Many Bloody Returns

Fire and Ice and Linguini for Two Tate Hallaway

Tate Hallaway is the author of other works featuring the main characters in this story: Tall, Dark & Dead, published in May 2006, and Dead Sexy, published in May 2007. She’s intimately familiar with Midwest winters, having grown up in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Tate currently lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with five monochromatic cats and her adorable four-year-old son, Mason.

Sebastian told me several times that his birthday was cursed. I didn’t really believe him, but when I found myself standing ankle deep in exhaust-smudged snow on the shoulder of County Highway 5 while Sebastian stared glumly at the engine block of our stalled car, I started to reconsider.

We were stuck. A broken broomstick handle propped open the hood of the ’90 Honda Civic. Sebastian usually drove a mint-condition classic car, but since it had no heater, it wasn’t especially suitable for Wisconsin winters. The Honda was a beater from Jensen’s, the garage where Sebastian worked. He had it on loan for as long as the bad weather lasted.

Sebastian held the distributor cap in his hands and was doing something to it with a fingernail file he had borrowed from my purse. The way he was dressed, it could be twenty degrees, instead of twenty below—no hat, no scarf, no gloves. In fact, all he had on as protection against the wind was one of those shapeless parkas, broken-in, loose-fitting jeans, and cowboy boots. He looked much more like a car mechanic than a vampire. Of course, he was a car mechanic—it was his day job. That’s right, you heard me, day job. Sebastian had been made by magic instead of by blood, and he could walk in the sunshine.

Not that there was much of that left.

The sunset threw pink and blue shadows over the frozen cornfields. In the fading light, icicles glittered from the eaves of a nearby abandoned barn. A dog howled in the distance. It would have been beautiful if it wasn’t so damned cold.

Despite the below-zero breeze pulling at his long black hair, Sebastian worked unhurriedly, impervious to the cold. The tips of his ears weren’t even red; I could feel mine burning under the fake fur of my hat. His composure in the bitter cold made him seem especially supernatural. When I took in a deep breath of icy air, my jaw clenched in a way that made my teeth actually chatter.

It must be nice to be dead.

Meanwhile, I was freezing my butt off. I looked great in my estate sale–find Harris Tweed wool coat, fluffy Russian hat, and fake-fur lined boots, but the skimpy little black number I had underneath everything let the cold seep in to the bone. Normally, a forecast of subzero temperatures suppressed my fashionista tendencies, but it was Sebastian’s birthday, and I’d wanted to glam things up. No doubt I looked absolutely fabulous underneath my winter layers, but a fat lot of good that did me right now. I was shivering so hard that my knees literally knocked together.

The deep blue shadows stretched in the fading rose-colored light, and above us, a highway light snapped on. Sebastian glanced up in the sudden illumination, and then glared at me for a short moment before going back to the distributor cap.

Sebastian hadn’t said much since the car sputtered and died twenty minutes ago, and I knew he was brooding. He hadn’t wanted to come out for his birthday. He said he’d never celebrated it in all the thousand-odd years of his life, and he hardly wanted to start now. It had never been a happy occasion for him.

He believed his birthday caused him to become a vampire.

Today was Christmas.

Apparently, the superstition at the time Sebastian was born was that sharing a birthday with Jesus was extremely bad juju—something about your parents engaging in earthly pleasures at the same time of year that the Virgin Mary had been divinely conceiving. Whatever. It made no sense at all to me, not being of a religious persuasion that concerned itself with Jesus’ birthday, but it was important to Sebastian. Plus, he had been reminded of this wickedness every single birthday. He told me once that the curse had become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, since he had pursued the “dark arts” of alchemy and witchcraft partly because people expected him to. If he hadn’t, he would never have discovered the formula that made him a vampire.

“Try it now, Garnet,” Sebastian shouted from somewhere under the hood. I slipped and slid over the frozen slush to the driver’s side. I scooted into the driver’s seat and shut the door to the wind. Depressing the clutch, I put my hand on the key and made a quick appeal to Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire. I closed my eyes and whispered, Give us a spark. Please.

When the engine turned over, I almost thought my prayers were answered. Then the noise stopped again, and this time, I had the distinct impression that something died—a metal-on-metal, grinding, final death.

“Nothing,” I shouted back as if he couldn’t tell. Having grown up with Midwestern winters, I couldn’t help but complete the traditional call-and-response of injured vehicles.

I waited for another word from Sebastian. Instead, he shut the hood with a firm finality, like closing the lid of a coffin.

I cranked down the window as he came around. I gave him a hopeful smile, but he shook his head. “It’s dead.”

I tried to remain perky. “It’s still early,” I said. “We could call a cab.”

Sebastian leaned against the driver’s side door, looking away from me. Crossing his arms in front of his chest despite the bulk of his parka, he stared out into the darkening fields. “Is anyone going to be working today?”

“The restaurant is open,” I reminded him. “As is the movie theater.” Despite being moderately sized, Madison—a left-leaning, radical, college town—had a large contingent of people for whom Christmas is just another day. In fact, I’d debated long and hard about whether or not to keep open the occult bookstore I managed but had decided to close it in deference to Sebastian’s birthday. It was winter break and my college-age staff was all at home enjoying roast turkey right about now, and I’d have had to staff the store myself. I’d wanted the day off to spend with Sebastian.

Sebastian fished through his pockets for his cell phone, but came up empty-handed. “Figures,” he sighed as we searched the car. “Benjamin must have walked off with it again.”

Benjamin was Sebastian’s resident house-ghost—well, poltergeist, really, since he had a tendency to toss things around when riled up. Still, it wasn’t like him to run off with Sebastian’s things. Benjamin was usually very loyal to Sebastian to the point of “defending” the house from all interlopers, even me. “What did you do to piss him off?”

“I’ve been thinking about rewallpapering Vivian’s room.”

“Are you insane?” Vivian was Benjamin’s wife, whom we suspected Benjamin had axe-murdered in that very room. Benjamin got especially crazy if anything in her bedroom was altered. In fact, Benjamin was so obsessed with keeping things precisely as they were, Sebastian could sometimes trick him into cleaning the place by moving some of Vivian’s things to other parts of the house.

Sebastian lifted his shoulders in a shrug barely visible through the thick down of his parka. “Why don’t we just go home?”

I would have been more excited about his suggestion if he’d sounded more “in the mood.” But I could hear the defeatism oozing from each syllable. Even so, part of me did want to just give up—the exact part being my frozen toes—but I was on a personal crusade to shake Sebastian of his birthday melancholia. He’d been carrying around this hatred of his birthday for a millennium. It was time for an attitude adjustment.

Sebastian’s farm was just about as far away from us now as Portobello Restaurant, where we had reservations in twenty minutes. We could still make it.

“I’m sure there’s a farmhouse nearby,” I said, rearranging my hat so it covered more of my ears. “We can call a cab from there.”

“For home.”

“For the restaurant.”

We got into one of those stare-downs where a normal person would just let the vampire win. The look of fierce intensity in those chestnut brown eyes with their eerie golden starburst pattern around the pupil said Back off. I, however, am a pigheaded Witch, and I’m somewhat careless with my sense of self-preservation.

“Come on.” I pasted a cheery smile on my face, despite the skin-numbing chill. Swinging the car door open, I strolled out into the frozen wasteland with a jaunty step. “It’ll be an adventure.”

For several steps I wondered if Sebastian was going to let me have this so-called adventure on my own. Then, in that silent way he had, he was suddenly beside me.

“You’re incorrigible,” he grunted, but there was the hint of a smile in his voice. Victory.

It didn’t take long for me to regret my pluckiness. Minus twenty was dangerously cold, and I was just not dressed for it. My face felt raw, and my toes had gone way past the tingly phase. I was seriously entertaining the idea of asking Sebastian to turn me into one of the living dead so that I didn’t have to deal with the prospect of freezing to death when we spotted a pickup truck heading in our direction.

Actually, at first, all I saw were two points of light, like the eyes of some huge animal. Through the still night air, I heard the snarl and spit of a working engine. I waved frantically, hoping to flag the vehicle down. My only thought was: heater.

Miraculously, it stopped.

Behind the wheel of the shiny black Ford was a woman in her mid to late fifties. The curls of hair that stuck out from an Elmer Fudd earflap hat were the color of steel wool. Her cheeks were burned red by the wind and cold. One look at her REI arctic-ready parka, insulated gloves, snow pants, and heavy-duty boots, and I knew she was a farmer.

The interior of the cab was blessedly hot and smelled faintly of stale coffee and wet dog. “Thanks for stopping,” I said, climbing in gingerly.

She nodded in that rural way that implied You’re-welcome and I-should-have-my-head-examined-for-this-act-of-kindness all at once.

“You should really stay with your car on a night like this,” the driver said as I wedged myself into the center of the bench seat. She was right, of course. Beyond the actual temperature, there was the wind chill, which could be considerably lower. A car protected you from that. Plus, out in the elements the cold hemorrhaged heat from your body. Inside a car, at least, you could build up a bit of warmth just from your own breathing. Not to mention the fact that I had no idea how far I would have had to walk to find another farm, and there’s always the risk of getting lost. Cops and snowplow drivers are trained to stop for cars with red flags tied to the antenna to look for people trapped inside.

As a native Minnesotan, I knew all that. I was about to acknowledge my failure in winter safety rules when she added, “Don’t either of you two have a phone?”

“No,” I said miserably.

Sebastian just shook his head. “I don’t suppose you do?”

She flashed a thin smile that held only a hint of self-righteousness. “Of course.” She pulled a sequin-studded flip case from the interior pocket of her parka. I raised my eyes at the shiny appliqués as I handed it to Sebastian.

He snapped it open and frowned. “No signal.” Then, “And…now your battery is dead.” Handing it back to me, he mouthed, “Cursed.”

“That’s strange,” she said when I gave it back to her. “It was working a half hour ago.”

“I’m cursed,” Sebastian said out loud this time, matter-of-factly.

The woman gave us a crook of a snow-white eyebrow and pulled back on to the road. “So,” she said, sounding anxious to get rid of us, “where are you headed?”

I didn’t take it personally. I was sure we made a strange pair—me, bundled up like some kind of accident between a Russian babushka and a Goth supermodel, and him, grumpily cryptic and ridiculously underdressed.

I looked to Sebastian for an answer to her question, but he stared out at the graying sky. I had to snap him out of this. He was being downright antisocial and rude.

“If you’re headed to town,” I tried hopefully, and when she didn’t deny it, I added, “Anywhere close to State Street would do us.”

She nodded, her eyes on the black strip of asphalt. Wind threw streaks of powdery snow across the road where it slithered like snakes, twisting and turning before merging with the drifts on the opposite side. “You kids off on a date?”

“His birthday.”

She nodded as if considering something. I braced myself for a Christmas comment or joke. Finally, she simply said dryly, “Nice day for it.”

Thunder rolled outside, strangely synchronous with her tone.

Sebastian roused himself from his brood enough to inquire, “Was there supposed to be a storm coming in?”

“Oh yeah,” said the driver, in a pitch-perfect Minnesotan accent. “National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning.”

“This just gets better and better,” Sebastian grumbled.

I gave him a punch in the arm, as if to say, “Be nice!”

“I feel terrible,” I said. “I should really have introduced myself. I’m Garnet Lacey, and my delightful companion here is my boyfriend, Sebastian Von Traum.”

She nodded her greeting. “Fonn Hyrokkin.” In the flash of a passing car’s headlight, something sparkled in her eyes like ice.

Hyrokkin sounded a lot like the Finnish surnames I’d grown up with in northern Minnesota, but something about the way she said it, as though it were more of a title, made me pause.

I looked with my magical vision, but it was too dark to get a good read of her aura. Auras are like halos of refracted light around a person or an object, and they can’t be seen without some kind of illumination. I’ve found artificial fluorescents work best, but light of some kind is an absolute must. The glow of the dashboard just wasn’t cutting it.

Despite my growing unease about our driver, we fell into a silence.

You can’t live in the upper Midwest without having to deal with quietness. I grew up in Minnesota, so I should be used to it: but I’m a chronic chatterer. I even commit the cardinal sin of enticing strangers into conversation in elevators. When I can’t talk, I tap my toes and drum my fingers. It was strange, but one of the things I like about my adoptive state of Wisconsin is that people around here seem to be much more willing to engage in copious amounts of small talk. Just my luck, the one Norwegian in all of Wisconsin would have to pick us up.

I glanced at Sebastian for support as my feet started their nervousness dance. He just glumly watched the darkness roll past the window.

Pulling at the fingers of my gloves, I looked back at Fonn. She stared resolutely ahead. Our shoulders touched when the truck bounced over uneven patches in the road, and each time they did I would have sworn I could smell dog more sharply. I told myself that maybe her golden retriever liked to nap on her coat. I mean, I was sure some of my clothes smelled of cat. Barney snoozed in my dresser drawer any time I accidentally left it open. Anyway, why should that make me so nervous? As someone who kept a pet, I tended to see animal ownership as a positive personality trait. The people who didn’t have animals when they could always seemed a little suspect. So what bothered me? Was it that the dog wasn’t anywhere in sight?

I listened to the sound of the engine growling as we continued to bump along the deserted county road. I wanted to ask Fonn about the dog I could smell but couldn’t think of a polite way to bring it up. “Say, I notice your truck stinks of wet pooch. So what kind is it, and where is it anyway?! Oh, that’s actually your body odor? My bad,” seemed just a little bit tactless.

On the side of the road, Christmas lights festooned a one-story ranch whose lawn was littered with illuminated and motorized reindeer, elves, snowmen, and a glow-in-the-dark plastic crèche. Three pairs of eyes turned to watch the extravaganza disappear behind us, but, in true Midwestern fashion, we kept our own counsel.

Lightning flashed across the sky. Snow sprinkled the windshield.

“What the heck?” I said, looking at tiny kernels of snow that the wiper brushed away. “It’s far too cold to snow.” I might have failed winter safety, but I knew that there were temperatures at which snow couldn’t form. It was simply not possible.

Something very strange was happening outside. Something unnatural.

“Storm,” Fonn whispered reverently. “It’s going to be a big one.”

Deep in my belly, Lilith grumbled.

Sharing a body with the Goddess Lilith meant that sometimes She felt free to editorialize. The snarl surprised me, however. It struck me as threatened…or even territorial. Though I knew it wasn’t audible to anyone else, I put my hand over my stomach.

I glanced over at Sebastian to see if he registered Lilith’s complaint. Thanks to a blood-bonding spell, Sebastian could sense Lilith’s moods.

He inspected Fonn with sudden interest. I followed his gaze to see what it was about her that suddenly fascinated him and concerned Lilith. In the bluish glow of the dashboard lights, her facial features were sharp, yet broad, and her skin stretched tightly across high cheekbones. She had a certain regalness about her, but nothing I hadn’t seen in countless faces of the farmers in Finlayson, Minnesota, where I grew up.

The only thing that struck me as particularly odd was the faint hint of a smile. She stared out at the wind and snow like something about it tickled her fancy…or made her proud. Yeah, that was it. She was staring at the growing storm like a mother would watch a baby taking its first steps.

Creepy.

Sebastian and I shared a look that said, Something here isn’t right. After all the silence, I was grateful to be communicating with Sebastian again, even if it was only about the bizarreness of our situation. He flashed me a crooked smile which seemed to say, Isn’t this just our luck? I nodded in quiet agreement.

Wind pushed against the truck hard enough to cause us to coast slightly toward the center line. Fonn corrected for it with a twinkle in her eye.

So, my first thought was that Fonn was some kind of demented storm chaser, except that Lilith rarely gave me the nudge when people were just plain odd. If She did, I’d be getting poked a lot, given the type I tended to attract. No, there had to be something supernatural going on here, but what?

If Fonn wasn’t a deranged meteorologist, what else could she be? Severe weather made her ecstatic, she was out on a cold night alone, and her truck smelled like dog. Seemed to me it was time to play twenty questions. Yet how to interrogate her without raising suspicion? “So, Fonn,” I said, trying to affect the vaguely disinterested conversation style of a church basement social gathering. “You from around here?”

“Nope.”

Argh! Foiled by a yes-no question and a wily yet taciturn respondent.

“Where are you from?” Sebastian asked, picking up the dropped ball.

“Came over from the Old Country.”

“Me, too,” Sebastian said. “I was born in Austria. You?”

“Norway.”

Okay, we had something on her. Not that it helped much. I looked to Sebastian, but he just shrugged. He didn’t have a clue what sort of magical being she might be, either.

The wind howled around the truck. Sheets of snow spattered against the windows. That was another oddity. The snow had changed from tiny ice pellets into large, fluffy flakes. The temperature must have shifted dramatically. It was just plain strange to see that kind of snow transformation so quickly. Normally, you saw one kind of flake or another, or if they changed at all, it was gradual, like over the course of several hours. Not minutes.

This storm challenged all my well-honed Midwestern senses. It was seriously freaking me out. Somehow Fonn was behind it, I was certain.

So, okay, maybe Fonn wielded some kind of weather magic. Did I know any Old Norse otherworldly beings in charge of snow? To be honest, the only Norwegian female baddie I could think of was a Valkyrie, and somehow I sensed that wasn’t right. It seemed to me that you had to die in battle to meet one of those—oh, and you should probably also be a Viking. Unless something really weird had happened without my knowledge, neither Sebastian nor I fit that particular bill. Well, okay, Sebastian was dead. And he had died in a battle, like the Crusades or against the Huns or something, but that was a long time ago and he definitely wasn’t Norse.

Fonn turned the truck onto a major thoroughfare. The snow became a blur of fast-falling, large flakes. Despite the wider, well-traveled road, all I could see ahead of us was a vague sense of the center line and ice crystals glistening in the headlights. The truck barreled ahead confidently, but I snaked a hand over to Sebastian’s and squeezed tightly.

Lilith rippled across my abdomen—a warning.

Okay, so Fonn was crazy magical, but what was Lilith saying? Was Fonn dangerous, too? How?

Despite the Ford’s heater going full blast, I felt an icy breeze on the back of my neck. My muscles tensed involuntarily. I snuggled a bit closer to Sebastian, who seemed to be feeling the chill also. The arm he wrapped around my shoulder shuddered slightly.

“Cold?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, raising his shoulders as if to ward off a wind. “Just now.”

“The storm is picking up,” Fonn said, as if that explained why the temperature suddenly affected my undead vampire lover. “We might need to find shelter,” she added, using her gloved hand to turn the wipers up a notch. They beat furiously against the glass.

“We’ve got to be getting closer to town,” I muttered to myself. Sebastian’s farm was no more than ten minutes from the edges of Madison’s suburbs. It seemed like we’d been driving twice that long, especially given that when we’d broken down we were almost halfway to the edge of town.

“I may have missed a turnoff,” Fonn said. “Visibility sucks. I think I might have gotten turned around. We’re a bit lost.”

We’re not lost, I thought. We’re being taken somewhere. Madison wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis. Okay, sure, it was the capital city of Wisconsin, but there weren’t that many roads that led in and out of it. Provided you stayed pointed in the same direction, getting lost was actually kind of difficult. Fonn knew where we were, I was sure of it, especially when I noticed that slight, malicious smile twitched across her lips again. I was just about to call her on it when Sebastian piped up.

“A bit lost? Isn’t that like being a little pregnant?” Sebastian asked, though his question was clearly rhetorical and sarcastic. “Lost. That’s fantastic.”

I rolled my eyes and shrugged out from under his arm. “This is not your curse,” I said with a long-suffering sigh.

“Are you kidding me?” Sebastian snapped out of his funk long enough to let out a rant. “We’re stuck in an ice storm with the creature from the black lagoon, and you don’t think it’s because my parents are sinners and I practiced the dark arts on the holy days?”

“No, I don’t. You’re suffering because your parents had sex on a night they weren’t supposed to? Do you even realize how insane that sounds?” I asked, giving him the she-can-hear-you glare.

“I’m from Norway,” Fonn added, sounding only a little put out. I started to giggle at the absurdity of her correction, when she continued, “And I’m not a ‘creature’; I’m a demon.”

“Oh, well,” Sebastian said dryly. “That makes things much better.”

I gave Sebastian a little nudge to say Go ahead, idiot, poke the demon.

The wipers smeared ice and slush uselessly across the windshield. We were surrounded in whiteness. The storm had become a full-on blizzard.

Pulling off to the side, Fonn slowed to a stop. “We need to wait this out.”

“Yeah, great,” Sebastian muttered.

Even though she’d identified herself as a demon, I still figured a little common courtesy could go a long way. “Thanks for picking us up,” I said, staring out into the shifting white. “We’d be dead otherwise.”

Fonn smiled.

Lilith tightened the muscles in my abdomen.

The chill crept along my spine again, like fingers of frost.

“Jesus, it’s cold in here,” Sebastian said, reaching for the heater.

Sebastian huddled near the vent, hugging himself for warmth. I looked at Fonn and the gleam in her eye.

Fonn pushed a button on her dash, and suddenly the cabin was filled with the droning voice of some announcer on Wisconsin Public Radio talking about the stock market and Bulgarian politics or some other esoteric subject. I didn’t really listen. I was too busy freaking out. Sebastian looked miserable. He shivered pathetically. I ran my hand along the back of his neck lightly to comfort him. His skin felt cold.

Cold? That wasn’t right. Yeah, okay, he was a vampire, and most vampires have cold skin. Not my boy. His magic made him hot-blooded. I pulled my fingers away in surprise.

“Sebastian,” I said. “You’re cold.”

“Damn right. I’m freezing.” He rubbed his arms in the classic style, trying to get some heat from the friction.

Wind rattled the windows of the truck. Everywhere was white on night, and where the headlights beamed, it reminded me a bit of the image of hyperspace from Star Wars. Sebastian shouldn’t be cold; this storm shouldn’t be so strong, so soon.

“You’re sucking the life from us to make this storm, aren’t you?” I demanded of Fonn, who sat smugly watching the snow pile up on the windshield.

Midshiver, Sebastian glanced up at Fonn. “Hey, I don’t have any life,” he pointed out.

“Energy,” Fonn interjected. “And, if I may say so, you’re both loaded.”

That would explain why Lilith didn’t like Fonn much. An energysnarfing demon would probably consider a goddess an all-you-can-eat-buffet.

“That’s fan-fucking-tastic,” Sebastian said. “Happy birthday to me.”

A knock on the driver’s side window made everybody jump, even Fonn. She powered-down the window, letting in an arctic blast of wind and snow. I noticed the faint flash of blue lights behind us and the reflective paint at the tip of a snowplow’s blade.

“Everyone all right in here?” a male voice asked. I had the impression of a mustache underneath the fake fur of a parka hood wrapped tightly around his head.

Fonn eyed the newcomer in a way that could only be described as hungry.

“We could use some help,” Fonn said, her voice abruptly shifting to that of a feeble older woman’s. Fonn was going to eat this unsuspecting stranger, too! I suddenly realized she’d been out trolling for victims and anyone would do. Of course, she’d lucked out and got a goddess-toting Witch and her supernatural vampire boyfriend. Good day for Fonn; bad day for us.

Lilith pushed against my stomach, like a snake uncoiling. But before I could react, Sebastian spoke up.

“Actually, we’re fine. Just waiting out the storm a bit.” Sebastian’s voice was liquid glamour. For a moment, I swore the cab of the truck smelled faintly of cinnamon toast and hot cocoa—very comforting smells, very homey. In fact, even I was feeling pretty safe and a little bit sleepy.

The snowplow driver nodded, completely duped by vampire charm. “Yeah, this weather sure is a doozie. You take care now.”

He disappeared into the snow, and I let out my breath when I heard the plow’s engine spring to life behind us.

Fonn did not look happy with either of us.

The temperature inside the cab dropped ten degrees. I could see my breath come out in white puffs. Sebastian took in a ragged breath at the same time, as if he also felt the shift. The snowy wind coming through the open window tossed Fonn’s curls about wildly. Her eyes flashed a stormy gray. Wind howled around the truck like a wolf.

Heat leeched from me in waves. I could see steam lifting from my body, rising to curl around Fonn like smoke. Fonn’s expression was pure triumph. She was going to suck the heat from us and make the mother of all blizzards.

So I kicked her.

I’m not usually a big proponent of violence, but I found her self-satisfied grin too annoying to bear.

I’d like to pretend that after my swift kick to the shin Fonn crumpled over in abject pain and suffering, we overpowered her, and that was the end of things, but in reality she gave me a do-that-again-and-I-will-squash-you-like-a-bug frown and continued stealing our life force.

Undaunted, I kicked her again. Harder. With both feet this time.

I must have gotten the angle just right, because she fell backward onto the door latch. Unexpectedly, the door swung open, causing her to lose her balance. She flailed around gracelessly for a second, groping for something to hold on to. Finding nothing, Fonn fell with a whump out of the cab.

I slid into her seat and shut the door.

“Go!” shouted Sebastian, despite the fact that the only thing I could see out of the window was white, white, and more white. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t,” I explained. “You saw what she was like with the snowplow driver. She’ll just find another person to suck.” Rolling up the window, I cranked up the heater a notch.

“Garnet,” Sebastian said, “she’s clearly some kind of elemental. We’re not going to be able to stop her. I’m not even sure Lilith could. Forces of nature are just that…. Part of the natural order of things. You can’t just wipe out the one in charge of winter.”

Why not? Couldn’t I just back the truck up and run over her a few times? Bump-bump, no more winter! I mean, come on, in Wisconsin winter generally sucks. Here in America’s Dairyland it was cold and miserable for nearly half the year. Sure, the first snowstorm with those fluffy, storybook flakes was beautiful, but it took less than a week for all the snow to get dirty from exhaust and other urban detritus.

But I supposed Sebastian had a point. Global warming was already a problem. If we stopped having winter altogether, we’d probably ruin some endangered ecological niche. Walleye population would explode from a lack of ice fishing. There’d be no annual mosquito die-off and they’d take over the world. So not cool, as it were.

Especially since I try to be so low-impact, you know? I even recycle my toilet paper rolls.

“We have to do something,” I insisted. I was starting to feel a bit warmer, more like myself, but not quite. My hands shook where I gripped the steering wheel.

“Yeah, drive,” said Sebastian. “Away. Fast.”

The snow flurries lessened enough to give me a tad more visibility. I glanced down out the side window, hoping to see Fonn unconscious on the snow. No luck. She was out there somewhere. Lurking.

I waved my hands in the direction of the sheets of snow still coming down thick and wet. “If I hit the gas right now, Sebastian, we’d ram into a light pole or another car. I can’t see a damn thing.”

“Except that,” Sebastian said dryly, pointing.

I gasped. Fonn pressed her face against the windshield. Rows of sharklike teeth lined an open, hungry mouth. Her hair whipped like snakes in the wind, blending into the sleet. Claws raked at the glass.

“Oh, great,” I said.

“Did you have a plan to get rid of her?” Sebastian asked as the safety glass began to show spiderweb cracks. “Because now would be a great time to let me know.”

“So, what do you think?” I asked, jumping in my seat at each slam of her claws on the windshield. “Could you take her? You’ve got super-vamp strength, right? How about you jump her?”

“How about I not? For one, I don’t think I could take her down, and secondly, what do I do once I have her? I can’t bite her; she might have antifreeze in her veins. How about you unleash Lilith?”

The windshield was completely cracked and starting to buckle in places. Safety glass, my ass.

Lilith was more than ready for the fight. It would not be a difficult thing to let Her out; but, She was Queen of Hell, Mother of Destruction. What if Lilith not only killed Fonn but also showed her usual lack of discretion and killed Sebastian, too? Then we’d have all that environmental disaster or Ragnarok or Goddess-knows-what-end-of-the-universe kind of stuff, and I’d be out one boyfriend.

Coldness began to seep in. I knew Fonn would be inside in a second.

I hit the gas hard and then slammed on the brakes. She slid off the hood and disappeared into the whiteout.

“Oh,” said Sebastian, a little startled. “Good job.”

“She’ll be back,” I reminded him. “We need to think of something slightly more permanent, but not too permanent.”

“Not to be unmanly, but I still think running away is a good option.”

“Well, it may come to that,” I admitted, hating the idea of leaving the next poor sap who happened to be out on Christmas to the fate of getting chomped by a heat-munching demon. “Are you sure you can’t bite her?”

“I could,” Sebastian said thoughtfully, then added, “if I want to die. Magical blood will kill me dead. And, like I said, God knows what’s coursing through those veins. You saw her, right? Did she look even vaguely human?”

“No,” I agreed. “So, if she eats energy, how do we counter that? She can’t be too affected by cold. I mean, she clearly controls it.”

“What about antifreeze?” Sebastian asked. “What if we blasted her with hot water and antifreeze straight from the radiator? Maybe, if nothing else, we could overload her…. Yeah, this could work. Turn off the engine. I’ve got an idea.”

Switching the ignition off meant no more heat. In the dangerous snowfall, it made no sense. As I hesitated, I felt someone pull at the truck’s door. I had to twist in my seat to double-check that it was locked. Sebastian reached across the seat and pulled out the keys.

“Distract her,” he said, opening the passenger’s side door and disappearing into the snow.

“Distract her? With what, my good looks?” I shouted at the open door. Two seconds later it registered: there was an open door.

Slowly taking form, Fonn materialized out of the snow. First, I noticed the black pits of eyes. Next I saw snow-white hair slashing wildly around her inhuman face. She crawled across the seat toward me, slowly, like a cat stalking its prey. Bitter wind blasted me, freezing the tips of my nose and ears.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I screamed. Screeched, really—all high-pitched and useless. I even started fumbling with the locks, slipping and scrabbling like a classic horror-film babe, until I remembered my purse. I made a snatch for it, and in a second, my fingers found the Mace where it always hung on the chain next to my keys.

Pulling out the tiny canister, I pointed the nozzle at those razor-sharp teeth. I let rip a big, nasty blast of the stuff.

Fonn reared back with a painful shriek. She pawed at her face.

I didn’t wait to see how quickly she might recover. Besides, discharging the pepper spray in an enclosed space had unintended consequences, like my own eyes starting to water. This time deftly flipping the lock, I scrambled out of the truck. Once outside, I slammed the door. I hadn’t really meant to shut it quite so hard, but the wind propelled it out of my hand.

Snow raged around me in blinding swirls. Momentarily, I lost sight of the truck even though I was standing right beside it. For a second, I thought maybe I’d blinded myself with the Mace. Then the truck reappeared in a gust of wind. I slapped my hands on to the metal frame so as not to lose it again.

“Sebastian,” I shouted into the squall. “Where are you?”

I strained to hear anything beyond the rush of air, and I inched forward toward the hood of the vehicle. Oh, it would so not be good to lose my boyfriend on his birthday. I started to feel a real quiver of panic as the storm continued to bluster. I couldn’t see anything. Snow slid into the tops of my boots as I sank knee-deep with each step. I felt like I was climbing forward into empty space.

“Sebastian!”

At this point, I might even have been grateful to see Fonn. Any sign that I wasn’t completely swept away into nothingness would have been welcome.

As if on cue, claws snipped at my back. Talons pierced my coat and scratched skin.

I tried to run. I tripped over something and lost my grip on the truck. My entire world became snow. There was snow in my mouth, my eyes, my nose, covering my face, and surrounding my body. I felt suffocated by cold. I started really screaming—deep, terrified-for-your-life bawling.

Hands griped my shoulders with a familiar strength and pulled me under the truck. The space between the undercarriage and the road was like a little cave. Heat from the engine had carved a no-snow zone, and I lay on my belly on warm, wet road. Sebastian stretched out beside me with a long hose in his hand. The hose was attached to something above us, and his fingers rested on a tiny spigot.

“Radiator drain,” Sebastian explained. “Is she coming?”

I started to explain that Fonn had been at my back a second ago when we noticed the digging. Claws scooped out huge chunks of snow, like a demonic prairie dog. Plus, I could feel her magic leeching the heat from me. Cold seeped in from the ground. My body felt heavy with ice, as if I were freezing solid.

Teeth were the first things I saw. I swore they’d grown. They now extended into grotesque spikes, like something you might see on a deep-sea creature or in your nightmares. Her face, too, was distended, almost fishlike, so she seemed to be one human-sized, extended gullet.

Sebastian’s hand began to quake. Ice rimmed his eye lashes and coated his hair. I hadn’t noticed that his fingers crimped together the hose; as the magic started to immobilize him, his fingers slipped off. A blast of heated liquid shot forward. Steam billowed everywhere. The smell of antifreeze filled the air, and I coughed, gagging.

Neon green splashed down Fonn’s gaping throat. When she startled and closed her mouth with a snap, the hot stuff squirted her right between her eyes.

Fonn yelped like a wounded dog, but there was so much steam in the cramped space I had a hard time seeing what was happening. But I certainly heard the gnashing of teeth, the snarling (which might have been Sebastian, come to think of it), and then a howl like a wounded hound of hell that nearly split my eardrums. The wind lifted the tires of the truck off the ground unevenly, so it seemed to bounce.

Then everything was quiet. Dead quiet.

Sebastian crimped the hose again. When the steam cleared, all I could see was a huge melted hole of toxic-green slush. From the front bumper, icicles dripped to sharp points like teeth.

There was no sign of Fonn. I held my breath hopefully and strained to hear anything. Sebastian scanned all around us, his fangs still bared.

I almost didn’t dare hope, but I felt the difference immediately. I still felt cold, but my limbs lightened. I no longer thought I might become a block of ice.

Sebastian put his hand on the spigot. “Do you think we got her?” he asked.

I wedged my hand between the ground and my belly. Closing my eyes, I let my consciousness rise out of my body. With Lilith’s eyes, I scanned the storm. When I didn’t sense Fonn in the immediate area, I reached my mind out further. Far off, on Highway 169, I caught the image of a woman riding bareback on a giant wolf. The vision blurred at the edges, melting into the snow, and steam streamed out of her like blood. She was running wounded. “We got her,” I said confidently.

Then I sneezed. The antifreeze smog and the cold plugged up my nose. Dirt was slowly freezing itself into the fabric of my ripped coat and dress. Sebastian screwed tight the spigot and looked over at me. Perhaps in reaction to my miserable expression, he laughed.

“I’m clearly not cursed.” He smiled.

“Oh, yeah, why not?” Although, when I said it, the words sounded a bit more like “Hi, what?”

“For one, we’re not dead,” he said, pulling the hose from the radiator drain. “Second, you’ve got a smudge of dirt on your nose that’s absolutely adorable.” He leaned over and kissed said nose, and I had to scrunch my face to hold back another wet sneeze.

I shook my head. “No, you are cursed. This was insane.”

“Come on,” he said with a laugh. “Once I get the hose back in place, we can get this baby running again.”

I guess defeating an ice demon can brighten a vampire’s day, or night, as the case may be. Feeling gross, exhausted, and tired of the cold, I wasn’t nearly as chipper as I had been at the start of our trip.

As he popped the hood, I started to wonder. I supposed the truck now could be considered a stolen vehicle. What is it when you borrow an abandoned one? Still a crime, no doubt. And, honestly, I had to wonder about whether or not Fonn owned this truck to begin with. What if, somewhere out in the snow drifts, there was a heat-sucked corpse waiting to be found and somehow linked back to us? “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Be practical,” Sebastian said as he slid me out of our warmish, wet cave under the truck. “You’ll freeze to death without the heat.”

He had a point. I was already chilled to the bone. “What about all the antifreeze?”

“The truck can run on water for a little while.”

I tried to remember if I’d seen a bottle of water anywhere in the cab. “Where are we going to get that?”

Sebastian looked around at the piles of snow and gestured with his open hands. “We seem to have an abundance of the frozen kind right here.”

I nodded. He got to work with a grin and a whistle. He seemed genuinely pleased to be fixing up the truck. I left him to it. The storm had abated to the point where I could see where I was going, so I stumbled my way back and threw myself into the passenger side of the truck. The interior stank of pepper spray, and, while I waited for Sebastian to finish, I coughed and sneezed until I had to open a window. Sebastian worked by the light of the headlights, while I sat there glumly.

In the fifteen minutes it took him to reconnect the hose and refill the radiator with snow water, the storm quit enough that I could see the occasional star through breaks in the clouds.

The truck ran hot all the way into town, but, luckily, Sebastian told me that the best way to contain that problem was to keep the heaters on full-blast.

My toes were toasty again by the time we pulled up to the darkened restaurant. “Oh, no,” I said, noticing the absence of any lights.

Sebastian just shook his head, a trace of his earlier sullenness returning. Even so, he pulled the truck into a parking spot and killed the engine. “We might as well go check it out.”

Despite myself, I felt a deep stab of desolation. The one thing I’d been fighting for—a decent night out for Sebastian’s birthday—now seemed ruined. I could feel a tear hovering at the corner of my eye. I wiped at it with a knuckle. “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound hopeful, but failing even to my ears. “Let’s go check it out.”

I trudged through the courtyard, one of my favorite features of Portobello during the summer. Snow draped the barren Virginia creeper vines that twined around the walls like white-frosted lace. Where they poked through the drifts, black-eyed Susan seed heads wore dots of snow. Dried husks of milkweed and mullein stood sentry over sleeping garden beds. The cobblestone walkway had been recently shoveled, and Sebastian and I made our way quickly to the heavy wooden door. A pull on the brass handle confirmed my worst fears. It was locked. Closed.

“I’m sorry,” I blubbered. Despite my best efforts, a hot tear ran down my chill-burned cheek.

Sebastian wrapped his arms around me, and I smelled that comforting scent of cinnamon again. I breathed in deeply. “It’s okay,” he lied smoothly. “I’m just glad we’re both alive.”

Yeah, and it’s my fault we were out in the first place, I wanted to say, but I was too choked up to make my throat work. I was just about to suggest we turn around and head for my apartment, when the door swung open, nearly knocking us off our feet. A round-faced older man wrapped in a shapeless parka and a stocking hat raised his eyebrows at us hugging on the restaurant doorstep.

“Von Traum party?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, wiping at my tears. “How did you know?”

“You were our only reservation tonight,” he said. “When the blizzard hit, everyone cleared out. The storm only now just let up enough for me to get out and shovel. I was just about to head home.”

I wanted to beg him to stay, but I couldn’t blame the guy for wanting to get home after a storm like this one. “Please don’t let us stop you. I’m so sorry you waited for us. We forgot our cell phone.”

“No, no problem. If you’re happy to pay, I’m happy to stay!”

“Seriously?” I brightened.

He waved a mitten dismissively. “I’ve seen worse storms. Besides, it’s your birthday,” he said to Sebastian. “You should do something nice. I know how it is; my birthday is on Thanksgiving. Do you even know how sick of turkey I am?”

We all laughed.

Then, to Sebastian I asked, “Are you up for it? Really? I’d understand if you just wanted to go home, too.”

Sebastian smiled. “Let’s stay. I’m starving.”

Though my dress had claw marks down the back, we had wine and pasta by candlelight and the place to ourselves. The cook pampered us with special sauces, fresh breadsticks and garlic butter, and tiramisu for two. Sebastian’s kisses tasted of fresh whipped cream and chocolate.

We walked to my apartment in the quiet, peaceful snow, hand in hand. At home, I gave him his birthday present—ironically, a part for his antique car that he’d been searching for—and a lot more.

“Still think you’re cursed?” I asked him, after.

Sebastian thought for a moment. “Let’s see, today we had our car break down, met some kind of storm demon who tried to kill us, and had fantastic pasta. Yes, I’m cursed,” he said. When I was about to protest, he put a finger on my lips. “But I also have you. That makes the whole thing bearable.”

And then he called me incorrigible again, and we laughed and kissed until dawn.