“We can try to make it down the hill in Joh—in my truck,” I said. “It has winter tires on it already. If we make it down the mountain, the rest should be manageable.” I walked out on the front porch and yelled for Yummy. When the ice-covered vampire appeared in front of me with a pop, it scared the P-turkey outta me.
“Dagnabbit, Yummy.” I ignored her laughter and said, “Occam and I jist got a case. Can you watch Mud and Soulwood until dawn? You can sleep in the guest room closet if needed.”
“Sure. But I’m a little wet.” She stepped in the door behind me and started dripping as the ice coating her hair and outer clothes immediately started melting. She slung a bag around and said, “I have dry clothes. A hot shower would be nice.”
“Help yourself. Don’t scare my sister.”
“You spoil all my fun.”
I raced upstairs to wake Mud. She was old enough to be at home alone—or with a trusted vampire—but I had to tell her what was happening. From the information we had so far, Occam and I would be heading into midtown. If we were on the wrong side of the river—
“Find which side of the lake Cai’s signal originates,” FireWind ordered.
I stopped my mad dash, listening.
“We’ve got ice-damaged cell towers,” Tandy said. “Best suggestion, Occam and Ingram head down Sixty-two, South Illinois Avenue, and cross Melton Hill Lake. I should have more by the time you cross the water.”
I dove into Mud’s room and woke my sister, saying, “Work emergency. No school today due to ice. Yummy’ll be in the closet, sleeping, after dawn. Sleep in, and then if you want, head to Esther’s. Don’t fall.”
Don’t fall.Advice I’d give to an adult, not my little sister.
Mud murmured in the affirmative and pulled a pillow over her head.
I raced back down the stairs, shoved into winter garb, thrust my feet into my boots, slung my vest over a shoulder, grabbed the new potted tree and my gear bag off the desk. I raced into the frigid cold, stopped to lock the door, and raced down the stairs. Halfway down, my feet went out from under me.
Occam caught my arm and held on, his were-strength halting my feetfirst plunge.
“That woulda hurt somethin’ awful,” I said.
“I gotcha, Nell, sugar. Always.”
I knew my cat-man meant far more than saving me from a plunge down the stairs.
More slowly, we both moved out onto the ice. Minuscule sleet drops were still falling, sounding like salt hitting, sharp and shushing. The air seemed to be growing colder instead of warmer, and I feared the storm wasn’t going to move away as quickly as the weather service had promised.
When we reached the truck, I saw that the bed was full of sleet that covered something mounded. “Occam? What’s that?”
He slung a second, very heavy gobag from his shoulder; it clunked into the truck bed. It sounded like lots of metal. “Firewood to add weight to give the tires more traction. Chains for the tires in the canvas bag. I figured a survivalist like John Ingram would have them. Looked for some in your back storage and found them. No time to put them on the truck, but the winter tires should make a difference.”
I started toward the driver’s side but stopped. “You got were-reflexes and this is not likely to be an easy trip. You drive?”
Without comment, he opened the passenger door for me and walked to the driver’s side. That started a small bit of hades, as we slipped and slid out of the driveway and started down the mountain. I held on for dear life and knew I should have bought new winter tires for the truck. As some in the unit might say,My bad.
TWELVE
The weather had gotten much worse at a lower elevation, wetter, mushier, a heavy, sloppy, peppering part-sleet, part-freezing rain, part-melting-ice amalgam ofyuck. The sound of precipitation alone made it hard to hear anything at our racing speed of less than twenty miles per hour. Visibility was poor and the streetlights were out here and there from ice building up on localized electric lines. Abandoned, ice-covered cars were all over the pike, some in small piles following accidents. The four-lane road was nothing but two slick lanes, each with two ruts, ruts that were being covered by the falling slush mired with sand and brine. Flames flickered here and there where electric lines sparked. Fire trucks traveled through the weather, firefighters putting out fires. Utility trucks and winter-clad workers repaired lines.
Tandy tried to contact us as we crawled down the main streets and, because the cell signal was so scratchy, I ended the call and pulled the comms headsets out of our gobags. I activated both and helped Occam into his before putting on my new set. Law enforcement comms were likely to be much more stable than cell phone signals now that we were in town.
Setting the mini-mics to the general channel—which would include all the people who had been at Ming’s, as well as HQ—I said, “Ingram and Occam are across the lake on Pellissippi Parkway.”
No one replied.
“Tan—Dyson,” I amended, “Ingram here. Please acknowledge?”
He didn’t.
I said, “Ingram here. Can anyone receive?”
