“I’m not wrong, Jenna.” His words were like a bucket of ice water tipped directly over my head. Stunned, I stared at him, my brain scrambling to come up with something, anything, to say to him.
“You’re distracted by this entire thing, you’re so caught up in the idea of Carmine that you haven’t stopped to really think about anything else.”
“What does that mean?” It sounded less like a question and more like a threat. As though I was daring him to say what was hovering just out of reach.
“Guys…” Alex’s voice was low and urgent but I ignored him, moving closer to Grey, closing the distance between us so that if I took a deep enough breath, my body would brush against his.
“Innocents are getting hurt,” Grey said, his voice tight with restrained emotion.
“You mean Ms. Rowanberry and Officer Bhatt?”
His silence was answer enough. The implication of it hung in the air between us, turning it sour so that every breath I took felt like I was drawing poison into my body.
“And where were you?” My question seemed to take him off guard for a moment, his mask slipped and I saw panic and pain warring behind his eyes.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, surely, Mr. Perfect,” I said scathingly, “if you had been there to hold my hand and make sure this case wasn’t too much for my fragile little mind, I wouldn’t have screwed up so badly.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, I—”
“Don’t bother, I don’t want to hear it anymore. I know what you think of me, that I’m just some feebleminded fool who allows her emotions to get in the way of what needs to be done. And maybe I am… But at least I don’t spend my time burying my head in the sand and running away from the ones who count on me…”
I turned on my heel and stalked toward the door. Before I could tug it open, Grey had caught up to me, his hand on my elbow as he drew me to a sharp halt.
“Jenna, please, that’s not what I’m trying to say, I’m sorry, I just—”
“Get your hands off me.” I snarled, furiously shaking free of him.
“I can explain, if you’ll just—” His fingers found my arm once more. Power rushed through me, tingling beneath the surface of my skin, and without needing to think about it, I rammed my hands against his chest. My power pulsed, and at the last second Grey knocked my hands aside and stumbled backwards several steps.
He said nothing as he stood in the middle of the room and watched me with his dark unfathomable eyes, but we both knew the truth of what happened. I could have turned him to stone, would have, maybe, if he hadn’t pushed me away. And despite seeing a kernel of fear forming in his eyes, I didn’t feel any remorse for what I’d done, what I almost did.
Instead, I turned and pulled the door open, leaving Grey staring after me as I made my escape down the hall and out into the cool evening air.
Chapter 28
I followed the winding street down until I reached the waterfront. Boats sat moored, the soft creak of timber as the water lapped against the hulls was rhythmic, quieting my racing thoughts. Pausing against the black rails, I sucked in a deep breath, the tang of salt and fish coating my tongue had my stomach rumbling.
The sun had started its descent in the sky and the rippling water looked darker than it had when we’d driven across the moors into town earlier.
Chill wind bit at my cheeks as it tunnelled up the narrow street and swept my braid back over my shoulder. It was good to get out of the conference room, to escape the judgement I’d seen in Grey’s eyes, heard in his voice. I hadn’t imagined it… Had I?
I suddenly wasn’t so sure. He’d tried to apologise, to explain, and I’d cut him off. Not that I was wrong to do it. He’d been an ass, but there was still a tiny part of me that felt guilty for snapping.
I’d almost used my power on him. I’d very nearly turned him to stone and I hadn’t even intended to do it. In the past my abilities had only come to the surface when I was under duress. It wasn’t the most convenient of abilities but it had saved my skin more times than I could count and that was all that mattered. But tonight it had been so easy, dangerously so, and that frightened me.
Even when I’d fought the vampire in Ms. Rowanberry’s house my power had felt different. I’d held the vampire aloft, watching as his skin crawled and turned to stone beneath my touch and I’d enjoyed it, revelled in it, which wasn’t like me at all.
Perhaps Grey wasn’t the only one suffering some sort of after effects of the wight…
Cold dread crawled down my spine and I halted. Awareness prickled along the back of my neck. My fingers shifted automatically to the whip coiled at my waist.
“So you came?” Carmine’s voice spiked my heart rate. I turned slowly, expecting to see her standing behind me but she wasn’t there.
Instead, the woman that stood at my back was tall and slender, a complete contrast to Carmine’s petite frame. Her rose coloured hair billowed around her in the wind like some sort of absurd cloak. She wore a black corset accented with pale pink roses. A tight pair of black leather trousers moulded to the lower half of her body and disappeared into the top of her knee high black patent boots.
She stood in the shade of a shop doorway that was advertising all kinds of gothic knick-knacks in the window. I peered closer at the woman standing opposite me as my palms started to sweat. Her eyes had an odd glazed quality and the more I focused on them, the more I realised she had no pupils.
“Couldn’t face me in person?” The moment my fingers curled over the handle of my whip, I felt marginally better.
The woman across from me threw her head back and laughed but the sound wasn’t truly coming from her. It was coming from Carmine, wherever she was hiding out, and the vampire in the doorway was merely the conduit through which she was conversing with me.
“Now why would I do that?” she asked, the woman’s mouth moving as Carmine’s voice filtered out through her. “This is so much more fun, Jenna, and you know I enjoy playing games.”
“Why are you doing this, Carmine?”
The woman’s head tilted to the side, reminding me of the robin that often landed in the garden after rainfall in search of the worms that had surfaced.
“You above all should know why I would do this, Jenna,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. The words were snatched up in the wind and flung back in my face.
“I really don’t,” I said. “You know what it’s like to suffer at the hands of a monster. Why would you willingly inflict a similar fate on others…”
“Power.”
Despite standing a few feet from me, I could feel Carmine’s breath on my skin as she spoke the word aloud like an invocation.
“You had it easy with him,” she continued. “I fought for every scrap he ever threw at me.”
“Easy, you think I had it easy with Kypherous?” Disgust welled within me.
“You were his favourite,” she said. “Ungrateful as you were, he still favoured you… Loved you…”
“He didn’t love me, Carmine, he wished only to possess me, to control me so that he could grow in power, and that is not love.”
“Liar,” she spat, the vehemence with which she spoke at odds with the serene look on the face of the woman she was controlling.
Laughter spilled from me, uncontrolled and on the verge of hysteria. “Why would I lie about it? You know what he was like, you saw how he treated me…”
“He was kinder to you,” she said, sounding strangely wistful. Had she loved Kypherous? I hadn’t believed it possible that anyone could love someone so monstrous and yet judging by the way she spoke of him, I couldn’t help but think she had actually loved him, monster that he was.
“I know he was cruel to you.” I could still remember the sounds of Kypherous and Carmine together. The screams and twisted laughter. The grunting and moans… The sound of his blade as it grated against bone and then, when he was done, sated, and Carmine’s heartrending sobs that followed.
>
I’d listened to it all, chained to the floor within my cell, and there had been a part of me that was grateful that whatever was happening to her wasn’t happening to me. That for once his attention was elsewhere, his blade occupied with another. It was a selfish and callous thought but in those days I could think only of surviving the next second. I didn’t have time to feel for the others he abused. My own wounds were enough to keep me occupied.
“Cruel?” She parroted the word back to me as though it were spoken in a foreign tongue. “Such a pretty word for the things we experienced together.”
The woman she was using as nothing more than a puppet shook her head, her hair splaying around her as it shimmered in the fading evening light. “He hurt me in ways your mind can’t begin to comprehend,” she said softly.
“But he won’t ever hurt you again, Carmine, he’s dead… I made sure of that.”
“I know.” The words were spoken simply enough but I could feel the undercurrent of tension that flowed through them. “You took away all that I knew, all that I held dear. And I would do the same for you. I can set you free the way you freed me, Little Viper…”
Hearing her call me by Kypherous’ pet name was akin to having him whisper it against my neck. I shuddered involuntarily as a wave of revulsion rolled through me.
“I am free.” I flexed my fingers around the hilt of the whip.
When Carmine laughed again, there was no happiness to it, no joy, and the air itself grew colder as though she was sucking every ounce of warmth from it.
The light faded and I glanced up in time to see clouds building over the sea. Something icy and wet struck my cheek.
Snow. It was snowing…
I glanced back at the doorway but Carmine and her rosy-haired vampire puppet was gone.
The snow started to fall faster. The flakes the largest I’d ever seen, some as big as the palm of my hand, and when they struck my skin, the cold permeated me to my very core. It definitely wasn’t natural but I couldn’t believe that Carmine had managed it. She’d been powerful, it was why Kypherous had been attracted to her in the first place, but she wasn’t an elemental.
Staring around at my unfamiliar surroundings, dread uncoiled within me. Night had well and truly fallen, the golden glow from the streetlamps overhead the only light by which I could survey the street I stood on. And even that was beginning to fade as the snow thickened even more.
In a matter of moments, it was sheeting down across the road, reducing my visibility to practically nothing. Drawing my jacket around my body, I shivered as the snowflakes struck my face, the cold searing me just the same as if it had been something hot.
If I didn’t find cover soon, I was going to be in real trouble. Perhaps that was what Carmine had been hoping for. She knew that as a gorgon, extreme drops in temperature like the one I was experiencing now affected my ability to function, slowing my reflexes and causing my power to grow sluggish. I wasn’t sure if it could kill me and I honestly didn’t want to find out.
Struggling to follow the path, I tried to stay upright as the snow started to form an icy sheet on the pavement. The wind slammed into me, driving me to my knees, and I hit the ground with enough force to knock the air from my lungs. Fighting to get back on my feet, I slid once more and wound up back on my hands and knees. Inching forward, I crawled into the same doorway Carmine and her vampire puppet had been standing in. Huddling up into the corner, I drew my knees to my chest and blew air against my hands in a futile attempt to warm my extremities as the snow billowed past.
I might not have been sure before if the cold could kill me but as I felt my heartbeat grow ever sluggish in my chest, I was more convinced than ever that it could.
Stay awake, Jenna… I whispered the words over and over in my head, focusing on them in an attempt to keep my brain active. If I passed out…
Darkness ate at the edges of my vision as the temperature plummeted further and the snow building up outside the doorway I was huddled in crept closer to my booted feet.
At the edges of my senses I could feel something watching me. No, not just one thing, many pairs of eyes trained on me as I crouched in the doorway of the closed souvenir shop. And I knew without a doubt that they were waiting for me to fall unconscious.
“Stay awake, Jenna…” My teeth chattered in my head, and as I blew tepid air onto my hands, I noted the blue tinge creeping up under my fingernails.
Regret swelled in my chest. If I died out here, I wouldn’t get to see Grey again and that more than the cold hurt. Closing my eyes, I huddled deeper into the doorway. I wouldn’t die out here…
Chapter 29
Headlights penetrated the white snow cloud that surrounded me and a small blue car pulled up at the curb.
A figure appeared in the snow, dressed in a thick quilted jacket that added bulk to the body beneath.
“Christ on a cracker.” The familiar voice of Jack was a welcome sound and I let him pull me to my feet. He pushed a blanket around my shoulders, and half dragged me from the doorway and into the snow. My legs were leaden and each step was an exercise in agony as I crossed the pavement.
He shoved me into the front seat of his small blue car and slammed the passenger door behind me without bothering to see if I was straightening up in the seat.
Hot air slammed into my face, causing my cheeks to burn and then tingle as the cold slowly fled. Jack slipped into the driver’s side behind the steering wheel and his brown eyes met mine.
“Just what the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. “Did ye not hear what I said back at the headquarters? We’ve got a curfew to keep people alive and instead of listening you take off into the night.”
“You didn’t mention anything about snowstorms.” I managed to get the words out between my chattering teeth. My face was beginning to ache which was definitely a step up from the numbness that had crept in while I was huddled in the doorway.
“This isn’t a snow storm,” he said, “this is a blizzard. Ye can thank Jack Frost for that one.”
I didn’t have the energy to ask the question that sat frozen on the tip of my tongue, but sensing my curiosity, Jack sighed and turned the heater up another notch.
“Jack Frost, you must have heard of him?”
I shook my head and slumped down into the blanket.
“One of the Norse gods,” he said, “well, the son of one anyway… The Vikings didn’t just bring their axes and long boats with them when they came pillaging and raiding these shores all those years ago.”
“You mean they brought a Norse god with them, too?”
Jack shrugged. “I told ye, there’re things living here that are so much older and more wicked than the creatures you deal with down south.”
“And so this is what he does? Dumps a ton of snow on you?”
“It’s the vampires,” he said haltingly, and I knew he wasn’t specifically talking about the vampires but, instead, Carmine. “The balance was upset between the fae and the vampires after the truce was broken in Ireland a few years back. Ever since then we’ve all been dealing with the fallout.”
“And let me guess, Carmine has kicked the fighting up a notch?”
Jack nodded, his complexion growing pale as I said her name aloud.
“I saw her,” I said. He whipped around to face me so quickly I worried he would snap his head clean off his neck.
“That’s not possible.”
“Well, not exactly her,” I qualified. “She used one of her vampires as a sort of puppet to speak to me.”
“Everything that’s not already dead knows not to go out after nightfall,” Jack said, “even that evil… witch.”
I cracked a smile at his choice of word and it felt like my face was going to break.
“You hungry?” The sudden change in the conversation caused the slight ache in my head to grow. Now that he’d mentioned food, I realised just how hungry I was.
“Yeah, famished actually,
” I said.
Jack nodded and released the hand brake, inching us forward slowly in the thinning snow. “We’re not just known for our vampires around here,” he said. “I’ll introduce you to something else we’re famous for.”
“You sure this is a good idea?” I asked, staring out at the snow drifts that sat along the side of the road.
“Trust me,” he said with a crooked smile, “for the culinary delight I’m about to introduce you to, I’d drive through anything Jack Frost could throw at me.”
I wasn’t so sure anything was worth that but I bit my tongue instead and stared out the window as we moved forward inch by painful inch.
“He’s running out of steam,” Jack said, keeping his attention fastened on the all but invisible road.
“How do you know?”
“Just ye watch, snow’ll stop, the temperature will come back up and the whole lot will melt.”
As though on cue a fat raindrop hit the window with a splash and within seconds the snowfall had turned to heavy rain. It was then the snow started to melt, unable to withstand the onslaught that fell from above, just as Jack had predicted. By the time we arrived at our destination it had almost entirely disappeared.
Jack parked the car next to a large arch which he caught me staring at.
“The Whale Bones,” he said as though that should explain everything.
“Those are whale bones?” I couldn’t hide the scepticism from my voice and it drew a wry smile from Jack.
“Somebody’s been living in the preternatural world for too long,” he said teasingly. “There’s as much magic in the natural world as there is in ours.”
“I’ve just never seen anything like it,” I said staring up at the curve of the bones as they met in the middle up top. “I mean, you’re right, I know the humans have their own wonders but—”
“You’ve never seen one up close and personal before,” he finished for me, and I nodded before I climbed from the car.
“I’ve seen other things similar to this,” I said, thinking about the skulls of the giants that Kypherous had kept in his vault. “But nothing from the natural world…”
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