body, the other”—I traced the un-blooded footprints back to the shadow of a tree on the edge of a clearing—“stood there. Watching most likely.”
“Why would they watch while their ally was fighting a werewolf? Tabitha wasn’t the strongest of us, but she was more than a match for an ordinary vampire.”
Had Yelena been an ordinary vampire? When we’d last met she’d seemed like a terrifying force of nature driven by hatred and envy. Then again, when we’d last met I’d been seventeen and deeply sexually confused. Looking back I couldn’t remember her doing that much to suggest she had any kind of special powers. Well, no more special than a vaguely witchy vibe but she was nowhere near Sebastian Douglas levels of I-have-spent-lifetimes-mastering-secrets-man-was-never-meant-to-know. I was damned sure Julian could have taken her, and I wasn’t sure I’d have fancied her chances against any of the Vane-Tempest pack. “You don’t have to touch somebody to help them in a fight. Vampires—if it was a second vampire—have a whole mess of tricks to play with.”
“You have a theory.”
“Standing on the sidelines watching, and then making one decisive strike from behind when you go for the kill? I know the MO. I might be wrong. I hope I’m wrong.”
Tara didn’t look scared. Which was good because I was shitting myself. “You think it was Douglas.”
“It’s what that fucker does every time.”
Barely breaking her stride, Tara dropped to all fours and went wolf again, searching the ground where the other attacker had been standing. After a few moments she shifted back, kneeling in the snow with a look of deep frustration. “Nothing. Too much ice and shadow, and vampires don’t sweat or breathe. It makes them much harder to follow.”
I took my coat off and laid it over her shoulders. “Give me a moment.”
“What’s this all about?” She looked at her newly acquired article of clothing.
“We’re standing in snow. You’re naked. I know it can’t kill you but it can’t be nice either. Besides it—it felt like I should make a supportive gesture. If you’re feeling all patronised I’ll take it back.”
She drew it slightly tighter around herself. “No, it’s—thank you.”
“Actually I might want it back anyway. It’s fucking freezing out here.”
Her smile was a whole lot less predatory than it normally was. “You forget the first rule of any bargain struck in faeryland—no takesie-backsies.”
“Can I at least have it when you go furry again?”
“We’ll see.”
Something struck me. “What was that you said about bargains in faeryland?”
“No takesie-backsies?”
“Well, yes. But it was the bargain thing that I was thinking about. If Yelena was here, if Douglas was with her, they can’t have got through without the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter knowing about it.”
Thrusting her hands into my coat pockets, Tara leaned back against one of the gnarled grey trees that I wasn’t completely certain weren’t humans transformed into plants for welching on their debts to the King-Queen. “Unless you’ve got his-her number in here somewhere”—she pulled a hand out with two old bus tickets and a Werther’s Original that had probably been in there since Bruce Forsyth was still doing Strictly—“I’m not sure how that helps.”
I tried to give her a flirtatious smile, but all the emotions coupled with the biting cold made it into more of a grimace. “If I did something totally reckless and dangerous, would you consider it exciting and a little bit sexy, or just really annoying?”
She stepped hurriedly towards me, my coat flapping around her in a way that I was pretty sure meant it wasn’t doing its job properly. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t even—”
“Too late.” I blinked, tasted blood, reached for something cool and dark and violent and my mother’s laughter rang in my ears. Then a chill wind brought me to my knees and when I looked up, shaking the bloodlust from my lips and the hunter’s mark from my eyes, there was a man in the shadow of the tree.
He wore a cloak made of utter darkness, and his black hair flowed around him like an ink waterfall. His face looked like it was carved out of marble and his eyes were onyx set with stars. “You bring war in your wake, hunter-thing.”
Breathing wasn’t happening easily right now, but I managed to gasp out something along the lines of: “Got. Your. Attention. Though.”
“My Lord.” Tara bowed her head courteously. “Forgive the intrusion. My pack has been grievously wronged and we thought you may know who had wronged us.”