Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

were given, she said. You should have come to me this morning and let those children live. At least then your death would mean something.
    The tissue under my blade was surging with the beat of her heart, a sign, Coyote had told me, that I was close. I switched to a new blade—I had three left—and kept working.
    My hands were cold and numb, and I’d slipped a couple of times. There was at least one cut that would need stitches if I survived. The new blade broke. I tossed it at one of the otterkin and hit it in the head. It chittered at me, and I stuck my tongue out at it as I grabbed another knife.
    Two left.
    Not enough, Mercedes, she said. Not good enough. Poor Coyote died in vain and took with him the last of the spirit warriors who walk our Mother Earth. You fail, but don’t worry—you won’t have to live with your failure.
    That blade dulled. And then there was only one. Had she moved underneath me?
    I took it out and went to work. It would either be enough, or it wouldn’t. The ankle that she’d grabbed me by throbbed in time with the beat of her heart. The hip attached to that ankle ached dully—I must have pulled a muscle in it. The cut under my arm burned every time I moved my hand.
    And the tissue parted, exposing her heart.
    It didn’t look like any heart I had ever seen—it was black and veined with gray, and the magic of it was so strong it stung the tips of my fingers.
    It’s no use trying to stab her heart. Coyote had chewed for a while, then swallowed. It’s too hard. You need to go for the connective tissue.
    So I did. There were four webs of gristle that held the heart in place. Once I took care of that, the veins and arteries were soft enough I could pull them out with my bare hand, or so Coyote had assured me.
    I set my knife to the first of the webs—and right about that time, she woke up.

13

    SHE DIDN’T AWAKEN ALL AT ONCE—OR ELSE I’D HURT her badly enough that she couldn’t react right away. The first thing she did was stretch. When she did, her pectoral fin fluttered and hit my hand, knocking the knife out of my hand. I watched it hit the water and disappear.
    The otterkin all pulled back into a semicircle about fifteen feet from her. Under me she writhed, and the back half of her body disappeared underwater. I was going to have to jump and get swimming if I wanted a chance to live through this.
    Yes, Mercedes, you should run now, she said. I like to chase my prey.
    Instead, I grabbed the edges of her skin and dug my fingers in so she couldn’t knock me off. Coyote died to give me this chance, and I had failed him. MacKenzie, who would never grow older than eight years and four days old, had died to give me this chance, and I had failed her and her family. Faith Jamison had come to me, and I had failed her, too.
    I had failed them all. But they were dead; they wouldn’t care. Adam would care.
    I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Not with Adam waiting for me.
    A single tentacle snapped back and hit my shinbone with a crack, and the pain didn’t touch me. I flattened my hand just as I would have to break a board and hit her heart. My form sucked because I was trying to stay put on a slippery fish who wasn’t cooperating, and I might as well have hit her with one of Thunderbird’s feathers. I reached in and pulled on her heart with my fingers and got nothing except for a mild zap of magic that felt like I’d grabbed onto an electric fence.
    I needed a weapon, something that could penetrate the river devil’s magic, and all I had was my bare hands.
    Her struggle to wake up pulled me underwater, making it obvious, if I needed to be reminded, that if I changed to a coyote to gain teeth, I’d never manage to stay on her long enough to do anything. I wasn’t even sure I could change to a coyote—Coyote was dead. I had nothing .
    I was up and out of the water again when a stray thought brushed across my awareness.
    Lugh never made anything that couldn’t be used as a weapon, the oakman had said.
    Maybe I did have a weapon.
    Jump, the river devil urged. Run. Swim for shore. I might even let you make it all the way if you swim fast enough. Or maybe I’ll decide that living with your failure would be punishment more fitting what you have attempted here.
    I opened my hand, and said, “Come on. Now. I need you.” Then I reached behind my hip and grabbed the silver-and-oak walking stick.
    The river devil writhed, and the section I was on lifted well up out of the