Frost Burned

with her head and tail low. The closer she came, the faster she moved. When she reached him, she dropped to the ground and leaned against him hard enough that if he had not been braced for it, he would have staggered.
    No, he thought as he bent down to rest his hand on the top of her head, and looking over his battered pack, he did not regret killing these people.
    “Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night,” he told them in a burst of exhaustion-driven fancifulness. “What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”
    Warren leaned against the doorway, and said, “We’re not tigers, we’re werewolves, boss. God didn’t make us, nohow. Just ask the dead guys where we come from.” Despite the drawl and deliberately poor grammar, the exhaustion and pain turning his skin haggard, his eyes were sharp.
    Darryl made a noise that might have been a growl if Adam hadn’t heard his second’s real growls. Darryl reached over and gave Warren’s hair a rough caress, an unusual sign of affection from the pack’s second.
    “Dead guys don’t get an opinion,” Darryl told everyone. “We’re the good guys. That we’re scary doesn’t mean we’re the villains.”

7
    Dominant werewolves are control freaks and do not enjoy being passengers in cars. Asil was no exception. He put on his seat belt, closed his eyes, and sat tense and unhappy as I drove toward Kennewick.
    We’d had a brief discussion about who would be driving, and he clearly felt my argument that I knew where I was going and he didn’t was insufficient. He reluctantly agreed, however, that since Marsilia would hold me responsible for anything (more) that happened to her car, it was only fair that I drove. We couldn’t take his rental because they came lo-jacked to the max, and I didn’t want to lead anyone to Sylvia’s home if I could help it.
    “Don’t worry,” I told Asil cheerfully. “I already wrecked one car this week. I have no intention of wrecking another. Really.”
    He glowered at me—which was impressive since he didn’t open his eyes.
    The morning sky was dark and overcast, which actually doesn’t happen all that often here. It wasn’t much lighter than it had been last night. Rain started to splatter the windshield as I pulled onto the highway back to Kennewick. The car informed me that it was thirty-four degrees F outside.
    About once a winter, we get a spate of freezing rain that is unholy scary to drive in. Rain turns to ice as it hits the road, and that turns the highways into frictionless surfaces that look no different than wet pavement—until suddenly steering and brakes quit working. I’ve seen semitrucks stopped at red lights start sliding without any impetus other than the weight of their load pushing eighteen wheels sideways across the road. Freezing rain makes auto-body men happy campers as they count the wrecks using all of their fingers and toes.
    But at thirty-four degrees, we were safe enough, so I didn’t have to worry about the rain.
    “After you retrieve Adam’s daughter, you really still intend to contact the vampires?” Asil asked when we were nearly at our destination.
    “Can’t do that until it gets dark,” I told him, then took a good look at the sky. “Nighttime dark, not daybreak dark. I don’t know what new delights this day will bring; however, if we all make it to this evening, then, yes, I do. Marsilia owes the pack. Much as she’d like to see me roast on a good hot fire for a long time, that’s personal. Business is more important. Business means that she doesn’t want to get on the bad side of the werewolves, especially right now. She’s down four of her five most powerful vampires. Two of them betrayed her to a vampire trying to take over her seethe and were kicked out. Stefan left the seethe about the same time. The one powerful vampire left to her is mostly crazy as far as I can tell. She can’t afford to offend us.”
    “What if the pack isn’t a factor?” asked Asil, soft-voiced. “What if they’re all dead? Does she hate you enough to go after them? She cut her teeth in Italy during the Renaissance; a little sleight of hand is not beyond her now.”
    “She knows about Bran, knows I was raised in his pack and that he is fond of me. If it turns out that she was involved, he’d wipe her seethe from the face of the earth, and she knows it. No.” I thought about it. “No, it isn’t her. There are too many downsides and no profit in it for her.