A Warm Heart in Winter Read online

  Like how a cobra might look at a bare foot that had invaded its territory.

  She almost cracked the window to yell that the punks needed to run. But it was just a tow truck guy, right? And maybe she was making a dangerous superhero out of him because he was all that stood between her and a whole lot of even-worse happening. She’d thought he was a threat and she’d been wrong. But she was not wrong about the three who had come out into the street.

  “You fucking deaf?” the one in front said.

  “I’m going to tell him,” Elle whispered as her head got buzzy with fright and she closed her eyes. “I’m going to tell Dad. This was a horrible mistake and I need to be responsible for it.”

  “I wish he were here.”

  The fact that it didn’t dawn on either of them to call their mother was lost on Terrie, and something that lingered for Elle. But she should be used to it by now, she supposed—

  The sound took her back to Labor Day, when her father had been carrying that cooler full of soda and ice and had dropped things: Loud, dull, and with a rattle.

  Her lids popped open.

  Outside, at the tow truck, one of the taller kids was slumping off the side of the hood, a streak of blood marking the path of his seemingly unconscious flop to the snow. The man in leather didn’t pay him any mind. He lunged forward, grabbed the shorter one who’d thought he was in charge by the throat. As the leader of the pack Three Stooges–slapped at what was locked on the front of his neck, all the man with the mismatched eyes had to do was point at the remaining boy—

  And the kid took off at a dead run, his ski hat flying off his head.

  Elle blinked. And blinked again. But what she was seeing did not change. The tow truck man just kept squeezing the neck in his grip, the kid clawing at the hold with his gloved hands, boots kicking at the snow… until he was lifted up high enough so that just his tiptoes made contact with the icy road. Meanwhile, the man stared with absolutely no expression at that reddened face with its gaping mouth and wild eyes. He might as well have been making himself a sandwich—

  Close to where he was standing in the snow, there was a knife, dropped by one of the kids.

  The punk who’d had his face banged on the hood flopped onto his side—and saw the weapon at the same time Elle did. Before she could yell, he moved faster than he should have considering he had blood dripping out of his nose and one of his eyes wasn’t working right.

  Elle yanked the door release, but forgot she’d locked everything. Banging on the window, she shouted, “Watch out!”

  The tow truck man glanced toward her—just as the punk got the knife and surged upward, leading with the sharp point of the blade.

  “No!” Elle screamed as she threw open her door.

  The knife went right into the tow truck man’s stomach, buried to the hilt.

  “Get back in that car!” he snapped at her.

  Then he threw the short one he had by the throat away. Like, literally, tossed the entire body of the kid he’d been strangling off to the side like someone littering with an empty soda can. The former leader of the attack landed in a heap, and he didn’t hang around to see what was next. He tore off in a sloppy retreat, snow flying behind him.

  Not that the tow man paid any attention to the bye-bye.

  He was all about the stabber. Not at all about the knife.

  How was this possible?

  Even with the blade embedded six inches into his stomach, he bent down to the kid who’d done the deed—who was now back on his ass and staring up with a look of confusion Elle could totally relate to. Clearly, he couldn’t believe that he’d stabbed the Terminator, but the tow man didn’t give him any time to square up reality with expectation. He grabbed the kid’s arm, yanked him to his feet, and forced the limb back until there was a loud crack! As the screaming started, and Elle felt a sickening urge to vomit, the man spun his attacker away like a top—with the kid taking the hint and racing off around the building.

  Looking down at the handle of the knife, the man seemed more annoyed than anything else. Which was not the typical response when something that could cut steak was at a ninety-degree angle with somebody’s belly button.

  “Motherfucker,” he muttered as he took out a cell phone.

  Just before he dialed, he listed to one side. Then he fell down to his knees.

  He was still looking annoyed as he slumped to the snow.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Black Dagger Brother Zsadist, blooded son of the Black Dagger Brother Ahgony, bonded of the fair and well-bred Bella, proud sire of Nalla, and brother of Phury, Primale of the Chosen, was cooling his jets on the corner of Market Street and 14th when the first of the punk-ass motherfuckers hauled by him at a dead run, black-and-gray parka flapping, boots stomping, fear scenting the air in his wake with an acrid burn that was a cross between a marshmallow too close to the campfire and Cascade dishwashing pods.

  Talk about a snooze. Given that it was after dark in downtown Caldwell, all kinds of humans were running this kind of footrace, twelve million kinds of bad decision making resulting in exactly this sort of panicked, rethink-sprint.

  Like he cared.

  Except then number two came tooling along. This guy was wearing a similar parka, which wasn’t necessarily a thing, and seemed slightly less terrified—but he smelled like bong water spilled on an old carpet, so it was possible that his body was making a more accurate survival assessment than his THC-dusted brain was. But again, not Z’s problem. Humans had an extraordinary capacity for stupidity, and who was he to get in the way of consequential learning—

  Inside his ear, there was a low-level brrrrng. Then Vishous’s voice: “Z? We need you three blocks to the north. Qhuinn’s down. Manny ETA four minutes. Abdominal stab.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered as he leaned into his shoulder. “Leaving now.”

  He would have dematerialized, except you didn’t do that unless you knew exactly where you were re-forming and he wasn’t far. He started running, the daggers that were holstered handles down on his chest moving with his torso’s power as if they were a part of his body that he’d been born with. His guns and his ammo were the same, everything lock-holstered to his shoulders and his hips, nothing slapping against him, the whole arsenal coming with and right in reach.

  And what do you know. He was looking to shoot something all of a sudden. Qhuinn was not only a member of the Brotherhood, but he’d also saved Z’s life one night. So yeah, there was loyalty all over the place.

  When he got to the corner of a storage building that was every bit as bright and shiny as a discarded hubcap, he choked up on his leg churn. Fresh blood on the breeze. Nothing gunpowdery, so no bullets. At least not yet—

  Footfalls were coming fast on an approach toward him, and a split second later, a lanky kid with a busted-up, bloody face tooled around the side of the building, right into Z’s path. To avoid a head-on collision, Z punched at the fucker’s pecs, and like a pool ball on a billiards table, things went ricochet, the body in motion spinning off and slamming into the metal siding with a cymbal crash.

  If Qhuinn hadn’t been wounded, Z would have grounded the little shit the old-fashioned way.

  With a shovel and a grave marker.

  Instead, he followed the trail of blood in the snow to the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s tow truck. The vehicle, which was supposed to be reserved for AAA situations of the vampire variety, was front-winch-in to the trunk of a BMW sedan the color of cabernet sauvignon. One of the car’s doors was wide open, and a human girl, mid to late teens, was kneeling over a facedown and fetal-positioned Qhuinn. Another human girl, younger, was leaning out of the front seat, one hand clamped over her mouth, eyes the size of basketballs.

  The brother was leaking. Badly. And that copper tint to the cold air was the equivalent of a fire alarm, something you couldn’t see but made your ears ring.

  Z went right for his brother. As he bent down, the girl who was with him backed off.

  �
�Is he d-d-dead? Is he dying?”

  “I’m fine,” Qhuinn muttered. “I just ate too much for First Meal.”

  Z wanted to roll the male over and see what was doing, but he didn’t have the medical training necessary to do that safely. “Yeah, that Henkel you had for dessert really put you over the edge.”

  “FYI, I don’t think it’s that fancy.”

  “Swiss Army?”

  “Prison shank maybe—”

  “He w-w-won’t let me c-c-c-call the p-p-police.”

  Z looked at the girl. She had to be seventeen, he was guessing. Jeans. Boots. Parka in pale blue. Nice, middle class, not the kind who should be out in this part of town at this time of night. Instead of fucking around and asking a bunch of questions, he barged into her brain and went directly to her file cabinet of memories.

  Ah, yes. Mild rebellion against Daddy run amok—and then things really went wrong.

  “Relax,” he told her.

  “I d-didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  Oops in one hand, shit in the other, see what you get the most of, he thought.

  Checking his watch, he figured he had three minutes until Manny arrived so he better get on with it. Rising to his full height, he strode over to the winch and the back of the sedan.

  “Don’t hurt my sister!”

  The older girl had both of her hands outstretched in a way that reminded him of medieval altar pieces, all helpless, Virgin Mary entreaty for him not to do something he had no intention of doing anyway. Uninterested in talking to her, to anyone, he slammed that open door shut and cut the proverbial cord. Unlatching the tow truck’s hook from the BMW, he tossed the winch over his shoulder and gripped the underside of the car’s bumper. With a grunt, he sank down into his thighs and was careful to lift with his glutes, not his shoulders.

  ’Cuz really, their snow-locked car was not worth a slipped disk.

  Through the rear window, the younger girl in the front seat wheeled about and stared at him, her arms wrapped around the back of the driver’s seat like she was hugging it in lieu of a parental figure. As the angle of the tilt increased, the suspension adjusted to the redistribution of weight with an undercarriage creak, and then there was some serious snow-squeak as he relocated the butt while the two tires in front stayed where they were. His human peanut gallery, both the one inside the sedan and the one standing next to him, were jawbone-slacked as he let the back of the BMW drop to the ground again.

  Heading to the driver’s side, he reopened the door—

  “No!” the younger girl screamed as she reared away from him again.

  “Oh, please,” he muttered, filling the space she’d vacated behind the wheel.

  The engine had been left on, so things were warm. Not that he cared. He put the gearshift in reverse and gently eased some pressure onto the accelerator with his right shitkicker. There was a flare of noise from the hood first, and then a subtle shift of position, the tires grabbing at the snowpack with delicate manners. Using what little traction he had, he coaxed those treads to take more of the slippery meal under them, and more, and more—

  The BMW rolled away from the snowbank it had been planted in, and he made sure not to run over Qhuinn as he righted its trajectory down the city street. Hitting the park button, he went to get out—

  Like a butterfly, a small hand landed on the battered leather sleeve of his wartime jacket. “Mister?” the younger girl said.

  He didn’t want to look into her eyes. So he stared at the speedometer. “Yeah.”

  “You’re really strong.”

  Z got out and took his sleeve with him. Facing the older of the pair, he said, “Go home. Don’t do this shit again. Your father loves you, that’s why he’s got rules. You think he wants to ruin your life? He’s just trying to make sure you live long enough to trash it on your own terms.”

  The girl blinked at him. When she didn’t move, he opened the door wider and indicated the way in with a hand motion that was more annoyed than gallant elder statesman.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” the girl asked of Qhuinn.

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “But it’s my fault. All of this is.”

  Zsadist frowned. “Why would you care about us?”

  As he heard himself speak, he stamped his shitkicker. He was supposed to have kept that as an internal thought.

  “Are you going to call the police?” she asked.

  She was so worried. So horrified. So full of self-blame. And even though humans were of less than no concern to him, he had been through those exact trails of brambles so many times. Especially that last one.

  “I’m going to take care of him,” he told her. “Now you gotta go.”

  “Promise?” she whispered.

  He was about to do another round of what’s-it-to-you, but of course she didn’t have a clue they were vampires. How could she?

  “Do you know how to get back to the highway?” he demanded.

  “I go that way?” she said as she pointed deeper into town.

  “No.” He put his hand on her shoulder and pivoted her around to the river. “That way.”

  The girl nodded, and for a moment, she seemed like she wanted to give him a hug. Or maybe get one from him. He took a step back.

  As a set of headlights flared and the deep rumble of Manny Manello’s mobile surgical unit came down at them, she got into her dad’s car. Going around to that back bumper again, Z pushed to help with traction as she turned the BMW in a circle to face the Hudson. At the last moment, just before he let go, he reached into her and her sister’s brains. Not only did he scrub their memories, he made sure the one with the provisional driver’s license knew exactly how to get back on the highway. Past that, though, she was going to have to get herself to the ’burbs.

  “You weren’t all that nice to her,” Qhuinn muttered as the car rolled off at a snail’s pace.

  Like its driver was worried that the other snowbanks might spontaneously animate and decide to retaliate for what she had done to their comrade-in-heaps.

  Z looked down at his brother as Manny’s RV pulled up to them. “Are you going to die right now?”

  “Nope. And did you hear what I said?”

  “I got them going. That’s all that matters.”

  “You have a daughter. Some night, she may need help from a human. How’d you like him to treat her?”

  Zsadist refocused on the taillights as the BMW’s brakes were hit and then a turn signal—to the left, which was the correct way to go—started to blink.

  “Whatever,” Z said under his breath. “Haven’t we got enough to worry about right now?”

  “You think Nalla is never going out into the world on her own?”

  “No,” Z announced as Manny disembarked with his Little Black Doctor Duffle of poke-and-tickle toys. “That will never, ever happen.”

  As Qhuinn started to chuckle, and Manny began to rapid-fire questions of the how-are-we variety, Z decided that the night was going to get a job-satisfaction rating of zero.

  Maybe less than zero.

  Then again, it could have been worse. Given his history, you’d think he’d remember exactly how creative destiny could get with the bad news.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Blay ran down the underground tunnel toward the Brotherhood’s training center, the clapping sound of his leather-soled loafers like a round of applause for his haul-ass. Inside his skin, he was screaming. On the outside, his rigid composure was his armor, the thing he was going into a battle with, and his rational mind was his ammunition, his primary line of defense.

  Too bad fate wasn’t the kind of thing you could actually fight against.

  When he came up to the locked door to the facility, he punched in a code and ripped through a supply closet kitted out with all kinds of OfficeMax. Out the other side, he scrambled by the desk, and from habit, smacked the Fuck No! button next to the computer. As the tinny voice expressed what he was feeling, he punche
d through a glass door and jogged down the concrete corridor. Doc Jane’s medical area, which had been constructed and outfitted as an engagement present by V, was state of the art. Thank God. With its fully stocked examination rooms, ORs, and patient rooms, it was the best place an injured vampire could be.

  Like, for example, if one had been stabbed in the gut.

  Going by the scents, Blay knew exactly where his mate was, and when he came up to the exam room, he wanted to throw his body through the closed door. He forced himself to slow that roll. The last thing he needed was for his panic to cause a golf-sprinkler bleed—

  The door in front of him opened and Manny Manello, Doc Jane’s clinical partner and Payne’s human hellren, jumped back. “Oh, good, you’re here.”

  “Last rites?” Blay choked out.

  Manny stepped aside as he took off his white coat. “No, awake and asking for you.”

  Blay’s knees went weak as he peered around the surgeon and got a load of his one true love.

  “Oh… God,” he said. “What happened to you?”

  Qhuinn was propped up on a gurney, his mismatched eyes bright and alert, his color good, his mouth pursed with mild annoyance… like maybe he’d picked the wrong tollbooth on the turnpike or a bad lane at the supermarket check-out. His shirt had been taken off—no, wait, cut off, given the two shredded halves on the tile floor—and for a split second, Blay’s libido responded with a hey-there-big-boy.

  Then again, all that muscle and smooth skin was distracting—

  Yeah, except for THAT FUCKING KNIFE protruding at a right angle to the chip-your-tooth-worthy six-pack.

  Blay reached out blindly as his balance went wonky.

  Manny caught his arm. “You okay there?”

  “Fine,” he mumbled. “I’m just—”

  “Ehlena, hand me the ammonia—”

  “Whatsthatfor—” Blay’s vision went checkerboard.

  All of a sudden, something that was the nostril equivalent of a sucker punch brought him back to attention. As his eyeballs came online, he got a close-up of Manny’s big hand and a cracked-open pill.