Frost Burned

His eyes glowed—not like a flashlight. It was more like a small Christmas tree light or a Siamese cat’s eyes in the dark if the cat’s eye actually lit up instead of catching and reflecting light. In a cat, it was cool—in a vampire it was just freaky. His lips were pulled back until his face looked as though it had been created to be a canvas to hold fangs and those faintly sparkling eyes. His fingernails lengthened until they were nearly as good a weapon as a werewolf’s claws. There was nothing human left in Shamus at all.

Wulfe had released him from his chain, though the collar was still on. If Shamus wasn’t twice Hao’s weight, he was very near to it. He was fast—and, as promised, utterly ferocious. After Hao hit him once, Shamus was totally intent on reducing Hao to a pile of sludge.

But Hao was never where Shamus thought he was.

“Flow like water,” Sensei Johanson often said, usually in a tone of exasperation. And he came pretty close. But I’d never seen anything like Hao.

Hao flowed like water. Sharp claws passed harmlessly by—and so close that a quarter of an inch more would have had Hao’s skin sliced like a prisoner rolled in razor wire. He twisted, stopped, leaned back, and nothing touched him. It was beautiful.

I was supposed to be watching Frost, I admonished myself sternly. But I kept sneaking glances at Hao.

Then the ghosts came. I knew they were here before I saw them, their presence something the coyote could feel, a prickle down my spine and a tingle on the tip of my nose. I trusted the coyote’s senses, tried to open my vision the way I had before, and took a good look around.

The dead spirits clustered against the wall, as far from the vampires as they could get. Ghosts, like cats (excepting my own Medea), don’t like vampires. They didn’t seem to be doing anything, though I could see the greasy spider-silk magic that tied them to Frost.

Despite the distraction of Hao and the ghosts, I was keeping my eyes on Marsilia and Frost. Who knew that Marsilia was a bruiser—and a trained boxer, from her tidy and agile footwork? Frost had been trained in some sort of hand-to-hand, too. It looked to be a relatively effective if piecemeal style, like the techniques the army teaches its new recruits—a style adjusted for vampiric strength and speed.

Just beyond them was a group of four of Frost’s vampiric audience and with my vision changed because I’d been watching the ghosts, I about fell off my wall.

I couldn’t see souls. Besides, vampires don’t have souls. But something was wrong with Frost’s vampires. Something was twisted and shredded that should have been straight and whole. I looked at my vampire then—at Stefan. He was standing a little in front of Honey, ready to grab her if she gave in to the drive that kept her intent on Frost. I still couldn’t see his soul, but he lookedright, just as he always did.

I found Marsilia. And she was different from Frost’s vampires in the same way Stefan was. Hao had said his informant had been broken. I wondered if she would have looked like Frost’s vampires.

But I wasn’t here to check out Frost’s vampires. I was supposed to watch him.

Both Marsilia and Frost were bleeding. Marsilia had found a metal bar somewhere, the kind someone might use to bar a door, and she hit him in the chin with it like Babe Ruth might have hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium.

He flew backward, and when he hit the ground, he fell like a wet washcloth. She pulled the bar back into batting position and watched him. He didn’t move—but vampires don’t need to breathe, and they can hold very, very still.

One of the ghosts of the Cantrip agents drifted closer to Frost. I thought for a moment that it was just chance. Throw a dozen ghosts into even a sizeable basement, and they have to go somewhere, right? There were ghosts drifting aimlessly all over the basement now—though only the one nearest Frost was anywhere near a vampire. The longer I watched them, the easier it was to see the binding Frost had netted them with.

It struck me as odd that in that dark basement, where every surface was blackened from the fire, I had no trouble seeing the web that held the ghosts captive. But the darkness of the net was different than just the lack of light.

The ghost that approached Frost had one of his sticky strings of magic wrapped around his neck, and that string was pulsing. Marsilia had started to relax, her hand on the bar less tense.

I stood up, but it was too late. Frost struck, his jaw hanging at an odd angle, but he moved so fast it was difficult to track. He grabbed the ghost and ate him. Not with his physical mouth. It was as if his body turned into a giant mouth and engulfed the ghost. To my sight, Frost’s body flared—and then he stood up, wiping his own blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. The damage Marsilia had done to him was just gone.

She struck again, but he was faster than he’d been. As if the ghost had more than merely repaired him. He grabbed the bar and ripped it from her hands—and she was the one in retreat.

The fighting had started out loud. Shamus roared and screamed. Bodies make noise when they are flung on the floor. Not just the sound of floor and flesh, but grunts and cracks as bones broke. The metal bar added a new dimension to the noise. There was a rhythm to it as he drove Marsilia back toward me, and I realized he was just playing with her.

I couldn’t help her with him. I had to trust that she was strong enough, good enough to protect herself, because I had another job—there were thirteen more ghosts in the room. And I had to figure out a way to keep Frost from eating them all. One of them was right next to me. I grabbed her by the wrist.My hand started to pass through, but I focused mysight on her and she became more solid, just as Peter had.

“Tell me your name,” I said to her, giving my command that borrowed-from-Adam Alpha wolf push.

“Janet,” she told me, her voice vibrating up my arm.

“Janet,” I told her.“Leave.”

She tried, but Frost’s net held her. Her eyes were terrified. I tried stripping the net from her with my hands, but it didn’t work. She wasn’t pack, so I couldn’t use pack magic to free her.

I pulled Zee’s sword out and invoked its larger form. For Zee and Tad, Hunger had been a black long sword. For me, it turned into a plain-bladed katana with a gaudy red-and-purple hilt.

It didn’t do anything to the net, though I had the feeling that in sunlight, when a vampire’s magic would be at its weakest, it would have been able to eat the magic that bound the ghost. I even tried stabbing her with it. I felt it taste her briefly, and she looked even more terrified, if that were possible. But when I pulled the sword back, she was still there, encased in Frost’s trap. I talked the reluctant sword back into its smaller form and stuck it back in my coat pocket.

The clank, clank, clank of the iron bar stopped suddenly, and I looked up to see it arc over the wall of the basement and safely out of useful range. Marsilia popped her shoulder back into joint without so much as a grimace and reengaged Frost. Without the bar, he was not so overwhelming—but she was still hurt. And then he reached out, almost casually, and ate another ghost. It was quick, and I was too far away to do anything about it—even if I could have figured out how. He smiled at me before he hit Marsilia in her damaged shoulder.

Desperate, I pulled my lamb-and-dog-tag necklace off my neck. Armed by my faith, the symbol of the Lamb of God had defended me against vampires. Maybe it would work against vampiric magic.

“Please, dear Lord,” I said. “Let this work.”

Then I pressed it against the net—which shrank away from the little golden lamb, twisting, curling, and lessening until the ghost stood free. I touched the lamb to her forehead, and said, “Janet. Be at peace.”