Iron Kissed (5 page)

I wasn't, of course. But Zee had no intention of telling me more.

I started back to the truck and Zee cleared his throat very quietly. I looked at him, but he just stared back. Just as he had when he was teaching me to put together a car and I'd forgotten a step. Forgotten a step…right.

I met Uncle Mike's gaze. “This ends my debt to you and yours for killing the second vampire with your artifacts. Paid in full.”

He gave me a slow, sly smile that made me glad Zee had reminded me. “Of course.”

 

According to my wristwatch, I'd spent six hours at the reservation, assuming, of course, that a whole day hadn't passed by. Or a hundred years. Visions of Washington Irving aside, presumably if I had been there a whole day—or longer—either Uncle Mike or Zee would have told me. I must have spent more time staring at the ocean than I'd thought.

At any rate, it was very late. There were no lights on at Kyle's house when I arrived, so I decided not to knock. There was an empty spot in Kyle's driveway, but Zee's truck was old and I worried about leaving oil stains on the pristine concrete (which was why my Rabbit was parked on the blacktop). So I pulled in and parked it on the street behind my car. I must have been tired, because it wasn't until I'd already turned off the truck and gotten out that I realized any vehicle belonging to Zee would never drip anything.

I paused to pat the truck's hood gently in apology when someone put his hand on my shoulder.

I grabbed the hand and rotated it into a nice wrist lock. Using that as a convenient handle, I spun him a few degrees to the outside, and locked his elbow with my other hand. A little more rotation, and his shoulder joint was also mine. He was ready to be pulverized.

“Damn it, Mercy, that is enough!”

Or apologized to.

I let Warren go and sucked in a deep breath. “Next time, say something.” I should have apologized, really. But I wouldn't have meant it. It was his own darn fault he'd surprised me.

He rubbed his shoulder ruefully and said, “I will.” I gave him a dirty look. I hadn't hurt him—even if he'd been human, I wouldn't have done any real hurt.

He stopped faking and grinned. “Okay. Okay. I heard you drive up and wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

“And you couldn't resist sneaking up on me.”

He shook his head. “I wasn't sneaking. You need to be more alert. What was up?”

“No demon-possessed vampires this time,” I told him. “Just a little sleuthing.” And a trip to the seashore.

A second-floor window opened, and Kyle stuck his head and shoulders out so he could look down at us. “If you two are finished playing Cowboy and Indian out there, some of us would like to get their beauty sleep.”

I looked at Warren. “You heard 'um, Kemo Sabe. Me go to my little wigwam and get 'um shut-eye.”

“How come you always get to play the Indian?” whined Warren, deadpan.

“'Cause she's the Indian, white boy,” said Kyle. He pushed the window up all the way and set a hip on the casement. He was wearing little more than most of the men in the movie we'd been watching, and it looked better on him.

Warren snorted and ruffled my hair. “She's only half—and I've known more Indians than she has.”

Kyle grinned wickedly and said, in his best Mae West voice, “Just how many Indians have you known, big boy?”

“Stop right there.” I made a play at plugging my ears. “Lalalala. Wait until I hop in my faithful Rabbit and ride off into the sunrise.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed Warren somewhere in the region of his chin.

“It is pretty late,” Warren said. “Do you still want to meet us at Tumbleweed tomorrow?”

Tumbleweed was the yearly folk music festival held on Labor Day weekend. The Tri-Cities were close enough to the coast that the cream of the Seattle and Portland music scene usually showed up in force: blues singers, jazz, Celtic, and everything in between. Cheap, good entertainment.

“I wouldn't miss it. Samuel still hasn't managed to wiggle out of performing and I have to be there to heckle him.”

“Ten
A.M.
by the River Stage, then,” Warren said.

“I'll be there.”

Tumbleweed was held in Howard Amon Park, right off the Columbia River in Richland. The stages were scattered as far apart as could be managed to minimize interference between performances. The River Stage, where Samuel was to perform, was about as far from available parking as it was possible to get. Normally that wouldn't have bothered me, but karate practice this morning hadn't gone so well. Grumbling to myself, I limped slowly across the grass.

The park was still mostly empty of anyone except musicians toting various instrument cases as they trudged across the vast green fields on their way to whatever stage they were performing on. Okay, the park isn't really that huge, but when your leg hurts—or when you're hauling a string bass from one end to the other—it's big enough.

The bassist in question and I exchanged weary nods of mutual misery as we passed each other.

Warren and Kyle were already seated on the grass in front of the stage and Samuel was arranging his instruments on various stands, when I finally made it.

“Something wrong?” Kyle asked with a frown as I sat down next to him. “You weren't limping last night.”

I wiggled on the lumpy, dew-dampened grass until I was comfortable. “Nothing important. Someone caught me a good one on my thigh at karate practice this morning. It'll settle down in a bit. I see the button men found you already.”

Tumbleweed was nominally free, but you could show your support by purchasing a button for two dollars…and the button men were relentless.

“We got one for you, too.” Warren reached across Kyle and handed a button to me.

I pinned it on my shoe, where it wouldn't be immediately obvious. “I bet I can attract four button men before lunch,” I told Kyle.

He laughed. “Do I look like a newbie? Four before lunch is too easy.”

More people gathered in front of Samuel's stage than I'd expected, given that his was one of the first performances.

I recognized some of the emergency room personnel who Samuel worked with near the center of the audience with a larger group. They were setting up lawn chairs and chattering together in such a fashion that I was pretty sure they all worked at Samuel's hospital.

Then there were the werewolves.

Unlike the medical personnel, they didn't sit together, but scattered themselves here and there around the fringes. All of the Tri-City werewolves, except for Adam, the Alpha, were still pretending to be human—so they mostly avoided hanging out together in public. They'd all have heard Samuel sing before, but probably not at a real performance because he didn't do them often.

A cool breeze came off the Columbia River, just a hop, skip, and a jump over a narrow footpath away—which was why the stage was the River Stage. The morning was warm, as early fall mornings in the Tri-Cities often are, so the slight edge to the wind was more welcome than not.

One of the festival volunteers, wearing a painter's apron covered with Tumbleweed buttons from this and previous years, welcomed us to this year's festival and thanked us all for coming. He spent a few minutes talking about sponsors and raffles while the audience shifted restlessly before he introduced Samuel as the Tri-Cities' own folksinging physician.

We clapped and whistled as the announcer bounced down the stairs and back to the sound station where he would keep the speakers behaving properly. Someone settled in behind me, but I didn't look around, because Samuel walked to center stage with his violin dangling almost carelessly from one hand.

He was wearing a cobalt blue dress shirt that set off his eyes, tipping the balance from gray to blue. He'd tucked the shirt into new black jeans that were tight enough to show off the muscle in his legs.

I had seen him just this morning as he drank his coffee and I ran out the door. There was no reason that he should still affect me like this.

Most werewolves are attractive; it goes with the permanently young-and-muscled look. Samuel had more, though. And it wasn't only that extra zap that the more dominant wolves have.

Samuel looked like a person you could trust—something about the hint of humor that lurked in the back of his deep-set eyes and the corner of his mouth. It was part of what made him such a good doctor. When he told his patients they were going to be fine, they believed him.

His eyes locked on mine for a moment and the quirk of his mouth powered up to a smile.

It warmed me to my toes, that smile: reminded me of a time when Samuel was my whole world, a time when I believed in a knight in shining armor who could make me happy and safe.

Samuel knew it, too, because the smile changed to a grin—until he looked behind me. The pleasure cooled in his eyes, but he kept the grin, turning it on the rest of his audience. That's how I knew for certain that the man who'd sat behind me was Adam.

Not that I'd been in much doubt. The wind was coming from the wrong direction to give me a good scent, but dominant wolves exude power, and Adam—all apart from him being the Alpha—was nearly as dominant as they come. It was like having a car battery sitting behind me and being hooked up with a pair of wires.

I kept my eyes forward, knowing that as long as my attention was on him, Samuel wouldn't get too upset. I wished Adam had chosen to sit somewhere else. But if he'd been that kind of a person, he wouldn't be an Alpha—the most dominant wolf in his pack. Almost as dominant as Samuel.

The reason Samuel wasn't the pack Alpha was complicated. First, Adam had been Alpha here as long as there had been a pack in the Tri-Cities (which was before my time). Even if a wolf is more dominant, it is not an easy matter to oust an Alpha—and in North America, that never happens without the consent of the Marrok, the wolf who rules here. Since the Marrok was Samuel's father, presumably he could have gained permission—except that Samuel had no desire to be Alpha. He said that being a doctor gave him more than enough people to take care of. So he was officially a lone wolf, a wolf outside of pack protection. He lived in my trailer, not a hundred yards from Adam's house. I don't know why he chose to live there, but I know why I let him: because otherwise he'd still be sleeping on my front porch.

Samuel had a way of making sure people did what he wanted them to.

Testing the violin's temperament, Samuel's bow danced across the strings with a delicate precision won through years…probably centuries of practice. I'd known him all my life, but it wasn't until less than a year ago that I'd found out about those “centuries.”

He just didn't act like an old werewolf. Old werewolves were uptight, easy to anger, and especially in this last hundred years of rapid changes (I'm told), were more likely to be hermits than doctors in busy emergency rooms with all that new technology. He was one of the few werewolves I knew who really liked people, human people or werewolf people. He even liked them in crowds.

Not that he would have gone out of his way to perform at a folk music festival. That took a little creative blackmail.

It wasn't me. Not this time.

The stresses of working in an emergency room—especially since he was a werewolf and his reaction to blood and death could be a little unpredictable—meant that he took his guitar or violin to work and played when he had a chance.

One of his nurses heard him play and had him signed up for the festival before he could figure out how to get out of it. Not that he tried very hard. Oh, he made a lot of noise, but I know Samuel. If he really hadn't wanted to do it, a bulldozer wouldn't have gotten him up there.

He tuned the violin with one hand while he held it under his chin and plucked with the other. A few measures of a song and the crowd sat forward in anticipation, but I knew better. He was still warming up. When he really started playing, everyone would know it: he came alive in front of an audience.

Sometimes watching Samuel perform was more like a stand-up comedy act than a concert. It all depended on how he was feeling at the moment.

It happened at last, the magic moment when Samuel sucked his audience in. The old violin made a shivering sound, like an old hoot owl in the night, and I knew he'd decided to be a musician today. All the quiet whispers stopped and every eye lifted to the man on the stage. Centuries of practice and being a werewolf might give him speed and dexterity, but the music came from his Welshman's soul. He gave the audience a shy smile and the mournful sound became song.

While getting my history degree, I'd lost any romantic notions about Bonnie Prince Charlie, whose attempt to regain the throne of England had brought Scotland to its knees. Samuel's rendition of “Over the Sea to Skye” brought tears to my eyes anyway. There were words to that song, and Samuel could sing them, but for now, he let the violin speak for him.

As he played the last notes softly, over the top of it he began singing “Barbara Allen,” as close to a universally known song among folksingers as “Stairway to Heaven” is to guitarists. After the first few measures, he sang the rest of the first verse a capella. When he hit the chorus, he brought in the violin in eerie descant. By the second verse, invited by his smile, the audience was singing the chorus, too. The singing was tentative until one of the other professional groups who had been walking by on the black-top path stopped and sang, too.

He gave them a nod at the last verse and stopped singing, letting the other group showcase the tight harmony that was their trademark. When the song ended, we cheered and clapped as he thanked his “guest performers.” The audience had been filling in as he played and we all scooted a little closer together.

He set the violin down and picked up his guitar to play a Simon and Garfunkel piece. Not even the stupid Jet Ski that kept roaring past along the river a hundred yards away detracted much from his performance. He launched into a silly pirate song then put his guitar down and took up a bodhran—a wide flat drum played with a double-ended stick—and broke into a sea chantey.

I noticed the Cathers, the elderly couple who lived next door to me, sitting on a pair of camp chairs on the other side of the crowd.

“I hope it doesn't rain. We wouldn't want to miss seeing Samuel play,” she'd told me yesterday morning when I'd found her tending her flowers. “He's such a
nice
man.”

Of course she didn't have to live with him, I thought, chin on my knee as I watched him play. Not that Samuel wasn't “a nice man,” but he was also stubborn, controlling, and pushy. I was stubborn and meaner than he was, though.

Someone whispered a polite “excuse me” and sat in the small square of grass in front of me. I found it a little too close for someone I didn't know, so I scooted away a few inches, until my back rested firmly against Adam's leg.

“I'm glad you talked him into playing,” murmured the Alpha werewolf. “He's really in his element in front of a crowd, isn't he?”

“I didn't talk him into it,” I said. “It was one of the nurses he works with.”

“I once heard the Marrok and both of his sons, Samuel and Charles, sing together,” murmured Warren, so softly I doubt anyone else heard him. “It was…” He turned away from the stage and caught Adam's gaze over the top of Kyle's head to shrug his inability to find the words.

“I've heard them,” Adam said. “It's not something you forget.”

Samuel had picked up his old Welsh harp while we were talking. He played a few notes to give the tech time to rush around and adjust the sound system for the softer tones of the new instrument. He ran his eyes over the crowd and his gaze stopped on me. If I could have scooted away from Adam without sitting on top of a stranger, I would have. Adam saw Samuel's gaze, too, and put a possessive hand on my shoulder.

“Stop that,” I snapped.

Kyle saw what was happening and put his arm around my shoulders in a hug, knocking Adam's hand away in the process. Adam snarled softly, but he moved back a few inches. He liked Kyle—and better yet, since Kyle was gay and human, he didn't view him as any kind of threat.

Samuel took a deep breath and smiled, a little stiffly, as he introduced his last piece. I relaxed against Kyle as harp and harper made an old Welsh tune come to life. Welsh was Samuel's first language—when he was upset, you could still hear it in his voice. It was a language made for music: soft, lilting, and magical.

The wind picked up a little, making the green leaves rustle an accompaniment to Samuel's music. When he finished, the sound of the leaves was the only noise for a few heartbeats. Then the jerk on the stupid Jet Ski came buzzing by, breaking the spell. The crowd rose to their feet and broke into thunderous applause.

My cell phone had been vibrating in my pocket off and on for most of the song, so I slipped away while Samuel packed away his instruments and vacated the stage for the next performer.

When I found a relatively quiet place, I pulled out the phone to find that I had missed five calls—all of them from a number I wasn't familiar with. I dialed it anyway. Anyone who called five times in as many minutes was in quite a lather.

It was answered on the first ring.

“Mercy, there is trouble.”

“Uncle Mike?” It was his voice, and I didn't know anyone else who spoke with such a thick Irish accent. But I'd never heard him sound like this.

“The human police have Zee,” he said.

“What?”
But I knew. I had known what would happen to someone who was killing fae. Old creatures revert to older laws when push comes to shove. I'd known when I told them who the killer was that I was signing O'Donnell's death warrant—but I had been pretty sure that they would do it in such a way that blame would not have fallen anywhere. Something that looked accidental or like a suicide.

I hadn't expected them to be clumsy enough to attract the attention of the police.

My phone buzzed, telling me that there was another call coming in, but I ignored it. Zee had murdered a man and gotten caught. “How did it happen?”