Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

roll harmlessly against his feet. His eyes were still closed.
    â€œSarge, Mercy,” hissed David. “Get down!”
    I realized then that I was still standing, too, leaning a little toward Adam as he called down the moon. I might have knelt then, if only because David told me to, but Adam threw back his head and howled, a wolf’s song rising from his human throat.
    For a moment the eerie sound rose, echoed, and died away into silence, but not an empty silence. More like the deadly quiet that precedes the start of the hunt. When he howled again, he was answered by every werewolf within hearing distance.
    I could feel a song surging into my throat, but like my wild brethren, I knew better than to sing with the wolves.
    When Adam called a third time, Darryl and David both dropped their weapons and began to change. The moon’s call sang through the trees and I could feel it catch the rest of the wolves and force them into their wolf form. I could hear cries of agony from those who fought it and groans from those who didn’t.
    Adam stood in the moonlight, which seemed somehow brighter than it had been moments ago. He opened his eyes and looked at the moon’s face. This time he used words.
    â€œCome,” he said.
    He didn’t speak loudly, but somehow his voice, like his song, spread through the abandoned tree-farm like a roll of thunder, powerful and unavoidable. And the wolves came.
    They came by ones or twos. Some came with joyful dancing steps, others with feet dragging and tails low. Some were still changing, their bodies stretched and hunched unnaturally.
    The warehouse door banged open and a man staggered out, one hand clutched to his chest. It was the guard Shawn had shot. Too weak to change, he still answered the power of Adam’s call.
    I wasn’t immune. I took a step forward without watching the ground and stumbled over a stick. I caught my balance, but the jerky move set off the pain in my arm—and the pain cleared my head like a dose of ammonia. I wiped my watering eyes with the back of my wrist and felt the unmistakable surge of witchcraft.
    Heedless of Adam’s magic and my arm, I started running, because, in the night air, thick with power, I felt the spell gathering death and it bore Adam’s name.
    I couldn’t take the time to find the witch; the spell was already set in motion. All I could do was throw myself in front of the spell, just as Ben had thrown himself in front of the dart.
    I don’t know why it worked. Someone told me later that it shouldn’t have. Once a spell is given a name, it’s sort of like a guided missile rather than a laser beam. It should have moved around me and still hit Adam.
    It hit me, brushed through me like a stream of feathers, making me shiver and gasp. Then it paused, and, as if it were a river of molten iron and I a magnet, all the magic flowed back into me. It was death-magic and it whispered to me, Adam Hauptman.
    It held a voice. Not Elizaveta’s voice, but it was someone I knew: a man. The witch wasn’t Elizaveta at all—it was her grandson Robert.
    My knees bowed under the weight of Robert’s voice and under the stress of taking upon myself Adam’s name so that the magic stopped with me. My lungs felt as if I were breathing fire and I knew that my interference couldn’t last for long.
    â€œSam,” I whispered. And as if my voice had conjured him from thin air he was suddenly in front of me. I’d expected him to be in wolf form like everyone else, but he wasn’t.
    He cupped my hot face in his hands. “What’s wrong, Mercy?”
    â€œWitch,” I said and I saw comprehension in his eyes.
    â€œWhere is she?”
    I shook my head and panted. “Robert. It’s Robert.”
    â€œWhere?” he asked again.
    I thought I was going to tell him I didn’t know, but my arm raised up and pointed at the rooftop of the boarded-up house. “There.”
    Samuel was gone.
    As if my gesture had somehow done something, the flow of magic increased fivefold. I collapsed completely, pressing my face against the cold dirt in hopes of keeping the fire burning inside of me from consuming my skin. I closed my eyes and I could see Robert, crouched on the roof.
    He’d lost something of his handsomeness, his face twisted with effort and his skin mottled with reddish splotches.
    â€œMercedes.” He breathed my name to his spell and I could feel it change