Frost Burned

“Wulfe,” said Marsilia. I think she wanted to say something else, but didn’t know exactly what. So she was just quiet, but her quietness had a quality of sorrow to it.

“Don’t be mad, Marsilia,” he said earnestly. “But us badass vampires must stick together, you understand.” He paused. “Maybe not. How about if I put it this way? It grievest me, dear heart. But in sooth, it is for the best, as you will see anon.”

“Five minutes,” said Stefan. “Starting now.”

12

We huddled in our corner. I huddled, anyway. Asil looked faintly bored. Honey never took her eyes off Frost. Hao lurked—which he did very well for such a compact man. Marsilia? Marsilia was all business.

I was going to fight vampires, and my name wasn’t Buffy—I was so screwed.

“Did you see his magic?” Marsilia asked me briskly. “I had Stefan tell you to watch closely.”

“I saw.”

“Your job is to stop him from doing it. Any way you can. Walkers are immune to vampire magic—even vampire magic that has its origins in witchcraft.”

She sounded a lot more confident than I felt.

“You didn’t seem to have much trouble stopping him,” I said.

She grimaced.“Yes. But he wasn’t trying very hard—and he exaggerated his reaction when the magic broke. He’s trying to get me overconfident.” She glanced over her shoulder at Frost, who was talking at Wulfe. Wulfe was watching Marsilia and not paying any attention to Frost that I could see. He noticedI was watching and winked at me.

“It is a tactic that Frost takes,” Hao said. He paused and looked at his hands. They were smudged black, and he had black ash smears on his gold shirt. Marsilia’s black outfit showed no wear and tear. I didn’t bother looking down at myself. My foster mother maintained that I could get dirtyin a swimming pool, and getting older hadn’t helped much.

“There were only a few witnesses to his other fights who were willing to talk to me. Some of them were in the same shape Shamus is.” He didn’t look at the collared vampire, but I could feel his attention. “Shamus was a fine guitarist, and he liked Te

“Why aren’t there other vampires here?” I asked. “He doesn’t have all the seethes under his control, right? Aren’t any of the other powerful vampires trying to stop him? Why are you and Hao the only ones here?”

“Vampires do not work well together—any more than Alphas work well together. And the Masters who are farther east feel Frost is at the limits of what he can control. An illusion Frost has done his best to foster,” Hao answered me.

“And most of them think that Frost’s desire to bring out the vampires and allow them to feed where they will is the best idea they’ve ever heard,” said Marsilia. “Stupid. I hate stupid people.”

“You don’t seem to be in a hurry to plan anything for the fight,” said Asil. “And you have two minutes left.”

Marsilia looked at him—and for a moment I saw lust in her face again.

Hao bowed to Asil.“Marsilia and I have spoken about this much so our plans are already laid. She will take on Frost. I will take both Wulfe and Shamus. Ms. Hauptman’s job is to keep Frost from bespelling either of us. It may be that Frost will be so busy that he has no time for tricks and your

Alpha’s matecan sit on the sidelines and cheer.”

I was going to have to come up with a rank for myself besides Alpha’s mate. In the pack, I was just Mercy—but if ten more people called me the Alpha’s mate, I was going to hit someone. It sounded like a chess move.

“More likely, he has tricks up his sleeves,” said Marsilia. “He knew coming to this that he had failed to kill Mercy.”

“He has a bunch of ghosts trapped here,” I told her. And I remembered Peter brushing Honey’s hair. Ghosts who could manipulate the physical world were few and far between. “They could be a problem.”

“Ghosts are not problems,” said Marsilia dismissively. “They moan and scare silly people.”

“Ghosts who can throw rocks and debris are a problem,” I told her. “And there’s that dead but still-moving-just-fine fae assassin, too. If he animated her, it was because he had a job for her to do. If she is a real zombie, then my understanding of the rules says he can call her to fight with him. Zombies aren’t living creatures, they are animated dead with no willpower or thoughts of their own. A zombie would come under the heading of his ‘power’ right?”

“You take care of the ghosts, then,” said Marsilia. “And keep him from trying to control us. We will do the fighting.”

Hao smiled and rolled his shoulders to loosen them. I’d been wrong. He did smile when he was happy.

“This should be an interesting fight,” he said.

When the fight started, I was about fifteen feet behind the two vampires on my side with orders to stay as far away from the action as possible. My knee hurt, my cheekbone throbbed—and I was as scared as I’ve ever been.

“Dear God,” I murmured earnestly. I’d quit worrying about who could overhear me when I prayed a long time ago. When you live with werewolves, there is no such thing as a private conversation even if you are talking to God. “Please don’t let me end up in a wheelchair again. No broken boneswould be a happy bonus, but I’m not expecting you to make up for my stupidity quite so completely.” And then, even more sincerely, I said, “Whatever happens, you don’t let that vampire make it out of here still moving. If he wins, it will be bad news. Any help you can give us will be appreciated. Amen.”

Stefan heard me. He didn’t look, but his mouth softened, and he shook his head.

“Go,” he said, and stepped back against the wall where the spectators had been allowed to watch. He stood next to Asil and Honey, which I had a bare instant to appreciate—if something happened to me, I knew he’d do his best to get the wolves out of here. Not that Asil would need much help.

Vampires are loud when they fight. I don’t know why that took me by surprise. I’ve been in a lot of sparring matches, and they get noisy. Maybe it was because werewolf fights are quieter, the silence imposed by the need to keep hidden. Though people know about the wolves, public fighting is still forbidden.

My job was to watch Frost, and that was what I’d do. The basement was “in,” Hao had explained. I couldn’t go outside the basement without forfeiting my place in the battle. That didn’t mean I’d get out of fighting. It just meant that Stefan would have to kill me. That’s why they had to have a powerful Master of Ceremonies. He would enforce the rules during the fight and declare the wi

I found a perch on top of a broken section of walls with my back to the outer wall. Probably Frost wouldn’t try anything too soon. Unlike human fights—or even werewolf fights—vampire fights could take a long time. Not breathing, not needing a beating heart meant that a vampire was dangerous long after a werewolf would be unconscious. It takes a great deal of damage to make a vampire lose consciousness.

The soot, disturbed by the violent action of the fighters, flew in a foot-high miasma of blackness. The footing was made worse because only part of the floor was tiled. Not even Marsilia was immune to inconvenient stumbles.

I was very grateful for Asil’s perspicacity in grabbing a coat for me. Once I stopped moving, I quickly grew chilled. Tucking my hands in my pockets, I encountered Zee’s abbreviated magic sword. Tad’s warnings rang in my head, so I had no intention of drawing it under anything but the most dire circumstances. But it gave me something to fiddle with—and that actually helped me focus on something besides how terrified I was.

The action was so quick it was difficult to split my attention, and I was trying to watch Frost. Even so, I caught glimpses of Hao fighting and wished my sensei could see him.

I have to admit that Shamus attracted my attention first. Vampires usually look pretty human. I’ve only seen their true faces, what the monster inside looks like, a couple of times. Once would have been enough, but Shamus wore his monster on the outside.