“I’m going to drop in a little higher up,” Nicola said. “I’ll meet you at the Midstation chair. We passed it on our last run, remember?”
“Got it.”
Eager to prove to myself that I could do better than the previous attempt, I buckled my bindings as quickly as possible. I was up and off before Nicola, using her tips to pivot from heel to toe and back again to carve out what I hoped was an impressive series of sweeping arcs. I know, I know; I was trying to impress a teenager who’d grown up on the mountain. Nobody’s perfect, okay? I’ve got an ego like anyone else, and I was doing a pretty decent job of stoking it until Nicola shot past me with little effort.
But that wasn’t what made me stand upright so abruptly I nearly face-planted. I felt the malicious surge of energy before I saw it forming behind Nicola.
“Nicola!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Wait!”
The formerly blue sky was obliterated in an instant. Ice pellets flew from dark clouds with violent force, stinging my lips and cheeks below my goggles. The wind gusted so hard it nearly knocked me flat on my ass. Only a subconscious burst of kinetic energy saved me from being driven back into the snow. I tucked into the smallest shape I could manage, risking disaster by pointing my board straight downhill like Nicola had when she’d zoomed past me.
Seemingly unaware of the dramatic shift in weather, Nicola stood perched on the edge of an even steeper route than she’d taken last time. Jacket fluttering in the buffeting winds, she adjusted her goggles and surveyed the landing zone below her. I yelled again while I closed the distance between us, but the wind snatched the words right out of my mouth. The only hope I had of saving Nicola from whatever was building around us was to get to her before she dropped over that lip. If she got away from me, I’d have no way of protecting her from whatever was about to happen.
The direction of the wind shifted drastically, suddenly blasting me from behind instead of trying to push me backwards. I kicked my back heel out as hard as I could, putting myself into a skid that had me sliding on my ass while my snowboard juddered and bounced across the hard-packed and windswept surface snow on the ridge. The friction of my body should have been enough to slow me down, but instead, I was actually picking up speed. I could only watch in horror as I slid right into Nicola, knocking her legs out from under her as we both went sailing off the edge.
Chapter Seven
What followed made my first tumble of the day a relaxing massage by comparison. The snow in the landing zone was deep and soft, but that didn’t save my stomach from landing across the edge of Nicola’s snowboard. I heard a muffled cry of pain when her legs flopped over her torso, our bodies breaking free as we each cartwheeled down the steeply angled slope. My helmet stayed on this time, but the chin strap dug painfully into my skin from the pressure of having my face slammed into the snow several times in rapid succession. I lost all control over my limbs, arms and legs flailing wildly while I bounced ass over teakettle. I felt a wrenching pop in my knee, followed by a searing pain that shot up my thigh.
When I finally slid to a stop several yards down the slope from Nicola, I looked up to see that we’d fallen back into clear skies. The dark storm that had driven us from the edge of the bowl was little more than an isolated whirling dervish of snow and ice spinning away on the upper slope. I spat blood onto the snow and shouted Nicola’s name again. This time she seemed to hear me, sitting up and glancing back to see how far we’d fallen.
We both watched the freak snow tornado drop down off the lip of the cliff face. I thought it was moving away from us when it began cutting a path directly across the top of the slope. Nicola figured it out before I did, jumping to her feet and beelining straight down towards me.
“Avalanche!” she shouted. “Get the fuck up! Go!”
The avalanche began as a low rumble, quickly building into a bowel-liquifying vibration that sent giant blocks of snow cascading down the mountain towards us. Had Nicola not been there to yank me to my feet, I would surely have sat there like an idiot, watching until the first sloughing snow bowled me over before burying me beneath its tremendous weight. Even if I hadn’t been paralyzed by fear, I’d probably have tried to outrun the damn thing by going straight down the mountain.
Nicola, however, knew better than to try to race an avalanche. She tucked into a low crouch, picking up speed while the first wave of snow crashed towards our backs. Doing everything in my power to stay right on Nicola’s ass, I conjured a force barrier that deflected the worst of it while keeping me upright in the ever-shifting terrain. Struggling to focus on both maintaining my balance and maintaining the energy shield, I sank into an emotionless focus. I left no room for fear. There was only survival. In that moment, staying alive meant riding through the hellish onslaught of ice and snow blocks which smashed to light obliterating powder when it hit my shield.
Just when the avalanche seemed about to overtake us, Nicola cut hard, leading me sideways across the slope. Snow funneled over us like a fat slab of water curling over a surfer tucked deep in a barrel. The experience was made even more bizarre by the crisp blue sky visible on the other end of the nightmarish snow tunnel.
Nicola broke free to high ground a split second before me. She collapsed to her knees, panting and holding a shoulder that hung limp and awkward even beneath the bulk of her jacket. I fell to the ground next to her a moment later. Safely out of the path of the avalanche, I let my spell dissipate. I’d already squandered a fair bit of my magic on the frivolous act of trying to fake being a better snowboarder, and now I was nearly drained.
“Are you okay?” I asked, shuffling over to where Nicola lay motionless.
“My shoulder,” she grunted. “I think it’s dislocated.”
I tore my gloves off and felt around the base of her neck. Chase had convinced me to take an emergency first aid course a few months earlier, but we’d covered so much over the three day workshop that it was all a jumble in my memory. I was pretty sure I knew how to reset the joint, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“This is going to hurt,” I warned.
Taking hold of Nicola’s arm, I slowly rotated it down and forward. The tendons and ligaments around the joint protested before finally giving way and allowing the shoulder to pop back into its socket. Nicola’s scream was muffled by the gloved fist she’d jammed into her mouth. When the initial flash of pain subsided, she clutched her injured arm and cried softly.
I surveyed the mountain above us. A light haze of snow was settling over the debris path, but there was no sign of the mysterious snow devil that had appeared out of thin air. My skin tingled in response to the heavy magic still lacing the air, and I had a pretty good feeling that whatever had attacked us wasn’t done yet. Bloedermeyer had been right to worry that someone was after his daughter. There was no way what we’d just experienced had been caused by anything other than a supernatural entity. I hadn’t yet figured out why fae might be so aggressively attacking Bloedermeyer’s daughter, but that could wait until we were safely off the mountain.
A gust of wind drove snow into my face with enough force that it stung like I’d stepped into the path of a sandblaster. Balls of snow rolled down the slope above us, rapidly increasing in size as they picked up mass along the way. At first, I thought it was a secondary avalanche. When the giant snowballs made a sharp turn to start rolling up the side of the bowl towards us, I knew it was something exponentially more dangerous.
“We have to go,” I said, trying not to let my panic show. “Can you get up?”
“I… I think so.”
Nicola used her good arm to push herself upwards. I stood up and reached down to help her, trying to keep her focus on me so she wouldn’t catch sight of the threat behind her.
“I need you to trust me without asking questions, okay?” I asked. “We’re in danger. We have to get down the mountain as quickly as possible. Do you understand?”
Nicola bobbed her head up and down, eyes wide with fear beneath her goggles
. She tried to turn her head to look up the mountain, but I took hold of her helmet with both hands and pressed my head against hers. There was a soft click as our goggles connected.
“Don’t think, just go.”
Together, we tilted our boards down the slope and raced for the trees. Too drained to fall back on using magic to keep me from wiping out, I put every ounce of focus I had into working my body through the turns. Though not as steep as the bowl we’d tumbled down, this stretch of the mountain was narrow and steep enough. A fall would put me in the path of one of the sentient snowballs chasing after us, and a too-wide turn would send me flying over the edge of a rocky cliff face. It was all I could do to stay on Nicola’s tail, carving back and forth in a series of tight s-turns that made my legs scream for mercy.
The tree line loomed directly ahead, and I risked a look behind me. The oppressive energy I’d felt at the top of the mountain had lessened a little the farther we progressed downhill, leading me to believe the force acting against us was tied to the mountain itself. What I knew about snow spirits could fit into a Twitter update with a hundred and thirty-three characters left unused. It seemed reasonable, however, to guess that this was something we could outrun. All we had to do was put enough distance between us and the summit before being flattened by car-sized snow boulders.
Nicola zipped into a gap in the trees and I followed close behind. I heard the crack of wood splintering just over my right shoulder. I glanced back in time to see several more trees snap beneath the weight of snowballs that had exploded against them. A few of the snowballs slipped through the gaps between trees, curving back and forth along the trail behind us.
“You've got to be kidding me,” I said to myself as I narrowly avoided slamming into a tree myself.
A branch snagged the arm of my jacket, spinning me sideways. My head bounced off the packed snow of the trail and I tumbled once more, desperately clawing at the snow to keep from sliding into one of the trees below me.
I arrested my descent enough to not break my neck when I hit the base of the tree that finally stopped me, but it was too late to keep me from dropping into the cavernous tree well surrounding the trunk. Snowboard acting as a bridge above me, I found myself suspended upside down, my body half buried in clumpy snow that was rapidly solidifying into an icy prison. I heard the rustling crunch of snow being compacted above me, and the next thing I knew, the magically animated snowballs were smashing themselves against the tree above me. The snow that had formed their bulk showered down on me, filling my throat and burying me faster than I could brush it away from my face. Before I knew it, I was rendered completely immobile from the weight of several feet of snow that had filled the space around me within seconds.
Arms splayed out beside me and pinioned beneath hundreds of pounds of snow, my world was darkness. I couldn’t tell which way was up or which was down. Only the pounding of blood in my temples gave me an impression of having my head lower than my heart. In a small mercy, my goggles had protected my eyes. The tiny pocket of space between the lens and my face alleviated enough of the claustrophobic panic to give me a fighting chance of staying somewhat calm.
The snow was too heavy, and I was too weak for a kinetic force spell to blast it away from me. The only other thing I could think to use was mage fire, but that came with its own set of risks. I’d never tried to set snow on fire before, but the persistent napalm-like fire could very well set half the mountain aflame before all was said and done. Not to mention the possibility of lighting my own clothes on fire. Mage fire burned mages as readily as it did anything else it touched. Casting fire from my snowy prison would be as much of a death sentence as doing nothing.
Being buried alive was oddly calming. So long as I didn’t try to move, it like being smothered by a lead blanket. It was also quite warm. I remembered something I’d once read about the insulating properties of snow, and I realized I’d suffocate long before I froze to death. The snow around my nose and mouth was porous enough for me to draw air through it, but it was beginning to freeze over. Wriggling my jaw and sticking my tongue out gave me a bit of an extra air pocket, but the snow I disturbed solidified and made it harder for me to shift my head even a little.
Not quite ready to risk burning myself to a crisp beneath a mountain of snow, I experimented with sending a low stream of energy into the spell I sometimes used to keep myself warm. It was more of an insulating barrier than anything else. It worked like magical long underwear, trapping heat that left my body instead of generating its own warmth.
But, if I could pump a little heat into it, just maybe I could melt myself free.
Magic is easy — until it’s hard. I could spout wild jets of mage fire from my fingertips without a thought, cast a protective shield on pure instinct, and deliver a reinforced blast of raw energy just by picturing the shape and heft I wanted it to have. Doing something new, however, was like trying to write in a foreign language without a dictionary for translation. Every spell started out as the same pure energy I drew from within myself, but it was up to me to mentally transform it into the desired form. I could light a candle with my mind about half the time, and I could boil water fairly easily, but projecting that same heat energy into the aura around me without cooking my own skin was going to be a bit more difficult.
Even though it was pitch black in my snowy tomb, I closed my eyes. I drew long slow breaths in order to slow my pulse, dropping my brain into a deep meditative state. First, I acknowledged and discarded each of the aches and pains in my battered body. I then walled off unproductive emotions like fear and anxiety. With the slightest touch I knew how to use, I began slipping heat into my insulating aura.
At first, I wasn’t sure it was working. Then I started sweating. My skin prickled and itched, and I felt heat flush through my body like a rising sunburn. A test wiggle of my arms and hips told me I’d done nothing to melt the snow around me, so I concentrated on radiating the heat outwards and away from myself.
It was agonizingly slow work, but I eventually melted out enough of a cave for me to wriggle up and attempt to unfasten my snowboard bindings. I’d arched my back enough upon falling into the tree well that I ended up lying on an incline. A few gut-wrenching crunches were all it took for me to reach up and ratchet loose the buckles holding me in place. My throat tasted like rotten grapefruit, and my body shook from how much I’d drained it both physically and mentally, but I was making progress. I guessed the snowboard to be wedged in place near the surface, and I contorted myself around in the small space to dig the rest of the way with my bare hands. The crystalline structure of the frozen packed snow scratched my skin until it bled from a dozen tiny cuts, but eventually I broke free to the open air above.
A hand clutched mine and squeezed it tightly.
I retracted my arm and looked up through the hole to see Nicola’s face.
“How the hell are you still alive?” she asked. “Never mind. Just stay calm until I dig you out.”
I heard the crunching scrape of Nicola using her snowboard like a shovel to widen the opening I’d created. She quickly cleared enough of a gap for me to crawl through, and she grabbed my jacket and hauled me bodily onto the snow like she was pulling an injured seal onto a beach.
With the last of my energy, I reached out with my senses to check for any signs of the malicious force that had attacked us. I couldn’t be completely sure it had retreated after its last ditch effort of trying to bury me, but the area felt clear enough for me to relax somewhat. We still had a long way to go to get down the mountain, but we were safe enough for the time being.
Chapter Eight
By the time we got back to the chalet, the damage I’d done to my knee was the only thing I could think about. We’d had no choice but to dig out my snowboard and ride down to the next lift station where we were thankfully able to download instead of having to ride any farther. That still left us with a long walk through the village to get to the vehicle Nicola had called for a pickup. Too exhaust
ed to talk, we rode in silence. It was only after we’d come inside and stripped out of our now damp outer layers that Nicola mumbled something about swallowing half a bottle of ibuprofen before getting into the hot tub.
“You’ve got a hot tub?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’re not peasants.”
I told her I hadn’t brought a suit, and after one of her trademark eye rolls, she dug one out for me to borrow. It was a little snug in all the wrong places, but it beat the hell out of wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.
After changing in my room, I sifted through my belongings until I found the first aid kit I’d brought. Unlike a normal medical kit, this one contained little more than a few packets of herbs and a couple of healing amulets. The amulets were one-shots — enchanted magical items that could only be used a single time before they lost their charge — so I set them aside and made a mental note not to leave the house without one. After sniffing a few of the folded paper packets, I found the one I was looking for and I went downstairs to find Nicola waiting for me. She led me outside to a hot tub big enough for seven or eight people, the jets already running and hot steam billowing up into the air.
After even a few seconds in the frigid outside air, the hot tub water was so hot it burned my already sensitive skin. Nicola sank right into it, but it took me several minutes to adjust to the temperature. My knee throbbed painfully beneath the water, a constant reminder of how badly I’d wrenched it during our tumble.
Black Ice (Black Records Book 3) Page 7