Chains of Ice

by Christina Dodd

  Avni paid no attention to Gary. “I never had a chance of winning. But I don’t dare fail again.” With a grimace at Genny, she lifted her T-shirt in demonstration.

  Genny flinched.

  Avni’s skin was shriveled and melted; it looked as if she’d turned her flame on herself. And maybe she had.

  “The master doesn’t accept failure.” Avni dropped her shirt and turned to Gary. “I suggest you remember that, and who you work for.”

  “I won’t fail,” Gary said coolly. Bending his head, he narrowed his eyes at John. His lids fluttered.

  Genny heard a hum, high pitched and menacing.

  As if he suffered a seizure, John’s eyes rolled back in his head. He jerked, then went rigid, his face frozen into an agonized grimace.

  “John!” Genny yanked at Brandon’s grip, trying to run to John.

  Brandon yanked back, twisting her wrists until she released a single sob.

  John went limp, his head lolling on his neck.

  “John. Can you hear me? John.” Genny turned to Gary, alight with fury. “What did you do to him?”

  “I’m not like the rest of the Abandoned Ones. I have more than one trick to my repertoire. Watch.” Once again, Gary lowered his head and stared at John.

  Genny heard that otherworldly hum.

  Gary’s lids fluttered.

  At once John went rigid, his back arched and arms strained against the ropes. His face was a mask of suffering.

  “Let him go!” Genny shouted.

  Gary held the pose. The hum continued. Suddenly, as if he had exhausted his power, he relaxed.

  Again John went limp, sagging against the restraints. Was he unconscious?

  Genny scrutinized him, looking for any sign of life—a pulse at his neck, a twitch of his fingers.

  Nothing.

  Gary sighed. And smiled. “I can twist my mind reading into mind assault. It’s not so different, really.”

  “You’ve killed him,” Genny whispered.

  “No, I haven’t.” Gary was slimy with charm. “Not yet. What would the fun of that be? He has a lot more suffering in him before he dies. Perhaps you want to tell me where that leather bag is, and spare him more pain?”

  “You broke your vow to defend the Chosen Ones and the children they protect. You tie people to a chair to torture them. You’re a coward.” She viewed him through a flush of rage. “Why would I believe a word you say?”

  Gary walked over to her and slapped her, open-handed, with the force of his arm behind him.

  She sagged in Brandon’s arms, saw stars that whirled and blinked.

  “Wrong answer,” Gary said.

  Brandon helped her get her feet under her. He held her with both hands on her shoulders.

  Slowly, John lifted his head. His eyes were blood-shot, his complexion pale, but something had shifted under his skin. Something about the way he viewed the Others reminded Genny of the day he’d discovered his photo in her backpack.

  They didn’t realize it, but they had unloosed the wild man.

  Gary had just made a big mistake.

  “When I was in Russia, I was always worried about the Gypsy Travel Agency sending agents after me.” John’s gaze shifted from Gary to Avni and back. “It looks like I was worried about the wrong group.”

  Gary was oblivious to the return of John’s savage self. “Did you ever tell your girlfriend why you were in exile?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned to Genny. “He had to run away after he screwed up my mission. Sun Hee was his wife . . . Did he tell you he had been married?”

  “I knew that, yes.”

  “Sun Hee was bored with John’s pedestrian lovemaking.” Gary aimed all his charisma at Genny.

  “Now, Gary”—Genny laughed softly, intent on keeping Gary’s attention fixed on her—“you forget. I’ve slept with John. I know better.”

  Gary’s smile and charm faded. “He won’t be worth much to you when I’ve finished with him.” For a moment, his attention shifted to John.

  She thought he was going to blast John again. “Why was he in exile?” she asked.

  For a moment, he wavered, but the temptation to smear John’s character proved too tempting. “Your wonderful hero burned his friends to death to get even with me and his wife—”

  Genny cut him off. “For cheating.”

  “He put me in a coma.” Gary put his hands to his head. “I could hear the dripping, the IV dripping, so slowly. I could hear the nurses talking. I could hear the TV. I knew the smells of that ghastly place. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. And always that dripping, one drop at a time, so . . . slowly. I would wait for it, like Chinese water torture . . .” He stood like a statue.

  John was still breathing as if trying to vanquish the pain.

  Avni waited, smiling slightly as she watched Gary.

  Brandon’s hands no longer gripped Genny so tightly.

  But Genny wanted to know . . . “What happened then?”

  Gary shuddered, once, and stilled. But he didn’t take his hands away from his head. “I heard a voice in my mind.”

  A chill slid up Genny’s spine. “Who was it?”

  “You know who it was,” Gary said dreamily.

  Yes. She knew.

  “He knew my thoughts,” Gary said. “He talked about my friends, about how they never came to see me anymore. He talked to me about John and how he had betrayed me. He told me all I had to do was give him the security code to the Gypsy Travel Agency and I could walk again. Walk the streets, be a man again and not a helpless wreck.”

  “So you said yes,” Genny said.

  “No! I was strong. I said no. But he promised me I would be healthy and dynamic. That I would serve him in this world and the next.” Gary’s hands curled in his hair. “I swore I wouldn’t. But no one from the Gypsy Travel Agency ever came to visit me. They left me alone in the dark listening to that damned drip. And then . . .”

  He paused so long, Genny prompted him. “And then?”

  “Then I heard the nurses. I didn’t have much longer. I had barely lived, and I was dying. I was the brightest, the bravest, the best. And I was dying. So I called to him . . . and I gave him the code . . . and after the Gypsy Travel Agency exploded, blew into bits so small they were never recovered . . . I was healed.”

  Genny glanced at John.

  His color had returned to normal, and he viewed Gary the way the lynx viewed prey.

  Avni could see it, too. Genny could tell. But Avni made no move to warn Gary.

  “You betrayed the Chosen Ones,” Genny said.

  Gary dropped his hands and stared at John. “They betrayed me first. Irving . . . Irving never liked me, and I made him pay.” He laughed. “It was great. He looked like a rag doll falling down those stairs, and I could hear those old bones crunch on each step.”

  The sheer, brutal pleasure and malice made Genny want to vomit.

  “John betrayed me.” Gary was breathing hard, still concentrating on John. “I’m going to make him suffer and die!”

  Not now, you’re not. Not while I can still wave a red flag at you. “No one betrayed you. You were the commander of the mission. The failure was yours.” Genny was relentless, pounding at Gary. “In your heart, you know it. That’s why you’re so ashamed. You broke your word. You joined with evil. What happened at the volcano was your fault!”

  “It was not!” Gary swiveled toward her.

  Brandon scampered away.

  John straightened in his chair.

  Gary dropped his head and stared at Genny, his eyelids fluttering.

  She heard that hum streaking toward her.

  Heat, pain, and energy flew like a knife through her brain. Every muscle in her body went into a spasm; her back arched as she fought to hold her own against the hell of pain and torment.

  Brandon caught her, held her upright, shouting unintelligibly.

  John stood. With his wrists still tied to the wooden chair, he strained to lift his arms.

>   Gold and red flashed like an inferno of power.

  Wood splintered.

  With first one of the shattered uprights, then the other, he slammed Gary in the back of the head.

  Released from her hell, Genny shoved Brandon aside. “Run!” she told him.

  But Brandon covered his head with his hands and crouched on the floor.

  John’s power rolled through the room in waves.

  Gary pitched forward, almost fell, then bounced back as if on a spring—and he was off his feet, rising from the floor.

  He screamed, “Let me down. Let me down!”

  John held his arms up, then twirled them, the wooden staves clacking together.

  Still in the air, still screaming, riding on a wave of power, Gary tumbled through the entrance and out into the narrow entry. He slammed into the wall above the narrow basement stairs.

  John followed, his brow furrowed with concentration. He held Gary out over the steps.

  “No. No!” Gary understood now what John intended. “John, no!”

  “Will you look like a rag doll falling down those stairs?” John asked, so cool, so calm in his anger. “Will your bones crunch on each step?”

  “John, remember our years together,” Gary shouted. “We were friends.”

  Genny snorted. Now he dredged that up.

  Someone tugged at Genny’s arm. She used her elbow in a combative dig. “Leave me alone, Brandon.”

  The point of a knife dug into her throat. She stiffened, held her breath.

  Avni whispered in her ear, “I’m not Brandon, and I will kill you if you don’t tell me where your father keeps his treasures.”

  Chapter 50

  Cold rage swept Genny.

  Oh, no, you don’t.She stomped Avni’s bony foot, grabbed her skinny wrist and dragged it over her shoulder, twisting until Avni’s grip loosened and the slim, curved knife fell to the ground.

  Avni screeched, wrapped her freakishly long arm around Genny’s throat, and squeezed.

  Genny gagged, choked. She lifted both feet off the floor, using the weight of her body to throw Avni off-balance.

  Avni staggered forward.

  The two women slammed into the wall.

  Avni’s elbow hit so hard, she dented the wallpaper.

  But Genny’s forehead hit just as hard. She blacked out, then struggled back to consciousness.

  John shouted something—he’d seen them.

  Distantly, she heard Gary scream, heard a body tumbling down the stairs.

  Twirling Genny around, Avni held her like a shield. “I’ll kill her. I swear, John, I’ll kill her!” she shouted, and tightened her elbow. Then, “Brandon, give me the knife.”

  Genny clawed at Avni’s arm . . . seeing the scene—John’s focused attention, Brandon’s blubbering dismay—through the haze of her pain and distress.

  “Brandon, give me the knife!” Avni commanded.

  He leaned down, picked up the blade.

  He lunged toward them.

  Genny was going to die.

  And suddenly, she was free.

  She fell to her knees, gasping, holding her throat.

  John seized her by the waist, swung her aside as Avni crashed to the floor, eyes shocked, blood rhythmically spurting from the side of her neck. She struggled for a moment, then went limp.

  Brandon stood, splattered with red, knife in hand, gaping at Avni’s body as if he couldn’t comprehend how Avni had died, that he had stabbed her. “She told me to give it to her. She said to give her the knife. She was hurting Genny, so I did. I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it.” He was babbling, using his bloody hands for emphasis. “Because I love Genny.”

  Genny tried to speak. She could only wheeze.

  Moving with watchful care, John set her on the floor.

  She sank to her knees, clutching her aching head.

  John stripped away the ropes around his wrists and dropped the shattered pieces of chair. Calm, strong, gentle, he took a step forward. “Brandon, drop the knife.”

  Brandon looked at John as if he’d never seen him before. “But I love Avni.”

  “I know you do. Drop the knife, Brandon.”

  “Avni gives me what I need.” He extended the knife. “Without Avni, I can’t live.” And he stabbed himself in the abdomen. He carved himself open, the upward thrust aimed at his heart.

  Genny groaned and covered her eyes.

  But he gasped her name. “Genny!”

  She looked up.

  He grinned, and for the first time looked like the old, obnoxious Brandon. “Take care of . . . the yeti.”

  Then the flame inside him went out.

  He dropped like a stone.

  Turning back to Genny, John knelt beside her. “I tried, but I never quite got the hang of subtle power movements,” he told her. Gently, he pulled her into his arms.

  She leaned against him. She touched the three bloody marks on his shirt, caught her breath, collected her thoughts, trembled with reaction. Then she sank into him, became one with him. Because like it or not, this was where she was meant to be.

  Under her ear, she heard him take a deep breath. He embraced her as if he would never let her go, then stood with her in his arms and carried her out of that horrible room and into the entry.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I was afraid to trust you, and it cost me everything. I’ve been in hell every day for more than two and a half years. Even though I thought—no, knew—you were dead, I never stopped searching for you.”

  “And no matter how far I traveled, I couldn’t forget you.” She pushed gently against him until he let her slide to her feet. “Believe me. I tried.”

  He looked achingly amused. “Good to know.” His expression changed; he pulled his vibrating phone from the inner pocket of his jacket, glanced at the text. “It’s from Isabelle. Irving is still alive.” He glanced out the front window at the night. “And the sun has set. That’s good. That’s very good. Excuse me while I answer?”

  “Of course.” She scrutinized him while he texted. A drop of blood had dried beside his eye . . . Had Gary’s attack done that? A long, deep scratch marred his arm; a piece of splintered chair had slashed him.

  The shoulder of his shirt was stained with blood. He was thinner than she remembered, and where before his face had been rugged, it was now sculpted, the skin stretched thin across his high cheekbones.

  But he looked good with his dark hair grown out to businessman’s length. And his light blue eyes, when he finished and looked up at her, became a deep, glorious cornflower blue.

  They couldn’t talk now; she knew that. They had a mission. But she saw his determination—and the savage lurking inside. They would talk.

  Genny gestured toward the living room and down the stairs. “My God, John. How did this happen?”

  “The bad guys wanted something very important. You refused to give it to them.”

  “I don’t know where it is.”

  “I’ll bet you have an idea.”

  “Well . . . yes.”

  His expression made the subtle shift back to responsibility. “Where do we look?”

  “The first place is the junk drawer in the kitchen.” She led the way toward the back of the house. “Anything in my father’s possession that the Gypsy Travel Agency deemed of real importance, they removed as soon as his arrest had been made. Other pieces were left in place to be photographed as evidence of his wrongdoing.”

  The kitchen hadn’t changed except to grow a little shabbier. Knives had scratched the wood-grain Formica countertop. Linoleum squares, put down by her grandfather, had curled at the edges. A wooden desk and chair filled the small breakfast nook, and on the stovetop, warped aluminum drip pans held bubbles of burned-on grease.

  “What was left to him was considered junk. He had it all appraised, of course, sold anything worth anything . . .” She yanked open the junk drawer beside the copper-colored refrigerator and rummaged through dried-out pens, old batteries, pads of paper
pilfered from Lizzie’s Plumbing. “Unless he threw it away, the purse is in the kitchen somewhere. I remember seeing it around.”

  “Irving said”—John swallowed—“artifacts of power are never gone forever.”

  “Probably true,” she said gently.

  John was worried about Irving. She was sorry for his grief, but at the same time, so glad to see the proof of his caring.

  “For sure, Father never throws anything away if there’s a chance he might ever make a profit from it. That purse is around here somewhere.” She lifted her hair off her forehead and in her mind, she walked the house, looking for that small leather sack with the yellow tie.

  But her burns felt like hot coals on her skin, and John watched her closely, as if he was about to take her to a doctor regardless of the importance of their find.

  “I’m fine,” she told him.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “Regardless, we need to find that—”

  A door slammed behind them.

  They turned together, hands up, ready for a fight.

  Chapter 51

  Kevin Valente stumbled out of the broom closet.

  “Are they gone?”

  Genny dropped her hands, astonished and appalled. “Father! Were you in there all the time?”“Yes. I hid as soon as they came in.” He twisted at the waist, back and forth, loosening his back. “Do you know how cramped it is in that closet?”

  Genny stared at him, at the father she hadn’t seen for so long, at the father who thought she was dead . . . and his reaction was to twitch the seam of his starched khakis back into place and complain about the space where he hid while she was tortured and almost murdered. All the hurt started to rise in her . . . and then it subsided.

  Because really, what was the point?

  He was what he was, and she could never change that.

  More important, she now knew a few things about herself. That she could survive and thrive alone in this world.

  And that she didn’t have to, because she had John.

  She took John’s hand. “Father, John and I are getting married.”

  John released a sigh.

  She didn’t know if it was relief or unhappiness. She lifted her brows at him. “Aren’t we?”