the waist. My arm and shoulder jerked with the impact. Left claws went higher, taking out the flesh below the collarbone, the left side of the throat, neck, up the back of the jaw and ear. One swipe. I landed off-balance. Tucked and rolled. Smelled Eli. I kept rolling. Three shots rang out. Three more. Three more. Three more. I came up behind a tree, stayed tucked. Located Eli in the dark. Sitting in a tree. Cold-suited. Headset with oculars and mic. Heard the faint clicks of a weapon mag being replaced with a fresh. I inspected the vamps. Both were still down on the snow. I took my first breath.
The vamps smelled strange. Acidic. Like boiling vinegar. I almost expected the snow beneath them to melt and boil, but nothing happened. The vamps stayed down. Eli dropped to the ground, silently moved through the trees and up to the bodies, his weapon out.
“Any more of them?” I asked.
Eli said softly, into a mic, “Activity?” To me, he said, “No. Alex found these two working their way in from the main road, through the trees. They startled a deer and it ran into the path of a laser monitor or we might have missed them. I’ll be installing more cameras in the morning.”
“Get Evan to help. He might be able to set some kind of far-ranging magical warning thingy in place.”
“I’ll be sure to ask for a magical warning thingy.” He sounded amused. I grinned at him in the dark, showing lots of fang and teeth. He snorted softly. “They skirted the house and the cottages, taking photos, then came here, as if they had notification you were inside.”
“Or someone told them about the sweathouse. Construction crew? Delivery help? How trustworthy are Kojo and Thema?”
“Shaddock says they’ve been bled and read and he knows the recesses of their minds.”
“But?”
“Kojo and Thema are centuries older than Lincoln Shaddock,” Eli said. “Not sure I’d trust the MOC on this.” He tapped his mic. “Copy,” he said into it. To me he added, “Kojo and Thema are on the way to carry the two back and interrogate them. Don’t attack the friendlies.”
I grunted and walked around the bodies, looking them over, checking pockets—empty—and clothing labels. Expensive Parisian clothing. Expensive Italian shoes. They carried a good dozen blades and two handguns each. I confiscated everything and started to close the sweathouse door. There was blood splattered on the wood in a swoosh I recognized, thrown from my claws. I had wondered if the house needed to be smudged before it could be used. Now it needed to be purified, ritually cleansed. Crap. I walked away, to face the creek farther down the hill.
On the frozen breeze, I smelled ginger, fresh-cut grass, and the trace of jasmine that identified the vamps Kojo and Thema. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t want to see them carting away our victims, enemies, and whatever else they were. Heard the two pick up the possibly dead vamps and carry them away.
I’d come back at dawn and cleanse the sweathouse, in case my new spiritual Elder came calling through the snowfall. For now, I followed Eli back to the inn, ate a half gallon of ice cream and a container of previously cooked pasta, some of Shaddock’s fantastic BBQ ribs, and half a chicken, cold from the fridge. It was an odd combo, but I needed calories and the sensation of eating solid food. Satisfied, I crawled into the bed next to Bruiser and fell instantly asleep.
* * *
* * *
The sky was only faintly gray when I stood outside the sweathouse door again, hesitating, surprised, seeing that someone—Eli—had washed off the splattered blood. I touched the wood and looked around, up in the trees and rock ledges. He wasn’t visible, but I caught his scent on the air. I said, “Thank you.”
“Welcome,” Eli said, his voice coming from far off, keeping watch. “Want company for a bit?”
I smiled slightly. “Sure.” Knowing I was safe, I went inside, squatted at the fire pit, and studied the fire-starting paraphernalia. In the center of the pit, I emptied out a plastic zipped bag of flammable stuff: well-dried slivers of beech and sycamore bark, lint, and what could have been Brute’s wolf hair. I untied a double handful of kindling, slivers of pine and cedar heartwood, and layered that over the lint with larger splits of well-dried oak. A book of matches allowed me to light the fire, the sudden illumination and acrid stench of