Frozen

by Meljean Brook

  “You’re all right?” he asked softly.

  Swallowing hard, I nodded. Despite that response, he remained there, watching me until I straightened up again. When he rose to his feet, the spear stood taller than his own considerable height.

  Now he intended to use that weapon.

  Heart racing, I looked through the portcullis. Orange streaked the darkening sky. The shadows between the trees had deepened and spread across the clearing. There was still enough light to see by, but night came quickly in the mountains. “Are you sure you’ll be okay out there?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation.

  “But he said you were weak.”

  “Not while I still have some control.”

  I glanced back at him. “Why wouldn’t you have control? Is that the curse he was talking about? What does it do?”

  Erik didn’t answer. Jaw tight, he stepped inside the house to push up the lever. The portcullis rattled and began to rise. “You’ll be safe in here. Lower this again as soon as I’m outside.”

  God. I looked out into the clearing again, and into the darkness of the trees beyond. Erik would be out there. Alone. “I have my gun. If you’re not going to tell me what the curse is, at least tell me how I can help.”

  “You’ll help by staying where I know you’re safe,” he said gruffly. “And when they’re dead, by getting as far away from me as you can.”

  Because he couldn’t stand to be near me. Because he might hurt me. Both were practical reasons to go. Both accounted for the aching knot in my throat.

  So did knowing that I could do nothing to help him.

  “All right.” I nodded and turned blindly toward the house. “Good luck out there, then. And be careful.”

  For a man who couldn’t wait to get rid of me, he wasn’t in a hurry to go. When I faced him again, my hand on the portcullis lever, he still stood in the same spot, watching me. Within the shadows of the gatehouse, his eyes glowed with that feverish blue light and his features were starkly drawn, as if by pain—or hunger.

  Frozen by that intense stare, I whispered, “Erik?”

  It was as if I’d hit him. His head snapped around, tearing his gaze from mine. “No,” he bit out, and I didn’t know if he was telling me or himself. But I didn’t get a chance to ask.

  Spear in hand, he strode out into the snow.

  * * *

  Where was he? My gaze searched the shadows between the trees again. The moon had risen with the setting of the sun and silvery light flooded the clearing in front of the house. Everything beyond the clearing lay in darkness.

  Almost an hour had passed without a sign of Erik, the Hounds, or the wolves. I’d gone into the house once, hoping to see something through the windows at the sides and rear of the fortress, but the narrow arrow slits on the first floor didn’t offer much visibility, and the increasing clouds were reducing the visibility even more. Though the tower rooms had a more expansive view, I couldn’t see any farther into the trees than I did from the gatehouse. So I’d returned outside and waited.

  Now I was considering going back into the house and searching for some clue that could tell me what the hell was going on. I’d tried to look up “moon hound” on my phone and stared stupidly at a blank browser screen for a few seconds before remembering I didn’t have service. One of the bedrooms upstairs had shelves stuffed full of books, though. I’d probably find something there. On the job, Erik fixed problems. If he was suffering from a curse, he’d have tried to fix that, too—which meant he must have researched it. Even if I couldn’t quickly find a real answer, simply reading the titles might offer a hint.

  But not yet. Movement at the edge of the clearing sent my heart leaping into my throat.

  Erik. Though I couldn’t see more than his silhouetted frame, his height and the breadth of his shoulders were unmistakable.

  Except…he’d said the Hounds might disguise themselves. That one might trick me into seeing Erik in his place. It seemed crazy, but so did blue skin. My pulse racing, I tugged off my right glove and slipped my hand into my bag. The pistol grip was cold against my palm.

  Before I could call out, his warning came across the clearing. “Don’t raise the gate.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Where’s your gun?” He was closer now.

  “I’ve got it here.”

  “You’re going to need it, Olivia. So take it out.”

  Suddenly alarmed, I did. “Why?”

  He reached the portcullis. The light spilling from the open front door revealed the bleak torment of his face. His hands wrapped around the bars like a man imprisoned, even though I was the one locked in. “Because you have to kill me.”

  My stomach lurched. Why would he say something like that? It had to be a joke…even though he looked deadly serious.

  But I couldn’t believe he meant it. “That’s really not funny.”

  “I know.” His hoarse agreement twisted the pain in my chest a little deeper. “But it’s the only way. Inside the house, you’ll be safe from the Hounds. You won’t be safe from me.”

  “Why? What will you do?” Frustration boiled through me when he only shook his head. “Then how do I know this isn’t a trick? That you’re not a Hound, trying to…I don’t know. Trick me.”

  Into killing him. That made even less sense than Erik asking me to shoot him.

  “Ask me something only you would know.”

  I’d already thought of the question I would use to verify his identity. “That night we went over the plans at the D&G offices, we went out to dinner when we were done. Where did we go?”

  “We didn’t go out.” His irises blazed a pale blue and his gaze fell to my lips. “We ordered in. Pizza.”

  I hadn’t wanted him to be right. But this was Erik. And he was telling me to kill him.

  There was no way. No fucking way.

  As if my face revealed exactly what I was thinking, Erik rasped, “You have to do it.”

  “No.” Pissed now, I stalked into the house.

  “Don’t you— God damn it, Olivia!”

  The iron lever shrieked when I shoved it up, raising the gate. My gun still in hand, I stepped outside again as it rattled upward.

  As soon as the spikes at the bottom cleared his chest, Erik ducked underneath and pushed past me. The lever screeched down. He joined me in the gatehouse again, so big in the narrow space between the portcullis and the door. “You have to do it.”

  “Why? What will you do?”

  “Nothing, if you listen to me. The Hounds are still out there. Even after you shoot me, the house will still protect you from them.” Calm acceptance had smoothed his expression, as if in his mind I’d agreed to kill him—and he was perfectly okay with that. “But you still have to be careful—”

  “I’m not murdering you, Erik.”

  “—because they’ll be pissed that I didn’t wait for them to do it,” Erik continued, talking right over me. “You have to shoot me between the eyes. Anywhere else will barely slow me down. Then leave my body out here. When the sheriff or someone else sees your Jeep on the road, they’ll come up the drive to find out what happened. The Hounds won’t risk exposing themselves then. So tell whoever comes that I attacked you—that I was the one who destroyed your rig. It’ll be self defense.”

  He had it all planned out. Not just resigned to this fate, but determined for me to kill him. Why did he think I could?

  Shaking my head, I dropped the gun into my bag. “This isn’t happening.”

  His appearance of calm cracked. Blue eyes paled to diamond. His lips drew back in a terrifying grimace, revealing those sharpened teeth. Instinctively I backed up until my shoulders pressed against the granite blocks of the gatehouse wall.

  He came after me. His palms slammed against stone on either side of my shoulders, caging me in. My insides quaking, I thought of the gun I’d just put in my bag. I wouldn’t use it. But, oh God, I wished that I still had it in my hand. Instead I stood with my fingers clenched, my body sh
aking.

  Looming over me, he bent his head to mine. “It has to happen, Olivia.”

  “Why? Explain to me why, Erik! And maybe I’ll do it.”

  That was a lie. I couldn’t. But if he would at least tell me what might happen, I could prepare for it.

  “You heard what the Hound said. That I’ll come through stone to get you. I will, Olivia. The curse doesn’t let me kill myself to stop it, so you have to. I thought that if I was away from you, if I didn’t know where you were, it would be all right. But I can feel you, like there’s a chain pulling me toward you, and it’s getting stronger. If you leave now, I’ll track you down. There’s nowhere to run. And when I find you, I’ll force— I’ll…” His voice faltered before hardening again. “I’ll hurt you, Olivia. So you have to do this.”

  His gaze burned into mine, pleading, and I tried to imagine myself doing as he’d asked, of simply aiming the gun and pulling the trigger.

  “I can’t,” I whispered. My heart constricted when his eyes closed and his head hung in defeat. “Not in cold blood. If you actually attack me, maybe. But not like this, not here—”

  His head shot up, his eyes blazing and razored teeth bared. He lunged at my neck. I screamed and flinched to the side. My hand dove into my bag at the same moment I realized what he’d done. I changed course and swung.

  My palm cracked across his cheek. “Don’t you dare try to scare me into it now!”

  Erik went rigid. Slowly, the corners of his mouth curved upward. “Olivia.”

  Just my name, but I heard the warmth in his tone. Great. He thought my response was commendable. As for me, I wondered if my refusal to shoot him was the stupidest choice I’d ever made.

  But there had to be other options.

  “Okay, look.” I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking in reaction and fear, but I was determined to approach this sensibly. “You said it was a curse. Can’t curses be broken?”

  “Yes,” he said, then dashed my hope. “This curse on my family will break during Ragnarök, when Odin’s son Víðarr destroys Loki’s son, Fenrir the Wolf.”

  A weak laugh escaped me. I didn’t know all of those names, but I knew some of them: Odin and Loki, both Norse gods…and Ragnarök. “During the end of the world?”

  He nodded, his gaze holding mine.

  Not a good option, then. “What about the curse itself? Someone had to cast it, right?”

  “The Witch of the Ironwood.”

  “Can’t she be reasoned with? Maybe someone in my mom’s family—”

  “She’s been dead for a thousand years.”

  Shit. “That’s inconvenient.”

  I bit my lip when a low laugh rumbled from him, suddenly aware that his arms still caged me in against the gatehouse wall. Despite the sharp teeth, the strange blue skin, and his enormous size, my fear of him was fading. Maybe that was stupid. But he was trying so hard to protect me, so willing to sacrifice his own life to avoid giving in to the curse, I couldn’t believe that he’d hurt me.

  Why would anyone force him to hurt me in the first place? “Why did she curse your family?”

  “We are Víðarr’s descendants,” he said. “And the witch was both Fenrir’s lover and mother to his son, the Moon Hound.”

  “And the brothers waiting to kill you are the descendants of the Moon Hound?” That kind of made sense. “So she cursed your family in revenge, because Víðarr killed Fenrir. Or will kill Fenrir, during the apocalypse.”

  Which, as far as I knew, hadn’t happened yet. And thinking about it further, now it didn’t make any sense at all. I shook my head.

  “Okay, wait. Why are they coming after you, then? None of that has happened yet.”

  “The eldest brothers don’t have any more choice than I do—but some aren’t compelled. They come to avenge the fallen ones. Our families just play out the same battle over and over again, and will until the final battle takes place.”

  The same battle? Erik had said that Víðarr won his. “Do the Hounds ever win?”

  “On the winter solstice, they can.” His answer stopped my heart. “When the curse is at its strongest. When we’re weak.”

  “Weak…? Because you’re overcome with the need to kill someone else?”

  “Not kill, but—” His eyes closed again. “It’s the same. We focus on getting to them. There’s nothing else. So the Hounds can take advantage of our distraction.”

  “So basically some innocent person is sacrificed so that a Hound has a chance of winning? That’s an awful thing to curse someone with.”

  A bleak smile was his only response. Cold seeped through me as I pondered the implications of it. The curse wasn’t just horrible for Erik, but for anyone caught near him…and the solstice came every year.

  “How many?” I had to know. Maybe I would shoot him. “How many people have you hurt? How many have you killed?”

  “None!” His expression darkened and a shudder ripped through him. Jaw clenching, he stilled his body again. “I swear to you, Olivia. None.”

  Confusion replaced my anger. “Then what makes this solstice different?”

  “Some of us never fall under the curse. I didn’t…until recently.”

  “Well, what changed? Can you change it back?”

  “No.” He shook his head and gave a humorless laugh. “No, I can’t.”

  “But something did change. Right?”

  “Yes.” His gaze fell to my mouth. “I kissed you.”

  Shock silenced me. I couldn’t breathe.

  “I shouldn’t have,” he continued roughly. “Walking away might have saved us both…but maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Maybe it was all over the second I met you, because you’d still be the same woman whether I kissed you or not.”

  “But…” I’d had this all wrong. “You aren’t coming after me because I’m near you? You’re after me specifically?”

  His answer was a slow nod.

  What difference did it make who I was? I grasped for a reason—and found one that seemed to make sense. “Because I have a witch’s blood?”

  For a long second, he regarded me in silence. I wished that I could read his face, but his thoughts remained hidden behind diamond eyes and a faint smile.

  “You have something, Olivia,” he finally said. “What power do you wield, then?”

  “None. I didn’t inherit anything from her.” Except for a deep practical streak and strong instincts that had already steered me in the wrong direction regarding Erik. “My mother says the abilities skip a generation. So my daughter will have it.”

  A fire lit behind his eyes. “And your sons?”

  I shook my head. “We only have girls in my family.”

  “We only have boys.” His smile widened when I laughed. “So this is why you’re not terrified, faced with me now. You’re no stranger to magic.”

  “A part of me is scared shitless,” I admitted, then wished I hadn’t when his smile vanished. “But you’re right: it’s easy for me to accept this craziness. It’s not so easy to accept that you can’t do anything to stop it.”

  “You can,” he said softly.

  By shooting him? “No. There has to be another option. You said this started when you kissed me. That was over a year ago. What were you doing during the last winter solstice?”

  “My father was here with me. He shattered my bones with an axe so that I couldn’t go after you. When I healed, he did it again.”

  I stared up at him in horror. “What?”

  “He refused to do it this year.” His jaw hardened. “I hoped that if I didn’t know where you were, you’d be safe, even if I destroyed myself trying to find you. But he sent you straight to me.”

  Gulbrandr had sent me here. There was only one reason I could imagine him doing something like that. “So if I kill you, I’m safe, right? But what happens if you kill me? Will you still be affected by the curse?”

  Erik’s tormented silence was my answer. Oh, God. My breath hitched.

  Suddenly fier
ce, he leaned in, his blue lips pulled back from sharp teeth. “I won’t hurt you. Because you’re going to shoot me first.”

  Reeling, I could only shake my head. Accepting magic was one thing. Knowing that John Gulbrandr had forced us into this situation was another. He’d sacrificed me to help his son. No wonder Erik had said that he’d kill his father—I was feeling pretty murderous toward Gulbrandr, too. There was no chance that I would continue working for him, not after this.

  This had turned out to be a really shitty detour. Now I had no job, and no way out of this.

  So why hadn’t my mother sent me running?

  “What about your dad, Erik? What about your mom? He must have kissed her.” I’d met her at the firm’s Christmas party only a few days before. A pediatrician with a warm smile, she’d spent the evening at John Gulbrandr’s side. I wouldn’t have said they appeared to be the most affectionate or loving couple, but I hadn’t noticed any tension between them. “She didn’t look like a woman who feared what her husband would do to her within a week.”

  Erik seemed to still. His icy gaze held mine. “It wasn’t the kiss. And my father has never been affected by the curse.”

  “Why? So is it the witch’s blood?” When he shook his head, I pressed further. “Does the curse always target a woman?”

  “Usually,” he said roughly.

  “And was your grandfather affected?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who did he focus on?”

  For a long second, I didn’t think he would answer. Then he said, “My grandmother.”

  “Did he hurt her?”

  “I don’t know,” Erik said. “She died before I was born.”

  Oh, Jesus. “Did your grandfather kill her?”

  If he had, I was taking Erik’s truck and getting the hell away from him. Screw the Hounds.

  But even as I thought it, I remembered what they’d had done to my Jeep. Erik had a nice rig with four-wheel drive, but I didn’t want to risk getting stuck in the driveway. I’d be a sitting duck. Better to stay at his fortress than ride away in a truck that the Hounds could rip apart. I’d rather take my chances with Erik, and pray that he could maintain control.

  “No,” he said. “My grandfather built this house to keep her safe from the Hounds on those nights. But a car wreck took her, instead.”