Chapter 8
Another terrified scream broke the air as I skidded down the corridor, finding a half-open door. I threw myself in just as I pulled the gun from my pants.
I saw John Lambert crouched low over a middle-aged man. John had a hand around the guy’s throat. Somehow, impossibly, lines of light were pulsing out from John’s strong grip and pushing into the man’s skin.
I smelt the sizzle of flesh and saw blood trickling down the guy’s throat as he bucked backward, trying to escape.
“Put your hands up,” I screamed as I leveled the gun at John.
It took several seconds for John to react. Several seconds for him to turn, a sneer creeping over his lips as he stared at me. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded. “This is my target. Go get your own fucking job,” he snapped once more.
“I said get away from him, asshole. Put your hands up. This is a magical gun,” I warned. “It will rip right through you,” I added, even though I had no idea what would happen when or if I pressed the trigger.
Slowly, like a snake uncoiling from hibernation, John released his grip on the man’s throat.
The guy convulsed backward, bald head slamming against the wall as the blood continued to trickle down his neck. There were two perfect handprints on his throat made out of bloodied, burnt, singed flesh.
“Walk to the side. I said get to the side,” I screamed at John as I gestured at him with the gun. My hands were so sweaty, I could barely keep hold of my weapon. Nothing but pure desperation was stopping me from keeling over, or worse: hyperventilating. “Get out of here,” I told the cowering man. “Get out of here,” I begged.
The guy did not need to be told a third time. He scrambled to his feet, moves so snapped, he was like a doll being jerked around on a string.
Without another look my way, he flitted through the door, slamming it closed behind him. I heard his footfall disappear out of ear-shot down the corridor.
That just left me with John Lambert.
He tipped his head to the side, gaze suddenly slipping up and down my form. It locked on my shaky grip around my gun. “First case, ha? It will be your last,” he warned. He took a step toward me.
“I said get back.” My voice was shrill, a breathy shriek.
He did not get back.
Right now, right here, I would find out if I could kill a man.
As he took another step back, a smile spreading over his lips, my finger tightened on the trigger.
… But I couldn’t shoot.
He suddenly lurched toward me with speed I couldn’t track. He jerked his elbow into my arm, and I lost hold of the gun. It slammed onto the floor with a resonant thunk and skidded into the shadows.
I gasped and shoved back, somehow showing agility I had no idea I possessed. I dropped to the floor, rolled, and lurched to my feet several meters away.
John ticked his head to the side and laughed, the sound so grating it was like someone was trying to rake the concrete with broken glass.
“Come on, you little bitch. Not so strong anymore now, are you? Tell me, you ever been split from head to toe with a magical sword? Worst way to go. The magic will burn you long before the steel cuts you in half.” He tipped his head back and let out such a maniacal laugh, I could tell he’d lost every scrap of his sanity years ago, if he’d ever possessed any at all.
“Just stop, please. Look, you’ve come to the attention of Vali. You should hand yourself in. I may not be any match for you, but he is.”
On the word Vali, John changed. His eyes pulsed wide – pulsed so wide they could have shot from his skull and slammed against the wall. His cheek slackened, his lips drew open, and he swore in a language I’d never heard.
Then he brought up his arm, snapped it up, in fact, like it was attached by a hinge and not a joint. The move was so jerky, his jacket flared open, his hair plastering over his face.
Suddenly that symbol on his wrist glowed. It glowed so brightly it rivaled a flood lamp.
I swore, shifting to the side, protecting my eyes with my hand. But it was too late.
He muttered something, and a circle of symbols suddenly exploded from his wrist. They hovered just in front of his hand, almost like a hologram from some sci-fi. He flicked his hand up, grasping at one of those floating symbols. As he did, the symbol changed. It reacted to the presence of his touch, elongated, extended, and became solid.
In a flash, he was holding a sword. One that was run through with light. It looked like dry earth fracturing with lava.
He cracked his lips back, showing a flash of teeth as he let out a dark snicker. “Why do I get the feeling this is your first job?”
I didn’t reply. Instead, I felt my breath becoming ragged as I struggled for air.
He took a step toward me, letting his sword drop to the ground, the tip scratching over the concrete. As soon as the metal indented the concrete, the concrete blistered. It bubbled as if it had just been thrown in a kiln.
And then – and then I started to feel the heat. It was pushing off him in waves, buffeting the room. It caught the ends of my hair and singed them, playing along my cheeks with a burning touch.
“Shit,” I swore as I backed up, lurching sideways and throwing myself against the wall.
My desperate gaze locked on the door, but with a snicker, he shifted into the middle of the room, blocking my path.
He now cracked his lips all the way open, his mouth full of dancing shadows as the reflected light from his sword played along his face. The symbol on his wrist burnt brighter than anything I’d ever seen. So bright, in fact, it looked as if it would consume him.
I pressed myself against the wall, feeling my cheeks singe and the exposed flesh along my shoulders and arms smart.
Two days ago I’d been nothing but a waitress. Today? Today I would die, singed to a crisp in the shifty basement of an equally shifty nightclub.
With manic glee shifting through his expression, he sliced toward me with the sword.
I had a single second where terror pulsed through me. More violent than any sensation I had ever felt, it was as if somebody had taken a hammer to me and crushed me completely.
I screamed – screamed with everything I had.
I also grabbed at my bangles. The move was instinctual, something inside me suddenly seizing hold of my hands and moving them of its own accord.
Vali had told me never to remove these locks.
But now? Now I had no choice.
The bangle unlocked with an echoing click. The click shifted through more than this gloomy basement. It shook right through me.
I felt it – felt it running through me, felt it burning along my skin, cascading up my back, playing along my face.
The symbols.
John jerked back, drawing a hand up to protect his face. His cheeks slackened as his eyes pulsed wide. “What- what the hell are you?” He brandished his sword.
That cold sensation in the center of my chest – it suddenly took up my entire world. Though the flash of steel was close to my throat, and death just a step behind, suddenly I was completely absorbed by that sensation. By the cold eddying in my soul.
It was like a set of hands spreading toward me, beckoning me onward. And all I had to do was reach out.
So that’s what I did.
I shifted to the side just as the man’s sword sliced across the tip of my shoulder. It did not, however, have the opportunity to travel through my neck and cut my head from my body. Instead, I reached forward, accepting the cold within.
And the cold – it spread out from my fingers, out from my arm, out from my body as I was pressed against the wall. This enormous wave of frozen power.
In an instant, the room around us froze, frost spreading across the floor and up the walls until it looked as if we were trapped in an ice cave.
At the last second, the man lost his balance, slipping to the side, body jerking out as he lost grip of the sword and stumbled over the ice. The tip of his sword sliced acro
ss the tip of my shoulder but missed my neck.
That’s not all that happened. For the ice started to climb him. Relentless, like a river breaking its banks, it climbed up his legs, marched up his thighs, and powered over his torso. He screamed as he bucked back, body skidding over the floor. Desperately, he tried to scrape the ice from his legs, but his movements became slow, broken.
I watched in total, astonished fear, incapable of moving as blood trickled down my shoulder, splashing against the icy floor by my crumpled body with a wet tap, tap, tap.
The man let out a rattling, desperate scream, clearly using the last of his energy as he jerked his head around and stared at my bulging eyes. “Please. Just stop. Please.”
His terror was the only thing that could move me. With a jolt that rattled my spine, I realized I was about to kill him. My relentlessly marching magic would freeze him to the spot.
I bolted forward, shifting over the ice with ease. I wasn’t cold, either. Even though this basement now looked as if it belonged in the heart of the Arctic, I wasn’t shivering. The man? His lips were blue, his skin whiter than powdered snow.
He had time to shoot me one last desperate, pleading look, then his head rolled back and thumped against the floor, cracking the ice. But the ice did not remain cracked for long – it kept growing. The power kept pulsing out of me, covering this room in more and more frost as the symbols over my body danced brighter and brighter.
“Stop. Please stop,” I begged myself, voice rattling in my throat as I desperately tried to control my power. I begged my mind to switch the magic off. And when that didn’t work, I began to scratch at the symbols on my exposed wrist.
Just as the man’s chest drew silent with one final, shuddering breath, I spied my bangle. I skidded over to it, the move snagging my nylons and tearing them to the knee. With no time to spare, I snapped over, grabbed my bangle, and slammed it over my wrist.
It took several agonizing seconds to work, but slowly the light dimmed and no longer played so brightly over my flesh. A second later, the ice stopped its inexorable march up the man’s body.
I bolted over to him, skidding on my knees and slicing them clean open. I ignored the warm blood as it pattered down my legs. I took my jacket off in a jerky move, rolling it up and placing it under his head. Then I pressed a hand over his mouth, checking for any signs of breath.
When that didn’t work, I pressed my fingers into his neck, and finally, finally felt a pulse.
I couldn’t crumple in relief just yet. For, as my fingers pressed against his neck, my body warmth thawed the ice. In fact, the longer I kept my hand gently locked on his throat, the more the ice receded. It was as if my mere presence was chasing it back.
I watched in stunned astonishment as the ice pulled back like a curtain or a receding river. It still covered the room, but in a few short seconds the man thawed out.
I incessantly checked his pulse and breathing, and when both seemed steady, I realized I had to go for help.
Checking him one last time, I got to my feet and threw myself at the door. I was usually an uncoordinated girl, and yet I could walk over the ice with all the elegance and grace of an Olympic skater. It couldn’t affect my balance, couldn’t chill me. It was almost as if it was still a part of me even though it had spread throughout the room to cover every space, corner, nook, and cranny.
I reached the door and yanked it open, getting ready to scream.
I stopped.
Not only was there no one in this abandoned corridor, but what was I thinking? That entire room was full of ice. There was still a burning, glowing sword on the ground, and even though the man was unconscious, his wrist was still blazing under the light of his magical mark.
These were all things a normal person could not see.
I stood there, frozen, immobilized.
Then that sense returned. I shoved a hand into my pocket, and I went to dial Megan – she’d given me her number on the same small square of paper that had contained a brief bio on John Lambert. Just as I pressed my phone to my ear, I realized I had no reception down here.
I screamed in anger, turning over my shoulder to check on the man once more. The ice had not grown up and encroached over his body again, but I could hardly leave him there.
Nor could I leave his weapon there.
Turning hard on my foot and skidding through the room once more, I lurched down and grabbed the sword up. As soon as my hand wrapped around the handle, I felt a twinge. A second later, that twinge turned into a full-on burning sensation.
I screamed, jerking my hand back as I dropped the sword. I stared down in horror as I caught sight of my palm. It was burnt, the skin blistered in places, a few droplets of crusty blood making it out of gaps in the scorched flesh and trickling down my palm.
The sword, rather than clattering by my feet, began to hiss like a broken steam pipe.
It remained, frozen in midair, jerking on the spot. As I took a terrified step back from it, it suddenly exploded. It did not, however, send burning shards of metal blasting through the room. Instead, it turned into a cloud of fine, gray dust. And that gray dust shot back to the man. Before I could become terrified that it would hurt him somehow, it disappeared back into the symbol on his wrist.
He convulsed but soon became still.
Warily, I crept over to him, pressing my fingers against his neck once more.
He was still alive, and if I was any judge, his breathing was calming. His skin wasn’t deathly white anymore, either.
If I was any guess – and, let’s face it, I wasn’t, considering I had all of two days experience in this magical world. Still, if I was any guess, he’d extended himself by creating that sword. And now it had disappeared back inside him, he was getting better.
Which meant he might just wake up soon.
I backed toward the door, but before I could run through it and try to rustle up some help, I stopped. “You have to restrain the criminal, idiot,” I chided myself as I reached a hand around and snapped the magical handcuffs out from the pocket of my jacket. The guard had given them to me before I’d left the armory.
Leaning down, carefully shifting the man until I could access both of his hands without hurting him, I snapped the handcuffs over his wrists. There was a resounding click, click.
I checked them, even though they were so solid they looked as if they could keep a frost giant in place.
Finally satisfied, I stood up, took a step back, then another, then turned.
I was woozy, dizzy, marching nausea climbing up my back and locking hard into my jaw. I’d lost a lot of blood, even though I couldn’t appreciate that. The wound to my shoulder was deep. I’d also used a lot of my nascent power.
That didn’t stop me from stumbling forward, eyes wide as they searched the darkened corridor for any sign of another person.
I brought my phone out and stared fixedly at the signal bar, waiting for it to change.
“Come on, come on, you bastard,” I begged as I reached the stairs and took to them. I had to lock one hand on the rail, lest I fall back. I was starting to become seriously woozy here.
Fighting against my nausea, I reached the top of the stairs. This level was somehow nicer than the actual nightclub. I’d noted that before, but I hadn’t paid that much attention considering the fact I’d been chasing down a murderer.
Now I frowned, pressing the back of my hand against my mouth as I winced against another surge of dizziness. Crumpling over, pressing a sweaty hand against the wall, I checked my phone once more.
It still had no signal.
Swearing, not daring to move my hand from the wall, lest I fall over, I pushed forward. My whole body was shaking now, bucking as a cold sensation began to press up through my limbs.
I might have felt completely warm in the ice-covered basement, but now it felt like I was freezing from the inside out.
The lighting down here was a little more reasonable than upstairs, but it was still dim. Even so, I could
make out the expensive Persian runner that divided the corridor. I could also tell that the doors dotted along the walls had little, expensive brass plates with place names carved into them like Paris, London, and Brussels.
I turned to the first door and knocked on it desperately.
No one answered.
I ran to the next door. No one answered.
I was starting to… shut down.
I suddenly noticed how badly my arm was bleeding. Clutching a hand to my injury, I shuddered as I saw how much blood came off on my fingers.
A new wave of nausea hit me, and I stumbled against the closest door.
That would be when it opened. Hard. I had no balance left and fell forward as the door opened inwards.
Before I could fall on my face, two strong hands locked on my shoulders.
Two strong, warm hands. Warm enough that they could momentarily cut through the cold marching through my limbs.
Sleepily, seconds from falling unconscious, I turned my gaze up and up and up. For the man who had caught me was no normal human.
“Lilly?” Franklin Saunders asked, voice quick with concern. His bright blue eyes darted from my ashen face to the bloodied rip in my leather jacket then down to my burnt, blistered hand.
I could hear voices behind Saunders.
“What’s going on?”
“Who is that?”
“I’ll be back,” was all he said. Then Franklin leaned forward and picked me up for the third time in several days.
It was such an effortless move. To him, I probably weighed nothing more than a breath of air.
“What happened?” he asked, voice low. And though it was low, it wasn’t hissed, wasn’t vibrating with that familiar anger.
Though I’d only known Franklin Saunders for two days now, he’d never simply talked to me. He’d berated me, sure. He’d shouted at me plenty of times. And god knows he’d grunted and growled.
But right now he actually sounded concerned.
“What are you doing here, Lilly? And what happened to you?” he asked once more, slowing his words down as he gently squeezed my shoulders with one hand, the other still hooked easily under my legs.
“What… am I doing?” I repeated, focusing on the question, trying to let it drag me back into consciousness. “Tracking… tracking the hitman.”
I felt him stiffen. “Here?”
“I… I was sent here… then….” Talking abruptly became too much for me. Despite the fact this was Franklin Saunders, and I hated him more than anything else in the entire world, I let my head loll against his appreciable chest.
He shook me gently. “Stay awake, Lilly. Where is your target?”
“The basement, he’s in the basement,” I suddenly answered with renewed vigor as a pulse of fear slammed hard into my gut. If there was one thing that could beckon me out of the waiting arms of unconsciousness, it was the fact I’d almost killed a guy. “You need to call the ambulance. You need to save him. I almost,” I choked, “I almost killed him. He might be dead now. Oh god. What have I done?”
I felt tears begin to streak down my cheeks. They were just as cold as the icy sensations still spreading through my heart.
Saunders suddenly stopped, turning hard on his shoe as I felt him incline his head the way I’d come. “You haven’t killed him,” he said softly.
“I almost froze him to death. He could have died of hypothermia,” I began.
“Lilly White, I would know if he were dead,” Franklin said simply. There was something so reassuring about his tone, so believable about his simple statement.
God knows I didn’t trust Franklin, but right now I hoped he wasn’t lying.
Though it would have been so easy to faint against his chest, I used what little strength I had left to drag my phone up. The dim light of its electronic screen was like a torch. It lit up my bloodied fingers as they clutched around the case.
But then I saw the signal bar and twitched wildly. I began to dial an ambulance.
“He won’t need one of those,” Franklin said, using that same simple, gentle, easy tone. The kind of tone that could lull you to sleep.
“I have to call them – he’s injured. Oh god, what have I done? I could have killed him.”
Franklin paused. I felt a strange tension shift through his muscles as he did. And that tension? It seemed important somehow.
“Did you act in anger or self-defense?” he asked plainly.
“I…” I trailed off as I remembered that flash of steel slicing toward my neck.
I shuddered.
“Self-defense, then,” Franklin came to his own conclusion.
“I still shouldn’t have…” I trailed off. My thoughts were becoming thick, heavy, and it took more and more effort to push them through my mind.
There was still one thought that could move me, though.
One terrifying thought.
I suddenly forced my eyes open and locked them on Franklin.
He stared at me.
“Am I going to pay for this crime?” I asked, voice trailing off and becoming weak.
Still staring down at me, he shook his head. “No, this is not your crime.”
With that, I really did start to shut down.
Everything became hazy. The last thing I saw were his eyes – those crystal clear eyes staring down at me. There was something so inviting about them. Inviting in the same way the cold had been when I’d opened up to my magic. It promised to make me more, so much more than I was now. But what did Franklin’s eyes really promise?
I would have to find out.
The Frozen Witch Book One Page 9