Frost Burned

I would not, could not allow Frost to do as he pla

Stefan walked between Marsilia and Frost, his posture military straight.“For the duration of the fight, the participants may use anything, any power, any weapon that comes to their hand. People who are not participants may not fight. This means that I must caution the audience—and more directly you, William Frost, that no vampire other than those requested by each of the participants, may join the fight. Even if they do not do it of their own free will. Violators will be killed—by me—and if such violation, in my estimation, leads directly to a victory, that victory will be overturned by the Lord of Night.”

“You are drawing a very fine line,” said Frost, but not as if it made him unhappy.

Stefan bowed his head in acknowledgment.“The rules are the Lord of Night’s. My job is to make those rules clear. The first call for comrades belongs to the challenged—Marsilia?”

“I call upon Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, mate of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack,” she said, not unexpectedly.

Beside me, Honey growled, her voice low and threatening. I’m not sure whom she was growling at—possibly me. Asil just stared at me. He knew I’d seen this coming.

“Yes,” I said coolly.

I was no match for a necromancer, though I was begi

“Mercedes,” said Asil in a cheerful voice. “You are going to get me killed at last. Bran would not do it, but I believe your mate will have no trouble.”

I frowned at him.“I make my own decisions. Adam knows that.”

He smiled at me.“He may know this in his head, Mercedes. But his heart will feel differently. You are a woman, and this is a thing of men.”

“Asil,” I said. “You heard. You want me to turn down this fight?”

He closed his mouth and looked away.

“Touching,” said Frost. “But not germane. She isrequired. She ca

Honey snarled at him, and he drew back involuntarily. She looked at me and snarled again, louder.

“He hired the man who killed Peter,” I reminded her. She quit growling and looked at him, again, and this time she showed him her very large white fangs. Werewolf fangs are more impressive than vampire fangs. They are more impressive than coyote fangs, too.

“I’ve accepted already,” I told Stefan. “Get on with it.”

He looked at me a long moment. I couldn’t read his face. “Don’t get killed,” he said.

“Awfully late to be worrying about that, vampire,” snapped Asil. “You should have made certain that Adam could be here. He at least would have stood a chance.”

“Werewolves,” said Marsilia, “are specifically forbidden from participating.”

I stared at her.“But you invited Adam, too.”

She smiled at me.“He is not what you are, Mercedes. Do you think that I who beguiled the Marrok’s son would not be able to beguile your mate so that he would allow you to fight?”

She’d caught Samuel, but she’d never have caught Adam. Samuel might be more dominant and a lot older, but Adam was more wary. He’d never have let her trap him in her gaze—and if he had, I could have freed him. But that part she probably didn’t know. Mating bonds are one of the things we didn’t talk to the public about, and they are idiosyncratic.

Mating bond or not, that she was so certain of her ability to incapacitate Adam made me reevaluate her intelligence—and not upward.

“She couldn’t have asked Adam,” Stefan said, meeting my eyes forthrightly. “Werewolves are specifically excluded from this kind of fight for territory.” He wasn’t just repeating the rule Marsilia had already stated. He was telling me he’d known what Marsilia pla

For a moment I was hurt. But only for a moment. If Marsilia was right, that I was useful, more useful than Stefan would be—and I wasn’t forgetting the way she’d misjudged Adam’s vulnerability—then bringing me here had been the right thing to do. Frost had to be stopped.

I gave Stefan a faint nod.

“Your first pick, Frost,” said Stefan in a “let’s get this done” tone of voice.

“Shamus,” Frost a

We waited, but no one appeared.

“He will be here in plenty of time.” Frost smiled genially. “He has always been a ferocious fighter. Under my tutelage, he has only improved—especially the ferocious part.”

“Marsilia? Your second and last choice.”

“I choose Thomas Hao, Master of San Francisco.”

Out of the shadows, not three feet from Frost, Hao sort of coalesced.“Of course,” he said. “I am delighted to accept the invitation.”

Frost hissed, stumbled back, and for the first time, his eyes flashed ice blue with shock. He recovered himself almost immediately, giving Marsilia a small salute.

“You have been busy, I see. Well then, I have a surprise, too. Let us finish the preliminaries. I call for my last companion—Wulfe. Better known as the Wizard.” He smirked at Marsilia, who wasnot happy.“Keep your enemies close, Marsilia. You have kept him so close to you all these years—but you failed tonight. You might have called him to your side, but you chose to summon this filthy walker instead.” He spat. On the floor. Toward me.

I guess I was supposed to feel insulted or impressed.“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” I chanted tunelessly and quietly, as if to myself, except that everyone in the room could hear me. If Frost wanted to be childish, I could do it, too—and do it better.

Stefan turned his head away, and I was pretty sure he laughed.

But no one was laughing when Wulfe dropped in from behind me so I didn’t see him jump, only heard the sound of his feet hitting tile. I turned so I could see him and still keep an eye on Frost.

Vampires scared me. I even had a mental list of the vampires who scare me the most. Some of those were dead. More dead. Not ever moving again. On the very top of the list of the still moving was Wulfe. I didn’t know why, exactly, he was so much worse than other vampires. Maybe it was the way that every time I met him, he seemed to know just exactly how to freak me out. Maybe it was the “nobody home” look in his eyes.

The Wizard looked like he should be worried about how to ask a girl out on his first date, checking the mirror for acne spots, deciding if he should get an ear pierced and if so, how he could hide it from his mom. He wore ripped-up, red Converse basketball shoes, blue jeans, and a thick cable sweater. His hair had been shaved boot-camp short. He held a thick chain that was attached to a metal collar wrapped around the neck of another vampire.

The second vampire was huge. If he’d been standing upright, he would have been the tallest person in the room

the grungy basement. He must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds.

He wasn’t standing upright, though. He was crouched on hands and knees, and he clicked his teeth together in a weird rhythm.

He saw me looking at him—all of the vampires had looked away from him almost immediately. If I had known him when he wasn’t this

monster, I doubt I could have kept my eyes on him, either. He roared at me, then launched himself like a junkyard dog and hit the end of the chain hard.

Physics said that he should have been able to drag Wulfe across the floor. But physics had only a nodding acquaintance with Wulfe. He had no trouble holding the vampire—who must have been Shamus—with one hand. His other rubbed the stubble of his hair, which looked more white than blond in this light.

“Hey, Mercedes,” Wulfe said lightly. “So they succeeded in roping you into this? I’ve always wanted the chance to taste your blood from the source. Walkers have this lovely bouquet. Like daffydowndillies in the spring, my old ma used to say.”