The interior roads weren’t clear of snow, and the BOW slipped and slid and a couple of times almost got stuck. Finally reaching the gate in front of Erebus’s home, Meg jumped out and held the door open for Sam. Before he could dash off, she picked him up and staggered to the gate.
“Mr. Erebus! Mr. Erebus! We need help!”
The door opened, and Erebus glided over the snow-covered walkway.
“Why is our Meg out in such weather when an enemy is among us?”
She tried to lift Sam above the gate, but couldn’t do it. “Those men,” she panted. “They’re after Sam. I
know
they’re after Sam. Please take him, Mr. Erebus. Simon is protecting the Courtyard, and there’s no one else who can keep those men away from Sam except you. I know it’s against the rules for anyone to enter the Chambers, but he needs your help. He needs you.”
Sam began to squirm and struggle, but she held on to the pup while her eyes stayed fixed on the old vampire. “Please help us.”
Erebus pulled open the gate. “Come in. Both of you will be safe here.”
She heard snowmobiles approaching from two directions. They didn’t need to stay on the roads, so they must have split up in the hopes of trapping her. And that meant she had run out of time.
She shoved Sam into Erebus’s arms and stepped back. “I’ll lead the men away from here.”
“No,” Erebus said. “You come in too.”
“Sam won’t be safe if I stay.” She cut off his objections by adding, “I know this.”
She got back in the BOW and took off, shivering from cold and blinking back tears as she drove recklessly down the interior road that would take her to her fate.
An explosion,
Monty thought as he hung up the phone.
In the Courtyard. Oh, gods.
He grabbed his coat and headed out to commandeer whatever car was available.
When his mobile phone rang, he almost ignored it, but Debany and MacDonald were already on patrol, and they might be calling to report. “Montgomery.”
“Kowalski, here. Ruthie just called. There was an explosion in the Courtyard, maybe more than one, but not near the shops. I’m heading there now. Thought you should know.”
Then the Utilities Complex was probably the target of one of those explosions. “How can you get there?”
“I do some cross-country skiing. I can make it to the Courtyard.”
He understood why Kowalski wanted to get to Ruth, but how were the Others going to respond to
any
human right now, especially an armed man? “You take care, Karl, and stay in touch.”
“Yes, sir.”
When Monty stepped outside, Louis Gresh was waiting for him.
“I heard,” Louis said. “You’re going to need help. And you’re going to need someone driving who can handle this snow.”
“Thanks,” Monty said as they got in Louis’s car.
“Just doing my part to keep us alive,” Louis replied.
As they reached the intersection of Parkside and Chestnut, they saw the flashing lights of patrol cars and emergency vehicles. Louis shook his head and continued on Chestnut. “We’ll go up Main Street. We’ll have the best chance of getting through that way.”
Monty just nodded—and hoped they got through in time.
The special messenger and his fourth man caught up to the three he’d sent to chase down the benefactor’s property. They were idling in front of a black wrought-iron fence.
According to the information he’d been given, the damn female was supposed to be physically weak and without the practical knowledge needed to operate machines or drive vehicles. Unless they were following a decoy, which he didn’t believe, the benefactor’s information was out of date.
“Where?” he snapped.
“She left the pup with the old man who lives in that little building,” one man reported. “We saw her turn onto the road up there.” He pointed. “We’ll have no trouble catching her.”
Maybe not,
he thought. But there were things happening now that hadn’t shown up during their testing forays—like those snow funnels that appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast. In addition to that, the team that had set fire to the barn wasn’t answering their radios anymore, and the men who came in through the western breach in the fence were talking about the ground shaking and water twisting up into frozen walls, blocking their escape. They were heading for the exit around where the Crows roosted or whatever the fuck Crows did. Trouble was, according to the map Asia Crane had provided, the Wolves were between the western breach and the Corvine gate.
Maybe he should have wondered why the money had been so good for this assignment, but he hadn’t, and none of them would get anything if the property wasn’t reacquired.
He wagged a finger at two of the men. At least Asia Crane’s fumbling had supplied them with a bonus acquisition. “You two get the pup from the old man. We’ll reacquire the property, and then we’ll all get out of here.”
That said, the messenger raced up the road the property had taken.
Simon and Blair carried Ferus into the bodywalker’s den in the Wolfgard Complex and laid him in the bed of straw she had prepared.
“Bullets,” she growled as she unwrapped the blankets. “Are the monkeys with the guns still alive?”
“No,” Blair replied.
She nodded in satisfaction, then said, “Go. I will do what I can, and Namid will decide if he is to remain with us or become a part of Thaisia.”
They backed out and looked at each other, not sure where they were most needed—until Simon heard Sam’s panicked <
Arroooo! Arrooooo! Meg’s gone! Meg’s gone!>
The pup didn’t answer him, but Vlad did.
The Sanguinati gathered around Erebus’s home, all smoke and shadows as the two men pushed open the gate and stepped into the Chambers. Sam had stopped trying to escape from Erebus’s arms and now howled and howled as if his puppy heart was broken.
Erebus stood on the threshold, smiling at the prey who were so obliging to bring themselves to the feast.
“Give us the pup, old man,” one of the monkeys said.
“Eh?” Erebus replied, turning his head as if to hear the words better. As if he couldn’t hear a heartbeat anywhere within Sanguinati land.
“Give us the pup if you know what’s good for you.”
“Come, little one,” Erebus whispered, taking a step back. “This is not for you to see.”
“Hey!” one monkey shouted as the two men rushed toward the closing door.
Vlad was so startled by the words, his smoke form condensed into a partial human shape. Punishment was a death that took days and broke the mind before it destroyed the body. Only the most hated enemies were condemned in that way, and the words told him the depth of Erebus’s hatred for these particular humans. So Grandfather’s next words didn’t surprise him.
As his kin surrounded the two intruders, he sent a message to Simon.
Asia picked herself up, still not sure what happened. They hit something. Or something hit them. But she’d heard the sound of bone breaking before the driver went flying and the snowmobile went up a snowbank at a bad angle and tipped over. Lucky for her, she bailed out before it tipped, but . . .
Had she really seen a giant bear made out of snow just before the accident? Impossible!
Asia glanced at the dead man and swallowed hard. Then again,
something
had swiped off the man’s face.
A howl rose from behind her. She didn’t know squat about the supposed tonal qualities of Wolf howls, but that particular Wolf sounded pissed off, and she didn’t want to run into him.
She took a step toward the snowmobile, thinking she could right it and drive out of the Courtyard, maybe all the way back to her apartment, where she would pack and be ready to leave town as soon as the driving ban lifted.
Something nearby growled.
Stepping away from the snowmobile, she began walking toward the Market Square and the parking lot. She didn’t give a damn about the driving ban. She’d just get her car unstuck and get out of town.
Nothing growled as she continued walking, but another howl was flung to the night sky—and was answered.
Asia broke into a jog.
Meg braked too hard and did a 360-degree spin before regaining control and stomping on the power pedal. She’d be scared later about what she’d just done. Right now, she had to get to the lake. She wasn’t sure if Winter would be there, but Spring would be. Maybe Air and Water too. She hadn’t met Earth or Fire, the other two cousins, but she’d filled a couple of library requests for each of them in the past week. If they were around, they would help her. Wouldn’t they?
A yellow triangle next to the power bar warned her that the BOW wasn’t going to run much longer. Behind her, she glimpsed lights. Those men, the enemy, were still after her.
Almost to the Courtyard Creek Bridge. And once she crossed the bridge, she would be in the Elementals’ part of the Courtyard.
Simon stripped off his clothes, shifted to Wolf
,
and burst out of the Wolfgard Complex, followed by Blair and Elliot.
The lake. Not too far from the Wolfgard land, then. Not far from him.
He took off, running, loping, bounding into and through drifts in the road, moving steadily toward the lake and Meg.
As Thunder and Lightning galloped toward the lake, Jester hung on to the front seat of the sleigh. Every time the horses’ hooves slammed into the ground, the potential for another storm grew in intensity. It could fade; the storms did sometimes. But Jester doubted this one would fade.
Humans often said payback was a bitch. Well,
Winter
was looking for payback.
Having survived the results when Winter was in full temper, he almost felt sorry for the humans.
Almost.
The yellow warning triangle was replaced by a blinking lightning bolt—the “charge me” symbol. A few seconds later, the BOW rolled to a stop within sight of the bridge. Meg got out, poised to run across the bridge. But the snowmobiles roared into sight, the headlights blinding her.
She knew what it felt like to be free, to have friends, to have a
life.
To have people she loved. She wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from her.
She bolted down the bank that led to the frozen creek. Harder to catch her, harder to disappear with her if she could reach the creek where she would be in the open and the Others could see her.
Her feet went out from under her, and she slid to the edge of the constructed retaining wall next to the bridge. As soon as she lowered herself to the creek, she screamed “Help!” and began shuffling across the ice.
“Stop!” a man shouted behind her. “Stop, you stupid bitch!”
Meg kept moving toward the other bank, slipping and sliding while men shouted for her to stop.
“Winter!” she yelled.
“Winter!”
“Meg?” The voice seemed to come from everywhere—from the snow and from a coldness that was so bitter, Meg felt like she was breathing ice.
“Stop!” a man shouted.
The crack of gunshot. Something hit the ice near Meg’s right foot. Shards struck her, and she jerked to her left, still moving toward the bank.
Cracking sounds under her feet. Remembering Spring’s warning, Meg veered toward the right. Another shot sprayed shards of ice that had her turning back toward the weakened ice.
Winter suddenly appeared on the bank.
“They have guns!” Meg shouted. She tried to hurry and get off the ice before her friend was noticed by the men with guns.
Just another step,
she thought.
Just another step.
“Meg, no!” Winter screamed.
As she took the last step, her hands reaching for the stones that acted as a natural containment wall on this side of the creek, the ice shattered beneath her feet, and Meg went under.
CHAPTER 27
T
he special messenger swore when the property fell through the ice. Still had a chance to retrieve her. If he could drive off the bitch standing on the bank, his men could cross the bridge and . . .
Two more women suddenly appeared. One of the women leaped from the bank, smashing through the ice while black smoke flowed across the creek toward the hole. The white-haired woman who was dressed like something out of a creepy novel
screamed
,
and then the one standing next to her
screamed
. And then he couldn’t see anything because it was snowing so hard, and that snow was whipped by such a savage wind, he couldn’t even see his own hand. As he fought his way back up the incline to his snowmobile, he heard tree limbs snapping around him.
What were those bitches?
No chance to recover the property now. Good thing the benefactor had made a subsidiary deal for the Wolf pup with the Sparkletown bigwig who had hired Asia Crane.
Had Asia tried to double-cross all of them when she went after the pup by herself? He didn’t know and, at this point, he didn’t care. He just hoped the pup’s acquisition would be profitable enough to make this job worthwhile.
He crawled the remaining distance toward the barely visible lights of two snowmobiles.
“Report!” he yelled, fighting to gain his feet.
He tripped over one man whose head was almost twisted off the shoulders. Where was the other member of his team? Fucking coward must have run off.
Or was taken?
Lightning tore the sky, closely followed by thunder that shook the ground.
When he reached his snowmobile, he took a moment to recall where he needed to go in order to escape from this place. Then he roared across the bridge.
Fuck this assignment and this fucking city.
As soon as he handed over the pup and got paid, he was getting back to civilization. And he hoped his balls fell off if he
ever
took another assignment that involved the fucking Others.
Cold. So cold. Already impossible to breathe.
Suddenly, Meg’s hands felt the sting of bitter cold air. She tried to grab for something, anything. She thought she felt fur, but she couldn’t hold on.
Cold. So cold.
She slipped back into the dark.
Simon clamped his teeth around her forearm firmly enough to hold her. When Vlad flung her toward the surface, Simon felt her fingers in his fur as she tried to grab him. But she hadn’t been strong enough to hold on.
The ground rumbled beneath him, shaking him off his slippery perch just enough that Meg’s head went under the water again. He hauled on her arm, pulling her back up while Blair grabbed for anything he could without ripping her skin with his teeth and claws.
Vlad was doing his best to keep her where they could reach her, but as smoke he couldn’t help her, and in human form he risked being swept under the ice. Even Water was trying to get Meg to safety, but she didn’t know how—
none
of them knew how—to help a human.
Shifting to a between form that kept the Wolf head and teeth but gave him the fur-covered body of a man, he finally got his fingers through a belt loop in her jeans and pulled her up the bank.
Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled.
He squinted at the blinding snow, hunching over Meg to give her some protection. How were they supposed to reach a hospital?
Jester was suddenly in front of him, holding out blankets. Then Winter placed a freezing hand on his shoulder and said, “I’ll drive you to the human place.”
Wrapping Meg in one blanket, he carried her to the sleigh and climbed into the backseat. He settled on one side of her while Jester pressed against her on the other side, tucking the second blanket around all of them as best he could.
Simon stared at Blair, his enforcer, and Vlad, who was Erebus Sanguinati’s most trusted weapon.
of our enemies get out of the Courtyard.>
Blair howled the Song of Battle and took off. Vlad gave him a nod, shifted to smoke, and followed his own trail.
Air leaped into the front seat beside Winter, who looked back at Simon. Despite his own fury, it took all the courage he had not to whimper at what he saw in her eyes.
“Run, my boys. Run!” Winter shouted to Thunder and Lightning. “Run for our Meg. AND LET THE STORM FLY!”
She screamed, and Air screamed.
Simon held on to Meg, licking the leaking wound on her chin as the Elementals unleashed their rage on the city of Lakeside. And he wondered if the hospital with its human healers would still be there by the time the sleigh arrived.
Monty and Louis were a couple of blocks from the intersection of Chestnut and Main when the new storm came out of nowhere and hit Lakeside with an insane fury.
Fog rolled so thick through the streets, they couldn’t see anything but the taillights of the car ahead of them—and half the time they couldn’t even see those. Mist followed fog, creating a thin glaze of ice on the street, and what fell on the windows defied the wipers’ ability to keep the glass clear. Snow fell heavy and fast, and the traffic that had been making slow but steady progress was instantly bogged down. Tires spun on the ice, and the wind was a battering force that slammed some of smaller cars into other vehicles as funnels appeared and disappeared, ripping a door off a car and flinging it through the window of a nearby building. Postal boxes were torn off their concrete platforms, becoming another hazard for motorists and pedestrians alike. Even people, knocked off their feet by the wind, were flung into the fog-filled streets, invisible to drivers. Lightning flashes came so fast, they reminded Monty of strobe lights, and the thunder that followed each flash rattled buildings and shattered windows.
“Turn on the radio,” Louis said. “Don’t know what good it will do, but I’d like to know what we’re in for.”
Monty turned on the radio.
“. . . blew in out of nowhere. They’re calling it the storm of the century. We’ve had a foot of snow in the past fifteen minutes, and there is no sign of it letting up. Lightning strikes have taken out some power nodes, and several areas of Lakeside are without electricity. Telephones are erratic. Ice is coating the lines, and they’re snapping under the weight. So are tree limbs. Being outside isn’t just hazardous, it’s suicidal. We’re WZAS, but we’re not being a wiseass now, folks. This is big and it’s bad. Get off the streets. Get to some kind of shelter. This is Ann—”
Static. Monty shut off the radio.
A storm that hit the city with insane fury. The radio station might be saying it came out of nowhere, but Monty figured that by now everyone in Lakeside realized
where
this storm came from. But how many had heard about an explosion in the Courtyard and could even guess why this vengeance was pounding the city?
When it was done, how many of these people would be left to bury their dead and rebuild their lives? How many would try to pick up the pieces without ever knowing why this storm tried to destroy them?
The special messenger raced toward the Corvine entrance. The fucking Crows wouldn’t be out in this storm. The wind would snap off their wings. Gods below,
nothing
should be out in this storm.
But something was standing there. Two of them. In his way.
Female forms caught by the snowmobile’s headlight. One of them was brown, but the other had red hair tipped with yellow and blue. They swung out of his way before he ran them down, but as he passed them, the brown one stomped her foot.
The earth lifted under him, under all that snow, tossing him and the snowmobile into the air. He felt the machine tipping and couldn’t regain the balance. As he came down, he threw himself off the snowmobile to avoid being trapped.
He hit snow that melted under him so fast, he found himself at the bottom of a crater filled with several inches of steaming water. Then the red-haired female leaped into the crater, grabbed his shoulders, mashed her lips against his, and breathed into his mouth.
Fire burned his throat and seared his lungs. Burn holes appeared where the yellow and blue ends of her hair brushed against his parka. Struggling to breathe, he reached for his gun, tried to defend himself. She grabbed his hands, and fire burned through the gloves, turning his hands into torches.
She held on and
laughed.
Then she released him, sprang out of the crater, and disappeared.
Have to get out. Have to get away.
He was still struggling to draw air into his damaged lungs and pull himself out of the crater when the Wolves found him. And he was still alive when they began to feed.
Asia rubbed at the snow crusting her eyelashes and looked again.
She’d made it. She’d reached the Market Square. From bits she’d heard, the Others didn’t always lock their doors. She might find something open, might be able to get out of this storm for a little while.
A howl came from somewhere behind her. That freaking Wolf. Why didn’t it have the sense to hole up somewhere?
An answering howl came from somewhere ahead of her.
Gods above and below,
another one
?
She turned her back to the wind to give herself a chance to take a few full breaths. She couldn’t take shelter in the Market Square. If the Wolves found her there, they would kill her. She had to get to her car. Or maybe she would leave the freaking car and just go to the Stag and Hare to wait out the storm.
With luck, the special messenger had stashed Meg somewhere. And the Wolf pup too. Maybe she wouldn’t get as much money as she’d hoped, but the experience would be invaluable for her TV series and give her an “I’ve seen the real thing” edge no other actress could match.
As soon as she could get out of this city, she would head back to Sparkletown. She would meet with Bigwig, who would be her producer, and then she would spend a couple of days on a beach, baking in the sun until her bones finally thawed.
But before she could do any of that, she had to get out of the Courtyard.
Staying close to the buildings, Asia trudged the length of the employee parking lot to the wall that separated that lot from customer parking. Gasping for breath, she leaned against the wooden door that provided access between the two lots.
Almost out. Almost safe. She could make it.
She kicked snow away from the door in order to pull it open enough to squeeze through. Then she waded through thigh-high snow—and bumped into one of the other cars that was buried in the lot. Fighting her way to the lump of snow that was closest to the street, she let out a giddy laugh as she brushed the snow off the driver’s-side door. She needed to get out of the storm for a few minutes before fighting her way up the street to the Stag and Hare.
“Keys,” she said, pulling off a glove in order to unzip the pocket that held the car keys. With keys in hand, she went to the back of the car and kicked the snow away from the tailpipe to give the exhaust a way to escape. Then she hurried back to the door and opened it. “Going to get out of here. Going to get warm.”
“No. You’re not,” Tess said.
Asia turned and felt something break inside her mind when she looked at the black hair that coiled and moved, looked at the face Tess usually hid behind the human mask. She tried to look away, but she couldn’t make her eyes work, couldn’t do anything but stare at something she didn’t want to see.
She sagged and would have slid to the ground if Tess hadn’t grabbed her arm to keep her upright.
She couldn’t feel that arm, and her legs weren’t working right. And beads of sweat trickled down the inside of her skull. She could feel them trickling and tickling inside of the bone.
That wasn’t right.
Tess eased her into the driver’s seat, lifting her legs and positioning them so that all she had to do was shift her foot to the gas pedal. Her hands were gently placed in her lap. Leaning in, Tess tossed the keys onto the passenger’s seat. Asia could see them out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t turn her head to look at them, couldn’t lift her hand to reach for them. Couldn’t do anything except feel the relentless, terrible thing that was happening inside her body.
It was raining inside her skull.
“Wha . . .”
Fingers turned her head so she could look at that terrible face with its terrible smile.
“Wha . . . are . . . you?”
Tess stared at her, then breathed in deep and sighed as if she’d just tasted something wonderful. “You monkeys have no word for what I am.”
Her face was turned again so her eyes stared out the windshield that showed her nothing but snow. The car door closed.
Asia’s mind continued to break. Her body continued to break. Nerves finally screamed their warnings of pain, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
And inside her skull, it continued to rain.
Tess squeezed through the door at the back of the parking lot, then pushed it closed.
In ancient times, there had been a name for her kind. But the naming attracted the named, so the word was said to be cursed. As races and languages changed, the symbol of the word, still recognized in the primal part of the human mind, was never translated into newer languages. Which was why, beyond a few whispered myths, even the rest of the
terra indigene
no longer knew about Namid’s most ferocious predator.
Long ago, there
had
been a word for her kind. Then, as now, it meant “harvester of life.”