Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

collarbone and her jaw in brutal relief.
    I shouldered the door open and stepped inside so I could reach out and touch the scabs, and Rachel flinched back, retreating from the door and from me.
    “Who did this?” I asked. Impossible to believe Stefan would let anyone else hurt her again. “One of Marsilia’s vampires?”
    She shook her head. “Ford.”
    For a moment I drew a blank. Then I remembered the big man who’d driven me out of Stefan’s house the last time I was there. Half-changed to vampire and mostly crazy with it—and that had been before Marsilia had gotten her claws into him. A very nasty, scary guy—and I expected he’d been scary before he’d ever seen a vampire.
    “Where’s Stefan?”
    I have very little tolerance for drama that ends in people getting hurt. It was Stefan’s job to take care of his people, never mind that for most vampires their menageries existed as convenient snacks, and all the people in them died slow, nasty deaths over a period that might last as long as six months.
    Stefan hadn’t been like that. I knew that Naomi, the woman who ran his household, had been with him for thirty years or more. Stefan was careful. He’d been trying to prove that it was possible to live without killing. From the looks of Rachel, he wasn’t trying very hard anymore.
    “You can’t come in,” she said. “You need to leave. We’re not to disturb him, and Ford ...”
    The floor of the entryway was filthy, and my nose detected sweaty bodies, mold, and the sour scent of old fear. The whole house smelled like a garbage heap to my coyote-sensitive nose. It would probably have smelled like a garbage heap to a normal human, too.
    “I’m going to disturb him, all right,” I told her grimly. Someone obviously needed to. “Where is he?”
    When it became obvious that she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, I walked farther into the house and bellowed his name, tilting my head so my voice would carry up the stairs. “Stefan! You get your butt down here. I have a bone or two to pick with you. Stefan! You’ve had enough time to writhe in self-pity. Either kill Marsilia—and I’ll help with that one—or get over it.”
    Rachel had resorted to patting my shoulder and tugging at my clothes to try to get me back outside the house. “He can’t go outside,” she said with frantic urgency. “Stefan makes him stay in. Mercy, you have to get outside.”
    I’m tough and strong, and she was shaking with weariness and, likely, iron deficiency. I had no trouble staying right where I was.
    “Stefan,” I bellowed again.
    A lot of things happened in a very short period of time, so that I had to think of them later to put them together in the proper order.
    Rachel sucked in a breath of air and froze, her hand on my arm abruptly holding on to me rather than pushing me away. But she lost her grip when someone grabbed me from behind and threw me onto the upright piano that sat against the wall between the entryway and the living room. It made such a huge noise that I mixed up the sound of my impact with the pain of my back hitting the top of the piano. Reaction to countless karate drills kept me from stiffening, and I rolled down the face of the piano. Not a fun thing. My face hit the flagstone floor. Something crashed into a limp pile beside me, and suddenly I was face-to-face with Ford, the big scary guy who inexplicably seemed to have thrown himself down beside me, blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth.
    He looked different than he had last time, leaner and filthier. His clothing was stained with sweat, old blood, and sex. But his eyes, staring momentarily at me, were wide and startled like a child’s.
    Then a faded purple T-shirt spilling over ragged dirty jeans, and long, tangled dark hair blocked my view of Ford.
    My protector was too thin, too unkempt, but my nose told me that he was Stefan almost before my brain knew to ask the question. Unwashed vampire is better than unwashed human, but it is not pleasant, either.
    “No,” Stefan said, his voice soft, but Ford cried out, and Rachel let out a squeak of sound.
    “I’m all right, Stefan,” I told him, rolling stiffly to hands and knees. But he ignored me.
    “We don’t harm our guests,” Stefan said, and Ford whimpered.
    I stood up, ignoring the protest of sore shoulders and hip. I’d have bruises tomorrow, but nothing worse thanks to sensei’s sometimes brutal how-to-fall sessions. The piano looked like it would survive our