Kiss of Frost

by Jennifer Estep

Page 17

 

  Chapter 13

  It took my brain maybe half a second to realize what was going on. That, yes, there was an avalanche on the mountain, that the snow was crashing down on itself with tremendous, unstoppable force-and that it was getting closer and closer with every breath I took.

  I might not be the outdoorsy type, but I'd seen enough nature programs on television to realize I had two choices: stay where I was, get swept away by the avalanche, and die or make a run for the tree line and hope that the gnarled, knotty pines would shield me from the snow. Of course, the only problem with option number two was that the Fenrir wolf was waiting in the trees to rip me into bloody bits. Not much of a chance of me surviving either way, but the odds were slightly better with the wolf. People survived getting attacked by grizzly bears. A Fenrir wolf couldn't be much worse than that-right?

  I was going to find out.

  I picked up my feet and raced across the snow, running as fast as I could through the powder and heading straight for the tree line. The roar of the avalanche grew louder and louder until it drowned out everything else, even my own desperate, panicked breaths and the erratic thump-thump-thump of my heart. The air felt dense and heavy with snow, and I couldn't get enough oxygen into my lungs, but I kept running. I knew that if I stopped, even for a second, the avalanche would catch me and carry me away.

  And then there was the wolf. It paced back and forth inside the thicket of trees, looking at me and then up at the snow that was probably going to bury us both.

  I didn't have time to tiptoe around the creature or keep it from attacking me, so I threw myself into the trees and scrambled forward, trying to get into the very middle of the thicket. The wolf stayed where it was, watching me with its burning red eyes. They grew brighter and brighter as the snow rushed toward us and the landscape darkened.

  I plopped down on my ass in front of the thickest, strongest tree I saw, ripped off my silver ski jacket, wrapped it around my waist, and used the sleeves to tie myself to the trunk. Then I curled my arms and legs around the sturdy trunk, ignoring the sharp, sticky needles that scratched my face and the pinecones that snagged in my hair. I anchored myself to the tree as best I could.

  I was two feet away from the Fenrir wolf-wel within kil ing distance. Al it would have to do would be to lean forward and snap its jaws around my neck, and I'd be dead.

  Instead of leaping on top of me, the wolf watched me al the while, its pointed ears laid back flat against its enormous head. It had hunkered down in the snow just like I had. The wolf's mouth was open, and it was probably growling at me, although I couldn't hear it above the roar of the avalanche.

  "This is not my fault, so don't kil me, okay?" I yel ed to the creature, even though it was useless.

  The wolf's red, narrowed eyes were the last thing I saw before the snow hit me, and the world went white.

  Everything was just- violent. Roars and crashes and forces pul ing me every which way, threatening to rip my arms and legs from around the tree trunk, threatening to sweep me away and bury me deep, deep down in the snow where no one would ever, ever find me.

  I tightened my grip and held on.

  I couldn't see, and I could barely breathe. There was just noise and pressure and stinging slaps of snow. I don't know how long I huddled there, my face mashed against the rough bark, my whole body pressed against the trunk, my arms aching from the effort of hanging onto the pine tree.

  My lungs burned from trying to suck down enough oxygen to stay conscious, and ice crystals pricked my face like thousands of tiny daggers. Al the while, the snow slammed into me, a cold undertow trying to pul me down, down, down the mountain with it.

  And then it stopped.

  The roars, crashes, and forces slowed, sputtered, and then slid away al together. It had stopped-the avalanche had final y stopped.

  I opened my aching eyes, but the world was stil white.

  Why? Why would everything stil be white? My brain just did not want to work, and it took me a second to realize I was buried up to my neck in the snow, my face stil digging into the trunk of the tree I'd tied myself to. For a moment I panicked, wondering how I was going to get out of here-

  and how long it would take before I froze to death.

  I made myself think of my mom. She'd always told me to stop a second and take some deep breaths whenever I was panicked, scared, or upset. Yeah, I was definitely al of those things right now. But Mom had always said that no matter how bad things got, no matter how much trouble I was in, the worst thing to do was to panic on top of it. So I made myself focus on my memories of her and fixed the image of her face in my mind.

  Long, brown hair; warm violet eyes; a beautiful, wise smile. Mom.

  I kept on breathing and thinking about her. The panic didn't completely fade away, since I was in some pretty serious trouble here, but it wasn't overwhelming me now either. I could manage it now. Slowly, reluctantly, I let go of my mom's image and let her face fade from my mind, feeling the sharp ache of her loss once more. Then I opened my eyes and started to move my arms and legs.

  Everything was stil attached, even though I felt bruised, battered, and sore from head to toe.

  The jacket I'd used to tie myself to the tree was long gone, ripped away by the snow. So were my cel phone and the gloves that I'd put in my pockets. I don't know how I'd held on to the trunk for as long as I had. Maybe because I'd known I simply had to in order to survive.

  I clawed and pushed and heaved and pul ed my way out of the snowbank, wriggling away from the tree that had saved my life. It was twisted and bent now, the needles long gone and the branches sheared off into broken, spearlike pieces. Al the other pines in the thicket looked the same, like they'd al been scalped.

  Once I was free, I lay there in the snow, panting, just grateful I was stil alive. . . .

  A soft, almost whimpering sound whispered through the crushed trees.

  The wolf!

  I'd completely forgotten about it in the roaring confusion of the avalanche. My head snapped around, looking for the creature, waiting for it to leap out of a snowbank and claw me to death.

  I spotted it lying on its side about ten feet away from me

  -with blood on the snow al around it. I looked closer and realized that a long, jagged branch stuck out of one of the wolf's legs, like an arrow. The force of the avalanche must have thrown the monster against a tree and shoved the branch through its leg, although I didn't know how the snow hadn't carried the wolf away completely. I supposed that was just a monster for you-surviving no matter what.

  The wolf saw me staring at it and let out another low, pitiful, pain-fil ed whimper. It looked at me with its red, red eyes and twitched its injured leg in my direction, almost like it wanted me to somehow . . . help it.

  I bit my lip, wondering if this was some sort of trick.

  Despite Metis's lecture in myth-history class, I didn't know much about Fenrir wolves. Wel , okay, I knew this particular wolf would have kil ed me if the avalanche hadn't caught us both. That it had been ordered to kil me by its Reaper master.

  The smart thing to do would have been to crawl away from it as quick as I could, to get to my feet, stumble out of the crushed thicket, and hope there was someone on the way to rescue me. But I couldn't just leave the wolf here like that. Not al wounded, bloody, broken-looking, and crying like a puppy who'd just lost its mother. My mom would have tried to help it, even if it was a monster, even if it had been sent to kil her. That was just the kind of person she'd been

  -and it was the kind of person I wanted to be, too.

  "Nike," I whispered. "If you're watching me right now, I would real y, real y appreciate it if you would keep that thing from eating me. "

  There was no answer, of course. According to everything that Metis had told us in myth-history class, the gods rarely appeared to mortals-and even when they did, it was strictly on their terms.

/>   After the end of the Chaos War, the gods had made a pact not to interfere in mortal affairs, so they wouldn't destroy the world with their magic and meddling, and they stuck to the agreement for the most part, letting their Champions do their dirty work for them.

  But asking Nike for help made me feel a little better, even if I knew that she wouldn't magical y pop into view and solve al my problems.

  Crazy-what I was about to do was absolutely crazy.

  But I did it anyway.

  I drew in a breath and crawled across the snow to the Fenrir wolf. The creature watched me with its red eyes, although its gaze was now dark and dul with pain. I stopped about a foot away from it, looking at the wound.

  The branch wasn't al that big, but it had to hurt, stuck through the wolf's leg that like, just the way it had hurt when I'd accidental y rammed a needle through my finger while trying to sew a button on a shirt once.

  Hands shaking, I reached forward and grabbed hold of the branch. I didn't get much of a vibe off the broken piece

  -it was just wood, after al -but the wolf let out a low, warning growl. For a second, I thought it was going to reach up with its other paw and rip my throat open with its sharp, black claws. Instead, the creature put its head back down, burying its muzzle in the snow, and closed its eyes, bracing itself for what it knew I was going to do.

  "Here goes nothing," I muttered.

  I shoved the branch through the wolf's leg. It took al the strength and bravery I had to force the wood through the creature's muscle and out the other side, but I did it. Then I grabbed the bloody stick and threw it as far away as I could. The broken branch hit one of the flattened trees and fluttered to the snow.

  The Fenrir wolf let out a horrible, horrible howl, and before I could blink, I was on my back in the snow, with the monster on top of me, its paws as heavy as lead weights on my chest. I froze, staring up into its bloodred eyes. The wolf leaned closer, its breath hot, heavy, and sour on my face. I tensed, waiting for it to sink its teeth into me. . . .

  The wolf leaned forward and licked my cold cheek.

  Its tongue was wet, heavy, and as rough as sandpaper against my skin, but the wolf's touch was gentle enough. My psychometry kicked in the second it licked me, and I got a series of flashes off it, mostly of the avalanche and al the snow slamming into its body just like it had mine. But there was also a warmer, softer feeling in the mix, a sense that the wolf was actual y . . . grateful to me for getting the branch out of its leg. For helping it when I could have just crawled away and left it here alone and injured in the snow.

  The wolf stared down at me, paws stil on my chest, its shaggy tail thumping from side to side and spraying us both with snow. It seemed like . . . it expected me to do something. Maybe my mind was completely gone, because there was only one thing I could think of right now that might satisfy it. I reached up and awkwardly patted the side of its head, since that was al I could reach.

  "Nice puppy," I whispered, and passed out.

  Chapter 14

  "Gwen! Gwen Frost!"

  Someone shouting my name snapped me out of the blackness that I'd been drifting along in. I opened my eyes and realized that I was stil outside on my back in what was left of the crushed, snowy thicket.

  But I wasn't cold.

  Sometime while I'd been unconscious, the Fenrir wolf had lain down lengthwise next to me. It was longer than I was tal , and it had wrapped its thick, shaggy tail around my legs, like I was a cute, wayward puppy that it was cuddling with. I turned my head and almost bumped my nose into the wolf's. The creature blinked at me, like it had been asleep, too, then yawned, showing me each and every one of its sharp, pointed teeth. It could have seriously used a breath mint.

  Snuggling with a wolf? That was kind of weird. Al right, real y weird. But since the creature hadn't tried to, you know, eat me, I wasn't going to complain. Not one little bit.

  Still, I slowly scooted away from it. No point in tempting fate, the gods, or whatever crazy thing was at work here.

  "Gwen!" the shout came again. This time I realized it was a man's voice. "Can you hear me?"

  "Over here!" I shouted back, although my voice came out as more of a low, strained rasp. "I'm over here!" Silence. For a second I wondered if he'd even heard my hoarse cry, but then-

  "I heard her! She's alive!"

  Scuffles sounded, and through the pulverized pine trees, I spotted someone in a black jacket running toward me, sending up sprays of snow in every direction. I turned and looked back at the wolf.

  "I think you'd better go now," I said. "They wouldn't like you being here. "

  I don't know if the Fenrir wolf understood my words or not, but the creature rose to its feet. I noticed that its right ear had a bloody, jagged V in it, like a piece of it had been torn off during the avalanche. The creature leaned down and gently butted me with its head. I hesitated, then reached up and stroked its silky ear.

  My psychometry kicked in, and once again, the wolf's warm gratitude fil ed my mind. Maybe it was my imagination, but the wolf almost seemed to-to rumble with pleasure at me petting it.

  Yeah, that was kind of weird, too, especial y since I'd never thought of the wolf as anything but a mythological monster, a nightmare come to life.

  "Gwen!" the shout came again, closer and louder this time.

  The wolf let out another happy rumble, then loped off through the trees, heading away from the sound of the approaching voice. It limped a little on its injured leg, but it stil moved quicker than I could ever dream of.

  I put my head back down on the snow and tried to ignore the tremors that shook my body and the fact that my teeth clattered together like dried up bones. I'd just petted a Fenrir wolf-and lived. How twisted was that? Daphne would have probably thought it was wicked cool. I was just happy I'd survived.

  Without the wolf to help keep me warm, the cold quickly seeped into my body. I knew I should fight the icy numbness, but I just didn't have the strength. Not right now.