situation was almost unlimited, the constraints on our equipment solely a product of time and the weather. With more time and opportunity, every bell and whistle known to the military could have been ours. And would be soon, I figured.
I spotted others in the dark. Half the people with us had headsets with multiple oculars or single multifunction oculars: low-light, IR. One guy had a virtual-reality-style headset but with only one ocular, for reasons I didn’t understand until I saw the drone in his hands. He scraped the snow off a patch of blacktop, placed the device with its four rotors and multidirectional cameras in the center and the explosive device mounted underneath, and the drone took off, almost silent in the constant low hum of the distant snow movers.
The air felt warmer than it had, but that thought must have jinxed us because the sky opened up and sleet began to whisper down, then to patter down, then to flood. This was going to make egress slippery. Ten seconds later, the drone came down in a clattering heap of broken rotors and shattered high-impact-plastic body. The pilot acted as if he’d lost his best friend.
Eli glanced to me across the night and I nodded, indicating that I was going ahead with the mission to rescue Edmund. Into comms, he said, “DQ and Shaddock in the center, behind Dumas. Everhart behind the DQ, Trueblood behind her. Kojo at the rear. Kojo, I don’t see you. Kojo you copy?”
“I copy. I am here.” The words were terse and irritated. Kojo seemed like the type to want to be at the front of the squad, leading the attack, not at the back protecting us all. I glanced around and spotted the warrior, partially concealed behind a snow-blanketed car in the adjacent parking area.
Our current pattern was like a diamond, the center group tightly positioned, the outer, diamond-shaped ring flaring to the side and in front, with shooters at high points on nearby roofs, providing cover.
“Alex,” I asked over the mic. “Does our guest know we’ve arrived for parley?” I’d been convinced not to walk into a hail of weapons fire by surprising a vamp in his lair.
“He’s expecting you.”
“Move out,” Eli said. The sleet began to beat down hard, strafing into my pelt and burrowing in deep where it would either melt and trickle or clump up like small snowballs and chill me.
Hate sleet, Beast thought.
Following Bruiser, I focused on my footing, on getting around the piles of snow left by snowplows, concentrated on the scents in the air: roasted meat, salmon, human blood, the mingled stink of unfamiliar vamps, and the stench of something dead riding high on the air, possibly on top of the hotel. Beast’s puma paws were designed to keep snow from packing in between the toe and center pads. Our half-form paw-feet were more human-shaped, and snow and sleet packed under our toenails with every step.
We entered beneath the arch on the corner, Eli and Thema slipping into the shadows and inside. Bruiser and Shaddock conferred, something about shock value and entertainment value getting us what we wanted. I shook snow out of my pelt. Molly and Evan held hands, Molly’s eyes closed, her lips moving. She was speaking a working, her magics clear and lively, not the dark night of her death magics. Evan was humming, his music a focal no one else might notice. No one, meaning the vamps and their servants inside. Evan was once again putting his witch-in-hiding status on the line, this time for a man he knew only because of me. They should have taken the kids and gone home.
I had to get Ed. Now. Fast. And get my people out.
The main doors opened. I stood straight and tall. Strode into the building and past the reception area. No one was behind the counter. No one alive anyway. Bloody boots stuck out from behind.
We pushed through to the interior. The heat was like a furnace, dry and slightly smoky. “The Dark Queen,” Bruiser announced, his voice echoing as I passed into the main room, “and the Master of the City, Lincoln Shaddock.”
The furniture that was usually placed in the receiving room was pushed back against the walls, leaving the space open. The fireplace was massive, four-sided, centered between four pillars, and everything in the room was arranged around it, meaning the vamps standing in a semicircle.
My eyes adjusted to the lights quickly and I slowed as the room opened out, giving