver, and he would no longer be able to link with the pack and he would die while the bastards who had him were still waiting for signs of weakness.
His chest rose and fell, and his heart stuttered against mine. I could feel how close his death hovered - too much silver, too much of the drug that slowed his reflexes.
Jesse is safe. You are safe. It's all right, Mercy. You didn't think I was going to die of old age, did you?
It was a joke, graveyard humor. Werewolves never died of old age because they didn't age. But he had no business making a joke like that. Not now, not ever.
Anger roared through me and carried with it a tidal wave of terror because Adam had given up.
No. He told me. I haven't given up anything. But the pack comes first. While they concentrate on me, the pack is working to free themselves. When I die, I can take the poison with me, and our pack will be strong enough to protect themselves. I love you, Mercy.
I absorbed what he said. He'd found something he could do. I'd seen him draw upon the pack to force silver out of his body. Apparently it worked in reverse. He was drawing the silver from that damned concoction Doc Wallace's son had created. When he was finished, he'd be dead - but the pack would be free.
I couldn't breathe, couldn't respond. Adam intended to die.
Are you not my daughter, whispered another voice, Coyote's voice, so quiet I almost missed it. Had I not been caught in that first moment of shock when everything goes quiet before the pain begins, I would not have heard it.
Coyote never loses, Coyote told me. Because I change the rules of the games my enemies play. What are the rules of your game?
Adam hadn't heard that other voice. I knew because he still hovered over me, his mouth soft with our kiss, a terrible good-bye in his eyes. He'd found a solution to the game that his enemies played, found a way to win, because Adam was competent like that. The cost was too high.
"Find another way to win," I said, my voice hoarse.
There is no other way, he said. I love you.
But I'd been talking to myself and not to him. I pulled him back down to me.
He cooperated because he had no idea I was changing the rules of the game on him. I was not Coyote's daughter, not quite. But that was okay because being almost Coyote's daughter in my dream would be enough.
Adam's lips came down upon my own and I opened my mouth. Looking into his eyes, I pulled the things that were killing him into me, swallowing down the silver that was poison to him and nothing to me.
He didn't understand at first, but when he did, he struggled, but it was my dream, not his. In this dream, I wasn't a coyote shapeshifter trying to hold a werewolf, I was Coyote's almost daughter, and I had all the strength of the world in my arms.
"Mine," I told him, though my mouth was still fastened to his. "Mine."
I meant that he was mine, but also that the silver he took from the pack to save them was also mine to bear, not his. I also used the word to call the silver from his body into my own, the silver and the ketamine and all the rest of the harm that had been done to him.
But he was an Alpha werewolf, and he was more than a match for me, even in my dream.
He roared, ripped free of my hold and off of our bed - in my dreams it was still our bed at home, not the one in Kyle's spare bedroom. It wasn't anger in Adam's voice when he spoke. Mercy, you don't know what you're doing. It was fear.
I started to go after him, but had to stop, kneeling on the edge of the bed because I was sick to my stomach. Either the silver or the ketamine wasn't sitting well. Heck. Maybe it was the DMSO for all that I knew. Adam ... he was better, I could feel his strength, could feel the pack stir in alertness because they could feel it, too.
Don't do that, he ordered retroactively, coming to his feet. He knew how well I followed orders. He looked away, took a deep breath, and reached out toward me. If you die ...
I didn't think it would kill me, no matter how much my stomach hurt. But I wasn't going to show him that it had affected me. "Not my day to die," I told him.
He stared at me, and I lifted my chin and stared back at him. There wasn't a pack around who needed to see me bow down to the Alpha. He could have made me drop my gaze anyway. I wasn't immune to his dominance, just stubborn. I could see the moment he gave up.
I remembered that there were other things I needed to know.
"Did you find out where you are being held?" I asked, then, seeing the answer on his face, I continued, "Any clues at all? Do you smell anything? The river? Sagebrush? Diesel?"
Dust, Mercy. His voice was quiet. Then he looked around himself. I don't think he was seeing our bedroom like I was. Dust and Peter's blood.
I'd heard that kind of rage in Adam once before. He'd torn the corpse of a man I'd already killed into small pieces. The men who had made themselves our enemy had no idea what they had done.
They are sending a helicopter to pick up Darryl and me. Soon.
"They're still sending you out after the senator?" I thought that our call to the police would have preempted the attack.
Yes.
We'd told the police about why Adam and the pack had been taken. They seemed to be taking our word seriously.
They know. They told me it would be more difficult now, but they didn't seem to be really bothered. Either the attack itself is what they want - or there is something else I am not seeing.
He sat back down on the bed and put his hand against my forehead. Are you okay?
I smiled at him. "Ariana is going to see if she can contact Bran. Maybe he can ride to the rescue."
Adam considered that. What about the vampires? he asked.
I stared at him. "Marsilia hates me, and Ben bled all over the back of her Mercedes."
The AMG?
Something distracted me. Something terrible. "What is that smell?"
I woke up with Ben licking my face as earnestly as a cat - which hurt. His breath made my eyes water - and I have a high tolerance for nasty odors.
"Jeez, jeez," I said, scrambling away from him. I hit something hard, then kept moving away from Ben when whatever it was fell to the floor with a thump and freed up some space on the bed.
My stomach hurt. Not like the flu or even bad food. More like I'd swallowed something that was eating me alive. The truly vile smell of Ben's breath didn't help. "Ben, your breath stinks. Have you been eating roadkill?"
"Ow. Ow. Ow," moaned Kyle from the floor where I'd knocked him. I'd forgotten he was in the bed with me - that he'd told me he'd be sleeping here - because even getting myself into the bed was a blur. "Remember, a guy who didn't even have the decency to be cute hit me a lot yesterday. And this room doesn't have a rug."
Ben laughed at me, and I covered my nose with both hands. But I was awake now and remembered where I'd smelled breath that bad before. "DMSO from the tranq, right? DMSO gives you bad breath." Then I saw the clock on the chest next to the bed.
"What time is it?" I asked, hopping out of the bed and stumbling over Kyle's feet. The room was dark, but there were no windows. The darkness reminded me that Adam had suggested going to the vampires. Maybe I ought to. But there was something ... Tad. Oh holy wow, I'd forgotten about Tad. I'd told him that I'd get right back to Sylvia's as soon as I made sure Kyle was okay. If it was really dark outside, he'd been watching them for a whole day, expecting me to return soon.
I took a step toward the door, which was a mistake. Every muscle hurt, my face throbbed, and I almost blacked out from the sudden way my body informed me that it wasn't happy with me. My stomach, then the rest of my muscles, seized in the worst charley horse I'd ever had.
"Mercy?" asked Kyle, rolling onto his feet with a little less than his usual grace.
Ben whined.
And I threw up silver goo all over the beautiful stone floor of Kyle's guest room.
Chapter Five
I stared at the floor - and Kyle did the same. Ben jumped off the bed and put his nose near the mess. He backed away quickly, his ears came up, and he looked at me. The expression on the wolf's face quite clearly said, "What the hell?" even if I hadn't been familiar with reading expressions on monster-sized wolf faces.
Kyle's floor was covered with silver. I licked my hand and looked at the result. My palm was gray where the saliva touched it. "I think," I told them, torn between triumph - because all that silver on the floor meant it wasn't in Adam - and terror. Having that place where Adam and I touched be something that I could drag something as physical as silver through was terrifying in its implications. "I think I'd better wash this off."
There was a bath attached to the guest room, and I staggered into it, washing out my mouth and scrubbing wherever the silver had touched. Kyle opened the sink cabinet and handed me a new toothbrush and one of those little travel toothpastes. I used it, twice. My lips were still black, like one of those thirteen-year-old goth girls who wore black lipstick.
"I used to know a couple of guys who painted their lips with silver nitrate to turn them that color," Kyle said. "I thought it was pretty stupid. Your lips weren't black when you went to sleep. What happened?"
"I'm afraid to guess," I said. Silver nitrate sounded familiar. I was pretty sure that was what Gerry Wallace had used in his tranquilizer concoction. "Give me a few minutes, and I might have something worked up that sounds vaguely coherent, okay?"
He looked worried but nodded. I looked in the mirror again and touched my lips. They felt just like they usually did. I grabbed a towel and went out to clean up the mess, but stopped when I got to it. The silver sludge was thickening. What if the towel stuck to it and made a bigger mess? And there was a lot of the stuff, more than I'd thought. If all of this had come from Adam, he should have been dead.