Winter (Mist Riders Book 2)

by Stella Fitzsimons

  “What about the time you followed me to the airport and…?”

  “Hello,” Faion cut in.

  “What?” we both said, glaring at him.

  Faion shrugged. “Hey, I wanted to bring you back to the task at hand, but it’s obvious you two have some… unresolved issues. I’ll be outside… on planet Earth. Call me when you’re done with whatever this is.”

  Winter chuckled after Faion left. “Your friend must have noticed your school-girl crush on me. It made him uncomfortable.”

  “You have that ass backwards, genius. He thinks you’re all about my business because you jumped at the opportunity to help me.”

  His expression switched to somber. “I responded because when you’re involved, the stakes are too high to avoid your sour disposition.”

  “Likewise, I would have loved to avoid your failed personality.”

  Something behind me caught his eye. I turned and saw nothing beyond the complete disarray of my apartment.

  “Is the ward yours?” he said.

  Ward? “I don’t put up wards willy-nilly,” I said. “I used some crisscrossing energy beams to seal reverberations. Is that what you mean?”

  He ignored me and stepped closer to the wall. Now I saw it. A thin, red energy flickered as it tried to contain itself.

  “I have no idea what that is,” I said.

  “Whatever it is, your shielding beams are irritating the hell out of it.”

  Winter lunged at me, grabbing my shoulders to pull me against him as we spun away. His much larger body covered mine from head to toe.

  The wall exploded behind his back. My ears rang as I turned in a daze. Plaster and wood pelted Winter’s back like a machine gun. Blood poured out of his neck, but he kept steady hold of me, shielding me from a second blast.

  Sharp shards zipped past us and planted in the opposite wall. Two shards had planted in his shoulder and I knew more had pierced his back and legs.

  I fought with all my strength to break free from Winter’s embrace, but I was easily outmuscled. He let go, suddenly, and I stumbled backwards. There was blood on my arms and shoes. Winter’s blood.

  The wall where the ward had lingered had been obliterated down to shreds of wooden support beams—the opposite wall had taken heavy damage from projectile wall debris puncturing gaping holes everywhere.

  As if the damage wasn't enough already.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” I said, patting dust off my clothes and hair.

  “It’s an instinct,” he said. “Like when your wolf howls at the moon.”

  Why did he make it so hard to like him?

  I bit my lip. “Well, are you okay? There are shards of everything sticking out of your arms and a few more in your back.”

  Instinctively, I waived my hand and all the shards fell out of his body.

  “And you didn’t need to do that,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “but thank you.”

  “I trust the wounds will still heal on their own?”

  “Already healing.”

  “Of course, they are,” I said. “And, thank you or your instinct, whichever was responsible for the gallantry.”

  “Not necessary,” he said.

  Faion walked in with caution. The blood and mayhem he witnessed stopped him in his tracks.

  It’s not a party until someone spills blood.

  “The blood’s not mine,” I said. “A sneaky ward exploded.”

  Faion nodded a few times. “How did I not hear a thing?”

  Ah-huh, my sealing spell had worked. No magic echoes would leave these walls.

  “Don’t be so proud of yourself,” Winter said. “It’s just a sealing spell.”

  Damn, I must have been smiling.

  He grabbed the collar of his bloodied shirt and pulled it over his head.

  Faion was immediately mesmerized. Winter’s golden tattoo of a regal double-headed eagle shone on his carved chest like amber.

  He walked to the kitchen and bent over the sink. His entire back and his bulging triceps were covered in an angry red—his minced flesh was raw and still bleeding as if he had just been skinned alive.

  Faion and I watched as his flesh quickly regenerated. Winter’s body created new cells and collagen to heal the lacerations briefly before the new scar tissue slid as quickly off his body as fast as it had formed. What was left were dozens of pink markings on healed skin. Seconds after it appeared, the pink faded and the flesh below became identical to his undamaged skin.

  Almost as amazing, he was able to wipe off his entire back with wet paper towels by contorting his shoulders and powerful arms.

  I reached over to close Faion’s mouth which was hanging open.

  “Let me guess,” I said to Winter. “You have a spare shirt in the old Civic.”

  “You remember one of my lessons.”

  “Yeah, be prepared,” I said. “Am I a boy scout now?”

  “I think you also have to pee standing up,” Faion quipped.

  “Diviner, the witch tells me you sensed an Immortal’s essence,” Winter said, ignoring Faion’s ill-timed joke. “Describe it.”

  Faion cleared his throat. “Yeah, it was, um, a pungent scent. No offense.”

  “I cannot be offended,” Winter said. “And I, too, can smell it.”

  “I mean, it has to be Chaos, right?” I said.

  “It does not have to be anything,” Winter said. “The shadow part of Chaos does not register. This could have been one of his immortal underlings or some other unknown player. Any assumption must be proved.”

  “Yeah, obviously,” I said.

  Winter brushed his hair back with his fingers. “Let me see that blood note and tell me exactly what happened, beat by beat. Leave nothing out.”

  I complied. He listened with intense interest and zero interruptions. I told the story slowly with extensive details, all the way down to the way Ken Groshek was dressed when he knocked on my door.

  “And do you have that note?” Winter asked when I was done. “The one left for the wolf’s father?”

  How had that not crossed my mind?

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “Would it be possible for you to retrieve it?”

  And, of course, I did not ask Mr. Groshek for a phone number. He did have Emmet’s phone, but his number was stored in my phone which I threw out and I hadn’t memorized it.

  Sure, there was a good chance Ken Groshek stayed at Emmet’s place, but I somehow had no idea where Emmet lived. Brilliant, just brilliant. For all my so-called drama with Emmet, I barely knew the first thing about him.

  “I guess we could try the hospital where Emmet works. They might be able to give us information of Ken’s whereabouts or Emmet’s apartment.”

  “Which hospital?” Winter asked.

  “Sharp Memorial.”

  “Leave that to me,” he said. “I’ll acquire the information.”

  His expression warned me not to ask how, which was great, because I had no desire to learn of his methods.

  “Great,” I said.

  “So, that’s all of it?” Winter said.

  “That’s it, the whole shebang… wait, there was one odd thing, maybe, I don’t know. They left my closet completely intact.”

  Why did I say that?

  My clothes went flying across the room as Winter rummaged through my tanks, jumpers, camisoles, tube tops, club jeans, the skirts I no longer wore, and boots I’d grown sick of.

  “There’s nothing of value here,” he concluded.

  “As far as magic? I could have told you that,” I said, irritated.

  “As far as anything,” he said under his breath.

  I might have erupted at that, but I was mortified at the sight of my Wonder Woman panties that had ended up hanging from the blue, stained glass light fixture.

  I dated a guy sophomore year with a superhero fetish. Sue me.

  Winter rubbed his chin. “Something gave them pause.”

  “Probably t
hem panties,” Faion said.

  Winter worked something out in his head. “They opened the closet doors and they sensed you, all of you, for the first time.”

  My essence. Oh god, they knew I was something more than a witch.

  “They didn’t know they were in a witch’s den?” Faion asked.

  Winter’s eyes fell on mine. I gave him a knowing glare.

  “I don’t know what they knew,” Winter said.

  Crisis averted. The less Faion knew about me, the safer for him.

  Winter picked up his shredded shirt and squeezed it into a ball. Sizzling orange flames formed in and around his fist. His magic always shook me. Immortals weren’t supposed to possess elemental magic, but he was more than Immortal—he was a shadow warrior. I had no idea of what they were truly capable, and it would be better never to find out.

  “There can be no traces of my blood left,” he said.

  The fire targeted the balled-up shirt with surgical precision, charring it down to ashes. A warm glow filled the room as Winter’s magic burned away every drop of his blood on the floor, furniture and ceiling. The paper towels he had used also flamed up and vanished.

  Winter turned to me, wielding the hand that held the blaze. I gulped. Blood from his wounds had sprayed all over me, but I had a serious fire phobia and human flesh that could burn.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

  I was very afraid. My insides ached with an electric frenzy.

  The blaze leapt from his hand and thinned into a pulsating dart of energy that attacked every molecule of his blood on my skin and clothes.

  The scarlet drops vaporized one after the other. I shuddered, struggling not to freak out as his burning magic tickled me everywhere it touched.

  One last hot tickle on my neck meant all his blood was gone.

  God, I really hate fire magic.

  Winter surveyed the place again until he was satisfied all traces of him were gone. “You have to leave this residence,” he said. “Too much happened here. Destroyed spells and wards as well as supernatural essences will linger here awhile, for years. It will draw others, the curious species, the dark ones.”

  “I’m leaving town soon,” I said. “A matter of days.”

  His eyes told me that would be easier said than done. “Until then, you’ll stay with me.”

  Winter strode to the door as if everything had been settled.

  Faion glanced at me, concerned.

  “You’re coming, too,” I said, grabbing my purse. “I don’t want you out there alone. I’m not losing another friend this week.”

  I caught up with Winter at his car and pulled him aside.

  “Let’s be clear, this is for the safety of everyone else, not me. And I’m not taking orders from you. No chance. Nothing has changed between us.”

  A lazy grin formed on his lips. “That is fine.”

  “And Faion’s staying at your place, too. Non-negotiable.”

  On cue, Faion walked past to check out Winter’s car. “My dude, you’ve been saving for thousands of years and this is the car you bought? You could have saved a table from the Age of the Renaissance and bought a damned Rolls Royce or Lambo. This some sad shit. No offense.”

  Faion opened the passenger door for me.

  “Mr. Trice,” Winter said, “this vehicle serves a purpose.”

  “If that purpose is humor, it does,” Faion said.

  I sat in the front, Faion in the back. Winter plopped down next to me in the driver’s seat.

  “Don’t mind him,” I said. “I think it’s very practical.”

  Winter shut his door and started the car… on the second try.

  “The purpose of the car is to not draw attention,” Winter said. “It has a very specific, very obvious purpose.”

  I turned to look out the side window and fight back a grin. Almost certainly Faion was doing the same in the back seat.

  Winter shifted his Civic into drive and we pulled away.

  CHAPTER 9

  ____________________________________

  We didn’t know where Winter had taken us. He blindfolded us both, although it was Faion’s divining eyes he wanted to prevent from seeing our destination. His guarded secrets felt as loathsome to me as his many deceits.

  When the blindfold came off, a sense of vague familiarity with the surroundings sparked within. I had been in that room before.

  The walls were covered by dark wood panels dotted with round paintings of seascapes. A dim, orange light softened the harsh lines of a windowless room void of furniture. I shuddered, remembering the four-poster bed which I expected to pop up at any time.

  This was the room in which I woke up after Winter had beat the living daylights out of me with magic in the park. He later explained that the violent assault never happened. Tell that to my fragile psyche. He explained it as his power of suggestion at work. I remembered it as abuse, pure and simple.

  There was also this other tiny problem. I thought Winter unstable. I had seen the depths of his volcanic wrath and the extent of his duplicity. He did all this while hiding behind a veneer of solemn authority. I’d be a fool to let my guard down around him.

  Winter waved his hand. The wood panels on one of the walls squeaked to the side. Metallic doors inside the wall opened in the same manner.

  We stepped into the hidden room. An ultrawide monitor, a Mac notebook and stacks of papers covered the top of an enormous desk. Floor to ceiling shelves lined the side walls—some of the books on them were so old that the slightest touch might have caused them to disintegrate.

  The epic journey of the written word from the paper revolution in ancient China to the digital revolution of modern-day cyberspace was starkly represented throughout the room.

  “We’re in your super special secret room,” Faion said. “Why?”

  Winter snapped his fingers and the screen came to life. “We need to plug into the Seventh Council’s database.”

  Faion scrunched his face. “You all have a database? Do you have like Immortal IT techs and Immortal design engineers?”

  “Apparently, they do,” I said, sensing Winter growing tired of Faion’s playful needling. “And, in fact, I am sure he could tell us how Immortals were vital in the creation of the first motherboard.”

  “Indeed, I could,” Winter said, “but that must wait for another day.”

  “Can I not be here that day?” I said.

  Winter turned to Faion. “If you breathe a word of what you see to anyone, I will know, and I will come for you.”

  “No one will say a thing,” I assured him.

  “I mean, no matter what hole you hide in, young diviner,” Winter continued, “you will not escape. I will husk you of your flesh and leave your skinless body for a cackle of hyenas.”

  “What she said,” Faion said, looking faint.

  “You’re such a bully,” I said, completely over his shit. “Have you ever heard of a toxic workplace? Because you Immortals need a few dozen HR sit-downs just to work your way up to toxic.”

  “Humans often speak,” he said.

  We waited for him to finish, then realized he already had.

  Standing three feet from the desk, he held his hand flat in the air and twisted his wrist multiple times. Code sequences flowed across the blue screen, forming patterned clusters only a very skilled eye could fathom.

  “This will take a while,” he said. “It’s searching.”

  Faion walked over to the bookshelves. He leaned in to read titles that were, no doubt, in countless languages.

  “Tell me,” I said. “The council’s plan to use technology in order to rule over the mortals, how is it progressing?”

  Winter kept his focus on the screen. “Halted… temporarily.”

  I stepped in front of him, “Just like that?”

  “It has been delayed. I know not the chain of events,” he said, avoiding eye contact in order to watch rapid streams of code. “Düsternis has his reasons which he would never shar
e with me.” He motioned the screen in new ways, closing windows and clicking open icons, searching for an answer or a question or any oddity that caught his eye. “Let us focus on the fact that we have more time, for now.”

  Right. And I had absolutely no reason to believe that. “Can you access any information at all on Chaos in this grand database?”

  “There is none.”

  I felt my pocket for my phone, then remembered I didn’t have one.

  “Then we’re wasting time here,” I said. “We should be out looking for Chaos.”

  He shook his head. “That’s precisely what we should not be doing.”

  “Have you decided it’s not Chaos, is that it? You don’t know him, not the way you think you do. He’s a psycho. That means you can’t know him. When will you get that through your thick skull?”

  “I, too, would prefer it be Chaos and not the council,” Winter said with a knowing glance. “I would rather not have to go against my own faction.”

  I took in a sharp breath. “Are you saying I want it to be Chaos? That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said and that’s saying something.”

  “Insults are the refuge of dullards,” he clapped back.

  “Isn’t that technically also an insult?” Faion said from a safe distance.

  “This is about you, Luna,” Winter continued. “You see things the way you want to see them. You always have, since you were a witchling. You ran from what you are, you ran from your boyfriends, your Oregon, and you are about to run from your country. You live in the past, in academia, in the echo chamber of your own head.”

  I glared at Faion who was nodding in the back of room.

  The unfeeling bastard talked on. “Yes, you want it to be Chaos, you want to project a scenario that fits a solution. This happens to beings in their first century of experience. Reality shaping, the delusion that what happens in a single feeble mind can dictate reality. You have your heart set on Chaos being the malefactor, because you think you can reason with him, that you two will talk it out like kindred souls and that he will surrender your dog brained boyfriend back to you. It’s a comedy, the Greek kind, without laughs.”