by Faith Hunter
“Apparently the driver had a snort of liquid warmth and drove off the road. His backup is—was—a pair of four-by-fours and they’re buried beneath a ton of plowed snow, for which we can thank the city of Asheville’s snowplows.”
Do not like sleet! Beast thought.
In the distance I heard the sound of snowplows, brining trucks, and the fainter sound of a police siren. Then more sirens, closer to us, and I feared for a moment that the vamps in the Regal had called the cops. Even in North Carolina it would probably result in days of paperwork to have so many weapons on hand and dead bodies in the hotel, but the units turned away.
Eli said, “Follow me,” and ducked into the driving storm. We trailed him. Eli tapped his mic and went onto a private channel for a discussion with someone, likely the Huey pilot, and oddly, he left me out of the loop. As we raced across the street into the protection of a covered doorway, I thought about being left out for a good dozen steaming, ragged breaths, my small clouds swept away by the icy wind. I’d been sick for months. Eli had, in the way of command structure, moved on. I was proud and sad and jealous and angry all at once, so I kept my mouth closed on any of the things I might have said. We huddled in the doorway, the sickly smell of Ed’s blood making my insides crawl. My primo was asleep, and hopefully not suffering. Bruiser leaned against a wall, looking like a broken doll, his eyes closed, his face pale, even after sipping on vamp blood. He seemed to be having trouble catching his breath.
Brute eased up beside Bruiser and sat, pressing his shoulder and his wolf-warmth against the Onorio.
Shaddock leaned in to him and said, “You’ll feed from my wrist every evening as long as I’m here. No argument, young’un.” I could have kissed the MOC. Bruiser murmured his thanks.
Eli said, “Master of the City. Can you offer us safe haven?”
“Can’t do much about the weather or the lack of power, but I can call my people and get us to the restaurant. I can start a wood fire and feed you reheated barbeque,” Shaddock said with a very human grin, “and bed you down on the floor in the kitchen, but there’s no power, and it’s on the other side of town. Gimme a little time and I’ll roll or bribe a tow-truck driver to get us there, but it’ll take a while.
Eli tapped the mic back to the public channel and then off. To Shaddock and me, he said, “Rock meet hard place. All the hotels are filled. All the B and Bs within walking distance are filled. There’s no vacancy anywhere. No readily accessible, defensible, empty buildings to take over and hunker down in. The city shelters are unprotected against fanghead attack and are too far off site to reach them on foot in the storm.” He swept his eyes over the buildings and up and down the street.
Shaddock said to me, “I can commandeer a snowplow or steal a car. You just say the word, but again, that takes time and the storm is getting worse by the second, Jane.”
“Sitrep,” Eli said, and I gave a chin jut to show I was listening. “Anyone not evac’d out will bivouac in a hostile environment. Freezing to death or being attacked by enemy vamps is no better than the possibility of crashing in the helo. It’s possible for the Huey to take off into a sleet storm, but that will mean the choice of either flying through the sleet and risk icing up, or flying above the storm in the warmer inversion layer to get out of the bad weather, and that risks the weather change at each altitude transition.
“He hasn’t made a decision on whether he’s willing to risk it, but if he decides to make a run, he’ll carry a maximum of seven passengers. In the event he does decide to transport you, his flight plan and altitude will depend on a lot of factors, like the position of the storm, wind speed, the altitude of the inversion layer compared to our current altitude, and the altitude of the inn. And he might have to alter everything at any moment.”
“So it’s wait out the storm here together or split up and it’s gonna suck on board. Got it. Where did the storm come from?” I asked.
Eli gave his barely there twitch of a smile, knowing what I was asking. “Not magic. We’ve been keeping an eye on two weather fronts. We’re currently right on the edge of both, giving us this,” he pointed up.
He turned his attention to Moll and Evan. “The helo’s upgraded deicing systems are the same currently in use on Marine Hueys. The pilot will go through a deicing process before taking off, and the helo has ice meters that tell him how much ice is building up on the frame of the helicopter while in flight. But any ice accumulation on the rotors doesn’t just mean they’ll be heavy; it means they warp, in which case he lands fast or you crash. I’ve seen the bodies of people who crashed. It isn’t pretty and there’s no walking away from it.”
Molly shivered and exchanged that silent communication common between old married couples. She nodded and frowned, thinking. Evan studied the sky. Eli scanned the streets again and back to us. Lightning ripped across the sky and thunder boomed like distant cannon.
“No matter how bad it gets here,” Eli said, “I’d rather you stick it out on the ground. It’s safer.”
“No. We have to get back to the inn,” Molly said, with the resolute tone of a mama bear. “Our children are there.”
Eli nodded and turned away, talking to the pilot again.
Angie Baby. Alone. A ticking time bomb with no finesse. Shiloh the only witch on the premises to keep her in check, a Shiloh who was still healing from having her throat ripped out.
EJ, all power and no training.
Only Shiloh . . .
“We have to go back,” I said. “Bruiser?”
He shook his head, eyes closed, his lips barely moving, saying, “Too sick. I’ll wait it out here.”
“He needs to feed again,” Shaddock said, “now and often.” He sliced his wrist with a tiny black blade and again offered it to Bruiser, who drank a few more sips before pushing the meal away.
“It’s been a while since I had blood. Can’t take more. I’ll be okay until nightfall, as long as I don’t use my magic again until then.” Bruiser opened his eyes and managed a sickly smile, directed at me. “Promise.”
I wanted him with me, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. Silently I slid my eyes from Eli to Bruiser and back, asking Eli to take care of him.
My partner tilted his head. “You know I will.”
I took a breath, thinking. Seven of us. “Ed, of course.” I almost said Gee could fly on his own, but I saw the Mercy Blade’s blue healing magics spreading over Edmund’s body and Ed was still out cold. Gee was using his Anzu magics to keep Ed unconscious and out of pain. “Gee and Shaddock, with me, if you’re willing?” Gee and Shaddock nodded agreement. I steeled my heart and said, “One of the Everhart-Truebloods because if we crash, they’ll have one parent left.”
Molly paled, her red hair blowing and sparkling with sleet. Evan, the air witch, whistled under his breath, his gaze far away, thinking, evaluating the storm.
I said, “That’s five, so two others, whoever we need most. No gear. No weapons. Light load. We can send in four-wheelers or the snowmobiles and the sleds to bring back anyone who stays, but it will be midmorning at the soonest. Decide quick, people.” It felt good to make demands. Real good.
“I’d be mighty appreciative if Kojo and Thema could go. If the storm shifts, they might not survive a sunny day without proper cover.”
Eli tapped his mic, again talking to the pilot: “One lift, seven passengers. How does it look?” He listened and talked, his face grim. “Copy. Extraction point? Copy. Thank you, Captain. You make it, and there’s a bonus. Yeah, in addition to living to see the dawn,” he said with humor, his eyes glancing at me, “we’ll make sure you have a bunk for tonight.”
I nodded. The pilot would be unable to get back to Asheville. We’d put him up.
Eli finished, “I owe you. Out.” To the rest of us, he said, “Okay. We have a hike to the extraction point. Who’s on the Huey?”
“I am,” Molly sai
d.
“Moll—” Evan started.
“No. You have a chance to keep that storm front to the west. To help adjust the inversion layer higher or lower, where the pilot needs it. You can’t do that in the air; you need a circle, on the ground.”
“You can do that?” Eli asked.
Big Evan sighed, the sound gusting from his barrel chest, audible even over the storm. “I can help. My magic isn’t geared for weather, but I know the methods and I have my pipes.” He patted his coat, where I assume he kept his flutes, which were his weapons of war. “But I don’t like it, Moll.”
Molly slid her arm through her husband’s. “I know. But it’s best. Besides, I’m so cold I’d never survive out here. My milk would freeze.”
I wanted to laugh, pretty sure that was a joke. But not totally. Could a mother’s milk freeze in her boobs? Before I could decide how to ask that, Eli led the way into the blowing snow and sleet.
Lincoln stepped into place beside me where I trudged at the back of the group, trying to shake the compacted ice balls from under my toenails with each step. It wasn’t working and Lincoln’s eyes were sparkling with laughter at my leg shaking and foot waggling. He said, “There’s lizards that do that dance step.” Before I could respond he said, “I’ll summon Kojo and Thema. We’ll keep the humans and the witch lady alive in the event of a crash.” He looked me over with a critical eye. “You can shift and live, right?”
“Theoretically.” My Beast might survive a leap out of a slowly falling helicopter.
Big Evan said to Eli, “The Cathedral of All Souls is that way.” He pointed off to our right. “An Episcopal church. I know one of the lay ministers or whatever they’re called. I’ve sent a text, hoping I can get us permission to use the premises.”
“Good thought,” Eli said. “We won’t have barbeque, but a church is the safest place we can hole up. Let’s get your wife on board the Huey.”
The sound of rotors cut through the air.
* * *
* * *
The ride through the storm was cold and miserable, once again deafening without the ear protectors. The turbulence slammed us around until we hit the inversion layer, where the wind whipped in the other direction and rain beat against the windshield and windows all around, and the Huey tried to turn upside down, just for funzies.
Beast growled through my mouth and complained the whole way about being in the belly of a metal bird. Halfway there, Molly threw up from the turbulence. The smell of vomit and Ed’s torn flesh and old blood and soured breast milk were not a good combination. We were all . . . Wretched was a good word. Completely wretched.
My stomach wasn’t happy and the stench meant that Beast was having kittens about it all, bouncing off the walls of my/our brain. It was funny and annoying and I knew she would get me back for making her fly again. I’d probably wake up human, lying in mud two feet deep, or perched naked on a billboard. Beast chuffed in amusement and settled at that thought, planning evil against me as only cats can. Go, me, for giving her the idea.
For a while, in the inversion layer, we leveled out, but that part of the trip was short and the passage back into the storm, with winds in the opposite direction as we descended to land, was horrible. The landing was more a controlled crash, and I heard metal things popping and twanging and snapping. The Dark Queen would have to repair her Warlord’s Huey. My teeth snapped together on a final bump. The skids settled.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for choosing Bell Huey Airlines,” the pilot said. “Watch your step as you disembark. And I thank you for the bunk on the layover.”
The rotors began their slowdown whine as Molly ducked and raced for the house. Lincoln, Kojo, Thema, and Gee, carrying Edmund, climbed out of the Huey and traipsed around to the back of the property. I glanced at the pilot, realizing I didn’t know his name, and decided he was busy. “Thank you,” I shouted to him. He didn’t look up, but he did give me thumbs-up. I stepped to the ice-slicked, crunchy ground, following the vamps and Edmund (who looked like a slab of raw meat slung over Gee’s shoulder) around the house to the finished cottages. The little Anzu was a lot stronger than he looked.
Lincoln opened the door to cottage one, the unit set aside for Edmund, and the inside lights came on. The cottage was set up like a four-star hotel suite, the décor in whites and grays, with a king bed, two pullout couches, an Oriental rug, a small kitchenette with quartz cabinet tops, and a bath that could have been designed right out of an HGTV makeover.
Gee carried Edmund to the bath and put a knee on the edge of the tub. Kojo came up behind him and together they lowered him to the bottom, Gee holding Ed’s head to keep it from bouncing on the porcelain. Gee stood up and backed away, as Lincoln stepped into the bathroom doorway behind me, pulling off his T-shirt.
It was not what I was expecting, all that expanse of flesh and ripping, rippling, striated muscle pressing beneath skin. Hairy bare chest and nipples and—
I jerked my eyes away but not before Thema noticed me looking. At my side, she said softly, “He is indeed a fine-looking piece of man flesh. Though his bum is lacking, I fear.”
Before I could figure out how to respond or how to stop the shock that flushed beneath my pelt, Edmund’s head raised. Fangs clicked down, the sound barely registering in time for my eyes to snap back. Before I could shout a warning, Lincoln Shaddock moved. Popped into the small space beside me. Caught Edmund’s head. Directed Ed’s desperate, insane dash for lifesaving blood to his own neck. Edmund savaged the flesh, biting, biting, sucking in the blood. Lincoln slid his arms around Ed, his voice hoarse from the fangs so near his larynx, saying, “I gotcha, bub. I gotcha.”
Tears filled my eyes and I said to the Master of the City of Asheville, “Thank you.”
“No problem, Queenie. It’s my job.” As master of a city, it truly was, and I inclined my head. Shaddock added, “Invading vamps in my city. Injuring a Mithran without my leave. Didn’t even bother to present themselves to me? I got me lotsa cogitating to do on just how to react to this’un, and how I’ll take his head,” he said.
Ed gulped and gulped, sucking down blood like a starving man. There was no sanity in his eyes. I had seen Leo blood-starved. Leo had tortured me after he was drained. I fought down the memory-fear and the old horror. The effect on vampires’ brains wasn’t pretty, and sometimes vamps didn’t come back from that precipice. Neither did their victims. I steadied my breathing before the nearby vamps caught the scent of yesterday’s fear.
“He has been deeply traumatized,” Gee said, his eyes fastened to the two in the tub. The Mercy Blade was perched on the closed toilet seat, his posture much like that of a big bird, his arms tucked up and his knees beneath his chin. In the white tub, Lincoln was smeared with thin blood and Edmund was breathing in and out, an almost inaudible whine with each breath.
From beside the tub, Kojo said softly, “The Son of Shadows is a dark cloud. His mind eats at the brain and the heart with fangs unlike any other. His magics slice the skin from our bones. I still carry his scars on my soul.” He shook his head, his scalp beneath his short-cropped hair catching the light. “I cannot feed one who has been a vessel for the shadow.”
“Why?” I asked, just as softly.
“For fear the darkness will find its way to me again through my blood.” That sounded like black magic and demon possession all at once. I knew blood demons existed, but my understanding was limited. Maybe demons could pass through shared blood as well as familial bloodlines.
Thema called for Shaddock’s human blood-meals on her cell. She asked for six. That meant the rest of the vamps would be more hungry than usual. When her call was over, I asked, “Is there a chance that Edmund’s brain is tied to Shimon’s? That the SOD can hear everything we say?”
Kojo shrugged, an odd, disconnected movement of his shoulders, as if those muscles were out of sync with the others. “Your Edmund is ve
ry powerful. But there is nothing upon the face of the Earth like the Flayer of Mithrans and his shadow when one is possessed. Anything is possible.”
That was an unconventional way of phrasing it. The smell of Edmund’s blood on the air was so strong that I only realized Molly was walking up behind me when she spoke. “Edmund swore loyalty to me,” she said, “and to Angie and to my family.” She let a small breath go, shifted her position closer to my side. She was nursing, rotating slightly, swaying slowly side to side, Cassy in a sling. The scent of baby, mother’s milk, and the purity of earth magic was intense. Her darker power was back under lock and magical key, and Molly’s relief at being with her children seeped through her pores, strong and clean. “It’s an Everhart responsibility to protect him. I have some shielding workings I can try, to protect his mind and to guarantee that we have privacy.”
Kits. Keep kits safe, Beast thought at me.
“Are you sure?” I asked, seeing the small head at the crease of her upper arm, barely visible beneath a cloth diaper she had placed over herself to nurse. Smart, considering that some vamps were evil dark creatures and I didn’t know where Lincoln’s newest stood on the sanctity of children. Then I remembered the death magics Molly had used at the Regal, and the vamps falling. Moll was not in danger.
She looked up at me as if hearing my thoughts and led the way back into the living area of the cottage. “They weren’t dead. They’re drained. The vamps back at the hotel,” she clarified softly. “And yes, I’m sure. It’s what a Glinda does.”
I chuckled at the name. She was talking about Glinda the Good Witch, from The Wizard of Oz. I peeked back into the bathroom and saw Shaddock tap on the tub, three times, like a TV wrestler asking for backup. Thema took his place, guiding Ed’s fangs out of Lincoln and to her throat.
Molly dug into her pocket, held out her hand, and dropped a small, carved amulet into mine. Everything went silent and my eyes shot open wide. She took it back and placed it on the coffee table at the foot of the sofa, restoring the ambient sound. “It’s a monkey ear charm. You know, like the monkey with his ears covered? Put it on Ed. He won’t be able to hear us strategize.”