“No,” Martin disagreed, his voice soft. “He just hated the Germans. Hated to see Prague under German control. It was when his wife died and Radim, his son, left.”
Radim, I thought. Zack’s real name is Radim.
“Look,” I said. “All this is well and good. But it appears that at least two groups of vampires are after me, here, in Prague. They are attacking your pack. I need to leave before someone else gets killed.”
They both looked at me as though I was being ridiculous.
Martin said, “Kocourek attacked the pack stronghold, Mercy. Whether you are here or in Germany, there will be more blood spilled between Kocourek and our pack. As for Mary’s seethe . . .” He shrugged. “They have been launching offensives at us ever since one of them seduced Pavel and tried to turn him into her servant. We think that somebody decided that the reason Bonarata was so scary was because he drinks werewolf blood.”
Jitka shivered. “Bonarata is scary because he is scary. The werewolf thing . . . that he could do that to an Alpha and his mate is scary. But—” She looked at Martin.
“It is also a weakness,” he said in a low voice. “I remember when no one thought he had any weaknesses. When the Lord of Night had his Blade and the Soldier and the Wizard . . . it was like the Avengers—except they were bad.”
Vampires did the one-name thing before Madonna and Prince. The Soldier, I knew, was Stefan. The Wizard was Wulfe. The Blade had to be Marsilia.
“I’m not that old,” said Jitka. “They left a hundred years before I was born. But I know that anyone who has an addiction as strong as Bonarata’s must have more weaknesses.”
“At any rate,” Martin said briskly, “an idiot is born every minute, and someone in Mary’s seethe—possibly Mary herself—decided that werewolf blood would make vampires stronger. So they got a pretty little thing to seduce Pavel.”
“Not difficult,” said Jitka. “He’s a good man, but”—she smiled wryly—“he has a weakness for women.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Libor happened,” said Jitka at the same time as Martin said, “Libor killed her and forbade sexual congress with vampires.” They spoke over the top of each other without really noticing it, so it must have been habitual.
“And how does he enforce that?” I asked.
They both looked at me incredulously. “He can tell through the pack bonds.”
I blinked. “Libor knows if his wolves have sex with a vampire through the pack bonds?”
Martin nodded. “It’s part of being the Alpha. And it’s not just sex—it’s anything very intense. Grief, joy, horror—he gets it.”
I was pretty sure that Adam wasn’t that connected with his pack. Almost sure. Because . . . ick. Invasion of privacy didn’t even begin to cover it. Maybe he just hadn’t told me because he knew how I’d react.
I was tired, and they must have been, too, because we kept wandering away from the point.
“What do I do to keep your pack as safe as I can?” I asked.
Jitka snorted. “Not your job, by my reckoning. Libor gave you three days of pack protection. Your job is to let us keep you safe.”
Martin grinned at me. “But if you want to behead a few vampires with a scythe, that’s okay, too.”
“It was only the one,” I said.
But he was looking at Jitka. “She got one and a half. I got two halves, and you got one and a half.”
Jitka shook her head. “No. I got one—I just finished off the one you’d already done.”
“So one and a half vampires for the poor weakling who matched or beat the scorecard for the werewolves.” Martin gave me a look. “All luck, was it? Luck didn’t kill those vampires, did it?”
“Martin,” Jitka said mildly. “We need to find all of us someplace safe to rest.” To me she said, “We didn’t think any of the vampires knew about this place. I only just moved out here, and Dobrichovice is pretty far out of their usual haunting ground.”
“We need to find a safe place for Mercy to sleep the rest of the night,” Martin said.
I don’t know why it bothered me so much. I mean, that’s what I’d been doing since I got to Prague, right? Finding a safe place to wait for Adam.
But we’d just killed four vampires. I wasn’t helpless. Helpless people get hurt.
And just for a moment, I flashed back to the time when I had been rendered helpless by a fae artifact and a creep named Tim . . .
“Mercy?” Jitka asked.
I realized I was sitting on the floor in the corner of her room. Martin was as far from me as he could get, watching me with a concerned look. Jitka was crouching about three feet from me, careful to give me space.
I met her eyes and said, “I hate PTSD, you know?” I remembered I was talking to a werewolf and turned my gaze to the floor. It was less humiliating talking to the floor, anyway. “It’s been years—and I killed that bastard. And it’s not like I was really hurt, right? I’ve been sent to the hospital by a volcano god, and that didn’t do anything but give my husband nightmares.”
Jitka nodded like all this was making sense. “Hurt comes in all forms. I wake up at least once a year to a memory that makes me shake for hours—something that happened 122 years ago. I have seen and done so much worse since that thing, and it wasn’t even something that happened to me. And still.”