Frostfire

“I have a life, and I’d rather cut my own throat, thanks.” She opened the door to the SUV, but before she could get in, Valori seized and pulled her back, turning her and giving her a tight embrace. She pushed against her. “Get off me, you stupid bitch.”

“Only I can save you,” she whispered, and then staggered away as Tina struck her in the face. “Teresina, don’t go. Tomaseo loved you. He wanted you to live.”

“Tomaseo is dead, and you can go to hell.” She got in behind the wheel, started the engine, and drove off.

Valori watched until the vehicle was out of sight, and then switched on the remote she had slipped out of Teresina’s pocket. She glanced back to assure no one else was near the other SUVs, and then she pressed the remote’s single button.

The explosions rocked the ground beneath her feet, but she stood and watched as the smoke rose from around the curve of the mountain, a mile away.

Valori walked back to where the others were staring at the ruins of the vehicles. Before she reached them, she dropped the remote and crushed it under her boot.

Nick gave her a narrow look. “Mission accomplished?”

“Yes, my lady.” She helped Samuel’s driver onto his feet. “My work is finished.”

Chapter 24

Lilah and Guy came out of the sheriff’s office as the townspeople began to straggle back in from the pass. Those who couldn’t walk were brought back in a pickup driven by Annie, who parked in front of the inn and began helping the injured inside.

“Can we do anything?” Lilah asked when they joined her.

“We’re using the rooms in my place for the outsiders.” She handed off a man with a bloody leg to Guy. “If you can get them inside, I’ll take the others to their families.”

Paul Jemmet arrived a few minutes later to treat the injured, and soon the inn was transformed into a temporary hospital. The most seriously injured survivor was Samuel Taske, who had multiple lacerations and had lost a great deal of blood.

“Findley will take me to a hospital in Denver,” Samuel told Paul. “I’d just like a moment to speak with Lilah.”

Guy didn’t want to leave her alone with Samuel, but she assured him she wouldn’t stay long. When they were alone, she went to stand beside his bed, and listened as he told her what he had done, from sending private investigators out to search for her to hiring Tina Segreta to abduct her.

The final straw was when he asked her to forgive him. “Do you understand what you did? You pretended to be my friend. You had me drugged and kidnapped. That woman who worked for you, she attacked us. She tried to kill me. And for what? Why?”

“I’m dying, Lilah,” he said. “Not from these wounds, but from the abilities I was given. If I do survive my injuries, I’ll be dead in less than a year. I researched every possible treatment, and I believed the only thing that could save me was you.”

He told her about the visions he had had about her, and what the scientists who had experimented on her had said.

“Well, I can’t heal you, Samuel. That’s not my gift.” Suddenly she understood. “Oh, I see. You wanted my DNA.”

“I wanted to study your blood. I believed its unique qualities could lead me to a cure.” He looked away. “God forgive me, I would never have done any of this to you.”

“What did you need from me?” When he shook his head, she said, “Tell me.”

“A pint of your blood, and some tissue samples.” Self-disgust filled his eyes. “You don’t have to worry, Lilah. I will never intrude on your life again.”

Lilah went out and found Paul, and brought him back to Samuel’s room. “Dr. Jemmet, I need you to take a pint of my blood and a few tissue samples, to send with Mr. Taske when he leaves. Do you have the equipment you need to do that?”

“Over at the sheriff’s office I do,” the doctor said. “Mr. Findley mentioned driving Mr. Taske back to Denver tomorrow morning, so it would be best to do it right before they leave.”

“Thanks.” She waited until Paul left before she looked at Samuel. “All you ever had to do was ask, Samuel. Under the circumstances, I would have been happy to help out.”

He covered his eyes with one hand. “I can’t accept this from you now.”

“Then you’ll die what sounds like a pretty horrible death, and I’ll always wonder if I could have prevented it.” She went to the door, and stopped. “Don’t do that to me, Samuel. Please.”

She joined Guy out in the hall. “Everything okay?”

He nodded. “Nicola and Gabriel have left. They took the GenHance survivors with them.” He glanced at Samuel’s door. “What did he say to you?”

“He said he was sorry, and he is.” She smiled as Paul joined them. “Is there anything else we can do to help, Doctor?”

“As it happens, there is.” He gestured toward the back of the inn. “It’s time we went back to the caves.”

Lilah winced. “You’re not going to try to put us in that cage, are you?”

“No, my dear. I’d like to tell you a story about this town.” He smiled. “Or, more precisely, I’d like the caves to tell it to you.”

Lilah’s eyes widened as Paul’s face began to distort, and his gray hair rose around his head. “Oh, my God. You’re one of the beasts.”

“I am not a beast.” He didn’t shift completely, but retained most of his human features. “I am Ahnclann.”

Before he took them up to the caves, Paul shifted his form back into that of the human doctor Lilah was accustomed to. “I don’t often change form anymore. I prefer my life as a human, but then, most of us do.”

“Most of you,” Lilah said uneasily. “How many are there?”

“Do you know, I’ve never counted,” he admitted as he mounted the plateau outside the caves. “We don’t often count things unless we have to.”

Guy pulled her to a stop, and she saw a gauntlet of silent, staring eyes inside the center cave.

“Don’t mind them,” Paul said. “No outsider has ever before been permitted to enter the Ahnclann cave, so they have all come out to see this.”

“Good Lord,” Lilah murmured as the beasts began to shift into human form, and she saw one familiar face after another. “It’s everyone in the town.” Aghast, she turned to the doctor. “You’re all werewolves?”

“Technically, no,” Paul said. “And we prefer to be called Ahnclann. When we change, we call the process the Fury.”

The doctor led them through a labyrinth of tunnels, and at last into a cavern so large it could have comfortably accommodated several football fields. Crystal stalactites hung like enormous, toothy chandeliers overhead, but their corresponding stalagmites had been cleared from the cave floor.

Nathan came out of the shadows, the torch in his hand illuminating his bare, scarred chest. “What?” he said when his father frowned at him. “I’m wearing pants.” He winked at Lilah. “This time.”

Guy put a protective arm around Lilah. “Why did you bring us here, Paul?”

Nathan swung the torch around. “He wants to show you the story.”

The flickering light danced over a long, smooth expanse of stone covered with paintings. The figures nearest Lilah were crudely made, as if by unsteady hands, but they gradually became more sophisticated as they moved down the stone.

“Cave paintings,” she murmured. “I didn’t think there were any tribes in the area that made them.”

“Actually, this was painted by the only true Native Americans in the area.” Paul walked up to the first group of paintings, which showed a pack of giant wolf-like creatures hunting game. “This is how it was before people came to the mountain. No names, no cabins, just life as it was in that time. The only things that mattered were hunting and playing and sleeping and breeding.”

Lilah stepped close. “They look like giant wolves.”

“Most of the creatures of prehistory were very large. We think modern wolves might be distant cousins.” Paul moved down the wall and gestured to two-legged stick figures with black hair. “The Anasazi were the first to discover them. They must have seen them hunting, because they called them Chahanat. It means ‘the Fury.’ ”

The doctor showed them paintings that gradually grew more detailed and sophisticated, and illustrated the plight of the Fury.

“Ultimately time and nature decides what lives and what dies out, and the Chahanat were no different than any other creature. Breeding females bore fewer young every year, and many never whelped at all. About the time the first white settlers arrived”—he pointed to a line of canvas-covered wagons—“the Fury were only a few generations away from extinction. No one knew that they would not be the ones to die out.”

Nathan stepped up beside his father. “My mother painted these,” he told Lilah gruffly, his fingers delicately tracing around the smiling faces of the settlers as they built their cabins and played with their children. “She loved this part of the story. She was crazy about kids.”

“The Fury would watch the settlers from the shadows. They weren’t afraid of humans, and didn’t mind sharing the mountain with them, but they kept their distance.” The doctor smiled sadly. “They knew the humans would go on after they died out, and perhaps they were a little jealous, too.”

Lilah peered at the next painting, which showed a dark, handsome man dressed in elegant clothing. His mouth was marked with red, and he held the sagging body of a woman whose throat bore terrible wounds. “Is that a vampire?”

“Yeah, he showed up one day, and got stranded here for the winter,” Nathan said. “But he didn’t suffer.”

“The settlers thought he was human, and took him in.” Paul walked on to a depiction of countless tiny graves. “By spring he had killed them all. He was trying to flee when the Fury came out of their caves and discovered what he had done. They took justice for his victims by killing him in the same way he had killed.” ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">