“If Bran behaves aggressively toward me without cause, he will force a war between the vampires and the werewolves,” Bonarata said.

“He won’t care,” Adam said, his voice sure and certain. Not all vampires could tell the difference between the truth and a lie when they heard it. But he was willing to bet that a vampire of Bonarata’s age could. “He might care afterward. He might care that you didn’t intend her death. But that will be afterward. Please don’t push him into it.”

8

Mercy

Running from vampires, again. Still. Go me!

I DIDN’T HAVE A WRISTWATCH, AND, SINCE IT WAS nighttime, there was no sun to help tell the time. It felt like we’d been riding the motorcycle less than an hour, but I had no way to be sure. We sped our way out of Prague proper and into a more rural area, where the road seemed to weave in and out of one tiny village after another.

We turned off the main road onto a blue-railed modern bridge that crossed a river and into the labyrinthian streets of yet another village. We drove past a castle—because it was the Czech Republic, and apparently castles were required by all the best villages.

The Tri-Cities had no castles. I’d never felt the lack before.

My guardian-angel werewolf slowed, and we puttered very quietly through a sleepy residential area. If we’d been in the US, I’d have said it was a bedroom community for Prague. But, remembering that there was a castle, I was hesitant to apply New World labels to Old World places.

Some of the houses looked very Bohemian. Some of them were very modern. We passed a couple of apartment complexes, took a hard right just past the second one, and found ourselves in an area where, on one side of the road, houses had gardens, huge yards, and trees. On the other side of the road was open land. It was too dark to be sure, but I thought they might be growing hay. Though it could just as easily have been some other grassy plant. It was dark, and I wasn’t a farmer.

We pulled into the driveway of a mansion-sized house that could have been a well-preserved three or four hundred years old—or a run-down twenty years old. It was hard to tell in the darkness.

My werewolf driver barely slowed down as we passed the ornate building, a swimming pool, and a stable, to park next to a much smaller house that might once have been a carriage house. Unlike the big building, where all the lights were on the outside and the interior was dark, the smaller house had no exterior lights on. There were fixtures beside both of the doors I could see, but the bulbs had been removed.

The purr of the engine stopped, and my werewolf guard removed his helmet and braced his feet. I was wise to the invitation, and I hopped off and took my own helmet off, giving it to him when he held out his hands for it.