Instinct

A Memory of Witches By Patricia Briggs[5]

WHILE MOST OF HIS WEREWOLF PACK were milling around aimlessly—or catcalling at the sight of their Alpha kissing his newly arrived mate—Sherwood Post watched the witch’s house.

Architecturally speaking, it was a lovely, two-story mansion with an interesting roof that sported skylights. If he were a poet, he might say that it sprawled out in the afternoon sun like a sleeping cat. The exterior was a warm cream stucco, a substance that withstood the extreme heat of the Tri-Cities better than wood and more stylishly than mason board or vinyl. The house was surrounded by extensive gardens and those were surrounded by acres of agricultural land. This edge of the Tri-Cities was mostly comprised of houses on acreage—some of them huge upscale places, some of them moldering mobile homes set side by side in a sort of quiet class warfare. Or possibly class assimilation.

This particular house was large and expensive, but witches came from families and those families served the witches in the same way the pack served the werewolves. Elizaveta Arkadyevna Vyshnevetskya’s family was large and included a lawyer and a doctor. And they all lived…had lived…in that house.

Now they were dead, all of them except for Elizaveta, who had been in Europe being wined and dined—and paid—by the Lord of Night himself. The witches were dead and everything he had seen in that house said the family had been killed by black witches who had moved in and taken over—possibly shortly after Elizaveta had left. And no one had noticed.

Adam wanted answers that couldn’t wait for Elizaveta’s return. Witches who killed fourteen witches in their own home, might be able to kill werewolves as easily.

“You okay to go back in?” Zack had been watching Sherwood for a few minutes before he broke though the invisible barrier separating Sherwood from the rest of the pack. “Witches can’t be your favorite people.”

He was being tactful. Doubtless he could smell Sherwood’s stress.

“I don’t remember anything about the witches,” Sherwood said because he couldn’t say he was okay without lying and because his lack of memory was well known to anyone in the pack. Probably anyone in any werewolf pack. Amnesia was something that most werewolves didn’t survive. Unstable werewolves—and amnesia—made containing the violent nature of a werewolf difficult. That Sherwood had survived, even though his memories had not returned, was unusual enough to be gossiped about.

“Sometimes, some memories are imprinted in your skin, though,” Zack said softly. Visceral.” He hesitated and gave him a perceptive look. “Or your wolf.”

Sherwood gave a short nod. It wasn’t a lie. His wolf did not want to go back into that house in a way that was not based on today’s experience alone.

Stupid, agreed the wolf. We don’t remember how to protect ourselves from magic.

But the wolf knew that at one time they—he could have kept himself safe from what awaited in that house, which was more than Sherwood would have guessed.

“Five years of memories,” said Carlos, following Zack, as many of the wolves had a tendency to do—especially when their submissive wolf came too near Sherwood. It was as if their protective instincts understood Sherwood was a threat. He sounded friendly enough, but he put his body subtly between Sherwood and Zack. “I don’t know what I’d do if all I could remember was the last five years.”

Carlos had been born in Mexico around a century ago and now worked for Adam, their Alpha, in his security business. That was most of what Sherwood knew about him. Sherwood had avoided becoming too close with anyone in his pack. He thought Carlos’s instincts were pretty good because Sherwood considered himself a threat, too.

Until last winter he’d accepted that his memory loss was due to his long captivity in the hands of witches. The Marrok, into whose care Sherwood had been brought, thought that the horror of being tortured to the extent that his left leg would never regenerate—something that just didn’t happen to werewolves—had given Sherwood traumatic amnesia. But if that were true, he shouldn’t still be losing memories.

We aren’t crazy, his wolf asserted with more confidence than Sherwood felt was due.

It had taken him a while to notice because he wasn’t losing years or centuries worth of memories—not that he had those to lose anymore. No one remembered every minute of every day—but he was losing the wrong moments, the interesting ones.

There was something broken in his brain—and he didn’t know what it meant—other than it made him unpredictably dangerous. That was why Sherwood had asked the Marrok, he who ruled the werewolves in this time and place, to send him away. The Marrok had been too likely to see what was going on. Though Sherwood agreed in principal that unstable werewolves had to be killed, he did not particularly wish to die.

Maybe the witches are stealing our memories, the wolf suggested, not for the first time.

That seemed like a possibility. Sherwood had spent the last few years studying witches in an effort to make his affliction make sense. There were a few of the witch families who knew how to feed off the emotional energy of traumatic memories. The idea that he was still somehow tied to the witches who had taken his leg made his skin crawl.

His revulsion didn’t feel like something new, something built over mere decades. It felt bred into his bones.

Yet you volunteered to go back inside, growled his wolf.

Mostly the really old werewolves could talk to their wolves. As if being linked to a human for so long gave the wolf access to speech in the same way their human halves gained access to the wolf’s instincts. He knew that, just as he knew that the sunset over the Parthenon was breathtaking, though he could not remember how he knew either one of those things. He was sure that he was very old because when he thought of the Parthenon, it looked a lot different from modern photos he’d seen.

“I heard Darryl say that you were going to escort Mercy,” said Carlos. “Why isn’t Adam doing it? Hell, why isn’t the whole pack going in?”

Carlos wasn’t as stupid as his question sounded. The whole pack had become a lot more vested in their Alpha’s mate’s safety since Sherwood had joined up. Partly it was because they recognized that she—a coyote shapeshifter—was a lot more vulnerable than a werewolf. Part of it was because she was directly responsible for giving the whole pack a higher purpose, a purpose that made them into heroes.

And Carlos thought Sherwood was a threat.

Even though the other wolf wasn’t wrong, Sherwood felt his eyes narrow. Carlos took a step back, bumping into Zack, who steadied him. It was the question in Zack’s face that Sherwood chose to answer.

“It’s a crime scene,” Sherwood reminded them. “The fewer of us who go in, the more Mercy will be able to discover. Adam asked me to go in because I found the witch’s traps.”

Both Carlos and Zack frowned.

“You don’t do magic,” said Zack with certainty. “Not even pack magic. What do you know about witchcraft?”

What do I know about witchcraft? Sherwood echoed the question silently because it was a good one. He didn’t like the answers that suggested themselves because he wasn’t sure regaining his memories was safe. A small dark voice in the hidden depths of his mind told him that magic was dangerous. It didn’t tell him why.

“I thought you didn’t remember the witches,” said Carlos in a tone that tried very hard to be neutral. “All you have is the memories after you were freed.”

That wasn’t quite true.

Sherwood had a few scraps of the time before he’d spent those years—maybe decades—a captive of witches. They were bits and pieces of memories, though—foggy at best. He had a vivid one of being on the deck of a storm-tossed ship, watching one of the sailors be sick on the deck. Seawater boiled over the ship and washed both sailor and spew into the sea, making Sherwood wonder if his decision to travel to England in search of who he had been mortally stupid. In that fragment he was in human form, and he had two good legs but no memory of his past. He might have gone into the sea after the sailor. But maybe not, because werewolves don’t swim well.

What was true was that he had no memories of being among the witches. Carlos was right again—there was no reason that he’d been able to spot the traps they had laid inside that house. Though he had done. There was no reason for him to believe he could keep Mercy safe while she used her quirky relationship with magic to look for clues about who killed Elizaveta’s family and, possibly more importantly, how it was done.

We can keep her safe, but we could protect her better if you freed our memories, suggested his wolf slyly. Some things are lost, but—

The wolf might know language, but it spoke more often and more clearly in images and impressions. It chose now to share the weight of the knowledge, the memories, that lay beyond the solid barrier in his mind.

How could his memories, all that he had been, lay behind that barrier if he was continuing to lose memories? Did the barrier itself eat his thoughts like some parasite? Or was there something lurking in his brain that had nothing to do with magic?

You could take down the barrier, insisted the wolf. Are you a coward? Afraid to know what you—what we once were?

The wolf fought him for the memories sometimes. Recently, Sherwood had found them leaking out in small ways—it had started before he’d come here. Another reason he’d asked to leave the Marrok’s pack. Some memories disappearing while others returned unbidden did not seem like something he could have hidden from the Marrok for long.

“Sherwood?” asked Zack.

“I can protect Mercy in that house,” Sherwood told them, believing it to be true.

He’d kept Adam and Darryl safe already. He could keep Mercy safe.

“Darryl says it is bad in there,” Carlos said.

“Elizaveta is a grey witch,” said Zack.

“Darryl says that there are signs the black witches had some time to play, maybe since the day Elizaveta left.” Carlos said darkly. “The basement cages…”

Sherwood nodded. “It is bad. I will keep her safe.”

The laboratory of a grey witch didn’t look much different from the laboratory of a black witch. Both witches fed on pain and suffering. The difference was in the willingness of their victims. Because of that, grey witches tended to treat their victims better. And they didn’t torture animals. There were animal cages in Elizaveta’s basement.

His pack bond flared. Sherwood looked toward Adam. He wasn’t surprised to see that his Alpha was looking at him. As soon as their eyes met, Adam nodded. Sherwood left Zack and Carlos to their worries and made his way to where his Alpha and Mercy waited, now a little apart from the rest of the pack.

A photo of Adam Hauptman would show a man of average height and movie star good looks. It could not capture the fierce personality that made even Sherwood’s stubborn knees want to bend a bit in his presence in an old-fashioned gesture of obedience. Adam’s innate power had nothing to do with the magic that had made him a werewolf. It was the kind of charisma that had allowed Alexander the Great to conquer most of the known world before he was thirty. Thankfully Adam had no ambition to conquer the world, he just wanted to keep his pack and those under his protection safe. He was a very strong Alpha.

We are stronger, said Sherwood’s wolf, but Sherwood ignored it because both of them, wolf and man, knew that they would not be able to keep their pack safe the way that Adam could. Stronger did not make one a better Alpha.

“Sherwood?” Mercy asked, glancing at the house and then back to him. She sounded worried for him.

Like Adam, she was average in height and unusually fit—the second being a byproduct of being a shapeshifter. He’d heard her father was a Native American. He’d also heard her father was Coyote—but that could have been an attempt to elevate her status. Having a coyote shapeshifter as the mate of their Alpha could have been a political liability for the pack. Naming her Coyote’s daughter, even fictionally, made her sound cool.

Her hair and skin agreed with the Native American, Sherwood was still making up his mind about the Coyote part. He hadn’t detected a whiff of the divine about her, but trickster gods could be subtle. Today her shoulder-length hair was working its way out of her usual French braid, and she looked tired. She’d been out hunting zombie goats.

Adam answered her before Sherwood could. “Sherwood knows the dangers better than anyone else here. I trust him to keep you safe.”

Sherwood’s wolf thought rude things aimed at Sherwood because he still believed they could keep Mercy safer if Sherwood freed the parts of himself he was keeping imprisoned. And unless he did that, the wolf was very much afraid they would die in the spiritual darkness of the black magic that dwelled in the basement of the house. The wolf was, Sherwood knew, viscerally afraid of going back in—but he wasn’t trying to get out of going. They both knew, with very little real evidence, that they could protect Mercy better than anyone else here.

Mercy frowned at Adam, then looked at Sherwood. “I thought you didn’t remember anything of your captivity?”

He thought of Zack’s assessment and said, “Apparently some things are imprinted in my skin. Like that—”

He thought of the basement laboratory that felt so familiar in its black malevolence, the place that threatened to send his wolf into paroxysms of terror.

Adam made a subtle gesture and Sherwood remembered that Adam wanted Mercy to go into that house without any idea of what she was walking into. He needed her unbiased opinion. That was the main reason Adam was staying outside. He and Mercy were true mates. It was entirely possible that Adam’s opinions would influence her if he were the one to go in.

So instead of continuing, Sherwood shook his head and said, “Never mind.”

Mercy glanced at Adam then gave Sherwood a rueful look and a shrug.

“No sense putting it off,” she muttered and started stripping off her clothes. Her coyote was better at sensing magic and identifying people than her human self.

Politely, Sherwood looked elsewhere until his nose told him that she’d shifted into her other form.

The little coyote’s nose for magic was better than any wolf’s in the pack. Adam needed her to glean whatever information she could get from the crime scene inside that house. She was the best the pack had, but all she had was a nose for magic and a chaotically occasional immunity to the same. She’d just been cleaning up a mess left by someone working black magic. Odds were that the zombie goats and the dead witches were connected, but it would be good to get confirmation of that.

But, more importantly, Adam was counting on her to confirm a hunch. That was the real reason why Adam was staying out. He didn’t want her to pick up on his reactions. Sherwood hadn’t felt the need to explain that to Carlos and Zack. What he had told them had been true enough.

Sherwood caught Adam’s worried expression before his Alpha hid it. If whoever had killed the people in that house came back, Mercy, herself, had very few defenses. Even a werewolf wouldn’t be much use against this kind of magic.

We could do this for her, insisted the wolf. Keep Mercy safe by doing this in her place.

Sherwood liked Mercy, and he knew her better than most of the rest of the pack. She was tough and funny and held her own in a pack of werewolves when her coyote wouldn’t have been much more than a mouthful for one of her packmates. She should have been a liability—but she wasn’t.

If we had our memories, our power back, she would not have to risk herself.

This time he wasn’t sure it was his wolf speaking or his human half. But the deathbringer here was gone and had already feasted on the deaths. It was unlikely the killer or killers would return.

What if, he suggested to the wolf, I take that barrier down and whatever is still feeding on our memories eats it all? We would have nothing and our enemy would be enriched by what it steals?

He could feel the wolf pause, tasting his questions and finding merit in them.

The barrier tastes like you, the wolf said. The Marrok thought so too. He thought you should rip it away and regain all that we have lost.

What do you think? Sherwood asked. If I put that shield around our memories, do you think it is a good idea to take it down? The Marrok thinks I am hiding from those memories—but it doesn’t feel like that to me. It feels like I did it to protect those memories—and whatever else I have hidden.

The wolf was silent a moment, then suggested, We could go hunting. Find whoever it is who is stealing our memories and kill them.

Sherwood chose not to argue with the wolf. Right now, we have to keep Mercy safe, he said instead.

Let me come out. A wolf would be better protection for her.

Someone needs to open doors, Sherwood told his wolf. It would take too long to change—fifteen or twenty minutes sometimes. And he didn’t trust his ability to control the wolf in the basement if he were wearing his wolf shape.

He felt his inner beast consider that and agree with the faintest whiff of condemnation for Sherwood’s lack. Sherwood controlled a huff of inappropriate laughter.

Unlike a werewolf, Mercy didn’t take long to change. Between one blink of the eye and the next a coyote stood where the woman had been. Mercy shook out her fur like a dog emerging from a bath and stretched. Then she turned her eyes toward the house.

Sherwood gave Adam a nod—which was a promise to keep her safe—then headed toward the house, the little coyote at his side. Adam kept the rest of the pack well back so they would not interfere with Mercy’s senses.

Sherwood’s prosthetic leg thumped on the imitation wood of the porch. He could move silently when he chose, but there was no reason here. He opened the door and the darkness he could perceive but could not see made him hit the light switch.

The coyote gave him a puzzled glance. It was still daytime, and this part of the house had vaulted ceilings that rose to the full two-story height and sported a pair of skylights as well as large windows. But the sunlight streaming into the room did not touch the darkness he felt—not that the artificial light could help with that.

Still.

“This house is dark,” he told her. “A little light doesn’t hurt anything.”

She walked in ahead of him and, aware of his Alpha’s intent stare, Sherwood pulled the door closed behind them.

Trapped, said his wolf.

Mercy hadn’t made it very far in. She stood in the middle of the room, the light from the windows showing the multitude of colors that made her coat look almost blond. The hair along her spine was raised and she sneezed at the foul scent of death—and maybe whatever else she could feel that he could not.

“I know,” Sherwood told her. “But you get used to it.”

The oily magic that had killed Elizaveta’s family had left the house reeking of black magic so strong that he thought even a mundane human would smell the rot. Fourteen witches lay dead within these walls, but the magic worked here had been more lethal than that. Every mouse, every bug, every house plant was dead, too.

Mercy sighed and headed into the kitchen where the closest corpses lay. From her flattened ears, the dead bothered Mercy more than they did Sherwood. But she did not shirk from exploring the bodies. Her tail drooped and tucked a little when she saw that one of the bodies belonged to a young woman—Adam had known that one, too.

Sherwood followed, hanging back a little, as Mercy moved from body to body, then room to room. He spoke as little as possible, letting her concentrate. She was thorough and she noticed every trap, though he couldn’t tell if she caught scent of something or if she was sensing the magic. Even though most of them were scribed with runes, he was pretty sure that she wasn’t picking up on them by sight because a lot of them were in obscure places.

Obscure enough places that he had no idea how he’d found some of them. They’d seemed obvious at the time but looking at them again he realized that they had not been.

Too much magic in here, observed the wolf. It’s calling to the hidden part of us.

He rubbed his fingers together and felt a faint tingle in the air. He was very much afraid that the wolf was right. Uneasily, Sherwood followed Mercy up the stairs.

This part of the house held a long hall with six bedrooms. The dead lay below them, and he’d discovered no traps up here when he’d explored it earlier. He told Mercy that and waited in doorways while Mercy tracked through the rooms. The last and largest room belonged to Elizaveta. Mercy took her time here, ears pinned in unhappiness. She wiggled under the bed and emerged a few minutes later a little dusty. She sneezed twice, looked around and then nosed Elizaveta’s closet open.

Sherwood frowned at Mercy’s disappearing tail as she pushed under the tightly packed hanging skirts. He hadn’t checked the back of the closet. He was already striding into the room when the deadly magic flared to life.

Sherwood was a dominant wolf whose instincts were to protect. Mercy had been given into his care. He didn’t even hesitate.

He ripped off the protective barrier that blocked his memories—his magic. As knowledge flooded him, he threw up his hands and wiped the structure of the witch’s warding so that the magic that charged it drifted harmlessly into the ether before it had a chance to touch Mercy.

The enormity of his lost memories—not just centuries but millennia—and unexpected power flooded him with staggering force. Cold sweat ran down his face and he struggled to breathe through the storm.

And at that moment, when his defenses were down under the influx of power and information—his enemy struck, engulfing him, swallowing everything it could in huge gulps.

He knew this enemy. Remembered.

A divine spark had awoken in the wilderness, a nascent god waiting to become whatever its worshipers conceived. Usually, without a civilization to feed it, such things fade away. But this one had lured a small group of people to it, had fed them beauty and consumed them in return. And so it had starved more slowly than it should have, growing into something twisted and wrong.

Sherwood—or the person he’d been before he’d been Sherwood—arrogant and sure of himself had gone in to…to do something. Save the people it held captive. Destroy it. Maybe. Probably.

He couldn’t sort out the memories from the tangle they were in. But this he knew, the mortals that divine thing had lured had been crumbs that kept it from dying immediately. But if it consumed Sherwood, with his years and his magic, with his ties to pack, that would be different. A feast. More than a feast.

If it ate Sherwood, it might have the power it needed to BECOME. The world would have a new god, the kind of being this modern world had no way of defending itself against. Even at his best he had been forced to lock his memories, his powers, away so that he could not access them either. Off-balance and vulnerable, Sherwood could not defend himself against it now. He would need some great artifact or solid faith to call upon another divine being to defend himself. The gods no longer walked the earth as they once had—and if Sherwood had ever had faith enough for summoning the God of Abraham or in one of the lesser gods, his memories were too jumbled to help him.

It was not his nature to give in, though. So, he fought with all the magic he had, all the knowledge he could pull out of the tangled skein of his mind. But it was useless against the thing that fed upon him, growing more powerful with every mouthful of Sherwood it gulped down.

It was his wolf, hunting for any weapon at hand, who found it, a small bit—a small memory of divinity that lingered nearby. Sherwood had no time to question how such a thing could be found in this house of death. He grabbed at it rudely and used it to coat the incipient shields he was trying to build from the shards of the old barrier he’d destroyed to protect Mercy. He pulled that remnant of divinity over himself like a child using a blanket to hide from night terrors, once more barricading his core–power and memories inside a vault.

Sherwood stood, breathing hard, in the witch’s bedroom and wondered how he’d moved from the doorway to the middle of the room without remembering it and why his body felt sore, as if he’d fought a battle. Under a bright pink ruffled skirt, Mercy’s tail stuck out just about as far as it had when he last remembered seeing it, so he couldn’t have lost much time. Even so, the sour smell of his own sweat and the way the back of his shirt felt clammy indicated that whatever had happened, it had been something big.

Yes, agreed his wolf. We have our magic back.

The wolf was right. Sherwood rubbed his fingers together. He could feel it now and the magic felt familiar and comfortable, as if he’d always had this connection.

Dangerous. That wasn’t the wolf, it was stark knowledge.

That he had magic was bad, something hadn’t been fixed right and it meant they were vulnerable. Abruptly pain laced through his head, sparking behind one eye and then the other. His attacker giving one last frustrated, rage-filled attack—

While he tried to figure out what had happened in the time that had been stolen from him, Mercy reemerged and shook herself briskly. She gave him a bleak look that distracted him enough to wonder what she’d found in Elizaveta’s closet, then headed for the stairs at a trot. He paused long enough to get a feel for the magic that lingered in Elizaveta’s room.

Adam had been right—the pack’s trust in one of its oldest and most useful allies had been betrayed. If he’d been on his game, he would have stopped Mercy then, because there was no need for her to go to the basement. But she was quick and, by the time he realized he might save her a few nightmares, she was down one flight of stairs. He caught up to her halfway to the basement.

He almost said something but rethought. He didn’t know what she’d found or how much she sensed. He didn’t know if she was suspicious or certain. She needed to see the basement so that Adam would be sure. Sherwood was certain—but Adam would believe Mercy.

So, Sherwood followed the coyote to the basement, hitting the light switch at the bottom of the stairs. The basement laboratory hadn’t changed in the past few hours. It was still a huge rectangular room strewn with cages of dead animals and tables and chairs to which living creatures could be attached. With his new sensitivity, it was worse than it had been the first time. The witches’ bodies didn’t bother him—there were seven of them, mostly in bondage positions that indicated they were actively being tortured when they had been killed. He did not feel sorry for any of them.

Because now that he could feel the magic, he could tell that every one of the dead witches in this room—with the possible exception of one—was a black witch. Just as Elizaveta was a black witch. Oh, her room hadn’t smelled of black magic—she must have some way of hiding the scent of it. But he didn’t need his nose to identify the greasy, clinging foulness.

Adam was fond of Elizaveta.

Sherwood couldn’t imagine being fond of a witch, even if she were a white witch. He rubbed his fingers together and then wiped them on his jeans as if that would clean them. There would be no cleansing until he was out of this place.

He paced back and forth between the pressure washer and the sink—torturing was a filthy business literally as well as figuratively. He tried to ignore the nearby racks of cages filled with the bodies of brightly colored frogs, turtles and a scattering of lizards. The alligator in the bottom cage was only two feet long—many of the creatures were babies. The young—of any species—had more power to harvest whether the villain was a witch or a fae.

We remember more about magic, observed the wolf.

That was true.

I remember more than you do, continued the wolf thoughtfully. I remember more about a lot of things than you do. I wonder why you did that?

The familiar smell of death combined with black magic was making his skin crawl.

I wonder, said his wolf, where I found a bit of divine—remnant you called it—just when we needed it.

That thought made Sherwood pause. He remembered that part, now that the wolf mentioned it—remembered using it to save himself.

A remnant is what’s left behind when a god works a miracle, the wolf told him.

He froze. If he had used such a thing to protect himself…

Then the creature hunting us is divine, agreed the wolf unhappily. A minor such being, or we would already be dead.

The gods didn’t walk the earth much anymore—there was a reason for that he couldn’t remember. He had no idea why a miracle had been worked here, or why the memory of it had remained, unconsumed, in this dismal and spiritually filthy place. But the next time whatever hunted them attacked, he would be unlikely to find another divine memory to save himself.

Mercy’s urgent yip reminded him that his job was to keep her safe—not be distracted by his own doom. His job, as long as he was still alive, was to protect those in his care. He strode over to the cages of dead mammals and opened the one Mercy was staring at. There were two half-grown kittens in it. The orange tabby was limp and lifeless, but the black kitten…

“We missed this,” he said.

He tried to be gentle as he extracted it from the cage, but it twitched back from his hold and tried to move away. The kitten stank of urine, feces and old blood—Sherwood could feel its spirit weakening. He was pretty sure it was dying—and maybe that would be a blessing for it.

Maybe it would have been a blessing if Sherwood had died in the hands of the witches, too.

He didn’t know—other than that obvious comradery of both surviving captivity by black witches—why the little survivor was suddenly important to him. Sometimes connections like that are made without warning or cause. But he found himself stripping off his shirt to wrap the little cat in to keep it from moving more in case it had broken bones, and also because his shirt was warm and softer than the floor. He had to set it down on in order to search the rest of the cages again.

If they’d missed this kitten the first time through, they might have missed another animal. But nothing else was alive.

The spell killed every living thing in this house except that kitten, said his wolf. I wonder how that happened.

A remnant of the divine is left when a god performs a miracle, Sherwood thought, arrested. He knelt on the floor beside the bundled kitten and brought it to his face.

He couldn’t feel it, but his wolf did.

Yes. He felt the wolf’s attention switch from the kitten to the coyote with sudden interest.

Coyote, the wolf said.

Sherwood knew it wasn’t talking about Mercy—and that the possibility that the stories about who Mercy’s father was might be more accurate than he’d assumed.

He considered the kitten again. It was struggling weakly in his hold—afraid of the wolf, possibly. But given that it had spent time in this place, it was likely frightened of everything.

He accepted that the wolf remembered more of magic than he did. But he looked at the dying kitten he held, touched by Coyote, and thought of the presumed god that waited to consume him.

He became aware that Mercy was staring at him.

“Missing an eye,” he told her soberly.

She whined in sympathy and then closed the distance between them. She licked the kitten’s filthy fur—grimacing at the taste—but the little creature relaxed under Mercy’s attentions. When Mercy stepped back, Sherwood stood up with the kitten held as gently as he could.

“Have you seen enough?” he asked Mercy.

She padded over to a metal door set in one corner of the room. Sherwood put himself in her way.

“No. You don’t want to go into the freezer. There are some things you don’t need to see. We should go.”

It had been the thing in the freezer that had made Adam think that Elizaveta had given herself over to black magic. Between Elizaveta’s room and this basement, Sherwood didn’t think that Mercy needed more convincing.

Mercy flattened her ears at him and looked pointedly around the room at each of the bodies. He’d told her there were fourteen bodies here, hadn’t he. She was one short. But that wasn’t in the freezer.

The kitten had given up fighting and lay limply in his hold, mouth open and panting a little in distress.

“This should only take a minute,” he assured it—him—Sherwood’s nose told him. He wasn’t sure that the time mattered, though. He doubted the kitten would live. The kitten had survived whatever had killed every living thing in this house of horrors—by a real miracle. But his senses told him that it was dying now. It seemed like a waste of a miracle.

Sherwood took Mercy to the large bin that held the last body. There had been one witch in the house who hadn’t been working black magic. Possibly because he had no way to do so. He pried the lid off and showed her the body. Mercy looked at it and displayed her fangs in distress.

“Adam said this was Elizaveta’s grandson and that likely Elizaveta had done most of the damage to him herself.”

Mercy sighed and inspected that body—for what, Sherwood could not tell. Then she went from body to body, sniffing carefully at fingers and faces. When she’d finished, she shook herself and trotted up the stairs. Sherwood had no trouble keeping up with her—but the smell clung to all three of them—Mercy, the cat and him—as they escaped out the front door and into the fresh air.

Sherwood rode in the back of Adam’s SUV with the kitten on his lap. He’d rearranged his shirt to be a bed rather than a straitjacket, but nothing was going to make the kitten comfortable. After a few miles it started making soft mewls of distress. He’d sort of curled into Sherwood and had started shivering. It probably wasn’t a good thing. The cat’s noise attracted Adam’s attention. Sherwood could feel it, even if his Alpha kept his eyes on the road as he drove.

“He’s dying,” Sherwood told them, feeling the malaise of that house creep further into his bones. The little cat had saved him—at least for the moment. He wished he could return the favor.

“He made it this far,” Adam said. “It’s just a mile more to the clinic.”

Because his wolf thought it might help, Sherwood slipped his hands under the limp body and pulled the cat up to his face, careful not to hurt it. He took in its scent—its real scent, not the filth that matted its fur—and gave the cat his own. If the cat breathed his last here and now, he’d know he was safe from the witches.

Witches.

“Did you know?” he asked Adam. “About the black magic in that house?” He wasn’t talking about the magic that had killed today, he was asking about the older magic that permeated the walls. Elizaveta’s magic.

Adam shook his head. “No. I’d have put a stop to it. I had no idea.”

Sherwood nodded. He’d known that from Adam’s reaction earlier. He’d just needed to hear him say it. Adam was a straight shooter and saw things mostly in black and white. Good and evil. He didn’t know why he’d needed to ask.

His wolf said, I remember the witches.

The wolf asked Adam, using Sherwood’s voice, “And what are we going to do about it?”

“We will do nothing,” Adam said. “This is something for me to do.”

The wolf wasn’t sure he liked that answer. That was the sort of answer that people gave when they were working out how to save a friend from the consequences of their own actions.

“There will be no black magic in my territory,” Adam said, his voice very soft.

That soft-voice implacable rage settled over the wolf, and Sherwood felt his shoulders relax a bit.

No black magic, purred his wolf.

They stopped at the emergency vet hospital in Pasco. As soon as he walked in, Sherwood felt the tension in the air: grieving families, worried pet owners and terrified animals. The emergency vet wasn’t where you took your animals to get vaccinated.

The kitten, who had mostly stopped making noise, let out a frantic sound and struggled a bit for the first time since he’d brought it up from the basement. It attracted the attention of everyone in the room. Sherwood saw the people take notice. The kitten was a rack of bones. They didn’t have werewolf noses to smell the filth on the cat’s fur, but they could see it. The dogs in the room quieted and a few of them showed their bellies to the werewolves. Cats hissed from their carriers.

He also realized that he didn’t have a shirt on. Sherwood was mostly indifferent to clothing, but he usually made some kind of effort to blend in.

Adam chose that minute to say to the receptionist, “My friend’s cat needs to be seen.”

Ownership implied responsibility. Sherwood had to admit that anyone responsible for the state this kitten was in should get the kind of looks that were being turned his way. Sherwood wasn’t exactly sure when the kitten had become his cat. But he wouldn’t have given him up to anyone else at this point, either.

“Adam Hauptman,” said a woman in the scrubs that seemed to be the vet’s office uniform. “You’re Adam Hauptman the werewolf?”

Adam smiled and nodded—and that smile swept through the room, breaking the tension in the air.

“I am,” he said. The dogs relaxed and even the cats settled down at the sound of an Alpha wolf’s voice.

“I thought werewolves couldn’t have cats as pets,” said someone else.

Sherwood moved past Adam, who was answering questions for his rapt audience, and spoke to the receptionist himself.

“We found the cat like this,” he told her. “He’s in rough shape.”

Adam had his back to her, so she hadn’t gotten the full effect of the smile. She was still suspicious.

“It looks like it’s been tortured,” she said.

He nodded. “That’s what we thought. And starved.”

The cat made a sad noise and Sherwood blew gently on its face to reassure it. The cat tried to purr.

The receptionist stared into his eyes for a few seconds—which was pretty good. Sherwood wasn’t an Alpha, but he was dominant. There weren’t many people who could meet his eyes at all.

She nodded and looked away, using the excuse of taking his information down. She finished her paperwork and assured Sherwood that someone would be out to get them as soon as there was a room free.

“Would you do that again?” The woman who’d recognized Adam waved a cell phone at Sherwood.

Sherwood lifted an eyebrow because he had no idea what she was asking. But the kitten mewed again, this time more quietly. He wished he thought it was because the cat was less scared, but he was afraid the softer volume meant it was getting weaker. He raised the kitten to his face and, when it raised its battered, one-eyed face to his, he kissed its nose on impulse.

“That’s even better,” said the woman, and he’d realized she’d taken a photo. “Do you mind if we use that on social media?”

He shrugged.

It didn’t take long to get called back to an examination room. Sherwood wasn’t sure if that was because the cat was so obviously in distress or if it was to keep the waiting room from becoming a social media circus. The cat was whisked away for x-rays and blood tests, then returned to Sherwood’s care looking even more limp than it had before.

“We can try,” the vet said after explaining all the damage they’d found. “But it’s likely to be painful for him and expensive for you. He’ll have to stay here a while and that eye needs surgery—though not until he’s stronger. Even with everything we can do—I put his chances of survival low. It might be easier and more humane to let him go now.”

The news wasn’t anything that Sherwood hadn’t expected. What he had not expected was the coyote who casually walked in through the half-open door that led into the depths of the clinic, toenails clicking on the hard floor. Sherwood thought for one incredulous second that it was Mercy—but no one else, not even Adam, reacted to it at all.

That’s not a coyote, said Sherwood’s wolf.

The coyote smiled at Sherwood as though he’d heard the wolf speak.

“Would you leave me alone with the cat for a minute?” Sherwood asked, his eyes on the coyote that apparently only he could see.

“Of course,” said the doctor. “Just knock on this door when you know what you want to do.”

He slipped back through the door the coyote who was not Mercy had entered through and closed it.

“I’ll be in the waiting room,” Adam said. His face bore a touch of puzzlement.

Sherwood understood. Werewolves were not afraid of death—or of suffering either. Whether or not to put the kitten to sleep was not a decision a werewolf should need privacy for. But Adam didn’t push.

As soon as they were alone, Coyote unfolded into a human form—appearing to be a wiry Native American man about a foot shorter than Sherwood. His smile was charming—and much less reassuring than the one Adam had used in the waiting room.

“You won’t remember our last meeting,” Coyote said coyly.

Sherwood just watched him.

“And,” Coyote drew out that word, “if you could remember it, you wouldn’t be happy with me.”

“Why does this cat bear your mark?” Sherwood asked, tired of the trickster’s games already.

Coyote hopped onto the empty exam table, landing in a crouch. He stayed there and leaned forward to run a light finger over the cat cradled in Sherwood’s arms.

“They call that color tuxedo,” Coyote said. “When all four feet are white it’s supposed to be a good luck sign.”

“I found it in a black witch’s lab,” Sherwood said dryly. “How lucky could it be?”

“Possibly good luck for you,” said Coyote. “You shouldn’t have wandered around in a witch’s house when you were trying to hide yourself. Without that exposure, your safeguards might have held out another month or two. But you aren’t going to keep the Singer out of your head with that mishmash you’ve cooked up now. He’ll have you consumed in a few days.”

The Singer, said the wolf. I remember the Singer.

Sherwood didn’t say anything. He was pretty sure that Coyote was right.

He is, agreed the wolf.

And Sherwood was also pretty sure that asking questions about “the Singer” would be engaging with…not an enemy…but a trickster god. That never went well for the questioner. Coyote would tell Sherwood what Coyote wanted to tell Sherwood. Questions weren’t going to make it go any faster.

“But,” said Coyote when Sherwood didn’t say anything. “But. But you were harmed watching over Mercy. But you were harmed originally hunting down the Singer because I told you about him. But it doesn’t suit me that the Singer moves on to the next phase of godhood.”

He caught Sherwood’s expression and grinned sharply. “Oh, he wouldn’t be all powerful. There are gods and there are gods—” he gestured to himself “—and then there is Apistotoke.”

He frowned at Sherwood. “Gitche Manatu. Wakan Tonka?”

He made a sound of mock-frustration. “You used to know things. I forgot you are stupid now and need a translation. The Creator. God-All-Mighty. Allah.”

“Got it,” said Sherwood as Coyote took a breath as if he were going to run through even more names for God.

“Good.” Coyote nodded his head. “So, not God or god, but even such a weak new thing as the Singer could become is enough to throw off the balance of the earth and cause—well, not chaos, I like chaos—but damage. Eternal damage. Damage to eternity. Something bad anyway.”

Coyote peered up at Sherwood, one hand in front of him on the silver exam table, the other resting on a bent knee. After a moment Coyote leaned back and sighed. “I liked you better when you understood what I was telling you.”

The kitten made a sound and Sherwood comforted it. It snuggled against him.

“I had…have—” Coyote paused, considering, then said, “—will have had a use for the kitten. But more importantly, for this conversation at least, I think you should have a use for him, too.”

Familiar, suggest the wolf. If we have a familiar who has been touched by the divine, I can use it to keep us safe. Actively keep us safe.

“Exactly,” said Coyote.

“Witches use familiars,” Sherwood said.

Coyote gave him an encouraging nod.

“I am not a witch.” He bit out the last word as if it tasted foul on his tongue.

Coyote sat down properly and swung his feet a couple of times. “That’s true enough. Or rather it isn’t, and it is. There’s no proper word for exactly what you are anymore. But you were witchborn—”

Sherwood felt his lips twist in a soundless snarl and fought to control his expression.

Coyote waved a dismissive hand. “Witchcraft can be useful—but I am not here to dictate your morality or lack thereof. I am here to tell you that I will have made use of that cat. That means that making it your familiar will give you—” he paused and peered at Sherwood.

“Well, that’s different,” he said. “Why did you do that?”

He considered it and said, “Oh. That was smart. I think. Your wolf might be able to keep you safe. Maybe. Thus, keeping everyone safe. Maybe for long enough. I have plans for the Singer. Hopefully they turn out better this time.”

When Sherwood didn’t respond, Coyote said, “You could think of the kitten as a reward and an apology—”

Sherwood grunted.

Coyote looked at Sherwood’s hands, cradling the tired, dying kitten and said, in an oddly gentle voice, “—to him. If you make him your familiar, you will live and so will he. I owe him.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” said Sherwood, knowing it was capitulation. Witchcraft. He was uncomfortable about how much of his willingness to do this thing—and anything that touched on witchcraft repulsed him to the bone—was because he did not want the kitten to die. It was important to him that it survive what was done to it.

I know how, said the wolf in a voice very like the one Coyote had just used.

“Touch and go,” Adam said to Mercy as they got into the car. “Lots of broken bones, some of them half-healed incorrectly. Lots of superficial and not so superficial damage. Minor skull fracture. Dehydrated and starving. They have him on IVs and have treated everything they can treat. It’s up to him now.”

“They thought it was us who had tortured the kitten,” said Sherwood to change the subject. He wasn’t as certain as Coyote had sounded that the kitten would make it. Coyote wasn’t the sort of being who inspired a lot of trust.

Mercy looked over the back of the seat at Sherwood, but it was Adam who spoke. “Until a lady in the waiting room recognized me and got so excited. Sometimes the publicity can be useful.”

Adam’s distaste for being a celebrity colored his voice.

“There will be headlines,” suggested Sherwood. “Werewolves rescue tortured kitten.”

Adam flashed Sherwood a grin in the rearview mirror. “Spotlight will be on you this time. That useful lady took a picture when you kissed the kitten’s nose.”

Sherwood snorted. “I posed for her.”

“Sure, you did, softy,” Adam said in dry tones. “That photo will be all over the social media sites by morning.”

“Werewolf contemplates dinner,” said Sherwood. “Dinner contemplates werewolf back.”

Mercy gave him an uncertain look.

She was right, it wasn’t like Sherwood to play verbal games. Coyote must be contagious.

Sherwood closed his eyes. If he concentrated, he could feel the little cat’s weakened heartbeat.

“I hope he makes it,” Sherwood said. He should have been worried because his survival could depend upon the little creature living. But he that wasn’t why he was worried.

It’s a survivor, his wolf told him with something near affection. Like us.

Patricia Briggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson series and has written twenty-eight novels to date; she is currently writing novel number twenty-nine. She has short stories in several anthologies, as well as a series of comic books and graphic novels based on her Mercy Thompson and Alpha and Omega series.

To learn more, go to: https://www.patriciabriggs.com/