jealous and angry all at once, so I kept my mouth closed on any of the things I might have said. We huddled in the doorway, the sickly smell of Ed’s blood making my insides crawl. My primo was asleep, and hopefully not suffering. Bruiser leaned against a wall, looking like a broken doll, his eyes closed, his face pale, even after sipping on vamp blood. He seemed to be having trouble catching his breath.
Brute eased up beside Bruiser and sat, pressing his shoulder and his wolf-warmth against the Onorio.
Shaddock leaned in to him and said, “You’ll feed from my wrist every evening as long as I’m here. No argument, young’un.” I could have kissed the MOC. Bruiser murmured his thanks.
Eli said, “Master of the City. Can you offer us safe haven?”
“Can’t do much about the weather or the lack of power, but I can call my people and get us to the restaurant. I can start a wood fire and feed you reheated barbeque,” Shaddock said with a very human grin, “and bed you down on the floor in the kitchen, but there’s no power, and it’s on the other side of town. Gimme a little time and I’ll roll or bribe a tow-truck driver to get us there, but it’ll take a while.
Eli tapped the mic back to the public channel and then off. To Shaddock and me, he said, “Rock meet hard place. All the hotels are filled. All the B and Bs within walking distance are filled. There’s no vacancy anywhere. No readily accessible, defensible, empty buildings to take over and hunker down in. The city shelters are unprotected against fanghead attack and are too far off site to reach them on foot in the storm.” He swept his eyes over the buildings and up and down the street.
Shaddock said to me, “I can commandeer a snowplow or steal a car. You just say the word, but again, that takes time and the storm is getting worse by the second, Jane.”
“Sitrep,” Eli said, and I gave a chin jut to show I was listening. “Anyone not evac’d out will bivouac in a hostile environment. Freezing to death or being attacked by enemy vamps is no better than the possibility of crashing in the helo. It’s possible for the Huey to take off into a sleet storm, but that will mean the choice of either flying through the sleet and risk icing up, or flying above the storm in the warmer inversion layer to get out of the bad weather, and that risks the weather change at each altitude transition.
“He hasn’t made a decision on whether he’s willing to risk it, but if he decides to make a run, he’ll carry a maximum of seven passengers. In the event he does decide to transport you, his flight plan and altitude will depend on a lot of factors, like the position of the storm, wind speed, the altitude of the inversion layer compared to our current altitude, and the altitude of the inn. And he might have to alter everything at any moment.”
“So it’s wait out the storm here together or split up and it’s gonna suck on board. Got it. Where did the storm come from?” I asked.
Eli gave his barely there twitch of a smile, knowing what I was asking. “Not magic. We’ve been keeping an eye on two weather fronts. We’re currently right on the edge of both, giving us this,” he pointed up.
He turned his attention to Moll and Evan. “The helo’s upgraded deicing systems are the same currently in use on Marine Hueys. The pilot will go through a deicing process before taking off, and the helo has ice meters that tell him how much ice is building up on the frame of the helicopter while in flight. But any ice accumulation on the rotors doesn’t just mean they’ll be heavy; it means they warp, in which case he lands fast or you crash. I’ve seen the bodies of people who crashed. It isn’t pretty and there’s no walking away from it.”
Molly shivered and exchanged that silent communication common between old married couples. She nodded and frowned, thinking. Evan studied the sky. Eli scanned the streets again and back to us. Lightning ripped across the sky and thunder boomed like distant cannon.
“No matter how bad it gets here,” Eli said, “I’d rather you stick it out on the ground. It’s safer.”
“No. We have to get back to the inn,” Molly said, with the