by Beth Dranoff
Jon
Ignoring the flashing message light, I thrust Jon’s note deep into my bag and instead dialed Lynna. Voice mail again. I hung up without leaving a message. Again.
Fine. I leaned back into my pile of pillows and dialed into my voice mail.
First message: a telemarketer trying to sell me a cable TV package. Delete.
Second, third and fourth messages: hang ups.
The fifth message was from a breathless Lynna. “Dana, I’ve got this bad feeling. Need you to tell me I’m wrong—or look under my car and kill the spider for me. I’m heading over to the Swan to meet you after work tonight. Please wait for me, okay?”
Sandor’s gravelly voice was next. “Dana girl, you coming in tonight? I got a message from your vamp friend that you might be out sick, but I wanted to check to make sure you’re okay and to see what’s the what. Give me a call when you get this.”
The seventh message made my heart go cold. There was a chill emanating from the phone. I swear I could feel a sheen of icy hoar frosting over the earpiece.
“We have your friend. You will meet us.” The voice described an area not far from Cherry Beach. “We will talk. And then you will die.”
I dropped the phone.
Okay so it wasn’t my imagination; there was ice puddling on the bed, searing the top layer of blanket—heat against all logic. Grabbing the edge of the sheet, I lifted it up and flung it as far away from me as possible with a very high-pitched, girly shriek.
Footsteps pounded along the hallway outside my door as Anshell raced, white coat flapping, into the room. Wordlessly, I pointed to the phone, which was melting through the shag to whatever lay beneath it.
Muttering under his breath, Anshell leapt across the room to the fire extinguisher, released the clasps and sprayed the phone until it stopped sizzling and popping. He pulled some thick rubber gloves from his back pocket and put them on before scooping up the mobile communication device, which had now clearly seen better days.
He let out a low whistle as he turned the piece over in his hands. “Girl, you sure do know how to liven up a place,” he said.
“Understatement much?” My voice raspy through a chest made suddenly tight.
Anshell hit a spot on the wall and a cabinet I hadn’t noticed before opened up. Out came a thick leather rectangle with a zipper on top; in went the melted phone; down went the bag.
He sank into the lounge chair with a squelch, leaned back, and looked at me expectantly.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on here. From the beginning.”
* * *
When I was done, he let out another one of his what I suspected were characteristic long, low whistles.
Starting from the beginning,” he said, “which friend do you think is in trouble here?”
“I’ve only got so many,” I replied. “Could be Jon. Could be Sandor. Could maybe even be Sam, although I don’t know that we know each other well enough yet. But I’m pretty sure they can all take care of themselves just fine.” I gulped, not wanting to force out the words I knew I had to say next. “I think it’s Lynna. Whoever is out there, I think they have Lynna.”
* * *
I wanted to go right away. Anshell made me wait a few minutes to have The Talk.
No, it had nothing to do with safe sex. Besides, let’s be serious—that ship had sailed, sunk and set sail again more times than it was worth counting. This Talk had to do with the Pack. Joining. What that meant. Protection, but also a set of responsibilities that maybe I wasn’t ready to deal with.
Of course, it all depended on whether or not I was truly a shifter now. Signs pointed to yes, but until I could control and replicate it...
Either way, Anshell was firm on the whole not-letting-me-walk-into-danger, especially not without backup. The way my week was going, I was inclined to agree. I wasn’t keen on danger to begin with, frankly, but it didn’t look like my life at present was going to make the avoidance of danger an option. I allowed myself a moment of weakness and acquiesced to his offer.
Backup, apparently, came in the form of Sam. Also Jon. Awesome. Two males, one female, and a homicidal poison gas arsonist on the loose. This just kept getting better and better.
Chapter Fifteen
The plan went something like this. I would head, ostensibly alone, to the place the scary melty ice voice directed me to go. Lurking in the background, with a more complex strategy, I was hoping, would be Sam and a team of Anshell’s making. Think of me as bait, but armed in places I didn’t think possible. Here’s hoping it didn’t occur to the chilled voice to melt my body armor the way it had done so effectively to my cell phone.
Get in, scope the scene, get Lynna, get out. Cause as much damage as possible. Hope that Sam would be enough to back me up in case Anshell’s team didn’t come through. Not that they wouldn’t come through. Right? Positive thinking there, Dana. Come on. You can do it.
Definitely don’t think about your friend, who might be an image master extraordinaire on a film set but was completely unprepared to defend herself. No self-defense classes (Lynna had tried one or two but spent most of the time hiding out in the back of the gym gossiping with the hunky caretaker), and no preternatural vaccinations (what’s the point, she said—I lead a very different life from you and I hate needles). Taking a shower and working sixteen-hour shifts was about as much exercise as Lynna was interested in. Pushing herself to her limits meant work, possibly play, but definitely no physical exertion. She’d wait for a big strong man to rescue her.
Not that Lynna would ever admit to the whole dominant male fantasy thing, but it was clear there was something more than sheer laziness behind her apparently limitless ability to sabotage anything that might make a male perceive her as a physical equal.
Not me. I expected my men to keep up with me, and if they couldn’t—well, that was their issue, not mine.
What choosing a vampire as one of my lovers demonstrated about my commitment issues, however, was something perhaps I would leave aside for now.
One of my lovers. Riiiight. Because I had them lined up around the block. Because I was seeing so many males at the same time. Because I wasn’t exclusive with Jon. Because I certainly didn’t feel like there might be life (or unlife) beyond the play. No. Of course not.
Denial. It’s more than just a river in Egypt.
There was Sam. Did I have the energy to start something up with a guy who wasn’t preternaturally inaccessible? Mr. Nice Guy With Weapons? No wonder pop psychologists have devoted so much time to the whys and wherefores of our attraction to the bad boys. Rough, dangerous, but of course soft and squishy in the middle when it came to us. Rescue fantasies go both ways, right?
Speaking of rescue, it was time. I drove my truck, scanned and cleared of all magical and mundane traps, to the spot. Turned off the engine with a rat-a-rat-rat-a-thud. Note to self: get engine serviced soon. Sat. Drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Waited some more while scanning the desolate area, waves slapping the shore and breaking against the ice with sharp snaps of sound. Ice + ice demon. Go figure.
Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. By twenty-five, I was examining my fingertips for hangnails. At thirty my hair became the subject of some scrutiny, as I began the Great Split End Hunt. Forty had me scrounging around for receipts and organizing them into neat piles on the ripped passenger seat. That kept me busy for at least another ten to fifteen, at which point I realized I’d been there an hour. That would be fifty minutes past the time the swap was supposed to happen. So not good.
The disposable cell phone Anshell had given me buzzed against my hip, scaring me out of my skin just a bit. I checked the display: Sam.
“Yes?”
“Keep it cool,” he said. “I’m seeing something from behind your vehicle, a ways off but heading towards you.
”
“From the lake?”
“No, the road.”
“So, ice demon. Not much for that lake effect mist, huh?”
Sam chuckled.
“Remember—we’re right here behind you,” he said. “Keep your head, watch your back and focus on your friend.”
“Roger roger,” I replied, cutting off the connection and putting the phone in my pocket.
All too soon the fog was there. My windows were sealed shut against the condensation, heart hammering, upper lip prickling with frozen sweat droplets. I couldn’t see the end of my hood.
I glanced over my shoulder, not trusting the rearview mirror. Grey goo. I looked to the front again and almost left my skin behind as I jerked backwards and away. Lynna’s cheek was pressed against the windshield of the truck, the rest of her body sprawled at awkward angles. I would have thought she was dead if not for the frantic darting motion of her eyes. She was being held in place by a single taloned hand, turkey claws on the end of stubby marbled orange digits. I couldn’t see the arm to which those fingers were attached.
Suddenly the hand rolled away from Lynna with a bloody thud as it hit the windshield wiper blades, severed from its source by a single wickedly curved blade that seemed to whistle even through the partial sound barrier of the glass. I saw a blur of green as what I assumed was the arm and the body behind it was hauled away from the truck. Gelatinous green glop smeared a finger-paint pattern, Rorschach drawings, dripping along Lynna’s shoulder. I saw Sam’s face, felt him smack the hood of the truck, (was that the severed arm he was using?) as the mist seemed to start clearing. The signal to grab Lynna and go.
In a flash, I had the driver’s door open and was hauling my friend’s relatively inert form into the truck, pushing her past the steering wheel and onto the pile of receipts. My accountant was so going to fire my ass when he got the blurry, smeared, stuck-together stacks this year. Lynna was curled into a fetal ball on the seat. I pushed her feet down and reached across to grab the seat belt. Once I was satisfied that she was securely fastened, I opened the truck door again—my side, not hers—and stepped out.
I had to check things out for myself. Because sometimes I’m an idiot.
Thick silence greeted me. No fighting. Nobody but me, the truck, and Lynna inside.
This made no sense.
And then I wasn’t alone anymore. In front of me, there was a blur of motion; a being of pale aquamarine blue with crystalline warts that twinkled in the moonlight appeared. A hand on my shoulder before I could move. Cold numbness where it touched, trickling ice into my veins. I could feel my heart start to pump slower. Sharp fear clawed at my chest. I was powerless in its grip. Not enough air. Too much pressure.
I couldn’t let it happen. I narrowed my concentration with the air I had left, and channeled that pressure. The edges of my fingertips started to tingle. I pushed aside disbelief, doubt; my wonder at what my body was trying to do. Claws, nubbly tips starting to lengthen and reshape. But slowly. Too slowly.
Time. I needed more time.
And, clearly, more practice. Instead I settled for distraction, forced through numb lips shaping a single word: “Why?”
“It’s not personal,” it said. “Someone wants you dead. I’m just the messenger.”
“Who?” A gasp. If I was going to die, at least I could find out who would do this to me.
It opened its mouth to answer and fell towards me, green blood blooming on its chest. Like a wall of sound exploding, I was abruptly surrounded by noises of fighting, slashing, screaming and dying as I gulped in breaths of precious air. I looked around and found Sam, dancing to my left in the fray, swinging his sword. Anshell was somewhere to my right, cracking necks. The battle had a feral grace, blood flowing as the players swirled in a killing two-step.
And then it was over. Mist flowed outward and away from the gore, and we were left, standing, dripping green and red, with the carnage that remained.
Except for the blue ice assassin. He was not happy at all. He was, in fact, spitting bits of frozen aquamarine chips tinged with his own green blood as he sat, fuming, swaddled in sparking cords of some kind. The killing blow to his chest was already knitting back together, although the healing was absorbing some of the fabric of his shirt along with the blue flesh. That would be a bitch to get out.
Jon was sitting opposite Demon Blue, fangs out, the laugh lines around his eyes pulled tight in anger. He leaned on a wicked sword, sharp and multi-layered, its handle solid black and covered with runes I didn’t recognize. I couldn’t make out what Jon was saying to the demon, but from the way the demon was responding (leaning away, looking down, trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible) I could only guess what Jon was impressing upon the would-be assassin. I’d always seen Jon as more of a lover than a fighter, but from his practiced stance and the ease with which he wielded the hefty sword, it was clear that Jon had yet another dimension to add to the picture I kept layering in my head.
He pointed the tip of his cutting edge at the throat of Demon Blue, leaning in just enough to cause a few drops of green blood to drip along the length of the blade. In a flash, Anshell and Sam were flanking the prisoner. Anshell laid his hand on Jon’s arm and cleared his throat.
“Be cool,” Anshell said. “If you kill him or tear out his throat, he can’t tell us anything.”
Jon growled in frustration, but withdrew his sword from Demon Blue’s version of an Adam’s apple. The look Jon threw Blue’s way, though, left no doubt that had looks been weapons, Demon Blue would have been very dead. Anshell leaned into Demon Blue as Jon backed off, Good Cop to Jon’s Bad Cop. You’d think they had planned it, it came off so smoothly. Sam stood in the shadows, a ways behind Anshell, flanking him and guarding his back. Not for the first time I wondered what, exactly, the relationship was between Anshell and Sam. Commander and bodyguard? Friends? More than friends?
“What did you want with our girl over there?” Anshell asked, nodding in my general direction. “You know she is under our protection?” Okay, we hadn’t dotted and crossed any special letters or anything, but it was nice of him to say anyway.
“Like I told the girl,” Demon Blue replied, “it’s nothing personal. Just a contract.”
“Who hired you?” Anshell’s voice was level.
“You know I don’t know that,” Demon Blue said. “It’s always brokered though a Shadow Wraith.”
“What’s this Shadow Wraith’s name?”
Demon Blue gave a short, sharp laugh at that question.
“You seem like a guy who knows what’s what around here, so I’m going to give it to you straight. I can’t tell you her name. Either you’re going to kill me or you won’t, but with her there is no guessing—I reveal her identity, I’m dead. And dying by her pleasure will, I’m sure, be lengthy and excruciatingly painful because that’s how she rolls. So how about we skip that part and get to what’s really important here. The details.”
“I thought you couldn’t tell me anything,” Anshell said, after a pause.
“You have to ask the right questions,” Demon Blue responded. “And if you rough me up a little, leave a few marks where they won’t heal instantaneously, it won’t seem like I rolled so easily. But don’t kid yourself. I’m not giving up the Shadow Wraith.”
Anshell looked at Jon, who didn’t need to be looked at twice. He reached out and sliced off a piece of Demon Blue’s ear. Then licked his lips. Blech. I thought vampires only went for human blood. Apparently not. Double blech. I looked away to see Sam watching me with a smirk. Apparently the nature of this particular delicacy was not lost on him, nor was it any kind of surprise. Awesome.
In the meantime, I found myself short on patience. I took a series of deliberate steps forward until I was nose to nose with the creature who had just tried to end my existence. Nothing personal, my ass. My life
was very personal—to me.
“Cut the crap,” I said. “Tell me who wants me dead.”
The demon laughed in my face.
“Listen, lady, you and I both know that if it weren’t for your posse of friends here you would be dead. This attitude you’re pulling with me? You’re bluffing. Get you and me alone again? You’ll die with my cold hot self as the last thing you see before you exit this mortal coil.”
My dagger was unsheathed and buried in his throat before he could utter another word. Blue sanguinity bubbled out of the corners of his mouth, and his cerulean eyes started to cloud over in a frozen sheen. I glanced up at Anshell, who was shaking his head.
“What? Can’t this guy repair himself indefinitely?”
Sam answered. “Ice demons have two weaknesses: their throats and silver. Unless someone draws out the poison now, this guy is done.”
“Oops,” I muttered, not very convincingly.
Sam peered over my shoulder to assess the damage. “Dead guys as a rule generally can’t tell you anything useful. Not without an exorcist or a psychic, and even then the results can be a little dodgy.”
I grunted my response as I yanked the dagger out. Anshell found a towel from who-knows-where and pressed it against the burbling, bloody gash to staunch the flow. Demon Blue took on a few gulps of suddenly precious air as his throat tried to knit itself back together.
Satisfied that Blue Boy wasn’t going anywhere for the moment, I bent down to wipe the bloody goo from my knife in the snowbank. It was extra sparkly in the moonlight.
I called over my shoulder to the group. “Any ideas about these diamonds? Like, for instance, do they do anything special?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, bitch,” Demon Blue gurgled. Jon kicked him, steel-toed boot to gut, in response.
“Manners,” Jon said. “Apologize to the lady.”
“I don’t see no ladies here,” Blue coughed. Jon raised his foot once more, lightning-quick, stopping mere millimeters from the previous point of contact between boot and gut. Blue held up his hands. “But let’s pretend that one over there,” nodding in my general direction, “is somewhat resembling a lady. In which case, let me express my most sincere apologies for referring to you as a female dog. If you were a dog, you would most certainly be the alpha male—which I guess would make these boys here your bitches, hmm? My mistake.”
