When she toed up to the pool’s edge, it all made sense—the stillness, the cold.
The pool was frozen solid from end to end. In the distance, as Ash’s eyes adjusted to the light, she could see where even the waterfall had frozen, a curtain of icicles dangling like butcher’s knives over the icy expanse.
Most unsettling, however, was the tall structure rising out of the middle of the pool, where the meager light from the lampposts failed to penetrate and darkness triumphed. It was like a totem pole made of ice, maybe twenty feet high, and at the top there was some sort of design that Ash couldn’t quite discern from this distance.
Ash’s skin tingled as she stepped down onto the ice. The needles on her internal threat detector were tracking off the charts, but she had never been one to turn away from a sinister cookie crumb trail.
The tall structure was still a mystery when she approached it. It started narrow at the base and then slowly widened as it grew higher until it fanned out at the very top. It was as though a two-story geyser had exploded out of the center of the pool and then frozen instantly.
Ash held up her arm and let the fire blossom from her fingers down to her wrist, transforming her hand into a makeshift torch. Her eyes adjusted to the tangerine light, and she lifted the torch higher, until the aura extended up to the top of the ice sculpture.
As soon as the orb of light revealed the top of the totem pole, Ash nearly fell over backward.
Lesley Vanderbilt was encased within the ice, at its very top, with her arms spread in a twisted human crucifix. Her fingers were curled into claws and her eyes had been frozen wide open, but there was no life left behind them. Her mouth hung open in a last-gasp scream. Maybe in her final moments she’d known that she was only a half-inch layer of ice away from the air she so desperately needed.
Ash dropped to one knee. The Four Seasons had discovered Lesley’s plan to betray them. Rose’s rescue had been compromised, again, just when it had been within reach of Ash’s fingertips. Now her only link to her sister had been brutally murdered and put on display in a tortured ice sculpture that was clearly meant for Ash to find.
Then she felt the presence behind her.
BLIZZARDS AND SQUALLS
Saturday
Ash spun around and let the warmth from the torch on her arm wash over the figure lurking behind her.
Bleak wore the same floor-length hooded robe she always wore—did she ever wash the thing, or did she just have a closet full of them? She lingered back five yards from Ash, with her feet set and her arms slack. Hardly a threatening pose, but Ash still felt her hackles rise.
“It’s funny,” Bleak mused, “how we echo the forces of nature. The warm front collides with the cold front.” Her voice was higher than Ash had expected; she had anticipated something huskier. Bleak had a vague hint of a Scandinavian accent as well, her inflection rising and falling musically with every syllable.
“I’ve met cold fronts before,” Ash said. “You’re just a cold bitch.”
The winter goddess ignored her comment, and let her eyes float up to drink in the totem pole of ice and flesh. “Do you like my sculpture? I’ve never been much of an artist.”
Ash was trembling. Involuntarily the fire burning in her arm flared up, showering the ice with sparks. “I would never have asked Lesley Vanderbilt to be my maid of honor, and the woman is—was—a complete megalomaniac . . . but did you really have to murder her?”
“Yes,” Bleak said quietly. “She dishonored her vow to the Four Seasons. She attempted to lie and steal what is rightfully ours. And we needed to transform her into an example so you would know to stop looking for your sister.”
A drip landed on Ash’s shoulder, then another. In her frustration she was growing so hot that the ice sculpture was beginning to melt behind her. She tried to curb her growing anger before she burned a hole right through the ice beneath her. “What is my little sister to you anyway?”
Bleak rolled up her sleeves and cuffed them at the elbows, revealing the same divided circle Ash had seen in her vision. Up close, Ash could now see that each of the quadrants of the circle stood for one of the seasons. “The Four Seasons are very forward-thinking,” Bleak said. “Surely you know by now that your sister is a portal-maker, and she has access to the Cloak Netherworld?”
“So I’ve heard,” Ash muttered, thinking of Colt and his vendetta against the Cloak. “And I’d bet anything that you want to use my sister to invade their Netherworld, and destroy them so that you can get all of your memories back. What is with you people and your obsession with the past? I’ve revisited some of my old memories, and let me tell you, it just complicates the shit out of things, and it’s much better—for everyone’s sake—that we come back with a fresh start each lifetime.”
“What good will it do for us in the long run to start a new religion and spend a lifetime recruiting true believers when we won’t be able to remember any of it the next time we’re reborn?” Bleak asked. “Without our old memories we might as well be filthy mortals like everyone else. Memory is immortality, and Rose is to be our savior, our miracle.”
“Miracles don’t leave craters in their wake.” Ash took a brave step toward Bleak. “Rose is a confused little six-year-old who wouldn’t know the difference between a handshake and blowing someone up if you showed her those images on flash cards. Hanging around your little cult isn’t going to do anything to help refine her sense of right and wrong. Mark my words: If she stays with the Four Seasons, I guarantee you that people will die. She needs guidance. She needs family.”
The temperature fell ten degrees, and a heavy wind hit Ash, blowing her hair out and knocking her back a step, until she could feel the ice tower against her shoulders. The palm trees surrounding the pool rustled. Bleak’s patient, stoic façade was beginning to deteriorate. “You of all people would lecture us on what family means? Until we found her, Rose was an orphan wandering around a dangerous jungle, with mercenaries hunting her like a wild boar. And did her two older sisters come to save her? No. You brand the four of us as monsters, but your sister would be rain forest compost if it weren’t for us, all while you contented yourself to live the life of a human. Rose will live a better life with us. She’ll be revered by the humans, the way the gods were intended to be.” Bleak shook her head, and the clouds above instantly blotted out the stars. “With you she’d just end up playing in the sandbox in some godless corner of suburbia.”
It began to snow, and Ash experienced a vivid flashback to that day in the parking lot when Eve had barged back into her life. Why was it that dramatic shifts in weather around meteorological goddesses always meant bad news?
“I get no enjoyment out of killing,” Bleak said, “and that’s why I’m giving you a moment to resign yourself to the truth that you and your sister are not meant to be together in this life. If you tell me that you can walk away and live your life without interfering with the wishes of the Four Seasons—and if I believe you to be sincere—then our feud is over. But if you resist, then you better believe that I’ll do what’s necessary to preserve the interests of the Four Seasons. Now . . .” Bleak flicked out both hands. The thickening snow parted in front of her, forming a corridor between her and Ash. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you’re ready to walk away from this fool’s quest.”
Ash leaned in and stared directly into the grays of Bleak’s eyes. “Go build an igloo.”
Bleak nodded as though she’d expected that. She extended her right hand, and the snow swirling around her vacuumed toward her outstretched fingers. The snow packed, and lengthened, and sharpened. Moments later Bleak held a white curved saber in her hand. Ice crystallized over the outside of it until the edge of the blade gleamed.
Bleak ran her finger along the edge. A few droplets of her own blood beaded and glistened down the blade, but she didn’t even flinch. “Just know that you could have avoided an early death if only you’d done what I asked.”
The winter goddess propelled herself
forward so that her leather boots skated over the ice. She extended the blade, its tip speeding on a collision course for Ash’s heart.
But Ash’s rage had been slowly boiling inside her throughout their conversation. The flames came easily this time. She pointed down and showered the ice between them in the hottest fire she could muster.
Bleak skated right into it, and after a heavy crack that made even Ash lurch forward, Bleak dropped like a boulder through the melted ice and into the pool below. Chunks of ice floated to the surface along with a single air bubble.
Ash stepped up to the edge of the hole, but it was hard to see anything. After a few moments with no signs of movement below, it was clear Bleak wasn’t coming back up. “Just know,” Ash said, “that you could have avoided being a Popsicle if you weren’t such a psycho.”
Ash began to walk away, but felt an ominous trembling of the ice beneath her. She jumped to the side just as Bleak’s blade pierced up through the ice, where Ash’s leg had been moments before.
Bleak muscled through the rift in the ice, forcing aside the frozen chunks until she could clamber up to the surface. Most disturbing was that she was dripping frigid water from her ivory robe but didn’t even shiver. In fact, she looked more comfortable than she had before.
With no plan B in mind, Ash took off running across the pool, toward the dark waterfall in the back. Her progress was hindered by a snowy squall, which slowed her to one labored step at a time. She held one arm in front of her face like a visor to block the storm.
Meanwhile booted footsteps thundered behind her. Sensing danger, Ash threw herself flat onto her back just in time to watch Bleak’s saber slice through the air above her. Bleak recovered quickly, flipped the sword around, and slashed downward at Ash’s face.
Ash dug deep into that cauldron of heat within her, and when she raised her arm, a raging fire flashed hot down the length of her arm, instantly incinerating the sleeve of her T-shirt. When the ice saber struck her heat shield, it vaporized instantly, sending a plume of steam up into the air.
It was enough distraction for Ash to send a second wave of flames up at Bleak’s face. The winter goddess shrieked and staggered back as the fire singed past her eyebrows.
Still, Ash wasn’t expecting it when Bleak blindly lashed out with a superhuman kick that drilled her in the ribs. The air deflated out of Ash’s lungs, and momentum carried her across the ice like a hockey puck until she stopped under the umbra of the frozen waterfall.
Ache echoed through her chest. Ash couldn’t breathe and was having trouble pulling herself out of the beached turtle position on her back. Overhead she could see the lethal razor-sharp points of the unnatural icicles the waterfall had formed when it had frozen.
Worse, a sheen of ice crawled out of the pool’s surface, suctioning Ash flat onto her back, with her arms outstretched to either side. She tried to summon the fire to melt it, but the pain in her chest had shattered her concentration into a thousand ungraspable particles. The ice quickly won over, and Ash was all too aware that in a minute she’d transform into a human snow angel.
Bleak stepped patiently over her, straddling Ash’s body where the ice had begun to draw her squirming legs taut to the surface. Ash shivered uncontrollably. With her internal temperature plummeting toward hypothermia, she could feel her fire power drifting farther away, like a lantern lost in an Arctic sea.
Between her fingers Bleak was twirling the remnants of her saber’s handle, which had unfortunately formed a convenient dagger. “I’m truly sorry,” Bleak began.
Ash fixed her eyes on the row of icicles overhead. Just one fire.
“Just as I got no enjoyment out of Lesley’s departure . . .” Bleak glanced back at the ice totem pole. “I shall get no satisfaction out of this.”
Ash narrowed her eyes. She roved the tundra of her mind for that last scrap of tinder she had left. She felt the flint catch once, twice, felt the spark. Just one little point of light.
Bleak knelt and lowered her knife toward Ash’s throat. “My only prayer is that you are the last obstacle on our way to power.”
Then Ash could see the tiny point of light, the prick of fire, ignite at the top of one of the icicles overhead. “I am . . . ,” Ash managed to say through her chattering teeth and frost-chapped lips, “your last obstacle . . . on your way to hell.”
A heavy crack like a splitting tree trunk was Bleak’s only warning. The tiny point of fire chewed through the top of the icicle directly over her, and the icicle dropped straight down. Bleak didn’t even have time to turn before the razor tip sank into her back and plunged into her heart.
The ice dagger clattered from Bleak’s hand and landed point-down inches from Ash’s cheek.
Bleak’s hands tried to find their way to her back, where the icicle had penetrated her body, but the wound was hopelessly out of reach. With a long wheeze she collapsed onto her ribs beside Ash.
Ash was able to wrangle control of her internal furnace again, willing herself back from hypothermia. She felt a raging fever, the type she always used to get when she came back inside after playing in the snow for too long. At last she ripped her arms and legs free of their icy shackles.
It might have been the residual anger from knowing that Bleak had killed Lesley, her only link to Rose, or it might have been shock that for the first time in her life, Ash had actually killed somebody. But Ash could think only to drag herself to her stiff-jointed feet and begin the trek across the ice toward the gate, without looking at Bleak’s body.
“Wait.”
Ash stopped. She turned.
Bleak reached out with a shaking hand. “Please . . . just stay . . . with me.”
Ash hesitated. She didn’t want to get within attacking distance of the girl she’d just condemned to death. Pity swelled in her heart, however, along with remorse that it had come to this. She had taken a life, taken the future from a girl she barely knew and would never know. The fact that it had been in self-defense wasn’t important right now.
Ash knelt beside Bleak, whose cheek was pressed against the ice. Water immediately soaked into Ash’s jeans. With the spell broken, the snow had transformed to rain, and the surface of the ice was already slowly melting. Ash made sure to stay out of the path of the dripping icicles, so that she wouldn’t share Bleak’s fate.
“I just . . . didn’t want . . . to be alone,” Bleak whispered. “At least . . . you’re one of us.”
Hesitantly Ash reached out and brushed the hair away from Bleak’s eyes. A thin trail of blood rolled out of the corner of Bleak’s mouth. It was strange sharing this moment of intimacy with a girl who, by all accounts, had been her enemy. But when Bleak opened her eyes, which were fading into white, there was no malice as she gazed up at her killer. Only sorrow.
“So this . . . is what it’s like . . .” Bleak’s eyes were now staring right through Ash. “So this . . . is what it’s like . . . to feel cold.”
Her lips lingered open but her breath had expired. Ash waited there until it was clear that the Norse goddess had passed on. Then she gently drew the hood over Bleak’s head.
On her way back to the main gate, Ash had to hustle. The ice was rapidly melting and separating into floes beneath her feet. When she’d safely reached the edge of the pool, she gazed back over the scene as the ice rink, Bleak’s last work, succumbed to the tropical heat. With a mighty, trembling crack, the ice totem pole with Lesley at its crest broke apart at its narrow trunk and crashed through the ice. The resulting suction dragged Bleak’s body under with it.
Ash couldn’t help but wonder whether Ixtab had been there in Bleak’s final moments. The words Ixtab had spoken just two days earlier echoed in Ash’s ears, ringing all too true as she stood at the water’s edge, where the night’s body count had tallied to two.
It seems like the only ability that we lack is the power to not kill each other.
Ash sat on the edge of the condo roof with her legs folded beneath her. It was so late that even the tropical
air threatened to stumble into chilly territory, and Ash hadn’t exactly bothered to buy any hoodies or cardigans when she’d restocked her wardrobe for Miami.
Although the eastern face of the building offered a beautiful view of Biscayne Bay and the ocean, Ash was facing west, landward. Her gaze was transfixed by one of the more prominent skyscrapers in the Miami skyline. It wasn’t the tallest, but it was lit top to bottom with golden lights through all of its nearly fifty floors. (Ash had counted.)
She was trying to count the floors again when Wes slipped down beside her. He was wearing a pair of plaid drawstring pajama pants and a gray T-shirt that looked like it had seen ten years and a thousand washings.
He wiggled his butt over so that they were directly side by side. With his legs out in front of him and hers bent underneath her, the two of them were almost at eye level for once.
“Miami Tower,” he said, and pointed to the building on the horizon that had been the object of her attention for the last two hours. “They change the lights to celebrate certain holidays throughout the year. The gold is a new one, to celebrate the summer solstice. It will go red, white, and blue for Independence Day soon enough.”
“Did you wait up for me, Dad?” she asked.
“What? No.” His attempt to sound surprised was one of the worst performances Ash had ever heard.
Ash rubbed her hand through his shaggy hair, which was somehow still immaculate. “Despite your pajama attire, it’s pretty obvious that your hair hasn’t seen a pillow all night.”
“Or maybe flawless hair is one of my supernatural talents.” He picked up the blanket he’d carried outside and tucked it around her shoulders. But the real warmth she felt came when he slid his arm around her waist. Her face flushed red when she realized that even through the blanket he could probably feel the sudden rush of heat coming from within her.
Embers and Echoes Page 19
