“I count ten gnomes at our backs,” I whispered. I drew Grief as I looked ahead. Could they be trying to herd us into another crowd waiting up the tree-dotted hill? Probably not if Cole was already there. Which meant they just wanted us to move too far from the road to consider escaping by car.
Vayl paused, checking the trail, considering our options. He tapped his ear. “Are you both in position?” he asked.
When Vayl nodded at a conversation I couldn’t hear, I said, “You didn’t tell me about a second sniper up here. Which means you’re still hiding stuff from me. And while I understand why, I’m about to risk my life without knowing the whole picture. Which is pissing me off.”
“Will you ever fully trust me?”
“I have no idea. I’m trying, but people close to me have been jerking me around my whole life. It’s hard to put your next breath in another person’s hands after that.”
“But I am not another person,” he said. “I am your sverhamin. ” The first of the gnomes had almost reached Grief’s range. Which meant I’d be a clear target for his weapon as well. I sighed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Kiss me.”
My supervisor had just been killed. My dog was missing. A radical fringe group of gnomes had partnered with a bunch of Weres to destroy one of my country’s most precious resources. And suddenly that was all I wanted to do. I rose on tiptoe, felt him lean down and wrap his arms around me. Our lips met, a mix of despair and promise in their tender touch. What an odd time to feel home.
Vayl moved his caress down to my neck. “You must survive this,” he murmured against my throat.
“Promise me you will live on.” Like I was crushed inside, where even surgeons couldn’t reach.
“I promise,” I said. Because we both needed me to, though I didn’t understand the source of his request until he kissed me again, and I felt his fangs pierce my bottom lip.
Cold shot through me, an icicle rocket threatening to rip off the top of my head. I screamed into his mouth as frost rimmed my teeth and tongue. The skin on my face and hands tightened painfully. My entire body felt like it had been buried in a snow bank. I jerked away, too cold even to shiver. I stared down at my arms. They were covered in ice.
“What have you done to me?” I demanded. It took a while to get the words out. My mouth didn’t want to work anymore.
He stared intently, his expression an odd mixture of triumph and dread. “I have lent you this, my greatest power, because I could not warn you that Cassandra had Seen this attack, embroiled as it had been in all her other visions of the shaman, the Weres, and Brude. If you had donned a bulletproof vest for this leg of our mission, we assumed Brude would have soon become suspicious and warned the shaman. So I have armored you.” He stopped, swallowed. “Are you all right?” I tried to shake my head. But it didn’t want to turn. So cold, right to my core, as if he’d pumped liquid nitrogen directly into my bloodstream. I could feel everything falling, failing. I wanted to shriek, but my mouth had frozen shut.
“Jasmine?” Cassandra could’ve been a mile beneath my feet, crouching behind an Ufranite sun generator, but her voice sounded close and urgent as she said, “Listen to me. Vayl only attempted this because of my vision. You can survive, but you must summon up that rage, the one that burns so hot in you that it catches your surroundings on fire when you release it.” I can’t! It’ll ash part of my soul!
Though it wasn’t one of her skills, it seemed like she could read my mind when she added, “The ice will keep it contained, Jaz. I Saw this. Call out your fury. Let it warm you.” I reached for the anger that always seemed to simmer right beneath my civilized surface. And found it, churning like liquid iron around a massive anvil engraved with the names of everyone I’d ever lost. The newest, pete, shone like silver next to the others, which had aged to dull pewter.
Suddenly all the voices in my head, the ones who’d stayed and those that had just returned, screamed, Pete’s dead! Matt’s dead! Jessie’s dead! They’re never coming back, and I’m possessed, and my mother’s hell-self tried to kill me less than two weeks ago and everybody I know has been Lying To Me! FUUUUUUCK!
I opened my eyes, not even realizing I’d closed them until I saw Vayl’s face hovering over mine, eyes wide, jaw tight with suppressed panic. I blinked. Nodded. I’m okay. The ice still encased me, but now it felt less like a freezer pop body bag and more like mega-stiff coveralls.
“They are coming,” he said. “We must lead them up this hill to the path.”
“Why?”
“Cole and Kyphas are waiting among the trees, perhaps fifty yards up.”
“Kyphas? So that whole sickbed thing…”
Vayl’s lips tightened. “It was largely an act to mislead Brude. I made a separate deal with her, when you—and he—could not hear. She has agreed to fight with us.”
“Because it’s in her best interests to!”
“She has also vowed to do no violence to any within our Trust.”
“Trust. That word bites on so many levels,” I muttered as we struggled up the slope, both of us now armored in such thick coatings of ice that when the first shots hit us we barely noticed them. In fact, some of them actually sounded pleasant, like Jack barking, that’s how wishful my thinking had become.
“Faster,” Vayl urged.
I grunted to let him know I was moving as quick as my creaking outer skin would allow. But when I felt the impact of a gnome slug slam into my back, I paused. Did a slow-motion spin. Raised Grief and commanded my finger to pull the trigger. The extra three seconds it took helped my aim. The guard crumpled, a hole in the socket where his eye had once been.
I glanced at my gun and felt glad I’d been holding it when Vayl had covered me. Because its grip had frozen to my palm, and if I hadn’t had my finger inside the trigger guard when the icing had gone down, I’d be cruising the woods for a club right now.
I backed up, took out another pursuer who was so sure of his future success that he’d stepped out from behind a grass tree to shoot. His buddy, sitting in the lower branches of the tree next door, dropped to the ground to check on him. I took him out, as well as another guard who was moving toward us from the same small hide.
“Come, Jasmine, run!”
Turning back, I forced my legs into a slow lope, my inner fire warming my muscles as the adrenaline boosts from all the shards flying off my body boosted me to even greater speed. Vayl led me straight uphill to a spot where a gravel path crossed ours. We turned sharply right to follow it. The trail would’ve been a cinch in any other conditions. Rising gently upward toward the skirts of Mount Eliza, its width allowed us to jog shoulder to shoulder. In places planked bridges gave us easy access to the opposite sides of shallow gullies. To our right, the trees grew closer together, giving us better cover than we’d had since beginning the chase. To our left large rocks had begun to take the place of trees, jutting from the side of the hill like giant, fleshy mushrooms.
“Do you see the bend in the path ahead of us?” Vayl asked.
“Yeah.”
“That is our goal.”
I’d turned to shoot again when I heard the sound of gunfire coming from behind us. We’d passed Cole.
I’d seen the flash from his muzzle. Heard the death-scream of a pursuer. Swift movement from Astral’s feed caught my eye. Kyphas, flinging her boomerang, laughed with delight as she watched it crush the throat of a careless Ufranite before it flipped back into her hand.