“So she’s hiding with you?”
“Yes.”
“Was that her idea?”
“Not exactly.”
Errata sat back, looking away. “I get that you grew up in the Castle, where locking someone up was considered normal, but you can’t do that here. This is, y’know, the real world.”
He wanted to snap at her. “It’s not like that. Help me prove her innocence.”
Errata turned back to him, her hazel eyes grim. “What do you need?”
“Tell me if you can find out anything about Talia Rostova’s history with her sire, starting with who that is. Something happened between them. This is more than just a rogue-on-the-run story.” It had left a sadness in Talia he itched to fix.
“Is that part idle curiosity, or do you really think knowing her history will help you catch her cousin’s killer?”
“Maybe.” He sounded defensive even to himself.
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Just be sure you know what you’re doing.”
I wish. “We don’t have much time. She’s a target.”
Errata stood, a graceful movement worthy of a feline. “Then I’ll let you know what I find out ASAP.”
“Be careful.”
Her lips quirked. “You and Perry. So good at stating the obvious.”
“He should be there next time we meet.”
Errata gave him a sly look as she picked up her coat and purse. “Tomorrow night. Your place. I want to see this vampire of yours. She must be something if you’re going to so much trouble.”
Lore experienced a wave of possessiveness for his territory and for Talia. “Yeah, okay,” he said reluctantly.
“One condition.”
“What?”
She was serious again. “You have to let her go. You can’t keep a bloodsucker in custody without reporting it to the vamp authorities.”
Lore narrowed his eyes. “Don’t go there.”
Errata leaned over him, showing tiny, sharp canines. “Caravelli’s only a phone call away. If anyone else finds out . . .”
Lore made an irritated noise. “I’ve had her for only a few hours. Once it’s safe, you can watch me shoo her out the door.”
“That’s what I needed to hear. I like you, Lore. I don’t want you in trouble with the Undead, and I don’t want to find out you have a hobby dungeon filled with pretty young vampires.”
Lore gave her a caustic look, trying not to remember Talia’s lips. “I’m a hellhound, not a sociopath.”
“I think you just want to keep her for yourself.”
“Scat!”
“Aha, you’re blushing. You like her.” She gave him a finger wave as she headed for the door.
“Just be cautious,” he said again to her retreating back. “Be careful who you talk to.”
“Yeah, yeah. Ta-ta, my brave puppy.” She was moving briskly, like a mouser on a mission. Cats never listened.
Lore felt a stab of worry, afraid he’d sent Errata into danger.
Chapter 13
Wednesday, December 29, noon
Lore’s condo
Lore dreamed of demons. Not half demons, not hellhounds or incubi, but the real thing, pitiless and hungry. He dreamed of them chasing the hounds through the Castle corridors, shredding the stragglers with claws as cruel and curved as the blades of warrior fey.
Run! Run quickly! He was dreaming a memory, his breath quick with the echo of panic.
But there were the demon’s searing balls of energy, sailing low over their heads, singeing the fur from their backs. The heat cut like a razor. Lore flattened his ears against his head, making himself as long and low as he could. He heard a yelp of pain. One of the other hounds wasn’t as quick or as lucky.
The tunnel narrowed, the side tunnels coming less and less frequently. They ran so fast, the stonework blurred into a gray wash. They were being stampeded. At the end of the tunnel was a dead end. It was a trap!
There was one last chance, barely a crack in the wall to wiggle through, that would get them to safety. One by one the hounds dove for it, the youngest first, then the mothers, but it was taking too long. Everything in the dream slowed to an excruciating slowness. They wouldn’t all make it through . . .
Stop!
Lore jerked awake but lay still a moment, letting the scene shred and fall away in the calm, rational daylight. He tried not to remember the old Alpha turning, hurrying the other hounds past, and putting himself between the demons and the pack.
The old Alpha. His father.
That was the end of the dream, but Lore hadn’t witnessed his father’s death yet again. He’d awakened in time. For once.
Lore had been the last through that crack in the wall. There had been others who’d died.
Lore had just turned eighteen. He’d become the new Alpha that day.
It was a long time ago. He could feel the pressure of the nightmare like something scrabbling at the doors of his mind. It wanted to finish, to show him the whole gruesome scene. No. Don’t think about it.
Lore sucked in a deep breath, forcing himself into the waking world like a swimmer breaching the waves. Wake up! There was a new threat to the pack and the yoke of responsibility was on his shoulders now. Get up, get moving.
But he slipped into a different dream. He saw Mavritte, one of the female hellhounds, looking at him with accusation in her eyes. “Do I not please you?” she asked, and then held up a long, thin knife, ready to strike it into his heart.
Lore came fully awake with a jerk, heart pounding. He looked around, letting the shock of the dream fade and the objects in his apartment become familiar and welcoming again.
He’d slept through the morning, making up for the long night. Because his bed was otherwise occupied, he’d curled up in dog form, taking advantage of the soft lambskin throw in front of the TV. Now he got to all fours, shook himself, and padded to middle of the room.
A glance out the balcony doors told him the world was buried in snow. It was still coming down, the stuff mounding into a white caterpillar along the balcony rail. Along the streets, cars were slowly disappearing into drifts. Lore couldn’t believe so much had fallen, and it was still coming down. A hush had fallen over Fairview. There was no hum of traffic—a bad omen for the state of the roads.
He thought of the dream of snow, and the mysterious terror he had to face. He thought of the she-hound Mavritte and the knife. Prophecy? Or anxiety that, as Alpha, soon he had to choose a mate from the pack? The urge to bond rode him like a constant thirst, and yet there was no one he wanted. It was a diplomatic disaster, and he couldn’t even lie about it.
If only one of the hounds fascinated him half as much as the vampire in his bed. But we never want what’s good for us. With a mutter of disgust, Lore turned from the window and headed for the kitchen.
Calling his magic, his hound form fell away, dissolving to mist and reassembling in his two-legged body. The sensation was like falling, every cell surrendering the subtle tension that glued it to its neighbor—floating free a terrifying instant—then gathering himself back together with the whoosh of an inhaled breath.
As the coffee brewed, he shook cereal from a box, feeling pleasant anticipation as the nuggets of Cap’n Crunch pinged into his bowl. Changing forms made him hungry.
Females were only one of his problems. There was the fire, the murder, the election, and the mysterious vampires he had met last night.
Where do I start?
Lore finished the cereal and looked in the fridge for something else to eat. He hadn’t gone shopping in a while, so all the good snacking food was gone. How do I expect to catch the perpetrators of dark sorcery, arson, and murder if I can’t even remember to buy groceries?
Annoyed, he pulled open the vegetable crisper and then quickly shut it. Prophets save me! He was a hellhound, not a biologist.
When it came to keeping the peace in Fairview’s nonhuman community, the hounds were basically hired muscle. They guarded VIPs, broke up bar fig
hts and sat on troublemakers until the sheriff, Alessandro Caravelli, showed up to dispense justice. The hound/vampire partnership worked, but now one half was on holiday. Lore would get the job done, but he missed Caravelli’s knowledge of the supernatural community outside of Fairview.
Unfortunately, the vampire had booked his holiday before the election date was set. He was missing all the fun. Lucky bloodsucker. Not that Caravelli didn’t deserve a break.
The vampire was vacationing in Madrid, traveling with his wife, his wife’s grandmother, his baby daughter—that was a long story—his wife’s sister and her husband, and their eleven-year-old girl. The women were witches, the brother-in-law an ex-immortal still settling into life in the twenty-first century. That was one Christmas family vacation sure to be memorable by anyone’s standards.
Lore pulled his head out of the fridge and tried the cupboards instead. There were dog bones and strawberry Pop-Tarts. He went for the Pop-Tarts, stuffing them in his old toaster.
Caravelli had been excited about the trip. This would be the vampire’s first vacation in—what had he said?—a hundred and fifty years. He was finally getting some personal time, leaving with a good conscience because the hellhounds were there to keep an eye on things.
The Pop-Tarts popped just as the appliance started to smoke. Time to fix it again. Lore pulled the plug out of the socket and grabbed a tart, burning his fingers, and ate it over the sink.
I can’t call Caravelli at the first sign of trouble. That would be the worst thing—a holiday ruined, Lore losing face in front of the pack, and what would happen to Talia? For now, it was better if the Fanged One stayed in Spain, safely out of the way. The airports were probably snowed in, anyway.
Lore chewed, feeling a nagging sense of guilt. Murder, arson, and dark sorcery weren’t exactly minor problems. Lore had a responsibility to ask for help if he needed it. He had a right to pride, but not to arrogance.
Lore started on tart number two.
He’d be an idiot if he didn’t ask for information. Lore looked at the clock. It would be night in Spain. Stuffing the last of the tart in his mouth, he picked up the phone and punched in Caravelli’s cell number.
The vampire answered on the third ring. “Caravelli.”
“It’s Lore. How’s the holiday?”
“Women like to shop,” he replied in sepulchral tones. “The only thing keeping me from eating someone is that I am mercifully unconscious during the vast majority of store hours. And it’s a good thing the queen pays me well. I apparently need to keep my wife in overpriced shoes.”
“Better you than me.” Lore didn’t buy the longsuffering husband routine. There was a vibrancy in Caravelli’s voice that said he was really having a good time.
“Is this a purely social call?”
“No. I met three vampires last night who made my nose twitch. Their names are Nia, Iskander, and Darak. Do you know them?”
He heard his friend catch his breath. Given that vamps didn’t breathe unless they were talking, that was saying something. “What were they doing?”
“Drinking at the Empire. They say they came into town for the election.”
“They weren’t causing trouble?”
“Not when I saw them.”
“You’re lucky. They’re rogues. More like the rogues. They’ve been around since the time of Nero.”
Lore’s grasp of human history was vague, but he knew that was a very long time. “What do they want?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“That’s helpful.”
“They have a particular hatred for authority, probably because they began life as Roman slaves. Darak was a gladiator, famous in his own time. There are crowned heads who tremble at the mention of his name.”
Yeah, whatever. “What did he do?”
“Whatever he wanted to. Basically, the gladiator doesn’t pick favorites when it comes to the vampire clans. That’s why they hate him. He’s more likely to show up, cut off the heads of both sides of an argument, and then shower their wealth on the gardener and the scullery maid. He thinks he’s Robin Hood.”
The reference was lost on Lore. “And he got away with killing both sides?”
“No one will stand up to him.”
We’ll see about that. Lore rubbed his eyes, still feeling his late, late night. “There’s more. You’re going to be home in three days, so you should know.”
“Know what?”
Lore told him the rest, keeping back only the fact that Talia was asleep in the next room. For a long moment afterward, Caravelli was silent. “I’ll try and get an earlier flight.”
“Finish your vacation. Don’t spoil it for your family. What I need you to do is to get the queen to delay her arrival. She’d just be another target we need to guard.”
“She’s on my speed dial.” Caravelli didn’t have an easy relationship with Omara, but he looked after her interests. “Look, I want to be there to help.”
“I’m just doing legwork right now. Recon. I’m not pulling the trigger on anything until I know exactly what I’m up against. And I’ll warn you that it’s snowing hard here. The airports may not be open.”
Caravelli made an exasperated noise. “Can I do anything else?”
“No. That’s it. I’ll call if anything else comes up.”
“Good. Keep me up to speed.”
“I will. Bye.”
“Later.”
Lore put the phone down, mulling over what to do next. He would welcome Caravelli’s return, but he couldn’t count on it. Not with this weather.
He was on his own.
Chapter 14
Wednesday, December 29, 2:30 p.m.
Spookytown
There might be Latin-spewing evil burning down the city, but Lore still was Alpha of the pack. Since questioning vampires in daylight was pointless and it was too soon for Errata to have found any answers, he would spend the afternoon finding out who had put Helver up to breaking into the campaign office.
Lore stood on a street corner downtown, or where he thought the corner should be. Snow hid the curbsides and muted the shapes of fire hydrants and garbage cans. It was still coming down, too, the heavy clouds making a twilight out of midafternoon. The buses had wallowed down the main roads without getting stuck, but he didn’t hold out hope for tomorrow. The city didn’t have much snow-removal equipment, and this storm was freakish.
Fortunately, he’d been born with an optional fur coat. Letting his human shape drop, Lore fell to a dark mist. The cold shocked him for a moment, seeping through the infinitesimal spaces between demon and nothingness. He swirled, buffeted by the rising wind. It took all his considerable strength to pull the particles of himself and re-form into a hound—ears, paws, tail, nose—his deep-chested body the last to form out of the churning mist. Lore shook himself, scattering the falling snow from his back. With a bound, he dove into the drifts, heading toward the cluster of city blocks the hellhounds called home.
He saw the pups first, bouncing in and out of the snowdrifts, rolling and wiggling in the soft white mounds, and tossing clumps of snow with their noses. Lore slowed to a trot as they raced in circles around him, seeming to barely notice the cold. Where do children get all that energy? He mock-nipped at a stubby tail as it flashed past.
He was tempted to give chase, giving in to the game, but a nudge of his psychic senses made him look down Heron Street. The urge to play vanished in a lurch of foreboding. There was a cluster of hounds in human form, hands in their pockets, standing in the intersection a block away.
There were two groups of hounds in Spookytown: his own Lurcher pack, and these others, the Redbones. When Lore and his allies had rescued his pack from the Castle, they had freed the Redbones, too. There were many casualties, and survivors from the two packs had amalgamated under the Lurchers.
Sort of. The Redbones’ idea of getting along seemed limited to sharing a zip code.
Lore barked the pups out of the way and shifted back to huma
n form. He turned down Heron Street to see what fresh hell the Redbones were plotting. He was willing to bet they were at the bottom of Helver’s sudden interest in crime.
Blowing on his hands, he walked toward the group. They fell silent as they spotted him, leaving nothing but the eerie quiet of the traffic-free streets and the soft crunch of his boots through the new-fallen snow. He counted five hounds, including the Redbones’ leader—the she-hound from his nightmare.
As he drew near, the female put a hand to her chest and bowed. At her signal, the four males followed suit. Lore had no illusions about the greeting. Mavritte was an Alpha in her own right, bowing to Lore only because so few of the Redbones survived. As leader of a diminished pack, her position was awkward. She could only truly join her group with another by mating with the Alpha or by losing to him in a fight—and losing was usually fatal. Her best option was to do what she was doing—maintain a truce with the Lurchers and treat Lore as her king. If their positions had been reversed, she’d expect Lore to do the bowing.
Not bloody likely. She was a bitch in every sense of the word. Beautiful, but in a spine-chilling way. Like all the hounds, she was tall, strong-boned, and leanly muscled. Her black hair was thick and cut to a shaggy cloud that framed her face and showed off huge, dark eyes. Despite the cold, she was dressed in more weapons than clothes, and a generous part of the clothing was rings, chains, and zippers.
He’d heard a Castle warlord had used Mavritte as a body slave, tending to his physical requirements. She’d eventually slit his throat. After that, she’d ousted her pack leader and taken his place. Now she was looking at Lore with dark, serious eyes. He had a fleeting urge to duck.
“Greetings, Madhyor,” she said, giving him his formal title.
She never did that unless she wanted something.
“Greetings, Mavritte.” He returned the bow, showing respect.
Lore took a quick survey of the others. All Mavritte’s favorites, and probably bedmates. All heavily armed. Each one shifting to block an exit from the intersection. He unbuttoned his coat, just in case he needed the freedom to move.
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