Frostbound

Chapter 7

Bad dog?

She had no idea.

Prophets spare me.

Lore banged into the stairwell and began running back to the fifteenth floor, taking the steps two and three at a bound. It had been a long night, but acute frustration made up for the bite of fatigue. His nerves were sparking like a faulty wire.

There was a human saying about heat and kitchens, and Lore was beating a retreat before he did something incredibly stupid. That vampiress—possibly murderess—was hot enough to set his fur on fire. When he’d had her pinned to the bed, every cell in his being had sat up and begged.

Definitely not something any hellhound should be thinking about, much less an Alpha. Hounds lived by a set of rules millennia old, and those rules said that no hound looked outside the pack for pleasure. They just didn’t. For one thing, if they did stray, they couldn’t lie about it afterward.

That was awkward, to say the least.

Lore stopped on a landing, breathing hard and glowering at the scuff marks on the wall. His skin felt prickly, as if he’d been standing next to a glowing furnace. Thinking about the vampire’s slender body made it worse. He’d had to walk away without even taking the time to put on the second set of cuffs. Feeling her struggle brought out the urge to pin her down. Taste her. Take her.

The memory turned the tingling in his skin to an outright itch.

Maybe he was allergic. After all, she was as different from him as another creature could be: a vampire, a rogue alienated from her sire, and on the run from a crime. The very thing orderly, family-driven pack structure despised.

Moreover, Lore was the serious, down-to-business leader, the one voted least likely to cut loose and have fun. Now, here he had gone and handcuffed a babe to his bedpost. Whatever seed of chaos had infected the vamp-on-the-run was apparently contagious, and now it was crawling through his system.

Bad dog. Who talked to a hellhound like that? In a very, very unwise corner of his soul, he found it hilarious. He started up the stairs again, more slowly this time. His footfalls echoed like a giant’s.

He should turn her over to the law. She wasn’t hellhound business. And how was he going to decide whether or not she had killed her cousin? He was an enforcer, not a detective. He had other priorities, such as Helver and whatever other whelps were digging their way into trouble. Furthermore, there was that something haunting the night and burning down buildings.

Something he thought might be the result of necromancy. That kind of sorcery required a death, and usually a violent one.

Maybe the murdered girl was part of it all. Maybe his pretty prisoner was guilty as sin.

Lore reached the fifteenth floor and cautiously pushed open the stairway door. He’d heard the sirens earlier and, for the second time that night, he found himself on the fringes of a crime scene. The hair on the back of his neck ruffled, his territorial instincts roused by so many strange males in his building.

Uniformed police officers stood outside suite fifteen-twenty-four. A knot of official-looking men crowded the doorway, backlit by the flash of a camera taking multiple shots inside the condo. Someone was asking for security tapes of the front door. Lore knew the man was out of luck. The building was old, and with few thefts there had been no need to add cameras—until now.

“Stop right there,” said one of the uniforms, holding up a hand. He was young and beefy, his features unfinished-looking.

Lore stopped, giving the cop the blank face hounds used with outsiders—except, for some reason, his vampire. She was like a sudden brain fever, making him behave in unusual ways. Perhaps keeping her in his bedroom was a really bad idea. He could almost hear Perry saying, “Ya think?”

“Crime scene,” said the uniform. “Move on, please.”

“What happened?” Lore asked, wondering how much the cops would be willing to say.

“Never mind. Move along.”

“Wait.” One of the other cops turned around. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Lore recognized Baines.

“Detective,” Lore said, erasing all emotion from his voice.

Baines hooked a thumb in his belt, narrowing his eyes as he walked toward Lore. His face was set, like someone had chipped it out of petrified wood. “Okay. I’ll bite. Why am I seeing you at two different crime scenes in one night?”

“I live in the building.”

Baines missed a beat when he heard that. A split second of surprise. “A hellhound? Here? This condominium is about as white-bread human as it gets.”

“I lease from a friend.” Who was a demon, but that was another story.

“Interesting.”

“I pay my utilities. I keep my TV volume at a reasonable level. I help the little old ladies put up their Christmas lights. There’ve been no complaints.” Lore let the slightest edge of annoyance creep into his words.

Baines recovered his cop face. “Uh-huh. Don’t play the poor-little-monster card with me. If a guy wants to spend part of his time running around on four legs, why the hell should the cops care? If that guy is dragging a dismembered leg in his jaws, then I’ll get excited.”

Lore felt his eyebrows lifting in surprise. This was an attitude he hadn’t encountered before. He liked it.

The detective remained expressionless. “What brings you to this floor?”

“I heard the sirens. I was curious to see what was going on.”

Baines flipped open his notebook and turned to a fresh page. “There were two women living here. Do you know either of them?”

“I know one was named Michelle.” So far he was telling the truth. That didn’t mean he had to say everything.

“Michelle Faulkner was murdered tonight. There was someone else living here, a Talia Rostova. A near lookalike to Faulkner, to go by the driver’s license. Who is she, besides a vampire?”

Talia Rostova. So that was her name. It swirled in his mind like an exotic cocktail. “A cousin, I think. I don’t know for sure.”

“They have any visitors?”

“None that I saw, but I live on six.”

“Any idea where this Talia is now?”

Lore hesitated, trying to think his way around the direct question. Baines gave him a suspicious look.

“Hey, Baines,” one of the other officers called. “There’s a drawing on the wall. Looks like gang shit.”

“Take pictures,” said Baines to the other cop. “See what the boys back at the office can make of it. Not that they know squat about supernatural crimes.” He turned to Lore. “Anything going on with the Spookytown gangs?”

“The Dark Hand tried to infiltrate Fairview. They didn’t succeed.” Under Caravelli’s direction, the hounds had made short work of those vampires.

Baines grunted. “I remember that.”

Lore saw his chance to get into the condo again before every trace of scent was trampled away. He hadn’t had much of a chance to check it out before Talia had burst from the kitchen. “I may recognize your drawing. I know the neighborhood and its people.”

“This is a crime scene. You’re not a cop.”

Lore could feel the man’s suspicion like a physical touch. He shrugged, keeping his face neutral. “You’re in charge here, but I might see something you won’t.”

And I’ve got the suspect you really want chained to my bed.

Interestingly enough, though, Baines was considering a range of suspects and not just the vampire roommate. It improved Lore’s opinion of the man.

The detective studied him for a moment. Beneath the wariness, Lore sensed a lot of curiosity. “Like what?”

“If you’re dealing with graffiti, I can help. Vampires are big on signs and symbols. Do you know which vampires belong to which clan, and which monarchs claim ownership of them?”

Baines shrugged. “I know Queen Omara demands the loyalty of any vampire living here.”

“There are things she doesn’t know.”

“And you do?”

Again, an image of Talia flashed through his mind. “I have my nose to the ground.”

“You a snitch?”

“I keep order.”

“I thought that was Alessandro Caravelli’s job. He’s the peacekeeper in Spookytown.”

“He hires my pack from time to time. Right now, I’m his vacation relief.” Lore gave a slight smile at the phrase. It was just so wonderfully, mundanely human.

After a long moment, Baines gave a small nod. “Okay. Maybe you should take a look at what we’ve got in there.” He glanced toward the open door to the condo. “Put some of those booties over your shoes.”

Lore obeyed, barely fitting the protective covers over his long feet. Playing along with the humans’ rules irked him, but at this point he’d take answers wherever he could get them. He’d hoped for more information from the hounds who questioned the crowd at the fire, but they’d come up empty. Helver had given the most detailed account.

After leaving the scene of the fire, Lore had found the pup and made him explain himself again. And again. Lore was taking his time to invent an appropriate punishment for stealing the campaign money. He was still too angry to think straight, and it wouldn’t hurt Helver to stew a little.

Unfortunately, the young idiot hadn’t had anything useful to add to the story. No sight, sound, or scent of an intruder. Lore guessed the fire had been ignited from a distance. Definitely sorcery, probably necromancy. Maybe a warlock, demon or vampire. Big, thick spell books required the patience of an immortal.

He walked behind Baines, taking in the scene. It was crowded with officers and hot with all the lights in the place turned on. The brightness showed everything in lurid colors. Lore had watched enough crime dramas to know they could tell a lot from the way blood splattered during a murder.

The walls and ceiling had a lot to say.

Hellhounds knew death intimately. They were predators, and they’d been preyed upon in the prison where Lore had grown up. He’d seen enslavement, torture, and cruelty for the sake of pleasure, and yet the sight of Michelle’s body made his chest burn with sadness. She’d been a slight woman, her shattered body reminding him of a fallen bird. Slashes seamed her skin where she’d tried to fend off her attacker. The neck was a gory mess, clumsily hacked apart. Lore prayed she’d been unconscious by the time that happened.

The vampires executed their own with swords. Those wounds were, by comparison, precise. Lore guessed the killer had used something that required a lot of cuts—a dagger or a knife.

The camera kept flashing, the bursts of light setting Lore’s nerves on edge.

The police had left the head where they had found it, apart from the body. The eyes were half-open, the lips slack. Lore turned away from the waxy face. It was far too much like Talia’s.

An officer stood in the living room, making a sketch of the placement of the toppled furniture, the body, and the severed head. With no camera or sketch pad, Lore had to remember what was there: a floor lamp toppled, a small bookcase capsized, paperbacks everywhere, pictures askew. Michelle Faulkner had fought back.

Lore tensed as someone bumped into him. There were too many people, and no one was dusting for fingerprints yet, tweezing up bits of thread or vacuuming the carpet for evidence. He supposed even more personnel would arrive to tramp through the place.

To a hellhound, it was a stupid way to investigate. The first and most obvious tool was a good nose, and now there were too many scents crowding out any trace of the killer. The only thing Lore could tell for sure was that hellhounds and vampires were the only nonhumans who had been there in recent history.

His other sense—the one that gave him premonitions—was jangling with a sense of wrongness. The place stank of violence and terror.

“Where’s the drawing?” Baines asked a young officer standing by the window.

“There.” The man pointed to the living room wall.

With a ping of annoyance, Lore wondered how the hell he’d missed it earlier. Then again, it didn’t exactly stand out—just more blood on a bloody wall.

“Well?” asked Baines.

Lore stepped closer. The symbol was crudely done, and at an awkward height. The blood was turning a rusty brown, soaking into the bland off-white paint. He estimated the distance to the floor. “It looked like whoever drew it knelt, scooping up the blood from the carpet with his fingers.”

Baines nodded. “So, what does it mean?”

Lore’s first impression was of a meaningless splodge. If he squinted, it reminded him of a pup’s drawing of the summer sun. Or a squashed spider. Or a head with crudely drawn hair. What had the cop been thinking? Gang symbols had more style. “Honestly, I can’t tell.”

Baines shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

Lore straightened, fixing the childlike scrawl into his memory. As he took one last look, he noticed there was a tiny squiggle disturbing the bottom smears. “There’s something written beneath the blood. It’s almost covered up.”

Baines quickly bent down, bringing his nose nearly to the wall. “It’s in pencil.”

He pulled a penlight from his pocket and shone it directly on the small printed letters. The writing was ragged, the letters uneven. It reminded Lore of his own awkward penmanship.

“Vincire,” Baines said. “Latin. Something about binding, I think. It’s been years since I studied it.”

“Latin?” Lore thought about the fire, dark sorcery, Talia, and the dead body mere feet away. “What kind of a binding?”

Baines didn’t answer. He straightened and looked out the window. “Huh. The snow’s started coming down in earnest.”

Lore followed his gaze. Fat flakes were twirling through the beams of the streetlights, the wind gusting them into spirals. A brief moment of wonder seized him. So that’s what snow looks like. He’d seen pictures, but never the real thing.

“I dreamed that it would snow.” In the dream, something was chasing him. The snow was so deep, he couldn’t run. There had been no choice but to turn and face his enemy.

Prophecies came in dreams. They were the gift and burden the Prophets sent to the Alpha of the pack. The problem was deciding what was a prophecy and what were the aftereffects of the three-day-old pizza he’d left in the fridge. It seemed this time the dream was a warning.

“The snow’s a nightmare all right,” Baines grumbled. “Roads’ll be hell by morning. No one here knows how to drive in this shit.”

The detective turned away from the window, then stiffened. He was looking at a desk with a laptop pushed into the corner of the living room. Lore recognized the detritus of a thinker’s profession: highlighters, sticky notes, bits of torn paper used as page markers, and more books than any one person could reasonably read. A teacher, perhaps? A stack of papers sat on one corner of the desk. The title page of the top one said Paradise Lost.

Lore wondered how anyone could sit still long enough to read that many books.

“What did the missing cousin do for a living?” Baines addressed no one in particular, raising his voice to be heard by all.

The answer came from the young cop who’d pointed out the blood on the wall. “Rostova’s a sessional tutor at the university. She’s got a master’s in education and a bachelor’s in Western literature.”

Baines gave a low whistle. “So she knows Latin?”

“I guess, maybe,” the young cop replied.

Lore understood why Baines had asked. There was a Latin dictionary sitting on the desk. The detective shifted some of the other books stacked on the desk. “Beginning Latin Translation. Virgil’s Aeneid. Pride and Prejudice. Anna Karenina. A DVD of Hugh Grant’s greatest hits. Good to have balance.”

A ripple of puzzlement passed over Lore. He could usually sniff people out. But with her endless shopping bags, glittery cell phone, and ridiculous heels, Lore would never have guessed Talia was a teacher. She didn’t put out the smart girl vibe. But then she didn’t put out the knife-fighter vibe, either.

She was deep in hiding, and better at it than anyone had guessed.

Maybe someone had found her out, and gone after her. If so, why?

Or maybe Lore was entirely wrong, and he had a murdering fiend chained to his bed.

He looked out at the snow, watched it gusting down the cold, dry street like handfuls of sugar. It was starting to stick to the grass.

Baines came to stand beside him. “If this keeps up, the city’s going to be shut down by morning.”

“That will make it hard for our killer to run.”

Baines snorted. “You’d be surprised how well they usually hide in plain view.”