Frozen

by Meljean Brook

  “Erik.”

  Only a single strained whisper, but it got through to him. His eyes closed and although he didn’t move, I felt his withdrawal in the new tension that claimed his form.

  He didn’t look at me as he said, “I need to track down another Hound.”

  Because as soon as he did, we could risk leaving in his truck.

  Except that we couldn’t. Not with the blizzard raging. Erik might be able to clear the roads but the whole point of that escape was to draw out the final Hound so that I could drive on alone. Driving through this storm might be more dangerous than staying.

  But I wouldn’t raise any doubts about that plan now. It was the only one we had—and by the time the second Hound was dead, the storm might have blown over.

  Hoarsely he continued, “I won’t come back in until either the second Hound is dead or my control is slipping, because I can’t risk coming through the walls and giving them a way in.”

  Then he believed I might shoot him. My throat an aching knot, I only nodded.

  So this was it. The next time I saw him, we’d either be risking an escape from here and I’d be running as far away as I could, or we’d be forced to make a terrible decision—to shoot him or to risk taking a frost giant to my bed.

  And if it came to that, I didn’t think we’d make the same choice.

  Chapter Seven

  Erik should have fixed the insulation in his roof when he’d remodeled. Outside the south tower room window, enormous icicles hung from the eaves. Each one was six to seven feet long, several inches thick at the top and tapering to a dangerous point. I usually only saw these kind of icicles on cheaply-built houses and apartment buildings; I’d never have expected them in one of the Gulbrandrs’ homes. They were an indication that too much heat escaped the house through the roof, melting the snow piled on top. Now the hanging ice gave the impression of a cage bars. Not keeping me in. Keeping danger out.

  Somehow the icicles had survived the blasting wind…so far. The storm had continued through the night, whistling past the windows of the north tower room. I’d tossed uneasily in bed until the early hours, when exhaustion had finally knocked me out. It was almost noon when I’d woken.

  Outside, there was nothing but white. Although the blizzard didn’t seem as fierce now, the driving snow reduced visibility to about ten yards beyond the window. Every once in a while the wind subsided briefly and I caught a glimpse of the trees at the edge of the clearing.

  I didn’t catch any glimpses of Erik, though I’d spent most of my time at the windows searching for him, with worry a constant weight in my chest.

  We hadn’t lowered the portcullis this time. Instead Erik had filled the gatehouse with a huge block of ice that he could easily pass through, but the Hounds couldn’t. Erik hadn’t needed to explain why. If he lost control out there, he’d come through the ice instead of destroying the gate. He wanted to be certain that I could still keep the Hounds out after I’d shot him.

  I didn’t plan to. I’d rather shoot the Hounds if they came in after him. Of course, I didn’t know how I’d manage firing a gun if Erik was screwing me. Being banged by a frost giant could probably fuck up anyone’s aim.

  God, this was all so fucked up.

  I pressed my forehead against the freezing pane. My breath fogged the glass. Still no sign of Erik.

  Was he all right out there? Obviously he didn’t think the cold would hurt him—and neither would losing sleep and going without something to eat. But two Hounds who wanted to kill him were waiting out there somewhere, too.

  Why hadn’t we thought to establish a signal of some sort, just to verify that he was okay? Stupid. Then again, if the Hounds caught on to the signal, they might use it against us. Try to trick us again.

  I just had to be patient and calm. Easier said than done, and the solstice was still more than a full day away. This uncertainty was already driving me crazy, and I felt absolutely useless in here.

  So I needed to make myself useful. Only one way to do that—by combating uncertainty with knowledge.

  Shivering, I forced myself away from the window. Each tower room had its own fireplace—not as grand as the fireplace downstairs, but one that did the job just as well. I’d lit the fire in the north tower room before I’d fallen asleep last night, but the south tower room was still chilly. Erik’s room.

  My gaze shot to the oversized bed dominating the chamber. Bigger than king-sized, the mattress was huge. Made for a giant. The black walnut posts at each corner appeared hand carved. Not by Erik—the bed was too old—but maybe his grandfather. The old framed photograph propped on the nightstand was probably of him. Captured in fading color, a big, smiling man stood with his arm circling the waist of a dark-haired woman in a sundress, who held a toddler on her hip. The fortress sprawled behind them; this tower was visible in the upper corner.

  I studied the woman for a long moment. His grandfather had built this house for her, Erik had said, and his grandfather had also suffered from the curse. For at least a moment, however, neither appeared to be suffering. The photo had caught them looking into each other’s eyes instead of at the camera. A breeze had swept a curl across her forehead, and she seemed on the edge of a laugh, her expression bright and his adoring.

  The toddler—most likely Erik’s dad—was about eighteen months old. So she’d probably already been through at least a couple of solstices at that point. Maybe two or three, or even more. I didn’t know how long they’d been married before John Gulbrandr had been born.

  Despite everything Erik had told me about the curse, there was still too much that I didn’t know. And something else was nagging at me, too—and had been since my conversation with Erik over dinner. There’d been something, something that hadn’t made sense, and I’d meant to ask him about it…but then I’d been distracted and it had slipped away. I could remember needing to ask but couldn’t remember what the question was.

  But it was nagging at me again now, as if this picture of his grandparents had brought my mind back around to that question. I just couldn’t nail down what it had been.

  The books might help. I replaced the photo and began examining the titles. There were a lot of them. Floor-to-ceiling shelves filled two walls of Erik’s room. I didn’t know if his house in the city was the same, but it was easy to imagine him sitting up in bed at night with a book in his hand. Smart men didn’t get that way in a vacuum. I skimmed over biographies, histories—many of them related to our field—and a few paperback mysteries and thrillers that I’d read. His personal library looked a lot like mine, except more substantial.

  A section on Norse mythology took up four shelves. I didn’t know where to start. But I had nothing except time.

  I grabbed four books and headed back to the north tower room—the only heated chamber in the house. Shampoo in the connecting bathroom and a few items in the closet made me suspect that the room was usually his mother’s when she visited. I might end up having to borrow some of her clothes before this was—

  The woman who triggered the curse didn’t have to have witch’s blood.

  That was it. That was what I’d forgotten to ask about. Because I’d thought that was what Erik had told me in the gatehouse—that a witch or her offspring triggered the curse. But Erik’s mother wasn’t one, and he’d said that she might trigger the curse in his dad, too. She just hadn’t yet.

  So what really caused it? Did they even know?

  Rolling it around in my head, I settled into the loveseat facing the fire and piled the books onto the cushion beside me. I let them sit for a minute. The curse’s starting point wasn’t the only thing nagging at me.

  The curse itself just didn’t make sense.

  Who was most hurt by it? The woman. Yet supposedly the witch of the Ironwood had cursed the men in Erik’s family. So why weren’t they the ones being raped or tortured or torn apart?

  And it just wasn’t practical. If the point was to give the Hounds a chance to win on the solstice, the
n why were some of the frost giants exempt? Why didn’t the curse hit all of them? Yet it had never affected Erik’s dad. So either the rules of the curse changed as the years passed, or the rule was something I just hadn’t figured out yet.

  Except that whatever the rule was, it was stupid. Erik could have easily freed himself from the curse just by killing me. Not that he would. But unless the Gulbrandrs and their ancestors were the most innately decent men who ever lived, no way could I believe that some wouldn’t have taken the easy way out. When the Hounds showed up at their door, the frost giants would have ripped the woman’s head off to save themselves.

  Since Erik’s dad sent me here to be raped, I suspected that I could cross out ‘innately decent.’

  But even if the Hounds weren’t an issue, guilt and fear wouldn’t always be, either. Erik was tortured by the thought of what he might do. Not everyone would be. Hell, some human men used a short skirt as an excuse to force themselves on women. How easy would it be to shift blame and guilt when magic forced them to rape someone?

  So it all came back around to the same problem: the curse was far more likely to hurt the woman than any son of Odin’s son.

  Which meant that either I was still ignorant of some vital information regarding the curse, or the witch of the Ironwood was the most shortsighted and ineffectual witch ever. If I was ever going to curse someone, I’d make certain he couldn’t escape the suffering. I’d go straight for his balls.

  Or his heart.

  Something stilled inside me. Blindly I stared into the fireplace, not seeing the flames but imagining exactly how I’d aim a curse at a man’s heart. There were a few certain ways to do it—either hurt those he loved…or make him hurt those he loved.

  That would be a really, really vicious curse.

  God. I pushed my hands into my hair, pulling until my scalp hurt, trying to make my brain work harder. Was I really thinking this? But I couldn’t stop remembering that photo of Erik’s grandparents.

  There’d been love there. It had practically beamed out of their faces. And Erik said his grandfather had been broken when she’d died. But his grandfather hadn’t been the one to hurt her. She’d survived twenty solstices. Even though he’d been so big, and she’d been so small.

  His father and mother weren’t in love, though. And John Gulbrandr wasn’t affected by the curse.

  Erik was.

  My chest felt tight; I could hardly breathe. There was only one direction that all of this was leading, and my instincts were screaming that I was on the right track, but I couldn’t even bear to face the answer squarely. What if it was just hormones again—or wishful thinking? I’d been so wrong before.

  My heart wouldn’t survive being wrong again. Not about this.

  So I had to put it aside. The reason Erik was cursed didn’t matter. Not really. It didn’t change the effect it was having on Erik now, or that the solstice would be upon us tomorrow night. Sitting here, obsessing over a question that I couldn’t answer wouldn’t solve any of our problems.

  Maybe the books would.

  * * *

  What little I discovered about the Ironwood witch didn’t make her sound like a woman who’d create a weak or ineffectual curse. One book called her a giantess, another a troll. All of them mentioned her relationship with Loki, and that she’d borne a son, Fenrir the Wolf—the Hounds’ ancestor—but a few also claimed that she was mother to two more of Loki’s children: Hel, who ruled the hall of the dead, and Jörmungandr, an enormous serpent who surrounded the world in his coils and whose poison would kill Thor during Ragnarök. That was a witch with one hell of a legacy and bloodline.

  Unfortunately, knowing that didn’t help Erik and me now. Nor did anything else I found in the books. I kept my nose between the pages until dark, then heated up soup from the pantry and ate while reading more.

  But by the time I prepared for bed, I wasn’t even reading anymore. Instead I was just keeping my eyes busy, because otherwise I’d be standing at the window and staring out into the driving snow. Not a word from or a glimpse of Erik all day. I eventually fell into a fitful sleep and woke late the next morning.

  The day of the solstice brought rabid anxiety that chewed holes in my gut. Lying in bed, I mechanically turned pages and scanned words and didn’t have a clue what I read. I examined every woodcut and illustration as if the drawings might offer some magical hint of what was happening outside.

  At noon, I made myself get up and shower. My underwear was still drying over the towel rack and I didn’t want to put my jeans back on without them. None of the shirts in his mother’s closet fit comfortably, so I stole a blue sweater from Erik’s closet instead. On me, it was more like a sweater-dress. Wrapped in its warmth and wearing a thick pair of socks, I carried the books I’d read back to his room and began reshelving them. My gaze skimmed the remaining titles, but I didn’t feel like taking another back to the north tower room.

  There were no answers on these shelves. Nothing that could save us. If there had been, surely Erik would have already discovered it.

  God, and where was he? Was he all right?

  I moved to the window. Still snowing. The wind wasn’t so constant and terrible now, but came in gusts that twisted the falling snowflakes into wild flurries. A few of the enormous icicles had snapped off. Most still remained, like heavy spears of ice dangling from the eaves.

  Still no sign of him. No movement in the snow.

  Fighting despair, I forced myself back to the shelves. It didn’t matter if the books helped me understand the curse or frost giants. A distraction was the only way I’d get through the next hours. It was only afternoon and my stomach was already a sick, knotted ache.

  I just needed to know if Erik was okay.

  My eyes burned. Blindly I pulled a thick paperback novel from the nearest shelf. A thriller. Some killer was targeting women. Jesus, I didn’t care. The mystery would be solved and there would be a happy ending for everyone except the dead women, and there was no way I could focus on this when Erik was out there. Maybe a movie or—

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Had I heard something from downstairs? I wasn’t sure. Now there was only the gusting wind. Holding my breath, I listened.

  Over the thundering of my heart came a faint rattle. The portcullis.

  Sudden joy burst through the anxiety and I spun away from the shelves. That only meant one thing. Erik was back. Erik was—

  Here. In the room.

  Shock yanked me to a skidding halt. My socks slipped on the stone floor. He moved so fast, big hands catching me around the waist. Heat radiated off him. His t-shirt and jeans were soaked—not in blood this time, but melted snow. Pulse racing, I stared up into his face, trying to take everything in at once. Blue skin. The unmistakable ridge of his erection. The diamond glow in his intense, ravenous gaze.

  Oh, my God. My body instantly responded to that look, as if the heat of his skin sank through mine, warming my flesh.

  “Erik.” I only managed a strained whisper. “Did you kill a Hound?”

  The magic word. I was almost sorry for using it when he closed his eyes and let go of my waist—but he didn’t go far. He gripped the shelves beside my shoulders. Still surrounding me.

  Clutching the paperback to my chest, I didn’t move. Didn’t do anything that might be construed as running away.

  No matter how much a part of me wanted to.

  “I didn’t find them.” His voice was gravel and ice, his teeth sharp. “But I can’t risk staying outside now.”

  Because his control was thin. Because he might come through the walls to get me.

  My breath shuddering, I nodded. “You closed the portcullis, right? So the Hounds can’t get in?”

  A low growl rumbled through his chest and emerged as a single word. “Yes.”

  “And this is you? Not the Hounds tricking me? How do I know?”

  His gaze met mine again. Still diamond, still hot, but I must have been getting through to him. His n
eed to protect me and to reassure me was battling with his need to have me—and for now, protection was winning out.

  I didn’t know how long it would.

  “The Mueller Park project,” he said roughly. “It’s going to come in at almost twenty million over budget.”

  My relieved grin was ridiculously wide. “The taxpayers won’t be happy.”

  “The governor’s next opponent will.”

  I laughed, but it faded as his smile slowly tightened and new torment filled his eyes. Still battling himself. And judging by the thick spear of his cock behind denim, more than ready to fuck me.

  I should have been afraid. I knew that. He’d begged me to put a bullet in his head to prevent him from hurting me…but I simply couldn’t imagine that he would. I’d kicked him in the balls, and the worst he’d done was drop me. Even if he lost control now and screwed me against the bookshelf, I couldn’t imagine it being painful—and all at once, I could easily imagine loving every hard surge of his body into mine.

  Liquid warmth spread through me as I pictured it: my legs wrapped around his hips, his heavy muscles bunching under my fingers. Heat and ice.

  I must be insane. My gaze lifted to his.

  The skin across his cheekbones paled. White edged his lips. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said hoarsely.

  I couldn’t help it. “How should I look?”

  “Terrified.” His gaze dropped to my mouth. “Ready to run.”

  But I wasn’t. “Why do you think you’ll hurt me?”

  “God, Olivia. If you could see what is in my head, you wouldn’t have to ask that.” On either side of me, his carved biceps flexed; I heard the ice surrounding his hands crack. White-hot, his diamond gaze seared mine. “If you could feel how I need to be inside you. If you knew how I’d tear apart mountains to come after you. How I’d destroy anyone that stood in my way. All just to have you. Nothing is safe from me—especially you, if you’re under me. I won’t have control.”

  No control. Knowing that didn’t scare me as much as Erik probably imagined. His words made it impossible to think of anything but being under him, of losing control with him as he fucked me deep and hard. I forced myself to concentrate past the need pulsing through my body.