Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

that he was taller and broader than he’d been.
    Courteously he’d waited until I stopped moving before speaking. It is generally a bad thing when someone hunting you is polite. It means they are sure they can take you anytime they want to.
    â€œSo you are the little dog with the curious nose,” he said. “You should have kept your nose to your own kind.”
    â€œZee is my friend,” I told him. For some reason the “dog” part of that offended me. It would sound stupid to say, “I’m not a dog,” though. “You fae were going to let him die for someone else’s crime. I was the only one willing to look elsewhere for a murderer.” I thought of a reason he might be upset with me. “Am I looking at a murderer now?”
    He threw his head back and laughed, a full-throated barrel-chested laugh. When he spoke again, his voice acquired a Scot’s brogue and had dropped half an octave. “I didn’t kill O’Donnell,” he said, which wasn’t quite an answer.
    â€œI have protection,” I told him quietly, careful not to put a challenge in my voice. “Killing me will start a war with the werewolves,” I told him. “Nemane knows all about it.”
    He shook his head from side to side, like an athlete stretching out the muscles of his neck. His hair was longer, I thought, and rustled wetly when he moved.
    â€œNemane is not what she once was,” he said. “She is weak and blind and troubles herself overmuch with humans.” He inhaled and he grew. When he finished breathing in, the outline of his form was larger than any human male I’d ever seen by about a foot, and he was almost as wide as he was tall. My eyes were adjusting and I could see that size wasn’t the only change.
    â€œThe call for your death has been set,” he said. “It is too bad that no one told me until too late that the orders had been recalled.”
    He laughed again and it shook the froth of dark strands that covered him like a tattered overcoat. His lips were larger than they had been and there were long, pale shapes in the dark cavern of his mouth. “It has been so long.” His voice was wet and sloppy. “Human flesh is sweet to my tongue and I have not partaken for so long that my very bowels cry out for sustenance.” He roared like a winter wind as he leaped across the road in a single jump.
    I was in coyote form and hightailing it at top speed down the road before he landed. Bits of clothing scattered behind me as I ran. I tripped once when my foot caught in my bra, but I rolled with it and shed the bra in my fall.
    He could have had me then, but I think he was enjoying the chase. It must have been the reason he didn’t just go back and get the Porsche. It might take him a minute to shrink down so he could get into it, but the car was a lot faster than I was, and it could run forever.
    I had to stay on the road until it crossed the canal. Otherwise it was too far for me to jump across and I wasn’t swimming anything with a water fae of some kind after me.
    As soon as I was past it, I dodged down the road that paralleled the canal, running toward the river. I jumped through the fence behind the first house and tore through the field. By the time their dog noticed me and began barking an alarm, I was in the next field over and running through grass taller than I was. After a half mile of running, I slowed to a trot.
    The ground was soft and there were horses and cows in the fields. A donkey chased me through its paddock with murderous intent, but I just picked up the pace until I could jump out of its paddock. Horses mostly don’t care about coyotes, nor do cows. Chickens run, but donkeys hate us every one.
    When I heard hoofbeats behind me, I thought maybe the donkey had jumped its fence—until the horse I’d just passed let out a terrified squeal.
    Kelpies could take on the form of a horse, I thought as I moved back into top gear.
    I learned that whatever Fideal was, he didn’t like railroad tracks. Though he could cross them, they slowed him down and made him shriek with evident pain. Finley has lots of railroad tracks and, after that, I crossed them wherever I could without slowing down my headlong run for Adam’s house.
    On the flats Fideal was faster than I was, but he couldn’t get through or over obstacles as quickly as I could. I scrambled over a twelve-foot-high chain-link