Kiss of Frost Page 9

  And that’s when a low, ominous growl whispered behind me.

  I froze, my blood suddenly as cold and icy as the surrounding snow. I knew that sort of growl. I’d heard it twice before in my life now, and both times, I’d almost died.

  Riding over to the resort, meeting Preston, flashing on Daphne, trying to ski. I’d had a busy morning. So busy I’d forgotten about the fact that there was a Reaper who was trying to kill me—and that he just might send a monster to do the job.

  I slowly turned around. At first I didn’t see it, but then a movement in the thicket of pine trees at the far edge of the slope caught my eye. I strained to spot it in the shadows and then wished that I hadn’t.

  It looked like an overgrown wolf. Even though the creature was hunkered down in the snow, I could still see how very massive it was. It seemed to be roughly the same size as a Nemean prowler, with a body that would come up past my waist and was longer than I was tall. Something flicked in the trees behind it, and it took me a second to realize it was the creature’s tail, slowly lashing from side to side and slapping snow everywhere.

  Its fur was the color of crumbled ash—not quite black but not really gray either—and strands of red glinted in its thick, shaggy coat. The bloody tinge matched the color of the monster’s eyes—a deep, dark, blistering red that seemed like it could burn right through anything, including me.

  My breath caught in my throat. I’d only seen a drawing of it in my myth-history book, that weird, weird drawing that had moved and oozed ink all over the page, but I knew exactly what the monster was: a Fenrir wolf.

  The wolf’s lips drew back in a silent snarl, showing me its razor-sharp teeth. I knew that hidden somewhere in the shadows would be the creature’s long, curved, black claws—ones that could tear through almost anything. Wood, skin, muscle, bone.

  All put together, the Fenrir wolf was a nightmare come to life.

  And now it was here to kill me.

  Chapter 9

  The Fenrir wolf let out a low, angry growl, and I slowly brought up my ski poles, holding them out in front of me. The thin, flimsy poles wouldn’t do me much good against the wolf, but they were better than nothing. I knew better than to try to run. I wouldn’t get two steps, not with the skis strapped to my feet, before the creature pounced on me and ripped me to shreds with its teeth and claws. Given the way it was licking its lips with its long, red tongue and staring at me with its bright, glowing eyes, the wolf would definitely enjoy that sort of thing.

  This was the third time I’d been face-to-face with a mythological monster, and the only reason I’d survived the first two encounters was because Logan had stepped in to save me. But Logan wasn’t here now, and I was all alone—

  “Hey, guys! Over here! This lift isn’t so crowded!”

  A group of Mythos students zoomed into view, gliding over the snow and heading toward the ski lift. The wolf’s gaze cut over to them, and it let out another low, ominous growl. While it was distracted, I took a step back, then another one, then another one, putting as much distance as possible between myself and the monster.

  The wolf got to its feet and started stalking back and forth inside the thicket of trees. The other kids never even saw it as they stopped at the base of the lift and waited for the chairs to come down the mountain. The monster’s gaze moved from them and then back to me, its eyes growing redder and angrier with each passing second, until it seemed like hungry flames flashed in the sockets were its eyes should be.

  The wolf realized that I was moving away from it, but there was nothing the monster could do to stop me—not without showing itself. I didn’t know how intelligent Fenrir wolves were, but this one must have instinctively known that it would be a bad idea to leap out into the middle of a group of kids. I might not be able to kill it, but the other Mythos students were warriors, trained to fight monsters. I had no doubt they could use their ski poles like spears to take down the creature.

  Step by step, I backed up until I was standing on the edge of the group waiting for the chair lift. The other kids ignored me, of course, the way they always did. I kept watching the wolf the whole time, poles up and at the ready, just in case.

  I thought about shouting out a warning to the others, but like running, I didn’t think I’d even get to scream once before the wolf bounded out of the trees and tore open my throat with its claws. The Mythos kids might be warriors, but I didn’t think they’d be fast enough to save me from the monster. I didn’t even know if Logan was that good. Either way I wasn’t about to bet my life on it—not now.

  I didn’t have to. The Fenrir wolf let out one final growl, then slid farther back into the trees and disappeared.

  The chairs finally circled back around, and the other kids scrambled onto them. Legs shaking, I managed to slip-slide over and sit down on the final chair before it took off up the mountain. I leaned over the side and peered down into the trees, but I didn’t spot the wolf anywhere beneath the thick tangles of snowy branches. It had vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.

  But this wouldn’t be the last time I saw it. The wolf would come for me sooner or later, lurking and hiding on the mountain until it got another shot at me, another chance to tear into me with its teeth and drag my body back to its Reaper master. I knew that, but I still couldn’t stop the questions from filling my mind.

  How was I going to kill it?

  And who had sent it after me in the first place?

  I was a little calmer by the time the chair lift reached the top of the slope. At least, I told myself that I was, even if my heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest, and my palms were cold and clammy with sweat inside my puffy purple gloves.

  Daphne and Carson were waiting for me. They sat at a wooden table that had been painted a bright, candy-apple red, and the glossy boards looked like blood resting on top of the snow. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I was still freaked out from seeing the Fenrir wolf.

  My friends both clasped oversize mugs in their hands and slowly sipped the hot chocolate they’d bought from a guy in a concessions shack off to one side of the slope. Steam wisped up out of the mugs, the thin ribbons bringing the smells of warm milk, sweet cinnamon, and just a hint of tangy peppermint along with them. Normally, the rich aromas would have made me thirsty for my own mug of hot chocolate. Now, they just turned my stomach.

  “Geez, Gwen. What took you so long?” Daphne said.

  “Yeah, we thought maybe you’d fallen into a snowdrift or something,” Carson joked.

  “No,” I said in a quiet voice. “But I saw a Fenrir wolf in the trees.”

  Instead of being scared by my confession, Daphne perked up. “Really? Cool! What did it look like? Was it really as big as a Nemean prowler? Did it have massive teeth?”

  “Cool?” I asked, confused. “Why is that cool?”

  Daphne and Carson exchanged a look, like they were in on some secret that I wasn’t.

  “Remember what Metis told us in class about how some of the Fenrir wolves still run around free in the wild?” Carson asked.

  “Yeah... .”

  “Well, the mountains around the ski resort are one of the places they live. A couple of kids saw some of the wolves last year, hanging around the resort. The kids tried to get close to the wolves, but they just disappeared into the trees.”

  “And it’s not just wolves,” Daphne added. “There are tons of wild animals around here. Sometimes we see bears or mountain lions or elk, right at the edges of the slopes.”

  My friends started talking about all the animals they’d seen last year and some of the cell phone videos and photos the other students had taken.

  “But—”

  I opened my mouth to tell them it wasn’t just some wild Fenrir wolf that I’d seen, that it wasn’t more scared of me than I was of it, that it had red eyes and had seemed to want to kill me more than anything else. But at the last second I changed my mind. Daphne and Carson looked so happy cozied up next to each other. I
didn’t want to ruin their day by going on and on about just how big, bad, and evil the wolf had seemed, especially when they weren’t really concerned about me seeing the creature in the first place. I didn’t want to be a total wimp—or worse, have my friends look at me like they didn’t believe me. Besides, there was a small chance I was wrong about the wolf being here to kill me. Wild or not, the wolf was still a monster. Maybe they all had red eyes. Okay, okay, so I didn’t really believe that, but it made me feel a smidge better.

  Anyway, my friends had come here to have fun. If word got out there was a wolf with red eyes roaming around the mountain, the Powers That Were might cancel the whole Winter Carnival. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I didn’t want to be known as Gwen Frost, that Gypsy girl who ruined everything. That would definitely make me more of a misfit freak than I already was.

  But even more than that was the fact that I wanted to be like the other kids. I wanted to be a real warrior. If the wolf was here to kill me, then I wanted to take care of the monster myself. Kill it myself. Even if I had no idea exactly how I was going to do that.

  So I made myself smile at my friends, even though my face felt frozen and numb. “Let’s forget about the wolf, okay? What do you say we go on up to the next slope and see if I can work my Gypsy magic again?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Carson said, pushing his black glasses up his nose and grinning.

  “See? I told you it would work,” Daphne said in a smug tone. “I always have the best ideas.”

  “Of course you do,” Carson told her.

  Daphne rolled her eyes and punched him lightly in the shoulder. Carson retaliated by trying to steal the Valkyrie’s hot chocolate. She swatted his hand away, and the two of them started laughing and mock fighting.

  Neither one of them saw the strained, fake smile drop from my lips or noticed that I didn’t join in the fun.

  For the rest of the afternoon, the three of us zoomed down the various ski slopes, then rode the chair lifts back up to the top again. All the while I kept an eye out for the Fenrir wolf, and I made sure that the three of us stayed far, far away from the trees. To my relief, I didn’t spot the monster lurking in the snow-crusted pines.

  The higher up the mountain we went, the more crowded the slopes were, and I relaxed a little bit. The wolf couldn’t get to me out here, not with all the kids and profs around. That would be suicide for the monster. As long as I stayed with a crowd, I was safe.

  For now.

  To my surprise, I sort of got the hang of skiing. All I had to do was use my psychometry magic and think of Daphne skiing, and I could get down all the slopes, even the really steep ones that twisted and turned like crazy. But the second I let my concentration waver, the second I started worrying about the Fenrir wolf, my memories of Daphne vanished—along with my ability to tap into them.

  I found that out the hard way—literally. One second I was swooshing over the snow just fine. The next I was looking for the wolf. And the one after that, I found myself face-first in a snowdrift and not quite sure how I had gotten there. I sat out the next few runs after that.

  Finally, at around five, we called it quits for the day and skied down the mountain to the hotel. The three of us ate dinner in one of the resort restaurants, which was just as expensive as everything else. And just like at the academy, the food was all fancy, froufrou stuff, like frog legs, rabbit, and pan-seared tuna. Yucko. I settled for a filet mignon cheeseburger, Parmesan sweet potato fries, and a piece of baklava made with sourwood honey and topped with toasted, slivered almonds. The baklava wasn’t nearly as good as what Grandma Frost made, but it was sugary sweet, so I scarfed it down anyway.

  After dinner, the three of us split up. Carson went to his room on the seventh floor, while Daphne and I headed up to ours on thirteen. Our room was on the side of the hotel that butted up against the new construction site, but the workers must have left for the weekend already, because I didn’t hear any saws, hammers, or drills, and I hadn’t noticed any noise while we’d been downstairs eating dinner.

  Daphne and I hung out in our room for a while, unpacking our bags and gossiping about who we’d seen on the slopes, who they’d been with, and how many people would hook up with the kids from the New York academy. One couple I hadn’t spotted had been Logan and Savannah. They were probably too busy sticking their tongues down each other’s throats to go skiing. The thought didn’t make me happy.

  I flopped down on the bed and stared out the window. Since we were on the top floor, we had a great view of the surrounding mountains and the valleys that dipped down in between the jagged peaks. Snow, trees, and sky stretched out all the way to the horizon, blurring together in soft shades of purple, gray, and wintry silver. But the beautiful vista didn’t soothe me. Not now. My thoughts turned back to the Fenrir wolf. I wondered where it was right now, if it was out there in the woods that surrounded the ski resort, if it was patiently waiting for another chance to attack me—

  “What’s wrong?” Daphne asked, staring at me in the mirror while she brushed out her golden hair. “You’ve been quiet all afternoon.”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I’m just tired. All that skiing wore me out.”

  “Tired? You can’t be tired. We’ve got a party to go to, remember?”

  I groaned and flopped back on the bed. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Of course, I’m serious. Yeah, the skiing’s nice and all, but we all really come here for the parties. They’re legendary. Last year, somebody dared Morgan McDougall to go skinny-dipping in the hotel’s indoor pool with a bunch of guys. And of course she did it—sober, no less. Everybody talked about it for weeks.”

  I grimaced. “Well, I’m not Morgan, and I’m definitely not the skinny-dipping type. I’m not sure I want to go.”

  Daphne put her hands on her hips and stalked over to me. Since I was lying with my head by the foot of the bed, she looked upside down to me. Pink sparks snapped and crackled around her fingertips like lightning. I sighed. Daphne always gave off more magic when she was upset, angry, or just plain annoyed. I was willing to bet she was feeling the last one right now, and I knew it was my fault. I hadn’t exactly been a bucket of fun so far, and the Valkyrie was probably tired of having to coax me to do every little thing.

  “Of course, you want to go,” Daphne scoffed. “It’s a party, Gwen. You know, a place where you go to have a good time.”

  I just shrugged. I didn’t tell her I could have a perfectly good time in the room by myself with my comic books and sugar stash. That’s pretty much how I’d spent every night when I’d first come to Mythos, since I hadn’t had any friends at the academy.

  Being alone didn’t bother me. Part of me had been alone ever since my mom had died—alone, hollow, empty, and aching—and I knew part of me would always feel that way. The feelings might dull and dim with time, but they’d always be there. I’d always remember losing my mom—and always feel the gnawing pain of wishing she was still here with me.

  “Well, what about that cute guy you talked to in the lobby? He said he was going to the Solstice party, didn’t he?” Daphne said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And he said maybe he’d see you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  Daphne rolled her eyes. “Well, he can’t see you if you don’t actually go to the party.”

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t argue with her logic. Her point made, Daphne sniffed and stalked back over to the mirror. The Valkyrie put down her brush, plucked her raspberry-scented lip gloss out of the depths of her enormous Dooney & Bourke purse, and started working on her makeup.

  I lay there on the bed, brooding. Yeah, I’d like to go to the party, see Preston, and have a good time, but I also couldn’t forget that a Reaper was trying to kill me. First the SUV, then the arrow in the library, and now a Fenrir wolf in the snow. Whoever he was, he was definitely serious about wanting me dead, enough to try again here at the ski resort.

  This trip was just for Mythos stu
dents and staff, both the ones here in North Carolina and those who’d come down from New York, and Daphne had told me the resort was always closed to other guests during the Winter Carnival weekend. That meant the Reaper had been at the academy to start with and not just some random bad guy who’d somehow gotten past the sphinxes on the wall and snuck onto campus. My Reaper stalker was either a student, a professor, or a staff member—maybe even someone that I saw every single day. Helena Paxton, that snotty Amazon girl from the library; Mr. Llew, the calculus prof who bored me to tears with his lectures; Coach Lir, who ran the swim teams and helped out with the weapons training and other sports programs. The Reaper could be anyone.

  Whoever he was, he was really starting to piss me off. Yeah, Jasmine Ashton was dead because of me. I had plenty of guilt over her death and the part I’d played in it. But the Valkyrie had been two seconds away from murdering me when Logan had put a spear through her heart.

  My mom had killed more than one bad guy while she’d been a police detective. She’d told me once that it wasn’t right taking someone else’s life, but sometimes it was necessary to protect other people and yourself. Logan had killed Jasmine to save me, even if Jasmine’s family didn’t see it that way, even if the other Reapers didn’t see it that way.

  The truth was, I wanted to know who was trying to kill me, so I could take the Reaper down myself. Of course, I wouldn’t discover anything if I stayed here in the room all night, even if it was definitely the safer option. No, the Reaper and his wolf were out there somewhere, and it was time for me to find them. Or at least have enough fun to make me forget about them for the night. Right now, I wasn’t too picky about which way things went.

  I sat up and met Daphne’s eyes in the mirror.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s party.”