“Still, you dated for a few months?” I looked at him doubtfully. “You didn’t figure it out before then?”
“Okay, maybe I realized the truth after a week or two,” he said. “She’s a big girl, though. If anything, she took advantage of me. She probably didn’t tell you about how she tried to blackmail me, huh?”
“Blackmail?”
Grayson laughed. “Yeah, I think she was just pissed because I told her I was engaged. It was kinda cute actually. She’d secretly recorded us one night, and she threatened to send it to my fiancée.”
“What’d you do?”
“Told her I’d forward it to her dad.” Grayson took a sip of his beer. “I even showed the video to my fiancée. She thought it was hot.”
What the hell kind of people were these? I’d thought Nicola was unbalanced and out of touch with reality, but she was starting to look pretty mundane considering the environment she was growing up in. With her father practically living at the office and guys like Grayson in her dating history, it was no wonder she acted as wildly as she did. These people didn’t have anything remotely approaching normal boundaries.
“So what about you?” Grayson asked. “There’s no way you’re her aunt. You’re too cute to be an aunt.”
I edged around the kitchen island, wanting to put a bit of distance between us. “Did you not just say you had a fiancée?”
“Wife now, actually. We have an arrangement,” he said with a suggestive grin. “She hates it up here, so she stays in the city. What we do in our free time is our business. She’s probably fucking her personal trainer right now. I don’t know what she gets out of hitting the same piece of ass over and over again, but I try not to judge.”
“I should go check on Nicola.”
I set the beer down, suddenly worried Grayson had slipped something into it. I’d put one of the emergency healing bracelets on my wrist before we’d left the chalet. It’d be a shame to waste it on something so stupid, but if I thought I was starting to lose consciousness, at least I’d have backup.
“If you change your mind, I’d love to give you a tour of the rest of the house later,” Grayson said as I left the kitchen. “Maybe you and Nic and I can all have a little fun together.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response. As tempting as turning around and kneeing Grayson in the nuts would be, I’d done the stupidly unthinkable and lost sight of Nicola again. Her gaggle of friends were still in the same spot, but Nicola was no longer with them. I was halfway across the room, bracing myself to ask them where she’d gone when I caught sight of a familiar face out on the balcony.
I went outside and saw Nicola with two guys and a girl who all looked like professional athletes. They were talking about epic conditions on such-and-such run while taking turns passing around an enormous joint. Nicola exhaled a cloud of smoke then offered the blunt to me.
“You probably need this after spending that much time with Grayson,” she said.
It was tempting. I lifted my hand to reach up for it, then stopped myself and shoved both my hands into my pockets. It’d feel good to take the edge off for a couple of hours, but I couldn’t afford to dull my reaction any more than I already had. With the very real threat of danger lurking in every shadow, I had to keep my wits about me if I was going to keep Nicola safe.
The guy to my left reached out to snatch the joint. “Nicola was telling us about that avalanche you two had a near miss with today. Sounded pretty gnarly.”
“It’s not an experience I want to repeat any time soon,” I told them.
“No doubt,” the other girl said with a laugh. “I was up there an hour later. The whole bowl was shredded right to the rock. I’ve never seen anything cut so completely free like that before. Patrol shut down the whole area and are trying to figure out what caused it.”
“It was probably that freak-ass storm,” Nicola said. “I swear I saw a fuckin’ tornado up there. One minute it was bluebird, next thing I know it’s total whiteout. Then, like five minutes later, the whole thing cleared up like it had never happened.”
The guy who hadn’t spoken yet narrowed his eyes at this. He stared at me a little too intently. It wasn’t anything creepy like how Grayson had openly leered at me, but he was definitely taking a more than casual interest.
“That does sound pretty weird,” he said to Nicola. He returned his attention to me. “Don’t you think?”
“I dunno,” I tried to act dumb. “I was too busy trying not to die to pay much attention to the weather.”
The joint had made its way back around to Nicola. She took a long drag then flicked the butt out into the night. When she exhaled, the smoky cloud was musky and sweet. It was also extremely potent. Nicola’s eyes were bloodshot and red. Her eyelids drooped heavily despite the amount of energy drink she’d already poured down her throat. Even as I watched, she drained the last of her vodka.
“Nearly dying makes me thirsty,” she slurred. “I’mma need another one of these.”
The other girl flashed me a look that said I shouldn’t worry too much, as though getting shit-faced after surviving an avalanche was a strict tradition. I supposed I would have done the same in Nicola’s position. That didn’t make it any easier to accept, but if the girl wanted to drink so much she’d be puking it all up within the hour, I didn’t think I stood much chance of stopping her. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it was like she said, I wasn’t her mother.
“Hold up a sec,” the guy who’d taken interest in me said before I could follow the others inside. “What’s your deal?”
“My deal?”
“No need to waste time bullshitting each other,” he said. “You’re Alex Black, aren’t you?”
This was a first. As flattering as it was to be recognized, it wasn’t exactly a good sign that my reputation was spreading.
“So what if I am?”
The guy rolled up his sleeve and showed me a tattoo I recognized all too well. The ornate quill pen tattoo meant this ski bum was really a Chronicler. If there was one organization more secret than the Conclave, it was the Chroniclers. The only way into the organization was being born into it. Possessing no magical abilities themselves, the Chroniclers were the typically silent history keepers that acted as unofficial liaisons between the gifted and the mundane.
“I thought you guys were super secretive about your identities,” I said. “Why show me that?”
“After what happened with Jessica last year, there’s no point in trying to hide ourselves from you,” he explained. “Our order is in debt to you for your role in taking down the dark mage Bracchus last year. If you tell me what really happened up there, maybe I can help you prevent it from happening again.”
I shivered and hugged my arms, more from the memory of Jessica’s death than the cold. A glance through the window told me Nicola hadn’t strayed too far. The glass she was drinking from contained nothing but clear liquid, and I hoped someone had given her some water and that she hadn’t switched to straight vodka.
“Something supernatural attacked us today,” I told the Chronicler. “It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
I did my best to explain what we’d encountered that morning. I also filled him in on everything Bloedermeyer had told me about the attacks on his business and his family.
“Sounds like one of the local mountain spirits,” he told me. “Every peak has its own, but they’re rarely active. According to our records, Whistler has been dormant for hundreds of years. Honestly, even that’s a guess. We’ve only had people in this region since the early 1900s.”
“Do you think the development somehow triggered this mountain spirit to wake up in a pissy mood?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Everything we know about mountain spirits indicates their power is concentrated near their summits. Their power is godlike up there, but it drops off quickly the further you get from the peak. Even if the spirit could reach down into the village without overextending itself, it wouldn’t
be able to do the kinds of things you’re talking about. As an elemental being, it can control the natural environment around it, but I doubt it could sabotage heavy machinery like what Bloedermeyer has on his development site.”
“Great. The local expert on all things supernatural has no idea what the hell I’m up against.”
“Are you kidding me? Places like this are like blank spots on a medieval map of the ocean.” The Chronicler turned and swept his arm across the shadowy hulking mountains surrounding us. “Everything we know about the area can be reduced to here be monsters. If you really want to get an idea of what might be acting against Bloedermeyer and his daughter, you’re going to need to talk to a local Lorekeeper.”
“Any chance you can point me in the direction of one?” I asked.
“Actually yeah,” he said. “You want to have a chat with Nathan Rivers. He doesn’t look like much, but he’s a descendant of a long line of chiefs and shamans. If anyone knows what’s going on around here, it’s him.”
“Where do I find this guy?”
The Chronicler gave me the address of a snowmobile tour guide company in the heart of the village. I was about to thank him and press him for more information when I saw Nicola stumble out into the area below the deck. She took a long pull from the vodka bottle in her hand, shouted something about the mountains having to try harder if they were going to kill her, then stumbled and fell face first into the snow.
“Shit,” I said as I pushed past the Chronicler to get inside.
I rushed down the stairs and found the front door. Nicola wasn’t where I’d last seen her, but her footprints led off towards the darkness of the trees lining the edge of the property. I heard violent retching and saw what I was fairly certain was her bent over and emptying the contents of her stomach into the woods.
“Better to get it out now,” I told her while I gathered her hair up to hold it out of the way.
I rubbed her back and averted my eyes when another stream of vomit flew from her mouth with alarming velocity.
That’s when I noticed the glowing yellow eyes staring at us from within the trees. Something uttered a low growl from off to our left. I saw another set of similarly feral eyes floating in the darkness. Scanning the tree line revealed a third pair of eyes off to the right. Whatever was out there was no harmless deer. Something wild and mean was in the process of surrounding us, and I had no doubt we wouldn’t stand a chance of making it even halfway back to the house before we were cut down from behind.
It was a good thing I’d replenished my magic stores, because all three sets of eyes began moving towards us at once.
Nicola heaved and wretched again, saliva dripping from her mouth in long viscous strings. I couldn’t very well pick her up and throw her over my shoulder, yet she didn’t look like she was in any state to run. At any rate, I didn’t want to draw whatever was in the woods closer to the party. The Chroniclers as an organization were a force to be reckoned with, but as individuals they were observers and scholars. I wouldn’t bet on the lone Chronicler back at the house being able to help me out. That meant taking the fight deeper into the woods.
When the eyes drew near enough, the bodies they belonged to resolved into massive feral wolves. Saliva frothed on bared lips, teeth glistening in the light spilling out from the house behind us. They stared at me with malicious intelligence, leaving no doubt as to their intentions to rip out my throat before descending on Nicola.
Without thinking, I gripped Nicola’s shirt collar and heaved her forward into the woods. She yelped when she stumbled forward, tripping over her own feet and pitching into the snow just as the nearest wolf launched itself towards her. I dropped to one knee to anchor myself, then thrust my arms out to let loose a kinetic blast that sent the wolf tumbling backwards where it slammed into a tree with a nasty crack of snapping bone. My throat stung with the aftertaste of burning magic, but the fight had just begun. I had two more wolves flanking me, and I had to figure out how to take them down without letting Nicola see me use magic.
“What the fuck was that?” Nicola said after she’d picked herself up.
Her hair was matted with snow, and her face was red with anger when she spun around to glare daggers at me. She took two steps towards me with balled fists raised as if to strike me, but a little hit of energy to her midsection caused her to buckle over and renew her violent retching just as the two remaining wolves sprinted towards us. Whipping through the trees with alarming speed, I only had seconds to do something. I considered throwing a shield over myself and Nicola, but holding back physical objects was far too demanding. All the wolves would have to do was prowl around us until I ran out of gas.
Instead, I dove forward and tackled Nicola around the shoulders. We sailed through the air before landing in a puff of snow. Before it could settle, I focused my will on the floating particles, sending energy into them in order to drive the spray away from my body. The snow crystals rocketed through the air with supercharged speed, clumping together and hardening to form a deadly barrage of ice pellets that would have torn the skin from a human standing in their path. It didn’t do quite as much damage to the thick furry hides of the beasts trying to attack us. It did, however, stop them in their tracks several paces away from where Nicola and I lay in the furrow our bodies had dug into the snow. When I lifted my head, I saw ragged clumps of bloody fur hanging off the nearest wolf’s face and sides. One ear had been shaved off completely, and where its eye had been was now only a pulpy mass of gore.
The other wolf was likewise maimed, holding at a distance while it licked at the wounds on its forepaws.
“Get off me, you crazy bitch,” Nicola cried from beneath me.
She clawed wildly at my face, managing to grab a handful of hair that she used to twist my neck to the side. I rolled away from her, dropping an elbow across Nicola’s bicep to get her to release her grip on me. She cursed then rolled after me, her tiny fist slamming into my cheekbone with surprising force. Fist raised to deliver another blow, Nicola hesitated, then let out a strangled moan before scurrying back away from me.
I tilted my head back and made eye contact with the first wolf. It was close enough I could feel the heat of its foul breath on my forehead. It was hard to tell from this angle, but something wasn’t entirely right about how the animal was standing. Its body looked crooked, like it was walking on a snapped spine.
Nicola fumbled for something in her pocket, scampering even further backward while she flipped the cap from a tiny cylinder attached to her dangling keys.
Searing hot pain engulfed me. The wild yelp and howl of the wolf competed with my own shout of agony when the cloud of pepper spray washed over us. My eyes stung like someone had poured battery acid over them. Every breath was like inhaling crushed barbecue coals. The pain was so extreme, I was rolling over and throwing up my own dinner before I could stop myself. Every instinct screamed for me to put up a shield to protect against the next attack, but the magic I projected around myself refused to take form. My nose and throat were on fire, every flicker of my eyelids like sandpaper scraping across my eyeballs. With all the pain signals flooding my brain, I couldn’t hold focus long enough to maintain anything more than a flickering aura of shield that a moderately motivated baby could probably push through.
A shadow loomed over me, and I dug deep to prepare for one last-ditch burst of energy before the wolves descended on me. Even as my stomach convulsed, I fought to locate a furry target for the wrath I was ready to unleash.
But the shape above me wasn’t a wolf. There was a crack of wood splintering, and I managed to rub my eyes clear enough to see the Chronicler standing over me. He held a broken tree branch as thick as my arm, the end of it hanging loosely where it had snapped across the head of the wolf now lying inert beside me.
“Two more,” I gasped, gesturing pathetically to either side of me.
“They ran when Eric showed up,” Nicola said. “Are you okay?”
With considerable effort
, I pushed myself up into a sitting position and glared at her. Even in the darkness, I must have looked terrifying. Nicola shrank back, using the Chronicler as a human shield. Fear-conjured energy roiled within me, desperately looking for an outlet. It took a significant effort of will to tamp it down again.
I scooped up a handful of snow and rubbed it across my face. It helped sooth the aching burn, and it took the edge off my anger. Her quick thinking had probably saved us without me having to reveal my true nature. That and the timely arrival of Eric the Chronicler.
“What kind of unnatural pepper spray is that?” I asked, trying my best to not sound like I was going to murder the girl the first chance I got.
“I dunno,” she said. “My dad got it for me. Said to be really careful I didn’t set it off by accident. Guess now I know why.”
I accepted a hand up from Eric.
“Let’s get you inside,” he said. “A gallon or two of milk will help with the sting.”
Eric and I both kept an eye on the woods while we followed Nicola back to the house. Neither of us felt the need to discuss what we’d just seen, since it had essentially spoken for itself. My attack should have killed those animals. The wolf Eric had put out of its misery hadn’t taken human form in death, ruling out shifters. That meant something had been controlling them. Something with far more power than I wanted to think about.
I thought back to the news story of the bear running amok earlier in the week. If something was taking control of such fierce animals in order to stop the new development, Nicola and her father were in more trouble than they could possibly understand.
Chapter Ten
The woman staffing the sales desk flashed me a professionally high powered smile when she saw me approach. I’d left Nicola back at the Chalet, sleeping off a deadly hangover. I’d also made Ada promise me she’d keep an eye on the girl. With luck, I’d be back before Nicola even staggered downstairs sometime around noon. The lining of my throat and nostrils still stung a little when I breathed, but chugging a few glasses of milk then splashing a gallon of it over my eyes and face had done a passable job of neutralizing the residual effects of the pepper spray.
Black Ice (Black Records Book 3) Page 9