Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

wasn’t fully asleep, just catnapping.
    Ben wasn’t as quiet as Adam had been, but he was obviously doing his best to keep his cries down. Finally, he sank his teeth into Warren’s biceps and dug in.
    â€œAttaboy,” Warren drawled without flinching. “Go ahead and chew some if it helps. Too far from the heart to do me much harm. Dang, but I hate fires. Guns, knives, fangs, and claws are tough—but fires are the worst.”
    Adam’s hands looked like raw hamburger, but at least they didn’t look like burnt hamburger—and one of them reached over and closed over my fingers. I tried to let go of him, but he opened his eyes and held on to me.
    â€œOkay, that’s it,” Samuel said, and he stepped back from Ben. “Sit him down on the stool and leave him alone a bit.”
    â€œI brought an ice chest filled with beef roasts,” Warren said. “It’s out in the truck, so we can feed them.”
    Samuel jerked his head up. “Your Alpha was in trouble, and you stopped and went grocery shopping?”
    Warren smiled with cool eyes while blood dripped to the floor from the arm Ben had gnawed on. “Nope.”
    Samuel stared at him—and Warren gazed at the wall beyond him without backing down a bit. He might like Samuel, but Samuel wasn’t his Alpha. He wouldn’t cede the lone wolf the right to question his actions.
    I sighed. “Warren. Why do you have an ice chest filled with roast on hand?”
    The cowboy turned to me and gave me a wide smile. “Kyle’s idea of a joke. Don’t ask.” A light blush bloomed on his cheekbones. “The freezer and the fridge are already full at Kyle’s house. We put them in the ice chest out in the garage to take back to my apartment, where I have an empty freezer, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.” He looked toward Samuel. “Bit snappy, aren’t you?”
    â€œHe’s waiting for Mercy to start in on him,” said Adam. His voice was faint, but, hey, we all had good hearing. “And Mercy is wondering if she should do it with all of us listening in or not.”
    â€œWhat’s Mercy got on you?” asked Warren. When it was obvious Samuel wasn’t going to answer, Warren looked at me.
    I was watching Samuel.
    â€œI just can’t do it any longer,” he said, finally. “It’s better to go now, before I hurt someone.”
    I was too tired to put up with his garbage. “The hell you can’t. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ Samuel. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ ” He’d helped me memorize that poem when I was in high school. I knew he’d remember.
    â€œ ‘Life’s but a walking shadow,’ Mercy, ‘a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.’ ” He countered my Dylan Thomas with Shakespeare, spoken with as much weary bleakness as any stage actor ever managed. “ ‘It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying . . . nothing .’ ” He said the last word with a bite of bitterness.
    I was so angry I could have hit him. Instead, I clapped my hands in mock appreciation.
    â€œVery moving,” I said. “And stupid. Macbeth killed his overlord and followed his ambition, bringing misery and death to everyone involved. Your life is worth more, I think, than his was. More to me—and to every patient who crosses your path. Tonight, it was Adam and Ben.”
    â€œCount me in on that,” said Warren. He might not have been in on the cause of the conversation, but any wolf would have caught the gist of what we were talking about. “If you hadn’t been here when that demon got ahold of me not so long ago, I’d be dead.”
    Samuel’s reaction was not what I expected. He ducked his head and snarled at Warren, “I am not responsible for you.”
    â€œYes, you are,” said Adam, opening his eyes.
    â€œThat chap your hide?” suggested Warren gently. He shrugged. “People die. I know that; you know that. Even wolves like us die. Fewer people die when you are around. Those are the facts. Being upset about them don’t make them false.”
    Samuel stalked away from us all. There wasn’t much room to get away, though, and he stopped with his head down. “I was hoping this could be easier, Mercy. But I forgot—you don’t