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Moon Called

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Moon Called is the first book in the Mercy Thompson series and the eighth book written by Patricia Briggs. It kicks off in November of Year One and introduces the major characters Mercy Thompson, Adam Hauptman, and Samuel Cornick.

Summary[]

Spoiler Warning.

Mercy is working on a car in her shop when she is approached by a young werewolf who asks her for work under the table which she agrees to. After she directs him to the bathroom to change into some work clothes, an undercover cop friend of Mercy's, Tony Montenegro, arrives and informs her about how the boy has been around the area but seems to be no trouble. After Tony leaves, Mercy and the boy work several hours before Mercy asks for his name and he tells her to call him Mac. At the end of the day Mercy pays Mac and asks if he has a place to sleep, he says yes. Mercy then goes home and finds her cat Medea in a cage (put there by her werewolf neighbour Adam Hauptman) and lets her out as she prepares supper and contemplates how she could help Mac.

The next day, a Saturday, Mercy goes to work and then goes for a run in her coyote form afterwards.

On Monday, Mac shows up again to ask for work and they repeat the arrangement they had originally made. At the end of the day Mercy asks Mac if he has a place to stay out of concern but Mac claims that he a place to stay before walking away. Later that night, Mercy decides to call Stefan, a vampire friend of hers, to ask if she can let Mac stay in Stefan's' Mystery Machine Bus. He agrees and Mercy goes out to her garage to collect her purse so she can buy Mac a blanket when she hears Mac speaking to two unknown men-- one of whom is a werewolf. The two men attempt to convince Mac to return with them so they can continue drug tests but Mac refuses. Sensing trouble, Mercy shifts into coyote form. Realizing the other werewolf is moonstruck Mercy attacks him and leads him away from Mac when he starts to change. Mercy rips out the werewolf's throat and returns to Mac who managed to take away the other man's gun before he escaped in his car. Mercy calls Adam and tells him that she killed a werewolf at her garage before moving the body inside and giving Mac a crash course on werewolves as he does not know anything.

Shortly after teaching Mac about werewolves, a car pulls up and the local pack's witch Elizaveta Arkadyevna and her grandson Robert climb out and begin to clean up the scene before Adam arrives. After Mercy annoys Adam he quickly determines that the werewolf is not one of his but then Mac starts to be overcome by his wolf instincts with a desire to eat Mercy but she breaks his collarbone with a crowbar and Adam takes control of Mac and tends to his wound while Elizaveta and Robert finish cleaning up and return the dead werewolf to his fully human form to learn his identity. After Adam borrows Mercys' camera, he helps Mac to shift, and Elizaveta gives Mercy some advice, they all go home.

Later that night, Mercy is making chocolate chip cookies while Adam's pack is called in to meet Mac. Adam's daughter Jesse arrives at her trailer to return Mercy's camera and to deliver a message from Adam before questioning Mercy on the night's events. Mercy explains then sends Jesse home with a plate of cookies. After putting her garbage out that night, Mercy meets Ben Shaw and the second Darryl Zao in her backyard before going to bed.

Early in the dark of the following morning, Mercy is awoken by the sound of a car driving away from her home and Madea asking to go outside when Mercy opens the front door for Madea, she smells death. Fetching her foster father's .444 Marlin she goes out her back door and circles her trailer to find Mac dead on her porch. As Mercy mourns his death, she hears a vehicle speeding away from Adam's house. Fearing that Adam's house has been attacked, Mercy rushes to his house where she hears some werewolves fighting in the dining room. She sees two more dead werewolves killed by Adam as she approaches the dining room. Inside, the last of the three enemy werewolves bites Adam's neck and throws him into a wall before being shot in the back of the head by Mercy. Mercy shape-shifts and checks to see if Adam is alive, she does not hear a heartbeat and moves on to search the rest of the house. She discovers that Jesse has disappeared then returns to Adam to find him breathing. She considers calling Darryl but gets a paranoid feeling at the thought. She decides to take Adam to Bran Cornick, The Marrok, because his injuries are severe and his wolf will be wild with no other wolves in the Tri-cities that can restrain him.

After loading Adam into her Vanagon and beginning the drive to Aspen Creek, Montana, she calls and asks Elizaveta to clean up Adam's house and Mac's corpse, then calls her other neighbour Anna Cather to ask her to look after Medea, and then her old boss, Siebold Adelbertsmiter, to close her shop for a few days but he instead opts to open it up in her stead in anticipation of something attacking him. Mercy then stops to pick up thirty hamburgers from a fast food joint (most of which she feeds to Adam) before carrying on.

When she arrives in Aspen Creek, she finds the hotel empty and calls her former lover's (Samuel Cornick) phone number but instead gets Lisa Stoval who sends her husband Carl over to help Mercy. after they get Adam secured in a holding cell/medical room Carl directs Mercy to Bran, who has taken the new wolves out on their first hunt to Lover's canyon.

Heading out to the location Carl specified, Mercy shifts into her coyote form and goes looking for the pack but decides to follow Samuel's scent when the scents split up. As Mercy is following Sam's trail, she realises that she is being stalked by a werewolf and ascertains that it is Leah Cornick (Brans' wife and mate) who holds a grudge against Mercy for having been born with her powers and still capable of having children, unlike werewolves. TMercy makes an attempt to create some distance from Leah by escaping to the other side of some close-together trees, Leah tries to attack but Samuel arrives and forces Leah to stop her hunt and calls in the other wolves with a howl. Bran, his other son Charles, and three new wolves arrive shortly. After Charles and Mercy shift back to their human forms, Mercy explains her reasons for returning to the town and Bran sends Samuel to take care of Adam and has Charles escort Mercy back to the hotel while he helps finish the new wolves' first hunt with them and Leah.

Back at the hotel, Charles drops Mercy off and takes Mac's body to the town clinic to examine him. Mercy receives a room key from Carl and leaves her room to check on Adam where Samuel criticizes her for not fixing Adam's broken leg and orders her to leave. That night, Samuel comes to Mercy's room to apologize and they talk about the past. After Samuel leaves, Bran arrives with food for them both and they discuss her and Samuel's relationship and how Samuel believed Mercy would give him children that would live where all of his others had died, causing Mercy to have to end things. Bran then informs Mercy that Samuel is his firstborn child and was born when Bran was still human, which surprises Mercy as she thinks of Bran as being "older than dirt." Bran convinces Mercy to delay her leaving town until Adam is healed so he can accompany her back.

The next day, as Mercy waits for the others to get ready for the drive to the Tri-Cities, she is greeted by a young-seeming man. She realizes that he is Carter Willis, a man who helped raise her and who had decided to become a werewolf in the past year. Carter reveals to Mercy that he doesn't have good enough control of his wolf and aks Mercy not to mourn him and sends her back to the hotel. At the hotel, Samuel asserts that he is coming back with her and Adam as per Bran's request. She is opposed to the plan until Bran comes by and convinces her of his decision. On the drive back to the Tri-Cities, Mercy, Adam, and Samuel discuss what Adam and Mercy remember from the night of the attack including the presence of Adam's fellow werewolf and army buddy David Christainsen and what the attackers' motives could be. They then decide that they should hide Adam while he finishes recovering with Warren Smith, Adams' Third and his and Mercys' best friend. Mercy calls Warren and after they again discuss the attack and Warren is assured that Adam is okay, Warren assures them that they can use his place.

When they arrive at Warren's, he carries Adam up to a spare bedroom while Samuel and Mercy wait in the living room where they meet Kyle Brooks, Warren's significant other. When Warren comes down the stairs and tells Kyle that he might have some business and can't see Kyle for a short time, Kyle leaves. Mercy follows him out and gets in his Jaguar with him and tells him to drive to a nearby park. They walk through the park before sitting at a park bench and discuss the lack of communication in Warren and Kyle's relationship. Kyle has come to believe that Warren is Fae as proof of the oddities of his nature but Mercy instead tells him that Warren is a werewolf and when Kyle is skeptical, she shifts into her coyote form to prove that their are more than just Fae hiding in the world. Kyle recovers quickly and they talk about werewolves until Mercy gets a phone call and returns to the house. When she arrives Warren smells Kyle on her and grows concerned when he realises Mercy told Kyle the truth (as it is against werewolf law). Samuel is unhappy but Adam supports Mercy's decision.

Samuel and Mercy go and see Zee and another Fae at Uncle Mikes where they get information that the rogues paid the vampires off. Mercy then calls Stefan and sets up a meeting with his Mistress to locate the rogue werewolves. Before they can leave the parking lot, Stefan appears and explains that he is to be their escort and Zee gives Mercy a Fae blade he was keeping on his person.

Stefan, Samuel, and Mercy head to the local Seethe were they wait for the Mistress in a sitting room. They are visited by a vampire named Lilly who takes an interest in Samuel before Stefan convinces her to play on the piano for them until she gets hungry and leaves. Stefan explains that Lilly is touched mentally before another vampire named Estelle comes in to tell them that the Mistress will be seeing them in a different room (which Stefan protests on his honor) and also takes any crosses from them. Samuel hands over his but Mercy wearing a lamb on her necklace gets to keep it and Estelle leaves. Following Stefan they descend deeper into the Seethe until they come to another sitting room where the Mistress Marsilia is located. Mercy begins to ask for the information they need but when Marsilia becomes focused on Samuel, who is acting unusual, she notices blood on his neck and captures him and begins to suck his blood while several other vampires appear in the room with them. Using her lamb necklace, the lamb being a symbol of God, Mercy is able to force Marsilia off of Samuel and the Mistress uses magic to force all of the other vampires to fall down. Stefan manages to say something about a trap and his Mistress releases enough of a hold on him for him to tell her of his suspicions that she was meant to kill Samuel so the vampires would be forced to flee the country from Bran. Marsilia is very interested in this and when Stefan offers to investigate she accepts and dismisses the group and orders the other vampires out. While a weakened Stefan and Mercy are moving a still enthralled Samuel to Mercys' van when another vampire named Andre appears to help them carry Samuel, Stefan agrees and after stowing him away the vampires discuss the effectiveness of Mercys' sheep and then Andre slaps Stefan for bringing Mercy, who according to the vampires is of a species that was antagonistic to them in the past before Stefan and Mercy assure him that she doesn't kill vampires. Mercy starts to drive back to warrens but Samuel begins to come out of the enthrallment and when Mercy begins to calm him down her cell phone goes off startling him and thus causing him to transform.

Answering her phone Mercy listens to Warren tell her the pack knows Adam is at his house and needs Samuel to make sure Adam is safe. Mercy tells him the situation and that she will get there with Samuel as soon as possible. Hanging up and shifting she assumes a submissive position when Samuel finishes his change and approaches her, she is able to help him calm down enough to let his human half regain control. They are noticed by a policeman who is patrolling the park they are in after dark but Mercy is able to convince him that they are well and that Samuel is just a really big dog thanks to the werewolf magic that let them be overlooked. After leaving the park the two of them head to warrens and interrupt the fight going on between Warren and Darryl when Samuel forces Darryl to back down and breaks the spell the pack was maintaining to keep the fight quiet before Adam comes downstairs in apparently good health and the werewolves and Mercy discuss what she and Samuel learned from the vampires before Mercy begins to suspect Dr. Willis of being involved with the tranquilizer and reveals that they went into the Vampire Seethe and Adam sends Mercy home.

The next day Mercy goes to work and while there meets Sylvia Sandoval who is a friend of Tony and they discuss the possibility of her son coming to work for Mercy. Mercy then calls Bran with her theory on the tranquilizer and a possible threat to Bran. When Mercy goes home she is ambushed and captured by David Christiansen and his grandsons. After assuring her that they mean no harm and releasing her to sit on the coach Mercy realizes that Dr. Willis's son Gerry is the one behind the events of the last couple of days. As he keeps track of all the lone wolves in North America and had access to the tranquilizer. David confirms her suspicion and four of them ponder Gerrys' reasons before Mercy asks them what they want with her. They explain Gerrys' telling them about Brans' plans of outing the wolves and Gerrys' plan to prevent it by having Adam challenge Bran after a talk from David to convince him to do so and how it all went in the wrong direction resulting in the attack. David ponders whether it was actually planned that way. Samuel walks in after having listened in on the conversation and informs them that that Adam is missing and David that his father is not leaving his people without support after they come out and plans to control the outcome.

David admits that he already knew this and is planning to turn on Gerry with his mercenary troop and rescue Adam and Jesse who Gerry has that night. He had come to get Mercy for help as he thinks she will keep Adam calm enough so he wont lose control and go wild like when David is around otherwise. Bran calls and tells Mercy to put Samuel on. Mercy decides to give his legend a bit of a boost and lies about being there which Bran is quick to correct and hand over the phone.

Later that night Mercy sneaks into a warehouse while the pack waits farther to avoid detection. Mercy frees Jesse and Adam after he sweats out the silver nitrate they were using to subdue him. With one of David men they begin to make their way out of the warehouse when Adam is attacked by one of Gerrys' werewolves before one of his werewolves intervenes and Mercy shoots said wolf after being thrown into a crate and breaking her arm. They leave the warehouse and are intercepted by the rest of the pack when the red wolf that helped them in the warehouse intercepts a silver dart meant for Adam. When Darryl checks the condition of the wolf it is revealed to be Ben. Adam calls all the wolves within his range while Mercy and Warren remove Jesse from the area.

Mercy returns senses Robert the witch trying to send a spell to kill Adam but intercepts and nullifies it before Sam knocks Robert unconscious before he can kill Mercy. Adam with Sams' help are able to summon Gerry before them. When summoned Sam asks him why he did all that led to this. Mercy then realises that it isn't about the werewolves coming out as Gerry supports that decision but rather of his fathers survival. his entire plan was to convince Bran that he had killed Adam and convince his father that he had not so that Bran would kill him and either before or after Bran killed him he would tell Carter and Carter would challenge Bran to either protect Gerry or get revenge in his name with Roberts' magic to tip the scale in Carters favour.

Such a fight would cause Carter to accept who he was a achieve balance. Mercy informs Gerry that they have dealt with Robert and if a fight takes place Bran will win. Hearing this Gerry requests that his father never learn of his actions and his own death be quick. With that Samuel breaks Gerrys' neck and then cuts of his head with Zees' knife before calling his father and filling him in and taking Mercy to the hospital after she nearly faints. Later that night Bran and Carter go for a run as wolves and curl up to sleep in the snow where Bran kills Carter in his sleep.

A few days later Gabriel Sandoval comes to work for Mercy and Zee before Jesse comes in to tell Mercy the time of the dinner at a restaurant her father and her invited Mercy to. Jesse leaves after flirting with Gabriel and when Mercy is leaving to get ready Tony comes in to talk to her and Gabriel moves to confront him before Tony changes his body language and appearance enough for Gabriel to recognise him as a family friend to his shock. After they send Gabriel to the shop Tony shows Mercy a picture of Mac and tells her his name before asking if she knows where he is. Mercy tells that he worked for her last week but that she hasn't seen him since.

Mercy and Adam are abandoned by Jesse to a date which leads to kissing on Mercys' porch before Adam is surprised to find Samuel living with Mercy as he has decided to go lone wolf in the Tri-Cities Kennewick. Mercy leaves to go to her shop when they start having a dangerous conversation and calls Stefan to help her fix his Scooby Van as her broken arm is in a cast. When Stefan asks about it she promises to tell him the whole story.

Several months later David Christainsen saves the two children of a missionary couple who died and comes out as the first public werewolf to positive reception.

End of Book One.

Timeline Placement[]

The timelines of the two companion series Mercy Thompson and Alpha and Omega are heavily intertwined, so the next book in one series may or may not be the next story in the combined timeline.

Mercy Thompson Series[]

  • NEXT: Blood Bound | Year Two, July | MT Book #2
  • PREVIOUS: none

Combined MT/AO Chronological Timeline[]

  • NEXT: Alpha & Omega (novella) | Year One, November | AO Book #0.5
  • PREVIOUS: none

Characters in Order of Appearance[]

Praise[]

  • "An excellent read with plenty of twists and turns. [Briggs's] strong and complex characters kept me entertained from it's deceptively innocent beginning to its can't-put-it-down end. Thoroughly satisfying, it left me wanting more." -- Kim Harrison, #1 New York Times bestselling author
  • "Patricia Briggs always enchants her readers. With Moon Called, she weaves her magic on every page to take us into a new and dazzling world of werewolves, shapeshifters, witches, and vampires. Expect to be spellbound." -- Lynn Viehl, New York Times bestselling author
  • "A suspenseful read that will have you on the edge of your seat as you burn through the pages. Ms. Briggs weaves paranormal and mystery together so deftly you can't put the book down." -- Romance Junkies
  • "A strong story with multidimensional characters . . . Mercy is, at heart, someone we can relate to." -- SFRevu
  • "I've never been disappointed by one of [Patricia Briggs's] books, and this one is no exception. Mercy's world is an alternate universe much like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books . . . or the Buffyverse or more recently the Kim Harrison books . . . Moon Called ends on a high note and leaves you wanting more. Like a good book should." -- Fresh Fiction
  • "Fans of Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking are sure to enjoy this fast-paced, creature-feature-packed suspense story. Mercy's no-nonsense approach and quick wit coupled with a strong story line and interesting subplots make for a thoroughly entertaining read."-Monsters and Critics
  • "Mercy's a compelling protagonist . . . The story hums along like a well-tuned engine, keeping the reader engaged through the tumultuous climax." -- RT Book Reviews
  • "Inventive and fast-paced . . . Mercy's first-person narrative voice is a treat throughout . . . An entertaining book from start to end." -- The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
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