But no, Con didn’t do anything the easy way, or even the same way twice. The last time he and Luc had heli-skied, the drop had been shorter.

And the risk of avalanche had been far, far less.

The powder was thick on top of an unstable snowpack, the slope steep, and the effort it took for Con to navigate it all would have him trembling with exhaustion by the time they reached the Harrowgate in the valley miles below.

Ahead, the mountain face became a sheer cliff, and he leaped, catching air under his skis. The ground was impossibly far beneath him and scattered with boulders, but the wind was in his face, the scent of pine was in his lungs, and adrenaline was pumping hotly through his body.

This was the best way to live—or die, depending on how he landed.

Sometimes, he didn’t really care either way.

He came down hard in an explosion of snow and nearly took a header, but he caught himself just before he hit a patch of wind-loaded crust that would have sent him flying.

Behind him, he heard Luc’s skis scratching out turns… and then came the sounds of something more ominous.

Con turned in time to see Luc leap off a snowcapped boulder, but behind him, a giant sheet of snow had begun to crack and slide, an avalanche being born.

“Luc!” Heart pounding painfully against his ribs, Con tucked and pointed his skis down the hill, angled toward Luc and a massive boulder stabbing out of the side of the mountain. Luc couldn’t see the potential shelter, was too close to the leading edge of the slab of white death coming at him.

Luc, never one for delicate maneuvers anyway, left finesse behind as he shot straight down the slope, barreling through drifts like an oil tanker through thirty-foot seas, but shit, he wasn’t going to make it. The avalanche behind him was gaining, and though Con could veer to the left and avoid it, he headed straight into its path.

The wind seared his face as he gained speed, getting closer to Luc… closer to the rock… closer to the fucking wall of ice and snow. They had one shot at this, and his mind shut down, taking him to a place of calm as he hit Luc at the last second, knocking them both off their feet and into the boulder as the monster wave of snow rolled over them.

Con landed on top of Luc, gripped his shoulders hard as he turned his face away from the assault of frozen chunks that broke apart against the rock. The noise was deafening, the rumble so fierce that it vibrated Con’s body and seemed to shock his heart into a new, frenzied rhythm.

Sixty seconds later, he lifted his head. Excellent. They were still alive.

“Get the hell off me, you damned pervert,” Luc muttered.

Con eased himself off the werewolf and brushed snow out of the gap between his jacket and his neck. “Nice way to thank a guy who saved your miserable life.”

Luc sat up and patted himself down, as if checking to see whether he was missing any parts. “Fuck,” he breathed. “This means I owe you.”

“Damned straight.” Con lifted his leg and discovered that one boot had snapped out of its binding, but thankfully, he had a ski leash, so the ski hadn’t gone anywhere. “I can’t wait to cash in.”

“You’d better not make me do something stupid. Like run with the bulls.” Luc dug inside one of his jacket pockets and pulled out a flask. “Naked.”

Con grimaced. “Trust me, I have no desire to see your pale, bare ass.” He snatched the flask from Luc and took a swig, relishing the burn of the rum as it slid down his throat. “But I wouldn’t mind seeing you trampled by bulls. You’re an asshole.”

“Ditto.” Luc grabbed the liquor away and took a deep pull. “You ready to go?”

Con snapped his boot into the binding. “Yep.”

“What are we gonna do after this?”

A flare of regret jerked in Con’s gut. Eidolon had sent all warg hospital employees into isolation to keep them from contracting the virus that was attacking the werewolf population, and Luc was going stir-crazy. Though Con and Luc had never been friends, exactly—they’d gotten their introduction in a bar fight with each other—they were paramedic partners and they hung out together occasionally, mainly to see who could beat who at whatever they did.

But ever since Luc had gone into isolation, he’d been even more eager to do crazy shit. Con was always game, but he didhave a job, and he was working more than ever to make up for Luc’s absence.

“I gotta work. But we’ll go skydiving next week.”

Luc nodded, and though his expression was as stony as ever, Con didn’t miss the flash of disappointment in the guy’s dark hazel eyes.

“When’s the last time you got laid? When you were in Egypt? That Guardian chick?” Con shoved to his feet. “You need a woman.”

Luc snorted. “Women are a pain in the ass,” he said, and wasn’t that the truth.

In fact, the biggest pain in the ass female he’d ever met was responsible for the very epidemic that was killing wargs. And Doc E had requested—well, ordered—a meeting with Con this afternoon, and he had a sickening feeling that the pain in the ass female, aka Sin, was going to be there.

Fuck. Once more, Con grabbed the flask from Luc, put it to his lips, and finished it off. Then he punched down the mountain.

Oh, yeah. Rum and adrenaline mixed well. Much, much better than he and Sin ever would.

Sin had been summoned.

Here she was, the freaking head of an assassin den, master of more than three dozen highly skilled killers, and she’d been summoned like some lowlife imp to an audience with her brother.

The great demon doctor.

She’d already given him her blood, her DNA, her pee, her spinal fluid… whatever samples the doctor wanted for his research, she’d handed over. Sin was, after all, responsible for the disease that was wiping out the werewolf race.

What a claim to fame.

A couple of days ago, she’d even come into Underworld General to channel her power into an infected male in an attempt to kill the virus, but if anything, she’d only accelerated its spread.

And she hadn’t thought it could get any worse.

Sin muttered to herself as she traversed UG’s dark hallways on the way to Eidolon’s office. Her boots clacked on black stone floors that were unusually in need of a good sweeping, and the echo bounced in eerie vibrations off the gray walls. She trailed a finger over the writing on said walls—protective antiviolence spells scrawled in blood. She had to give credit to her brothers for that; the hospital serviced nearly all species of demons, many of which were mortal enemies.

She rounded a corner to enter the administrative area, only to curse fiercely. Wraith, the only one of her four brothers with blond hair and blue eyes—neither of which were original parts—stood in the doorway as though he’d been waiting for her. His arms were folded over his broad chest, the dermoireon his right arm blending in with his T-shirt’s Celtic print—Celtic print that was cleverly designed to form the words “Fuck off.”

“Well, if it isn’t Typhoid Mary.”

“Read your shirt.” She pushed past him to enter the office, missing a step when she saw not only Eidolon, MD, but also Conall, SOB.

Great. When she’d last seen the vampire-werewolf a few weeks ago, they’d parted on shitty terms. He’d assumed the worst of her, threatened her, had been an utterly unlikable ass. Oh, sure, she’d led him to believe she’d intentionally started the epidemic that was killing his warg relatives, but if he hadn’t been such a jerk, she might have told him the truth.

Not that the truth was much better.

“Sin.” Eidolon remained at his desk, his espresso eyes bloodshot and framed by dark circles. His short, nearly black hair was mussed, probably from repeated rakes of his fingers. He pretty much looked like hell itself had beaten the crap out of him. “Sit.”