Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

the wolf who was my mate. “They’ll stay home.”
    He put his phone away without a word, but I could see his dimple peeking out. Jesse’s disconcerting the intellectual and physical giant who was Adam’s second was pretty funny to think about.
    “Sorry,” Adam said to the others. “Urgent business, unless you want to be neck-deep in werewolves.”
    “He knew you were hurt?” Fred asked.
    “He’s pack,” Adam told him. Then, maybe to forestall questions about things Bran didn’t want the public to know about werewolves, he continued briskly, “Here’s what we need to figure out about whatever is in the river. How much harm is this creature doing? We don’t really have a lot of data to go on other than a lot of scary talk about monsters. As the sole representative of monsters here, it is my . . . obligation to make certain we are looking at this with a balanced perspective. I am sorry that Benny’s sister was killed and Benny injured. However, people are injured by”—he hesitated—“bear attacks, too. Just because something is dangerous does not make it evil. Was it defending its territory? Are we correct that it is a single beast? How intelligent is it? Can we bargain to keep people safe? Should we kill the last or near last of its kind because it has killed a woman and hurt her brother? Is there a way to salvage this situation with no more deaths?”
    When you are a werewolf, I thought, it’s a little hard to point at another predator, and shout, “It’s a scary monster, kill it! Kill it!” I rubbed my calf though it wasn’t itching at the moment.
    Hank’s eyes were open, but he didn’t say anything or look at anyone. Instead, he stared at the river with such intensity that I shivered.
    “I have a friend in River Patrol,” said Fred. “I can find out how many casualties there have been in the river.” He looked at Gordon. “Is there any story about how someone is freed from this mark?”
    Gordon shook his head. “I do not know. But I will ask around.” He looked at Adam. “It is not something you can bargain with, Mr. Hauptman. It is Hunger.”
    “I’m a werewolf,” Adam told him. “People would have said that about me a century ago, too.”
    “This,” said Gordon, “is nothing so benign as a werewolf or a grizzly bear.”
    Fred, kneeling on the ground next to his hog-tied brother, frowned suddenly at Gordon. “I thought you’d come with them”—he tipped his head toward the trailer, so he meant Adam and me—“until you named yourself Calvin’s grandfather. But Calvin Seeker’s father’s father is dead. I know his mother’s father. How is it you are his grandfather?”
    Gordon smiled, the gap in front making him look as harmless as I was suddenly certain he wasn’t. “I’m an old man,” he told Fred. “How should I remember this?”
    “I’ll vouch for Gordon,” said Jim, though he didn’t sound enthusiastic or certain of it. “And so will Calvin. I think we ought to get Hank to the hospital, where they can check him. He doesn’t seem to be tracking very well.”
    “I hit him pretty hard,” I said, almost apologetically, which was as good as I could do, given that he’d shot Adam. “I didn’t realize I’d grabbed my walking stick and not just some random stick until afterward.”
    “Understandable,” said Fred unexpectedly. “My wife would take a baseball bat to someone who shot me.”
    “Has,” said Jim. “I remember. It was Hank that time, too, wasn’t it?”
    “He didn’t mean to,” said Fred. “It was in Iraq—Desert Storm. I startled him on sentry-go, and he shot me. Meant I beat him back by a month. He showed up at my house to see how I was, and my Molly chased him around the front yard with my boy’s bat until she got him in the backside. Good thing it was a plastic bat, or Hank wouldn’t be walking now.”

    THEY LEFT. JIM, FRED, AND HANK TOOK JIM’S TRUCK with Hank bound and laid out as comfortably as possible in the truck bed, with his brother to steady him. I rode up with them to let them out, and by the time I got back, Adam was alone. He was standing up—I think because if he sat down, he was worried he couldn’t get up again.
    “Food,” I told him.
    But he shook his head. “No. Shower. Then food. After I eat, I’ll want to sleep. Can’t safely sleep covered in blood and risk the wolf waking up without me and panicking him.”
    He was worried that he’d be weak enough when he slept that he couldn’t control his