Frostbound

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Book: Frostbound by Sharon Ashwood Read Free Book Online
Authors: Sharon Ashwood
Tags: Fiction > Urban Fantasy
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Lore guessed the killer had used something that required a lot of cuts—a dagger or a knife.
    The camera kept flashing, the bursts of light setting Lore’s nerves on edge.
    The police had left the head where they had found it, apart from the body. The eyes were half-open, the lips slack. Lore turned away from the waxy face. It was far too much like Talia’s.
    An officer stood in the living room, making a sketch of the placement of the toppled furniture, the body, and the severed head. With no camera or sketch pad, Lore had to remember what was there: a floor lamp toppled, a small bookcase capsized, paperbacks everywhere, pictures askew. Michelle Faulkner had fought back.
    Lore tensed as someone bumped into him. There were too many people, and no one was dusting for fingerprints yet, tweezing up bits of thread or vacuuming the carpet for evidence. He supposed even more personnel would arrive to tramp through the place.
    To a hellhound, it was a stupid way to investigate. The first and most obvious tool was a good nose, and now there were too many scents crowding out any trace of the killer. The only thing Lore could tell for sure was that hellhounds and vampires were the only nonhumans who had been there in recent history.
    His other sense—the one that gave him premonitions—was jangling with a sense of wrongness . The place stank of violence and terror.
    “Where’s the drawing?” Baines asked a young officer standing by the window.
    “There.” The man pointed to the living room wall.
    With a ping of annoyance, Lore wondered how the hell he’d missed it earlier. Then again, it didn’t exactly stand out—just more blood on a bloody wall.
    “Well?” asked Baines.
    Lore stepped closer. The symbol was crudely done, and at an awkward height. The blood was turning a rusty brown, soaking into the bland off-white paint. He estimated the distance to the floor. “It looked like whoever drew it knelt, scooping up the blood from the carpet with his fingers.”
    Baines nodded. “So, what does it mean?”
    Lore’s first impression was of a meaningless splodge. If he squinted, it reminded him of a pup’s drawing of the summer sun. Or a squashed spider. Or a head with crudely drawn hair. What had the cop been thinking? Gang symbols had more style. “Honestly, I can’t tell.”
    Baines shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
    Lore straightened, fixing the childlike scrawl into his memory. As he took one last look, he noticed there was a tiny squiggle disturbing the bottom smears. “There’s something written beneath the blood. It’s almost covered up.”
    Baines quickly bent down, bringing his nose nearly to the wall. “It’s in pencil.”
    He pulled a penlight from his pocket and shone it directly on the small printed letters. The writing was ragged, the letters uneven. It reminded Lore of his own awkward penmanship.
    “ Vincire ,” Baines said. “Latin. Something about binding, I think. It’s been years since I studied it.”
    “Latin?” Lore thought about the fire, dark sorcery, Talia, and the dead body mere feet away. “What kind of a binding?”
    Baines didn’t answer. He straightened and looked out the window. “Huh. The snow’s started coming down in earnest.”
    Lore followed his gaze. Fat flakes were twirling through the beams of the streetlights, the wind gusting them into spirals. A brief moment of wonder seized him. So that’s what snow looks like. He’d seen pictures, but never the real thing.
    “I dreamed that it would snow.” In the dream, something was chasing him. The snow was so deep, he couldn’t run. There had been no choice but to turn and face his enemy.
    Prophecies came in dreams. They were the gift and burden the Prophets sent to the Alpha of the pack. The problem was deciding what was a prophecy and what were the aftereffects of the three-day-old pizza he’d left in the fridge. It seemed this time the dream was a warning.
    “The snow’s a nightmare all right,” Baines grumbled.

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