Frostbound

by Sharon Ashwood

  But no one ever rescued her. She just wasn’t that kind of girl. You’re a monster. She could feel a tear leaking down her cheek, but she didn’t dare move. Save me, save me, save me. She could hear Lore breathing, rattling keys in his left hand.

  She could hear that his heartbeat was slightly fast, as if taking a captive was the exercise equivalent of a brisk walk. Her window of escape opportunity was closing fast, but there wasn’t a damned thing she could do while the Ruger was still planted firmly against her spine.

  She tried to care, but all she could see in her mind’s eye was Michelle’s dead body. Why did I let her try to help me? Why couldn’t I just leave her alone?

  “Consider this your formal invite.” He grabbed her above the elbow and pushed her through the door. Talia stumbled. His fingers tightened, keeping her from spilling forward. “Sorry.”

  He let her go as she leaned on the corner of the wall, steadying herself. Lore’s apology had been automatic. At some time in the past, manners had been drilled into him. That made her feel just a little bit better. Too bad that innate sense of etiquette didn’t extend to, say, not handcuffing a girl on first acquaintance.

  Is it anything more than you deserve?

  Now she could hear the police sirens again. Rack lights splashed on the thin drapes, showing the first squad cars had arrived. But who had called? Lore hadn’t had time. Perhaps another neighbor had found Michelle while investigating the sound of their scuffle? Or maybe the killer himself had called, anxious for his fifteen minutes of fame?

  Lore had gotten her away from the crime scene just in time. She was safe from the law. But really, how safe was that? Talia looked around, sick with anxiety.

  She saw at a glance the layout of Lore’s place was the exact image of Michelle’s. Corner suite, even the same color of paint—except these walls weren’t splattered with gore. Remembering what lay upstairs sent a hot, queasy wave through her. Lore took her arm again, pulling her to the left.

  “Hey! Take it easy. You’re leaving a bruise,” she snapped, summoning some attitude, but her words were faint.

  “Vampires heal.” But he let go, instead poking the gun in her ribs. “That way.”

  Lore propelled Talia into a dark room and flipped on the overhead light. Oh, Lord, it’s his bedroom.

  He wasn’t Mr. Tidy. The queen-sized bed was made, its navy comforter dark against a brass bed frame, but clothes, magazines, and other junk littered the floor in the basic single male decorating scheme. Her heel caught on a wadded-up sock.

  “Onto the bed,” he ordered.

  Onto the bed? Not bloody likely!

  Forgetting the gun, Talia twisted away to face him. A furious tingling crept up her limbs, the shock of just too much emotion. She was either going to throw up or slug him the moment her hands were free. “What kind of male fantasy bullshit is this?”

  “Fantasy?” His heavy-browed scowl fragmented, drifting into embarrassment.

  Something inside her snapped. All of a sudden, Talia’s nerve was back. So what if she was in handcuffs? She’d give him the fight of his life. “You sick bastard.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” He gave her a shove that made her sit with a bounce on the soft mattress. “I don’t do dead people.”

  Her arms pinned behind her, Talia struggled to stay upright. The mattress was one of those poofy pillow-top things. “Then what are we doing here?”

  “This is my private territory. No one comes here unless they’re invited.”

  Anger stabbed through her. “Your personal den of iniquity, huh?”

  “More like the one place I can get some peace and quiet. Or used to be. Now there’s a vampire in my bed.”

  “I’m not in it yet, bud.”

  His expression dripped irony. “I always forget the chocolates and flowers.” Lore holstered the gun and pulled a handcuff key from his jeans pocket.

  “That’s more like it.” Talia turned so he could reach her wrists.

  She felt his fingers working with deft efficiency. Her right wrist came free. She flexed her arm, making sure it still bent in all the right places. Then she felt him moving her left arm and heard a metallic snick.

  “Hey!” she yelled, squirming around to see what he’d done. He’d fastened the empty half of the cuffs to the heavy brass post framing the headboard. Now she was chained to his bed. Oh, gag me!

  He stepped back, his expression hard. “You may as well get comfortable.”

  Her stomach plunged. “This is my prison cell?”

  “As I said, the crypt was already booked.”

  Oh, shit! She gave the cuffs a jerk because, well, it was mandatory in the shackled prisoner handbook. Metal grated on metal, the silver of the cuffs biting into the skin of her left wrist. She took in a breath that rattled with fear, but she forced her voice to steadiness. “You don’t have the fur-lined model, huh? Those would be a bit more comfy.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Not my thing. Bondage is a bit too much like my day job.”

  The words felt oddly like a joke she wasn’t getting. Maybe it was something cultural. He had an odd, halting way of speaking—no accent, but she was willing to bet that English wasn’t his first language.

  Talia clenched her fist to hide the fact her fingers were shaking. “What exactly is your day job? Village executioner?”

  “I am the Alpha of the hellhounds.”

  Lore folded his arms. Even through the storm of emotion, Talia couldn’t avoid noticing how the gesture showed off his arms and chest. All he needed were buckskin and a rifle and he could have been a brawny version of Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans.

  Then what he said soaked in. “Hellhound?”

  “We are half demons.”

  “Isn’t that like being a little bit pregnant?”

  Lore gave a sudden, evil grin. He leaned against the brass rail of the footboard, looming over Talia. No one got to be Alpha just because he was a nice guy. If Lore really was the top dog, there was a savage streak to match the wild-man looks. “It means that if you do break out of here, there is nowhere you can hide. I can track the ghost of a ghost, and the whole pack will be hunting you right along with me.”

  Talia set her jaw, refusing to give in to a sudden wave of terror. “Why?”

  Lore’s grin faded as he took a step away from the bed. “I told you. I’m not certain whether you’re innocent or guilty. I’m the acting sheriff in Fairview. Right now you’re my responsibility.”

  “So you’re the self-appointed detective on my case, is that it?”

  “Be happy that I care whether or not you’re guilty.”

  The handcuffs interfered with her sense of gratitude. “I didn’t kill Michelle.” Her voice cracked, and she gulped down a rising tide of grief. She was in danger. She had to keep her head straight. Don’t you deserve to die?

  “Were they trying to kill you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” She looked away, hiding the tears that spilled out from under her eyelashes. Oh, God, Michelle.

  “No possibilities?”

  There were, but none that she’d admit to. Talia shrugged as much as the handcuffs would allow. “No names come to mind.”

  “That’s the difference between you and me.”

  “What?” She tried to glare, but her eyes were too wet to make it convincing.

  “Hellhounds can’t lie.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re incapable of telling an untruth. You are not.”

  “Are you saying I’m a liar?”

  Lore looked unimpressed. “You’re on the run. I found you with a bloody corpse. You use a knife with considerable skill. You’re something more than you’re saying.”

  He turned and opened a drawer in a tall dresser. From where she was chained, Talia couldn’t see what was in the drawer, but heard the scrape of metal on wood. When Lore turned back, he had another set of silver handcuffs in his hand.

  T
alia scrambled backward, squeezing herself into the corner where the bed met the wall. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Extra insurance.”

  She jerked at the chain with frustration. “Damn you, leave me alone!”

  “It was your choice, me or the police.”

  Lore reached over her, his big body stretching easily over the wide mattress. Talia shrank against the pillows as his face came too close to hers. She could smell that burnt chemical scent on his clothes again. Beneath it was the musky scent of man—except it wasn’t. It was richer. Darker. Hellhound. The hair on her neck ruffled. Must be the demon blood, because Mrs. McCready’s cockapoo never smelled that good.

  But there was no way she was letting him chain her other hand. His face drew close to hers, a mixture of caution and determination in his dark eyes. She flexed her fingers, calculating the angle between Lore’s nose and the heel of her hand. With enough force, the right blow could knock him out. The squishy mattress would cost her momentum, but she was willing to give it—him—a shot.

  Damn! He anticipated her move, his hand rising to block her, so at the last second she changed angles and went for his holster. Lore solved the problem by dropping on top of her, pinning her under his weight. Suddenly her nose was buried in his hair, her breasts crushed under his broad, strong chest.

  “Get off me!” she hissed into his ear. His neck was right there, pulse pounding like forbidden candy. She’d heard some vamps liked demon blood.

  Talia felt the strength in his body, the stretch and pull of muscle under cloth. She tensed, wanting the freedom to fight but only meeting a solid wall of hellhound wherever she moved. Lore grabbed her right wrist. Nuts! She cried out, the sound plaintive.

  He stopped moving and simply held her there, their faces a breath apart. His eyes were so dark, there was almost no distinction between the iris and pupil.

  “Are you going to be good?” he growled.

  Talia squeezed her eyes shut. “Please don’t cuff my other hand. You don’t need to. I can’t break free.”

  Her voice cracked, finally giving way to the terror of the situation. She was too young a vampire to break the silver cuffs, and not nearly as strong as a hellhound. She might as well have still been human.

  Helplessness brought back bad, bad memories.

  “Do you promise to be good?” This time the question was gentler.

  She nodded, hating herself for her eagerness. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  She was lying. He had to know that. It was the first duty of a prisoner to escape—even if she had no idea in the world how she was going to do it.

  He rose up on hands and knees. Talia was trapped beneath him, caged by his limbs. The feel of his warm hands still clung to her skin. His touch had been businesslike. Appropriate, if chaining up a woman ever could be described that way—yet now there was something in his expression as he stared down at her, the second set of cuffs still dangling from his hand. Something other.

  The look pinned her like a stake.

  She resisted the urge to curl into a ball, an instinctive urge to cover her vulnerable parts. He was looking at her as if he’d just decided she might be good to eat—in more ways than one. Worse, she wanted to respond.

  Talia swallowed hard, putting all her defiance into her eyes. Refusing to cave.

  “Bad dog!”

  Chapter 7

  Bad dog?

  She had no idea.

  Prophets spare me.

  Lore banged into the stairwell and began running back to the fifteenth floor, taking the steps two and three at a bound. It had been a long night, but acute frustration made up for the bite of fatigue. His nerves were sparking like a faulty wire.

  There was a human saying about heat and kitchens, and Lore was beating a retreat before he did something incredibly stupid. That vampiress—possibly murderess—was hot enough to set his fur on fire. When he’d had her pinned to the bed, every cell in his being had sat up and begged.

  Definitely not something any hellhound should be thinking about, much less an Alpha. Hounds lived by a set of rules millennia old, and those rules said that no hound looked outside the pack for pleasure. They just didn’t. For one thing, if they did stray, they couldn’t lie about it afterward.

  That was awkward, to say the least.

  Lore stopped on a landing, breathing hard and glowering at the scuff marks on the wall. His skin felt prickly, as if he’d been standing next to a glowing furnace. Thinking about the vampire’s slender body made it worse. He’d had to walk away without even taking the time to put on the second set of cuffs. Feeling her struggle brought out the urge to pin her down. Taste her. Take her.

  The memory turned the tingling in his skin to an outright itch.

  Maybe he was allergic. After all, she was as different from him as another creature could be: a vampire, a rogue alienated from her sire, and on the run from a crime. The very thing orderly, family-driven pack structure despised.

  Moreover, Lore was the serious, down-to-business leader, the one voted least likely to cut loose and have fun. Now, here he had gone and handcuffed a babe to his bedpost. Whatever seed of chaos had infected the vamp-on-the-run was apparently contagious, and now it was crawling through his system.

  Bad dog. Who talked to a hellhound like that? In a very, very unwise corner of his soul, he found it hilarious. He started up the stairs again, more slowly this time. His footfalls echoed like a giant’s.

  He should turn her over to the law. She wasn’t hellhound business. And how was he going to decide whether or not she had killed her cousin? He was an enforcer, not a detective. He had other priorities, such as Helver and whatever other whelps were digging their way into trouble. Furthermore, there was that something haunting the night and burning down buildings.

  Something he thought might be the result of necromancy. That kind of sorcery required a death, and usually a violent one.

  Maybe the murdered girl was part of it all. Maybe his pretty prisoner was guilty as sin.

  Lore reached the fifteenth floor and cautiously pushed open the stairway door. He’d heard the sirens earlier and, for the second time that night, he found himself on the fringes of a crime scene. The hair on the back of his neck ruffled, his territorial instincts roused by so many strange males in his building.

  Uniformed police officers stood outside suite fifteen-twenty-four. A knot of official-looking men crowded the doorway, backlit by the flash of a camera taking multiple shots inside the condo. Someone was asking for security tapes of the front door. Lore knew the man was out of luck. The building was old, and with few thefts there had been no need to add cameras—until now.

  “Stop right there,” said one of the uniforms, holding up a hand. He was young and beefy, his features unfinished-looking.

  Lore stopped, giving the cop the blank face hounds used with outsiders—except, for some reason, his vampire. She was like a sudden brain fever, making him behave in unusual ways. Perhaps keeping her in his bedroom was a really bad idea. He could almost hear Perry saying, “Ya think?”

  “Crime scene,” said the uniform. “Move on, please.”

  “What happened?” Lore asked, wondering how much the cops would be willing to say.

  “Never mind. Move along.”

  “Wait.” One of the other cops turned around. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Lore recognized Baines.

  “Detective,” Lore said, erasing all emotion from his voice.

  Baines hooked a thumb in his belt, narrowing his eyes as he walked toward Lore. His face was set, like someone had chipped it out of petrified wood. “Okay. I’ll bite. Why am I seeing you at two different crime scenes in one night?”

  “I live in the building.”

  Baines missed a beat when he heard that. A split second of surprise. “A hellhound? Here? This condominium is about as white-bread human as it gets.”

  “I lease from a friend.” Who was a demon, but that was another story.

  “Inter
esting.”

  “I pay my utilities. I keep my TV volume at a reasonable level. I help the little old ladies put up their Christmas lights. There’ve been no complaints.” Lore let the slightest edge of annoyance creep into his words.

  Baines recovered his cop face. “Uh-huh. Don’t play the poor-little-monster card with me. If a guy wants to spend part of his time running around on four legs, why the hell should the cops care? If that guy is dragging a dismembered leg in his jaws, then I’ll get excited.”

  Lore felt his eyebrows lifting in surprise. This was an attitude he hadn’t encountered before. He liked it.

  The detective remained expressionless. “What brings you to this floor?”

  “I heard the sirens. I was curious to see what was going on.”

  Baines flipped open his notebook and turned to a fresh page. “There were two women living here. Do you know either of them?”

  “I know one was named Michelle.” So far he was telling the truth. That didn’t mean he had to say everything.

  “Michelle Faulkner was murdered tonight. There was someone else living here, a Talia Rostova. A near lookalike to Faulkner, to go by the driver’s license. Who is she, besides a vampire?”

  Talia Rostova. So that was her name. It swirled in his mind like an exotic cocktail. “A cousin, I think. I don’t know for sure.”

  “They have any visitors?”

  “None that I saw, but I live on six.”

  “Any idea where this Talia is now?”

  Lore hesitated, trying to think his way around the direct question. Baines gave him a suspicious look.

  “Hey, Baines,” one of the other officers called. “There’s a drawing on the wall. Looks like gang shit.”

  “Take pictures,” said Baines to the other cop. “See what the boys back at the office can make of it. Not that they know squat about supernatural crimes.” He turned to Lore. “Anything going on with the Spookytown gangs?”

  “The Dark Hand tried to infiltrate Fairview. They didn’t succeed.” Under Caravelli’s direction, the hounds had made short work of those vampires.