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Patricia Briggs

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Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson Book 10) Kindle Edition

by Patricia Briggs (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.7 18,124 ratings

Book 10 of 14: Mercy Thompson

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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In the #1 New York Times bestselling Mercy Thompson novels, the coyote shapeshifter has found her voice in the werewolf pack. But when Mercy’s bond with the pack—and her mate—is broken, she’ll learn what it truly means to be alone...

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes—only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in the heart of Europe...

Unable to contact Adam and the rest of the pack, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a war between vampires and werewolves, and between werewolves and werewolves. And in the heart of the ancient city of Prague, old ghosts rise...

Editorial Reviews

Review

PRAISE FOR SILENCE FALLEN AND THE MERCY THOMPSON NOVELS

"Patricia Briggs is an incredible writer and Silence Fallen is simply fantastic. I love hanging out with the amazing characters in this series!"—Nalini Singh, New York Times bestselling author of the Psy-Changeling series

“Patricia Briggs never fails to deliver an exciting, magic and fable filled suspense story. Silence Fallen is one of her best.”—Erin Watt, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Royals series

“I love these books.”—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“The best new urban fantasy series I’ve read in years.”—Kelley Armstrong, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“It is always a joy to pick up a new Briggs novel, and she certainly doesn’t disappoint with this latest Mercy Thompson book. . . . the character development is wonderful, not to mention there is plenty of action, humor and magic to satisfy readers’ cravings! Briggs hits another one out of the park!” —RT Book Reviews

“Packed with an awesome mix of the supernatural, humor, romance, and action, topping itself off with one wallop of a surprise at the end that will knock you out of your armchair. If you haven’t given this series a try, you’re totally missing out!” —The Independent (Utah)

“Silence Fallen . . . is now my favorite book in the series. There's no question that this series continues to get better with every book.” —Fresh Fiction

“Briggs’ Mercy Thompson book series is one of the standard-bearers of the urban-fantasy subgenre.” —Booklist

About the Author

Patricia Briggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series (Fire Touched, Night Broken) and the Alpha and Omega novels, (Dead Heat, Fair Game).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Mercy

This wasn't the first time chocolate got me in trouble.

I died first, so I made cookies.

They were popular fare on Pirate night, so I needed to make a lot. Darryl had gotten me a jumbo-sized antique mixing bowl last Christmas that probably could have held the water supply for an elephant for a day. I don't know where he found it.

If I ever filled the bowl entirely, I'd have to have one of the werewolves move it. It ate the eighteen cups of flour I dumped into it with room for more. All the while, piratical howls rose up the stairway from the bowels of the basement.

"Jesse-" Aiden began, raising his voice to carry over an enthusiastic if off-key whistling rendition of "The Sailor's Hornpipe."

"Call me Barbary Belle," my stepdaughter, Jesse, reminded him.

Aiden might have looked and sounded like he was a boy, but he hadn't been young for a very long time. We had assimilated him, rather than adopted him, as he was centuries older than Adam and me put together. He was still finding some things about modern life difficult to adjust to, like the live-action-role-playing (LARP) aspect of the computer-based pirate game they were playing.

"It only works right if you think of me as a pirate and not your sister," Jesse said patiently. Ignoring his response that she wasn't his sister, she continued, "As long as you call me Jesse-that's who you think of when you interact with me. You have to believe I'm a pirate to make it a proper game. The first step is to call me by my game name-Barbary Belle."

There was a pause as someone let out a full-throated roar that subsided into a groan of frustration.

"Eat clamshells, you sodding buffoon," Ben chortled. His game name was Sodding Bart, but I didn't have to think of him that way because I was dead, anyway.

I got out my smaller mixing bowl, the one that had been perfectly adequate until I married into a werewolf pack. I filled it with softened butter, brown sugar, and vanilla. As I mixed them together, I decided that it wasn't that I was a bad pirate, it was that I had miscalculated. By baking sugar-and-chocolate-laden food whenever I died first, I'd succeeded in turning myself into a target.

The oven beeped to tell me it was at temperature, and I found all four cookie sheets in the narrow cabinet that they belonged in-a minor miracle. I wasn't the only one who got KP duty in the house, but I seemed to be the only one who could put things in the same place (where they belonged) on a regular basis. The baking pans, in particular, got shoved all sorts of odd places. I had once found one of them in the downstairs bathroom. I didn't ask-but I washed that motherhumper with bleach before I used it to bake on again.

"Motherhumper" was a word that was catching on in the pack with horrible efficiency after "Sodding Bart" Ben had started using it in his pirate role. I wasn't quite sure whether it was a real swearword that no one had thought up yet, one of those swearwords that were real swearwords in Ben's home country of Great Britain (like "fanny," which meant something very different in the UK than it did here), or a replacement swearword like "darn" or "shoot." In any case, I'd found myself using it on occasions when "dang" wasn't quite strong enough-like finding cookware in bathrooms.

I thought I was good to go when I found the baking pans. But when I opened the cupboard where there should have been ten bags of chocolate chips, there were only six. I searched the kitchen and came up with another one (open and half-gone) in the top cupboard behind the spaghetti noodles, which made six and a half, leaner than I liked for a double-quadruple batch, but it would do.

What would not do was no eggs. And there were no eggs.

I scrounged through the fridge for the second time, checking out the back corners and behind the milk, where things liked to hide. But even though I'd gotten four dozen eggs two days ago, there was not an egg to be had.

There were perils in living in the de facto clubhouse of a werewolf pack. Thawing roasts in the fridge required the concealment skills of a WWII French Underground spy working in Nazi headquarters. I hadn't hidden the eggs because, since they were neither sweet nor bleeding, I'd thought they were safe. I'd been wrong.

The majority of the egg-and-roast-stealing werewolf pack was currently downstairs, enthralled in games of piracy on the high seas of the computer screen. There was irony in how much they loved the pirate computer game-werewolves are too dense to swim. Coyotes, even coyote shifters like me, can swim just fine-except, apparently, in The Dread Pirate's Booty scenarios, because I'd drowned four times this month.

I hadn't drowned this time, though. This time, I'd died with my stepdaughter's knife in my back. Barbary Belle was highly skilled with knives.

"I'm headed to the Stop and Rob," I called downstairs. "Does anyone need anything?"

The store wasn't really called that, of course; it had a perfectly normal name that I couldn't remember. "Stop and Rob" was more of a general term for a twenty-four-hour gas station and convenience store, a sobriquet earned in the days when the night-shift clerk had been left on his or her own with a till full of thousands of dollars. Technology-cameras, quick-drop safes that didn't open until daylight, and silent alarms-had made working the night shift safer, but they'd always be Stop and Robs to me.

"Argh," said my husband Adam's voice, traveling up the stairs. "Gold and women and grog!" He didn't play often, but when he did, he played full throttle and immersed.

"Gold and women and grog!" echoed a chorus of men's voices.

"Would you listen to them?" said Mary Jo scornfully. "Give me a man who knows what to do with what the good Lord gave him instead of these clueless scallywags who run at the first sight of a real woman."

"Argh," agreed Auriele, while Jesse giggled.

"Swab the decks, ye lubbers, lest you slide in the blood and crack your four-pounders," I called. "And whate'er ye do, don't trust Barbary Belle at your back."

There was a roar of general agreement, and Jesse giggled again.

"And, Captain Larson," I said, addressing Adam-my mate had taken the name from Jack London's The Sea-Wolf-"you can have gold, and you can have grog. You go after another woman, and you'll be pulling back a stub."

There was a little silence.

"Argh," said Adam with renewed enthusiasm. "I got me a woman. What do I need with more? The women are for my men!"

"Argh!" roared his men. "Bring us gold, grog, and women!"

"Men!" said Auriele, sweet-voiced. "Bring us a few good men."

"Stupidheads," growled Honey. "Die!"

There was a general outcry because, apparently, several someones did.

I laughed my way out the door.

After a moment's thought, I took Adam's SUV. I was going to have to figure out what to do for a daily driver. My beloved Vanagon Syncro was getting far too many miles put on her, and her transmission was rare and more precious than gold on the secondary market. I'd been driving her ever since my poor Rabbit had been totaled, and the van was starting to need more and more repairs. I'd looked at an '87 Jetta with a blown engine a few days ago. They wanted too much for it, but maybe I'd just have to pony up.

The SUV growled the couple of miles to the convenience store that was ten miles closer to home than any other store open at this hour of the night. The clerk was restocking cigarettes and didn't look up as I passed him.

I picked up two dozen overpriced eggs and three equally overpriced bags of chocolate chips and set them on the counter. The clerk turned away from the cigarettes, looked at me, and froze. He swallowed hard and looked away-scanning the bar codes on the eggs with a hand that shook so much that he might save me the effort of cracking the shells myself.

"You must be new?" I suggested, running my ATM card in the reader.

He knew who I was without knowing the important things, I thought.

I found the limelight disconcerting, but I was slowly getting used to it. My husband was Alpha of the local pack; he'd been a household name in the Tri-Cities since the werewolves first revealed their existence a few years ago. When we'd married, I'd gotten a little of his reflected glory, but after helping to fight a troll on the Cable Bridge a couple of months ago, I had become at least as well-known as Adam. People reacted differently to the reality of werewolves in the world. Sensible people stayed a certain length back. Others were stupidly friendly or not-so-stupidly afraid. The new guy obviously belonged to the latter group.

"Started last week," the clerk muttered as he bagged the chocolate chips and eggs as if they might bite him.

"I'm not a werewolf," I told him. "You don't have anything to fear from me. And my husband has put a moratorium on killing gas-station clerks this week."

The clerk blinked at me.

"None of the pack will hurt you," I clarified, reminding myself not to try to be funny around people who were too scared to know I was joking. "If you have any trouble with a werewolf or something like that, you can call us"-I found the card holder in my purse and gave him one of the pack's cards, printed on off-white card stock-"at this number. We'll take care of it if we can."

We all carried the cards now that we'd (my fault) taken on the task of policing the supernatural community of the Tri-Cities, protecting the human citizens from things that go bump in the night. We'd also been called in to find lost children, dogs, and, once, two calves and their guard llama. Zack had composed a song for that one. I hadn't even known he could play guitar.

Sometimes the job of protecting the Tri-Cities was more glamorous than others. The livestock call, in addition to being musically commemorated, had actually been something of a PR coup: photos of werewolves herding small lost calves back home had gone viral on Facebook.

The clerk took the card as if it were going to bite him. "Okay," he lied.

I couldn't do any better than that, so I left with my cookie-making ingredients. I hopped into the SUV and set the bag on the passenger seat as I backed out of the parking space. Frowning, I wondered if his strong reaction might be due to something that had happened to him-a personal incident. I looked both ways before heading out onto the road. Maybe I should go talk to him again.

I was still worrying about the clerk when there was a loud noise that stole my breath. The bag with the eggs in it flew off the seat, and something hit me with a loud bang and a foul smell-and then there was a sharp pain, followed by . . . nothing.

I think I woke up several times, for no more than a few minutes that ended abruptly when I moved. I heard people talking, mostly the voices of unfamiliar men, but I couldnÕt understand what they were saying. Magic shimmered and itched. Then a warm breath of spring air drifted through the pain and took it all away. I slept, more tired than I ever remembered being.

When I finally roused, awake and aware for real, I couldn't see anything. I might not have been a werewolf, but a shapeshifting coyote could still see okay in very dim light. Either I was blind, or wherever I was had no light at all.

My head hurt, my nose hurt, and my left shoulder felt bruised. My mouth was dry and tasted bad, as if I'd gone for a week without brushing my teeth. It felt like I'd just been hit by a troll-though the left-shoulder pain was more of a seat-belt-in-a-car thing. But I couldn't remember . . . even as that thought started to trigger some panic, memories came trickling back.

I'd been taking a run to our local Stop and Rob-the same all-night gas station slash convenience store where I'd first met lone and gay werewolf Warren all those years ago. Warren had worked out rather well for the pack . . . I gathered my wandering thoughts and herded them down a track that might do some good. The difficulty I had doing that-and the nasty headache-made me think I might have a concussion.

I considered the loud bang and the eggs and realized that it hadn't been the eggs that had exploded and smelled bad, but the SUV's air bags. I was a mechanic. I knew what blown air bags smelled like. I didn't know what odd effect of shock made me think it might have been the eggs. The suddenness of the accident had combined the related events of the groceries' hitting me and the air bag's hitting me into a cause and effect that didn't exist.

As my thoughts slowly achieved clarity, I realized that the SUV had been struck from the side, struck at speed to have activated the air bags.

With that information, I reevaluated my situation without moving. My face was sore-a separate and lesser pain than the headache-and I diagnosed the situation as my having been hit with an air bag or two that hadn't quite saved me from a concussion or its near cousin. The sore left shoulder wasn't serious, nor was the general ache and horrible weariness.

Probably all of my pain was from the accident . . . car wreck, I supposed, because I was pretty sure it hadn't been an accident. The vehicle that hit me hadn't had its headlights on-I would have remembered headlights. And if it had been a real accident, I'd be in the hospital instead of wherever I was. Under the circumstances, I wasn't too badly damaged . . . but that wasn't right.

I had a sudden flash of seeing my own rib-but though I was sore, my chest rose and fell without complication. I pushed that memory back, something to be dealt with after I figured out where I was and why.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01H17UAF4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ace (March 7, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 7, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3364 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 379 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #46,277 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #389 in Fantasy Adventure Fiction
- #483 in Action & Adventure Romance Fiction
- #1,464 in Thriller & Suspense Action Fiction

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4.7 18,124 ratings

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Patricia Briggs

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Patricia Briggs is the author of the New York Times bestselling Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series. She lives in Washington state with her husband, children, and a small herd of horses.

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Erin S. Burns

Nonlinear story, but it worked for me.

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2017

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Glorious! I devoured this book in record time. How a series that I initially gave no chance to, could so quickly become one of my absolute favorite series is a bafflement to me. But it is true. Patricia Briggs has a gift for writing strong, ferocious heroines that still engender empathy in her readers.

This is book 10 in the series, and these are NOT, I repeat NOT standalones. So, unfortunately, spoilers for the previous books may occur. But let me tell you, if you have any interest at all in urban fantasy/paranormal romance, this is a series that will suck you in. We have a Volkswagon mechanic named Mercedes, a daughter of chaos who plays merry hell on the stoic werewolves around her. A coyote shifter is so very different than the other big bads in this fantasy setting. It is completely worth the read, and I highly recommend the series as whole.

This book in specific though plays a nice symmetry with the beginning of the series, Mercedes alone and ostensibly friendless. Of course Mercy has always had a knack for managing the chaos in her life. But it was interesting to see how different of a person she is by this point in time, even when she is on her own.

Following the events of the previous books, the consequences of the Columbia Basin's power plays in making their territory neutral for both humans and the supernatural alike have shown up in an interesting way. And while our main protagonists, and us readers, have had a view from the inside, it was very interesting to see how those on the OUTSIDE have interpreted the events that unfolded. Needless to say they got it all wrong. Which opened up all sorts of doors to conflict.

Enter stage left- The Master of Milan, Iacapo Bonaparte. He is the biggest, baddest vampire in Europe. And ever if there was a canny, crafty, bastard of a villain, this jerk is it. I never thought I could sympathize with some of the vampires who have been making Mercy's life hell in the previous books, but Briggs managed it. Surprising revelations changed the entire COMPLEXION of events that I thought I understood before, and in such a way that it seemed completely natural to me. The landscape back home is going to end up very different once our stalwart heroes make it back.

Of course, despite Bonaparte's machinations, things are very much not what they seemed, and forces were at work that even he couldn't comprehend. Turns out there is even more to Mercy than we had already realized....I think she finally discovered her "42".

Adam and Mercy though, at this point are just rock solid, but it was nice to see how even apart they are still each the others touchstone. But it was also nice to see a few secondary characters shine, and get to understand them better. I think going back and rereading with some of this new information is going to give me a deeper appreciation of some of the other characters. And I know that events from this book are going to perceptively color future events.

And of course the reunion between Mercy and Adam was sweet, and sexy, and full of the turmoil only these two characters can bring to one another. Briggs had a description in the spinoff series that everything here made me think of, about how opening up was like opening an umbrella that had been shut a very long time and how parts creak and groan and threaten to break...only in this case it was like someone then oiled all the moving parts so that everything will now function like it should. That is what this book felt like. It may hurt to open things up that have been closed a very long time, but sometimes you have to so you can use it the way it need to be used.

Another note though, this book is somewhat nonlinear, so I think I will need to read it at least one more time to truly get it all together in my head. But it was excellent enough that I would have wanted to regardless. This was one of those books that was absolutely worth the wait and more than exceeded my expectations even though it was nothing like I was expecting, if you see what I mean.

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Minxy Melissa Reviews

Where other series can get stale or predictable this series has remained strong!

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2017

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To say that I am a fan of the Mercy Thompson series is really an understatement. I have read every book and that actually makes me potentially a great critic. Where other series can start to get stale or predictable this series has remained strong! Silence Fallen steered away from the formula and gave us new features to look forward to in future installments. Fan-tast-ic!

Mercy is back and this time she is not the one getting herself into a predicament. She was abducted as part of a power play that has many facets and is vague at best, in the beginning. At the start of the story you are left in puzzlement as to why she has been taken but I liked that. There was a real air of mystery to this installment. This story had Mercy truly being an innocent victim and not the one getting herself into hot water. It is a different take on the status quo and I loved it!

The bond between Mercy and Adam is rock solid by this point in the series as is her bond with the pack. The bond between Mercy and Adam is the mating bond where they can speak to each other or feel each other over distances. Because Adam is a werewolf and alpha, Mercy is also connected to the pack’s bond and it works similar to the bond she shares with Adam. She can also draw strength from his bond. So, when Mercy is taken and the bond is “cut off” it leads to a lot of freaking out. Adam and his wolf are truly tested in this story. It is also disconcerting for Mercy as she is faced with the realization of how much she has come to rely on that bond.

Mercy manages to escape her situation only to find out she is completely alone and in danger. What this scenario does for her character is just fantastic. She has to go old school in a lot of ways and I loved the glimpse of the old Mercy. She also learns more about her abilities and has to rely on and trust in her new awareness. Great character growth as well as the introduction of new characters to this series. Even with the help of her European friends Mercy manages to get herself into quite the pickle and there were some moments that had my heart in my throat!

In case you were not aware, Mercy can interact with the departed, heck yeah! Now that she is alone Mercy must come to rely on any aid that is offered. Lots of ghosts and ghostly interactions make up a portion of this story. Not to mention that this story has the character of The Golem of Prague! I loved that this legend was brought to life in this story. It was uniquely done and perfectly executed.

Adam is really the star of this book this time around. In order to find his mate, he enters into situations that he would have before found completely intolerable. In addition, alliances are made that would have previously been seen as impossible. Marsilia is the mistress of the Tri-Cities seethe, think Queen of a vampire coven and has a big role in this book. In this role, surprisingly, she is not the bad gal. Normally Marsilia is synonymous with evil traitorous wench, so this was a surprising turn of events and I think I liked it. It remains to be seen where this alliance will go.

As always the ending was satisfying and left me wanting more! I can’t wait for the next book in the series. My fingers are crossed on a few threads that I picked up that could be woven into the next story and I am hoping that they may come to fruition. This is a book and series that I highly recommend!

This review is based on a complimentary book I received from NetGalley. It is an honest and voluntary review. The complimentary receipt of it in no way affected my review or rating.

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tracey connelly

mercy is always entertaining

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2024

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Never disappointed reading about mercy’s adventures. I only hope they keep on coming. Don’t know what I’d if they did

Cliente de Kindle

I really enjoy this series

Reviewed in Mexico on August 31, 2017

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This is my favorite so far. This time not all that happens is in mercy and i love it.
Really a great book super fun and full of adventures. Also i love "matt smith" didn't connect but now i have to reaf it again...
C. C.

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Marta

Patricia Briggs nunca decepciona

Reviewed in Spain on November 26, 2018

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Para no caer en Spoilers, solo decir que es un libro digno de la saga de Marcy Thompson y de su autora. No puedo dejar de recomendarlo a todos los fans de Urban Fantasy.
Llegó rápido y en perfecto estado, a un precio que me sorprendió bastante.

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Prashant Koorse

Great book

Reviewed in India on December 11, 2018

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Great story, fast paced and amazing twist. Mercy Thompson novel...