A Warm Heart in Winter(10)

Inside his ear, there was a low-level brrrrng. Then Vishous’s voice: “Z? We need you three blocks to the north. Qhuinn’s down. Manny ETA four minutes. Abdominal stab.”

“Fuck,” he muttered as he leaned into his shoulder. “Leaving now.”

He would have dematerialized, except you didn’t do that unless you knew exactly where you were reforming and he wasn’t far. He started running, the daggers that were holstered handles down on his chest moving with his torso’s power as if they were a part of his body that he’d been born with. His guns and his ammo were the same, everything lock-holstered to his shoulders and his hips, nothing slapping against him, the whole arsenal coming with and right in reach.

And what do you know. He was looking to shoot something all of a sudden. Qhuinn was not only a member of the Brotherhood, but he’d also saved Z’s life one night. So yeah, there was loyalty all over the place.

When he got to the corner of a storage building that was every bit as bright and shiny as a discarded hubcap, he choked up on his leg churn. Fresh blood on the breeze. Nothing gunpowdery, so no bullets. At least not yet—

Footfalls were coming fast on an approach toward him, and a split second later, a lanky kid with a busted-up, bloody face tooled around the side of the building, right into Z’s path. To avoid a head-on collision, Z punched at the fucker’s pecs, and like a pool ball on a billiards table, things went ricochet, the body in motion spinning off and slamming into the metal siding with a cymbal crash.

If Qhuinn hadn’t been wounded, Z would have grounded the little shit the old-fashioned way.

With a shovel and a grave marker.

Instead, he followed the trail of blood in the snow to the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s tow truck. The vehicle, which was supposed to be reserved for AAA situations of the vampire variety, was front-winch-in to the trunk of a BMW sedan the color of cabernet sauvignon. One of the car’s doors was wide open, and a human girl, mid to late teens, was kneeling over a facedown and fetal-positioned Qhuinn. Another human girl, younger, was leaning out of the front seat, one hand clamped over her mouth, eyes the size of basketballs.

The brother was leaking. Badly. And that copper tint to the cold air was the equivalent of a fire alarm, something you couldn’t see but made your ears ring.

Z went right for his brother. As he bent down, the girl who was with him backed off.

“Is he d-d-dead? Is he dying?”

“I’m fine,” Qhuinn muttered. “I just ate too much for First Meal.”

Z wanted to roll the male over and see what was doing, but he didn’t have the medical training necessary to do that safely. “Yeah, that Henkel you had for dessert really put you over the edge.”

“FYI, I don’t think it’s that fancy.”

“Swiss Army?”

“Prison shank maybe—”

“He w-w-won’t let me c-c-c-call the p-p-police.”

Z looked at the girl. She had to be seventeen, he was guessing. Jeans. Boots. Parka in pale blue. Nice, middle class, not the kind who should be out in this part of town at this time of night. Instead of fucking around and asking a bunch of questions, he barged into her brain and went directly to her file cabinet of memories.

Ah, yes. Mild rebellion against Daddy run amok—and then things really went wrong.

“Relax,” he told her.

“I d-didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Oops in one hand, shit in the other, see what you get the most of, he thought.

Checking his watch, he figured he had three minutes until Manny arrived so he better get on with it. Rising to his full height, he strode over to the winch and the back of the sedan.

“Don’t hurt my sister!”

The older girl had both of her hands outstretched in a way that reminded him of medieval altar pieces, all helpless, Virgin Mary entreaty for him not to do something he had no intention of doing anyway. Uninterested in talking to her, to anyone, he slammed that open door shut and cut the proverbial cord. Unlatching the tow truck’s hook from the BMW, he tossed the winch over his shoulder and gripped the underside of the car’s bumper. With a grunt, he sank down into his thighs and was careful to lift with his glutes, not his shoulders.

’Cuz really, their snow-locked car was not worth a slipped disk.

Through the rear window, the younger girl in the front seat wheeled about and stared at him, her arms wrapped around the back of the driver’s seat like she was hugging it in lieu of a parental figure. As the angle of the tilt increased, the suspension adjusted to the redistribution of weight with an undercarriage creak, and then there was some serious snow-squeak as he relocated the butt while the two tires in front stayed where they were. His human peanut gallery, both the one inside the sedan and the one standing next to him, were jawbone-slacked as he let the back of the BMW drop to the ground again.

Heading to the driver’s side, he reopened the door—

“No!” the younger girl screamed as she reared away from him again.

“Oh, please,” he muttered, filling the space she’d vacated behind the wheel.

The engine had been left on, so things were warm. Not that he cared. He put the gearshift in reverse and gently eased some pressure onto the accelerator with his right shitkicker. There was a flare of noise from the hood first, and then a subtle shift of position, the tires grabbing at the snowpack with delicate manners. Using what little traction he had, he coaxed those treads to take more of the slippery meal under them, and more, and more—