Spain, safely out of the way. The airports were probably snowed in, anyway.
Lore chewed, feeling a nagging sense of guilt. Murder, arson, and dark sorcery weren’t exactly minor problems. Lore had a responsibility to ask for help if he needed it. He had a right to pride, but not to arrogance.
Lore started on tart number two.
He’d be an idiot if he didn’t ask for information. Lore looked at the clock. It would be night in Spain. Stuffing the last of the tart in his mouth, he picked up the phone and punched in Caravelli’s cell number.
The vampire answered on the third ring. “Caravelli.”
“It’s Lore. How’s the holiday?”
“Women like to shop,” he replied in sepulchral tones. “The only thing keeping me from eating someone is that I am mercifully unconscious during the vast majority of store hours. And it’s a good thing the queen pays me well. I apparently need to keep my wife in overpriced shoes.”
“Better you than me.” Lore didn’t buy the longsuffering husband routine. There was a vibrancy in Caravelli’s voice that said he was really having a good time.
“Is this a purely social call?”
“No. I met three vampires last night who made my nose twitch. Their names are Nia, Iskander, and Darak. Do you know them?”
He heard his friend catch his breath. Given that vamps didn’t breathe unless they were talking, that was saying something. “What were they doing?”
“Drinking at the Empire. They say they came into town for the election.”
“They weren’t causing trouble?”
“Not when I saw them.”
“You’re lucky. They’re rogues. More like the rogues. They’ve been around since the time of Nero.”
Lore’s grasp of human history was vague, but he knew that was a very long time. “What do they want?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“That’s helpful.”
“They have a particular hatred for authority, probably because they began life as Roman slaves. Darak was a gladiator, famous in his own time. There are crowned heads who tremble at the mention of his name.”
Yeah, whatever. “What did he do?”
“Whatever he wanted to. Basically, the gladiator doesn’t pick favorites when it comes to the vampire clans. That’s why they hate him. He’s more likely to show up, cut off the heads of both sides of an argument, and then shower their wealth on the gardener and the scullery maid. He thinks he’s Robin Hood.”
The reference was lost on Lore. “And he got away with killing both sides?”
“No one will stand up to him.”
We’ll see about that. Lore rubbed his eyes, still feeling his late, late night. “There’s more. You’re going to be home in three days, so you should know.”
“Know what?”
Lore told him the rest, keeping back only the fact that Talia was asleep in the next room. For a long moment afterward, Caravelli was silent. “I’ll try and get an earlier flight.”
“Finish your vacation. Don’t spoil it for your family. What I need you to do is to get the queen to delay her arrival. She’d just be another target we need to guard.”
“She’s on my speed dial.” Caravelli didn’t have an easy relationship with Omara, but he looked after her interests. “Look, I want to be there to help.”
“I’m just doing legwork right now. Recon. I’m not pulling the trigger on anything until I know exactly what I’m up against. And I’ll warn you that it’s snowing hard here. The airports may not be open.”
Caravelli made an exasperated noise. “Can I do anything else?”
“No. That’s it. I’ll call if anything else comes up.”
“Good. Keep me up to speed.”
“I will. Bye.”
“Later.”
Lore put the phone down, mulling over what to do next. He would welcome Caravelli’s return, but he couldn’t count on it. Not with this weather.
He was on his own.
Chapter 14
Wednesday, December 29, 2:30 p.m.
Spookytown
There might be Latin-spewing evil burning down the city, but Lore still was Alpha of the pack. Since questioning vampires in daylight was pointless and it was too soon for Errata to have found any answers, he would spend the afternoon finding out who had put Helver up to breaking into the campaign office.
Lore stood on a street corner downtown, or where he thought the corner should be. Snow hid the curbsides and muted the shapes of fire hydrants and garbage cans. It was still coming down, too, the heavy clouds making a twilight out of midafternoon. The buses had wallowed down the main roads without getting stuck, but he didn’t hold out hope for tomorrow. The city didn’t have much snow-removal equipment, and this storm was freakish.
Fortunately, he’d been born with an optional fur coat. Letting his human shape drop, Lore fell to a dark mist. The cold shocked him for a moment, seeping through the infinitesimal spaces between demon and nothingness. He swirled, buffeted by the rising wind. It took all his considerable strength to pull the particles of himself and re- form into a hound—ears, paws, tail, nose—his deep-chested body the last to form out of the churning mist. Lore shook himself, scattering the falling snow from his back. With a bound, he dove into the drifts, heading toward the cluster of city blocks the hellhounds called home.
He saw the pups first, bouncing in and out of the snowdrifts, rolling and wiggling in the soft white mounds, and tossing clumps of snow with their noses. Lore slowed to a trot as they raced in circles around him, seeming to barely notice the cold. Where do children get all that energy? He mock-nipped at a stubby tail as it flashed past.
He was tempted to give chase, giving in to the game, but a nudge of his psychic senses made him look down Heron Street. The urge to play vanished in a lurch of foreboding. There was a cluster of hounds in human form, hands in their pockets, standing in the intersection a block away.
There were two groups of hounds in Spookytown: his own Lurcher pack, and these others, the Redbones. When Lore and his allies had rescued his pack from the Castle, they had freed the Redbones, too. There were many casualties, and survivors from the two packs had amalgamated under the Lurchers.
Sort of. The Redbones’ idea of getting along seemed limited to sharing a zip code.
Lore barked the pups out of the way and shifted back to human form. He turned down Heron Street to see what fresh hell the Redbones were plotting. He was willing to bet they were at the bottom of Helver’s sudden interest in crime.
Blowing on his hands, he walked toward the group. They fell silent as they spotted him, leaving nothing but the eerie quiet of the traffic-free streets and the soft crunch of his boots through the new-fallen snow. He counted five hounds, including the Redbones’ leader—the she-hound from his nightmare.
As he drew near, the female put a hand to her chest and bowed. At her signal, the four males followed suit. Lore had no illusions about the greeting. Mavritte was an Alpha in her own right, bowing to Lore only because so few of the Redbones survived. As leader of a diminished pack, her position was awkward. She could only truly join her group with another by mating with the Alpha or by losing to him in a fight—and losing was usually fatal. Her best option was to do what she was doing—maintain a truce with the Lurchers and treat Lore as her king. If their
