Nora Roberts - Blood Brothers

He swept it toward the sound. The beam struggled against the thick, moving curtain of snow, did little but bounce the light back at him.

The blanket had become a wall that rose past his knees. Calling his dog, Cal pushed through it, trying to pinpoint the direction of the howling. It seemed to come from everywhere, from nowhere.

As he heard sounds behind him, he whirled, gripping the flashlight like a weapon.

“Don’t clock the reinforcements,” Fox shouted. “Christ, it’s insane out here.” He gripped Cal’s arm as Gage moved to Cal’s other side. “Hey, Lump! Come on, Lump! I’ve never heard him like that.”

“How do you know it’s the dog?” Gage asked quietly.

“Get back inside,” Cal said grimly. “We can’t leave the women alone. I’m going to find my dog.”

“Oh yeah, we’ll just leave you out here, stumbling around in a fucking blizzard.” Gage jammed his freezing hands in his pockets, glanced back. “Besides.”

They came, arms linked and gripping flashlights. Which showed sense, Cal was forced to admit. And they’d taken the time to put on coats, probably boots as well, which is more than he or his friends had done.

“Go back in.” He had to shout now, over the rising wind. “We’re just going to round up Lump. Be right there.”

“We all go in or nobody does.” Quinn unhooked her arm from Layla’s, hooked it to Cal’s. “That includes Lump. Don’t waste time,” she said before he could argue. “We should spread out, shouldn’t we?”

“In pairs. Fox, you and Layla try that way, Quinn and I’ll take this way. Gage and Cybil toward the back. He’s got to be close. He never goes far.”

He sounded scared, that’s what Cal didn’t want to say out loud. His stupid, lazy dog sounded scared. “Hook your hand in my pants-the waistband. Keep a good hold.”

He hissed against the cold as her gloves hit his skin, then began to trudge forward. He’d barely made it two feet when he heard something under the howls.

“You catch that?”

“Yes. Laughing. The way a nasty little boy might laugh.”

“Go-”

“I’m not leaving that dog out here any more than you are.”

A vicious gush of wind rose up like a tidal wave, spewing huge clumps of snow, and what felt like pellets of ice. Cal heard branches cracking, like gunfire in the dark. Behind him, Quinn lost her footing in the force of the wind and nearly took them both down.

He’d get Quinn back into the house, he decided. Get her the hell in, lock her in a damn closet if necessary, then come back out and find his dog.

Even as he turned to get a grip on her arm, he saw them.

His dog sat on his haunches, half buried in the snow, his head lifted as those long, desperate howls worked his throat.

The boy floated an inch above the surface of the snow. Chortling, Cal thought. There was a word you didn’t use every day, but it sure as hell fit the filthy sound it made.

It grinned as the wind blasted again. Now Lump was buried to his shoulders.

“Get the fuck away from my dog.”

Cal lurched forward; the wind knocked him back so that both he and Quinn went sprawling.

“Call him,” Quinn shouted. “Call him, make him come!” She dragged off her gloves as she spoke. Using her fingers to form a circle between her lips, she whistled shrilly as Cal yelled at Lump.

Lump quivered; the thing laughed.

Cal continued to call, to curse now, to crawl while the snow flew into his eyes, numbed his hands. He heard shouting behind him, but he focused everything he had on pushing ahead, on getting there before the next gust of wind put the dog under.

He’d drown, Cal thought as he pushed, shoved, slid forward. If he didn’t get to Lump, his dog would drown in that ocean of snow.

He felt a hand lock on his ankle, but kept dragging himself forward.

Gritting his teeth, he flailed out, got a slippery hold on Lump’s collar. Braced, he looked up into eyes that glittered an unholy green rimmed with red. “You can’t have him.”

Cal yanked. Ignoring Lump’s yelp, he yanked again, viciously, desperately. Though Lump howled, whimpered, it was as if his body was sunk in hardened cement.

And Quinn was beside him, belly down, digging at the snow with her hands.

Fox skidded down, shooting snow like shrapnel. Cal gathered everything he had, looked once more into those monstrous eyes in the face of a young boy. “I said you can’t have him.”

With the next pull, Cal’s arms were full of quivering, whimpering dog.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He pressed his face against cold, wet fur. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Get him in by the fire.” Layla struggled to help Quinn up as Cybil pushed up from her knees. Shoving the butt of a flashlight in his back pocket, Gage pulled Cybil to her feet, then plucked Quinn out of the snow.

“Can you walk?” he asked her.

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get in, let’s get inside, before somebody ends up with frostbite.”

Towels and blankets, dry clothes, hot coffee. Brandy-even for Lump-warmed chilled bones and numbed flesh. Fresh logs had the fire blazing.

“It was holding him. He couldn’t get away.” Cal sat on the floor, the dog’s head in his lap. “He couldn’t get away. It was going to bury him in the snow. A stupid, harmless dog.”

“Has this happened before?” Quinn asked him. “Has it gone after animals this way?”

“A few weeks before the Seven, animals might drown, or there’s more roadkill. Sometimes pets turn mean. But not like this. This was-”

“A demonstration.” Cybil tucked the blanket more securely around Quinn’s feet. “He wanted us to see what he could do.”

“Maybe wanted to see what we could do,” Gage countered, and earned a speculative glance from Cybil.

“That may be more accurate. That may be more to the point. Could we break the hold? A dog’s not a person, has to be easier to control. No offense, Cal, but your dog’s brainpower isn’t as high as most toddlers’.”

Gently, affectionately, Cal pulled on one of Lump’s floppy ears. “He’s thick as a brick.”

“So it was showing off. It hurt this poor dog for sport.” Layla knelt down and stroked Lump’s side. “That deserves some payback.”

Intrigued, Quinn cocked her head. “What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet, but it’s something to think about.”

CAL DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TIME THEY’D FALLEN into bed. But when he opened his eyes the thin winter light eked through the window. Through it, he saw the snow was still falling in the perfect, fat, white flakes of a Hollywood Christmas movie.

In the hush only a snowfall could create was steady and somehow satisfied snoring. It came from Lump, who was stretched over the foot of the bed like a canine blanket. That was something Cal generally discouraged, but right now, the sound, the weight, the warmth were exactly right.

From now on, he determined, the damn dog was going everywhere with him.

Because his foot and ankle were currently under the bulk of the dog, Cal shifted to pull free. The movement had Quinn stirring, giving a little sigh as she wiggled closer and managed to wedge her leg between his. She wore flannel, which shouldn’t have been remotely sexy, and she’d managed to pin his arm during the night so it was now alive with needles and pins. And that should’ve been, at least mildly, annoying.

Instead, it was exactly right, too.

Since it was, since they were cuddled up together in bed with Hollywood snow falling outside the window, he couldn’t think of a single reason not to take advantage of it.

Smiling, he slid a hand under her T-shirt, over warm, smooth flesh. When he cupped her breast he felt her heart beat under his palm, slow and steady as Lump’s snoring. He stroked, a lazy play of fingertips as he watched her face. Lightly, gently, he teased her nipple, arousing himself as he imagined taking it into his mouth, sliding his tongue over her.