Page 40 of Bold Mercy

Chapter Twenty-One

Avis was surrounded by magic, and it spread its wings and carried her away. It was the only way to explain how the warped vampire woman kept getting out of sticky situations. She should have been holed up with the human she’d turned, watching him with his gory dinner and teaching him, as she’d promised, to be a vampire.

But when we reached where her scent was strongest, she was gone. When Wyatt Killen shifted and held a borrowed stake to a vampire’s chest, the vampire died without giving up any of her secrets. And when I tracked her scent through the building, it led me to the streets, and after an hour of hunting, it disappeared. I lost her.

I stood in the middle of a barn in the rural village of Teichmann, a few miles outside Jakeston, my nose twitching as I attempted to sort through the strong scents of farm animals to find Avis’s. I couldn’t. She was gone.

“For now,” I whispered, bone tired. While I’d been hunting, my mind had been too occupied to think about everything that had happened that night. But now, the hunt was over, and it all rose up to choke the breath from me.

“Check the house,” Wyatt said, and two of his men hurried through the darkness to make sure Avis wasn’t inside, and that the humans who lived there were still alive. I could have told him Avis wasn’t in the house, but I said nothing. The men had no clothes on, but it wasn’t like they were going to knock politely on the door to ask questions. They’d peer through windows if they could, listen for sounds of distress, and use their superior noses to smell for blood.

Dogs were barking, but they were contained inside a fenced area and couldn’t do much to challenge the men. They’d been barking before we arrived, though, and I was sure it was because Avis had been through the area.

Wyatt jogged from the barn at a nod from Jared, leaving me and his alpha alone.

“We will get her, Kait.”

“Yeah.” My fingers were shaking when I lifted them to shove loose tendrils of hair from my sweaty face. “I just wonder what else she’s going to do before we catch her. She’s turning humans like nothing I’ve ever seen before. She’s shoving deadly magic inside people—inside wolves—and killing them.”

“She did that to you?”

I hesitated, but I wasn’t sure why. “Yes. It was burning me from the inside out. I think they’ve managed to duplicate what it feels like when a vampire is hurt by the sun. I know how that sounds, but I felt it, Jared.”

“It didn’t kill you,” he said. “So that means there is a chance of surviving it.”

“She said she’d been saving that particular vampire for me. I don’t think they possess the power any longer, like it wears off after a while or they use it up after they use it once. That doesn’t mean that they might not be able to get shot up with more of it. I just don’t know.” I rubbed my temples, then my eyes. “Nothing they do is possible. It’s like I’m caught in a nightmare and can’t wake up.”

“Eli is sending a car. You’ll feel better after food and rest.”

Dawn had come, and Avis and the vampires would be forced to sleep for the day. At least, I thought they would, but who the hell knew anymore? I certainly didn’t. I could hope, though, because I needed some sleep myself. And I really needed to hug my mother.

There were a lot of things I needed, but the car arrived and Jared popped the trunk and got dressed while I climbed into the warm back seat. After he got in with me, I slid into his arms and let him hold me while I began to relax. I drifted off with his scent in my brain, and I wished the car ride would last for a few hours. I didn’t have to be strong or prepared to fight or worried someone was going to die. I didn’t think about Avis Vine’s awful magic or if Jakeston would ever get back to normal or what the future held for nonhumans. I could just lie there and let the alpha take care of me.

And that didn’t bother me at all. Not right then.

I fell into a sort of blank unconsciousness that both rested and reset me, brief though it was. When the driver pulled into Shadowfield and shut the car off, I awakened immediately, and instead of being groggy and exhausted, I was strangely energized.

I sat up but didn’t pull away from Jared. I lifted my fingers to his lips, and he watched me calmly, but his stare sharpened and his body tensed. I barely noticed when the driver climbed from the car, barely heard the soft thunk of the door closing. Distant voices of returning warriors and the awakening community drifted through the cold, foggy morning, but I was isolated inside the warm car with the alpha and the outside world simply didn’t matter.

I slipped my hand around to the back of his neck and pressed my lips to his. I didn’t move, then, just closed my eyes and reveled in the feel of his lips against mine, his scent, his warmth, his presence.

There was something undeniable between us. It flared to life every time we were near each other. Definitely every time we touched. It was irresistible, and it was inevitable. And maybe my encounter with Avis Vine’s magic and the fragility of life had affected my thinking—definitely watching her kill a human and then bring him back immediately as a vampire had altered me—but something settled inside me.

Jared didn’t want to love me and leave me. And he didn’t want to take part of me if he couldn’t have all of me. He had to weigh each decision he made, had to think about the future, his wolves, the consequences of his actions. That was his job as alpha of a pack.

I understood that. I was also tired of all the back and forth, all the thinking, worrying, wondering.

I pulled away from him, finally, darting my tongue out to grab the taste of him from my lips, and smiled. He didn’t return my smile, though. He saw something in my eyes. Something he wasn’t sure he liked.

“Kait?”

I shivered at the way his deep, quiet voice wrapped around me and slid into my soul. It was good to be free of doubt.

“I’m going to check on everyone,” I told him. “You’re going to get some sleep?”

He watched me, frowning. “You, as well.”

I only nodded. I was practically jumping with an urgent energy, and I couldn’t sit still a moment longer. I rushed from the car to check on my people and my mother, content with the weight of my blade in my pocket. Already I was eager to change clothes and strap on a belt so I could slide it into a sheath at my hip where it belonged.