“What else have you tried?” I asked, starting toward the river again. There was nothing I could do for Stefan right this moment.

Wulfe shrugged. “The usual. After the river, salt, silver, torture, fire. Nothing seems to work.”

“Do you know how to kill it? Or if killing it will save Ben and Stefan?” I asked, fighting not to visualize someone torturing Stefan. Wulfe was old—Middle Ages old. And he was a sorcerer, a witch, and a vampire. He should know something about this beast.

“I meant to ask you what you knew about it,” he responded, as if we were walking to tea instead of watching Adam, Warren, and Darryl struggle to hold on to the bound form of Ben long enough to get to the water’s edge.

I told him everything I knew. It didn’t take long.

“Smoke beast,” said Wulfe as Ben arced out over the water and entered with a splash. “Never heard of it. Smoking bites don’t ring any bells, either—and I know a lot about things that bite.” He snapped his teeth together.

Kyle let me go and I broke free of Wulfe so I could get a better look at Adam, Warren, and Darryl trying to drag Ben out of the water. He seemed to be trying to slip out of their fingers, and werewolves don’t float—they sink. Too much muscle, not enough fat. Or maybe it was something about the way their magic worked.

All four of them were wet by the time they dragged Ben back to shore. He choked up water in great heaving coughs that strained his bound limbs. The river had almost succeeded in drowning him.

When Adam reached for the cuffs, Ben shook his head. “No!” And after he spoke that single word, he coughed up another burst of river, only to collapse in a limp heap.

“He’s in me,” he said. Then tears leaked out as if he’d absorbed some of the river into his eyes as well as his lungs. “He’s still here. Don’t let me free.”

“Shh,” said Adam. He looked at me.

“Did you hear Wulfe?” I asked.

He nodded, then kissed the top of Ben’s head—avoiding the snap of Ben’s teeth without apparent effort. “We have a problem. Let’s get him back to the cage where I can at least get him out of the cuffs. I’ll call Marsilia and check on Stefan.”

That would work better, I acknowledged silently. She liked Adam and she really didn’t like me. Especially she wouldn’t like me asking about Stefan. She tended to view him as her property—and viewed me as the reason he’d broken free of the seethe. He was the only vampire in the Tri-Cities who did not belong to her. We could work together when we had to, but there was no reason to push it now.

And all of that gave me something to think about other than our poor Ben and Stefan caught up in the same hell. And I had nothing I could do to help.

“Where did the scary vampire go?” asked Kyle in a low voice.

“Wherever scary vampires go,” answered Warren. His voice acquired a hard edge. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back.”

WE SETTLED BEN IN THE CAGE WITH A MATTRESS ON the floor and the chains and cuffs off.

Releasing him from the cuffs had almost resulted in disaster. If Kyle hadn’t been carrying a stun gun and been unafraid to use it, Ben would have broken free.

Adam called Marsilia and she confirmed what Wulfe had told us. The beast had indeed gotten Stefan, though when asked, she said the bite marks on his shoulder were more akin to a big snake—a very big snake—than to a rabbit. She sent photos. Two red marks, the size of a dime, marred the white flesh of his left shoulder. According to the measuring tape, the marks were four and three quarters of an inch apart.

“That’s the size of a horse’s mouth,” Warren said. “More or less.”

“Does he know what bit him?” Adam asked.

“He has not been able to share coherent information with us,” said Marsilia. “We can keep him … indefinitely, I suppose. But I would not keep anyone I cared about in this state for long.”

“No,” agreed Adam, watching Ben, who stared back at him with eyes that were not Ben’s. “But we are working on it.”

“Except for Wulfe—with whom it is not practical—I have brought all of my people and their flocks to our seethe and locked us in,” Marsilia said. “I understand that you think that you need to do something about this, but I advise you to do the same. Think about what the news organizations will do when one of your wolves is bitten and goes on a killing spree.”

“Is that what Stefan did?” I asked. Then I had a panicked thought: “What about his people?”

Vampire hearing was good, too. She said, “All of his sheep are safe.”

I did not add “those who survived,” but I wanted to. Marsilia had killed some of Stefan’s people (he had never, in my hearing, referred to them as sheep or his flock) in order to perpetrate some desperate scheme or other. He had never forgiven her.

She blamed me. Not for her having to kill his people, but for his lack of forgiveness. It didn’t make sense, but emotions don’t have to make sense.

“How did you discover what had happened?” Adam asked.

“Wulfe brought him in,” she said. “It was not pretty—and there was no doubt that something or someone else was controlling him. He did not try to blend in. At all.”

“Thank you for the information,” Adam said. “If we find out anything useful, I’ll make sure you get word.”

“I would appreciate that,” Marsilia told him.

Warren and Kyle left to go home and sleep. Darryl settled in as our guard, since Ben had been retired from the field. Adam and Darryl were still discussing how to patrol safely when I went up to bed. I was pretty sure that Adam wouldn’t come up to bed until I was safely asleep, so I left them talking and went upstairs.

I paused in front of Jesse’s door, then gave in to my need to see someone safe tonight and cracked the door. She was curled up on the bed with a stuffed elephant that I knew Gabriel had gotten her. I shut the door again and left her to her dreams.

I was just pulling the bedding up to my chin when my phone rang. Caller ID said the number was unavailable. I hesitated—but it was the wrong time of night for a robocall.

“Mercedes,” said Beauclaire, son of Lugh and Gray Lord of the fae. “Uncle Mike asked me to call you tonight. A few days ago, he informed me that Underhill created a door to her realm in your backyard and in the process, she released a predator, one that Aiden told you was called the smoke beast.”

“Yes,” I told him.

“I know of that one,” Beauclaire told me, and I felt a shiver of relief.

Beauclaire knew things about the creature who held Ben and Stefan. He would know what to do about it so we could save Ben, and save Stefan.

“You know that Marsilia has locked down her seethe because Stefan was taken.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you hear about the accident on Highway 240? The terrible tragic accident where a tanker sideswiped two other cars? All three drivers and their passengers died. Eight people in all.”

That accident had happened the same night that Kyle had shot one of the werewolves. It had made the front page and relegated Kyle and Warren’s encounter to the Public Records section of the newspaper.

“Yes,” I said, sick to my stomach because Marsilia was fond of using car wrecks or house fires to account for “problem bodies” that needed to be explained. She had told me that Stefan’s people were safe, but she had not answered my first question about a killing spree—and I hadn’t noticed until just now.

“A few hours ago, one of the fae, not a Gray Lord, but one who had power and skill, walked into Uncle Mike’s with a sword and used it and her magic to kill as many as she could. Fourteen fae died and also three humans and two goblins. Uncle Mike was on other business so he was not present. Had Larry the goblin king and the snow elf not been there, more people would have died.”

There was no such thing, as far as I knew, as a snow elf. It was just what our resident frost giant liked to be called. I thought about how powerful a fae had to be if it took both the goblin king and a frost giant to subdue.

“Some of those who died were very old and very powerful beings,” Beauclaire told me. “Uncle Mike says that your previous encounters with the smoke beast seemed to indicate that it was having difficulty acquiring power. I thought you should be warned that, as of tonight, that is no longer the case.”

“I see,” I said. I no longer was hopeful that Beauclaire was going to provide me with an easy way to save my friends.

“Because of tonight’s incident—and because of the problems the vampires have experienced—I have called all the fae in the area back to the reservation, including Siebold Adelbertsmiter and his son.” There was a bite to Zee’s full name. Zee had killed Beauclaire’s father a zillion years ago—but the fae have long memories.

“Is there anything that you can tell me that would help us defeat it?” I asked.

“Yes.” A pause, as if Beauclaire was being careful with his words. More careful than usual. “I cannot tell you who he is.”

And that was important or it wouldn’t have been the first thing he said in answer to my question.

“Cannot,” I said. “As opposed to will not. Like a geas?”

“To you, perhaps that is the best way to explain it. It is a quirk of his nature. I can tell you a few, very few things about him.”

“Please,” I said, tightening my grip on the phone.

“In addition to ‘smoke beast,’ some call him ‘smoke weaver’ or ‘smoke dragon,’ all three referring to his nature—none of them are his name or bear any resemblance to his name.”

“Because you cannot speak his name,” I said, to tell him that I caught the import of what he was telling me.

“That is so,” he said. “Long ago he was captured by Underhill, a result of a bargain he made with her. He needed to bargain, as a part of the nature of the creature he was. A human woman gained the upper hand that somehow triggered the terms of his bargain with Underhill. Underhill swallowed him and we … I had thought him safely caught up in her nets for all these years.”