Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

a ferocious and silent intensity. I gave him the last of the hamburger and the thawed steaks before going to work on the frozen stuff. Happily, there was a microwave in the Trailer of Wonders. When I’d finished slicing the frozen meat, I watched the speed with which he was eating and knew it wouldn’t be enough.
    So I made pancakes on the nifty little stove and had a hot stack waiting for him when he finished the frozen meat. He gave me a look when I set it in front of him, but he ate the pancakes with the same steady rhythm as he’d eaten the rest of the food. Meat was better, but calories were calories.
    He finished before I’d gotten the last of the batter in the pan, pushing the plate away so I’d know.
    “Okay,” I said. “Change already.”
    “You need to go,” he said. “This is going to hurt. Give me about twenty minutes.”
    I left and waited outside five minutes while our bond let me know just exactly how much pain he was in. Changing for the wolves was bad enough when they weren’t hurt. Five minutes was all I could take. I couldn’t help him, but I couldn’t bear to leave him alone, either.
    “I’m coming back in,” I told him, so he wouldn’t think it was some stranger. The only concession I made to safety was to sit on the far side of the trailer until the wolf heaved himself up on all fours. He started to shake himself free of the last tingles of the change and stopped abruptly. It must have hurt.
    “Bedtime,” I told him firmly. “Do you need help up?”
    He sneezed at me, then trotted up the steps to the bed with only a slight hitch in his gait. If I hadn’t been there, it would probably have been a limp, but that he was bothering to hide it from me was a good sign that he’d be okay.
    I climbed into bed and settled next to him, touching him gingerly. But he wiggled closer with an impatient sigh, so I quit worrying about hurting him. After a moment, I pulled the covers over both of us. He didn’t need them, but I did. The night was warm. I should have been warm, too, especially curled around Adam’s big furry self. But I was cold.
    I waited until he’d fallen asleep before I started to shake.
    He could have been dead. If Fred had been a half instant slower or Hank a smidgen faster.
    Mine. He was mine, and not even death would take him from me—not if I could help it.

    I WAS PRETTY SURE I WAS DREAMING WHEN I CLIMBED out of the bed, leaving Adam sleeping under a pile of blankets. He looked hot, his long tongue exposed to the air, so I pulled the blankets off him.
    I put on my clothes and followed the odd compulsion that pulled me out of the trailer and out to the river. It must have been very late because there were only a few semitrucks on the highway on the other side of the Columbia.
    On the west end of the swimming hole was a big rock formation. I climbed up and sat on the top, my feet dangling over the edge. My toes were ten feet above the river, which rushed darkly along toward the Pacific.
    When the man came up and sat beside me, it didn’t startle me. His face in shadows, he held out something to me—a piece of grass. I took it and stuck the end in my mouth. From his silhouette, I could see that he was chewing on his own piece, the seed heads bobbing leisurely in the air.
    Just a couple of hayseeds in the moonlight. It could almost have been romantic; instead it was peaceful.
    We must have been sitting there in a companionable silence for ten minutes before he said, “You aren’t sleeping, you know.”
    I took the grass out of my mouth and dropped it into the river—or that’s what I meant to do. A stray gust of wind caught it, and it flew onto the riverbank on the swimming-hole side instead.
    “Shouldn’t I feel the need to scream and run?” I asked.
    “Do you?” He sounded mildly interested.
    “No.” I considered it. “I am pretty convinced that I am probably dreaming, though.” Apologetically I shrugged. “Despite your assertion that I’m not.”
    He looked up at the half-moon and squinted at it, as if he might see something in it I couldn’t. “I’d guess that’s because you were sleeping when I called you out here. I didn’t know if it would work. I can’t do a lot of the things I used to do. Still, I am not lying. You are quite awake.”
    The moon lit the face of a man who’d died more than thirty years ago. A man who had been a ghost, dancing for me in broad daylight. He was handsome and young with a devil-may-care air that was obvious