Secure in the knowledge that no aesthetic damage had been done—in spite of the fact that his schnoz now had its own heart rate—he clomped down and moved the ladder over to the next window in the lineup of three. The process was repeated, with the absence of the face-plant because now he was ready for it.
“One more to go—”
Just as he was about to step down again, a sensation like he’d been tapped on the shoulder startled him. With a wrench-around, he glanced over the back gardens and the forest rim beyond them.
“What is it?”
Qhuinn’s eyes searched the darkness outside the reach of the dimmed security lights. Familiarity with the estate filled in the winter details he couldn’t visualize fully: the pool, which was drained and covered for the season; the flower beds and blooming fruit trees, which were likewise on lockdown and draped with burlap; the snow-covered sloping lawn on the far side of the brick walkways. And after all that, the tree line’s boundary of coniferous sentries.
“What’s wrong, Qhuinn?”
Shaking himself, he intended to look down at his mate. But his eyes would not leave the back forty.
“Nothing,” he lied. “It’s . . . nothing.”
Over at the other end of the house, by the library, Z was coiling up a rope that was locked on Balthazar’s waist. The Bastard was not paying attention to any of the safety shit, and not surprisingly, he was already starting up the side of the house.
Oh, and not using the ladder that had been leaned into place.
Because why the fuck would you use the ladder.
No, no, the twenty-footer, which had been properly tilted and footed for safety, had been eschewed with the dismissal of a race car driver being offered a tricycle. Instead, Balz was somehow managing to tiptoe his way up the stone, his fingertips and toes cruising along the mortar joints.
“How the hell is he doing that?” Rhage muttered as he came around the corner.
“Bubblegum on his shoes,” somebody with the brother answered.
“Is he even wearing shoes?”
“He better be or those little piggies of his are going to be frozen bacon in the next minute and a half.”
Z let out a little more lead, and then a little more. After which he felt compelled to call out, “You need to set some hooks now and loop yourself in.”
“I will,” Balz said. “Just a bit farther.”
“You got this, Z?” Rhage asked.
“Yeah. I’ll scrape him off the snowpack when he falls off.”
“Call us for backup if you need us. We’ve got those ground-level shutters out in front to deal with.”
Z nodded, and stayed focused on the Bastard. And of course, there was no setting hooks and loops going on. Balz just kept crabbing his way up the stone wall, finding fingerholds, toeholds, in the seams of mortar. When he got to the problem window, some twenty feet up, he reached over with his left hand, grabbed on to the track of the shutter, and pulled himself across so he was in the center of the no-go issue.
“Now you tie yourself,” Z yelled up. “Before you do anything. Or I’ll pull you down myself.”
Balthazar smiled under his arm. “You can’t do that.”
Z yanked the rope to answer that one.
“But I’ll shatter into a thousand pieces,” the Bastard said. “That’s what you’re worried about, right? Seems silly to prove the danger by creating it—and then who will fix this shutter?”
“There’s a bush under you. FYI.”
“Oh! Well, then it’s not that dangerous to begin with, and messing about with hooks will not only ruin the structural integrity of this house, but it’ll slow me down and accomplish nothing. Kind of like this conversation.”
“Has anyone told you you make no damned sense?”
Balz turned back to the faulty shutter. “It’s come up once or twice. Fortunately, I can get very hard of hearing when I want to.”
Z closed his eyes. When he reopened them—prepared to tell the fucker to go ahead, it was his goddamn life to wager on the asshat wheel of craps—Balz was already in a yank with the bottom of the half-shut shutter, gloved hands locked on like loaves of bread, body arching back. If that thing decided to get with the program, the Bastard was going to free-fall into—
“Not going to budge,” Balz puffed. “Shit. Let me try the next one.”
“What do you think is wrong with them?” Z said.
Distantly, the wind let out a roar, the sound like that of a train on the approach. Good thing the mansion weighed as much as the mountain or it might get blown off.
“I think the motors have burned out,” Balz yelled down. “You can smell the electric fire up here.”
The Bastard crab-walked over to the next fixed sash. Pull. Tug. Nowhere.
“Wait, I have an idea.” The male took the rope off his waist and tied it onto the bottom of the shutter. “You have better leverage than I do.”
“Get out of the way.” Before the Bastard could do what he inevitably would with the arguing, Z cut in with, “You’re wrong. So shut the fuck up.”
“How do you know what I was going to say?”
“History.”
But the Bastard still put his gloved hands back on the shutter.
“You’re going to fall off the damn house if this lets go.” Z shook his head. “Just be reasonable. Please?”
Well. What do you know. The magic word.
Balz backed off with all kinds of muttering. And then Z wound the nylon rope around his hands a couple of times and gave it a try all on his lonesome, easing into the full power of his body like a tow truck trying to get a car out of mud. Finally, he sank down into his glutes, his arms and shoulders straining, his lips pulling away from his fangs.
There was a tremendous screech, and then the shutter came down on a oner.
“Oh, shit!”
Z fell back on his ass, the snow catching his body like a baseball mitt, all support, no cushioning. As the rope went lax and flapped onto his legs, Balz swung loose up at the window, one foot fixed, the other free, one hand locked on the track of the next shutter, the other up and out. He recovered quick, velcroing once again.
“You okay?” the Bastard called down.
Z upped to his feet and brushed the snow off his backside. “I told you so.”
“Let’s do the same thing on the next one.”
Zsadist glanced to the other end of the house. Qhuinn and Blay were working on their set of shutters on the lower level, or should have been. The former seemed frozen as he focused on something off toward the tree line.
Z put his fingers between his front teeth and whistled. As the sound traveled, Qhuinn’s focus shifted around.
After a moment, the brother whistled back two short bursts.
“Do they need help?” Balz asked from above.
“All clear.” Z nodded to the next failed shutter. “Okay, Spidey, rope me up with that one. Let’s get this done and see what else is wrong with this old ark.”
It was all going to be fine.
That’s what was going through Blay’s mind as he and Qhuinn reentered the garage with the ladder. The busted shutters were down where they should be and locked into place, the motor lines cut so that there was no malfunction risk when the full electricity came back on. After the storm, there were going to be a lot of repairs, and there would be time to rewire things then. What couldn’t be risked was a daylight retraction.