Bone Crossed (Mercy 04) by Patricia Briggs

Author:Patricia Briggs [Briggs, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-03T07:00:00+00:00

I blinked really fast, wishing I was home already. Home with Adam instead of driving in the dark with a vampire.

“I’m sorry it bothered you.”

“A benefit of the pack bond,” Adam told me. Then, because he knew me, he said, “I’m Alpha, so I get things first. No one else in the pack felt it. What scared you?”

“The ghost,” I told him, then let out my breath in a gusty sigh. “And the vampire.”

He coaxed the whole story out of me. Then he sighed. “Only you could go to Spokane and get bitten by the one vampire in the whole city.” He didn’t fool me. For all the amusement in his voice, I could hear the anger, too.

But if he was pretending, I could pretend. “That’s pretty much what Stefan said. I don’t think it’s fair. How was I to know that Amber’s husband’s best client was the vampire?”

Adam gave me a rueful laugh. “The real question is why didn’t we suspect that’s what would happen. But you are safe now?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’ll wait until you get here.”

He hung up without saying good-bye.

“So,” I said, “tell me what Blackwood can do to me now that he’s fed off me twice.”

“I don’t know,” Stefan told me. Then he sighed. “If I have exchanged blood with someone twice, I can always find him, no matter where he goes. I could call him to me—and if he is near, I could force him to come to me. But that is with a true blood exchange—yours to me, mine to you. Eventually ... it is possible to force a master-slave relationship upon those you exchange blood with. A precaution, I suppose, because a newly turned vampire can get nasty. A simple feeding is less risky. But your reactions are not always the usual. There could be no ill effects to you at all.”

I thought of Amber, who had been feeding the vampire for who knows how long, and her husband, who could be in the same condition, and felt sick. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” I said. “Damn it.” Okay. Think positive. If I hadn’t gone to Spokane at all, the vampire would still have had Amber and her husband, only no one would have known. “If I was unconscious, could he have forced a blood exchange?”

He sighed and slumped in his seat. “You don’t remember him biting. That doesn’t mean you were unconscious.”

I wasn’t expecting it. I hadn’t had one since leaving the Tri-Cities. But I managed to pull over, hop out of the van, and make it to the barrow pit at the side of the road before throwing up. It wasn’t sickness ... it was sheer, stark terror. The panic attack to end all panic attacks. My heart hurt, my head hurt, and I couldn’t stop crying.

And then it stopped. Warmth ran through me and around me: pack. Adam. So much for not bothering Adam’s wolves, who were already unhappy about me, with my troubles. Stefan wiped my

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