A Warm Heart in Winter(38)

“There’s another one,” Balz called down from the now-shuttered bank of windows. “There.”

Zsadist stood up again from the snowpack and brushed his leathers off. You’d think he’d have developed a core competency in catching his weight on the free fall, but nope. His butt had taken the brunt of things. Three times now.

As he looked in the direction Balz was pointing toward, he got a snowflake right in the eyeball. Rubbing the sting away, he said, “Yeah, we need that closed, too. Take the rope up?”

“Will do.”

There was no reason to raise the whole setting-hooks thing again. Balz was right about his climbing expertise. The Bastard’s scaling and staying put was totally impressive, and it made a male wonder exactly what the guy had gotten into over the years.

Then again, that wasn’t a question Z really wanted answered.

Stepping back, he reviewed the expanse of the house, you know, just in case any shutters had decided to magically retract. Which they hadn’t. But a male got paranoid when he thought of his shellan and his young.

What if one of those things decided to pop loose in the middle of the day? What if the electricity came back on or had a surge or . . . something . . . and suddenly the mansion went wide-open glass at noontime?

Jesus, why hadn’t he worried about this before.

As a hot flash of terror went through him, at least his toes warmed up a little in his shitkickers. Meanwhile, the Bastard was already over at the other window, the rope hanging off his ass like a tail, his thin-gloved hands working the upper left-hand corner of the shutter where the motor was, his lower body flush with the exterior wall while his upper torso curved away to give him space to work.

“Almost done,” he called out. “Then I’m going to—”

All at once, the window he was at lit up like the sun had risen inside the room on the far side, yellow light cascading out into the night, into the storm.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t all.

Sparks exploded from the motor Balz was disconnecting, the electrical charge transferring from the metal to the male, the blue arc of the lightning-like flash going right into one of the Bastard’s hands.

And through his body.

As a brownout registered the transfer of voltage, Balz was thrown back into thin air, his body stiff as a board, arms and legs fully extended.

Z reacted without conscious thought. He triangulated the fall and got under the male, bracing himself for the impact, arms cupped like he was going to catch a hay bale. At the last moment, as Balz dead weighted down toward the ground, Z pivoted, realizing he needed to be sideways to the load he was going to try to cradle.

Talk about electrical burns.

As he captured the heavy load, a whiff of burned flesh along with a metal tang hit his nose, and then he wasn’t thinking about smells at all. Lying the male out in the snow, he checked for breath and found none. Reaching for his own shoulder—

Fuck, no communicator. ’Cuz they were at home, not in the field.

Z whistled loud and long as he ripped off his gloves and felt for a pulse at the jugular. Faint. Or . . . maybe there wasn’t one? Yanking open the Bastard’s parka, he dropped his head down to make sure there was no breathing still. Then he put one of his palms on top of the other in the center of that big-ass chest, interlocked his fingers, and started straight-arming CPR.

“Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive,” he said under his breath as he compressed with his doubled-up hands. “Ah, ah, ah . . . ah . . . stayin’ alive . . .”

He paused to give the male two breaths. Which, yes, he was aware was not what the American Heart Association recommended anymore, but he was hardly a casual bystander and rescue breaths were fine with him.

As he resumed chest compressions, he called out with various “Hey!” “My brothers!” “Fritz!”

He didn’t yell Help. He never had, and he wasn’t starting now.

Time to breathe for the Bastard again.

Inhale. Forced puff into that lax mouth. Inhale. Forced puff. And then more with chest compressions and the yelling.

Jesus Christ, what did he need to do to get someone’s attention around here?





In the mansion’s foyer, the security lights came back on with the same lack of warning that they went out, and Blay braced himself for a paralyzed mahmen and a young with horrible injuries, for Wrath to be crazed with grief, for—

Halfway down the grand staircase, there was a tableau of off-kilter, and the great Blind King was in the center of it. L.W. was hanging from the back of his onesie in Wrath’s fist, the young screaming and red-faced—but safe from a fall that would have killed him for sure. And on the other side of the King, Beth had been caught by the arm, her whole body leaning out over the rest of the red-carpeted steps, only one foot planted, the other on a high kick to nowhere.

As for the fall? Down at the bottom of the steps . . . L.W.’s favorite toy, the nearly life-sized golden, with its beanbag paws and loosely stuffed legs, was lying in a tangled heap on the hard mosaic floor.

Wrath had saved his Queen and his son.

And beside him, George, the real-life dog, was frozen and panting in a panic, as if the animal knew that things had almost been a tragedy.

As everyone standing around exhaled in relief, the King pulled his loved ones into him, cradling both his shellan and his young close, L.W. settling down as soon as his mahmen was back in range and all was okay.