Soul Taken

15

Benton City was a small town ten miles on the other side of the Tri-Cities from where we lived. Most of the people who lived there worked in the Tri-Cities or out in the nuclear-cleanup complex of the Hanford Site. The rest of them grew fruit or made wine.

It was about three in the morning when Adam drove to the abandoned vineyard in the maze of hilly agricultural land surrounding the little town. The property was still covered with gray skeletons of grape vines that had been left to die. It was unusual that good grape-growing land had been left to lie fallow like this for so long.

But on the site of the burned-out winery, someone had recently built a very large house. The land around the house was ripped up and scored—obviously where someone was still working on proper landscaping—but the house itself looked finished.

Anyone could have been building a house, of course. But Adam had checked the county records and found that the land was owned by an Italian company. If I had any doubts that our vampires were there, the big black helicopter sitting on a pad beside the house eliminated them. The helicopter also meant Bonarata was there, but we’d known that was probable.

Adam drove on about a quarter of a mile and pulled into the property via a side road demarcating the line between the dead vines and live ones. The road was graveled and wide enough for a car and a half to drive on it, but there was cleared ground on either side of it.

The ground sloped—as good vineyards do—and we drove over a hump of land before we stopped. Adam parked out of sight of the house, next to one of the rows of dead grape vines, and we got out.

I heard a nighthawk cry and the distant sound of the interstate traffic. Coyotes exchanged a few barking yips—and when I replied, they showed up to check us out. An adult and three half-grown pups. One of the latter looked as though it wanted to investigate further, but the adult headed out for better hunting grounds, and the pups followed her.

“You’re still sure that the Soul Taker will come out and find us?” Adam asked.

I nodded and thumped my temple—not the side the pumpkin had hit—and said, “It knows we are here. It wants me. It will come.”

The only question was if the Harvester—the Soul Taker and Wulfe—would come alone.

We had been there for about twenty minutes when the helicopter engines roared to life. I looked at Adam, who shrugged. He didn’t know what the helicopter meant, either—except that the game was probably ready to begin.

“I love you,” I told him.

He smiled and set his steel-shod bō against his shoulder to get it out of the way so he could kiss me.

“Very touching,” said Bonarata, his accent both faintly British and Italian.

We’d hoped for Wulfe and the Soul Taker alone, but Adam had thought it unlikely.

Neither Adam nor I reacted to Bonarata’s presence, letting the kiss come to a natural conclusion a few seconds after Bonarata spoke. Then I stepped back and let Adam do the talking.

“You are trespassing on our territory without permission,” Adam said.

It wasn’t that Bonarata didn’t look dangerous; he just didn’t look like a monster. He was maybe four inches taller than Adam and had a boxer’s square build, a big man who looked like a brawler. His nose had been broken and badly set—probably when he’d still been human. The skin around his left eye had been split and scarred. Even in the hand-tailored suit that he wore, he looked like hired muscle.

He smiled at Adam, and the smile changed his face, giving it the kind of dangerous charm that had sent women after bad men for as long as there had been women and bad men.

“Ah, please forgive me. I was visiting my people. I had forgotten that I should have let you know that I was here.”

He knew that Adam could hear the lies he spoke. He didn’t care.

“Oh, you let us know,” I said. But I said it quietly enough that he could ignore me if he wanted to, and he didn’t pull his attention off Adam, who was smiling with white teeth.

“I wasn’t speaking of your visit,” Adam said gently. “Though I accept your apologies as meant; Marsilia can have whatever visitors she chooses. She is my ally and I accept her judgment. I was speaking of this—” Adam swept out a hand to indicate the vineyard and the house we couldn’t see but all knew was there. His other hand held the bō. “You should have put the property in someone else’s name if you didn’t want us to find it.”

“This?” Bonarata said, brows raising in mock surprise. “This is a gift for Marsilia. She complained to me that so many houses have been built around her seethe that they pose a risk to her people. When it is finished, I shall present her with the deed.”

That, oddly enough, was truth.

“A surprise gift,” Adam said. “She didn’t know about it.”

Bonarata’s smile widened. “That is true. But how else should you present such a gift to the woman you love?”

I snorted and drew an unfriendly look. He wouldn’t think it odd that I avoided his eyes. Smart people didn’t look vampires in the eyes.

He returned his attention to Adam. “Next time I come, I will be sure to give you warning,” he said. “When I next buy property, I shall speak to you as well. As you can hear, I am getting ready to leave.” His smile widened again, giving us a glimpse of fang. “My work here is done.”

I tapped my hand twice on my thigh, giving Adam warning. When the Harvester appeared at Bonarata’s side, teleporting in, Adam had already let the bō slide into both of his hands, ready for action.

Wulfe had fed again since Warren, I thought. The iris of his left eye was white, still in the process of regeneration, but his right eye was clear. He could see. That would change things a little, hopefully in our favor. I wondered that Bonarata had allowed it, then realized it was the Soul Taker that understood Wulfe’s ability to see made him more difficult to keep in thrall.

“This one,” Bonarata said, indicating the Harvester, “belongs to Marsilia.” His words rang with a power that seemed to take him by surprise.

I had done that a few times. Said things in the heat of the moment, and it was like the universe listened. That was how our pack ended up in charge of a supernatural neutral zone.

I could see from Bonarata’s face that he hadn’t meant his statement to be real. But there had been truth in his voice, and something—fate or the universe or magic itself—had decided to take the man at his word.

A binding between Bonarata and Wulfe broke. I saw the Harvester’s robes sway.

Wulfe had always been a spy in Marsilia’s camp, Bonarata’s unwilling servant. If Wulfe and Adam and I survived this night, I’d be pretty interested to see what this changed.

Adam stepped forward, disrupting the moment. “This is my territory,” he said—and there was a bit of unintentional magic in his voice, too.

Maybe he should have waited another minute, because our territory had just expanded again.

There was something in the air tonight, I thought. Then my eyes found the battered sickle in Wulfe’s hand. I knew how dense the collection of souls the Soul Taker had amassed was. Something like that could leave a magical charge just by being in the vicinity.

I put my hand on the girdle—not on purpose, just reflex, to make sure it was still there—and it was warm, a few degrees warmer than my body. It took me by surprise. I had not thought the belt to be anything but an antique. Not only was it warm, but I could feel a few bits of sparking magic caressing my skin.

The Harvester—Wulfe—turned his face toward me, and I saw the exact moment he noticed what I was wearing.

The girdle’s magic had distracted me. Adam and Bonarata had exchanged a few words, but Adam’s growl brought my attention back to them.

“The Harvester may not hunt in my territory,” Adam said.

Bonarata stepped back and waved a gracious hand. “By all means, Alpha. I have told you he is not mine.” His voice had a snap to it I didn’t think he intended because the last two words were nearly a purr. “Stop him.”

Adam didn’t run precisely, though he moved with speed. Wulfe looked at the girdle I wore for half a breath longer before turning to engage with Adam.

I moved to the side so I could watch the fight and keep an eye on Bonarata at the same time. Adam and I had a backup plan if Bonarata threw in—but Adam didn’t think he would. If he attacked Adam in our territory when he was a guest, he would lose face—and provide an opportunity for Bran to claim the attack was an act of war. Our pack might be officially separated from the Marrok, but Bran claimed all of North America. He could legitimately recognize any unprovoked aggression on Bonarata’s part. More to the point, Bonarata knew that Bran would do so.

Adam didn’t think Bonarata would risk a full-scale war with the North American werewolves. Of course, for Bran to act, there had to be witnesses.

I touched the belt again, just to make sure that I hadn’t been imagining things. But it felt entirely normal now. Maybe I had just imagined it.

Like the sickle, the bō had started out as an agricultural tool. It was, essentially, a good, stout stick. Adam used the metal bands on the ends of his stick to protect the wood from edged weapons.

Even though Wulfe was taller by several inches, the bō gave Adam the advantage of reach, letting him stay well out of range of the Soul Taker. Wulfe wasn’t giving Adam any opportunities to break bones. The only reason I’d been able to do that was because Wulfe hadn’t expected me to snatch the walking stick out of the air.

The fight was a near stalemate, an exhibition in martial arts done at supernatural speed. Adam had told me that, having seen Wulfe fight a time or two, this part of the dance might last as much as five minutes.

As long as neither of them made a mistake.

A gun might have been the best choice of weapon—and we had discussed that, too. I had my concealed carry tucked in my waistband, though Adam had left his in the SUV. Adam wasn’t sure that he could kill a vampire as old as Wulfe with a gun, and we didn’t want to do that anyway. Our goal was to separate Wulfe from the Soul Taker. Marsilia needed him in the same way that we needed Sherwood.

I’d thought Wulfe had been holding back when we fought, and I’d been right. Someone who didn’t understand what was going on might think that they were deliberately not hitting each other. But that wasn’t true. They were predicting each other’s moves and getting out of the way. I could do that, a little. I could do it better when fighting with people I’d trained with for months or years. Adam and I could put on a pretty good show. But nothing like this.

There weren’t any giant leaps—once a fighter’s feet left the ground, his trajectory couldn’t change until he hit something. That made him an easy target. Those kinds of flashy moves were for demonstrations, or for fighting someone you held a considerable advantage over.

I wasn’t the only one fascinated. I caught the moment when Bonarata leaned forward and watched the fight, moving subtly as if in participation. When he’d been human, he’d been one of the condottiere, a captain of mercenaries who’d gained power and wealth by waging war.

I might have enjoyed watching it, too, if I didn’t know what the Soul Taker was. If so much didn’t ride on Adam being just that little bit better than Wulfe.

Just that little bit. Or maybe if Wulfe managed to figure out why I brought his silk girdle with me. I wanted to touch it again, to see if it was still sparking magic. But Bonarata hadn’t noticed it yet, so I kept my hands still.

Gradually, Adam forced Wulfe to fight defensively. And the fighting had slowed down a little. Not because anyone was tired, but because they’d taken each other’s measure and quit wasting effort.

At that slower pace it was easier to understand what they were doing. The sickle was knife-sized, and so was best used just outside of grappling range. The bō allowed Adam to stay farther away than that, in the outer circle of the fight. He could hit Wulfe—as long as he was fast enough that Wulfe couldn’t grab the bō. But Wulfe was forced to stay too far away for the Soul Taker to touch Adam, who used the ends of the bō to keep Wulfe away from him.

I judged the duration of the fight more on the way they were fighting than a clock. Adam’s shirt was wet with sweat and Wulfe was making irritable movements when his Hollywood-inspired costume got in his way. He pulled off one of the flowy sleeves and flung it on the ground with a snarl that would have done credit to Adam.

I unwrapped the girdle from around my waist—and it was once again warmer than it should have been. I coiled it up so I could hold it in one hand, but when I got to the end, I wrapped it around my wrist. I didn’t want to lose it too easily.

“What do you have?” Bonarata asked.

I looked up, almost caught his gaze, and managed to focus on his mouth instead.

“Bait,” I told him. “And anchor.” Then I let out a single yip and bolted for the fight.

Adam hit Wulfe hard in the chest, making the vampire take a step back and a little to the side. Then Adam took two quick steps out of the pattern of the fight—away from Wulfe. Leaving Wulfe facing me while focused on Adam.

I stopped about ten feet from him, and using the power that flowed from Adam, I said, “Wulfe.” It was more than his name, it was a reminder of who he was. I held up the girdle stretched between my two arms as I caught his gaze.

I heard the crack of a gunshot, but it didn’t hit me or Wulfe, so I ignored it. I was aware, peripherally, that another fight had broken out between Adam and Bonarata, but I could not afford to look. Adam had told me that he’d keep Bonarata from interfering with what I was going to try to do.

Using the knowledge the Soul Taker had given me, I found the soul bond it had initiated between me and it and hit that with a blaze of the pack’s cleansing power—just as I’d watched Adam do to keep Warren from being enthralled by Wulfe’s bite. I didn’t try to break the bond between the Soul Taker and me. Instead, I sent the spiritual fire through the artifact and into the slave bond between the Soul Taker and Wulfe. Then I twisted the cleansing power and let it burn.

I couldn’t quite burn through the bond, no matter how much power I threw at it. Wulfe wasn’t ours in the same way that Warren was, so the pack magic couldn’t completely destroy the Soul Taker’s hold.

Wulfe’s eyes, one clear and one cloudy, met mine as he walked up to me and held out his hand. Despite the war I knew was raging inside him, there was no tension on his face. I gave him the girdle and he closed his fingers upon it. The serene expression on his face reminded me forcibly of the memory Stefan had shared with me of his first meeting with Wulfe.

As soon as he touched it, the Latin words and the phoenixes embroidered along the belt began to glow. It wasn’t flamboyant, more like the embers of a fire. He closed his eyes, brought the fabric to his face—and dropped the sickle.

I quit pouring power into him and collapsed on the ground in the same instant. I don’t think I could have managed even a second longer—but it had been enough to give Wulfe a chance, and he’d taken it.

I had called him to himself, then given him the belt—a reminder of a time before Bonarata had broken him, something for him to cling to. And with that anchor, he’d been able to destroy the hold the Soul Taker had on him all by himself.

“Because a kite needs to be tethered in order to fly,” Wulfe said, as if pulling the thoughts from my head, which he very well could have been. He opened his eyes and met mine. “And Marsilia”—his hand tightened on the old silk—“is my anchor.”

They had been lovers once. More than that. Marsilia, Stefan, Andre, and Bonarata had been his family. The reason for his existence. But when Bonarata had broken him, Marsilia had given him a touchstone of safety. I didn’t have to close my eyes to remember the skeletal creature that had clung to Marsilia’s skirts in that long-ago dungeon.

I could see that Wulfe was thinking the same thing. And I knew why he’d never killed Bonarata. The simplest reason of all. Wulfe loved him.

Wulfe looked away, breaking that intense communication—and I realized for the first time that the reason I hadn’t looked away first was because I couldn’t have. He leaned down and kissed the top of my head, and then vanished.

A wailing roar reminded me that there was still a fight going on—and I knew that sound. I knew what I was going to face before I turned to look.

Adam . . . the beast that fought Bonarata wasn’t anything like a werewolf. Though his hind legs were articulated like a wolf’s, he stood mostly upright by choice—aided by overly long arms that could balance him when necessary. Adam’s face was a monstrous distortion of a wolf’s head, with an undershot jaw and teeth that would have done credit to a predator twice his size—and he was huge.

Bonarata must have gotten closer to me than we’d planned for Adam to have given himself up to the cursed monster. Then I noticed there were pieces of a gun scattered about. Somehow, though we went armed with guns ourselves, neither of us had considered what might happen if Bonarata had a gun.

I thought of the shot I’d heard. Unlike his change to the wolf, Adam’s change to this beast could be instantaneous, quick enough for him to stop Bonarata from shooting me. To save me, Adam had given himself over to the beast.

Adam’s monster was built for fighting. It was faster than his wolf form and armed with outsized claws and fangs. Even though Adam wasn’t in charge of this form, his instincts were still honed by half a century of fighting and training.

Bonarata looked fragile next to Adam. He’d armed himself with Adam’s bō but he still should have been outmatched.

I had never seen anything like the beauty of that fight.

I’d known Bonarata had been a fighter. But I’d just watched Wulfe fight—no-holds-barred—and if he had not lost to Adam, he had not won, either.

Maybe if Adam had been fully in control of that beast, he might have stood a chance, but it was obvious to me after watching for a few seconds that Bonarata was going to kill Adam.

I drew my own gun—but the speed at which they were moving meant that I’d have a better chance of hitting Adam than Bonarata because Adam was bigger. My hand was shaking so badly—from the after-effects of the magic I’d poured into Wulfe—that I didn’t dare try.

My foot touched the sickle and I felt it tug at me.

I could help you kill the vampire, the Soul Taker whispered. The sound of its truth wound around my heart.

I jerked my foot away . . . and hesitated.

The fight between Adam and Wulfe had been almost musical, the percussive sounds of weapon on weapon and light feet on the ground. The fight between Bonarata and Adam was not. I had the feeling that if I understood Italian, Bonarata’s vocabulary would have rivaled Ben at his best as he screamed insults in a stream of rage. Adam’s monster’s inchoate howls and roars made Bonarata’s battle cries insignificant.

I saw Bonarata swing, and this time Adam didn’t move away in time. There was a crack that sounded like a baseball bat hitting a home run, and Adam reeled back, one arm at a funny angle. He grabbed that wrist with the opposite hand, overlarge even on such a huge body, and jerked it. The arm snapped again, though not as loudly. It was hard to tell, because none of his limbs looked as though they were natural, but I thought he must have either reset a joint—or pulled a broken bone straight so it could heal.

The whole thing took only a second. Adam reengaged with Bonarata, though he visibly favored the arm that had been injured. While Adam was dealing with his arm, Bonarata had glanced at me and seen the Soul Taker.

I didn’t see him do it. I felt the Soul Taker take notice.

Take me up, it told me. Take me up or face me in the hands of the Lord of Night.

Bonarata caught Adam in the ribs and broke the bō on him. The monster fell but rolled back to his feet immediately. Now Adam’s breath was harsh and labored, and he whined with each intake. The arm Bonarata had hit seemed to be okay now, but there was a dent in Adam’s rib cage.

He will be better than the last one, the Soul Taker told me. The Lord of Night is strong. I can break strong.

Bonarata was moving the fight so that it neared the place where I stood, indecisive and scared to the bone. I bent down to take up the sickle—and Bonarata lunged for it at the same time.

I could have beaten him to it, but I could not force myself to touch it. Bonarata’s hand closed on the blade, and it cut his flesh. I felt a cold chill sweep through me—the Soul Taker’s joy at the power of the blood of the Lord of Night. There was still a moment left for me to grab the handle. I could not do it.

Through the blood tie that stretched between the Soul Taker and me, I understood as soon as it did that the artifact could never bind to the soul of the Lord of Night. Not in a week. Not in a century. Influence, yes, but the vampire’s mind was impenetrable in a way that the Soul Taker understood better than I did.

Bonarata smiled at me as he let Adam rip the Soul Taker from his careless hold while I screamed a hopeless protest.

Adam’s oversized hand made the sickle look absurdly small. He jerked it back and Bonarata hissed, his blood splattering the ground and me.

Adam roared at him, and for a moment I thought everything would be okay—but only because in that moment the only thing I could feel was my mate. Then Adam dropped to the ground as if he’d been shot. He curled around the hand that held the Soul Taker as if to protect it, hiding both hand and artifact from view. Every muscle of his body was rigid, the corded veins growing more defined. He made an indescribable noise that hurt my ears as the Soul Taker began to turn Adam into its wielder.

Bonarata put his hand to his mouth and licked delicately at the wound the Soul Taker had left.

I brought my gun up—and Bonarata slapped me in the face with the back of his free hand. It didn’t knock me unconscious, quite, but I couldn’t protest when he kicked the gun out of my hand and walked a few steps away.

I heard a soft noise, and something bumped against the tip of my nose. Cold and old and fathomless.

I rolled away from the blade of the Soul Taker, but sick and dizzy, I could only manage to come up to my knees before I sat down again. My nose bled from Bonarata’s slap, but it was the feel of the Soul Taker I tried to wipe away with the back of my wrist. Adam hadn’t meant to touch me with the sickle. I doubt Adam knew I was here at all.

The beast that held the soul of my mate was curled around himself, one arm outstretched as if to keep the sickle as far from the rest of him as he could manage. He was writhing slowly with the effort of his fight.

Bonarata was sitting on his heels about ten feet from me—which was way too close—a three-foot section of Adam’s bō tucked into the crook of his elbow. He was smiling, but his eyes were as empty as the grave.

I quickly looked at his chin. I did not want to see into Bonarata.

“I’m glad you woke up before I had to go,” he said. “I wanted to take this moment to tell you why I am here.”

“Evil overlord’s classic mistake.” My voice was tight. My face hurt where he’d hit me, and Adam’s pain was sliding through our mating bond.

He laughed. I imagined that people who didn’t know what he was would have found the sound warm and reassuring.

“Not at all, Mercedes Thompson Hauptman,” he said. “It is necessary that you understand why so many people died. Why I destroyed the Tri-Cities seethe and your pack.”

“Pack’s not destroyed,” I said grimly.

His smile widened as he nodded at Adam. “You do understand what the Soul Taker is, don’t you?” He looked a little thoughtful. “I wonder if it ever will collect enough souls to bring its god back.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, though. Because in an hour or two, it will have your mate, the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack. Through the pack ties it will own your whole pack.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It will leave you alone, though,” he said. “Coyote is a little too much like its own god for the Soul Taker to risk drawing his attention.”

That’s not what the Soul Taker believed, but I wasn’t going to take up that argument with Bonarata.

“And there are some things even the Soul Taker cannot force its wielder to do,” Bonarata continued. He shrugged. “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but in my judgment, Hauptman could not be forced to hurt you.”

He tapped Adam’s bō into the ground a couple of times, watching Adam’s shuddering body. “I expect that the Dark Smith will eventually wrest it away from him. A pity, but once you killed my Uttu and Ninhursag, my sweet spiders, I knew it was time to let the Dark Smith have his plaything. Siebold Adelbertsmiter might even free your mate rather than killing him. What do you think Adam Hauptman will do after a day, or a week, or a month of killing innocents?”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

“That’s what I think, too,” he said. “Do you suppose that he’ll drown himself like Bryan did?”

I didn’t know how he knew about my foster father, but I tried very hard not to give him a reaction. We’d been wrong, Adam and I, when we’d determined Bonarata’s motivations. This hadn’t been about Marsilia or sabotaging our neutral territory. This had been about me, a coyote shapeshifter who’d made a fool out of the Lord of Night.

“I will follow you for the rest of your life,” he said pleasantly. “It doesn’t matter if you live to be a hundred or five hundred. I understand it’s a toss-up with Coyote’s children.” He pulled out his phone and hit a button. We both listened to my phone ring for a few seconds. I thought about the crank calls I’d been getting, the ones Adam’s people couldn’t trace. The calls that had happened during the day.

“After a few months,” he said, brushing a thumb over the screen of his phone to cut the call, “I suspect that you’ll think of me every time you hear a phone ring.

“Whenever the whim strikes me, I will kill everyone you care about and anyone who cares about you.” His voice was conversational. I don’t know what he was reading in my face. “They will die, and you’ll know it is your fault.” He stood up and dropped the broken section of bō on the ground.

“I will not have it said that the Lord of Night was bested by you,” he told me. “I hear the whispers. But no more. For centuries they will talk about what happens to people who dare to thwart my will. Your fate will be a lesson for them all.”

He walked away. After a couple of minutes, I heard the helicopter lift off.

“Mercy.”

I think I was still half-dazed by the blow Bonarata had dealt me, because I’d been staring after Bonarata instead of trying to help Adam. I was sitting on the ground, and I didn’t try to get up for fear I’d just fall back down again.

I crawled to Adam.

His mouth wasn’t made for speech, and the words came out garbled, if urgent. I understood them anyway. “Get Sherwood.” “Bran.” “Run.” And then my name, over and over again. I don’t think he even realized he was doing it. His eyes were closed.

I put both hands on his face. The reddened hide felt strange—almost rubbery under my hands. At my touch he opened his eyes. In this form, his eyes were always human.

I saw him.

I was too tired, too hurt to try to free Adam the way I’d helped Wulfe break free. In any case, the power that I’d used for that had been Adam’s and the pack’s. He was already using it to fight the Soul Taker. The pack was feeding power to Adam as fast as he could take it.

I could see that as I looked into him. I could feel the pack bonds the way he did, as connections to each of us. Through those bonds I felt their frantic effort to help Adam—and I felt when Sherwood stepped in, his power sweeping through every wolf. I only barely managed to shield myself from being pulled in.

The power that pulsed into Adam was more focused, more useful, with Sherwood directing it from his end. But I could feel the Soul Taker’s triumph as Adam began to lose the battle anyway.

So I opened myself up to Adam, let him see me the way the Soul Taker had forced me to see others. Let him see how the Soul Taker worked so that he could take the power that Sherwood fed him and—burn the bond the Soul Taker was building.

Ours, roared the pack magic, our Alpha, our mate, ours.

Adam opened his hand and released the Soul Taker.