Dead Ice

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Meet with me, Maximiliano, and I will be so honest it'll blow you away."

  "Oh, we're here," he said. The engine on the car turned off. I heard the door open on his car, and I think I heard him step on gravel. I know I heard someone trying to scream through a gag. It sounded like a woman. "You can both scream for me, Consuela. She was my fiancee once, but she left me. Now she's mine forever."

  Connie was doing her best to scream through whatever was on her mouth, duct tape he'd said. Whatever she was seeing was scaring the hell out of her.

  "I've got to go, Anita, my sister is being difficult, but before the sun comes up she'll be easy, because she'll do exactly what I tell her to do. Thanks to you I lost a lot of money, but Consuela will be perfect for a client who wanted his own slave. He doesn't even have to be here for the ceremony, he just needs to hold the bottle that contains her soul, like a magic ring for a genie."

  My mouth was dry, but I said, "How did you get around the fact that murdered zombies attack their murderers?"

  "The soul, Anita, the personality; people are so conflicted about violence. Pure zombies aren't conflicted at all, but add the soul back in and they're just as fucked up as the rest of us. I'm going to sell my sister to a very rich man as his slave forever. I don't know if I'll just kill my brother, or cripple him. Either way, my father will never forget me again."

  "Maximiliano, don't do this, don't hurt them."

  "Would you let me fuck you to save them, Anita?"

  "Sure," I said.

  He laughed again, and I heard Connie making helpless noises through the gag. It sounded like he was dragging her over gravel and then weeds, or something. "I've got to go, Anita, I have people to kill, souls to steal. You know I haven't found a buyer for a teenage boy, but I'm betting that one that was completely obedient to the customer's every whim, well, the right person would pay handsomely for that, don't you think, Anita?"

  "I'm not joking, Maximiliano. Let's hook up. Let's fuck, just like your mother wanted."

  "Rumor says you killed the Senora, is that true, Anita?"

  "Never believe the rumors," I said.

  "Oh, I hope they are true, because if they are then I'll give you a chance to see which of us is more powerful."

  "More powerful how? How do we prove that?"

  "First, find me before I finish the ceremony and there's no sister left to save, though maybe I'll fuck her first, before I kill her; that would give you more time to find me."

  I fought the urge to threaten him, and tried for calm. "This is your last chance to do what the Senora wanted you to do, Maximiliano."

  "I saw the videos from Colorado, Anita. More than giving my mama powerful grandchildren, I want to see which of us is the better necromancer."

  "Fine, let's go, let's do it, just tell me where you are."

  "Think about what I want, Anita, and you'll know there are only a limited number of places I could have driven in this amount of time that will give us the arena to test ourselves."

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "If you don't figure it out, then I kill them, sell at least her, and leave town a very rich man. I'll set up shop in a country that is a little friendlier to me and doesn't have extradition with America."

  "Maximiliano, tell me how you do it. How do you capture the soul?"

  "Come and watch," and then he said something harsh in Spanish. "The boy has undone his bonds and found the trunk release. Stupid boy." The gunshot was so loud I was deaf in one ear for a minute.

  "Fuck, what did you do?"

  "He ran, what else could I do, Anita?"

  Connie was screaming as loud and long as she could through the gag. He wasn't worried about the noise; fuck!

  "If Tomas dies, you die. If you touch Connie, I will cut your dick off and gag you with it."

  "Oh, sticks and stones, Anita, sticks and stones."

  "Tell me where you are, you son of a bitch, and I'll prove to you that I never make an idle threat."

  "Find me, and then we'll see who raises what." The phone went dead.

  I screamed my rage loud and wordless. If he'd been in front of me in that moment I'd have killed him, cops or no cops.

  62

  I HAD TO call Manny and tell him about Connie and Tomas. I started with just them being hostages, without going into details. I figured him knowing he had a long-lost son with Dominga Salvador could wait until his kids were safe, or until I saw him in person. Some things you don't want to try to explain over the phone.

  "I need you to talk to the phone company and waive your rights to the phone records, so we don't have to get a warrant for them to use Tomas's phone's GPS to locate him and Connie."

  "We're still paying for Connie's phone, too. Does that help?"

  "Shit yes, I know he has her phone, because I was talking on it." I turned to Sergeant Hudson, who wasn't much bigger than I was, with a neat dark mustache to match the hair hidden under his helmet. He was the smallest man on his unit now, but they all still acted as if he were about eight feet tall and would hurt them if they fucked up. Hudson and I weren't buddies, but we respected each other, and I'll take respect over being liked any day of the week. He let me train with his team once a month to keep me from screwing up too badly. That he let me near his men at all was the compliment. He talked to all his guys like that.

  "Manny, the father, is paying for his daughter's phone; if he waives his rights we don't need a warrant for the GPS records."

  "Great, did you hear that?" He spoke into a phone that he'd been using to try to get the GPS location for either of the kids' phones. They wanted to help, but legally we needed a warrant . . . but Manny could waive his rights since it was his account and not Connie's.

  It took us holding the phones next to each other and Manny giving some account information, but it was done. Hudson listened to his end of the phone for a few seconds. "They'll call us back in ten minutes tops with the phone's location."

  "Perfect," I said, "now just one more warrant in hand and we're good to go."

  "Anita, what's happening?" Manny asked on my phone. I told him.

  "While we wait for the GPS I need to ask your voodoo expertise."

  "I can't think, Anita."

  "How complicated would the spell be to capture a soul? I mean, how long would it take?"

  "I only know the theory of the spell; I had left her long before she came up with that piece of evil."

  "I know, but you know way more voodoo than I do, Manny. I need to know a time frame, and I need to know it now."

  "What aren't you telling me, Anita?"

  "Dominga's nephew Max is the bad guy. He's taken over where Dominga left off on the zombie slaves."

  "Why did he take Connie and Tomas?"

  "I think Tomas was incidental, wrong place, wrong time."

  "Oh God, oh God, you think he's going to do that to Connie."

  "He's threatening it."

  "Why? Why after all this time?"

  "How much time do we have to find her? I need you to think, Manny."

  "My kids are missing."

  "And the more information we have, the better the odds for bringing them back safe and sound."

  "All right, all right, if he has to make a container to house the soul, it will take weeks."

  "Assume he has a container."

  "He'll have to draw symbols, verve, and if he's a true believer he'll have to persuade the loa to ride him, or to ride the victim."

  "I don't think he's a true believer," I said.

  "An hour, maybe. You say he had verve all over his altar area like Dominga did."

  "Yes," I said.

  "He'll be careful to draw the verve then, because Dominga believed very much that the symbols helped call power and protect her. If he draws all the symbology, then at least an hour, maybe a little more. Does that help?"

  "Yes, it does."

  "I'm on my way to the bridal shop now."

  "Go to Rosita, stay with her."

  "No."
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  "All right, but I may roll out before you get here if we have a target."

  "Save my kids, Anita."

  "I'll do my best."

  "I know you will."

  What else was there to say? We hung up.

  63

  THE GPS ON Connie's phone and Tomas's phone led us to the same cemetery. I expected that, but what I didn't expect was that GPS knew which crypt the phones were in. That didn't guarantee that they were still with their phones, but it was our best bet. If they weren't with their phones we had to search two acres of graveyard, including about twenty crypts, one at a time, like making entry on a block of apartments. So we assumed they were in the crypt with their phones; it gave us a place to start, and a plan. The "we" wasn't Zerbrowski and RPIT; it was our local SWAT. A lot of preternatural branch marshals had been forced on SWAT across the country for no-announce warrants, which all warrants of execution were, but a few of us had proven ourselves enough to be invited to train with them, and were allowed to go out with the team. Most of the marshals who had been invited to play with SWAT hadn't been able to keep the training up. It wasn't the weapons practice--that was the easy part--it was the physical prerequisites, and gym time, that most of them failed. Honestly, if I hadn't been more than human I might not have made all of them either.

  "This will be my first assault on a crypt," Killian said, smiling and tense in the dark as we stood behind the Lenco Bear Cat. They could call it an armored rescue vehicle if they wanted to, but it always looked big, black, slightly sinister, and very military. It could take heavy rifle fire and protect the men inside it, or even hiding behind it.

  "If this is your first crypt, you haven't been hanging around with me enough," I said.

  "Yeah, Blake takes you to the best places," Hill said.

  In the movies you can always see everyone's face on SWAT, but in reality the helmets and gear hide nearly everything. I knew Killian was blond and pale Irish, and that Hill was dark and middle-of-America-not-from-anywhere ethnic, but all I could tell suited up in the spring dark was that Killian was a few inches taller than me, and Hill was much taller. Most of the men standing in the dark with us were taller than average, and then you had Saville, who even towered over these guys. He was darkly African American, but again I only knew that because I knew him. We were all generic in our SWAT gear, except for height and size.

  "Will the ram work on a crypt door?" Saville asked. If we'd been doing a normal entry he'd have been using the ram to bust in the door.

  "I'm not sure," I said.

  Hermes said, "We brought stuff that will help us knock louder if we need to." He was tall, dark, and I guess handsome under all the gear. His wife thought so. I knew that from the time she made a point of meeting me, after I helped save his life but broke his leg in the process.

  "We have about five minutes to figure out which dynamic entry we're making," Montague--Monty--said.

  Another thing they get wrong in most movies is how much time you wait before you rush in. And you don't really "rush" in; you go in with a plan. Our plan was up on the tallest hill they could find with Sergeant Hudson and Sutton, their sniper. They were going to use the tech on Sutton's gear to see what they thought of the door. There were maps of the cemetery, but not specifics of the crypts and what their doors were constructed of; the way we got to "knock" and enter depended on the kind of door. It might be better to use small explosives on the lock than to blow the door open, because the stone construction of the crypt meant we couldn't see inside with infrared, so we didn't know where the hostages were standing. It would suck to blow a hole in Manny's kids because they were on top of the door we blew. We were waiting for more intel, as in intelligence, so we could go in smart. Slow is steady. Steady is smooth. Smooth is fast. Fast is deadly. I knew it was true, but if I hadn't had the rest of the team to keep me steady, I might have rushed in, because it was Connie and Tomas. I'd known them since Connie was Tomas's age and he was a toddler. I didn't want to go back to Manny with anything other than a win on this one.

  "If Blake were the size of Saville the ram would work," Monty said. He was the same size and build as Hermes, so only Hermes's slightly broader shoulders let you know who was who, unless you saw the nameplate, or knew how they carried their gear. I knew, because I'd been training with them at least once a month for a year. They'd seen what my more than human speed and strength could do on the tests they had to pass to keep their place on the team.

  "I've known a few guys Saville's size that are even faster and stronger than I am."

  "Lycanthropes?" Hermes asked.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "I'd like to see what one of your guys would do on the obstacle course," he said.

  "And the weight room," Saville said.

  I grinned. "You'd need specialty bars in the weight room for them to max out."

  "You mean like the bars made for power lifters, so they don't bend the steel?" Jung asked.

  "Something like that."

  Jung was still the only green-eyed Asian American that I'd ever met, but now I knew that he was a Korean/Chinese/Dutch American whose grandparents had met during the Korean War, and his mother had married a Chinese American man whose family had been in the country generations longer.

  The radios in our ears came to life, and it was Hudson. "Crypt door just opened, but one of the hostages is tied up in it."

  I touched my mic. "Say again."

  "Strung up in the doorway," Hudson said.

  "Shit," I whispered, but it carried over the earpieces.

  "We need a new entry plan," Hill said.

  "Sutton and I will regroup."

  "Can't kick, ram, or explode a hostage to get inside," Jung said.

  "Which hostage?" I asked.

  "Woman."

  My stomach tightened at the thought of Connie strung up in the doorway of the crypt like an animal for slaughter. "Any sign of other hostages?" I asked.

  "Negative," Hudson said.

  Sutton said, "Sorry, Blake."

  "Don't be sorry yet, Sutton. We get them out, no sorry needed."

  "I hear that."

  "We'll get them out," Killian said.

  "Cheerful is good," Hermes said, "but we have to get past the door to get them out."

  "We have to get through one hostage to get inside," Saville said.

  "We don't go through Connie," I said.

  "Hostage, just hostage. Names cloud the issue, you know that," Monty said.

  I wanted to protest, but . . . "Fine, we don't go through the hostage like she's a fucking door."

  "We do what works best to save the most lives," Hill said.

  I shook my head. "Not good enough."

  "It's all we got, Blake," Saville said.

  "Define 'go through the hostage,'" I said, and glared at Saville.

  "You're too close to this," Hill said.

  "I know."

  "Don't let your emotions compromise the rest of us," Monty said.

  I nodded. "I won't get you guys hurt trying to save them."

  "It's our job to risk ourselves to save the hostages," Jung said.

  "Monty knows what I mean."

  "We need an idea for entry," Hill said.

  "I need to see it," I said.

  "See what?"

  "The door, Connie, I mean the hostage."

  "Seeing it won't make it easier," Saville said.

  "I need to see how she's tied up in the doorway, Saville." I hit the button on my throat mic. "Sutton, is it just her hands tied, or hands and feet?"

  "Wrists tied over her head to something inside the room."

  "Is she in the doorway, or just inside the door?"

  "Inside, but she still blocks the entrance."

  "I need to see," I said, and pushed away from the side of the truck.

  Several of them pushed away to stand around me. It was Hill who said, "You wait for Hudson and Sutton to regroup."

  "I am, I just want Sutton and his high-tech gadgets to help me s
ee into the crypt."

  "We can't see through solid stone, not even with infrared," Jung said.

  "Connie, the hostage, is five-nine, but she's slender like her dad. Her body may block us from rushing through the entrance, but we should be able to see around her with infrared and night vision."

  Hill asked on his radio, "Sarge, could you see into the crypt?"

  "Not from the top of the hill."

  "Find Sutton and me someplace low, so we can look past the hostage's legs."

  "What have you got in mind?" Hermes asked.

  "Let Sutton and me see into the room, place the hostages. You guys find cover that allows you to get close enough."

  "Close enough for what?"

  "Dynamic entry."

  "You got mad at me for saying we go through the hostage," Saville said.

  "I didn't get mad, I got scared for her, but me afraid doesn't help."

  "And so just like that you're not afraid anymore?" he asked.

  "Hostage needs me to think more than she needs me to feel, right now." The hard, cold pit of my stomach didn't believe me, but my head was trying, and that was all I could do.

  I heard Sutton and Hudson before they stepped into view. I watched the other guys and no one looked toward the small sounds of them moving in the grass, a pants leg brushing something taller and more dried than the spring grass, their boots swooshing through. If Nicky or any of the other lycanthropes had been with me, they'd have heard it even sooner than I had, but for once our prey wasn't someone who had super-hearing, or sense of smell, or vision, or anything. He could raise the dead and capture souls. Neither of those would help him see, smell, or hear us moving around in the dark.

  The two of them looked at us, and Hudson said, "Tell me."

  I told him. It wasn't a great plan. It wasn't a perfect plan. But sometimes you don't need perfect, just good enough. Good enough for everyone to survive. Well, everyone but Maximiliano. Him, he could die; it would save me having to execute him later.

  64

  SUTTON AND I managed to find a place out among the graves as directly in line with the doorway as possible and still keep hidden. Being on the ground meant we had to be closer to the target than if we'd been up on the hill. Higher up almost always gave you a better unobstructed view, but this once we were hoping lower down was better. We snugged down on top of one of the graves with its tombstone at our feet, and another taller one of a different grave to one side of Sutton and his M24. We'd had trouble finding a space between the graves where Sutton could stretch out flat on his stomach. He was so damn tall, and just a very big guy; he almost didn't fit between the older graves. I had no trouble finding room to lie flat on the cool ground, with its early-season grass and wildflowers here and there. Sutton used the edge of the gravestone to steady his rifle so he could see past the figure hanging in the doorway. I tried very hard to think of it as just a hostage, but seeing the tall, slender woman hanging by her wrists in the doorway, her dark hair spilling down her back while she struggled and pulled at the ropes, hurt me in ways I had no words for.