Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

freedom for safety deserve neither.” He leaned close. “Do you feel safe, Stefan? Or do you miss what you once had, what you allowed them to steal from all of us.”
    Littleton turned to his victim, then. She made very little noise when he touched her, her cries so hoarse that they would have been inaudible to a human outside of this room. I fought the harness until it cut into my shoulders but it did me no good. My claws tore holes in the carpet, but Stefan was too heavy for me to budge.
    Littleton took a very long time to kill her: she quit struggling before I did. In the end the only noise in the room was from the vampires, the one in front of me feeding wetly and the one beside me making helpless, eager noises though he didn’t move otherwise.
    The woman’s body convulsed and her eyes met mine, just for a moment, before they glazed over in death. I felt the rush of magic as she stilled and the rank bitterness, the scent of the demon, retreated from the room, leaving only a faint trace behind.
    I could smell again, and almost wished I couldn’t. The smells of death aren’t much better than the scent of demon.
    Panting, shaking, and coughing because I’d half strangled myself, I dropped to the floor. There was nothing I could do to help her now, if there ever had been.
    Littleton continued to feed. I snuck a glance over at Stefan, who’d quit making those disturbing noises. He’d resumed his frozen stance. Even knowing that he’d been able to watch that scene with desire rather than horror, Stefan was infinitely preferable to Littleton, and I backed up until my hip bumped his thigh.
    I huddled against him as Littleton, the white of his shirt all but extinguished beneath the blood of the woman he’d killed, looked up from his victim to examine Stefan’s face. He was giggling a little in nervous pants. I was so scared of him, of the thing that had been riding him, I could barely breathe.
    â€œOh, you wanted that,” he crooned holding out a hand and brushing it over Stefan’s lips. After a moment Stefan licked his lips clean.
    â€œLet me share,” the other vampire said in a soft voice. He leaned into Stefan and kissed him passionately. He closed his eyes, and I realized that he was finally within my reach.
    Rage and fear are sometimes only a hairbreadth different. I leapt, mouth open and latched onto Littleton’s throat, tasting first the human blood of the woman on his skin, then something else, bitter and awful, that traveled from my mouth through my body like a jolt of lightning. I fought to close my jaw, but I’d missed my hold and my upper fangs hit the bone of his spine and bounced off.
    I wasn’t a werewolf or bulldog and I couldn’t crush bone, only dig deeply into flesh as the vampire gripped my shoulders and tore himself loose, ripping the leash out of Stefan’s grip as he struggled.
    Blood, his blood this time, spilled over his front, but the wound began closing immediately, the vampire healing himself even faster than a werewolf could have. In despair, I realized I hadn’t seriously harmed him. He dropped me to the ground and backed away, his hands covering the wound I’d made. I felt his magic flare and when his hands fell away from his throat, the wound was gone.
    He snarled at me, his fangs showing and I snarled back. I don’t remember seeing him move, just the momentary feeling of his hands on my sides, a brief moment while I was hurled through the air and then nothing.

Chapter 2
    I awoke on my couch to steady strokes of a tongue-in-the-face wash and Medea’s distinctive thrumming. Stefan’s voice came as a relief because it meant that he was alive, just like me. But when Samuel replied, though his purring tones bore more than a passing resemblance to the noise my cat was making, there was no comfort to be had from the cold menace under the soft voice.
    Adrenaline pumped through me at the sound. I pushed the memory of the night’s terrors aside. What was important this minute was that tonight was the full moon and there was an enraged werewolf not two feet from me.
    I tried to open my eyes and stand up, but I encountered several problems. First, one eye seemed to be stuck shut. Second, since I seldom sleep in coyote form, I’d tried to sit up like a human. My floundering was made worse because my body, stiff and sore, wasn’t reacting very well to movement of any kind. Finally, as