by Rainy Kaye
My best option was to take the long route: help Ever and her siblings steal the pendant, and then hope they held up their end of the deal to rescue my team. In the end, I was going to need a way past the monster guarding the only entrance—and exit—into Haven Rock before this was over, anyway. We had just barely survived our encounter with it the first time. I wasn’t willing to press my luck on outrunning it again.
Still, irritation settled in my chest. I didn’t want to have to go on another adventure. I wanted to save my friends, put the mage away, and get onto the next town.
But here we were.
My soles crunched over the snow, and I kept my head lowered against the growing icy wind. My face itched under the mask. I brought my hand to my face and used one gloved finger to rub at the edge where my skin and mask met, but only served to make me want to rip off the glove and mask and use my nails.
I chewed my cheek from the inside, as if that would help, which it didn’t.
Something moved to my left, in the distance. I turned to squint through the darkening, swirling air. My comrades all came to a stop, and we clustered together, staring past the snow, into the thin trees.
“Maybe a deer,” Paisley muttered through her mask. “They’ve been more easily spooked since everything started.”
“We should be too,” Jax said.
Ever shot him a glare. “Let’s just keep going. Make sure you don’t lose your weapons.”
Jax waved the kukri in his hand back and forth, and Ever spun on her heels and marched onward. With a sigh, Jax lowered his weapon and we all continued toward the slope.
I tried to reach out, tried to sense if there was anything nearby, but came up blank. That provided no reassurance.
The wind picked up, battering at us, as if trying to keep us from reaching the incline, though it would be impossible to say if it was working for or against us. We were certainly walking toward an unhealthy situation.
As much as I hoped I was wrong, I had the nagging thought that the man with the pendant probably belonged to the group with the tentacle magic. I hadn’t seen them yet in Haven Rock, but they were sure to be here, as they had been in the last two places.
It still made no sense to me what they thought they would do with the dark witches and mages now freed, considering no one matched them in strength. That was the entire reason that had been put in the paintings to begin with—they were not otherwise stoppable.
So who were these people, and what were their intentions? They had been there since day one with Eliza Brown, and then Nikandros Remis. Joseph Stone had said they wanted the dark witches and mages, but he hadn’t seemed to know why.
Not that I could ask him to clarify now.
It was always a sobering, and discouraging, thought: the dark mage of New Orleans had killed the sole person deemed capable of even attempting to stop them.
What was I doing here again?
Sighing, I turned my attention back to the present. My shoulders already pinched and ached from lugging the pack. It might have been overkill to bring so many supplies, considering we were only going to be an hour or two stroll from town, but Ever and her siblings had been displaced almost as long as Randall and I had been, and they seemed to take preparation more seriously. I could probably learn a few things from her.
If we lived. Which was always a debate these days.
Jax strode forward, passing me, and headed toward Ever in the lead. He opened his mouth to speak, but an icy wind rushed through, stealing his words. I hunched over a little as I slowed to a stop, bracing against the cold as it tried to beat me off my feet.
Our group huddled closer together as the wind picked up speed, carrying bits of ice. My itchy mask at least shielded most of my face, and I tucked my arms close to my torso. Ever gestured as she yelled, but I couldn’t make out her words even as I strained to hear her. She jutted out one arm, stiff with her thick jacket, toward the direction we had been headed and made eye contact with each of us. Then she turned and hustled toward the slope.
We surged forward. I tried to break into a run, but the snow slowed me down until my heart raced with the effort. Wind continued to slam into us. I found myself veering slightly and having to course correct. Snow kicked up around us as we slogged forward, bumping shoulders and tripping over each other.
I could barely lift my feet, and snow piled over my boots with each step. Our footprints vanished the moment we made them. Lifting my head, I squinted into the distance, but the slope had disappeared, and I doubted we were headed in the right direction anymore. The wind had probably blown us off track. I slowed, turning to orientate myself, but the world had dissolved into white and gray haze, with snowdrifts building up like hills around us.
With a jolt, I turned back to my companions. They moved in and out of the fog, and I stuck out my arm to touch Paisley’s shoulder, just to assure myself that she was close, that I hadn’t strayed too far from my team.
Paisley’s chest heaved under her thick jacket, and I tried to look reassuring, but I doubted it would convey through the mask and haze even if I could fake it.
I nodded us onward. The wind shoved back at me, and my feet slid in place for a moment before I managed to move forward. The snowdrifts continued to grow taller, as if a film had been fast forwarded. My shoes sank down in the snow until I found myself calf-high and barely able to move.
Ever spun around and clomped back toward us, shaking her head. Her muffled voice continued to break through the mask and wind, but nothing more than one indecipherable syllable at a time.
I scanned around us. We were being snowed in, and Ever had either determined we had lost the slope or would never make it.
We needed to wait out the storm.
My attention slid back to the drifts. I didn’t grow up in extensive snow, nothing close to what we were experiencing now, but I did know snow provided insulation.
I raised my eyebrows, trying to indicate I had an idea, and pointed toward the nearest snowdrift before miming pawing like a dog and then sleeping.
Everyone stared at me, and then the lights clicked on and they nodded, exchanging looks. Without cue, we all turned and charged toward the snowdrift. We didn’t need organization; instead, we all sat to work using our gloved hands to shovel out a cave. The task was harder than I had anticipated. Before long, my arms ached, and everyone around me began to slow down too, but we didn’t stop as we dug deeper into the snowdrift. A cave began to hollow out, big enough to fit one person, and then two.
My fingers tingled and burned from the cold, but I rubbed them together through the gloves and dug further. Our cave fit three now. Paisley fell to her knees, and her swipes carried little snow with them. Her head drooped.
Even my own pawing had become lackluster. We needed rest.
I held up my hand to signal everyone stop, and the group fell to the ground, arms at their sides, leaning forward. Gritting my teeth, I hauled Paisley into the cave, and then disarmed her and stabbed her kukri into the snow at the entrance. My katar went next. We didn’t have room for weapons, not safely.
I signaled for the others to crawl inside. After dropping weapons and bags, they swarmed in like insects, pushing to make room and drawing our limbs in close to take up as little space as possible. Inside the cave, we sat bunched together, entwined, with barely enough room to breathe.
Ever twisted around, sticking partway out of the cave, to grab her backpack. She pulled back inside, the bag on her lap, and shuffled around the contents, elbowing us as she worked.
“Sorry,” she muttered through her mask. She pulled a blue plastic tarp free and shoved the bag outside our small enclosure. Snow dusted over it, and I resisted the urge to yank the bag back inside.
I expected she would use the tarp to help seal off the opening of our cave, but instead, she unrolled the end of it and nudged Jax to lean forward. He did and she tucked the tarp down, working her way under each of us in turn until we were sitting on a bunched up, but dry, sheet of plasti
c. It wasn’t until then I noticed how wet the back of my pants were, and how numb my ass and legs had become from it. The shield between me and the snow brought a surprising amount of relief.
Jax scratched over the surface right next to him, filling the cave with a crinkly sound. His chest heaved as he peered back out at the snow.
“It’ll pass soon,” Ever said, gesturing toward the storm. “The snow will pile up in front of the door, and we will just need to punch through it, so we have ventilation.”
“We can’t let the snow cover the door,” Jax said, voice rising. He leaned forward, batting at the snow gathering in front of our shelter.
Ever grabbed his arm to still it. “It’ll be fine, Jax. We won’t let it trap us.”
“It’s coming down so fast,” he said, shaking her off. “It could cover the opening before we notice, and then what? The shelter will fill up with carbon dioxide and we won’t be able to breathe.”
“We’ll make sure there’s plenty of oxygen,” Ever said. “The opening is so large that it will keep us warmer if we let some of it close up. You’re just feeling claustrophobic, just like you do on elevators.”
He shook his head vigorously and continued pawing at the snow in front of us.
Paisley dozed with the tarp wrapped up between her and the wall where she pressed in a tight bundle. Next to her, April hunched around her, a bit like a yin-yang symbol, her face pressed to Paisley’s hair. Both girls seemed oblivious to their brother’s meltdown.
Ever sighed, leaning back in the cave until she touched the wall and then jerked forward.
“We really should just rest,” she said, speaking as if to the group but her gaze never lifted from Jax.
He stood on hands and knees, scraping at the ground outside and dusting off the backpack. His breathing quickened.
“Hey,” I said easily. “It’ll be fine. The weather will pass soon, I’m sure.”
He whipped around to face me, eyes wild. “No. It’ll seal us in, then we won’t be able to breathe. There’s too much carbon dioxide, every time we breathe, there’s more and more and more, filling up the cave. It’s already suffocating us. We need to let in more air.”
His hand went to his mask.
I lunged forward with Ever as he yanked the mask off his face and jutted out of the cave, sucking in a long breath.
“Jax,” Ever screamed, grabbing him by the front of his jacket. She pulled him back into the cave, so they were face to face. “Put your fuckin’ mask on right now or I swear I will—”
Her voice died as Jax’s eyes coated in blood. Droplets trickled down his cheeks as his skin turned stone gray. Lines cracked down his face and neck and disappeared under his jacket.
Ever released him, recoiling. “Jax.”
With a wild howl, Jax turned and scrambled from the cave, kicking up snow. He stood a few feet away, the blizzard—tinted with red mist—whipping around him, and tossed his head back with a scream.
Ever bolted toward him and I charged after her, knocking against April. I came to a halt, Ever a few feet in the lead, as blood spread out across the snow at Jax’s feet. With a terrified look at us, he dropped to the ground and didn’t move.
“It’s the plague,” Ever said, with a whimper. “We can’t…we can’t touch him.”
“Is he…?”
I couldn’t finish my sentence, but it was a moot point. Even from where I stood, I could make out Jax’s body shriveling away as decomposition accelerated. It didn’t stop until his skeleton poked through ragged muscles and patches of skin.
I looked away, my stomach heaving.
“Let’s go back,” I said because I had nothing else to offer her. My brain still hadn’t quite processed what had happened.
I strode forward and placed my arm around her shoulder to guide her back to the cave where April and Paisley peered out, side by side, attention frozen on their brother.
Before we had even made it to the cave, the snowfall ceased. I halted, fixing my gaze on my shoes to verify I had not imagined it, but they remained clear of newly fallen snow.
Beside me, Ever stood hunched slightly, and her shoulders shook as she sobbed quietly into her mask.
As much as I wanted to allow her time to grieve, we couldn’t lose more ground. The storm had all but ceased, and if we hurried, we could make up time.
If we didn’t, she would lose another sibling.
“We need to get going,” I said, voice hoarse, as I picked up her backpack from the ground.
Her entire body trembled as she took the pack and shouldered it. Her sisters crawled free from the cave, Paisley pulling out the tarp behind her. She wadded it up and then stepped around Ever to shove the tarp into her backpack and close it up. April unburied our weapons and passed them back to us, and we gathered our remaining bags.
Together, we set out for the slope again. I wasn’t sure what we would find at the top of the incline, but it was guaranteed to be unpleasant.
8
With each step, my soles sank down in the snow and if it wasn’t for the sturdy boots Ever had provided at her camp, my feet would have been wet and this side of frostbit. My magic had not yet returned so it was all up to the mundane to keep us alive.
I still had to wonder what the perks of being a witch was, but it was just busy thoughts. I already knew the pros and cons, and moreover, I knew that there would be a lot more benefits if I could just somehow figure out how to access what was, by all considerations, my birthright, even though it seemed more like an addon than a part of me.
The ground inclined just gradually enough, but soon were hunched over, knees slightly bent, using sparse trees or touching our fingertips to the ground as we made our way to the top.
My lungs struggled with the thin air, and I resisted glancing back, as if it would break the illusion and I would tumble back to the ground where I belonged. Gritting my teeth, I pushed onward, aware of those around me but forcing myself to focus only on one heavy step after the other. Bitter wind, tinted with the red mist, beat at me, and I refused to acknowledge how it managed to weave under my jacket and snake across the sleeves of my long undershirt.
This town may have once been beautiful, a beacon for solitude and nature, but after this adventure, I couldn’t imagine wanting to return to the mountains, forests, or the goddamned snow ever again.
The ground rumbled under my feet, an all too familiar sensation. I threw myself against a tree trunk as my soles slipped, trying to find purchase in the shifting snow. My breath came out in short gasps inside my mask.
When the rumbling stopped, Paisley and April were huddled together, braced against a jutting rock. Ever crouched on the ground, hands splayed in front of her, looking out at the world with silent determination, as if she could will the earth to behave.
She did not take her big-sister responsibilities lightly.
I pushed off from the tree by a few inches, hovering near the trunk to grab it for support again if the dark mage decided to take another earth-trembling pull of magic. Besides the plague, I had yet to see what his plans were. The dark witch of Green River had apparently wanted to continue her reign of delirium as she had once done in Salem. The dark mage of New Orleans had been creating fanfare and mayhem as he asserted control over the masses.
What, exactly, was this dark mage up to? Perhaps he simply sought pleasure from killing people with the plague. Maybe he intended to wipe out humanity one town at a time. He had been up to something to earn a painting, and I was going to make sure he continued his eternal sentence.
First, we needed to get this pendant so we could get rid of the cockatrice on the road, and I could rescue my comrades.
One step at a time. Literally.
The others around me shifted free of their positions and, without a word, we resumed trudging up the incline. My chest couldn’t seem to loosen, and I had to force myself to breathe slow and steady so I didn’t hyperventilate and become dizzy.
Even though the masks and jacket hoods
obscured everyone’s expressions, their trepidation was nearly tangible. Below us, the dark mage grew in power. Above us, the man with the pendant. He wouldn’t give it up without a fight.
As we continued up the incline, the others spread out a few feet apart, as if preparing for room to take cover if we were hit by another quake. My mind reeled for what we intended to do once we reached the top of the slope. On a good day, we would be able to sneak around inside the lodge, find the pendant, and then hurry away before anyone noticed us.
I hadn’t had a good day in a while, so that meant we would have to come up with a Plan B, and maybe all the way through to Z.
We had weapons, but I doubted they would do much against this man besides make us feel cocky enough to try to take him. Ever would put up a good fight, and maybe even April. Paisley, on the other hand, continued to wobble in her steps, as if she were moments from passing out. I still didn’t understand why Ever had brought her along.
I tried not to think about Jax and his corpse icing over in the snow.
At the top of the incline, a three-story building peered down at us, dark clouds weighting the sky behind it.
I started to slide backwards so I ducked and plowed on ahead, kicking up snow.
Finally, the ground leveled out until I was standing on a flat surface. The others came up around me with muted groans as we collected at the top, positioned in front of the lodge, panting.
The lodge stood as two buildings connected by a breezeway. Wood slats compromised most of the siding, the corners enforced with gray brick that coordinated with the barely subdued storm. Yellow lights lit the windows and exterior, and I could imagine in a better time, this place would be warm and inviting after a long trek up the mountain road.
Right now, those lights burned like fires at the entrance to hell.
I skittered over to Ever and leaned in close.
“We can split into groups of two and cover more ground,” I said, just above a whisper. “What do you think?”