Helpless (Blue Fire Saga)

by Scott Prussing

  Maier would not be pleased with their actions, Jarubu was certain of that. But how far would the old chieftain take his anger?—that was the question Jarubu had been chewing on as they drew closer to home. He decided to err on the side of caution, but it was important his followers detected no sign of worry in him.

  He called his band to a halt when they were still a few miles from their lair. His fellows gathered around him in a small half-circle.

  “I think it best we do not all return together,” he told them. “If Maier is angry at anyone, it will be me. There is no need for the rest of you to suffer his anger by being caught too close to me.”

  The others looked at him inquiringly, wondering what he was proposing.

  “I will remain behind for a bit, together with Conley, Alexi and Melissa.” He beckoned those three forward, and they fell into place behind him.

  “The rest of you will return together,” Jarubu continued. “My absence should deflect much of Maier’s anger from you. If he punishes you at all, it will be slight. Tell him I remained behind because I feared his wrath. You can even tell him where we are, if you think it will help you curry his favor. I will not consider your doing so to be any kind of betrayal of me.”

  Jarubu saw the expressions of relief on the faces of some of his younger followers. They feared him, but they feared Maier more. They were glad to be separated from him now, to have their punishment separated from his as well. They believed what he was telling them. He forced down a smile. If only they knew.

  “Go now,” he told them. “We will wait here for an hour and then we will return as well.”

  As soon as the younger vampires loped off into the trees, Jarubu motioned for his remaining companions to follow him. They raced off at vampire speed, heading on a slight angle to the path taken by the others and circling around to the north of the mining camp, where a high ridge looked down on the abandoned buildings and the entrance to the mine shaft. They arrived well before the others and settled down far back into the trees, out of the sight and smell of any vampires below.

  Jarubu peered down between the pines. The only vampire he could see was Maier. The chieftain stood just outside the mine entrance, his sculpted face serene, his uncovered arms folded across his broad chest. Pale moonlight glinted off his long silver hair, which hung loose halfway down his back. Jarubu wished he could see inside Maier’s mind as clearly.

  A few minutes later, Jarubu’s erstwhile companions entered the valley from the south. They walked slowly, approaching Maier with obvious trepidation. The vampire chieftain stood still as a statue as they moved closer. When the returning vampires were fifty feet away, Maier raised his right hand over his head. What looked like a signal for the new arrivals to halt turned out to be a sign to other members of the coven, who emerged from hiding places in the old buildings and quickly surrounded their fellows, grabbing their arms and herding them forward.

  One of the youngest dared to fight back, baring his fangs and lunging toward his captor. The foolish youth was immediately set upon by three vampires, who grabbed him roughly and dragged him over to where Maier waited. Jarubu watched as his chieftain put his hands on either side of the young vampire’s head and leaned forward, as if about to whisper some piece of fatherly advice. Suddenly, Maier wrenched his hands in a twisting motion and ripped his captive’s head completely off his body. Jarubu grimaced as Maier hurled the head to the side as if it were nothing more than a piece of garbage. The vampire chieftain was clearly not in a forgiving mood.

  Jarubu knew it wouldn’t be long before Maier turned his attention to finding the rest of the wayward vampires. Jarubu crooked his head at his fellows—still wide-eyed from the horror they had just witnessed—signaling them to melt farther back into the trees. They crept away as silently as if they were hunting prey, little more than ghosts in the night. When he judged they were far enough from the camp, he led them racing off to the northeast, wanting to put as much distance between themselves and the camp as they could before any pursuit began.

  4. A FRIGHTENING VISION

  By the time the snow stopped falling on Monday morning more than two feet of the stuff blanketed the Weston campus. Classes were cancelled for the day and the entire region was at a standstill. The governor had declared a state of emergency, closed all the schools in the state, and urged the public to stay home and off the roads, most of which were impassible by anything short of four wheel drive vehicles with snow tires. Even those risked becoming stuck in the five and six foot drifts which seemed to be everywhere. Many areas of the state were without power, as snow laden tree limbs broke off and fell onto the electrical lines, snapping them. Luckily, the campus had been spared any power outages.

  The cook for Leesa’s dining hall had been unable to make it to work, despite living barely a mile from campus, so Leesa and her friends had gathered downstairs for a breakfast of toast, cold cereal and hot chocolate heated in the microwave. Leesa thought if the cook had been really dedicated, he could have hiked in to work with snowshoes or something, but she certainly didn’t expect that kind of dedication from a low paid college employee. Besides, she didn’t begrudge him the chance to take an extra day off from work—she was certainly happy enough to have the day off from classes. Anyhow, she liked cereal, and they didn’t need a cook to whip up hot chocolate.

  “We’re going to build the biggest, baddest snowman ever this morning,” Cali declared. “We’ll make it so big we’ll need a freakin’ crane just to get the head up on top of it.”

  “Ha!” Leesa said, pausing with a spoonful of cereal halfway to her mouth. “And just where are we going to get that crane?”

  Cali slapped playfully at Leesa’s shoulder, spilling cereal and milk onto the table. “Don’t be a spoil sport. You know what I mean.”

  “Did any of you happen to take a look outside at our snowman from yesterday?” Caitlin asked.

  None of them had, so they crowded together at the window and searched the courtyard for any sign of their snowman. Leesa saw a small lump in the snow where she thought the snowman should be, but that was it. The storm had completely buried it.

  “Wow!” Stacie said. “That’s amazing.”

  “It reminds me of this Ozmandias poem we had to read in high school,” Leesa said. “About this giant statue that lies crumbled and buried in the sand. Apart from a few ruined pieces, all that’s left are some words about how everyone should admire the mighty statue and the ruler who had it built.”

  “Wow, that’s really heavy, Lees,” Cali said, a serious look on her face that lasted just a few seconds before breaking into a wide grin.

  Leesa shook her head in mock resignation. “I should know better than to try to give you any culture.”

  Both girls laughed, and then Cali drained the last of her hot chocolate and put her empty mug back down onto the table with an exaggerated thump.

  “Who’s ready to venture out into the arctic wasteland?” she asked, smiling.

  “Not dressed like this,” Katie said, fingering the sleeve of her red Weston sweatshirt.

  Cali rolled her eyes in faux frustration. “Duh,” she said. “After we go upstairs and change, of course.”

  Leesa laughed. “With you, we’re never quite sure, Cali.”

  “Ha, ha. I know, right?” Cali said. “How about we all meet back down here in fifteen minutes?”

  Everyone nodded, so they took their dishes into the kitchen and then headed upstairs.

  Back in her room, Leesa pawed through her closet, looking for her loosest pair of pants to wear over her jeans for playing in the snow. The cargo pants she’d worn yesterday were still damp, so she settled on a pair of khakis. While the material wasn’t as thick as the cargoes, she thought the two layers should still be enough to keep her legs warm and dry. She decided a T-shirt, sweatshirt and her parka would be enough for her upper body.

  As she pulled the khakis up over her jeans, her thoughts turned to the two men in her life, Rave and Dominic. It was nice
not to have to worry about Rave at all because of the cold and snow, but she did wonder what he was doing and when she would see him next. All the time that she’d been hoping and praying for snow, she hadn’t thought about what the snow would mean as far as being able to get together with him. She didn’t know how long it would keep him away, but decided if he hadn’t come to see her by next weekend, she would try to borrow a car and drive to him instead. She hoped he was making use of their forced separation to put in some extra practice on that Rammugul thing.

  Dominic was a different matter. He was somewhere nearby, she knew, and she was sure he would be coming by to work with her sometime today. She wondered where the wizard had slept last night. She’d offered to let him stay in her room, but he declined, saying that except for when he was training her, it was safer if he remained apart from her because of the enemies searching for him.

  Part of her thought Dominic might be exaggerating the danger. After all, hadn’t he been successfully eluding his pursuers for more than a hundred years? The chances they might stumble across him now while he was with her were remote—as long as he didn’t use any of his active magic, of course.

  She wondered what they were going to do when it finally became time to begin training with active magic. Dominic said it should be safe for her to use in small doses, because the grafhym taint in her blood had somehow altered her vibrations and also because she was female. There had never been a female waziri—that fact alone should have altered her vibrations. Still, she thought her training would require at least some demonstration of his magic, and that would be a beacon to his enemies. She had no idea how Dominic planned to handle that.

  It wasn’t anything she needed to worry about right now, though. She still had weeks, if not months, of the preliminary training she should have received before she turned eighteen. There was also her training in passive magic—the kind Dominic said their enemies could not detect, even from him. He would be able to demonstrate the passive stuff as much as necessary. She smiled, remembering that eventually the passive magic would make her less susceptible to the weather—she’d be able to say good-bye to doubling up on her pants.

  Finished dressing, all that was left was to settle on a pair of boots. She decided to go with a pair of knee high black leathers, the tallest boots she owned. Even they would not be tall enough for the depth of the snow outside, but they were the best she had. She rolled her khakis up above her knees and pulled the boots on, tucking her jeans inside them. Once she got the jeans comfortably smooth inside the boots, she rolled the khakis down over the tops. She grabbed her parka, cap and gloves and headed downstairs to meet her friends.

  Stacie and Caitlin were already there. They both looked pretty much the same as yesterday—jeans, parkas and caps. Both wore taller boots today, and the only other change Leesa could see was that Stacie had woven her hair into a long tight braid instead of a ponytail. Leesa wondered if either of the other girls had doubled up on pants, or if maybe one or both owned long ski underwear. She didn’t want to mark herself as a California wimp by asking, so she remained silent.

  Cali bounced into the room a moment later, her wolf cap once again perched atop her head.

  “Everybody ready to do some snow?” she asked, an excited smile on her face.

  “You bet,” Leesa replied. “I can’t wait.”

  They all slipped into their coats and gloves, pulled their caps down on their heads, and headed out the door.

  Outside, Leesa didn’t feel nearly as cold as yesterday. The wind that had blustered out of the northeast with the storm had all but died, taking much of the chill with it. Gray clouds still masked the sky, but they were lighter in both color and weight than those that had dropped the snow. Few people were out yet, and with no traffic noise at all, the day was almost preternaturally quiet.

  The walkway outside the dorm had not yet been shoveled, forcing Leesa and her friends to push their way through the thigh high snow, moving with a series of slow, awkward steps that brought their knees up to their waists before they could set their feet down just a few inches ahead of the previous step. Cali quickly gave up her place in the front to the stouter, longer legged Caitlin.

  By the time they made it part way out into the courtyard, they were all breathing heavily. Puffs of white steam floated out from their mouths as they struggled to catch their breath. Leesa playfully collapsed on her back into the snow, which gave way beneath her for about a foot until the compacted snow finally supported her weight. She felt like she was lying in an open-faced cocoon. She had no idea how they were going to manage to build a snowman with the snow so deep. Maybe her more experienced friends would know.

  Getting back up onto her feet proved difficult—when she pushed down with her hands to get some leverage, they just sank deeper into the snow. Finally, after much twisting and turning and pushing, she managed to hoist herself back up. She brushed the snow off her parka and looked at her friends. All three had big grins on their faces. Leesa smiled back. She imagined she’d probably looked pretty funny trying to get up.

  “I wish I had video of that,” Cali said. “I can see it on YouTube now—California girl drowning in the snow.”

  They all laughed, Leesa included. For a moment there, she had felt almost like she was drowning—or was about to, anyway.

  “Since you’re so smart,” Leesa said when she finally stopped laughing, “maybe you can explain just how we’re supposed to roll snowballs in snow this deep to build a snowman.”

  Cali swung her head from side to side, eyeing all the snow. The task did seem to be pretty impossible. There was simply too much of the stuff.

  “I have an idea,” Stacie said. “We can use the snow that’s already here for the base of our snowman.”

  Her friends all looked at her with confused expressions on their faces, unsure what she meant. Cali voiced their confusion.

  “Um, exactly what do you mean, Stacie? Use the snow that’s already here? What other snow would we use?”

  “Use it how?” Caitlin added.

  An image popped into Leesa’s head. She was pretty sure she knew what Stacie meant.

  “Do you mean dig out some space around a big hunk of snow and use that as the bottom part?” she asked.

  “Exactly. Sort of like excavating the base of a buried statue—like that Ozmandias thing you mentioned yesterday.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Cali said. She flashed a wide grin. “I knew there was a reason we kept you around, Stacie.”

  “And why do we keep you around?” Caitlin asked, smiling.

  Cali ostentatiously flipped one of the wolf ears on her cap. “Why, for my style, dahling,” she said. “For my style.”

  Once again, they all joined in a round of giggling laughter.

  “Okay, let’s get going on that snowman,” Cali said when they all stopped laughing.

  They formed a square about four feet across, facing each other, and began scooping snow with both hands and tossing it out in front of them. The snow was wet and heavy, but the moisture made it stick together nicely when they scooped it. Before long, Leesa was beginning to work up a sweat beneath her clothes, so she slowed her pace. It wasn’t a race, she reminded herself. The idea was to have fun, not wear herself out before they had barely gotten started.

  Ten minutes of digging by the four girls produced a narrow trench surrounding a pile of snow more than four feet high. They packed the snow down with their gloved hands, shaping it into a big ball as they did so.

  “So far, so good,” Cali said.

  “What’s next?” Leesa asked. “We still can’t roll any balls to make the upper sections.”

  “Let’s do the same thing again, only smaller,” Stacie said. “If we pack it tight enough, the four of us should be able to lift it up onto this one.”

  “You should be a freakin’ architect,” Cali said grinning.

  They repeated the process on a smaller section, packing it even tighter and then chopping off the corners fir
st with their feet and then with their hands until they had rough ball of snow almost two feet across. Together, they were able to hoist it high enough to place it atop the base. Its weight and the stickiness of the snow kept it firmly in place.

  “We’re really cooking now!” Cali said as they all admired their handiwork.

  Leesa was ecstatic. She could see they were going to have a pretty giant snowman after all. They had just one more ball to make, the smallest and simplest yet, to serve as the head.

  They set to work. There was really only room for three of them to make this smallest ball, so Caitlin backed away and let her friends do their thing.

  When they were finished, they had formed a tightly packed ball of snow about the size of a basketball. Leesa and Caitlin hoisted it up into place. Except for some minor shaping and adding the decorations, the snowman was done!

  Leesa stepped back and admired their creation. It was taller than any of them—at least six feet tall—with a big, bulging lower section. Just the way a snowman should look, she thought—big and fat. All their digging had created a small clearing around the snowman, making it stand out even better in the courtyard full of such deep snow. She couldn’t wait until they finished decorating it. She liked it so much she decided she would even donate one of her scarves to wrap around its neck.

  Without warning, her vision began to grow dim. The snowman faded away, replaced by a swirling gray mist. Leesa blinked her eyes, trying to get rid of the fog and bring the snowman back into focus, but it didn’t work. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut but the mist remained, continuing to dance in whirling patterns. She understood now it was not her eyesight playing tricks on her—she was experiencing one of her visions, the first she’d ever had while she was awake.

  Slowly, the mist began to coalesce, forming an outline very similar in shape to the snowman. It was not the snowman, though. It was a man—an enormous man with a huge bulbous belly and a round, hairless head. As the details continued to come into focus, Leesa could see that his skin was almost white. Not the clean, beautiful white of the snow—no, this was a milky, deathly white.