Frost Burned: Mercy Thompson Book 7 (15 page)

“Who
are
you?” I asked the werewolf, again.

He smiled again, though his eyes were cool. “Asil, Ms. Hauptman. You might also know me as the Moor, though I find the title overly dramatic and wouldn’t have mentioned it, but that you would find it, perhaps, a little more recognizable.”

I gripped Kyle’s arm a little more tightly. I knew who the Moor was. The Moor was a scary, scary wolf who I’d thought was merely a story, like the Beast of Gévaudan.

“It’s okay, Kyle,” I said, hoping I was right. “Asil is one of Charles’s wolves.” Kyle would understand I meant the Marrok.

Asil smiled because he heard the lie in my first sentence. Maybe Kyle did, too, because he gave me a sharp look before he waved at the security team with the two-finger salute immortalized by President Nixon before either of us was born.

“I am not at liberty to tell you anything,” Armstrong half apologized as he sipped his coffee. He glanced from my face to Kyle’s, taking in the spectacular bruising Kyle was sporting and my own, more modest bruise—which started at my jaw and hit the top of my hairline. Kyle looked like he’d gone into a boxing match with his hands tied behind his back—which is sort of what he’d done.

Armstrong grimaced. “I know it’s not fair. But I have to operate by my superior’s orders.”

We were sitting in a room I’d actually never been in before. It was decorated in cool tones and was in the basement, with only a small window. Presumably it was one of the rooms that Adam’s security team had deemed safe—or else Kyle had some other reason to drag us down to a room that smelled of carpet shampoo and the lady who cleaned his house, with no hint of either Kyle or Warren.

“Don’t tell me,” Kyle said sourly. “A group of Cantrip agents who were unhappy with the limited power given them to combat the scary werewolves and suddenly scarier fae decided to go off on their own. Someone decided that they needed a really big event to turn the tide of public opinion in their favor—and they decided the murder of a popular anti-fae senator would be the torch they could use to inflame the public and get, at last, the right to shoot werewolves and fae on sight. They failed when Mercy, Ben, and I managed to call the police on them, and you’ve been sent to fix the situation however you can while also finding out where they got the money to hire a private army. How am I doing?”

For a moment, Armstrong’s friendly face wasn’t so friendly. The Moor smiled and lifted his own cup to his lips. If I wasn’t looking at his eyes, he appeared too young, too urbane to be responsible for the violence he was famous for. He caught me looking, and I looked away—but not before I saw his pleased smile.

“Don’t patronize us,” Kyle said softly, his attention on Armstrong. “You need us to find your people before they do something even stupider. I’m not sure we need you at all.”

“Your cooperation will be noted,” Armstrong said. “That might become important for you if Bennet succeeds in making a bloodbath here that he can blame the werewolves for.”

“Who is Bennet?” I asked, and Armstrong pursed his lips.

“Ah, excuse me,” he said. “Let us instead say, ‘our rogue agent’ who is apparently responsible for recruiting other dissatisfied agents.” The slip of his tongue that gave away Bennet’s name seemed purposeful because he wasn’t very upset. “It is imperative that we stop him, and you can help by telling me anything you know about how Hauptman and his pack were taken. Anything about the men who held you here. Anything might be useful. In return, I assure you that we will turn our resources to locating and rescuing your people.”

He was sincere and truthful, which surprised me somehow. I’d expected him to lie his head off.

“We are on the same side,” Armstrong said earnestly, and he believed that, too—I could hear it in his voice.

“Those men who broke into your house are all dead, Mr. Brooks,” Asil said quietly—and Armstrong jerked his head around so fast it was a wonder he didn’t kink his neck. He wasn’t so much surprised about the dead men, I thought, but that Asil knew about their deaths.

I wondered if Asil had killed them himself.

The werewolf caught my expression and smiled, showing his teeth. “Not me. I was not sent here merely as a liaison, Ms. Hauptman, but as a useful tool in your arsenal. They were released on bail last night. Because they were scheduled to fly to Seattle, then off to South America by private charter, I thought it would be expeditious to talk to them before they left. But they were dead when I went to the hotel they had checked into, and I nearly interrupted a federal cleanup of the site.” He smiled toothily, and I understood that the cleanup was of the sort meant to keep the men’s deaths from the local police as well as the public.

If he knew all that, Charles had been busy, because he was more current than Ariana had been when she left. Armstrong was watching him with sudden wariness. Apparently he hadn’t known how much Asil knew.

“Did
you
kill them, Agent Armstrong?” I asked. Most people didn’t know that werewolves could hear lies, and those who did thought I was human.

“No, ma’am. But my people were responsible for the cleanup. There was an anonymous call to my superiors.” He grimaced. “I’ve spent most of the last twenty-four hours playing cleanup, catch-up—and all sorts of other things that end in -up when things go to hell.”

Asil nodded at me. Like me, he’d heard the truth in the agent’s voice. Armstrong had not killed them and “unhappy” was a very small word for what he was feeling about their deaths and the involvement of Cantrip agents in the whole thing. My nose could sense more than just lies. Emotions, especially strong emotions, have scents, too.

“You told the police that they wanted your husband to go after Senator Campbell, Ms. Hauptman,” Armstrong said.

I lifted my chin. “That’s right.”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t scan. These guys were the real deal, Ms. Hauptman. They make a lot of money by not shooting their mouths off. There is no way that they told you that.”

Asil met my eyes. He knew how I got my information. He tilted his head a little and gave a shrug.

He was the dominant wolf in the room. If he didn’t care what I told a federal agent about how werewolf magic works, maybe I shouldn’t, either.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again, visions of being locked up in a white room somewhere with someone asking, “What is Adam looking at, Ms. Hauptman? Is it a triangle or a square?” in my head. It was probably the result of too much
Mystery Science Theater 3000
at a young age, but there was also a real danger in telling people too much.

“You know how you told us that there were things you couldn’t tell us?” I said. “It’s like that. There are things I cannot reveal to you at this time. Need-to-know things.”

Armstrong grunted, but he could hardly complain. “On a scale of one to ten, how sure are you that the threat was aimed at Campbell?”

“Zero,” I told him, because I’d thought long and hard about this. “The threat was aimed at the werewolves. Campbell might be a secondary target—or maybe he was scheduled to be miraculously saved at the last moment. It’s easy to thwart an assassination when you know the who, where, and when. I don’t know why they picked Adam.”

“He’s become a public figure,” murmured Asil. “People like him, and they trust him. When newspapers and magazines want to talk to a werewolf, they try for Adam because he’s pretty and well-spoken. Three-quarters of the people interviewed on the streets of New York for a recent morning news story could pick Hauptman out of a lineup. Better than either of the last presidential candidates or the mayor of New York did.”

“You think this was aimed at Adam specifically?” I asked.

Asil frowned at me. Maybe we weren’t supposed to be talking in front of Agent Armstrong. “I think,” he said slowly, “that we don’t know enough.”

“And our enemies know too much,” I said. “They knew all of the pack—and there are a number of our members who aren’t out. They came looking for Jesse and me. Where did they get their information?”

“Jesse?” Armstrong asked.

“Adam’s daughter,” I said. “She’s not a werewolf. We’d gone out shopping, had a car wreck, and ended up at my garage, where Ben had come to tell us that the pack had been taken.”

“Ben?”

I tipped my empty cup toward the werewolf stretched out on the floor near me, but not touching. Ben was pointedly not looking at Asil—though he was still keeping his body between us. “This is Ben. He was upstairs when the rent-an-army broke into our house and took out most of the pack in one fell swoop. He managed to get away and warn me.”

There was a funny pause, and I looked up.

“I thought.” Armstrong swallowed. “I thought that he was just a big dog. I like dogs.”

I looked at Asil, then back at Armstrong. “You
do
know that Asil is a werewolf, too?”

The fed rubbed his face. “I’m too old for this. I’ve been up for twenty-four hours.”

“Ben won’t hurt you,” I told him, just as Asil got up to put his empty cup on the low table between the chairs. Ben surged to his feet, growling—but with his head tilted so he didn’t meet the more dominant wolf’s eyes. Armstrong spilled his coffee, jerking away. The sudden move attracted Ben’s attention, and he showed his fangs to the Cantrip agent.

“Armstrong, drop your eyes.” Kyle’s voice was calm and easy.

I reached for Ben’s ruff, but as soon as my fingers got close, he slid away from my hand.

“It’s my fault. We need to get this over with before someone gets hurt.” Asil finished setting his cup down and looked at Ben, though he spoke to the rest of the room. “You will have to excuse us while this wolf and I have a talk.” He reached down and snapped his fingers in front of Ben’s face. “Come with me.”

I stepped between them. Ben couldn’t put himself between us again without knocking me over—so he nipped me on the back of my knee. A very quick nip, not enough to hurt, just a protest.

Asil tilted his head and smiled. “I do like you, Ms. Hauptman. You are not exactly what I expected, but I like you. By all means, come with us.”

“What exactly are you going to settle?” asked Kyle, sounding a little hostile.

Asil examined him for a moment. “I won’t hurt him, Mr. Brooks, but Ben is trying to protect Ms. Hauptman from me. There is no need, but he has to decide that himself. It will be a lot easier on him if we do this without an audience.”

“It’s okay,” I told Kyle. “It’s a good idea if we are likely to spend much time in each other’s company.” And I could question Asil without Agent Armstrong listening in—and he could question me.

“Guest room,” suggested Kyle. “The one we were sleeping in. Apparently this house is low in rooms that are really possible to secure. Otherwise, you’ll have to make do with a bathroom. Agent Armstrong and I can wait here.”

I waved and took the lead out the door and up the stairs. Ben followed me as close as he could get without touching me, leaving Asil trailing behind us.

“Kyle Brooks is mated to your third,” Asil said, as we hiked up the stairs, his voice thoughtful. “He is a lawyer. He was tied up and being tortured by a pair of professionals, and he managed to get himself loose and break one man’s neck and knock out the other without killing him. Such an enterprising and ambitious thing for a human lawyer to do to a pair of men who make their livelihood from killing people. How wonderful that he managed it.”

“Kyle Brooks has a black belt,” I said very quietly. “He’s in good shape and was rescued by a vampire friend of mine who killed the man who hurt Kyle and let the other live because I asked him not to kill everyone in sight.”

There was silence on the stairs behind Ben and me.

“I believe I misheard,” said Asil, who’d stopped on the stairs. “English is not my first, nor even my fifth, language. Did you say ‘a vampire friend’”

“I did.” I half turned to look at him as I stopped, too.

“The world,” he said, “is a very strange place, and just when I thought I’d witnessed all the wonders it had to teach—here is another one. This ‘vampire friend’ of yours did it for a price?”

“He did it because he is my friend and Kyle’s friend,” I said.

“Impossible.”

There was something in his voice that sent Ben surging up against my legs, which wasn’t so bad—but then he bounced away like a ping-pong ball, and I almost lost my balance because I’d braced for his impact. I did lose my temper.

“Maybe for you,” I snapped at Asil, turning to finish the last four-or-five-stair climb to the second floor. “Me? I have friends.”

There was another of those speaking silences, then he laughed. “Please tell me I won’t end up with eggs in my pillowcase or peanut butter on my car seat.”

I threw up my hands involuntarily and turned to him to face him again. Walking backward, I said, “I was twelve. Don’t you wolves have anything better to gossip about than things that happened twenty years ago?”

“Mi princesa,”
he told me, his voice deep and flirty, “I was in
Spain
and I heard about the peanut butter. Two decades are nothing, I assure you—we will speak of it a hundred years from now in hushed voices. There are big bad wolves all over the world who tremble at the sound of his name, yet a little puny coyote girl peanut-buttered the seat of Bran Cornick’s car because he told her that she should wear a dress to perform for the pack.”

“No,” I said, getting hot about it again. I turned and stalked down the hall. “He said Evelyn—my foster mother—should know better, that she should have made sure I had a dress to wear. He made her cry.” And that was the last time I consented to play the piano.

I opened the guest room door, and Asil paused until I looked at his face. “Yes,” he said sincerely. “Such a one deserves peanut butter on the seat of his pants.”

And that sincerity was the last straw. I put my hand over my mouth and leaned against the door and laughed. I was worried, tired, and it felt like every muscle in my body ached—and all I could see was the peanut butter on the back of the Marrok’s elegant beige slacks and the expression on his face when he realized what had happened. I’d been hiding under bushes in my coyote shape downwind and everything—but he’d seen me anyway. Bran could always find me wherever I was hiding. He’d raised an eyebrow at me, and I’d run all the way home.