Frostbound

Chapter 31

When she came to, Talia couldn’t figure out what she needed most: rest, water, blood, medication, or a therapist.

A bath. She pulled herself upright. Her side twinged where Belenos had stuck her with the knife, but she’d stopped bleeding.

Belenos.

The gruesome ruin of his body lay there, an arm’s reach away. He was melting, dissolving into a dusty slime as vampires did when they died for the second time. She’d well and truly killed him, a vampire monarch. Her sire. Her persecutor. Her killer.

She’d been a Hunter. She’d killed before. By rights, she should have felt remorse, jubilation, satisfaction, something—but no. Maybe those were emotions for later. Maybe this was too personal, too deep for ordinary feelings.

Right now it was more like ticking a mental check box. Belenos needed killing. No question. Tick. Done that.

Suddenly, she turned and threw up a spatter of liquid, missing herself but not missing the decaying splodge that had been his feet. Her body was experiencing something, even if her mind had checked out.

I have to get out of here. Her senses were coming back, and the smell of him was staggering.

Talia got to her feet, memories returning in a jumble. Michelle, finally avenged. Max, who had come to save his sister but had been too afraid to stay. Afraid of Dad.

Belenos was a crazy, dangerous sonofabitch, but in some ways was a stand-in for the real villain of this piece. Her father—the great Mikhail Rostov—was the one who’d given his daughter her real wounds. Without him, Belenos would never have had a chance to touch her.

And he was out there with the rest of the Hunters, killing her friends.

Lore. She knew he could take care of himself, but he was facing magic and Hunters. I have to help him.

I have to stop my father.

At the thought of that confrontation, Talia’s hands began to shake. How long had she been unconscious? She stole another glance at Belenos. Couldn’t have been too long. Vampires decomposed quickly, and there were still bits of him left.

She picked up his weapons, pulling the long knife from the remains of his chest. Without looking back, she left her prison and her jailer behind.

To find the first man who’d hurt her.

Talia walked for a while, listening to the sounds of battle around her, but not seeing anyone until she had gone some distance south. What was going on? What was it Belenos had said? Plans have changed. We have to be prepared to move in a hurry.

If he was packing up and killing the captives, he and the Hunters were losing. The first feelings of satisfaction began to warm her.

It was then she saw a party of four moving a little way ahead. Gun drawn and held in both hands, she ran forward as silently as she could. It was a woman and three men. When one of the men turned to speak to the female, she recognized Joe’s profile. By the height and shaggy look of the other two men, she was sure they were hellhounds in human form.

“Joe! Errata!”

They turned, Errata’s eyes flared with surprise. “Talia! Where were you? What happened to you?”

Talia looked down, realizing that she was splattered with Belenos’s blood. “I got sick of people trying to lock me up.”

Joe and Errata exchanged a wide-eyed look. “We’re one of the teams looking for prisoners,” Joe said. “Now we know where you are, but Baines is still missing.”

“He’s down here somewhere.” Talia accepted a bottle of water from Errata. “Somewhere where the wooden flooring has collapsed.”

While she finished the bottle of water—it wasn’t blood, but she was badly dehydrated—Talia told them about what Belenos had shown her in his quartz ball. It crossed her mind that what she wanted to do most was hunt down her father, but she owed Baines for treating her fairly. Revenge could wait a few more minutes.

“We’re near the ocean,” said Joe. “I’ve been down here before, looking at the sewers as part of the district business council. The area you saw is right around here. Do you think you’d recognize the look of the exact place?”

“Maybe,” she replied. “I’ll give it a shot.”

As they set out through the tunnels, one hound was left to relay the news that Belenos was dead and Talia found. Yaref, the hound that remained with them, was silent, dangerous-looking, and in star-struck awe of Errata. The latter was focused on filming everything with a small, expensive-looking camera.

“Here we are,” said Joe, holding up one hand to signal a stop. They shuffled to a halt. They’d come to an intersection of three tunnels. Two looked old, with slabs of shattered concrete making up the floor. One was more recently built. Bare lightbulbs followed a track down the ceiling, but the power was off. Errata swung around, making sure she got the location from every angle.

“Maybe it was near here, but this isn’t the exact spot.” Talia turned to the hellhound. “Do you know Baines’s scent? Can you track him?”

By way of answer, Yaref did the dissolve-and-reform trick, changing into a massive black canine. He applied his nose to the ground, snorting like a Shop-Vac.

“Where are we?” asked Errata.

“Under the old hotel row on Johnson Street,” said Joe. “Look.” He walked over to the wall, wiping off a few bricks with his sleeve and revealing an enameled metal plate screwed into the brick. “There’s a few of these sign plates around.”

Talia drew closer to see. It read FIVE LILIES HOTEL.

“There were old wine cellars down here,” he said. “The Five Lilies was around a bit before the Empire was in its heyday. There’s an apartment building on the old Lilies site now.”

The hound woofed, and then stood still as a statue, one paw lifted, nose pointing down an old, wet-looking passage.

“Seriously?” Errata asked.

Yaref gave her reproachful eyes.

“Lead on.” She sighed.

The tunnel was narrow and slimy. About a hundred yards on, Talia noticed a salty smell clinging to the old brickwork. “I can hear water,” Talia said.

“Parts of the waterfront are riddled with caves,” Joe said. “Watch where you put your feet. The tide has washed out the floor in places.”

“What were these tunnels used for?” Errata asked, looking more catlike than usual as she picked her way over the slippery floor.

“In the old days, they could deliver from the ships straight to the storage rooms under the hotels.”

Yaref was trotting ahead, making excited woofs. Joe was keeping up with him, but Talia and Errata lagged a little behind. The dog reached a junction in the tunnels, did some more loud sniffing, but then continued on ahead. The air got colder and danker, and Talia envisioned the tunnel ending and dropping them all in the Pacific.

Yaref started to bay, the deep awoowoo that seemed to be their warning cry.

Errata gripped Talia’s arm. “Hold on. Something’s gone wrong.”

Talia pulled herself free and crept forward, her gun in both hands.

“Talia!” Errata hissed.

A huge, angry fireball whistled down the corridor. The enemy! It was bigger, brighter, and faster than anything Talia had seen. Growling and snarling erupted and she heard Joe’s angry shout. Talia turned and ran back to where Errata waited. The reporter was unarmed.

“Run! ” Talia ordered.

Errata obeyed. Neither of them looked back until they reached the last place where two pathways joined. They crouched for a moment just inside the mouth of the intersecting tunnel, both silent and still in the dark. There was an angry growl, and then stillness. The hypnotic slosh-slosh of the ocean sounded right beneath Talia’s feet.

“Now what?” Errata whispered.

A fireball burst past the tunnel entrance, making them jump. Talia could hear Errata’s heart pounding fast. Yaref flew past, legs churning. Pause. Then a huge shaggy wolf burst past.

“Was that Joe?” Talia whispered.

“I think so.” Then Errata raised a finger to her lips.

Four figures ran past, two vampires and two Hunters. Talia recognized both Hunters as lieutenants of her father. Seeing them together with the Undead was just weird. Unexpected tears filled her eyes, as if trying to wash away the sight. Her old tribe was violent and filled with hate, but now they’d betrayed everything they stood for in a bid for yet more power.

One of the vampires stopped, called fire to his hand, and threw it with the efficiency of a sportsman. Talia itched to shoot, but she couldn’t take him and the other three in time to prevent return fire.

The vampire ran on. Talia waited a long moment until the sound of their footsteps had fallen silent before she stirred.

“Do you remember the way back?” Errata whispered.

“Baines is still down that tunnel. We’ve got to try finding him.”

“We don’t have Joe or the hounds.” Errata looked doubtful. She pulled out her cell phone. There were no bars in this part of the underground.

“We could at least go look for Baines,” Talia argued. “Yaref thought he was down here. It can’t be far. This tunnel has to end sometime.”

Talia could see Errata thinking, the call to adventure warring with caution. “Okay. Let’s look.”

They slowly slipped back into the main tunnel, stopping to look and listen every few yards. They stayed at the edge of the passage, close to the brickwork. In places, the floor was spongy, no more than rotten planks.

As Talia suspected, there wasn’t much tunnel left. Soon they could see the end of it, a round brick mouth looking out at the gray ocean. Flakes of snow made a diagonal curtain across the opening. The wind was freezing cold.

There was a power boat tied up at the tunnel mouth. Errata pointed the camera at it. “Want to bet that’s where those guys came from? Think they were patrolling this entrance?”

“Watch it!” Talia cried.

Errata froze, pulling the camera from her face. About twenty feet from the tunnel mouth was a gaping hole in the floor. Errata looked down. “Omigod! Baines!”

Talia rushed over. The detective had propped himself against the wall, his gun in his hand. He looked white-faced and pinched with cold.

“Are you hurt?” Talia asked.

“I blew my knee falling.”

“Maybe I can pull you out.”

“Watch out for the cat,” he said.

“Huh?” said Errata.

“A different cat. I used up my pepper spray getting it to back off. It’s still around.”

Errata pulled back from the hole, whipping her head around and sniffing the air. “Is it very big?”

“Let’s just say Fluffy’s on steroids, and he’s mean.”

With quick motions, she shut down the camera and stowed it safely inside her leather knapsack. “Take this,” she said to Talia, passing her the bag. “I’m going to get changed.”

Talia set the knapsack to one side and lay down on her stomach, peering into the hole. She remembered you had to lie flat when rescuing someone from an icy pond. She guessed falling through soft ice and rotten wood involved similar physics. Spreading out her weight would be a wise idea. Many vampires could levitate, but she’d never mastered the trick. “Can you reach my hand?”

Baines holstered his gun and hopped over on one foot, hissing through his teeth with pain. Their fingertips brushed. “Not quite,” he said.

She wriggled forward a couple of inches, listening for ominous moans from the flooring, and reached down again. This time, she got a firm grip on his hand. He was as cold as she was, all of the usual human warmth having fled his fingers.

It was at that moment she heard a low, feline murmur. She twisted to look behind her. “Oh, shit.”

Baines hadn’t been kidding. A long, wiry tabby was stalking around the hole, staring at Talia with brilliant green eyes. As cats went, it wasn’t pretty. One ear was torn. She could see its ribs. Its tail was missing patches of fur. And it was the size of a St. Bernard.

Talia froze, mesmerized by the lime-green stare. She could reach for her gun, but by the time she could draw it, she’d be vampire pâté.

“It’s there, isn’t it?” asked Baines.

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s fast. I’m a good shot, but I’ve only managed to wing it.”

“That’s so not what I want to hear right now.”

A second yowl rippled down the tunnel. Errata.

The cat sprang to attention, forgetting all about Talia.

Talia immediately took advantage of the reprieve. Bracing herself the best she could, she gripped Baines’s hand and hauled with all her vampire strength. She heaved him up, up until his other hand could grab the edge of the hole. That gave her a bit more stability, so she used her free hand to clutch a fistful of his coat and drag him forward. It was an awkward maneuver. He landed with a flop, using his elbows to lever himself the rest of the way out of the hole.

Talia got to her feet, grabbing Errata’s backpack. Baines got to his feet, but it was obvious he wasn’t up to much walking, much less running away. Talia wrapped his arm over her shoulders, taking his weight. Step one was accomplished. She’d found their man. The next order of business was to get him aboveground, preferably without getting chewed on along the way.

The first obstacle was the Evil Kitty. It was hunched into an unhappy ball, tail lashing, sending up a nonstop chorus of warbling yowls. Errata was answering in kind, her own tail whipping against the floor.

The werecougar was smaller than Talia would have expected, her body only about four feet long. Errata was packed with muscle, her fur a tawny golden brown except for her white chin and underbelly. Rather than hunkering down, she had one paw in the air, ready to swipe at her opponent.

The caterwauling blended into a continuous meeeoww w w w w owrr . Talia would have given a lot for earplugs.

She struggled to think past the racket. She’d never get Baines back through the tunnels to the Castle entrance, but there was a boat a short hobble away. Under the circumstances, a bit of piracy didn’t bother her, especially when the rightful owner was a villain.

A hop at a time, they started toward it. Baines was silent, his face gone ashen with pain.

“Do you know how to hotwire a boat?” Talia asked.

“Not. Done it. Long time,” Baines replied through his teeth.

But you have. Interesting. Talia eyeballed the vessel as they got closer. It was a small Ranger, okay for traveling close to shore. “It’s got an old Evinrude outboard. There’s a red plug on the main wire harness. Disconnect it and jump the starter straight from the battery. Just choke it down to kill the engine later.”

Baines frowned at her. “I thought you were a Latin teacher.”

“English Lit, actually, but I can say all that in Latin if you want.”

The cat picked that moment to pounce on Errata. Talia and Baines wheeled around to see the tabby grab Errata’s head and flip her, clawing her belly with its hind legs. The cougar raked the tabby between the ears.

“Into the boat!” Talia ordered, grabbing Baines by the arm and half lifting him over the side. “Call the cavalry. Try the werebears. Tell them we need more help down here. Bring everything they’ve got.”

Baines gave a single nod, discipline warring with worry in his face. “I’ll do that.”

In the tunnel, the cats separated, but only for seconds. Errata boxed her opponent, using strength where the other had speed. The tabby caught her in another grapple, but this time Errata threw her weight against the cat, bearing down and gripping with her long, curved teeth.

Talia glanced back at Baines. He was already working on the motor.

“If you call in your cop friends, keep them out of the tunnels. This fight isn’t for humans. Your guys can make their arrests topside.”

Errata howled in outrage as the tabby clawed at her eyes.

The outboard motor sparked to life. Talia suddenly felt light-headed with relief. He would make it out of danger.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

“I’ve got to help Errata,” she said, getting to work on the rope tethering the boat to the mouth of the tunnel.

“Watch yourself.”

“Dead already, and I probably taste like it.” She cast the rope into the boat and walked away back into the tunnel.

One life saved. Now for the catfight.

She pulled her gun. This was getting to be one hell of a night. Just call me Dirty Harriet.

She braced her feet apart, raising the Airlite in both hands. “Here, kitty, kitty.”