Frost Burned

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.”
    “How did you escape?” I asked.
    “I was upstairs.” His voice was getting closer to his usual enunciation, and he sounded more coherent. “Getting toilet paper for the fu—for the downstairs bathroom.” He made a noise, a half sob. I hugged him more tightly.
    “Go ahead and swear,” I told him. “I promise not to tell Adam.”
    He snorted. “Bad habit.” I couldn’t tell if he was talking about his swearing or me promising not to tell Adam.
    “You’re right,” I said, because he was. “So you heard them and ran for Gabriel?”
    “I heard,” he told me. “I waited. Whole pack was down there. Then Adam said, ‘In all Mercy, Benjamin Speedway.’ Adam said that ‘Benjamin Speedway’ like he was swearing, but I knew. I’m Benjamin. Mercy is you. Speed meant go. He was ordering me to run, to find you. Disguised the order to give me a moment of grace before they figured it out. There were people out the back, and they saw me jump out the window. Hit me with the damned dart, and I ran for the river. Doubled back and found Gabriel. Made him drive. But you weren’t here. You were supposed to be
here
.”
    If it hadn’t been for the wreck, Jesse and I would have finished our shopping and headed home. Presumably into the arms of whoever had Adam. Luck. It made me take a deep breath, and I got a good whiff of what I’d been smelling all along.
    “Blood.” I leaned back, trying to get some space between us. “Ben, where are you bleeding?”

2
    “Do we need lights?” asked Jesse.
    “I’ll get the big kit in the shop,” Gabriel said, and ran for it. Night was dark to him, but he knew his way around, and the first-aid kit was on the wall just inside. He wouldn’t be as fast as me, but I was attached to a werewolf at the moment.
    I knew what Adam would say about turning on the lights when we were possibly hiding from some unknown group capable of taking on a pack of werewolves and coming out on top. But my night vision wasn’t up to first aid in the dark.
    “Flashlight,” I said. “Under the counter. Also get the box cutter next to it in case I have to slice his clothes.” I put my hands on either side of Ben’s face and tried to make him look at me. “Ben. Ben.”
    “Yes?” It came out clear and crisp-upper-crust-British, as Ben, with his excellent four-letter-laced vocabulary seldom did. But he didn’t let me pull his face up so I could see it.
    “Where are you hit?”
    “Tranq. Arse.” That one wasn’t as clear, but I could understand him and assumed the last word was a location and not an epithet, though with Ben it was a risky call.
    “No. Not the tranq.” A tranquillizer dart wouldn’t have left him bleeding this much later. “Someone shot you, Ben. Where?”
    Jesse aimed the flashlight. “Leg,” she said. “Just above his right