I ignored him. Mostly because Mr. Yang suggested I ignore people who are pissing me off instead of hauling off and punching them.
Tobias sighed. “Stay behind me at least.” He put an arm out to stop me. “Wait.” He crouched to make two snowballs, then lobbed them at the two nearest security cameras. I felt a smug satisfaction at seeing the lenses obscured. “Probably can’t see us in this storm anyway, but I’d rather be sure.”
The trail wasn’t exactly stealthy; even I would’ve been able to follow it alone. They’d cut through the fields and crashed through the woods. Broken branches and churned-up snow led us farther and farther into the forest. I put my head down, pushing against the snow. I didn’t realize how cold I was until Tobias glanced back and then stopped so suddenly I crashed into him.
“Kia?” he said. “You’re glowing.”
It looked like my hands were made of candlelight, a peach-colored hue that wavered with heat. It was like looking at the sun through your closed eyelids. I didn’t feel cold anymore. I smiled sheepishly. “Um, yeah. That happens.”
“That happens?”
Actually, it usually happened with a great deal more violence, as Ethan’s dad’s car could attest to. This was kind of awesome. It was a simmering warmth, nothing exploding, no one getting hurt.
Yet.
“Ethan.”
Tobias’s jaw clenched. I nodded grimly. “It was calling out to him like that before.”
The snow swirled, blinding us. I stumbled to keep up. The glow from my hands intensified. A hank of white hair fluttered in a severed branch. Blood and sap dripped sluggishly to the ground.
We finally found Ethan, a knife in his hand and his hair frozen in spikes. Tobias grabbed his arm. “Let it go, man.”
“Get off me.” Ethan shook him away, snarling. “It’s right there. I can get it.”
I saw the flash of the wendigo’s eyes, like shards of mirror. The snow turned to ice pellets, stinging and biting as it pelted us. “Uh, guys?”
“You’re not even wearing shoes!” Tobias argued, ignoring me.
“I don’t care!” Ethan shouted back.
“Guys?” I knew the minute the wendigo saw me. Its eyes flashed brighter, and ice creaked all around us, coating pine needles and the last of the maple leaves. It dropped out of a tree and advanced on me, licking its mangled lips. “Guys!”
They stopped shoving at each other to glare at me, snapping in unison. “What?”
I pointed to the blur of white hair and jagged wintry bones rushing at us.
Well, at me.
Ethan threw his knife. Wendigo blood was dark and sluggish, a trickle in the snow, but it barely noticed, flicking at the knife as if it were a mosquito. Tobias swung his staff in warning. Ethan ducked underneath it and went for the creature’s throat. He punched, snapping its neck back. There was the crackle of ice, a slap from the storm. The wendigo grabbed Ethan by the collar of his shirt and lifted him up so that his feet dangled off the ground.
“No!” Tobias swung his staff low, at the wendigo’s skeletal knees. It was too late. It had already tossed Ethan aside as if he were a paper doll and kicked Tobias in the face.
And now it was charging toward me.
Ethan landed hard, crashing through pine branches until he lay sprawled and covered in snow. When he didn’t move right away, fear clamped around me like an iron trap. The answering fire blasted through the air, turning the snow to boiling water around us, cracking branches off trees as the ice shattered. The smell of charred pine made Ethan choke.
At least he was alive. The fire danced, biting at the wendigo. It cried out like a wounded animal, falling back. But it was still glaring at me, still boiling with resentment and hunger. I knew exactly how it felt. I really must be one of the monsters after all.
“That thing really doesn’t like you,” Tobias remarked calmly, wiping blood from his crooked nose. Ethan pushed to his feet, groaning.
I swallowed. “Bigger problem.”
They followed my gaze to the treetops. “Oh, crap,” Tobias said. “And now you pissed off the moss girls.”
“Me?” I squeaked. “How did I piss them off? I don’t even know what they are!”
Well, I knew one thing. They looked damned scary. And this coming from a girl facing down an angry wendigo.
Shadows congregated around us, grim mouthed and green eyed. They were the color of pine, mahogany, cedar. One was faintly green, like moss. They wore layers of birch bark and leaves and berries in their knotted hair, and they carried sharpened spears and bows and arrows.
All pointed at us.
“Girls,” Tobias said, stepping out so that he was the easy target. An arrow took the tasseled end of his scarf and pinned it into the ground, nearly strangling him in the process.
“What the hell, man?” Ethan asked, shaking snow out of his ears as he kicked the arrow, snapping it in half. “The moss girls love you.”
“I helped Abby chop firewood last week, and they smelled the sap on my hands. Guess they’re still pissed.”
“Guess so.”
“But what are they?” I asked. The fire was still keeping the wendigo at bay, but I had no idea how long that would last.
“Kind of like dryads,” Ethan replied. “Tree spirits,” he elaborated when I just stared at him. “They protect the forest.”
“More security? And how exactly do they do that?”
“Well, not with sunshine and sugar, I can tell you that much.”
When we stepped back, a spear bit into the snow, cutting off our movement. That spear was sharp enough to cut through bone. Fire raced up a pine tree, flaring with my agitation. Blisters rose on my fingertips, but I barely noticed.
“No more fire!” Tobias actually yelled, abandoning his usually Zen-like calm, as more spears and arrows whistled toward us. Ethan pushed me into the snow, covering me. There were pine needles and blood in his hair from his collision with the tree. If anything, the tree had harmed him, not the other way around.
“Hey!” I yelled at the moss girls, craning to see over his shoulder. “Maybe you missed the big-ass wendigo somewhere over there? He’s the one breaking all your trees. We’re just trying not to get eaten!”
Ethan looked down at me, nearly smiling despite the fact that he was in real danger of being turned into a pincushion. “You used to poke the bears at the zoo when you were a kid, didn’t you?”
“Tobias.” The moss girls’ lips didn’t move, but they seemed to speak as one. It was a chorus of voices that was rustling leaves and the clack and rattle of dry winter branches. Tobias stood in the center of the clearing, vulnerable and silent. Stoic.
When I tried to wiggle out from under Ethan, he pinned me, shaking his head. “Don’t,” he whispered. An arrow landed so close to our heads I had to blink snow out of my lashes. The cold ground warmed up under my body, melting in rivulets that soaked into my clothes.
“Leave us the girl.”
Ethan tensed.
“Shit,” I said. “That’s not good.” The moss girls were still talking, but I couldn’t make out any more words, only leafy sounds. “I have an idea.”
“And now I’m really afraid for the first time tonight.”
“Ha-ha. Seriously. The wendigo hates me. We need it to attack again.” Ethan didn’t move. “A little misdirection,” I pointed out. “You’re the big hero, shouldn’t you know this stuff?”
He still didn’t move. “Great plan. You know, if it didn’t involve risking your life for us.”
We didn’t really have time to argue. So instead I pinched him really hard on the sensitive skin under his arm. He jerked back reflexively. I rolled to my feet, staying low. I took a deep breath, concentrating on the cold numbing my hands until the fire died down.
The wendigo snarled, coming at me through the trees, hair singed.
Ethan kicked the back of my knees, knocking me back down, as winter-damaged claws raked past my nose. White hair slapped me in the face. Ethan spun on his
heel and kicked again, sending the wendigo stumbling. It caught itself on a tree, ripping a branch right out of the trunk. A moss girl lost her footing and tumbled. The others jumped like mad hornets, swarming the wendigo.
“Run!” Ethan grabbed one of my arms.
Tobias grabbed the other one. “Run faster!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ethan
If I’d had time and she wasn’t so feral, I would have picked Kia up and carried her back to the castle. As it was, Tobias and I held on to her so tightly her feet were barely touching the ground. Moss girls were unpredictable. They’d probably stay and fight the wendigo for knocking one of their sisters out of a tree.
Probably.
There were no guarantees in the forest.
The sounds of a battle trailed us, and it went against all of my training not to turn around and go back. I still wanted a piece of that wendigo.
“Don’t even think about it,” Tobias said before I’d even realized that my steps had slowed. He knew me better than anyone else, and I owed him a debt. He could have left the castle. He’d graduated last year, and he had a job. He could get his own place. Hell, he could move to the city and never look back. But he wouldn’t. Not while I was still here. He wouldn’t leave me alone, and I couldn’t drop out and run away because it would leave the others vulnerable. And now that Colt was injured, Justine would have to fight all that much harder to keep herself and her siblings out of the Trials. And the day they turned eighteen, Justin would go through it without her. She was buying time, like her mother, but it was the best she could do.
There was a sharp cry from somewhere behind us. Tree branches tangled together, creating knots. The moss girls were closing the forest. We didn’t have much time.
We pushed through the blizzard, cold air slapping the backs of our throats as we gasped. We didn’t let go of Kia, even when branches and boughs scraped at our faces. We ducked our heads and kept going. The trees bent over like gnarled old women, cackling and cracking their dry bones. A pine bough slapped the cut on my temple, and I hissed in pain.
Tobias and I used our last burst of energy and adrenaline to drag Kia and then toss her into the white field on the edge of the forest. She landed half buried on her back, blinking at us as we slid in beside her. Tobias and I exchanged a glance, waiting for some kind of hysterical reaction—tears or, more likely in her case, a foul-mouthed tirade.
“I’m freezing my ass off,” she said instead. “And there’s snow in my ears. Let’s get inside.”
We limped on frozen, tingling feet into the pool house. The ice in my hair melted into cold water, running down the back of my neck. Kia gave a violent shiver.
“If you do that again, I’ll kick your sorry ass,” Tobias told me calmly before going back to his room.
The anger and vengeance searing through me fizzled. I ached all over, and I was so tired of the Cabal and the forest and the training grounds. I reached for Kia’s hand. Her fingers were warm.
I took her to my room, and I went straight to the fireplace and lit the wood stacked inside. It was stuffed with twists of paper and pinecones. I pulled off my wet shirt. She glanced at my bare chest, glanced away. I went into the bathroom and put on dry clothes.
When I came back, Kia was sitting on the floor, the firelight playing over her face. “That was insane, right? Even for this place?” She shook her head. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.” I sat next to her, pressing a towel to the cut on my temple. “Ethan, that thing could have killed you.”
“I’m harder to kill than that.” I tried not to let frustration choke me. I’d been so close, twice now. I’d looked into the wendigo’s haunted, strangely human eyes. I should have killed it by now.
“It knew your name.”
“Most of the creatures know our names,” I told her, pulling the towel away. Since the bleeding seemed to have stopped, I tossed it aside. The cut stung, but I didn’t have a headache. I’d caught most of the fall on my left arm. “At least the sentient ones. We’re not exactly popular.”
“I can’t think why.” She drew her legs up, resting her forehead on her knees. Her hair was twisted over one shoulder, leaving her nape bare and delicate. I traced my thumb over her top vertebrae. She leaned into my touch a little. I wasn’t sure if she even realized what she was doing. “Do you think the wendigo is behind those hikers going missing?”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t be sure.”
“Bears don’t leave a severed arm behind.”
“Ew.”
“When it attacked the car, you said it looked at you through the windshield, right?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. And again through the pool house window.” She paused. “Are you saying it’s targeting me?”
“Maybe.”
“But why?” she asked. “How could I have pissed off an ice monster? And one that specifically knows your name?”
“Good question.”
“Does that mean it used to be a person? Are wendigos born or made?”
“Another excellent question.”
“I’ve noticed we have a lot of those.”
“And very few answers.”
“I noticed that, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kia
I woke up slowly, trying to remember why I was sleeping on the floor. The fire was down to smoldering red coals behind the ornate iron grate. The snow was pretty and soft at the window, and there was a blanket over me. Ethan must have put it there. I wondered if I’d fallen asleep midsentence. All I wanted to do was lie there and listen to the whispers and moans of the blizzard and the pop of the firewood.
Except that Ethan didn’t sound right.
He was sprawled on his back beside me. His eyes were closed, but as I shoved off the blanket and shifted closer, I could see them fluttering like butterfly wings. “Ethan,” I said. My voice sounded odd in the quiet room, echoing as if we were in a cave.
His eyelids flickered faster, and then he moaned as if he was in pain. There was sweat on his forehead and curling his hair into a lock over his left eyebrow. It made him seem younger, more vulnerable. Especially when it became clear that he was in the jaws of a nightmare. “Ethan, wake up.” He jerked, making a strange guttural sound in the back of his throat, but he didn’t wake up. I reached out to shake his shoulder firmly. “Ethan, you have to—”
My finger barely brushed him. His eyes opened so abruptly I flinched. He wasn’t entirely present; part of him was still dreaming in some corner of his mind. He didn’t recognize me, except to assume I was a threat.
This was not good, considering how many ways he could kill me.
I realized that too late. I was already flipping through the air. I landed on the floor on the other side of him as he leaned over me, arm across my throat, teeth bared. And they’d laughed at me for assuming he was the werewolf. He looked more feral right now than Sloane ever could.
“Ethan,” I wheezed, tugging on his wrist. “Ethan, it’s me.”
He was still, predatory. Who knew what horrible monster he was seeing when he looked at me? He was pressed so close I could see the spikes of his eyelashes, the faint stubble along his jaw. So I did what I always did when I felt trapped. Well, one of the things I always did, since fire wouldn’t answer me in the castle.
I kneed him right between the legs.
He blocked with his own knee, pressing harder on my windpipe. My breath clogged somewhere in my throat, far from my lungs, where it would do me some good. I couldn’t get enough momentum or range of motion for a good punch. I tried what Abby used to do to me when I was little and in trouble—I’d hazard a guess she’d have done the same thing to Ethan, billionaire boss’s son or not—I twisted his ear as hard as I could and yanked.
Ethan recoiled, cursing. His arm came off my throat. He rested his hands on either side of my head and blinked at me, confused. “Kia? What’s going on?”
I gasped, taking big breaths. “Remind me not to
wake you up unless I have a very long stick to poke you with.” I swallowed, grateful it didn’t hurt. “Preferably a sharp one.”
“Oh, God,” he said, looking faintly green. “Did I hurt you? What did I do?” He launched off me. He scrambled closer to the fire, as far from me as he could get. “I’m so sorry.”
I sat up, massaging my neck. “I’m okay. You were having a nightmare.”
He shoved his hair off his face, looking haunted. And hunted. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “You shouldn’t wake me. I have…reflexes.”
I snorted. “No shit, Sherlock.” I nudged him gently with my foot when he sat there looking freaked out. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Next time, ignore me.”
I shook my head. “Next time I’ll throw something at your head.”
He quirked half a smile. “Deal.”
I moved closer to him. He radiated tension, and I could all but feel the burn of adrenaline rising off his skin. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Wow, you’re a bad liar.”
He shot me a funny look. “I’m an excellent liar.”
“How do you figure?”
“You thought I didn’t like you, didn’t you?” he asked quietly. “You have no idea how many times I think of you. How often I want to kiss you.”
As fast as that, Ethan went from hunted to hunter.
The snow piled against the windowsills, the wind tapped on the walls. We were outside of time, held safe in a little burrow of darkness and warmth, far from reality. He didn’t smile, didn’t tell me I was pretty like most boys did when they were alone in the dark with a girl. He leaned in, fingers grazing up my arms until I shivered. They tangled in my hair, just as his breath tangled with mine.
His mouth was sweet and hot, and he kissed me as if there was nothing else in the world. I kissed him back, falling into the blanket as he pressed against me. I smelled the smoke on his skin from the fire he’d built. He kissed my neck, my jaw, my ear until I grabbed his face and moved his mouth back to mine. He smiled against my lips. I touched his tongue with mine. His hands moved up my waist, his thumbs resting on my rib cage.