Frost Burned

There was an eight-foot stone fence between the yards, but someone had left a ladder next to it. Had old Mr. What’s His Name been sneaking into Kyle’s swimming pool before he died, or—and this was more troublesome—had someone been spying on them? In any case, it was not much effort to get over the fence. Even on three good legs, Ben didn’t have to use the ladder; nor did Stefan. As a coyote, I’m outclassed by the werewolves and the vampires in everything except blending in.

Like the empty house, someone kept Kyle’s yard neat and tidy so that we ghosted over grass rather than rustling through the leaves of fall. We kept to the shadows, though I don’t think that anyone would have seen Stefan if he’d walked through the middle of the backyard. He was doing something, some vampire magic, that made him really hard to focus on.

I kept a sharp eye out, but I didn’t see anyone keeping watch. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, but between Stefan’s mojo and the concealing pack magic that Ben and I were pulling around ourselves, only truly bad luck would allow a human to see us anyway.

I could smell it before we hit the house. There was blood on the lawn. I abandoned the shadows to cast out until I found where the dark wet stuff splattered the grass, because it was Warren’s blood I smelled.

Ben sniffed beside me and snarled soundlessly, exposing his fangs as he turned his eyes to the house. From the back, it was as dark as the front, but this near the house, we could both hear the murmuring of voices from inside. They were being quiet, and had we been human, we would not have heard them at all. As it was, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, just a rumble of men’s voices.

They’d taken Warren here, in the backyard. He’d been in human shape—a werewolf’s scent changes when they are in human form, becomes diluted. That they took him in the yard was good. That I smelled only his blood was also good. That meant that all of Kyle and Warren’s friends who’d come overfor Thanksgiving probably weren’t in the middle of a firefight. That was good news, and not just for Kyle and Warren’s friends. Once these people began killing innocent humans, there was no way back. Their only survival path would then be to kill everyone who knew about them—including Adam and the whole pack.

As long as the dead were werewolves, it was unlikely that they had to worry much about the consequences as far as the human justice system was concerned. With the fae, the courts had already demonstrated that when put to the test, fear beat out justice.

For us, right now, that was a good thing. As long as we could keep the villains off the defensive, Adam should be okay.

What Stefan had said was true. They were obviously waiting for someone, and Jesse, Ben, and I were the logical targets. I had to assume that they were prepared to deal with Ben and me. Stefan would throw a wrench in their plans, but I didn’t know if it was a big enough wrench.

While I was debating, someone started speaking. The voices were coming from Kyle and Warren’s bedroom on the second floor. I looked up and saw that the blinds weren’t drawn—unusual for Warren, who was quite aware that there were things that could look in your window in the dark.

“They aren’t coming,” someone said. “We can’t afford to wait until daylight. We need to find them. Orders are to get the information.”

“Yessir,” a second man said. “How far can I go?” The second man gave us a total of at least four. I could still hear the rumble of the other two down in Kyle’s living room.

“Get the information,” the first man said, and I heard the bedroom door shut and the footsteps of someone leaving.

“You hear that, Johnny?” There was a sick eagerness in his voice. “He said I could go as far as I want.”

Another man, presumably Johnny—giving me a count of five bad guys—said, softly, “Only until we get the information, Sal. You hear that? Give us what we want, and I’ll stop him. Sal was captured by the Afghanis a while back and didn’t come back quite right. He likes torture. Tell us where they are likely to have gone to ground and everything stops.”

Silence.

“So where would they go?” someone asked, and there was the sound of flesh on flesh.

Someone made a noise, and the hair on the back of my neck rose as my lips pulled back from my teeth. Kyle. They were hitting Kyle.

“Staying quiet isn’t helping, son,” said the soft voice. “I don’t want to do this. Boss don’t want to hold your lover any longer than we have to. Takes a lot of people to hold a werewolf pack—and some of them are going to get dead. If we can get Hauptman’s daughter and wife, we can let the rest of you the fuck go.”

I wonder if Kyle heard the lie.

“Fuck you,” he said.

Maybe he had. A divorce attorney, I expect, would have a lot of practice telling when someone was lying.

They hit him again. Beside me, Ben was vibrating.

Stefan said, sounding hungry,“Mercy, there are only two of them in that room.”

I shifted back to human so we could talk.

Ben nudged my knee, hard.

“I know,” I told him. “Can we take them without alerting the others?” I shivered. The TriCities wasn’t Montana, but it was still too cold to stand around naked in November. Or maybe I was shivering with my coyote’s desire to go kill someone.

The first man said something ugly, and Kyle made a noise.

Yep. It was the go-kill-someone shiver.

“We can,” Stefan said. “And if not—I can kill them all.”

That didn’t sound like a bad plan, standing out here listening to them hurt Kyle. Iknew it would be stupid to leave bodies, but his pain was putting paid to my good sense.

“Throw me up,” I told him, and turned back into a coyote.

I looked at Stefan, and when he met my eyes, I jerked my chin to the balcony that came off the bedroom. He frowned at me doubtfully. I rose up on my hind legs and bounced once. Then lifted my muzzle toward the balcony again.

His eyebrows rose, but he picked me up and threw me. I cleared the railing but had to twist hard, so I landed in the middle of a planter instead of on top of the lawn furniture that might squeak under me.

Ben jumped to the top of the railing, and Stefan followed. Stefan hopped off and landed on the balcony with bent knees and no sound. Ben’s ears flattened at me, so I moved off the planter and let the heavier werewolf use it as a stair so that he didn’t have to land so heavily. Hard to land quietly on a hard surface with werewolf-sized claws.

4

The brocade drapes were an inheritance from the people who had built the house. Kyle loved the fabric but complained a lot about the way they left six inches between the bottom of the curtains and the floor.

I dropped to my knees and peered through the bottom of the sliding glass door that Kyle planned to replace with french doors next summer along with the drapes.

Kyle and Warren’s bedroom was decorated in a minimalist and very civilized style. The blood on the carpet looked like the single contrasting note one of those designers on TV liked to recommend.

There was so little furniture that the villains had had to bring up a chair from the dining room so they had something to use to stage their interrogation. They’d tied Kyle to the sturdy chair naked. His feet were free, but it didn’t matter because they were also bare. Unless you are a werewolf or maybe Bruce Lee, bare feet can’t do much damage unless you have more of a strike opportunity than being tied to a chair presents.

From the looks of him this wasn’t the first round of abuse he’d taken. I kept my growl to myself, though I could do nothing about the snarl that wrinkled my nose. Kyle’s face was bruised, the aristocratic nose sat at an angle, and dried blood covered his chin and upper chest. A cut above one eye had bled, too, and that eyewas swollen shut and purple. There were red marks on his cheekbone and stomach that were fresher, having not had time to bruise.