Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

left it too late before I waded in.”
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked again, but when he didn’t answer immediately, I gave him an impatient flick of my hand and ran bare-footed back across the street, through the parking lot, and into the bar.
    Inside, with the missing section of wall behind me, it didn’t look so bad: a big, empty tavern after a couple of football teams had gotten drunk and partied all night. Teams with really big players, I thought, looking at the beam that the snow elf had taken out with his head—elephants, maybe.
    Adam, fully in human form again, sat with his back against the stage riser on the far side of the room, his arms folded over his chest. Somone had found him a pair of cutoffs to wear. Not like he was angry ... just closed-up.
    Next to him were two of his other wolves, Paul and one of Paul’s cronies. Paul looked sick, and the other man, whose name escaped me, was curled around a very still form.
    I couldn’t see who it was, but I knew. Mary Jo’s car in the parking lot told me. There was blood all over all of them. Adam’s hands were covered, as was Paul’s shirt. The other man was drenched in it.
    The wolves weren’t the only ones bleeding. There seemed to be a triage of sorts going on at the opposite end of the building. I recognized the woman who had cut her hair to free herself, but she seemed to be one of the aid-givers rather than a victim.
    Adam looked up and saw me, his face very bleak.
    There was glass on the floor, and my feet were bare—but it would have taken more than that to keep me from them.
    Paul’s friend was sobbing. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I’m so sorry.” He was rocking the body he held, Mary Jo’s body, as he apologized over and over again.
    I couldn’t get close to Adam without wading between Paul and his friend. I stopped while still out of reach. It didn’t seem like a really good idea to give Paul an easy target just yet.
    Uncle Mike had followed me in, but he’d gone to the other huddle of beings in that too-empty room first, and when he came over to us, he had the shorn woman in tow. Like me, he stopped before he intruded on their space.
    â€œMy apologies, Alpha,” he said. “My guests are entitled to an evening of safety, and someone broke hospitality to bespell your wolves. Will you let us repair the damage if we can?” He waved at Mary Jo.
    Adam’s face changed from grim to intent in about half a breath. He stood up and took Mary Jo from the wolf who held her. “Paul,” he said, when the man wouldn’t let go.
    Paul stirred and took his friend’s hands, pulling them away. The man ... Stan, I thought, though it might have been Sean, jerked once, then collapsed against Paul.
    In the meantime, the woman was protesting in a rapid flow of Russian. I couldn’t understand the words, but I heard her refusal clearly in her face and body language.
    â€œWho are they going to tell?” Uncle Mike snapped. “They’re werewolves. If they go to the press and reveal that there’s a fae who can heal mortal wounds, we can go to the press and tell the interested humans just how much of the horrors of the werewolf have been carefully hidden from them.”
    She turned to look at the wolves, a snarl on her face—and then she just stopped when she saw me. Her pupils dilated until the whole of her eyes were black.
    â€œYou,” she said. Then she laughed, a cackling sound that made the skin on the back of my neck crawl. “Of course it would be you.”
    For some reason the sight of me seemed to stop her protests. She walked to Mary Jo, who hung limply from Adam’s curled arms. Like the snow elf had before her, the fae shed her glamour, but hers dripped from her head and down to her feet, where it puddled for a moment, as if it were made of liquid instead of magic.
    She was tall, taller than Adam, taller than Uncle Mike, but her arms were reed-thin, and the fingers that touched Mary Jo were odd. It took me a moment to see that each one had an extra joint and a small pad on the underside, like a gecko’s.
    Her face ... was ugly. As the glamour faded, her eyes shrank and her nose grew and hung over her narrow-lipped mouth like the gnarled limb of an old oak.
    From her body, as the glamour cleared away, a soft violet light gathered and flowed upward from her feet to her shoulders, then down her arms to