Written In Red: A Novel of the Others

by Anne Bishop

  “Turn on the radio,” Louis said. “Don’t know what good it will do, but I’d like to know what we’re in for.”

  Monty turned on the radio.

  “. . . blew in out of nowhere. They’re calling it the storm of the century. We’ve had a foot of snow in the past fifteen minutes, and there is no sign of it letting up. Lightning strikes have taken out some power nodes, and several areas of Lakeside are without electricity. Telephones are erratic. Ice is coating the lines, and they’re snapping under the weight. So are tree limbs. Being outside isn’t just hazardous, it’s suicidal. We’re WZAS, but we’re not being a wiseass now, folks. This is big and it’s bad. Get off the streets. Get to some kind of shelter. This is Ann—”

  Static. Monty shut off the radio.

  A storm that hit the city with insane fury. The radio station might be saying it came out of nowhere, but Monty figured that by now everyone in Lakeside realized where this storm came from. But how many had heard about an explosion in the Courtyard and could even guess why this vengeance was pounding the city?

  When it was done, how many of these people would be left to bury their dead and rebuild their lives? How many would try to pick up the pieces without ever knowing why this storm tried to destroy them?

  * * *

 

 

 

  * * *

  The special messenger raced toward the Corvine entrance. The fucking Crows wouldn’t be out in this storm. The wind would snap off their wings. Gods below, nothing should be out in this storm.

  But something was standing there. Two of them. In his way.

  Female forms caught by the snowmobile’s headlight. One of them was brown, but the other had red hair tipped with yellow and blue. They swung out of his way before he ran them down, but as he passed them, the brown one stomped her foot.

  The earth lifted under him, under all that snow, tossing him and the snowmobile into the air. He felt the machine tipping and couldn’t regain the balance. As he came down, he threw himself off the snowmobile to avoid being trapped.

  He hit snow that melted under him so fast, he found himself at the bottom of a crater filled with several inches of steaming water. Then the red-haired female leaped into the crater, grabbed his shoulders, mashed her lips against his, and breathed into his mouth.

  Fire burned his throat and seared his lungs. Burn holes appeared where the yellow and blue ends of her hair brushed against his parka. Struggling to breathe, he reached for his gun, tried to defend himself. She grabbed his hands, and fire burned through the gloves, turning his hands into torches.

  She held on and laughed. Then she released him, sprang out of the crater, and disappeared.

  Have to get out. Have to get away.

  He was still struggling to draw air into his damaged lungs and pull himself out of the crater when the Wolves found him. And he was still alive when they began to feed.

  * * *

  Asia rubbed at the snow crusting her eyelashes and looked again.

  She’d made it. She’d reached the Market Square. From bits she’d heard, the Others didn’t always lock their doors. She might find something open, might be able to get out of this storm for a little while.

  A howl came from somewhere behind her. That freaking Wolf. Why didn’t it have the sense to hole up somewhere?

  An answering howl came from somewhere ahead of her.

  Gods above and below, another one?

  She turned her back to the wind to give herself a chance to take a few full breaths. She couldn’t take shelter in the Market Square. If the Wolves found her there, they would kill her. She had to get to her car. Or maybe she would leave the freaking car and just go to the Stag and Hare to wait out the storm.

  With luck, the special messenger had stashed Meg somewhere. And the Wolf pup too. Maybe she wouldn’t get as much money as she’d hoped, but the experience would be invaluable for her TV series and give her an “I’ve seen the real thing” edge no other actress could match.

  As soon as she could get out of this city, she would head back to Sparkletown. She would meet with Bigwig, who would be her producer, and then she would spend a couple of days on a beach, baking in the sun until her bones finally thawed.

  But before she could do any of that, she had to get out of the Courtyard.

  Staying close to the buildings, Asia trudged the length of the employee parking lot to the wall that separated that lot from customer parking. Gasping for breath, she leaned against the wooden door that provided access between the two lots.

  Almost out. Almost safe. She could make it.

  She kicked snow away from the door in order to pull it open enough to squeeze through. Then she waded through thigh-high snow—and bumped into one of the other cars that was buried in the lot. Fighting her way to the lump of snow that was closest to the street, she let out a giddy laugh as she brushed the snow off the driver’s-side door. She needed to get out of the storm for a few minutes before fighting her way up the street to the Stag and Hare.

  “Keys,” she said, pulling off a glove in order to unzip the pocket that held the car keys. With keys in hand, she went to the back of the car and kicked the snow away from the tailpipe to give the exhaust a way to escape. Then she hurried back to the door and opened it. “Going to get out of here. Going to get warm.”

  “No. You’re not,” Tess said.

  Asia turned and felt something break inside her mind when she looked at the black hair that coiled and moved, looked at the face Tess usually hid behind the human mask. She tried to look away, but she couldn’t make her eyes work, couldn’t do anything but stare at something she didn’t want to see.

  She sagged and would have slid to the ground if Tess hadn’t grabbed her arm to keep her upright.

  She couldn’t feel that arm, and her legs weren’t working right. And beads of sweat trickled down the inside of her skull. She could feel them trickling and tickling inside of the bone.

  That wasn’t right.

  Tess eased her into the driver’s seat, lifting her legs and positioning them so that all she had to do was shift her foot to the gas pedal. Her hands were gently placed in her lap. Leaning in, Tess tossed the keys onto the passenger’s seat. Asia could see them out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t turn her head to look at them, couldn’t lift her hand to reach for them. Couldn’t do anything except feel the relentless, terrible thing that was happening inside her body.

  It was raining inside her skull.

  “Wha . . .”

  Fingers turned her head so she could look at that terrible face with its terrible smile.

  “Wha . . . are . . . you?”

  Tess stared at her, then breathed in deep and sighed as if she’d just tasted something wonderful. “You monkeys have no word for what I am.”

  Her face was turned again so her eyes stared out the windshield that showed her nothing but snow. The car door closed.

  Asia’s mind continued to break. Her body continued to break. Nerves finally screamed their warnings of pain, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

  And inside her skull, it continued to rain.

  * * *

  Tess squeezed through the door at the back of the parking lot, then pushed it closed.

  In ancient times, there had been a name for her kind. But the naming attracted the named, so the word was said to be cursed. As races and languages changed, the symbol of the word, still recognized in the primal part of the human mind, was never translated into newer languages. Which was why, beyond a few whispered myths, even the rest of the terra indigene no longer knew about Namid’s most ferocious predator.

  Long ago, there had been a word for her kind. Then, as now, it meant “harvester of life.”

  CHAPTER 28

  A car was stuck in the intersection, blocking traffic in every direction.

&nbs
p; “No,” Louis said as a man got out of that car and walked away. “No. You can’t do that.”

  Monty watched the man and instinctively braced himself. “Louis, he’s trying to run from something.”

  Lightning struck the intersection, thunder shook everything on the street, and a gust of wind shoved the car out of the intersection as a sleigh raced by, heading for the hospital.

  “Follow the sleigh.” Monty’s heart slammed against his chest. He could think of one person in the Courtyard who, if injured, would need human help. And if Meg Corbyn was in that sleigh, everyone in the hospital was at risk if the terra indigene reacted badly.

  As if the blizzard wasn’t a bad enough reaction.

  Louis didn’t ask questions. He turned right on Main Street and went after the sleigh, driving down a street that was suddenly cleared of all obstacles.

  As they approached Lakeside Hospital, Monty pointed and said, “There.”

  Nodding, Louis started to make the turn into the emergency-care entrance.

  The sleigh was parked right in front of the emergency-care doors. The horses—one black and one white—tossed their heads and stamped their feet. Lightning cracked the sky while thunder shook the car right off the pavement. It ended up packed against the snow mounded beside the emergency-care entrance.

  “Damn it,” Louis said softly, looking at the wall of snow against the driver’s side of the car. “You need backup?”

  Monty pushed his door open. “Don’t know. You get the car out of the way of the ambulances first.”

  “Right.”

  Monty struggled to walk up the slight incline to the emergency-care doors, keeping his head down in an effort to see—and breathe. Whiteout conditions. Killer wind chill. And there, suddenly standing between him and the doors, were two females.

  Not human, he thought as they watched him approach. Not Other in the way the shifters and vampires were Other. Elementals. He swallowed fear and refused to think about which ones he was dealing with.

  “I’m Lieutenant Montgomery. I’m a friend of Ms. Corbyn.” Maybe that was stretching the truth, but right now he’d stretch the truth until it broke if it got him inside so he could find out what happened.

  “Our Meg is inside,” the white-haired one said.

  “She’s hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  He heard the rage in her voice, her hatred for the human race.

  “I would like to help.”

  She stared at him with those inhuman eyes. Then she stepped aside. “Tell the monkeys that this storm will not end until Simon Wolfgard says our Meg will get well.”

  Monty bolted inside, intending to grab anyone who might know where Meg Corbyn could be found. Seeing a nurse, he reached for his badge. Before he could say anything, he heard a yip, a startled yell, and an enraged voice roaring, “She needs human medicine, so we brought her here. Now fix her!”

  Monty ran toward the commotion. He slammed into a fur-covered but otherwise naked Simon Wolfgard, breaking the Wolf’s clawed hold on a pale but angry doctor.

  “Mr. Wolfgard!” Monty shouted. “Simon!”

  Something wrong with the eyes, Monty thought. More than being neither human nor Wolf in form.

  Someone whimpered nearby. He glanced at another terra indigene who was crouched on the floor, cradling a blanket-wrapped Meg Corbyn.

  “Mr. Wolfgard, let me talk to the doctor. Let me help,” he said firmly when Simon snarled at him. The Wolf didn’t lunge at any of them, so Monty took the doctor by the arm and led him a few steps away.

  “I’m Lieutenant C. J. Montgomery, Lakeside Police Department.”

  “Dr. Dominick Lorenzo. Look, Lieutenant, we’ve got ambulances fighting to get here with people who need our help. We can’t be indulging them just because—”

  “Sir, I understand your feelings. But she’s human, and she’s their Liaison. They came here for help. Unless she gets the very best care you can provide, this city will never see another spring. I’m sorry to place this burden on you, but the lives of everyone in Lakeside are now in your hands.”

  Lorenzo glanced toward the entrance. “You can’t know the storm won’t end.”

  “Yes, sir, I can, because the fury driving this storm was standing outside this hospital a minute ago and told me flat-out that our lives depend on their Liaison getting well.”

  “Gods above and below,” Lorenzo muttered. Squaring his shoulders, he strode back to where Simon Wolfgard stood trembling with rage.

  “Do you know what happened to your friend?” he asked.

  “She fell through the ice when she was running from the enemy,” Simon snarled.

  “Most likely hypothermia, but we’ll make sure nothing else is going on,” Lorenzo said. “Let’s get her into the exam room at the end.”

  Snatching Meg from the other terra indigene male, Simon followed Dr. Lorenzo. Monty followed them, and the other male trailed after him.

  Monty half listened to Lorenzo’s rapid instructions to the nurses who were getting Meg out of her wet clothes. Before the doctor could close the exam-room door, Simon muscled in, leaving Monty with little choice except to go in with him and hold him away from the doctor and nurses.

  Turning his face to give Meg that much privacy, he whispered to Simon, “What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”

  The question brought back some of the thinking intelligence in Wolfgard’s eyes. “I feel . . . angry.”

  “Did you take anything before you started feeling angry?” Any drugs? Not likely, but it was possible Simon had ingested something without realizing it.

  Simon shook his head, his eyes fixed on the people touching Meg.

  Then a nurse sucked in a breath. Turning his head, Monty looked at Meg Corbyn’s bare arms and saw the evenly spaced scars—and the crosshatch of scars on her left arm. Answering the unspoken question in Lorenzo’s eyes, he said, “Yes, she’s a cassandra sangue.”

  “Get more blankets and a heating pad,” Lorenzo said. When one of the nurses bolted, he tipped his head to indicate he wanted to talk to them out of the room.

  “How long was she in the water?” he asked Simon.

  “Not long. We heard Winter scream when Meg fell through the ice. We pulled her out.”

  “And before that? Did you remove her coat before you brought her to the hospital?”

  Simon shook his head. “No coat. No boots. She was running from the enemy.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “We came in the sleigh.”

  Lorenzo didn’t look happy. “All right. We’ll start with external treatment; see if we get enough indication that we can bring her around that way. Now. That gash in her chin. I can close it without stitches, but only if you can leave the bandages alone. If you can’t, I’ll have to use stitches to make sure the gash stays closed and heals properly. But stitches puncture the skin, and that might cause her some mental distress, even in her present condition. Also, if I use stitches, the whole chin would no longer be viable for cutting.”

  Simon’s eyes blazed red. He snarled, “Do you think we care about her because of her skin? She’s not property to us. She’s Meg.”

  Monty held on to the Wolf, pushing him back from Lorenzo. “He has to tell you that, Simon. You’re standing in for Meg’s family, and it’s his duty to tell you so that you can decide what is best for her.”

  Simon panted with the effort to control himself. “Fix her.”

  “It would be best if you stayed out of the room while I tend to her.”

  Feeling the objection in the way the Wolf’s muscles bunched, Monty said quickly, “If you give me your word that you’ll wait right here, I’ll go in and stand guard for you.”

  He thought Lorenzo might object, but the doctor just waited with him for Simon’s answer.

  A sharp nod. Wolfgard was panting and growling, so a nod was the best he could do to give permission.

  The nurse arrived with blankets and a heating pad. Lorenzo and Monty followed her into the
room. When Lorenzo closed the door, they all jumped at the howl that rose from the other side of the door.

  “Can you keep him from doing that?” Lorenzo asked as he cleaned and closed the gash in Meg’s chin. “Scaring everyone in the emergency room isn’t going to help.”

  “Let him stay in here with her. I think he’ll be calmer that way.” Monty glanced at the bed, then looked away. “You’ve dealt with blood prophets before?”

  “I saw a few of them during my residency. Anytime the skin is punctured, it opens the girl to prophecy.”

  “So if Ms. Corbyn needs stitches . . . ?”

  “Only the gods know what she’s seeing right now because of the gash,” Lorenzo replied grimly. “Every stitch would only add to it.”

  Monty leaned against the wall, feeling sick. He didn’t speak again until Lorenzo finished and the supplies were properly stowed away.

  “Let him in,” Lorenzo said.

  Simon leaped into the room the moment Monty opened the door. He stared at Meg. “She’s cold. She’s shivering!”

  “That’s a good thing,” Lorenzo replied. “We’ll use the heating pad to warm up the blankets. We’ll keep her warm, keep watch on her heart rate and breathing.”

  “Not so different from a Wolf,” Simon said quietly.

  “I’m calling in my men,” Monty said, knowing he wouldn’t have anyone but Louis for backup until the storm ended. “One of them will be on guard at all times.”