Taking his cell phone, he stepped outside the back door, not bothering to put on his coat. The night felt muffled by clouds, the sky hovering just above the rooftops. The square of light from the doorway splashed into the darkness, an island of homey warmth framing his shadow. He sucked in a lungful of the icy air, exhaled a cloud of frosty breath.
He tried to let go of enough tension to think clearly. Part of him was proud of what had just happened. He’d pulled together a team and figured out Belenos’s plan. Perry had paid a high price, but that only made Lore more determined to make their work count. He pulled out his phone and began making calls, first to Bevan and then to Perry’s father, the Alpha of Pack Silvertail.
Lore rubbed his hand over his face, willing to trade anything to be back in bed with Talia, lost in lovemaking. His skin remembered hers, the curve of her collarbone beneath his lips, the faint spray of freckles in the cleft between her breasts. The idea of her brought such a weight of joy and sadness that he struggled for the next breath.
The last thought had barely formed, when a familiar dread leached the softness from the gray winter night. Something evil was watching, just as it had on the night Talia’s cousin was killed. Lore’s gaze snapped upward, scanning for any clue. This has to be Belenos at work again.
He’d felt this same dark miasma just before the fire—except this time he was sure it was watching him. Lore banged back into the apartment, the door crashing shut in his wake. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
“Why?” Darak demanded.
Lore struggled for a moment, searching for the right words. “There’s dark sorcery watching us again. I felt it in the parking lot.”
“What?”
Perry struggled to a sitting position. “Fido’s balls, not again.”
The last time he had described the evil, Perry had teased him. Now his friend sat white-faced with pain, a hard expression in his eyes that Lore hadn’t seen before. Perry gave a bitter smile. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not really up to running.”
“It’s Belenos,” Darak said, understanding sparking in his eyes. “Now I understand. He has a scrying ball. He’s using it to spy on his enemies.”
“That’s why he’s been a step ahead of us all along.” Lore looked at Perry. “If you used a spell to locate his image on surveillance video, that’s how he found you.”
“Shortcuts,” Perry said sourly. “I should know better than that.”
Darak pulled a carved wooden amulet from his pocket. He turned it over in his hand and shook it. “Nia, my second, made me take this to hide from the evil eye. Maybe its battery’s dead.”
“How do we block Belenos out?” Lore asked.
“You don’t. I do,” said Perry.
“You can’t,” Errata shot back. “You’re full of holes.”
Perry flushed with temper. “Are there any other sorcerers in the room?”
Errata folded her arms, her expression hurt and angry at once. “Just don’t complain to me when you bleed to death, okay?”
Perry shook his head, as if shaking off her words. “Cats, always with the big drama. Hand me that red stone on the bookcase.”
With his good arm, Perry pointed to a sphere of red jasper about the size of a man’s fist. Lore did as he asked, finding the sphere was heavier than he expected. He passed it over carefully, afraid that one of them would drop it. Perry braced his hand on his knee, cupping the stone.
“Drama my hind paw,” Errata muttered. “You’re just another macho idiot.”
“Better that than an idiot in that evil entity’s crosshairs.”
Errata clamped her mouth into a thin line.
Lore shot her a look he hoped was sympathetic. He didn’t blame her for worrying. Perry was reciting something in a low voice. The wolf stared hard at the ball of jasper, a deep furrow creasing his brow. A faint glow was gathering around the ball, but it was obviously coming at a price. His face was falling into hard, tired lines, his skin draining of any remaining color.
Then, as suddenly as if a switch had turned on, the ball of red jasper began to radiate a thick, ruddy glow. Perry’s shoulders sagged. At first the light spilled over his hands, heavy as syrup, but with a single word from him, it feathered into the air, fanning out like a drop of ink in a pan of water. It crept farther and farther in every direction, a splash in slow motion. As it thinned to cover every inch of space, the color grew so thin it was barely noticeable.
Lore and the others watched, looking up, down, and to every corner as the room filled with the faint light. “What’s it doing?” Lore demanded.
“Call it magical anti-spyware,” Perry said softly. “It’ll scrub any unwanted spells within a city block.”
He set the ball on the coffee table and sank back against the couch cushions, closing his eyes again. “We’re safe enough for the moment, but we’ve got to fix this, quick. I can’t shield the whole town.”
“If you attack the tunnels, expect resistance,” Darak said grimly. “Chances are, Belenos will see you coming.”
Lore’s phone chose that moment to ring. He flipped it open. “Hello?”
“It’s Baines.”
The phone line crackled as if the connection was breaking up.
“Detective.” Lore’s heart leaped. “Thanks for returning my messages. Is Talia with you?”
“She’s gone. I need your help. I’m willing to bet she does, too.”
“What happened?”
“The only clue I’ve got is a pair of fang marks in my neck.”
There was static on the line.
“What did you say?” Lore demanded. There was another burst of static that made Lore growl at the phone.
Finally, a clear sentence came through. “I can’t get through to the station. I’m underground. I don’t have a clue where I am. It’s freezing cold. Someone bit me and then dumped me down here.”
The call went dead.
Chapter 28
Friday, December 31, 10:00 p.m.
Spookytown
They were going into the tunnels.
They’d gathered in the alley outside the Castle door. It was cold and it was snowing again, a steady drift of fat, white flakes that made the crowd around the open manhole cover look like a scene from a demented Christmas card.
For the last ten minutes, Lore had been giving everyone their instructions, the logical part of his brain still working even if the rest was MIA. At the moment, Lore didn’t care about evil bubbling up through the storm drains—he wanted Talia in his bed, and the rest of the world could line dance its way to hell. But she was missing and probably underground with Belenos, so down the manhole Lore and his makeshift army would go.
There were wolves and hounds, both in beast and man form. Joe had spread the word to some of the local vampires, too. They stood at the back, lounging against the brick wall and smoking, flashing fang as they laughed at their own jokes.
Darak had left to meet the other members of Clan Thanatos. Besides the two that Lore had met, a handful of others had just arrived from down the coast by private boat. They would carry out their part of the plan separately. Clan Thanatos would cover the operations aboveground, Lore and his friends below. As they’d expected, Belenos had given his assassins the word to set Omara’s doom in motion. Lore hoped Darak was as good as he claimed, because at a rough estimate Belenos’s welcome party for the queen, not counting the Hunters, outnumbered Clan Thanatos ten to one.
Mavritte stood across from Lore, on the other side of the sewer entrance. She’d planted her feet as if she were braced for another attack, her hands fisted on her hips. The strappy leather outfit she wore showed the deep scars in her skin, reminding him of the sacrifices she had made fighting for her people. It was good to have her on his side. It meant something that, despite their differences, she’d brought the Redbones when he asked.
Time was their enemy. Hurrying through his instructions, Lore forced himself to look calm and in charge. “Any questions?” he concluded, scanning th
e crowd.
“Go over the bit again about how we’re not going to be made into throw rugs by the Hunters,” said Joe, who had left his bar to support Lore in the fight. “Just for me.”
Joe was carrying a weapon called a bardiche, which looked like a thin, curved ax on a long pole. The blade was almost as long as his arm, but Joe handled it with the ease of long familiarity. No villain in his right mind was coming near that thing.
A camera flashed. Errata was there, documenting everything. Lore wanted to snap at her. Sure this was news and she was a journalist, but the constant retinal assault was getting old.
Perry wasn’t there, and that left a hole. Since coming to Fairview, they’d been friends, always together in a fight—against the demon Geneva; against their foes in the Castle; and in a dozen bars in Fairview and surrounds. Perry’s absence was the marker of just how serious this was. He was the first casualty. There could be more.
Talia might be tied up and at the mercy of her sire. A sick lurch jolted Lore’s stomach.
And where the hell was Detective Baines?
With his heart in his throat, he gave the order to move. He’d prepared his people as best he could but, ultimately, they didn’t know what they’d find down below. The nonnegotiable was that Lore never, ever left his people behind. One way or another, he would get everyone home.
Once they were into the tunnels, the company split up. Errata had insisted on being embedded with the troops, whatever that meant. The company split into four groups, each taking a quadrant of the tunnels. Lore had deliberately kept the units small. There wasn’t much room to maneuver underground, and he didn’t want his people getting in each other’s way. An efficient strike force, experienced with close quarters, was the best choice he could make with the information at hand.
Lore took his group of hounds to the southwest quadrant, close to the Castle entrance. A few of these tunnels were newer, lined with cement and lit with a string of lightbulbs along the ceiling. His plan was to sweep through this area first, because it included the basement of the old hotel where Darak had met Belenos. With luck, the king would still be there. Lore prayed that Talia and Baines would be, too.
Talia sat on a straight-backed chair in the middle of the old, dusty room, bound with silver chains and gagged with a strip torn from her own blouse. Her skin felt grimy with dust, every tickle of her hair a reminder of the rats she was sure lurked just outside of visual range.
She was somewhere in the tunnels. Wine barrels were stacked against the walls, coated with decades of dust so thick it looked like cotton batting.
Now would be a good time for Lore to burst in and save her—heck, she’d welcome Mavritte—but she knew it was a selfish thought. It was better if she could escape on her own, because this was Belenos. The last thing Talia wanted to do was to bring his special brand of crazy down on the man she loved.
So far Belenos hadn’t done anything more dramatic than tying her to a chair, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled an iron maiden out of a utility closet. Belenos was good at pain. Some said it was his only real hobby anymore. Talia knew better. His hobby was fear.
Which was why she kept her face as blank as possible when he unlocked the squeaky old door and stepped inside.
“Hello, my duck,” he said, his voice silky. “How are you?” He shoved his hands into his pockets, drifting into the room.
She tracked him like a downed bird watching a slinking cat. A bird with attitude, though. She made a growling noise around the gag.
“Sorry. Didn’t quite catch that.” He bent and untied the strip of cloth.
He peeled it away from her face. Automatically, Talia hauled in a deep breath, winding up to scream. Instead, she started coughing, a reaction to the stale, dusty air.
“Poor Talia,” said Belenos, walking in a circle around her chair. She could feel his presence like a cold, slippery finger along the back of her neck. “So sorry this isn’t much of a room, but privacy is hard to get when you’re on the move. Or, in your case, on the run.”
He put his mouth close to her ear, his fox-red hair swishing against her cheek. “But you know all about that, don’t you? You can run, but you can’t hide. You know your daddy’s here, don’t you?”
Talia couldn’t help a twitch, but said nothing.
“Oh, yes, he’s my new best friend. We’re working together. Isn’t that nice?”
What? Shock made her jerk, which seemed to amuse him. Then she understood. Big Red was a nickname for vampires, but a lot of people used it specifically for the red-haired king. Max had posted to the bulletin board that he was following Big Red. Following, not hunting. I can’t—I won’t—believe this!
“It’s quite true,” he said as if reading her thoughts.
She couldn’t protest, the hot rage of betrayal too thick in her throat. How could her father agree to this?
“I asked for Max as our special go-between.”
Oh, God, Max! She turned to meet the king’s one topaz eye. Belenos licked his ruined lips. “I remember how good he tasted, don’t you? Dessert.”
Talia squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop it.”
“Are you hungry yet? Give it a day or two and I’ll bring Max in. I daresay it’s been a while since you’ve had anything but a dog to eat.”
Oh, no. She locked her knees, fighting the shudder that quaked through her. She couldn’t feed on her brother. It was bad enough that she’d betrayed him to Baines in the car as they drove to the university. But that’s exactly why her sire would starve her and then send Max in. It was her worst nightmare.
Belenos bent, and pressed his twisted mouth to hers. She could feel the scar tissue of his skin against hers, cold and hard and vampire dead. As she fought the impulse to gag, he thrust his good hand up the hem of her sweater, working his fingers under the lace of her bra. Clenching her body, Talia stayed perfectly still, knowing that if she recoiled there would only be more to come.
“You’re so frigid, I’d almost say someone had killed you.” He gave a soundless laugh that filled the room like a dirty secret.
“Let me go.” She didn’t open her eyes, but whispered the words like a prayer.
“It’s not time yet.”
His last reply made her flinch. What had she heard in his voice? Anticipation. “I’ve waited for this for months. Oh, I’ve known where you were, Talia. This is the computer age, after all, but I let you think you were safe. What’s the fun of having the humans send you back to me when I was just waiting for the right opportunity to come after Omara? The bonus of paying you a visit made this trip well worth the air miles. You’re my killone, get-one-free special.”
He leaned closer. “There’s something I want you to see.”
Talia kept her eyes closed. She was shutting him out. Denying what he had to offer.
“Look at me,” Belenos said, suddenly furious.
She squeezed her eyelids tighter, like a toddler having a tantrum.
He grabbed her chin, pulling her forward as far as the bonds allowed. “Look at me!” he roared. As he squeezed, she felt the slide of flesh against her jawbone.
Her eyes snapped open, glistening with the pain.
“That’s better.” With his free hand, he pulled a quartz sphere out of his pocket. “I’m in charge. Don’t forget that.”
He released her chin, letting her slump back against the chair. Her jaw throbbed, a pain for every place his fingers had crushed her.
He lifted the quartz. It sparked to life, a firefly of light glowing at its center and then blooming to fill the sphere. Talia watched with deep suspicion as the bright ball glowed in his hand, rimming the edges of his fingers with transparent red.
He shielded the quartz with one hand, hiding it from her view. “Let’s see who is down here. Where is Detective Baines? He was last seen bumbling into the wrong part of the underground.”
The image of Baines was blurry at first, but came slowly into focus. The detective was sitting on the ground, loading wha
t looked like the last clip of ammunition into his sidearm. Baines looked dirty and in a desperate hurry, but there was no blood or broken bones that Talia could see.
Oh, wait. Baines was getting to his feet now, but struggling, using the wall for support. Something was wrong with his right leg. He couldn’t seem to put weight on it.
Belenos zoomed the image out a little, getting more of the surrounding area. “There are plenty of places where the tide has chewed caves into the soft rocks beneath the harbor, and many more where the tunnel floors are just wooden planking over the pits beneath. After a hundred years, some of that wood has rotted away. I’m afraid our brave detective has fallen through.”
Talia’s chest seized with tension. When the tide came in—around midday—all those underground caves would fill up, but that was a future problem. Right now, Baines had other issues. He wasn’t alone in the cave. Something had fallen in with him.
The cat looked like a creature made by magic, or it might have escaped from the Castle. It looked like a standard tabby alley cat—scraggly, thin, and mean—except it was bigger than nature intended. It must have weighed a couple hundred pounds.
It was looking at Baines as if he were a baby bird. Easy, tasty pickings. Baines was hurt, trapped, and running out of ammunition.
“Oh, this is too good, don’t you think?” Belenos cooed. He rose from his chair and crouched down beside her, showing her a better view of what he’d conjured in the stone. “What you see is what’s happening right now. How do you like my kitty? I made him specially to keep the detective from getting bored.”
“No!” she cried, forgetting herself and trying to rise from the chair.
It rocked forward, forcing Belenos to grab the back to steady it. The lapse of concentration made him lose the image.
“Bring it back! I have to see what happens!”
The desperation, the begging in her voice was a mistake. His mouth curled into a smile. “I bet you think your dog is going to ride to your rescue like a true-blue hero.”
Frostbound Page 25
