River Marked (23 page)

“Will do,” I said. “Good night.”

I handed the phone back to the wolf who was my mate. “They’ll stay home.”

He put his phone away without a word, but I could see his dimple peeking out. Jesse’s disconcerting the intellectual and physical giant who was Adam’s second was pretty funny to think about.

“Sorry,” Adam said to the others. “Urgent business, unless you want to be neck-deep in werewolves.”

“He knew you were hurt?” Fred asked.

“He’s pack,” Adam told him. Then, maybe to forestall questions about things Bran didn’t want the public to know about werewolves, he continued briskly, “Here’s what we need to figure out about whatever is in the river. How much harm is this creature doing? We don’t really have a lot of data to go on other than a lot of scary talk about monsters. As the sole representative of monsters here, it is my . . .
obligation
to make certain we are looking at this with a balanced perspective. I am sorry that Benny’s sister was killed and Benny injured. However, people are injured by”—he hesitated—“bear attacks, too. Just because something is dangerous does not make it evil. Was it defending its territory? Are we correct that it is a single beast? How intelligent is it? Can we bargain to keep people safe? Should we kill the last or near last of its kind because it has killed a woman and hurt her brother? Is there a way to salvage this situation with no more deaths?”

When you are a werewolf, I thought, it’s a little hard to point at another predator, and shout, “It’s a scary monster, kill it! Kill it!” I rubbed my calf though it wasn’t itching at the moment.

Hank’s eyes were open, but he didn’t say anything or look at anyone. Instead, he stared at the river with such intensity that I shivered.

“I have a friend in River Patrol,” said Fred. “I can find out how many casualties there have been in the river.” He looked at Gordon. “Is there any story about how someone is freed from this mark?”

Gordon shook his head. “I do not know. But I will ask around.” He looked at Adam. “It is not something you can bargain with, Mr. Hauptman. It is Hunger.”

“I’m a werewolf,” Adam told him. “People would have said that about me a century ago, too.”

“This,” said Gordon, “is nothing so benign as a werewolf or a grizzly bear.”

Fred, kneeling on the ground next to his hog-tied brother, frowned suddenly at Gordon. “I thought you’d come with them”—he tipped his head toward the trailer, so he meant Adam and me—“until you named yourself Calvin’s grandfather. But Calvin Seeker’s father’s father is dead. I know his mother’s father. How is it you are his grandfather?”

Gordon smiled, the gap in front making him look as harmless as I was suddenly certain he wasn’t. “I’m an old man,” he told Fred. “How should I remember this?”

“I’ll vouch for Gordon,” said Jim, though he didn’t sound enthusiastic or certain of it. “And so will Calvin. I think we ought to get Hank to the hospital, where they can check him. He doesn’t seem to be tracking very well.”

“I hit him pretty hard,” I said, almost apologetically, which was as good as I could do, given that he’d shot Adam. “I didn’t realize I’d grabbed my walking stick and not just some random stick until afterward.”

“Understandable,” said Fred unexpectedly. “My wife would take a baseball bat to someone who shot me.”

“Has,” said Jim. “I remember. It was Hank that time, too, wasn’t it?”

“He didn’t mean to,” said Fred. “It was in Iraq—Desert Storm. I startled him on sentry-go, and he shot me. Meant I beat him back by a month. He showed up at my house to see how I was, and my Molly chased him around the front yard with my boy’s bat until she got him in the backside. Good thing it was a plastic bat, or Hank wouldn’t be walking now.”

THEY LEFT. JIM, FRED, AND HANK TOOK JIM’S TRUCK with Hank bound and laid out as comfortably as possible in the truck bed, with his brother to steady him. I rode up with them to let them out, and by the time I got back, Adam was alone. He was standing up—I think because if he sat down, he was worried he couldn’t get up again.

“Food,” I told him.

But he shook his head. “No. Shower. Then food. After I eat, I’ll want to sleep. Can’t safely sleep covered in blood and risk the wolf waking up without me and panicking him.”

He was worried that he’d be weak enough when he slept that he couldn’t control his wolf. For the wolf, all the blood would be all it took to wake up defensive and ready to fight. He had a point—the dark hid the worst of it, but there was no denying that he and I were covered in his blood.

“Okay,” I said, and ran into the trailer to grab clean clothes and towels. I got back out and made him get in the truck because “I can’t carry you if you go down hard.” He didn’t argue much, which showed me how badly he was hurting.

We showered together in the men’s room, because that was the direction he headed and, well, there was no one else in the campground, so what did it matter which side we went in? The men’s room was done in browns rather than greens, but it had the same huge shower stalls with big showerheads. By the end of the shower, he was leaning on me pretty heavily.

“Maybe I should have just washed up with a wet cloth and changed clothes,” he admitted.

The mark on his chest, where Gordon had opened a path to the bullet, was a dark, angry red, but it would heal as soon as the rest of the damage did. Shift to wolf, food, and sleep would see him right.

“Mercy,” he said. “I’ll be okay.”

I controlled myself because he had enough to worry about without me setting his wolf off. “Sorry. I know you will.” I growled a little, not seriously, just enough so he knew I wasn’t happy. “I don’t like it that you are hurt. I like it even less that it could have been worse.”

“Good.” He lifted his head into the water. “I’ll try to make sure that you always feel that way. My mother used to threaten to shoot my father.”

He could barely stand up, and he was making jokes.

I nipped his shoulder. “I can see why she might feel the urge. Tell you what. If you make me mad enough to aim a gun at you—I’ll aim for right between your eyes.”

“So I won’t feel it?” he asked.

I nipped him again, but gently, just a scrape of my teeth. “No. So the bullet will just bounce off your hard head.”

He laughed. “Birds of a feather, Mercy.”

If Hank had loaded his gun with silver, I might never have heard that laugh again.

Two years ago, silver bullets meant someone had to make them—I’d made my share. After the wolves had come out, suddenly people could buy silver bullets at Wal-Mart. Cops were unhappy about it because silver works pretty slick as an armor-piercing round, but without legislation, anyone who wanted to spend thirty dollars on a bullet could get one. Hank had known what Adam was, and still his gun had been loaded with lead. To me that indicated that he hadn’t been planning on shooting Adam—or else he was really broke and couldn’t afford the thirty bucks.

Another question occurred to me. Why had he shot Adam instead of Fred, Jim, Gordon, or me?

Assuming he was under the control of the river devil or whatever it was, maybe he or it or they together had decided that the werewolf was the greatest threat. I could understand that reasoning at least as far as Fred and I were concerned. Who would worry about a hawk and a coyote when there was a werewolf in the party? Yo-yo Girl’s premonition indicated that Adam was important. Maybe the river devil knew why that was.

I propped Adam against the shower-stall wall and dried him as quickly as I could. I kept a wary eye on him while I did the same to myself and dressed.

“You could shift now,” I suggested.

He shook his head. “Not until I eat. The wolf is riled up. Can’t protect you, and there’s danger around. Too easy to hurt you when I’m like that.”

I snorted inelegantly. “Me, fragile? You’ve got the wrong woman. I don’t break; I bounce. Besides, we’re mates, remember? Your wolf won’t hurt me.”

“Not always true,” he grunted, as I helped him into a pair of sweatpants. “Ask Bran. Not going to risk it.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s get you back to the truck,” I said.

“Shirt,” he insisted.

“No one is going to see that mark and know you’ve been wounded.” I didn’t say that no one would have to as badly as Adam was staggering. Willpower was all well and good, but there were limits. “Anyway, there’s no one here to see you but me.”

“Shirt,” he insisted.

Arguing was taking up energy neither of us had to spare. So I grabbed the button-up shirt I’d brought and helped him into it. The Italian silk shirt looked a little odd paired with the sweatpants, but who was going to look?

Back at the trailer, he sat at the little table and ate with a ferocious and silent intensity. I gave him the last of the hamburger and the thawed steaks before going to work on the frozen stuff. Happily, there was a microwave in the Trailer of Wonders. When I’d finished slicing the frozen meat, I watched the speed with which he was eating and knew it wouldn’t be enough.

So I made pancakes on the nifty little stove and had a hot stack waiting for him when he finished the frozen meat. He gave me a look when I set it in front of him, but he ate the pancakes with the same steady rhythm as he’d eaten the rest of the food. Meat was better, but calories were calories.

He finished before I’d gotten the last of the batter in the pan, pushing the plate away so I’d know.

“Okay,” I said. “Change already.”

“You need to go,” he said. “This is going to hurt. Give me about twenty minutes.”

I left and waited outside five minutes while our bond let me know just exactly how much pain he was in. Changing for the wolves was bad enough when they weren’t hurt. Five minutes was all I could take. I couldn’t help him, but I couldn’t bear to leave him alone, either.

“I’m coming back in,” I told him, so he wouldn’t think it was some stranger. The only concession I made to safety was to sit on the far side of the trailer until the wolf heaved himself up on all fours. He started to shake himself free of the last tingles of the change and stopped abruptly. It must have hurt.

“Bedtime,” I told him firmly. “Do you need help up?”

He sneezed at me, then trotted up the steps to the bed with only a slight hitch in his gait. If I hadn’t been there, it would probably have been a limp, but that he was bothering to hide it from me was a good sign that he’d be okay.

I climbed into bed and settled next to him, touching him gingerly. But he wiggled closer with an impatient sigh, so I quit worrying about hurting him. After a moment, I pulled the covers over both of us. He didn’t need them, but I did. The night was warm. I should have been warm, too, especially curled around Adam’s big furry self. But I was cold.

I waited until he’d fallen asleep before I started to shake.

He could have been dead. If Fred had been a half instant slower or Hank a smidgen faster.

Mine. He was mine, and not even death would take him from me—not if I could help it.

I WAS PRETTY SURE I WAS DREAMING WHEN I CLIMBED out of the bed, leaving Adam sleeping under a pile of blankets. He looked hot, his long tongue exposed to the air, so I pulled the blankets off him.

I put on my clothes and followed the odd compulsion that pulled me out of the trailer and out to the river. It must have been very late because there were only a few semitrucks on the highway on the other side of the Columbia.

On the west end of the swimming hole was a big rock formation. I climbed up and sat on the top, my feet dangling over the edge. My toes were ten feet above the river, which rushed darkly along toward the Pacific.

When the man came up and sat beside me, it didn’t startle me. His face in shadows, he held out something to me—a piece of grass. I took it and stuck the end in my mouth. From his silhouette, I could see that he was chewing on his own piece, the seed heads bobbing leisurely in the air.

Just a couple of hayseeds in the moonlight. It could almost have been romantic; instead it was peaceful.