Cold Days

“Mab sent you?” Thomas demanded.

“Mab saved me!” I rasped. “Hell’s bells, man, it’s me!”

Thomas growled, lower, but he didn’t pancake my skull or stick something sharp and metal into my brain. Thomas was strong—stronger than me. A vampire of the White Court can bring out that kind of strength only on special occasions, but Thomas was a very well-fed vampire. I knew that if he wanted to do it, Winter Knight steroids or no, he could twist me like a congressman’s logic.

“Molly!” he called out. “I know you’re out there. I can smell you.”

A few seconds later, there were soft steps on the gangplank, and then the shadows moved at the door. “I’m here.”

“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.

“I’m not sure,” Molly said. “It’s dark. But if I could see, I’d tell you that I try not to put myself between two siblings when they’re fighting. It never seems to help.”

Two or three flabbergasted seconds passed. Then the pressure against my skull was gone so fast that I all but fell over. I grabbed myself before I could and shook my head. “Ow. Nice to see you again, too, man.”

He moved silently across the cabin and something clicked. A battery-powered tap light came to life, bringing a dim if adequate level of light to the compartment.

My brother was a hair shy of six feet tall. He looked much as I remembered him: dark, glossy hair fell to his shoulders. His skin was even paler than mine. His eyes were storm-cloud grey, though they looked brighter than that now, glinting with little metallic flecks that revealed his anxiety and anger. He and I shared a similar scowl, all dark brows and intense eyes, and his mouth was twisted into a silent snarl as he stared at me. He was wearing a pair of jeans, and that was it. The cabin’s bunk had been folded down and slept in. I’d woken him when I came aboard. In his right hand he held a metal tent stake. There was both dirt and rust on it. Can you get gangrene in your brain?

“Oh,” Molly said. She stared at Thomas for a moment. “Oh, um. My.”

Oh, I forgot to mention it: My brother is the kind of man whom women stalk. In cooperative packs. I’d say he was model pretty, except that as far as I could tell, there weren’t any models as pretty as he was. He had muscles that rippled even when he was motionless and relaxed, and it was utterly unfair.

And . . . I didn’t do a lot of appraising myself in the mirror, typically, but I suddenly realized that sometime in the past few years, Thomas had stopped looking like my older brother. He looked younger than me. Wizards can live a long time, but we don’t look youthful while we do it. Thomas was a vampire. He’d look this good until he stopped breathing.

The guy barely works out, eats whatever he wants, and gets to look that good and that young his whole life. How is that fair?

“You can’t be my brother,” Thomas said, staring hard at me. “My brother is dead. You know how I know?”

“Thomas,” I began.

“Because my brother would have contacted me,” Thomas snarled. “If he were alive, he would have gotten in touch with me. He would have let me know.”

Molly winced and looked away as though she’d just heard a very loud and very unpleasant sound. I’m not sensitive to the emotions of others the way Molly is, but I didn’t need to be to know that Thomas was boiling over in reaction to seeing me there.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Molly said. “I can’t . . . It hurts.”

“Go,” I said softly.

She nodded and withdrew onto the deck of the boat, shutting the door behind her.

My brother stayed where he was, staring at me. “All this time,” he said. “And not a word.”

“I was dead,” I said quietly. “Or the next-best thing to it. Maybe it was more like a coma. Hell, I thought I was dead.”

“When did you wake up?” he asked. His voice was carefully neutral.

“About three months ago,” I said. “Wasn’t in good shape. I’ve been recovering since then.”

“Three months,” he said. “No phones there?”

“No, actually. I was in a cave on the island for a while. Then Arctis Tor.”

“No way for you to make contact?” he asked calmly. “You?”

Silence fell heavily. Thomas knew the kinds of things I could do. If I want someone to get a message, I can generally make sure it gets done—one way or another.

“What do you want me to say, man?” I responded. “I sold out, Thomas.”

“Yeah, when you hurt your back. You told us. For Maggie. To get her home safe.”

“Right.”

He was silent for a second. Then he said, “Empty night, why didn’t I put that together . . . ?” He sighed. “Let me guess. You tried to kill yourself after she was home safe, right?”

I snorted through my nose. “Something like that.”

He shook his head in silence for several seconds. Then he took a deep breath, looked up at me again, and said, “You. Moron.”

“Hey,” I said.

“You. Idiot.”

“Dammit, Thomas,” I said. “I haven’t lived my life the way I have to watch myself get turned into—” I broke off suddenly, and looked away.

“Into what, Harry?” he asked. “Say it.”

I shook my head.

“No, you don’t get a pass on this one, little brother,” Thomas said. “Say it.”

“Into a monster,” I snapped.

“Right,” Thomas said. “A monster. Like me.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“It is exactly what you meant,” he spat, angry. “You arrogant . . .” He flung the tent spike in a fit of pure frustration. It tumbled end over end once, and sank two inches into a wooden beam. “You were going to be tempted, eh? Going to have to deal with monstrous urges? Going to have to face the possibility that you might change if you lost focus for a minute? Lose control of yourself? Maybe hurt somebody you care about?” He shook his head. “Cry me a fucking river, man. Boo-fucking-hoo.”

I couldn’t look at him.

“You’d rather be dead than be like me,” he said. “That’s one hell of a thing to say to your brother.”

“It wasn’t about that,” I said.

“It kind of was,” he snapped back. “Dammit, Harry.”

“I can’t go back and change it,” I said. “Maybe I would if I could. But it’s done. I’m sorry, but it is.”

“You should have talked to me,” he said.

“Thomas.”

“You should have trusted me,” he said. “Dammit, man.”

The memory of those desperate hours hit me hard. I felt so helpless. My daughter had been taken away from her home, and for all the times I had gone out on a limb for others, no one had seemed willing to do the same for me. The White Council for whom I had fought a war had turned its back on me. Time had been running out. And the life of a little girl who had never known her father was on the line.

“Why?” I asked him tiredly. “What would it have changed? What could you possibly have said that would have made a difference?”

“That I was your brother, Harry,” he said. “That I loved you. That I knew a few things about denying the dark parts of your nature. And that we would get through it.” He put his elbows on his knees and rested his forehead on his hands. “That we’d figure it out. That you weren’t alone.”

Stab.

Twist.