Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

“I hear that.”

“We’ll get them out,” Killian said.

“Cheerful is good,” Hermes said, “but we have to get past the door to get them out.”

“We have to get through one hostage to get inside,” Saville said.

“We don’t go through Connie,” I said.

“Hostage, just hostage. Names cloud the issue, you know that,” Monty said.

I wanted to protest, but . . . “Fine, we don’t go through the hostage like she’s a fucking door.”

“We do what works best to save the most lives,” Hill said.

I shook my head. “Not good enough.”

“It’s all we got, Blake,” Saville said.

“Define ‘go through the hostage,’” I said, and glared at Saville.

“You’re too close to this,” Hill said.

“I know.”

“Don’t let your emotions compromise the rest of us,” Monty said.

I nodded. “I won’t get you guys hurt trying to save them.”

“It’s our job to risk ourselves to save the hostages,” Jung said.

“Monty knows what I mean.”

“We need an idea for entry,” Hill said.

“I need to see it,” I said.

“See what?”

“The door, Connie, I mean the hostage.”

“Seeing it won’t make it easier,” Saville said.

“I need to see how she’s tied up in the doorway, Saville.” I hit the button on my throat mic. “Sutton, is it just her hands tied, or hands and feet?”

“Wrists tied over her head to something inside the room.”

“Is she in the doorway, or just inside the door?”

“Inside, but she still blocks the entrance.”

“I need to see,” I said, and pushed away from the side of the truck.

Several of them pushed away to stand around me. It was Hill who said, “You wait for Hudson and Sutton to regroup.”

“I am, I just want Sutton and his high-tech gadgets to help me see into the crypt.”

“We can’t see through solid stone, not even with infrared,” Jung said.

“Connie, the hostage, is five-nine, but she’s slender like her dad. Her body may block us from rushing through the entrance, but we should be able to see around her with infrared and night vision.”

Hill asked on his radio, “Sarge, could you see into the crypt?”

“Not from the top of the hill.”

“Find Sutton and me someplace low, so we can look past the hostage’s legs.”

“What have you got in mind?” Hermes asked.

“Let Sutton and me see into the room, place the hostages. You guys find cover that allows you to get close enough.”

“Close enough for what?”

“Dynamic entry.”

“You got mad at me for saying we go through the hostage,” Saville said.

“I didn’t get mad, I got scared for her, but me afraid doesn’t help.”

“And so just like that you’re not afraid anymore?” he asked.

“Hostage needs me to think more than she needs me to feel, right now.” The hard, cold pit of my stomach didn’t believe me, but my head was trying, and that was all I could do.

I heard Sutton and Hudson before they stepped into view. I watched the other guys and no one looked toward the small sounds of them moving in the grass, a pants leg brushing something taller and more dried than the spring grass, their boots swooshing through. If Nicky or any of the other lycanthropes had been with me, they’d have heard it even sooner than I had, but for once our prey wasn’t someone who had super-hearing, or sense of smell, or vision, or anything. He could raise the dead and capture souls. Neither of those would help him see, smell, or hear us moving around in the dark.

The two of them looked at us, and Hudson said, “Tell me.”

I told him. It wasn’t a great plan. It wasn’t a perfect plan. But sometimes you don’t need perfect, just good enough. Good enough for everyone to survive. Well, everyone but Maximiliano. Him, he could die; it would save me having to execute him later.

SUTTON AND I managed to find a place out among the graves as directly in line with the doorway as possible and still keep hidden. Being on the ground meant we had to be closer to the target than if we’d been up on the hill. Higher up almost always gave you a better unobstructed view, but this once we were hoping lower down was better. We snugged down on top of one of the graves with its tombstone at our feet, and another taller one of a different grave to one side of Sutton and his M24. We’d had trouble finding a space between the graves where Sutton could stretch out flat on his stomach. He was so damn tall, and just a very big guy; he almost didn’t fit between the older graves. I had no trouble finding room to lie flat on the cool ground, with its early-season grass and wildflowers here and there. Sutton used the edge of the gravestone to steady his rifle so he could see past the figure hanging in the doorway. I tried very hard to think of it as just a hostage, but seeing the tall, slender woman hanging by her wrists in the doorway, her dark hair spilling down her back while she struggled and pulled at the ropes, hurt me in ways I had no words for.

“Talk to us, Sutton,” I whispered.

“Tall figure standing near middle of room; second figure lying down on stone structure in center of room, seems to be struggling, maybe tied down; third figure slumped in far right corner, no movement.”

My gut tightened again at that slumped third hostage with no movement. Was it Tomas? Were we going to be too late for Manny’s son? I pushed the thought away, because it didn’t help anything right now. Tomas and Connie and even Max’s fiancée needed me thinking, planning, helping to get them out. I held on to the thought that they needed me to do my job. They needed me to help SWAT do theirs. It was true, and I’d keep on doing all that, until we either saved them . . . until we saved them.

“Do you have a shot at the standing figure?” I asked. Was I a hundred percent sure that one was our bad guy? No, but it was my best guess, and sometimes that’s all you got.

“Negative.”

“Shit,” I said, softly. I prayed that they would be okay. I prayed that this would work and no one else would get hurt, not because prayer was the only thing I could do, but because prayer never hurts, and if you can get God to help, why not?

I saw the other team members moving up through the graves on the side of the crypt. It was good to be hunting a human for once, because he wouldn’t be better than the men with me. If you had to go into danger with just humans, these were good men. Maximiliano was not a good man, not in any way. Was that judgmental of me? Yes, and I was okay with that.

I felt magic on the air, a rush against my skin. “He’s casting,” I said.

“Casting what?” Sutton asked.

“Magic.”

“Talk to me, Blake,” Hudson whispered.

I heard screaming, muffled through a gag, but it carried on the soft night air surprisingly well. The woman in the doorway started screaming, too, and struggling harder, so that she spun her body around, and I could see her face for the first time.

“It’s not Connie,” I said.

“What?” Sutton asked.

“It’s not Connie Rodriguez.”

“Who is it then?”

“I think it’s the zombie from some of the films.”

“Doesn’t look like a zombie,” Sutton said, eye still snugged to his eyepiece.

I used his extra eyepiece to look closer at the struggling woman in the doorway. “It’s the zombie. I saw her on film.”

The magic tightened around me, so that it was hard to breathe past it, as if the air were getting heavier. “The spell, whatever it is, is almost complete, and when he finishes he will kill her.”

Connie and the zombie were both screaming, because one was alive and wanted to stay that way, and the other one didn’t know she was already dead.