Patricia Briggs: Frost Burned

I’d had another werewolf do that before, felt the same tremors and ragged breathing. I was reasonably sure that Ben wasn’t feeling hungry (like the other wolf had been) because it hadn’t been that long since turkey dinner. So I put a hand on his head and glanced at the pair of shell-shocked teenagers standing in front of a shelf of old, mismatched hubcaps. It was dark inside the shop, but coyotes like me can see in the dark.

Ben half growled, half spoke, but I couldn’t parse anything he said. From the heat of his skin against mine, he was trying to fight off the change. I made a soothing sound but didn’t move my hand again because a werewolf’s skin is pretty sensitive when he is changing. Ben quit trying to talk and contented himself with breathing. I looked at Gabriel.

He was gripping Jesse’s hand—or letting her grip him—and didn’t look to be in much better shape than Ben.

“Start over,” Jesse told him. “Mercy needs to hear it all.”

Gabriel nodded. “About midnight, Ben burst into my living room, grabbed me, grabbed my car keys, and dragged me out the door. As soon as we were outside, I could tell there was a lot of something going down at your house. There weren’t any headlights, but I could hear cars—something with diesel engines, truck size. Ben said something about getting here and getting to you, I think. He sounded pretty odd. He shoved me into the driver’s seat and hasn’t said a coherent thing since. I was going to try to call you, but—”

He nodded at the floor, and I saw the scattered remnants of the shop’s phone. “He didn’t seem to think that would be a good idea. I am really, really glad to see you.”

“Ben?” I asked. “Can you—”

He reached up and dumped a tranquilizing dart into my hand. It was about half full of something that looked like milk, but I knew better. Someone knew our secrets.

“He was drugged,” I said, sniffing the hypodermic just to make sure. It smelled familiar. “It looks like that stuff that killed Mac.”

Jesse inhaled.

“Mac?” Gabriel asked.

“Before your time,” I told him. “Mac was a newly turned werewolf who got in the way of a Byzantine plot ultimately aimed at Bran. We’ve always thought that werewolves are invulnerable to drugs of any kind. But the bad guy who happened to be a werewolf himself figured out a cocktail that worked with ingredients any vet supply would have.” That knowledge should have died with Gerry. “Most of the wolves who got hit with the stuff were fine, but new werewolves are more vulnerable, and it killed Mac.”

We all looked at Ben, who wasn’t looking too healthy.

“Is Ben going to be all right?” asked Gabriel. “Can we do something for him?”

“Burning it out,” Ben growled.

I wasn’t sure I heard him right, his voice was slurred and thick. “Ben? You’re burning out the drug?” His skin did feel feverish. “Boosting your metabolism?” I didn’t know werewolves could do that.

“Burning it good,” he said, which I took to be an affirmative. “But it’ll … a minute.”

“What can we do to help?” I asked. “Water? Food?” I had some granola bars in here somewhere.

“Just you,” he said. “Pack smell, Alpha smell. It helps.” He shuddered hard against me. “Hurts. Wolf wants out.”

“Let it out,” said Jesse.

But Ben shook his head. “Then I won’t be able to talk. Need to tell you.”

He smelled like adrenaline and blood.

“Is it safe here?” I asked. “Do we need to move?”

“Short-term safe,” Ben said after a moment. “Think so. They should be occupied with the rest … the rest of the pack.”

“Would coffee help?” Jesse asked.

I considered it but shook my head. “I’m not a doctor. Adding a stimulant to the mixture could just make it worse.”

“You could call Samuel.”

I looked into her fear-filled eyes and tried to be stalwart for her sake. “Samuel’s phone goes to his answering service. We’re on our own.”

“What about Zee?” asked Gabriel. He’d seen what Zee could do for a car and had acquired a case of hero worship for the grumpy old fae. “Couldn’t he do something about the silver?”

“Zee’s hidden in Fairyland with the rest of the fae,” I told him, though he knew it. “He’s not going to be able to help.”

“But—”

“Whatever else Zee is,” I told him, “he is fae, first.”

“Hurts,” said Ben, his voice muffled against my stomach. He was writhing against me. Silver hits werewolves like that. I wished that there was something I could do.

“Yes, you can help,” he said, as though he’d caught my thoughts. Sometimes the pack bond did that—one of the things that I was still adjusting to. “You can ask me … that’s what you can do. Ask me questions. Keep me talking so I can keep the wolf down. You need to know.”

“Everyone is alive,” I told him. “I can tell that much. What happened?”

“Taken,” he said, then, “Federal agents.”

Chills went down my spine. I had a degree in history. When the government moves against a segment of its own population, it is bad. Nazi bad. Genocide bad. We needed the feds to protect the werewolves from the zealots in the general population. If the government had turned against us, the wolves would have to defend themselves. There was no good ending to that story.

“Federal agents from which agency?” I asked. “Homeland Security? Cantrip? FBI?”

He shook his head. He looked up at me and stared for a moment as if eye contact would let him sort himself out. He started to speak a couple of times.

“They took everyone who was there?”

“Everyone,” he said. He put his head against me again. “Everyone there.”

It had been Thanksgiving. I exchanged a bleak look with Jesse. A lot of the pack was at the house.

“Honey and Peter and Paul and Darryl and Auriele.” He stopped naming wolves for a moment to take a breath. “Mary Jo. Warren.”

“Mary Jo wasn’t there,” I said. “Neither was Warren.” Warren and his boyfriend had put on a Thanksgiving dinner for their friends who didn’t have families to go home to. Being gay meant they had a number of friends with no welcoming families. Mary Jo, a firefighter, had been on duty.

“Smelled them,” growled Ben. Then he paused, his body tightening. “Said … they said, not Adam said. They said … ‘Come quietly no one gets hurt, Mr. Hauptman.’ Adam, he said, ‘I smell blood on your hands. Warren and Mary Jo. What have you done to my people?’ They said, ‘Federal agents,’ again. Said, ‘Here’s our ID.’”

He took in a big breath. “Adam said, he said, ‘ID is good. But you are not federal agents.’ Liars. Adam said they lied.”

I couldn’t tell if I was holding Ben or he was holding me.

“How did they find Mary Jo?” I asked. Mary Jo worried that she would lose her job if they knew what she was. If they knew about Mary Jo, knew about the tranquilizer, then someone knew too many of our secrets. It was a rhetorical question, I didn’t expect Ben to know the answer.

“Cell phones,” he told me. “Bran sent a text.”

“I got it,” I said. “I thought it meant that the phones weren’t safe to use.”

He shook his head. “Meant that someone was tracing our phones. GPS tracking. Charles has spiders.” Charles was the son of the Marrok, who ruled the werewolves. Among his wide array of talents were killing people, making money, and a scarily thorough understanding of technology—but not arachnids. Not that I knew of, anyway.

“Spiders?” I asked.

He huffed a laugh. “Spiders. Bits of code out looking. Watching out for things like that. Spyware in the phone-company logs. Think he might have someone on the inside. Warning came too late, though.”