Winter Lost

They found Don a vantage place in the hills that gave him a clear view of the compound below, well within his field of accuracy. He didn’t have to worry about taking out civilians; there were none of them anywhere around here. He set up his tripod and gave a little groan—mostly theatric—as he lay down and got ready for his shot. If he was needed.

It had taken Adam’s people less than a day to find the culprits. They’d checked out the place where their man had been killed, then wandered around the various buildings until Auriele Zao said, “I smell henbane.”

Don had had no idea that one of their projects was entirely peopled by witches doing magic instead of chemists doing…what chemists did.

The pair of werewolves had called a meeting with the entire group of white witches to find out who had been stalking them. Darryl Zao was a scary SOB, but in that meeting…Well, Adam said that being Alpha was as much about being a protector as being able to kill things. Don had been privileged to see that at work. Darryl had taken a room filled with terrorized, traumatized people and made them feel safe.

As they’d left the tearful, grateful bunch of witch nerds—Vincent’s term, and it was sticking—Darryl had muttered, “Like putting a barbecue in the jungle and wondering why the predators keep coming around.”

“Poor things,” agreed his wife. “I’ll have some suggestions for Adam about extra protections.” She glanced at Don. “And you should have a word with someone. White witches are prey. You should have been told they were here, and accommodations should have been made for their safety.”

Darryl made a few phone calls—apparently there wasn’t a pack in Los Alamos, but there was a big one in Santa Fe.

“I thought Adam’s pack didn’t get to call for support from other packs,” Don had observed to Auriele while her husband gave orders to the Alpha of the Santa Fe pack.

She’d grinned at him. “Don’t remind them, and we won’t, either.”

Darryl hung up the phone and shook his head at her. “The pack Alpha is a good friend of mine. He doesn’t like witches—and he tells me there’s a compound about ten miles up into the hills outside of town. Auriele and I will do a quick recon to make sure these are our culprits, and we’ll take them out.”

Don didn’t ask him about the legalities of the operation. Black witches were, all of them, killers of the innocent—and the human justice system was not built to handle them. If there were bodies, the wolf pack would handle it.

—

Beside him, the werewolf left to guard him whined softly.

“I know,” Don told her. “Don’t shoot wolves or people with armbands.”

Auriele’s voice whispered in Don’s earpiece. “Go.”

He put his scope to his eye and waited.

11

Mercy

“Wedding?” I said. “You mean Tammy’s wedding?”

“The one scheduled to take place on the winter solstice,” Adam said, which was something that I should have noticed.

Liam gave him a tight smile. “Exactly.”

A marriage in which the very wealthy heir of the family fortune chose to marry a policeman’s daughter sounded very romantic. It was probably the plot of a dozen different romance novels. But marriages had not always been about love.

A marriage was an ancient rite of passage. It was an exchange of vows—a contract, in the fae sense of the word—intended to represent the uniting of bloodlines for the future. As such, a marriage, the right kind of marriage, could be a powerful source of raw magic.

“What is so special about this wedding?” I asked slowly. “Magically speaking.”

I expected the rite to be some sort of method for maintaining power—it might be wealth, of course. The Heddars were very wealthy. Or possibly it was some sort of influence. But my bet was that it was power. All of the fae lost a great deal of magical ability when Underhill closed herself to them, driving some of them to drastic measures.

Liam didn’t speak right away. Finally, he got up from his seat and walked to the window, his back to us as he watched the snow fly outside. “Every hundred and forty-four years, the oldest child of the current generation of what is, in this age, the Heddar family must marry on the shortest day of the year on sacred ground.”

I wondered if it was the Heddar family who received the power or if they were bound by some fae bargain. Liam didn’t seem to be more powerful than Uncle Mike, so I doubted that it was him.

The green man turned to face us. “With such a binding is the beast known as Garmr kept captive.”

That was so far from anything I expected that I just stared stupidly at him.

“Garmr?” asked Adam. “What is that?”

“Wait,” I said. I had been reading every folktale story I could scrounge since the fae had become an unavoidable part of my life. There was a lot of important information sprinkled somewhat carelessly in fairy tales. But there were some sources that had been more carefully tended.