I heard Stefan go to the kitchen, open my refrigerator, and mess around in the cupboards. Then the vampire's scent drifted nearer and he said, "Get her to drink this. It will help."
"Help with what?" Samuel's voice was a good deal deeper than usual. If my head had hurt a little less, I would have moved away.
"Dehydration. She's been bitten."
Stefan was lucky I was leaning against Samuel. The werewolf started to his feet, but stopped halfway up when I whimpered at his sudden movement.
Okay, I was playing dirty, but it kept Samuel from attacking. Stefan wasn't the villain. If he'd fed off of me, I was sure it had been necessary. I wasn't in any shape to step between them, so I chose to play helpless. I only wished I'd had to act a little harder to do it.
Samuel sat back down and moved my hair away from my neck. His fingertips brushed a sore spot on the side that had just blended in with my other aches and pains. Once he touched it, though, it burned and ached all the way down to my collarbone.
"It was not me," Stefan said, but there was something uncertain in his voice-as if he wasn't entirely sure of it. I un-buried my head so I could see him. But whatever had been in his voice hadn't touched the bland expression on his face.
"There is no danger to her beyond anemia," he told Samuel. "It takes more than a bite to change a human to a vampire-and I'm not certain Mercy could be turned anyway. If she were human, we'd have to worry that he could call her to him and command her obedience-but walkers are not so vulnerable to our magic. She just needs to rehydrate and rest."
Samuel gave the vampire a sharp look. "You're just full of information now, aren't you? If you didn't bite her, what did?"
Stefan smiled faintly, not like he meant it, and handed Samuel the glass of orange juice he'd tried to give him earlier. I knew why he handed it to Samuel and not me. Samuel was getting all territorial-I was impressed that a vampire could read him that well.
"I think Mercy would be a better narrator," Stefan said. There was a thread of uncharacteristic anxiety in his voice that distracted me from worrying about Samuel's possessiveness.
Why was Stefan so anxious to hear what I had to say? He'd been there, too.
I took the glass Samuel handed me and sat up until I wasn't leaning against him anymore. I hadn't realized how thirsty I'd been until I started drinking. I'm not usually fond of orange juice-Samuel's the one who drank it-but just then it tasted like ambrosia.
It wasn't magic, though. When I finished, my head still hurt, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my head, but I wasn't going to get any rest until Samuel knew everything-and Stefan apparently wasn't going to talk.
"Stefan called me a couple of hours ago," I began. "I owed him a favor for helping us when Jesse was kidnaped."
They both listened raptly, Stefan nodding in places. When I reached the part where we entered the hotel room, Stefan sat on the floor near my feet. He leaned his back against the couch, turned his head away from me and covered his eyes with a hand. He might just have been getting tired-the window shades were starting to lighten with the first hints of dawn as I finished up with my botched attempt at killing Littleton and my subsequent impact with the wall.
"You're sure that's what happened?" asked Stefan without uncovering his eyes.
I frowned at him, sitting up straighten "Of course I'm sure." He'd been there, so why did he sound as if he thought I might be making things up?
He rubbed his eyes and looked at me, and there was relief in his voice. "No offense meant, Mercy. Your memories of the woman's death are very different from mine."
I frowned at him. "Different how?"
"You say that all I did was kneel on the ground while Littleton murdered the hotel maid?"
"That's right."
"I don't remember that," he said, his voice a bare whisper. "I remember the sorcerer brought the woman out, her blood called to me, and I answered it." He licked his lips and the combination of horror and hunger in his eyes made me glance away from him. He continued in a whisper, almost to himself. "Bloodlust has not overcome me in a long, long time."
"Well," I said, not sure if what I had to tell him would help or hurt, "you weren't pretty. Your eyes glowed and you showed some fang. But you didn't do anything to her."
For a moment, a pale reflection of the ruby glow I'd seen in the hotel room gleamed in his irises. "I remember reveling in the woman's blood, painting it on my hands and face. It was still there when I brought you home and I had to wash it off." He closed his eyes. "There is an old ceremony forbidden now for a long time but I remember " He shook his head and turned his attention to his hands which he held loosely looped around one knee. " I can taste her still."
Those words hung uncomfortably in the air for a moment before he continued.
"I was lost in the blood"-he said that phrase as if the words belonged together and might mean something more complex than their literal meaning-"when I came to myself, the other vampire was gone. The woman lay as I remember leaving her, and you were unconscious."
He swallowed and then stared at the lightening window, his voice dropped an octave, like the wolves' voices can sometimes. "I couldn't remember what had happened to you."
He reached out and touched my foot, which was the body part nearest him. When he spoke again, his voice was almost normal. "A memory lapse is not inconsistent with bloodlust." His hand moved until it closed carefully around my toes; his skin was cool against mine. "But bloodlust usually only dulls unimportant things. You are important to me, Mercedes. It occurred to me that you were not important to Cory Littleton. And that thought gave me hope while I drove us here."
I was important to Stefan? All I was to him was his mechanic. He'd done a favor for me, and last night I'd returned it in spades. We might possibly be friends-except that I didn't think vampires had friends. I thought about it a moment and realized that Stefan was important to me. If something had happened to him tonight, something permanent, it would have hurt me. Maybe he felt the same way.
"You think he tampered with your memory?" Samuel asked while I was still thinking. He'd scooted closer and slid an arm around my shoulders. It felt good. Too good. I slid forward on the couch, away from Samuel-and Stefan let his hand fall away from my foot as I moved.
Stefan nodded. "Either my memory or Mercy's is obviously wrong. I don't think he could affect Mercy's, even being a sorcerer. That kind of thing just doesn't work on walkers like her, not unless he made a real effort."
Samuel made a hmm sound. "I don't see why he'd want to make Mercy think you were innocent of murder-especially if he thought she was just a coyote." He looked at Stefan who shrugged.
"Walkers were only a threat for a couple of decades, and that centuries ago. Littleton is very new; I would be surprised if he's even heard of anything like Mercy. The demon might know, one never is quite sure what demons know. But the best evidence that Littleton thinks Mercy was nothing more than a coyote is that she is still alive."
Goody for me.
"All right." Samuel rubbed his face. "I'd better call Adam. He needs to get his clean-up crew to the hotel before someone sees the mess and starts shouting werewolf." He raised an eyebrow at Stefan. "Although I suppose we could just tell the police it was a vampire."
It had been less than six months since the werewolves had followed the fae in coming out into the public view. They hadn't told the human population everything, and only those werewolves who chose to do so came out in the open-most of those were in the military, people already separated from the general population. So far we were all holding our breath waiting to see what would come of it, but, so far, there had been none of the rioting that had marked the fae's exposure a few decades earlier.
Part of the quiet reaction was the Marrok's careful planning. Americans feel safe in our modern world. Bran did his best to protect that illusion, presenting his public wolves as victims who took their affliction and bravely used it to protect others. Werewolves, he wanted the public to believe, at least for a while yet, were just people who turned furry under the full moon. The wolves who had come out first were heroes who put their lives on the line to protect the weaker humans. The Marrok, like the fae before him, chose to keep as much of the werewolves' darker aspects as carefully hidden as he could.
But I think most of the credit for the peaceful acceptance of the revelation belongs to the fae. For more than two decades the fae had managed to present themselves as weak, kindly, and gentle-and anyone who has read their Brothers Grimm or Andrew Lang knows just what a feat that is.
No matter what Samuel threatened, his father, the Marrok, would never agree to expose the vampires. There was no way to soft-pedal the fact that vampires fed on humans.
And once people realized there really were monsters, they might just realize that werewolves were monsters, too.
Stefan knew what the Marrok would say as well as Samuel did. He smiled unpleasantly at the werewolf, exposing his fangs. "The mess has been taken care of. I called my mistress before I brought Mercy home. We don't need werewolves to clean up after us." Stefan was usually more polite than that, but he'd had a bad night, too.
"The other vampire gave you false memories," I said to distract the men from their antagonism. "Was that because he was a sorcerer?"
Stefan tilted his head, as if he were embarrassed. "We can do that with humans," he said, which was something I didn't want to know. He saw my reaction and explained, "That means we can leave those we casually feed from alive, Mercedes. Still, humans are one thing, and vampires another. We're not supposed to be able to do it to each other. You don't have to worry, though. No vampire can remake your memory-probably not even one who is a sorcerer."
Relief climbed through me. If I were going to pick things I didn't want a vampire to do to me, messing with my thoughts was very high on the list. I touched my neck.
"That's why you wanted me with you," I sat up straighten "You said he'd done it to another vampire. What did he make the other vampire think he'd done?"
Stefan looked wary and guilty.
"You knew he'd kill someone, didn't you?" I accused him. "Is that what he did to the other vampire? Make him think he'd killed someone?" The memory of the slow death I hadn't been able to prevent made me clench my fists.
"I didn't know what he would do. But yes, I believed that he had killed before and made my friend think he had done it." He spoke as if the words left a bitter taste in his mouth. "But I could not act without proof. So more died who should not have."
"You're a vampire," said Samuel. "Don't try to make us believe you care when innocents die."
Stefan met Samuel's eyes. "I have swallowed enough death in years past that more sickens me, but believe as you wish. So many deaths threaten our secrets, werewolf. Even if I cared nothing for any human's death, I would not have wanted so many to die and endanger our secrets."
So many to die?
His sureness that noise wouldn't disturb anyone in the hotel when Littleton had invited us in became suddenly clear. The thing I'd seen kill the woman would not have hesitated to kill as many people as he could. "Who else died tonight?"
"Four." Stefan didn't look away from Samuel. "The night clerk and three guests. Luckily the hotel was nearly deserted."
Samuel swore.
I swallowed. "So the bodies are just going to disappear?"
Stefan sighed. "We try not to have disappearances of people who will be missed. The bodies will be accounted for in such a way as to cause as little fuss as possible. An attempted robbery, a lover's quarrel that got out of hand."
I opened my mouth to say something rash, but caught myself. The rules we all had to live by weren't Stefan's fault.
"You put Mercy at risk," Samuel growled. "If he had already made another vampire kill involuntarily, he might have been able to make you kill Mercy."
"No. He couldn't have made me harm Mercy." Stefan's voice held as much anger as Samuel's, giving a little doubt to the firmness of his answer. He must have heard it, too, because he turned his attention back to me. "I swore to you, on my honor, that you would take no harm from this night. I underestimated the enemy, and you suffered for it. I am foresworn."
" All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing'," I murmured. I'd had to read Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France three times in college; some of his points had seemed especially relevant to me, who had been brought up with the understanding of just how much evil there really was in the world.
"What do you mean?" Stefan asked.
"Will my presence in that hotel room help you destroy that monster?" I asked.
"I hope so."
"Then it was worth what little hurt I took," I said firmly. "Quit beating yourself up about it."
"Honor is not so easily satisfied," said Samuel meeting Stefan's gaze.
Stefan looked like he agreed, but there was nothing more I could do for him about that.
"How did you know that there was something wrong with Littleton?" I asked.
Stefan broke off his staring contest with Samuel, dropping his eyes to Medea who'd crawled onto his lap and crouched there, purring. If he'd been human, I'd have said he looked tired. If he'd dropped his eyes like that in front of a less civilized werewolf, he might have had problems, but Samuel knew that a vampire dropping his gaze was not admitting submissiveness.
"I have a friend named Daniel," Stefan said after a moment. "He is very young, as our kind go-and you might call him a nice boy. A month ago, when a vampire checked into a local hotel, Daniel was sent to see why he had not contacted us for the usual permissions."
Stefan shrugged. "It is something that we do a lot; it should not have been dangerous or unusual. It was an appropriate assignment for a new vampire." Except there was a hint of disapproval in Stefan's voice that told me that he would not have sent Daniel off to confront an unknown vampire.
"Somehow Daniel was sidetracked-he doesn't remember how. Something aroused his bloodlust. He never made it to the hotel. There was a small group of migrant workers who were camping in the cherry orchard, waiting to begin the harvest." He exchanged a glace with Samuel over my head. "Like tonight, the mess wasn't pretty, but it was containable. We took their trailers and vehicles and got rid of them. The owner of the orchard just thought they'd gotten tired of waiting and moved on. Daniel was punished. Not too harshly, because he is young and the lust is so very strong. But now, of his own will, he won't eat at all. He is dying from guilt. As I told you, he is a nice boy."