Chains of Ice

by Christina Dodd

  She picked up handfuls of the warm, soft mud, and smeared his chest again, then leaned down. As she moved on his cock, she rubbed her chest to his—and laughed when he groaned.

  She was riding him, traveling at her own pace, and he gave up all power to her. He gripped her butt with his hands, strained and wanted to come, agonized as he held back.

  He didn’t want this to end . . .

  He was enveloped in sensuality: the warm mud cradling him, her hands and chest stroking him. She held him tightly, the slow slide of slick heat on his cock an aphrodisiac so compelling he knew he would never forget this day, this moment.

  This was going to end too soon.

  His urgency spiraled out of control.

  He drove up and into her and, without his volition, his power surged and sparked. Driven by the motion, the energy, the freedom, she sat up and pressed herself on him, up and down, up and down.

  She was glorious, wild and free, a primitive idol with mud smeared across her skin. Her hair flew in the breeze and her breasts bounced, her golden eyes glowed with joy. As climax swept her, she looked into his eyes and smiled, alive with bliss.

  He watched her, held her hips in her hands. The muscles of her thighs shifted and strove. Inside, her body rippled and clutched.

  And when he came, he plunged into a satisfaction so deep and so distinctly Genny, he knew nothing in his life would ever be the same.

  Chapter 39

  Genny rested on top of John’s chest, breathing heavily, alight with the joy of their joining. Nothing she had done in her whole life had been as fulfilling, as freeing. She had assumed control, used her powers as a woman to tame the savage beast, and now he rested, sated, beneath her.

  At some point, he might even remember the advice she had given him.She laughed softly, sat up, and looked at his face, replete with glory.

  He looked as if he couldn’t remember his own name.

  “Oh, John.” She smoothed her hand across his cheek. “I can’t believe you don’t trust me now.”

  His eyes popped open. He stared at her without a trace of confusion, stared at her as he would gaze at a shattered dream.

  And he didn’t answer.

  Shock brought her to her feet.

  He still didn’t trust her.

  Her legs wobbled. But she smiled. Damn it, she smiled. “Forget I said that.” Then she had to get away from him, from that stare that stripped away her pride and turned her joy to dust.

  With a jaunty wave—she was very proud of that wave—she waded into the water and swam, fast, from one end of the pool to the other.

  Why did she think that just because he had trusted her to make love to him, he would believe in her? That was stupid. Illogical. Womanish.

  She had to leave here, leave him.

  She needed to spend time alone, with herself, without anyone pushing her, wanting her to be someone she wasn’t—or accusing her, imagining her to be a villain when she was just . . . a dupe.

  Never again would she be somebody’s tool.

  Picking up her shirt, she waded out of the water.

  He stood on the edge, clean and stern.

  The passionate episode in the mud might never have happened.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Getting dressed.” She spread out her shirt on the grass, then pulled on the panties and bra, already dry. She shook out her pants. Dry and remarkably clean. “The springs in the pool must act like a cleanser. The mud is completely gone.”

  He ignored her conversation, watching her as he would a stranger. “What are you planning?”

  All right. He could be blunt. He could be detached. So could she. “I’m leaving here. I’m leaving this place.”

  She pulled on the pants. Gestured around. “The rasputye .”

  “That’s not possible.”

  She wanted to snap at him, but she calmed herself. She didn’t want to fight. She needed to imitate John, and betray as little emotion as possible. “Of course it is.”

  “You don’t understand.” One by one, he shook out the pile of his precisely folded clothes resting on a rock beside the pool. “The rasputye doesn’t run on the same timetable as the rest of the world. We have no idea how long we’ve been here.”

  “A day!”

  “Perhaps. Or a month. Or a year.” He dressed himself quickly, efficiently, like a military man on a mission. “Time passes differently here. The relationship to the continents it divides isn’t the same, either. When we leave, we could come out anywhere along the Asian/European split. We could come out in Afghanistan in the middle of a battle. We could come out on the steppes in the middle of winter. I can’t let you go on your own.”

  “And yet I am going . . . by myself.” Catching sight of the leather bag resting in the grass, she picked it up, relieved to have a change of topic. “John, I forgot. This is yours.”

  He wavered, obviously trying to decide whether to argue or let the subject drop. Being John, he let the subject drop. Being John, he undoubtedly figured he would get his way in the end. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. A purse of some kind. Don’t you know?”

  “No, it’s not mine.” He walked over, stood close, smelled like sunshine and fresh air.

  And she wanted him.

  That was so not fair.

  “What’s in it?” he asked.

  She untied the string and spread the stiff leather open.

  Together, they stared at the collection of small petrified bones, smooth and yellow with age.

  “What in heaven’s name . . . ?” Genny picked up one and held it in her palm. “This looks like a finger bone.”

  “I would say that’s exactly what it is.”

  “Human?”

  “Yes. Female. In my time with the Chosen Ones, I have seen enough skeletons to identify the shape and size.”

  Everybody had to have his or her area of expertise.

  But she held her tongue. “Two of them have marks on them. Black marks.” She stirred the bones with her finger. “It almost looks like a puzzle you could put together, but some of the pieces are missing.” A memory stirred in her brain . . . something seen years ago at home. . . a leather bag tied with a string, tossed carelessly in a drawer . . .

  “That’s not a whole hand there.”

  “If this purse isn’t yours, then whose . . . ?” She looked around at the empty lands.

  John took the leather pouch from her, put the bones inside, tied it tightly. He placed it in her palm and closed her fingers around it. “It’s a gift from the rasputye to you.”

  Just when she had convinced herself he wasn’t crazy, he said something like that. “From the rasputye?”

  “It’s an empty land. A lifeless land. A supernatural place where the devil can walk abroad and creatures that are not human emerge. But nothing can live here for any amount of time. You brought passion and vitality.” He viewed her gravely. “You sacrificed your virginity nearby.”

  She looked around in alarm, then felt stupid. “The rasputye doesn’t know that!”

  “This isn’t reality here. The place knows what a virginal sacrifice, freely given, is worth.”

  “It’s worth a bag of bones?” She didn’t know whether to laugh or be insulted.

  He didn’t smile, didn’t laugh. “Keep them. We might not know what they’re for, but the rasputye doesn’t give worthless gifts.”

  “All right.” She tucked the purse into her pants pocket. Picking up her shirt—it was not dry; apparently the supernatural clothesline was slow—she slid it on and buttoned it up.

  He observed impassively.

  She didn’t know whether to offer her hand to be shaken; it seemed like the mature way to act, so she did. In a voice she kept firm and pleasant, she said, “Okay, I’m off. I’ve enjoyed our time together, most of it, and—”

  “If you must go now, I’ll go with you.”

  She put her hands behind her back, braced her feet. “No.”

  �
�You’re not leaving without me.”

  She had tried to be stoic and uncommunicative, like him. She truly had.

  But that wasn’t who she was. Seeing him hurt, making love with him, being chased by the mob, climbing the Devil, these outrageous sex acts . . . the emotional upheaval of the past few days had brought every long-repressed emotion to the surface, and the truth came out in a rush. “I really don’t know why you’re so willing to believe the worst of me. I suppose it’s easier than facing real life again. You’re a man of passion, yet you’re so afraid of who you are and what you can do, you’ve never allowed yourself to feel deeply.”

  He looked as astonished as if she had slapped him. “Afraid? Me?”

  Finally, she had his attention . . . but it was too late. She wasn’t waiting for him anymore. “Yes, you. I love you, John Powell, but what good are you to me? I don’t want a man who’s a coward.”

  “A coward?” Now he was outraged.

  “Think about it.” Turning, she walked away, but she wanted to run so he wouldn’t see the tears brimming in her eyes.

  He caught her arm. “No. I won’t have you leave like this.”

  “John—” She tugged at him.

  She heard the sound of running feet.

  John half turned.

  Suddenly she was free.

  John sprawled flat on his face with Brandon pounding his head. “Run! Genny, run!” Brandon looked up, his brown eyes fierce. “I’ll defend you.”

  His inattention was his downfall.

  John flipped Brandon off, grabbed him by the shirt, lifted him to his feet and shoved him hard.

  Her paralysis broke. This was her chance. “Thank you, Brandon.”

  “I love you!” he yelled, then charged John.

  She had only a few minutes to escape. She ran.

  As she approached the sky that touched the ground, somehow, she knew what to do. She sped up, flung out her arms, and jumped.

  The sky split around her in flashes of black and red, gold and purple. She heard the scream of a thousand voices; felt the weight of the old legends land on her shoulders, then drop away.

  And she fell into the real world—a frigid world, filled with wind blasting down a mountain pass, snow falling, accumulating as high as her waist, and not a sign of human habitation anywhere.

  She started walking, struggling against the snow. Flakes accumulated on her eyelashes. Her hair, still damp, froze as she walked, and ice shuffled down into her boots. Her nose grew numb.

  John was right.

  She was going to die alone with a bag of bones in her pocket.

  John ran through the rasputye, his face low to the ground, following Genny’s footprints. He could only see out of one eye—who knew little Brandon could pack such a punch?

  Of course, John had left him stretched out cold on the ground. When John hit him, the kid had gone down for the count. The drug the Others had fed him must have given him strength, then faded. John would bet Brandon was going to have one hell of a headache when he came to.Then . . . he would seek out the Others for more.

  Genny’s footprints led toward the edge of the rasputye , the sky showed a crumpled patch surrounded by creases of brilliant light. She had exited here, breaking into . . .

  John advanced steadily. He had been born in the rasputye. It would release him once again into the world.

  He was right. As he walked, the air got thin. The sky surrounded him, flashing in protest. He parted the way . . . and he was out. Out in a land of towering mountains, of ice so thick his soles skidded across the slick surface. Massive icicles hung twenty feet or more off a towering rock cliff. The sky was high and blue, the land bleak and wild, and his breath showed in white puffs on the still air.

  Where the hell was he? For sure somewhere high and isolated. Kazakhstan? Uzbekistan?

  Dismay struck at his heart.

  Had Genny come out of the rasputye here? Here, in this frigid desolation? There was nothing here. Nothing of human habitation as far as the eye could see. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, a heavy shirt, boots. He was tough, and knew how to survive in a frozen wasteland.

  But Genny would have been ill-prepared, shivering with cold . . . and in the rasputye, time didn’t march along at the same speed as in the real world. To him, it seemed Genny had exited less than an hour ago. But he might be standing here a week later, a month later. What if she’d come out in the middle of a storm? Or at night when the temperature was subzero?

  He spied a movement across the valley and far below, a dark speck that moved horizontally across the plain. He stood watching, straining his eyes to make out the shape and realized . . . a man led a yak pulling a wooden cart. John gave a shout and started running, waving his arms, slipping on the treacherous ice, trying to get the guy’s attention before he disappeared into some cave or up some narrow vale.

  Finally the guy stopped and stared up at John. Then as if the sight of a tall, broad, pale-skinned man dressed in jeans and a fatigue shirt scared him, he tugged at the golden-haired yak and moved more quickly across the landscape.

  “Hey, hey!” John shouted louder, his voice rumbling up the rocky walls. “I need help. Help me!” So many people across the world spoke some English, and John spoke a smattering of a lot of languages from across Asia—he could thank his time in the circus for that—surely they could somehow communicate.

  As John neared, the guy seemed to realize the futility of escape. He stopped and faced John.

  The guy wasn’t a guy. It was an old woman shaped like a dumpling, five feet tall with a square ruddy face and a body covered with yak fur. She was trembling, probably with fear.

  So John dropped to his knees. He tried the Kazakh language. “Mother, I won’t hurt you.”

  She stared at him stonily.

  He tried Uzbek.

  She still stared.

  He started to speak in Russian.

  She waved him to silence, grabbed a skin off the cart and threw it at him, then gestured for him to follow her.

  Slowly, he stood, his knees already frozen and stiff. Wrapping the fur around his shoulders, he trudged behind her as she crossed the valley and took an abrupt turn into a notch in the mountain. There, protected from the wind, stood a round hut made of sticks and skins. Thin smoke rose from the hole in the middle of the roof, and when she called out, the flap flew back and a squat, barrel-chested man stepped out. The female joined her husband. They were almost identical in height and looks, and they stared at John from eyes so dark they were almost black.

  The man pointed west. “Rasputye?”

  “Yes.” John nodded, and in halting Kazakh, he said, “I’m looking for a woman. Dark hair.” He made ripples with his hands. “Gold eyes.” He pointed at the yak’s fur. “This tall.” He held his hand at the right level. “Wearing these kinds of clothes.” He fingered the material of his shirt and jeans.

  They stared again, their dark eyes unblinking.

  When the man spoke, John only understood every third word. “The woman. Genny?”

  John took an excited step forward.

  They stepped back.

  He stopped. “You saw her? You met her? Where is she?”

  “She came from the rasputye. Storm. Wind, snow.” The man wiggled his fingers, then shook his head sadly. “Not good.”

  John wanted to grab him by the throat and wring the facts from him. “What happened to her?”

  The man started to speak, but the woman caught his arm. She glared at him. She glared at John. And she said, “She froze. Genny dead.”

  Chapter 40

  “How’d it go? Did you break your engagement?” Samuel Faa stood and held the empty chair beside him at the round table in Davidov’s brewhouse.

  “No.” Isabelle Mason tucked her skirt tightly around her legs, and seated herself on the opposite side of the table.Samuel still held the chair. “What do you mean, no?”

  She looked up at him, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed. “I mean no. He broke the engagement, not
me.”

  Grinning was out. Punching the air with his fist was out. Leaping around the room and crowing like a rooster was out.

  Gentlemanly calm reaction was in. “Well, good. I imagine that will make it a little easier to visit your parents’ home in Boston. Not so many expectations.” He congratulated himself on sounding disinterested.

  “Yeah, like we all give a crap about expectations.” The vulgarity, combined with the prissy gentility of Isabelle’s voice, made him flinch.

  Vidar Davidov came out from behind the bar and placed a cold glass of what looked like pink beer in front of her. “Here. A pint of your favorite.”

  She looked up at him with a grateful smile. “Thank you, Vidar. You always know exactly what I need.”

  Meaning Samuel didn’t.

  He felt bad for her. He really did. No one liked to be dumped, especially when you intended to do it first.

  But oh! That big-ass diamond was off her hand and that jerk from the U.S. Congress was out of the picture. Finally, she was available for Samuel to pursue with all the intensity of his Gypsy soul.

  Beside him, Aaron Eagle jammed his elbow into Samuel’s thigh. “Sit down,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “You look like the freaking Statue of Liberty up there.”

  “Right.” Samuel reseated himself and pretended not to see the smirk Davidov sent in his direction.

  Samuel didn’t like Vidar Davidov, hadn’t since the first time they’d come through the New York tunnels to his underground brewpub. For one thing, the guy was too good-looking. Six and a half feet tall, probably thirty years old, electric blue eyes, tough, chiseled face. His wavy, white blond hair brushed his wide shoulders. Muscled chest, muscled arms, muscled wrists, long legs. Even Samuel, a dedicated heterosexual, knew the guy was built like a brick shithouse. Worse, Davidov had this arrogant, kingly attitude that set Samuel’s teeth on edge and made the women get all soft and gushy.

  Added to that, Davidov had created this pub where the Chosen gathered.

  The guys felt at home amid the oak-paneled walls and huge, round tapped kegs set into the wall behind the granite bar. There were worn wood tables with deep, cushioned chairs gathered around them. And the smell of yeast and fermentation permeated the big room.