Frostbound

by Sharon Ashwood

  Thursday, December 30, 6:00 p.m.

  University of Fairview

  Lore had to go to Perry because the werewolf was stuck at the university. In the midmorning, a power outage had made the pipes freeze and burst, flooding the downstairs computer lab. Plumbers had made it in, but Perry was called to assess the damage and do what he could to rescue his digital babies.

  Lore had been able to drive his truck as far as the university’s main parking lot, but going was slow even with chains. Driving in real winter conditions, he’d quickly learned, was a question of concentration and planning. That didn’t mean more than ten percent of Fairview’s residents concentrated or planned. With so many cars spinning out of control, telephone poles and mailboxes were becoming endangered species.

  He was almost pathetically grateful when he was able to park and make the rest of the way on four feet. Now he was making good time along the path to the Cambridge Building, taking the deep drifts in long bounds. Lore rounded the corner of the building, catching a blast of damp, bitter wind in the face.

  He hoped Perry’s evidence was good. Frankly, Lore was worried that the airports would be cleared and Omara would show up. The queen was overwhelming at the best of times, and Lore’s plate was more than full as it was. With Belenos, rogues, murder, the election and the Prophets knew what else running amok on his watch, a lesser hound would have been babbling by now. Lore was keeping it together, but he was starting to feel punch-drunk.

  The strain was clearly affecting his judgment, if he was spending couch time with Talia. What was he doing? He was supposed to be choosing a mate from the pack, not flirting with vampires. Especially vampires—if Errata’s sources were right—with possible slayer connections. He wasn’t going to jump to conclusions, but that would explain why she could fight like a professional and why she was so closed-mouth about her past. But whatever she’d been, things had changed. What the hell had happened to her?

  It would be easy, even smart, to distance himself from a woman who was not only the wrong species but most likely had been raised in the archenemy’s camp. But she was in trouble, and he couldn’t help himself. Her kiss was like nothing else. Once he’d tasted her, there was no going back.

  Was his attraction the appeal of forbidden fruit? Was it rebellion because he didn’t want Mavritte or one of the other she-hounds?

  No.

  Talia was beautiful and smart, and she was brave. He didn’t know all her story, but she was clearly a survivor. No one mourned as deeply as she did without knowing how to love. No one sat down to swap information with a roomful of shape-shifters unless she was prepared to meet them halfway. And to run away from Belenos and steal from him? That showed the kind of spirit Lore wanted guarding his back.

  The Alpha couple was a partnership. He’d led his people out of hell, and then gone back for the stragglers. He needed a mate who could do the same in a pinch. He needed someone who wasn’t afraid to kick down the bedroom door and come out swinging a baseball bat. To put it in terms his beast understood, she had to smell right.

  Talia was all that and more.

  He was spending that couch time for a very good reason. He intended to have her. Hellhound tradition be damned; he wasn’t going to pass up a woman like that before he even got to know her. It’s the twenty-first century, and we’re not in hell anymore. Get with the program.

  Lore ducked his head and forged on, finding his way by the occasional emergency lights over the building entrances. He’d just about zoned out, hypnotized by the rhythmic sound of his paws in the snow, when a doorway opened and Perry stuck his head out. “I’ve got hot coffee! Fido’s balls, you look like an Arctic troll!”

  Hot coffee! Hallelujah! Lore was about a hundred feet away. He shifted his gait to a higher gear.

  He almost felt the shot flick through the air before he heard the crack. It smacked into the doorframe inches from Perry’s head. He ducked back inside as Lore made a bound for the corner of the building.

  Sniper rifle, Lore thought, morphing back into human form. He dug for his sidearm through layers of coat and sweater. A gunshot was a big jump from beheading with a sword, but then Perry wasn’t a vampire. Lore would have bet his hind paw the rifle used silver bullets.

  Lore sighted down his firearm and searched the roofline of the building opposite the doorway. It was the most likely spot for a marksman to hide, but with no moon, all was inky shadows. Hellhound sight was good in the dark, but not good enough.

  He listened instead, trying to catch the sound of a boot scraping tile, a window sliding closed. He was far away, but sound carried oddly in the cold, dark silence. All he heard was the hiss of blowing snow and the rustle of his own clothes as he breathed.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door swing open again. No, stay inside!

  Perry threw something just as the rifle cracked once more. The object flew upward in an arc worthy of a professional pitcher, heading straight for where the gunman hid. It started small, no bigger than a baseball, but it grew as it spun through the air, blooming into a ball of light that drowned the campus in an eerie blue-green light. Lore shielded his eyes with his arm, squinting through the glare. He saw a man on the roof leap to his feet, falling back into the shadows. Lore squeezed off a shot, but the angle was bad. He got a glimpse of dark clothes, but nothing more.

  The ball exploded, fountaining sparks like a Roman candle. The campus fluttered with plumes of blue-green light, the falling stars hissing as they hit the snow. Sorcery or chemistry? Lore wasn’t sure—Perry was adept at both—but it had bought him a glimpse of the suspect.

  He blinked away the last afterimages from the exploding ball. Scanning the building again, he saw nothing—no shooter, no sign of movement. Crouching low, Lore crossed the distance to the other building. A bullet whined past his ear. He ducked and rolled, floundering a little in the heavy snow, but came up close to the building wall.

  That shot had come from a different angle. The shooter was on the move. He got to the end of the building and, gun at the ready, rounded the corner. There was a door, open just a little because the heavy, wet snow had jammed it.

  Lore slipped inside. With the power out, it was dark. The door led straight to a large spiral staircase that wound around a huge, hanging metal sculpture. A mental calculation said the last shot had probably come from the third floor. Lore started up the stairs, hoping the shooter wasn’t simultaneously descending somewhere else in the building. It was the best he could do. There were too many exits to cover, so a fighting chance was all he had.

  Just enough light came in the stairwell windows to find his way. Stopping at the second floor, he strained to catch any sound of movement. A cold breeze stirred the metal shards of the sculpture, making them turn on their long, thin chains. Nerves chattered at the edge of Lore’s mind, but he tuned them out.

  Instead, he started up the stairs again. He’d gone three steps when he heard a single scuff. He froze. Overhead, two of the metal shapes bumped together in the air currents with a sepulchral clang.

  Lore backed down the stairs, gun aimed at the second-floor landing. An electricity-deprived soft drink machine dripped softly, ice giving up the ghost. Lore peered down the hallway leading from the stairwell to the classrooms. A shadow flickered across the far window so fast it seemed a trick of the eye. A ping of grim satisfaction ran through him.

  Quarry spotted. Now the real work began.

  He slipped out of the stairwell, picking up speed. When he reached the window where he’d seen the figure, a wet footprint glistened on the tile floor, just visible in the light from the window. Lore crouched, squinting at the mark. He could tell it was the right size for an adult human male, but not much else. He followed the direction of the print, heading for the south side of the building.

  There were fewer windows there. There seemed to be no emergency lights in that part the building, or else something had malfunctioned. All Lore could see was the outline of an intersecting hallway ah
ead. He moved cautiously, aware he could easily run into an open door or bit of wall. He’d survive that, but perhaps not the noise he’d make.

  But then he noticed light creeping along the floor. It was coming from the left, up ahead, where he guessed the shooter had gone. As he drew nearer, Lore raised his weapon, focused on the south corridor as it slowly came into view.

  He stopped midstride. The shooter was walking casually down the hall, his rifle—a box-type semiautomatic—slung over one shoulder. He had a flashlight in the other hand. Lore got an impression of someone fit and tall with collar-length hair—but not Belenos. Lore remembered the vampire king as a bigger man. Who was this guy? Lore took aim.

  “On your knees! Now!” he roared.

  The light vanished. The figure didn’t turn or even flinch, but bolted like a flushed rabbit. Lore fired, hoping to scare the guy into stopping, but no such luck. Lore ran after him, afraid to stop and change to his hound form. The seconds it would take would be enough to lose his prey.

  He’d gone about fifty steps when he lost sight of his quarry. He stopped, listening, but there was nothing to hear. Instinct made him fall to the ground a second before another bullet zinged through the air. Lore saw the muzzle flash. The guy was using a classroom door for cover. Lore returned fire, the bullet striking sparks off the door handle.

  The guy dove for the emergency exit a few feet away. They had traveled a nearly complete loop back to the main stairwell. Lore cut down a side hall and aimed for that instead, hoping to head the shooter off when they reached the main-floor landing. Firefights in a stairwell weren’t pretty, and he’d as soon have the element of surprise on his side.

  He galloped down the stairs and jumped the last steps, dashing to the fire exit door across the building foyer and ripping it open. He was late. The shooter was already two flights below, heading for the basement. Thankfully, the emergency lights were working here. Lore charged after him, stripping off his suffocating coat along the way.

  Closing the gap between them, Lore followed the shooter into the subterranean warren of language labs, lockers, and bare concrete. Lore got a few more details—the guy was wearing a watch cap and black clothes. Caucasian. Human? Graffiti snaked along the walls as they streaked past. The runner turned, crashing through the fire doors that passed into a tunnel that ran between this building and the computer lab.

  This is what Lore had been hoping for: an easy shot in an area where there was nowhere to hide. The runner had gone straight into a perfect kill zone.

  “Freeze!” he bellowed, the walls ringing with the word.

  Without stopping, the shooter turned to his right and opened a door in the side of the tunnel.

  What the fuck? Lore charged toward him. He’d been in this underground passageway before. There was no door.

  But the shooter passed through it.

  Lore slowed, fighting momentum, ready to grab this unexpected doorknob.

  But there wasn’t one. No knob. No door. No seam where the door might have been. There was only grubby concrete wall, and a tingling sensation when he touched his hand to the concrete blocks. Magic. Magic not even a hellhound’s power over doorways could break.

  Fury shocked him, leaving his skin tingling and raw. It took him beyond swearing. He simply backed away, turned, and walked quickly to the end of the tunnel to the Cambridge underground entrance. His jaw clenched, and eerie, cold anger gripped him like an invisible beast.

  Sorcery. Hate. Prey. Escape. Tear. Bite.

  As he stalked into the basement computer lab, he could smell damp concrete. A mop and bucket in one corner reminded him there’d been a burst pipe. He walked up the wheelchair ramp to the main floor, wondering where Perry was. Lore pulled out his cell and pushed the speed dial to Perry’s number, but it went to voice mail.

  The ramp ended near the door. Lore looked around, noticing a red smear on the wall. Blood? Automatically, he looked down. There was more spatter on the floor.

  No! Perry had been hit. A trail led away from the door, the teardrop shape of the drips pointing down the hall.

  Lore ran in that direction, pulling out his cell phone again. He hit redial, listening for Perry’s phone. He heard the tinny strains of “Blue Moon” coming from a cluster of couches up ahead. Lore sprinted toward the sound, a sick feeling in his gut.

  Perry was lying on one of the couches, shivering and drenched in blood.

  Chapter 19

  Thursday, December 30, 7:30 p.m.

  Fairview General Hospital

  “Silver bullets?” Talia breathed into the phone.

  She could hear the tension in Lore’s voice. “The bullet was a safety slug filled with silver pellets. The penetration wasn’t deep, but a lot of metal got into his bloodstream.”

  Talia knew very well what that meant, because she’d used those rounds herself. Organ damage, and then death. Oh, God, Perry. It was a bad way to go, but at least it would be relatively fast. “Meet me at the front door of the hospital in half an hour.”

  She hung up the phone before Lore could argue. Talia had been mostly okay with staying at the condo while Lore went to the university, but now she couldn’t sit around any longer. No one used those slugs but professional monster-killers. They were hard to get, expensive, custom-made, and this was her area of expertise.

  Among the Hunters, she had been one of the very best shots. She knew where to get specialized ammunition, who made it in which back room, and what their maker’s marks looked like. Safety slugs mushroomed on impact, so conventional ballistics was tricky, but there might be other clues as to where it came from. With a stroke of luck, she might even figure out who pulled the trigger. Perry had found the images that proved she had come home too late to kill Michelle. She owed him whatever she could offer.

  A sixth sense told her to hurry. Fortunately, she’d already solved the problem of weapons. A search earlier that evening had revealed the locker where Lore kept his toys. There was a lock box protected by one of those zappy spells, but she found a knife in a sheath she could strap to her calf. It had probably been meant for Lore’s forearm, but whatever.

  In a determined flurry, she bundled into her coat and ran out into the snow. A few of the main buses were running, and there was no way she could be identified under a hood, scarf, mitts, and layers of sweaters. Everyone out on the streets looked like a bundle of knitting projects. She doubted anyone could even tell she was Undead, much less pick her out of a lineup.

  The bus took longer than she expected, but it successfully dropped her at the edge of the hospital grounds. The parking lot was largely empty, but plenty of people had slipped, skidded, and snow shoveled their way into Emergency. The desk at the entrance was mobbed, making it easy to simply walk past. The nurses were too busy to care about one young woman wandering by, craning her neck to find one tall hellhound.

  The gray tiled floor was covered in wet footprints. Talia could see the occupants had filled every bench. She caught the stink of wet wool and coats that had gone too long without dry cleaning. Chatter filled the place, mostly folks swapping bad weather stories.

  After the quiet of Lore’s bedroom, Talia was overwhelmed by the noise. Plus, she was hungry. She’d refused the icky refrigerated blood and now she was regretting it. The ambient smell of the hospital wasn’t helping. Beneath all that antiseptic was . . . Oh, don’t go there.

  The sight of Lore leaning against the wall, one leg bent and arms crossed, banished all thoughts of hospital food. The memory of his taste brought saliva to her mouth. She walked up to him, untying the long striped scarf she’d swiped from his drawer.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.” Now that she was close, she could see the strain around his eyes.

  “How is he?”

  “The doctors put him on hemodialysis to clean as much of the toxin out of his blood as they can. They say it’s the only thing that works on werewolves.”

  “What’s the prognosis?”

  “They don’t kno
w yet, but at least they’ve got plenty of blood donors. I think all of Pack Silvertail showed up.”

  They reached the elevators and Lore punched the button. “Perry was lucky to get a bed. Not all hospitals are equipped to treat shifters.”

  Talia understood. A lot of people still believed that werebeasts would automatically heal if they changed form. That worked with small injuries, but few could summon enough energy to change after trauma and massive blood loss.

  The elevator arrived, disgorging an orderly pushing an empty gurney. They got in and the doors closed with a shudder. With glacial slowness, it started going up. They were alone, but she could smell the hundreds of warm bodies that had come and gone throughout the day, some cleaner than others.

  Talia glanced at Lore. A deep frown line creased his brow. She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it. Startled, he glanced down, then squeezed back.

  “I’m glad you came,” he said.

  “It’s good not to be alone when things go bad.”

  He couldn’t quite manage a smile, but the worry line relaxed.

  The elevator doors opened and they exited on the third floor.

  “I hate hospitals,” Talia grumbled. Health care administrators seemed to search the world over to find the most stomach-turning shades of paint. This ward had walls the hue of squished caterpillar guts.

  She trailed Lore down the corridor, unbuttoning her coat. They’d rounded the corner, heading to the area marked NONHUMAN PATIENTS when Lore slowed, putting a hand on her arm. Up ahead she could see a cluster of people hanging around the doorway. Many of them looked related—lean and compact, with brown, wavy hair. They moved like they were on springs, filled with restless energy. A few paced back and forth, the others doing their best to stare down the nurse. Wolves.

  There were a few more who weren’t shifters—including a tall, dark-haired human. Handsome in a square-jawed, no-nonsense way that belonged to action movies and cop shows. Baines.