Hunter surprised the hell out of me. He stepped forward. “I will go with you, then. If my granddaughter does not fear the blizzard, then I will follow. You are the Queen of Snow and Ice. I am part of your realm, as was my son, before he fell in love with the Summer.”
“The Queen will not travel without her guards. When do you want to head out?” Check stretched, shading his eyes from the storm.
“I think as soon as we gear up and eat a little more. We shouldn’t waste any more time than necessary. I have a feeling that we are in the grace of a window right now. We can make haste. Once Zoey is found, if there’s a way she can communicate with Myst, you know she will.” The more I thought about it, the more urgent I felt that we make our move. I was antsy, and nervous, and as I looked up at the sky, I could almost imagine Myst staring down at me.
“Listen to the Queen,” Grieve said, and as he spoke, my wolf shifted. “I can feel her uneasiness. Let us go. Now.”
And so we entered the house again. I chose not to wear the leathers—they were heavy and would bog me down in the snow. We needed to move fast, and light. I motioned for the others to gather around the kitchen table.
“Where did Ysandra go?” She wasn’t around anywhere in the house.
“I’m not sure, but she mentioned something about attending to an urgent situation and took off with her crew from the Consortium. I thought they were just headed outside.” Chatter frowned, looking around. “Has anybody else heard from her?”
Rhiannon shook her head. “No—she can’t have been gone long.”
“Well, we’ll have to start the meeting without her.” I was irritated. People needed to check with me before running off to take care of errands. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We have to split up. I don’t like it any more than you do, so keep your complaints. But this is how it’s going to be. I will lead a group into the Golden Wood. We go in search of Myst’s heartstone.”
“We’re going with you.” Peyton set her jaw. I recognized the stubborn streak in her rising.
“You can’t.” I didn’t want Luna and Peyton prowling the woods. I didn’t want them out there, endangering themselves. “We need to fly through the forest, my friend. And very few can match our speeds. Besides, somebody needs to be here to guard the Veil House and wait for the vampires to wake.”
“What about Rhiannon and me?” Chatter cupped his mug of tea. “What would you like us to do?”
“We will leave most of our Fae warriors here to guard the house and, if needed, scour the town. They will report directly to you and Rhiannon. Rhia, you’re in charge. If you have to, you and Chatter can lead another routing on the town. But be cautious—this storm is going to become far worse before long. A whiteout is nothing to get caught in. And very hard to navigate.”
“I need to go with you, Cicely.” Kaylin cocked his head. “I have to go with you.”
I stared at him and something deep inside whispered, Let him. “All right—but my men will have to help you. No bitching about it.”
“Understood.”
As we armed up, my cell phone rang. It was Ysandra. I quickly punched the Answer button. “Yes?”
“Cicely? I need your help.”
“Where are you? What’s going on?”
She sounded frightened, and when Ysandra was afraid, that meant there was trouble, big-time. “I’m over at the school a few blocks away. Dakota—Lannan’s day-runner—texted to let me know there were children trapped in the school. Parents have been calling the emergency vehicles but nobody can get through. They thought we might be able to do something since we’re near. Everybody was busy, and the school is so near the house that I decided to bring my group of Consortium guards over to gather the kids up—it’s only a few blocks away, and I thought it would be easy enough. But it’s all gone horribly wrong.”
Oh fuck, no. “What’s going on? Shadow Hunters?”
“I wish it was just them. No, Myst sent in more than the Vampiric Fae on the snows. We have snow weavers building webs outside the school, and they are trying to get in. I heard rumors that some houses in Snoqualmie are covered with webbing. They’ve come in force, Cicely. This is Myst’s full push. It’s now or never. Either we defeat her this time, or she will lay waste to this region and pick up steam.”
I stared at my phone. “I’m putting you on speaker, give me a second to fill in the others on what you’ve said so far.”
As I ran down what she told me, then tapped the button to put Ysandra on speaker phone, the enormity of our situation was beginning to hit me and my stomach clenched, thinking of the kids trapped in the school.
“Go ahead. You’re on speaker.”
“Thanks. As I said, Myst is making her push. It might seem a far cry for her to blanket an entire city, but reports coming in from Seattle say it’s snowing heavily there, too, and they’re expecting extreme ice and snow within a couple of hours. The long winter has begun. Ragnarök is rolling in, not on the shoulders of the frost giants, but on the wings of a crazed queen. Can you come get us?”
I bit my lip—we needed to get out to the woods, but the children were in danger, and so was Ysandra. “We’ll be there. How many kids?”
“Fourteen. The others made it out, but how many made it home safe, I cannot tell. I do know that we can’t hold out much longer. We’ve locked them out for now, but there are so many ways into the school. I have the children huddled in a classroom, and my guards are blocking the doors and trying to keep the snow weavers from breaking through the windows. Hurry, Cicely. Or we aren’t going to be here when you arrive.”
And with that her phone went dead. The bars on my phone vanished. I picked up the house phone but it, too, was dead.
“I suppose the television is out?”
Luna nodded, pale. “We’re cut off, then.”
“Yes. It won’t take much to bring down the coast. The grid isn’t all that stable and the infrastructure of this country is already strained and weak. Come on—we have to go rescue Ysandra and the kids. All hands on board, and we’re fighting Myst’s spiders, so be prepared.”
With that, leaving a small contingent of men at home, the rest of us armed up and headed out into the storm.
Chapter 12
We moved into the storm, leaving behind enough of our men to guard the house should anybody decide to try to invade. My bets were that Myst was still focused over in Snoqualmie and turning her sights on Seattle, but she’d given her minions a free hand in branching out. I also had the feeling she’d ordered them to leave me alone. In other words, leave me for her. She wanted her revenge as much as I wanted mine.
The streets were so clogged with snow there would be no other way of getting there except on foot. As we turned the corner, about twenty yards down Second Street we saw flames. The school was still several blocks off, so we knew it wasn’t that, but a house had caught fire, probably from someone trying to stave off the cold, and it was blazing brightly. The fire department was nowhere in sight. Maybe they were trying to plow through the streets to get here. The snow was piling up so fast and thick, that even the fire engines would have trouble navigating New Forest. We were here, though, and so I sent over one of my men to see if there was anybody still trapped inside.
He returned. “No, they are all safe, at least from the fire. But Your Majesty, if we continue on and leave them here, while waiting for the emergency response . . .”
I saw where he was going. “The Shadow Hunters may attack them. Or the snow weavers. Or worse. I see your point. How many are there?”