“Ada is not going to believe this,” said Nicola. “Or Eric. He’s going to flip when he hears what I saw.”
I stopped in my tracks and turned around to face Nicola. “You absolutely cannot tell anyone about this. If people found out about Charles, they wouldn’t stop until they’d hunted him down. The only reason his kind have even survived this long is that the general population believes them to be nothing more than a hoax.”
Nicola recoiled from my aggressive tone, then recovered and scrunched her face in thought.
“How did you know to find him?” she asked. “I mean, if no one believes sasquatch exist, what made you go looking for him in the first place?”
“That’s complicated,” I said. “Let’s just say your dad hired me without knowing the full extent of my abilities.”
I shuffled my feet back towards the direction of the construction site and started walking again.
“How cryptic,” I heard Nicola mutter behind me. “So you’re some kind of beast hunter?”
“Something like that,” I replied.
We walked without talking for a while. The only sound was the soft swish and crunch of our snowshoes compressing snow beneath our feet. The invigorating effects of Charles’s tea had worn off quickly, leaving me tired and eager for dinner followed up by a warm bath.
“Why did that sasquatch call you ‘little wizard?’” Nicola asked. “There’s something not right about this whole thing. Those wolves that attacked us the other night? That shit was not normal. I know you think I was too drunk to remember, but I saw what happened. You did something that night didn’t you? Something magical?”
I clomped through the snow for several more steps, trying to figure out how much to let Nicola know about the truth of what I was. Hell, not even Nicola’s father knew the full extent of my abilities. Whistler was such a small community, it wasn’t unsurprising that Nicola had already had encounters with a few local magic users. Even if she didn’t have the slightest clue of who those people really were. I was just one of several that had fallen into her strange little orbit, but it looked like I’d be the first to break the silence.
“There’s a lot that normal people don’t know about the world,” I explained while we walked. “There’s a lot people shouldn’t know about the world. Given that something magic seems hell-bent on coming after you, it might be time we talked about what’s really going on.”
“You're joking,” Nicola said. “That’s your explanation? My dad pissed off an evil wizard, and now Gandalf is trying to take it out on me?”
“I know how crazy it sounds,” I said. “Most people go their whole lives without ever having to think about this stuff. It may sound ridiculous, but magic is very real. I don’t know who — or what — is trying to get at you and your father, but both of you are in serious danger.”
We walked quietly for another few minutes. I knew Nicola must be bursting with questions, but at that moment something else was drawing at my attention. I couldn’t quite lock on to anything specific, but something was stalking the woods around us. It might just have been a side-effect of the compulsion Charles had laid on the area. Even so, after what had happened with the wolves, I wasn’t going to dismiss anything as paranoia until I was a hundred percent sure I was only imagining things. I called up a bit of energy, forming it into a preliminary shield. It took a bit of extra power to encompass both Nicola and myself. Still far away from home and alone in the woods, I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.
Out in the trees, something flitted across the edge of my vision. It was little more than a shadow passing through the trees, but activating my mage sight illuminated something entirely different. Bursts of light about the size of house cats leaped from tree trunk to tree trunk. The little creatures bounded through the snow, circling around us. They scurried around so quickly it was difficult to make out exactly what they were. They looked like a cross between a bat and a small monkey. I hadn’t decided if they were friendly or not, but when one came flying from the trees, fangs bared, I got my answer.
“Duck!” I shouted to Nicola.
The little bugger caught hold of my shoulder, its tiny claws and teeth leaving long gashes down the fabric of my jacket before I was knocked to the ground. The damn thing had flown straight through my shield. No sooner had I batted the first one away than another shot from the darkness, bounding across the snow towards us. The rest of the little beasts rallied, circling inward in an ever-tightening loop. Up close now, I saw that they were more like white squirrels with narrow rat-like tails.
Their tiny faces displayed evil intelligence when they darted in to slash at us before retreating to the safety of the trees. The way they sprinted across the snow without leaving so much as a tiny footprint made it clear they were more than wild creatures. There was no doubt they were some kind of fae I’d never seen before, and that something had stirred them up against us.
Nicola cowered in the snow. I crouched next to her and placed my arm protectively around her shoulder, flinging little blasts of energy at the creatures when they approached. I knew I could only hold out so long before they overwhelmed me with sheer numbers. It was like being attacked by a manic horde of miniature zombies. No matter how many I knocked down, there was always another one to take its place. What had at first seemed to be no more than four or five of the little beasts turned out to be ten, then twenty, and now quite possibly fifty or more.
“What’s happening?” asked Nicola, her voice quavering with fear. “What the hell are these things?”
“I don’t know,” I said between firing kinetic blasts. “But I do know that if we don’t get out of here quickly, they’re going to overrun us.”
Desperately trying to think of a way to stave them off, I considered my options. There were far too many of them to try the little trick I’d used to fend off the wolves. The way they simply bounced right back to their feet after slamming against the trees made me realize I could never hope to take them out with kinetic blasts alone. That only left me with mage fire. As usual, that option was far too risky. Setting the entire forest on fire might scare the creatures away, but it would also trap us in the middle of everything.
“Ow!” Nicola swatted one of the creatures away from her shin. A bloodied gash was visible beneath the tattered edge where it had chewed through her ski pants.
I kicked another away before it could jump onto her back. At the same time, one of the foul rodents ran up my leg, claws piercing the thick fabric of my snow pants to dig into the sensitive skin beneath. The little thing squirmed beneath my grip when I grabbed it by the scruff and flung it away. They were coming faster now. For every one I knocked back, another two crowded in to take its place. The ones that managed to breach my defenses lashed out with teeth and claws, shredding our pants and jackets to ragged strips. I felt blood welling up from a dozen tiny scratches, and I prayed their saliva wasn’t poisonous.
“Alex, help!” Nicola wrestled with one of the little creatures that had gotten caught up in her hair. A fistful of long blonde strands came loose when she finally tore the creature away. Blood dripped down her temple, but before she could wipe at it, she was attacked again.
Feeling desperate, I reached down and hiked my pant leg up to my knee.
“Take off your glove and grab my leg,” I ordered Nicola. “Whatever you do, do not let go.”
Nicola took hold of my lower leg, squeezing so tightly it hurt. I stood up and planted my feet firmly on the snow. If this was going to have any chance of working, I needed to maintain skin to skin contact with Nicola. After having to fight off a couple of brutes who’d used electricity to attack me that previous summer, I’d been fooling around with the technique myself. The only problem was that I hadn’t quite mastered it on a scale larger than the stun gun spell I’d used at the bar.
I closed my eyes and summoned energy to my fingertips. Energy crackled and buzzed around me, filling the air with a corrosive tang. Bending my entire will towards conjuri
ng the energy outwards, I thrust my arms to the side and unleashed an electrical storm more violent than anything I’d yet attempted to cast. My skin burned and vibrated as though I’d grabbed the wrong end of a set of car jumper cables. Down by my feet, Nicola cried out in pain. I tried to yell at her to not let go, but the words died in my mouth. Her connection with my body was the only thing keeping her from being electrocuted along with the little creatures now dropping like flies around us.
“Hold… on,” I managed to grunt. “Just a… little… longer.”
Droves of the wild snow-rodents fled from the torrent of energy streaming from my fingertips, but it was too late. The smell of burning fur and flesh filled the forest. The lightning streaming for my fingertips was impossible to control. It flashed wildly, seeking any living thing and killing it without mercy.
Not one of the little creatures had survived by the time I dropped to my knees, completely spent. I’d put everything I had into the spell, leaving myself with almost no energy for another shot if it came down to it. Panting for breath, I scanned the area looking for stragglers.
The forest was a war zone. Splotches of blood stained more of the snow than not, marking the places where the corpses of the little creatures had fallen. Here and there, some of the little beasts twitched then fell silent. To my dismay, I saw the bodies of a few birds and what looked like a small deer lying among the dead. They were innocent lives that had been taken as collateral damage in a last-ditch effort to save myself and Nicola.
“Are you okay?” I asked Nicola.
She nodded dumbly, a mixture of fear and awe in her eyes. The poor girl looked like she’d lost a wrestling match with a rose bush. Her clothes were ruined, and she cradled the hand she’d been using to hold onto me. Even in the growing darkness, I could see how red and tender the skin was.
“It burns,” she whispered. “What were those things? What did you do to them?”
“There’ll be time for answers later,” I said. “Right now I think it’s best we get the hell out of here before we freeze to death. Or before something worse comes along.”
I packed snow onto Nicola’s scalded hand, then helped her to her feet. Together, we staggered off down the trail, eager to get back to the construction site where Nicola had hopefully left her father’s car.
Chapter Sixteen
Nicola’s hand didn’t look as bad as I’d feared when we made it back to the chalet, but the lacerations around her body were another story. Several of the creatures had chewed or torn their way through her clothing, leaving her arms and legs covered in gashes and crescent-shaped bite marks. Most were superficial, but a few had cut deep enough to be worrisome. I hadn’t yet checked out my own body, but I had a feeling it hadn’t fared much better. I could feel the angry sting of several cuts, and blood dripped down my legs beneath the shredded remains of my snow pants. My priority right now was ensuring Nicola was cared for. Horrified by the sight of us when we’d stumbled through the front door, Ada helped me drag Nicola upstairs to her bedroom. She then fetched a first aid kit, hovering around me until I assured her I had everything under control. Eventually, she went downstairs to see about getting us something to eat.
I finished dabbing burn ointment on Nicola’s palm, and set to work cleaning the worst of the cuts crisscrossing her body.
“I guess it’s time we had that talk about what happened back there, huh?” I asked while dabbing antiseptic on one particularly bad slice across her bicep.
Nicola blanched, the blood draining from her face as she winced in pain. She turned her head away from me to hide tears dripping down her cheeks. I didn’t blame her one bit. The antiseptic must have stung like bloody murder.
“So I guess you really are some kind of wizard then?” She asked when she’d recovered.
“Mage, actually.”
“What’s the difference?”
I taped a piece of gauze across the wound and tried to figure out how best to explain it to her.
“It’s kind of like the difference between dubstep and house music,” I said. “Wizards are just… different. Most of them are graybeards who really buy into the mysticism of the whole thing. They wear robes and carry staffs — that kind of thing. Honestly, you don’t find many true wizards around anymore.”
“Okay, so you’re a mage.” Nicola looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “Does my dad know?”
“I don’t think so,” I said honestly. “But I’m guessing whoever recommended me to him knew what I was. Although full-blown mages like me are rare, there’s a pretty wide spectrum of magically sensitive people. You’d probably be surprised to learn that you know a few already. Odds are good that someone in your dad’s sphere of influence is tuned into the supernatural.”
“The lightning that killed those creatures,” Nicola said quietly, “you caused that? I could feel it through your skin, like it was flowing into me from your body before shooting out into the air around us.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said sheepishly. “That’s kind of a new spell for me. I only used it because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“This is insane,” Nicola said. “First I meet sasquatch, then I’m attacked by some kind of rabid snow-squirrel, then I find out my bodyguard is really a mage.”
She settled into introspective thought, so I re-focused my attention on fixing her injuries. The kid had a lot of information to process. What she needed now was time.
“That avalanche wasn’t natural was it?” she asked after a few minutes had passed. “I thought I saw something up there before you knocked me into the bowl. It was some kind of snow tornado. In all my years of skiing here, I’ve never seen anything like it. And then the way the avalanche seemed to chase us up the hill, that was magic too wasn’t it?”
“I still haven’t figured out exactly what that was,” I admitted. “As near as I can figure, some kind of mountain spirit tried to attack us. I did my best to shield you, and I think the only reason we didn’t die that day was because we managed to outrun it. Whatever’s trying to get at you is extremely powerful.”
“We have to warn my dad,” said Nicola. “If he doesn’t know magic is being rallied against him, what chance does he have of protecting himself? Why are you even watching me instead of him?”
“We can’t tell your father,” I said. “I tried talking to them this morning, but he’s not willing to listen to reason. He’s so focused on the problems at the job site, that he can’t see past them. I think the only reason he hasn’t been hurt yet is that he’s spending most of his time at the office or at home. So far every attack on you has happened in the wilderness or near it.”
“We should still warn him,” she said, sitting up and staring at me fiercely. “It sounds like he’s only safe by pure chance. What happens if he gets caught in a snow slide while driving home? What happens if whoever is trying to stop him decides to escalate their plans?”
“Your father isn’t ready to hear the truth yet,” I said. “Think of everything you’ve seen in the last couple of days. If I’d told you yesterday that magic was behind all of it, would you have believed me?”
Nicola frowned. The answer was written all over her face, though I could see she didn’t want to admit it.
“There is some scary shit out there,” I continued. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but the other night at the bar I talked to a vampire —”
“No way,” she interrupted. “Vampires are real too?”
I nodded. “Very real. They’re a pretty mixed bag as far as supernatural creatures go. Most of them aren’t that bad — you know, if you can look past the whole bloodsucking thing. It’s not uncommon for the power to go to their heads, though. They’re stronger than humans, harder to kill than humans, and they can potentially live forever if they don’t piss anyone off enough to have a stake driven through their heart. At the end of the day, it takes a lot for a vampire to be afraid. The vampire I ran into at the bar was afraid. He didn
’t know exactly what was happening here, but he knew something bad was coming.”
“And you think all of this is somehow tied to my father?”
“It’s too early to say for sure,” I told her. “But I don’t think it’s just a coincidence something is trying to attack you. My guess is that someone is trying to get to your father through you. If they hurt him directly, another contractor or investor might just take over the development. If they put you in enough danger, they might be able to scare him enough to shut the project down for good.”
Nicola surprised me by laughing. She shook her head and looked at me like I’d said something stupid.
“Whoever is behind all of this must not know my father very well,” she said. “The only thing threatening me will achieve is making him angry. When he’s angry, he only tries harder. Besides, I don’t even think he’d notice if I was hurt.”
“That’s not true, Nicola, and you know it,” Ada said from the doorway. She carried a tray with two steaming bowls of soup. “Your father loves you very much. It’s obvious in the way he looks at you. I will admit he spends too much time at work and not enough time with you, but I don’t believe for a second that he loves you any less for it.”
Ada came into the room and set the tray down on a desk opposite Nicola’s bed. She brought each of us a bowl of soup, then hovered at the edge of the room, trying to gauge the extent of Nicola’s injuries. She watched us dig into the meal, both of us eagerly shoveling spoonfuls of light broth into our mouths.
“There’s more where that came from,” Ada said. “Come down when you’re ready, and I will have a proper meal waiting for you.”
She disappeared again, leaving us to slurp our soup without sparing time to talk. I could have destroyed a mountain of barbecue after how much energy I’d expended in the forest, but the soup was a good start. I still had my own wounds to look after. I needed some time to patch myself up, and then I figured maybe we could go get some answers. Leaving Nicola alone had caused more problems than it had solved. After everything she’d seen, I figured it was okay for her to come with me when I talked to Nathan again. I didn’t know how much he’d say around her, but taking her with me beat the only other option of leaving her behind practically unsupervised. As much as Ada cared for the girl, she didn’t exactly have a lot of control over her.
Black Ice (Black Records Book 3) Page 14