A Warm Heart in Winter(37)

There was a tremendous screech, and then the shutter came down on a oner.

“Oh, shit!”

Z fell back on his ass, the snow catching his body like a baseball mitt, all support, no cushioning. As the rope went lax and flapped onto his legs, Balz swung loose up at the window, one foot fixed, the other free, one hand locked on the track of the next shutter, the other up and out. He recovered quick, velcroing once again.

“You okay?” the Bastard called down.

Z upped to his feet and brushed the snow off his backside. “I told you so.”

“Let’s do the same thing on the next one.”

Zsadist glanced to the other end of the house. Qhuinn and Blay were working on their set of shutters on the lower level, or should have been. The former seemed frozen as he focused on something off toward the tree line.

Z put his fingers between his front teeth and whistled. As the sound traveled, Qhuinn’s focus shifted around.

After a moment, the brother whistled back two short bursts.

“Do they need help?” Balz asked from above.

“All clear.” Z nodded to the next failed shutter. “Okay, Spidey, rope me up with that one. Let’s get this done and see what else is wrong with this old ark.”





It was all going to be fine.

That’s what was going through Blay’s mind as he and Qhuinn reentered the garage with the ladder. The busted shutters were down where they should be and locked into place, the motor lines cut so that there was no malfunction risk when the full electricity came back on. After the storm, there were going to be a lot of repairs, and there would be time to rewire things then. What couldn’t be risked was a daylight retraction.

Just as they were heading back into the house, a muffled roar sounded out somewhere in the distance. And a second. A third.

At which point the lights came back on fully, the generators settling in to a dim, pervasive purr.

“Ruhn is the fucking master,” Qhuinn said as they tilted the ladder against the wall in the mudroom and stomped the snow off the treads of their shitkickers.

The cheer of the doggen in the kitchen was like that of a group being rescued off a deserted island. By a Carnival cruise ship. With a stocked bar and the buffet already set out. And Charo performing on the Lido Deck.

“Such the man,” Blay agreed.

As they walked into the kitchen and were applauded unnecessarily by the staff, Blay unzipped his parka, but kept the puff where it was in case this was just a pause and they would be going out again. In the foyer, people were gathering once more, the check-in happening organically, as if the electricity coming back on required a reckoning—

The crash was loud as a bomb.

And succeeded by shattering glass, a blast of cold air, and a resonant pine smell.

Before anyone could react, Rhage and Butch came running out of the library. The pair of them looked like they’d been in a slap fight, their faces red, noses runny, eyes blinking like they couldn’t see. Snow covered their hair, their shoulders, their shitkickers.

“Tree,” Rhage panted.

Butch grabbed the front of his own parka like he was having a coronary. “Big tree—”

“Coming after us!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” someone demanded.

“And what just hit the house?” somebody else shouted.

“Fucking tree!” Rhage ground out as he braced his hands on his knees and bent over to breathe better. “And it’s in the house.”

At that moment, up at the head of the grand staircase, Wrath and Beth appeared with their son. The Queen was carrying L.W., the young was carrying his golden retriever stuffed animal—the one that was bigger than he was—and Wrath had his hand locked on George’s lead.

“Is everyone okay?” Beth called down. “We heard a crash.”

“And smell a whole lot of pretty-much-Pine-Sol,” the King said as they started their descent. “What’s going on in the library?”

Blay shook his head and glanced at Qhuinn, ready to raise a question about what was going to go wrong next—

When the lights went off unexpectedly.

Where there had been illumination, there was a sudden and pervasive return of the pitch black, no security lights on, no fireplaces lit to glow, the candles canned because of all the Thomas Edison.

Later, Blay would remember wheeling around in space and throwing his arms out toward the grand staircase. It was as if he knew what was going to happen, what misstep was going to occur, what off-kilter was going to result in a tragic fall.

Wrath would be fine on the descent. As a blind male, whether or not there was light did not matter to him. For Beth, however, the abrupt loss of her sight would be a shock—and Blay didn’t know exactly what occurred, but he, and everyone else, heard her shout of alarm.

After which came the fall.

L.W. began to wail at the same time a sickening series of bumps and thumps came down the stairs, bruises or worse occurring—and there was nothing to be done. The momentum worked with gravity’s inexorable pull to a terrible result, and in the darkness, no matter how far Blay reached forward, no matter how much he strained, there was nothing he could do to stop the inevitable.

It was a hole in one. Nothing planned, certainly not the horrible result.

And all the while, the child screamed.