A Warm Heart in Winter

by J. R. Ward

  Qhuinn halted in mid-step and popped his brows. And then he yanked open the door with an expression of total focus.

  “Fritz!” he called out. “Get me the flamethrower!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They’re not shutting.”

  Zsadist paused his hammer-and-nail routine and glanced down from his perch on a stepladder. “What aren’t shutting?”

  Payne, who was holding a six-foot-long plywood section to the sitting room’s busted window for him, also looked at Tohr.

  “You mean the daylight shutters?” she asked. “Because they’re fine in here.”

  The other brother walked across the antique carpet, his shitkickers crunching over broken glass. Bending down, he picked up the sandbag that was next to the silk sofa and then glared around like he was searching for other signs of storm-related vandalism and equipment failure.

  And PS. Z thought, if it was true that the shutters were failing? Fuck the snow, they had bigger problems. Of all the human myths around vampires, those rats without tails had gotten one thing right: No sunlight. Ever. So the mansion, like any other house inhabited by the species, had custom-made shutters that got locked into place during the day.

  Windows needed to be covered before daybreak.

  “I should amend that,” Tohr muttered. “Some of the shutters aren’t working. I just needed to check we were covered in here.”

  “How many are bad?” Payne asked.

  “We got three sets across the back, so far. But this is a big house, as you know, and that wind is a bastard. We’re definitely going to lose some trees tonight, and that means all the windows should be protected.”

  Z pounded in another nail, and then descended the stepladder and moved the thing around Manny’s shellan to the other side of the plywood. Even though he didn’t know a damn thing about decor, you didn’t need an Architectural Digest eye to see that the insta-fix was a frickin’ eyesore in the elegant room.

  But it was better than having three feet of snow on the Aubusson—

  As the wind speed surged again, the gusts whined through the gaps around the window’s molding, and he wondered if he should have used screws.

  Or maybe bricks and mortar.

  Restarting with the hammer, he nailed another twelve four-inchers in a tidy little row down the plywood’s flank. With the last one in place, he disembarked from the ladder and—well, hello peanut gallery. All kinds of people had come in and were on the talk train: Rhage was going on about some fuse box, V was checking the exterior cameras on his phone, and Tohr was talking about emptying the rooms that weren’t protected to prevent further furniture damage.

  “How many shutters failed?” Z asked. “Do we have a total.”

  This had a silencing effect, and Tohr did the duty on replying. “Still tallying. And fixing them is going to be a bitch. Even the ground-floor windows are ten feet high off the ground, so it’s not an easy reach, and so far, the failures are on banks of windows we can’t open—so it’s not like we can lean out to see what’s wrong.”

  “I’ll take care of everything,” Rhage announced. “I can get a ladder—”

  “No, I’ll do it.” V stepped forward. “I’ll get a ladder and—”

  Tohr interrupted the pair. “That wind is really dangerous, even if some are on the back side of the house—”

  “You guys are so cute.”

  As the male voice spoke up, everybody turned to the laconic commentary. Balthazar, one of the Band of Bastards, was leaning against the sitting room’s doorjamb, his long body at ease, a Yoplait strawberry yogurt in one hand, a spoonful of the sweet stuff on the way to his mouth in the other. He’d been letting his brown hair grow out, and the waves were down to his thick shoulders now, a feminine-ish fall that did absolutely nothing to maternalize his muscle-heavy body, his half-lidded, slightly sneaky eyes, or his sly attitude.

  The fighter was a snake in the grass, something that moved quietly and dangerously, always tracking everyone and everybody in any room. But Z actually liked the fucker. Balz never apologized for or tried to hide what he was, and he had the one virtue that mattered: He was willing to die for the people under the mansion’s roof.

  So a snake with a moral compass.

  “I mean, really,” Balz murmured before disappearing the spoon between his smackers. “So cute.”

  Vishous went hands on hips, proving, once again, that he had the warm-and-fuzzies of an Uzi. “You want to explain that compliment?”

  The motherfucker was implied.

  Balz shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, you bunch of chest-thumping, I’ll-handle-it’s are great. But if you want someone to scale a building, especially in conditions like this, you should use somebody who’s done it before.”

  “Well, ain’t you Spider-Man.”

  “No, I’m a thief.” Balz made a ring around the inside of the little container, turned the spoon to his tongue, and licked things clean. “I’ve climbed more shit than you all have stabbed—and in weather as bad as this. Besides, if I slip off and break my head, who cares? Oh, and don’t give me that I’ll-just-dematerialize-out-of-the-fall bullshit. You get twenty or thirty feet up, freezing cold in a storm, trying to fight with exterior shutters on tracks that were mounted in, what, the seventies? Eighties, in a best case? Good luck going into a free fall and getting ghost in a split second. You will hit hard, even with the snowpack, and hurt something that can’t grow back. And need I remind you that most of you—oh, wait, all of you—have shellans to worry about? Let a dummy like me do this, will ya?”

  “You know”—Rhage crossed his arms over his chest like the blond Adonis he was—“he’s not talking stupid.”

  Balz pointed across the sitting room with his spoon. “You, sir, are smarter than you look and you’ve never looked stupid.”

  “You’re willing to go up on the house then?” V asked.

  “Yup. I’ll figure out what’s wrong and we can fix it together—”

  “I’ll spot you,” Z cut in. “We’ll use ropes and I’ll be your ground. And fuck off with the you-can-handle-it. Death bores me after all these years. I’m way too familiar with it.”

  Balz shook his head. “You’re going to stand out there in a blizzard for nothing.”

  Z’s eyes flashed black. “You think I can’t handle the cold.”

  Instantly, the Bastard ducked his stare. “Actually, I’m very sure you can—”

  Without any brownout or blink warning, the mansion was plunged into absolute darkness, the electricity cut.

  “Shit on a shingle,” someone muttered. “Does anyone else think this is going to be a really long night?”

  * * *

  Qhuinn was just stepping out of the cold garage and into the warm back hall when everything went dark. Immediately, he reached back and took Blay’s arm—and worried his fantasy about the tarp and the flamethrower was about to get derailed.

  “You okay?” he demanded.

  “Really.” Blay chuckled. “If a piano had fallen on my head, you’d have heard it even in the dark.”

  The door slammed shut behind them, and Qhuinn stayed where they were, waiting for the emergency generator to kick on. When nothing happened, he looked around. But like that was going to help? He felt like someone had thrown a black felt bag over his head—

  Light flared, emanating from Blay’s phone, a pinpoint of here-ya-go that diffused into a shallow, blue-bright illumination that pulled the tile floor out of the void. The beam moved around, illuminating the closed doors of the mudroom, the snow boots of the doggen lined up by an Orvis mat, the outerwear hanging on pegs.

  “Twins are safe and sound up in the bedroom,” Blay said. “Xcor just had Syphon text us both. He’s lit candles, so they’re not scared.”

  Qhuinn’s worry deflated instantly. “I love that Bastard.”

  Down the hall, voices from the kitchen rose in volume and velocity, the doggen cooking staff clearly nervous—although knowing the way they thought, they were more worried a
bout Last Meal being late eight hours from now rather than any kind of home invasion.

  Then again, anyone tried to get inside who wasn’t allowed? Not going to be pretty. And hey, Fritz would have plenty of blood to clean up, which was one of his favorite hobbies. #BOGO

  Blay led the way forward with his phone, and as they emerged into the culinary area where preparations for Last Meal were indeed in full swing—or had been until it was lights-out—the doggen were clustered together, holding hands in their chef whites.

  “Don’t worry,” Blay told them. “We’ll figure this out. Let’s get you guys some candles—”

  Fritz came in from the pantry with a miner’s light on his head and a bundle of wax-and-wicks in his arms. For once, he was not smiling.

  “What shall we do about the bread,” he said as he began passing out the candles. “Light these, yes, light them, please. We must needs recalibrate our offerings for the end of the night.”

  As the staff shared a box of matches, pinpoints of lights flared in a circle around the stainless steel island, drawing anxious faces out of the dark.

  “You all are safe here,” Qhuinn told them. “The shutters are in place in this wing, so nothing is going to get through any windows or the foot-thick stone walls. But we need to check for damage elsewhere.”

  “Whatever may we do to assist you?” Fritz asked as he tucked his hands up close to his throat. “May we help in some manner?”

  “Call your staff down here, all of them. If we know where you are, we don’t have to worry about you. God only knows what else has gone wrong.”

  Fritz bowed low and took out his phone. “Yes, sire. Right away!”

  When Qhuinn motioned over his shoulder, Blay nodded, and they walked out into the dining room. Everything from First Meal had been cleared, but there were tall stacks of china and bundles of sterling silver flatware that had already been put out to reset the table.

  “Where’s the generator?” Blay asked.

  “Not a damn clue.”

  As they entered the foyer, others in the household were gathering at the base of the stairs, various camera phones and candles doing the duty with the light thing. There was a lot of talk, and then a voice broke through.

  “I can fix the generator.”

  All the chaos turned to the male who had spoken. Ruhn, mated of Qhuinn’s cousin Saxton, was calm-eyed and handyman-ready in his flannel shirt and his low-hanging jeans.

  “Just show me where it is,” the guy said. “And I’ll figure out why it hasn’t kicked in.”

  “ ‘They,’ you mean,” somebody said. “We’ve got three. And right this way.”

  As Ruhn followed Phury around the base of the grand staircase, Qhuinn decided, not for the first time, that his cousin Sax had picked a real winner. Ruhn was an all-around good guy, quiet and steady.

  And hey, the pair were clearly in love—which mostly took the sting out of the fact that Blay and Saxton had had a thing once. For a little while. Because Qhuinn had been a douche and a coward.

  “Anyone want to help with the shutters out back?” a voice said in the dark.

  “Yes,” Qhuinn replied, without knowing the details or caring about them. “I’m in.”

  Anything to avoid going back to that part of his and Blay’s past. Even if the distraction involved minus-four-degree windchill, chapped lips, and frostbite.

  Blay stepped in close. “I’m in, too.”

  Outside the pools of light, Qhuinn reached to the side and found his true love’s hand. As he squeezed the palm he so often held within his own, he had a thought.

  Why hadn’t they been formally mated by now? ’Cuz maybe that was something they needed to get on the goddamn calendar.

  Not that he was feeling territorial or anything. Or still a little jealous of his very handsome, yet very happily mated cousin Saxton.

  Nah.

  There was just something about a power outage in the middle of a blizzard that made a young male’s thoughts turn toward romance.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  This time they were going to be better prepared for the great outdoors.

  As Qhuinn zipped up a Mount Everest–worthy parka from his hips to his chinny-chin-chin, he felt like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Add in a set of Gore-Tex mittens, a hood, and a coat of ChapStick on the lips, and he felt like he was going to war out on a tundra.

  He also knew what steamed broccoli felt like. Jesus, it was hot under all the thermal gear—and not in a fun way.

  Turning his head, the miner’s light strapped to his skull hit Blay’s chest. His mate had grabbed a load of wearable duvet as well, and as long as a person didn’t focus on the twelve-foot-deep gash on that cheek, the sheer beauty of the male was almost overwhelming. Between that wind-burned face and those bright blue eyes and that red hair, Blaylock, son of Rocke, was positively edible.

  And okay, fine. Maybe that scratch on the cheek was just a minor injury, but the thing certainly seemed like a mortal wound—

  The emergency lights came on, offering a quarter of the normal illumination—and saving all kinds of retina burn.

  “Thank you, Ruhn,” Blay murmured as he looked to the ceiling fixture.

  “Guy’s a frickin’ genius.” Qhuinn switched off his headlamp, but kept the contraption noggin-bound on a just-in-case. “Let’s do this.”

  Hitching an arm through the rung of a five-foot stepladder, he led the way back into the garage. The lights that were motion-activated came on at that reduced level, but it was more than enough to see by as they tromped along the concrete floor, passing by the riding mowers that were drained and draped for the winter, as well as the thirteen ancient coffins that were lined up like something out of a Bela Lugosi movie.

  The damn things freaked him the hell out—not that he’d shared that little slice of pansy with anybody. He always worried Dracula was going to crack open one of those fuckers—which was pretty rich because Qhuinn actually was a vampire.

  “What about Bela Lugosi?” Blay asked as he unlocked the door to the back forty.

  “Just rambling. Hey, did you think Frank Langella was hot?”

  Blay glanced back. “In that Dracula movie from way back? I mean…”

  “You’re blushing.” Qhuinn laughed. “You so did. You so thought he was hot with those high collars and that widow’s peak.”

  “Whatever. You had a crush on Jordan Catalano—”

  Qhuinn pulled Blay’s parka forward. “I’ve got a crush on you. Right now. And forever.”

  Okay, that giggle was pretty much the high point of Qhuinn’s night. No, wait. The true high point was going to be getting the male naked and bent over in front of him—

  “Oh, my God,” Blay said. “You can’t talk like that right now. We’ve got a job to do.”

  “Did I say that out loud? For real? Oopsy. You want to spank me for being a naughty boy? Please? Commmmme onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.”

  Blay was laughing as he stepped out of the garage, and this was the intention. It was always good to hear that sound and know that Qhuinn was the reason for it—especially on a night like tonight, when a strange, paranoid feeling was not only persisting, but being egged on by things like broken windows and moaning wind and electrical failures.

  Outside in the back, they didn’t run into any wind at all. The great stone house was a helluva buffer, the front taking the lashing, the rear spared. Overhead in the sky, the snow had finally started to fall, the flakes rushing by up high illuminated by the exterior security fixtures that were back on at half-power, the variegated angles of the roof acting like the aerodynamics of a car, the airflow whipping past the peaks and valleys in a fixed, organized pattern. Not that there weren’t some icy anarchists. Some of what was coming down—or across, as the case was—broke free of the masses and drifted toward the ground, clearly exhausted with all the frantic, conforming congestion.

  “Over here,” Blay said.

  Qhuinn humped the ladder across to a row of three windows that were on
ly halfway shuttered. “Okay, let’s have a look at this.”

  “I’ll hold the ladder base.”

  “Perfect.” Qhuinn set the thing up and put a foot on the first step. “And please feel free to ogle my assets. Don’t be shy about it, either.”

  Blay laughed, his breath leaving in puffs of white. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “You should also feel no obligation to keep your hands to yourself. And this is more than a mere suggestion.”

  Down at the other end of the house, at the library, there was another group gathered with a bigger ladder. Because yes, sometimes size did matter. Balz and Z were focusing on the second-story windows of Wrath’s study, and that was a heck of an elevation.

  “I wonder how many other shutters failed,” Blay murmured.

  “More than we want, for sure.”

  Qhuinn went up to the second-to-the-last step and surveyed the shutter’s nonfunctioning landscape. As he came to absolutely no viable conclusion, he tried not to envy Ruhn’s obvious Mr. Fix It confidence—and he sure as shit wasn’t going back down to the ground until he figured things out.

  The steel shutters that were mounted over every single piece of window glass around the mansion were not just sunlight blockers. They were windproof, bulletproof, fireproof, vampire-proof, and anti-tamper. Every sash setup had a set custom made for it, and the protective suits were painted the gray color of the stone wallings and set on tracks so the interlocking panels could unroll from their top mounts and click into place. Like little garage doors.

  Only these weren’t coming down.

  Qhuinn grabbed the lower lip with his gloves and pulled. And pulled again. “Yeah, it’s frozen in place.”

  “As in ice frozen or not-moving frozen?”

  “I don’t know. Gimme a screwdriver.”

  Putting a hand down, he got the slap of the tool’s handle against his glove. “When in doubt, force it, right?”

  “Usually, you just shoot things.”