The Bite of Winter (International Monster Slayers Book 2)

by Bethany Helwig

  “I don’t know where else to go,” I say quietly and step outside.

  Hawk follows me like a silent shadow as I gather up all the used bandages and ruined jacket and carry them towards the house. I unlock the deadbolt with my key and let my brother inside. He stands in the dark for nearly half a minute before turning on his flashlight. I move around him through the living room and to the kitchen that I know by heart to dump the load in my arms into the rusted sink. No evidence should be left behind to be discovered. So, I grab one of the cabinet doors, rip it off its hinges, and start snapping it into pieces. Once I have enough kindling, I array the pieces in the sink around the dirty bandages.

  “Do we have a lighter in the car?” I ask.

  My brother nods and walks off only to return a minute later with one in hand. He passes it over and I work on getting the bandages to burn. After coaxing the flames to life, we watch our little fire burn in the pit of the sink. I soak up the warmth and hover over its radiant light, its cleansing flames.

  “You unlocked the front door,” Hawk says. A spark of life returns to his eyes. He hasn’t shutdown on me completely. “It didn’t have a lock before.”

  “I guess this is my little secret,” I murmur. “I couldn’t let this place go. I’ve been coming back for months. I put locks on the doors, swept up a little.”

  “Why?”

  I shrug. “I don’t really know. I guess . . . it’s the only bit we have left of Mom and Dad. I didn’t want it to rot.”

  He’s quiet again and the firelight reflects in his eyes.

  “I hate this house,” he whispers. “To me, it’s not where Mom and Dad lived or where they raised us. It’s a ruined monument to their deaths. It’s a reminder of the monster I’ve become.”

  “You’re not a monster.”

  “Yes, I am. Don’t tell me that I’m wrong.” He turns away and wanders into the living room with arms crossed over his chest and chin tucked down. Eventually he sits beneath the boarded up bay windows and watches the flames from a safe distance.

  A wall has been raised around him and I want to break it down. Shutting me out isn’t going to help either of us. I walk over and sit beside him. The flames in the sink lick up over the sides in a sporadic dance.

  “Talk to me,” I say and hold my hands in close to my chest for warmth.

  He leans his head back against the dusty boards. “I didn’t take the serum. I said I would but I didn’t.” He closes his eyes as if pained. “You have no idea what it feels like, Phoenix. When I took it as a kid at the beginning of all this, I felt like it was scooping out my insides and replacing them with acid. It was a constant pain and it ate away at me. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. And I knew it wouldn’t go away. They forced me to keep taking that serum and they never listened when I tried to tell them it hurt. No one seemed to have the same problem so they dismissed my complaints as a little boy wanting attention.”

  I’m biting my lower lip so hard I’m pretty sure I’m going to start bleeding. I remember parts of that—I remember he wouldn’t touch his food, kept to himself in his room, and never wanted to play. Our caretakers told me he was sad—probably depressed but I wouldn’t have known what that was as a child—and he would get over it soon. I was there the whole time but he never confided in me and never showed a trace of that pain.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper.

  “Because you’ve always been the strong one. I was a little kid. I didn’t want you to think I was weak like everyone else apparently did.”

  “And when we grew up? Why not then?”

  “By then it didn’t matter anymore. I wasn’t taking the serum so why bring it up? Even now I—” He heaves a sigh and runs a hand through his hair. “I still feel like I’m the culprit. I’m the reason the serum did what it did. It was my fault. I’m too much of a monster so instead of giving me peace of mind, it tried to destroy me. I didn’t want you to think the same of me.”

  I want to reach out and hug him but he might think I’m patronizing or pitying him. The words to comfort him don’t come. I never had the same gift for that as he does. I can’t mend wounds with pretty sentences. My way of caring has always been to act.

  “And this house reminds you of that?” I ask.

  He nods mutely.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought us here.”

  “I’d burn it to the ground if I could.” He fiddles with the strings of his sweatshirt.

  The gnawing ache in my chest becomes even more painful. My brother and I have almost always been on the same page about everything since we were kids. Now it’s like we’re on opposite sides of a divide. Hawk’s so ready and yearning to destroy the one place we have left of our parents but I desperately want to keep on stitching this house back together. I tilt my head and stare up at the decayed ceiling, the water damage stains and flaking bits of paint, the cobwebs and dust.

  This place is ugly. It’s revolting. Why am I trying so hard to hold on to this place? So what if I manage to fix the holes in the walls? Redo the paint? Patch the roof? Replace the floors? It’ll never matter how much effort and hard work I put into this house. I’ll never be able to fix the one thing I’m truly trying to repair.

  It’ll never be enough to bring back our parents.

  Time to be reckless. “Then let’s do it.”

  His head turns sharply towards me. “What?”

  “Let’s burn this piece of crap to the ground.”

  “But you—”

  “Anything that hurts you, hurts me,” I say firmly. “If this broken house makes you think you’re a monster, then I’m sending it off to high heaven in flames. And by rights it’s ours anyway. I’ll do whatever I want with it. There’s enough snow packed around the house to keep the fire here and the closest trees are too far away. It’ll be fine.”

  He considers me for a long moment. “And if someone sees us? We’ll be arrested for arson.”

  “Then we give ourselves a good head start before the cops and firefighters show up. Besides, it belongs to us. It’s ours to burn.” I get to my feet and hold out my hand. Without any hesitation, he takes it and I haul him up.

  Together we walk to our little sink fire and I break apart another cabinet door. I pass him one stick for a torch and we hold the ends in the flames until they catch fire.

  “Are you ready?” I ask.

  “I’ve been ready to do this for a long time,” he says darkly.

  I grab hold of the sink, wrench it onto its side, and let the burning debris spill across the floor. The rotten boards catch quickly and we move to the other side of the house to set fire to the peeling wallpaper and toss our sticks up the stairs to get the upper level going. Like shadows we slip out of the house and stand together next to the tire swing as the inside of the house glows brighter by the second, until flames lick through the windows and door. Minutes tick by and smoke rises above like a signal to the world. The old house, filled with memories forgotten and lost, turns into a blazing inferno of hot rage, purging the bloodstains and broken promises of a brighter future.

  Hawk holds my hand and we watch as our past goes up in a firestorm.

  * * *

  Jefferson gives us space when we finally return to the cabin. I hope he takes our vacant expressions as worry about the vampires or something. We both collapse in our bunks and I’m asleep almost instantly. I must be so exhausted, either from the day itself or the constant use of my magic, that my sleep is devoid of dreams. It’s one small mercy.

  When I wake I have a plan ready but it’s so hard to get out of bed. Grimacing against the pain in my neck, I slide down to the floor. Hawk is in bed but he’s not actually sleeping. He stares at the top bunk mindless again. I don’t disturb him but slip off to the bathroom to get ready. After I take a shower and put a new bandage on my neck, I creep out into the kitchen area. There’s a pot of coffee brewing and bread warming in the toaster. Jefferson’s bedroom door is open so I move to stand in the doorway.
/>   Jefferson looks up from where he sits on the edge of his mattress, a picture frame clutched in his hands. It’s the only photo I’ve ever seen of his daughter. She’s on a pink bike wearing overalls and her black hair flies behind her in a pair of long braids. I’d say she’s maybe seven in the picture. From what little Jefferson has told me, it was taken only a month before Moose Lake became a hot spot and his daughter vanished along with Dasc.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks gently.

  My hand automatically touches the bandage on my neck. “I’ll live.”

  He nods and his focus shifts back to the picture in his hands. Cautiously, I walk into the room and take a seat beside him. This is the first time he hasn’t told me to get out of his private space immediately. I wait for it but I think he might actually want company.

  “She’ll be twenty-one now,” he continues in that gentle voice I rarely hear him use. It makes my chest ache. “I got that bike for her birthday that year. She loved that thing. Rode it round and round. Almost ran over a cat, silly girl.”

  He smiles faintly, sniffs once, and then runs a hand over his mouth.

  “I’ve missed fourteen years of her life, Phoenix. Fourteen years during which only God knows what that monster did to her. She won’t be my little girl anymore. She won’t even know who I am.”

  I wrap my hand around his and we just sit there staring at the memory of who Jefferson’s daughter used to be. Genna Barnes. The clock ticks out the slow, painful seconds.

  “We’re going to make things right,” is all I can say.

  “When we find her,” he says and faces me, “I hope she’s someone like you.”

  My lower lip trembles and I swallow a few times. Jefferson isn’t just my mentor anymore. He’s not just my comrade. He’s family. And I don’t deserve him. I think of that unmarked grave in the woods, of the way I lied to Jefferson when we got home, of the smoldering ruin of my parents’ house.

  I hope Genna Barnes isn’t like me at all.

  I slip my hand out of Jefferson’s and rise. In unison we clear our throats and avert our eyes. I guess neither of us are good at this part.

  “Hawk and I better get to school,” I say.

  “You can take the day off. Heck, take three. You have my permission after the mess you went through yesterday.”

  I let a faint smile touch my lips. “A little normalcy will be good for me.”

  “Only if you’re sure and you take it easy. There’s a bit of breakfast for you in the kitchen.”

  “Thanks, Jefferson. For everything.”

  I move out to rouse Hawk and eat the toast waiting for me. It takes visible effort for Hawk to offer Jefferson a normal “good morning.” I keep him moving and we climb into the SUV.

  “I don’t know if I can do this today,” Hawk says from the passenger seat.

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing we’re not really going to school.” I turn the wheel as we reach the intersection into town and head in the opposite direction from the route we usually take.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “To get answers.”

  We go up the main road before making a left onto a one-way street and stop in the parking lot for the Moose Lake Public Library. When I try the glass doors to the building I find they’re locked and see a note listing the business hours. It’ll be another hour before it’s open.

  “Come on,” I say and usher my brother over to Java Jitters up the block. After ordering a pair of espressos, we sit in silence at a small table tucked in the corner by the windows. For a whole hour, I contemplate everything that happened the day before with the vampires and Hawk. I’ve been so caught up with everything around me that I’ve hardly had time to give my own blood much consideration. I’ve been through enough life changing experiences lately that maybe what power is in me has enhanced or matured. I need it to. I need it so desperately.

  The second I see a pair of women through the window unlocking the doors to the library, I hop out of my seat and beckon my brother along. Hawk gives me a long sideways look as if I’m crazy but keeps quiet. He follows me out of the café, across the street, and into the library. I walk straight up to the front counter without preamble. We’ve wasted enough time. I came here twice before with Jefferson and the same stick-thin librarian waits on us at the desk. Her mousy hair is pulled back into a pristine bun and everything about her face is sharp—cheekbones, nose, eyes, chin.

  “I’m looking for the first edition of Apollodorus,” I say. I’m glad I’m able to remember the title of the book for Jefferson’s dead drop to communicate with his hidden “expert.”

  The woman’s razor eyes narrow as if testing me, but then she takes long elegant strides into the backroom.

  Hawk hovers at my ear and says under his breath, “Okay, so what’s going on?”

  “I’ll show you in a second.”

  The librarian reappears without making a sound and slides Apollodorus across the counter. Its brown leather cover almost sticks to the glossy countertop when I pick it up and the yellowed pages crinkle as I shrug it into the crook of my elbow.

  “Thanks,” I say and steer Hawk towards a computer cubicle out of sight from a couple of newcomers walking in. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one is watching us, I flip open the book to reveal the hole cut out in the center of the pages. I grab a piece of scrap paper lying nearby and a pencil to hastily write a note.

  “What on earth?” Hawk breathes and runs his hands along the false book.

  “This is how Jefferson sent my blood to his expert,” I whisper and keep writing. “I think it’s about time we met this expert, don’t you?”

  “How do we know they’ll even respond to us?”

  I finish my note stating in urgent terms that we have to meet immediately as a matter of life or death. I close the book and meet Hawk’s uncertain gaze.

  “We don’t have any other options,” I say and return to the counter.

  The librarian tugs the book from me with a scowl and returns it to the backroom. Before she returns, we quickly exit and go sit in the SUV. Instead of pulling away, I lie in wait at an angle so I can see if anyone goes up to the counter to ask for Apollodorus. I have no idea how this expert is even supposed to know when there’s a message waiting or if they check it at regular intervals like clockwork. I’m determined to sit here and find out. I’m sick of waiting for my blood to incubate or whatever the crap they want to call it. I need that cure yesterday.

  “You never told me what happened the other day with your vampire lead,” Hawk says and sounds guilty. “I was a little preoccupied with . . . you know . . .”

  I keep my focus on the counter. A man is waiting at the front with a stack of books to check out but the librarian isn’t back yet. “Yeah, I know.”

  “You got hurt.”

  “Yeah, psycho vampires will do that to a person.” I give him the short version of my interrogations with the shapeshifters and Dasc, then the battle in La Crosse. I consider leaving out the bit about owing Dasc a life debt but then think better of it. We aren’t keeping secrets anymore and I don’t want to start that up again.

  The guy at the counter looks furious there’s no one to check out his books and a line forms behind him. A younger girl moves up to man the counter but the main librarian still hasn’t come back.

  “As if things weren’t bad enough,” Hawk mutters. “Why can’t these monsters go live in Antarctica and not bother anyone?”

  “That can be our plan B,” I say. “Ship everyone to Antartica if this blows up in our faces.”

  “Us or them?”

  I shrug. “Maybe Australia instead. Isn’t that what people used to do?”

  He laughs under his breath and it’s a good sound. I had been afraid he’d never laugh again after the way he looked last night.

  I catch movement in the corner of my eye and spin around in my seat as the rear passenger door opens. Hawk jerks back and without warning the librarian that helped us earlier
slides into the seat and shuts the door behind her.

  “Well, you two aren’t exactly stealthy,” she says and gives us a sharp, appraising once over. “You make your business sound so dire and then you squat in the parking lot. Don’t you realize you’re blocking other people from parking here to get their library books?”

  Her tone is indignant and I’m completely baffled. My mouth opens and closes a few times but I’m drawing a blank.

  Hawk manages to speak up for the pair of us. “What—I—I’m sorry, who are you?”

  She heaves a sigh and smooths out her pencil skirt. “I certainly hope you can at least remember a face you saw only a couple of minutes ago.”

  “I know who you’re supposed to be,” he says. “What are you doing in here?”

  “You said it was urgent,” she says like it’s so blatantly obvious. “I’m taking you to your expert. So, are we going to waste more time or are we going to get moving? Phoenix, dear, you really shouldn’t leave your mouth hanging open like that. A pixie might rip out your tongue.”

  I close my mouth but still can’t get my brain to function. The librarian makes a little circle motion with her forefinger indicating I ought to turn around in my seat and get us out of here. Hawk is wide-eyed and shrugs. This is what we wanted, isn’t it?

  Allowing myself to be bossed around by a stranger, I rev the engine and pull out of the lot.

  “Where am I going?” I ask and watch her in the rearview mirror.

  “Eyes on the road, Phoenix.” She clucks like a hen. “Make for I-35 if you’d please.”

  “North or south?”

  “South. Go on, now. Traffic is waiting for you.”

  I share an annoyed frown with Hawk and pull out onto the one-way street. The librarian is quiet only for a short while as I navigate to the interstate. We merge with the traffic going south and when I ask for the next set of directions, she waves her hand at me.

  “I’ll notify you when the turn approaches,” she says dismissively. “I certainly hope you slept well enough last night to keep sharp while driving. It was quite an eventful evening for our fiery redheads, wasn’t it? Burning down your parents’ home was quite the statement.”