The abandoned ski lodge seemed a fitting base of operations for the sinister members of Ice God.
The thought had barely crossed Talon’s mind when one of the band members emerged from the decrepit structure. Talon hit the snowy ground, his white snow-gear allowing him to become one with the frozen landscape. He brought up a pair of binoculars and peered up at the old hotel with eyes as cold as the air that raked his lungs.
More members of Rezok’s freak-fest grew visible. Talon’s breath hitched as he spotted the woman, whom he hadn’t expected to find alive. Two of the black-metal musicians were dragging Kristin toward a waiting snowmobile, its thrumming engine the source of the noise Talon had picked up earlier. They had all traded their corpse paint for skull-masks.
Kinda early in the year for the Halloween get-up, Talon thought.
One of Rezok’s goons forced Kristin to take a seat on the snowmobile and he joined her. Rezok emerged from the ski lodge, now decked out in a jet-black ski suit with a gray skull-helmet shrouding his bone-white face. He didn’t use any poles as he skied away from the hotel, as formidable a presence on the slopes as he was on the stage.
The snowmobile with Kristin on it tore after him and the last two band members followed on skis. Moments later, the dense forest had swallowed them whole.
Talon picked himself up. He pulled a collapsible snowboard off his back and hit a button. The board switchbladed out to full size. Moving quickly, he clamped in his feet and tore after Ice God, a predator seeking his prey. Soon the band’s blood would be coloring the snow red.
The snowmobile blasted into the wooded darkness. A white splinter of muted sunlight flashed through the pines racing past Kristin. She clung to consciousness as the stark, surreal landscape flew by. The barren trees seemed alive, reaching out for them with a terrible hunger. One of Rezok’s men sat behind Kristin, one powerful hand hooked around her neck while the other operated the vehicle’s controls, navigating the arctic obstacle course.
Kristin knew her time had run out. This was the end of the line. They were about to kill her. She’d perish deep within these snowy woods where her body would never be found. God, what had she done to deserve this?
Her life flashed before her eyes. She thought of her parents, good friends and old lovers. Thought of how her father and mother would suffer, never knowing what happened to their daughter. Tears welled in her eyes. It wasn’t fair…
A fat tree jumped into view in front of them, head-on collision imminent. Kristin’s captor was forced to relinquish his hold on her neck so that he could grab the controls with both hands. The snowmobile performed a hard right, dodging the tree and sending a plume of snow into the air.
For a moment, the man was distracted and Kristin saw her chance to escape. Body responding before her mind could talk her out of it, she hurled herself from the moving snowmobile. Kristin’s captor had expected little resistance from the mousy, broken woman and let out a sharp curse as she disappeared into the snow.
By the time he stopped the vehicle, Kristin was already on her feet and running at full bore. Her heart was pounding and the roar in her ears wouldn’t stop.
As she sprinted through the dense forest, she spotted a series of strange items dangling from the trees. Animal bones (or were they human?) hung from the branches on strings and danced back and forth like primitive wind chimes. Rune symbols had been cut into the frost-covered bark. It gave the woods an air of dark magic, almost as if everything inside it had become part of some ancient, long forgotten ritual.
Kristin couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d stumbled into her own personal Blair Witch Project, a flick she’d caught on cable years earlier. It had kept her up for days.
She slowed, each step becoming hesitant. The eerie trees gave way to a small, snowy clearing and now Kristin stopped dead in her tracks. The world tilted and elongated. The tree-line filled with unnatural life, transformed into a grotesque, nightmarish Dali painting.
Her eyes fastened on a deep hole dug into the snow. With growing dread, she realized that the grave was meant for her. A second later, her eyes spotted what remained of the other seven women and she understood the dark fate that awaited her. Kristin’s brain was still struggling to make sense of the horrific tableau when Rezok and his crew emerged from the surrounding forest.
Chapter Nine
TALON SHOT DOWN a steep hill and rippled into the waiting woods. As soon as he disappeared under the dense canopy of branches, the forest grew quiet. The sputtering snowmobile had become a faint rumble. In the near distance, Talon caught dark glimpses of his targets against the white background. Ice God’s penchant for wearing black was working in his favor.
The dense tree cover made it cumbersome to keep advancing on his snowboard. Talon quickly snapped off his bindings. From here on out he’d continue on foot.
All of a sudden the snowmobile’s engine turned off. An unnatural, disconcerting silence descended on the backwoods. Talon had spent enough time outdoors to know that the wild was filled with life, if you knew what to listen for. This felt different. A complete absence of sound greeted him.
He also noticed the strange runes carved into the nearby trees. About every fifth one bore the Norse symbols on its surface.
Talon dismissed the growing sense of atavistic unease taking root in the pit of his stomach. He forged ahead, eyes alert. The forest was soaked in shadows with only sporadic shafts of sunlight able to penetrate the dense canopy. The members of Ice God seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Talon’s heart hammered in his chest and suddenly he wasn’t sure who was hunting whom. Did his quarry know that they were being stalked? Had they lured him into a trap?
Before Talon could consider that possibility, Kristin’s scream pierced the silence of the forest.
The cry of terror jolted Talon into action. Gun out, he pressed on. Following the panic-filled voice, he arrived at the edge of the clearing and stopped dead in his tracks.
An overwhelming sensation of dread sliced into his soul and he gripped the gun tighter. Eight round objects sprouted from the frigid earth.
A closer look revealed the full horror. He was staring at the missing women. They had been buried up to their necks in the snow with solely their heads exposed. Their bluish faces were frozen in the rictus of a scream and coated in a veneer of ice.
Only Kristin clung to life in her own snowbound grave, eyes squirming with terror.
Rezok loomed before her, shimmering blade in hand. The other three black-metal musicians formed a half-circle around him, knives out. Their muffled, monotone chanting resounded through the woods, the lips under their skull-masks uttering words in an ancient Norse language that bore little resemblance to the Norwegian spoken in the country today.
Talon sensed that Rezok and his cohorts were close to completing their gruesome ritual. Only one final sacrifice remained. Judging from the bluish tint to Kristin’s skin, Talon didn’t think she had much time left. Some ancient terror would be birthed on this mountain when the chanting stopped and Kristin succumbed to her bitter ordeal.
Snow whipped Talon’s face as he considered his options. If he just started firing at them, one of the knife-wielding targets might reach Kristin before Talon’s bullets took him out. He needed Rezok’s crew to move away from the woman. A diversion was in order.
Talon’s gaze combed the forest and fell upon the parked snowmobile nearby. Under different circumstances, he might’ve allowed himself a dark grin – he had found his plan of attack.
He closed in on the vehicle and cranked up its engine. The snowmobile’s roar pierced the air, drowning out Ice God’s guttural singsong.
Rezok and his men froze. Talon had their attention.
The skull gang exchanged a few words and darted into the woods.
Seconds later, one of the Norwegians stepped up to the rumbling snowmobile and paused. He leaned forward and killed the engine, eyes scoping the area. He was still trying to figure out how his ride had switche
d on by itself when a laser dot found the center of his sculpted mask. His face erupted in a spray of crimson and fiberglass. Skull-man crumpled, bloody brain matter speckling the snow.
A second cult member appeared and firing again, Talon stitched a bloody track across his chest. The man heaved and lurched, soon joining his buddy on the ground in a puddle of blood.
The voice of a third band member rang out, calling his comrades, a note of panic coloring his words. The corpse-paint, black clothing and skull-masks all served to make Rezok’s crew seem larger than life and more than human. The illusion was being shattered by the power of steel.
The third cultist grew visible in the dark forest. After a few steps he sensed movement from a snowy embankment. He stopped and narrowed his eyes, detecting something off about the snowdrift. An instant later, the snow shifted, coming alive. Talon rose from the mountain of ice, an angel of death. One gloved hand cupped the band member’s mouth while the other drove a knife into the base of his neck. After a quick twist of the handle, the target’s entire body went from rigid to limp in one convulsion as his brain stem was severed.
Three down, one to go.
In other news, Ice God broke up tonight.
Talon stood still and listened like the predator he was, senses fully engaged with his environment. The lead singer had vanished. Talon combed the forest but failed to detect any movement among the trees. Where had Rezok gone?
Once more, Kristin’s cry for help carried through the night. Every fiber of Talon’s being was on high alert. He wanted to come to the terrified woman’s rescue, but he didn’t want to give away his position, either…
Screw that. Kristin’s condition was worsening by the minute. He had to act now.
Casting caution aside, Talon burst into the clearing. Despite the many brutalities of war he’d experienced over the last decade, he was affected by the sight before him. The clearing had become a horrific mass burial ground, with the heads of the dead acting as icy grave-markers. Talon saw no signs of decay, the cold perfectly preserving the women’s lifeless flesh.
Talon crossed the icy cemetery to Kristin. She stared up at him with big, terror-stricken eyes now framed in frost.
Frozen tears, Talon realized.
On some instinctive level she seemed to comprehend that Talon wasn’t one of her kidnappers.
“Help me,” she pleaded.
He scanned his surroundings and spotted a shovel leaning against a tree. Ice God must’ve used it to dig Kristin’s vertical grave. Moving fast, he snatched the tool.
Eyes still fixed on the trees, he holstered his gun. He didn’t like it, but there was no other way. He would need both hands if he hoped to free the woman from her icy prison.
The metal shovel sliced into the ground. Talon put his back into it, but the snow seemed unwilling to release its human bounty. Even worse, he would dig and seemingly make progress only to turn around and find the snow back in its original place. Was the ice actually fighting him in some way?
Don’t give up now!
Talon redoubled his efforts.
As he launched his renewed attack against the frozen soil, he sensed eyes on him. Was it Rezok?
Following a crazy hunch, Talon shifted his attention to one of the buried women. For a second, he could’ve sworn her head had moved.
Impossible!
Correction, kiddo — impossible in the old world, but this is your new reality! Haven’t the last four months taught you anything?
Talon analyzed the eerie heads more closely. Their purplish, frostbitten skin made them look barely human. He was about to advance when he sensed movement behind him. Body in full combat mode, heart pounding, he pivoted toward another of the buried victims. For a terrifying split second, the lifeless face glaring back at him with an accusing, unforgiving expression belonged to his dead fiancée.
The blood drained from Talon’s features.
Why didn’t you try this hard to save me? Is this worthless bitch more important to you than your own fiancée?
Talon clenched his jaw and blocked out the haunting voice in his head. What he was hearing and seeing couldn’t be real. The magic only gave life to his own dark thoughts and guilt.
Galvanized by rage, Talon spun toward Kristin and continued his furious shoveling. He had become a man possessed. This time no matter how hard the ice fought back, he made progress. He kept digging and digging, metal carving away until he could reach for Kristin’s halfway exposed arm. His fingers closed around her frozen limb and he pulled with all his might. Her body moved toward him, one strenuous inch at a time.
Suddenly, something yanked Kristin from below, almost as if icy hands had snagged her legs and refused to surrender their prize. Kristin felt the tug, her features contorting with terror.
No matter how hard the force jerked, Talon held on.
You’re not going to get her!
Talon clasped her arms tighter, face twisting with effort, muscles and joints pulled to the breaking point.
LET GO OF HER!
A final excruciating effort and… Kristin was out of the hole. She collapsed on top of him, clinging to him like a newborn hoping to reclaim the heat of the womb. Hands touching, faces close, eyes meeting. Survival stripped down to its most basic impulse — the need for warmth.
They lay there for a moment before Kristin bolted upright, her whole body wracked by powerful convulsions. What was happening?
Talon stared as Kristin gagged and spat up a stream of snow and ice particles. Her face reddened with effort as she expelled the contents of her stomach. With each passing heave, color returned to her bluish features. After a final, powerful retching sound, her lips ejected a small dark object.
It was one of the rune stones.
Kristin’s legs caved beneath her and she collapsed. Talon caught her in mid-fall and gently lowered her to the ground. Her breathing seemed to have normalized. Weak, but steady.
Talon shifted his focus to the other women. Ice God must’ve forced each of these victims to swallow a stone. Rage rose inside him, a murderous force that yearned to be directed against the mastermind who had perpetrated these savage atrocities.
His chance at revenge came a second later.
Rezok peeled from the circle of pines.
Talon heard the fiend before he saw him. Glock leveled, he spun around. A red laser-light tattooed alabaster muscle. The albino warlock had cast off his jacket and shirt, standing bare-chested in the frozen clearing. His body was as pale as his face and for a moment he seemed to have been carved from ice. Snowflakes danced around his head, his long mane of white hair framing granite features. Runes adorned his sickly looking flesh and a serrated knife angled from his bony hand. He spoke in Norwegian, or perhaps it was the old tongue, as he pointed the blade at Talon.
Talon somehow understood the words without knowing the language.
“The Ice God demands his sacrifice.”
Screw your Ice God! Talon thought, and fired the Glock. Or at least, he tried.
No bullet erupted from the muzzle. Talon’s finger was glued to the trigger, arm stiff from the unbearable cold.
Rezok advanced another step.
His blade glittered and shimmered in the hazy, dull light.
Talon tried to go for his combat knife, but his body wouldn’t respond. Transformed into a statue, he was the latest victim of the winter warlock’s magic.
Rezok kept whispering away in that creepy, archaic language. Each muttered word became an icy hook that dug deep into Talon’s muscles with paralyzing force. The cold had become unbearable. He instinctively understood that he was in the presence of something ancient and timeless, an unfathomable darkness that predated mankind and had been biding its time to consume the world once more.
Waiting for the sun to burn out and the Earth to turn into a barren, frozen ball.
Waiting for the day when ice would reclaim the planet.
Rezok approached his prey.
Instead of driving his knife
deep into Talon’s prone form, he brushed past him, dismissing him like a pesky insect not worthy of his wrath. Rezok didn’t seem to care that Talon had taken out his cohorts. His full attention was devoted to Kristin. Only one objective seemed to matter to the albino mage: completing the ritual.
The cold kept wearing Talon down. Some of his Delta buddies used to say he had ice in his veins. It didn’t feel like a joke any longer. His insides had turned solid and were tearing him apart. He almost expected snow slick with gore to erupt through the pores of his frozen skin.
Memories began to drift away. Thoughts ceased.
There was only the cold.
Only the ice.
As the blizzard engulfed his mind and the darkness closed in, one memory somehow fought its way to the surface. He was twenty-two again. He’d served in the Army since turning eighteen and he’d just begun the first week of the Delta selection course at Camp Dawson in West Virginia. During this phase of the process, his commanders did everything in their power to make him and his fellow recruits quit the program. The punishing obstacle courses, the nights without sleeping, the mental harassment – it was beginning to take a toll on everyone.
It all came to a head that day in the swampy marshlands. Each trainee had to paddle down the river and survive the freezing cold mud. Talon tried to ignore the howling winds and physical agony. The swamp consumed their bodies until nothing remained visible but their heads. All throughout, the instructors tantalized them with promises. If a few men quit, the rest would be off the hook.
Talon didn’t know what was worse - his chattering teeth, or the incessant prodding of his tormentors.
He’d been so close to giving up that night, his suffering pushing him to a place from which he feared there might be no return. Soon it would all be over. Just one more week of this hell before the real training at Ft. Bragg got underway. It was a weeding-out process, a test of mind over matter. Talon tried to will the pain away, but his mental discipline failed him. He had reached his limit.
Occult Assassin: The Complete Series (Books 1-6) Page 32