The kiss went dark and beautiful, necessary.
In the stone fireplace, the flames flared up into the chimney. The sudden light and heat had us pulling apart. I stared at the fire, then at Ethan. My palms didn’t itch. “I thought you said that couldn’t happen.”
“It can’t,” he said, watching the flickering light. “The wards must be down.”
I put my hands behind my back. “For how long?”
“A few minutes at most.” I scooted back. “What’s up, Alcott?”
“I’m dangerous,” I said miserably, thinking of burning roses and Riley. The scars on my arms hurt.
“Kia, I once wrestled a yeti.”
“Well, aren’t you macho?” I snorted back. “Fire isn’t a creature you can fight, Ethan. It always wins.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” he said quietly, invading my personal space. When I went to slide away, he blocked me, casually resting his arms on either side of my hips. “You’re afraid of yourself. Talk about a fight you’ll never win.”
I looked at him bleakly. “You’re not afraid of yourself sometimes? I’ve seen what you can do.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, appearing far more interested in my bottom lip than his violent and unusual childhood. “But I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” I muttered.
“Oh, I think I have,” he replied, his mouth a whisper away from mine. “I see the burns on your arms, the way you clench your hands into fists when you’re nervous or angry. The way you push people away.” He smiled against my lips. “So push me away, Kia.”
We stayed there in a tableau of longing and need until I gave in. Until I kissed him, gently, hesitantly, waiting for fire to burn between us. I slid my hands under the hem of his shirt, and his skin was warm and smooth, his chest as sculpted and scarred as one would expect from someone who had once wrestled a yeti. I might have purred. I’d have to kill him later if he teased me about it. We stayed there, losing track of everything but each other until an alarm beeped in his bedroom.
He lifted his head reluctantly. “Security shift is changing. They’ll do a sweep.” He kissed me again. “We should stop.”
“Okay,” I agreed before our tongues touched. He wasn’t the only one who could be distracting. His hands tightened in my hair. I stroked the warm skin of his back.
He groaned, forcing himself off of me. “You have to get out of here. Dad can’t know.”
At the mention of his father, the moment broke.
I pushed to my feet, lips tingling. “Fine.”
He kissed me again at the door, so deeply that I had to grab the wall. “You asked me if I hate my dad?”
I nodded, breathless. He smiled, brushing his lips over mine so gently it tickled. “I’ve never hated him more than at this moment.”
The door closed between us.
…
I spent the morning idly flipping through comic books, trying to make sense of the last couple of weeks and trying not to obsess over the cages in the zoo, especially the one painted with a firebird. I looked up the story of the firebird and found it was a good-luck sign from a Russian fairy tale.
It was a miracle that Ethan was as normal as he was. It was hard to imagine Summer in this world. The girl in the pretty dress and glittery earrings from Ethan’s photo looked too delicate to fight manticores and wendigos.
The photo.
I sat up, my stomach clenching nervously. I remembered the beast chasing me in the forest, the feel of ice and iron closing over me, of Ethan hunting in the woods and blackened lips at my car window. The way it seemed to target me. The crystal beads trapped in its white hair.
I knew who the wendigo was.
And I knew exactly where she was going.
Ethan.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ethan
There wasn’t much time. Kia and I hadn’t decided the best way to get her out of the castle, beyond a few sleepovers in Sloane’s dorm room. Until then, there were two concrete things I could do to help protect her.
Kill the wendigo.
And take apart the cage meant for her capture with my bare hands.
I hurried through the woods toward the zoo. Smoke drifted on the cold air from one of the barrel fires burning to keep the guards warm. The electric fencing had been fixed, and it buzzed unpleasantly as I punched in my code. The creatures were mostly asleep, conserving warmth. I went straight down the shoveled path to the red cage. The thought of Kia locked inside made adrenaline fire through my system.
I reached for the crowbar and the tools I’d brought with me in an old gym bag. The cameras faced away, since this cage was empty. As much as I wanted to smash it apart with the crowbar, I’d have to restrain myself. Better to weaken it subtly, so that no one realized we were onto them. I loosened the screws on the hinges first, then stepped back to survey the crucial structural points. The bars were too solid to tamper with. The back wall was metal, as was the floor. Kia would have been able to burn through wood eventually. Anger made my mouth taste like iron.
“Ethan?”
I spun around, slipping the screwdriver in the back of my jeans, under my coat. “Dad! You’re back.” He was standing in the path, the troll making obscene gestures in his cage behind him. The hippogriff gave a cry like a wounded eagle. “Are you the game warden tonight?”
“Someone has to keep order.” He nodded, smiling. “Animals are pretty quiet tonight, though. Too cold, I guess.”
“I guess,” I agreed. I had to distract him. The door to the cage creaked open on its hinges behind me.
“Well, that makes it easy,” he said.
Right before he shoved me and swung the door shut, locking me inside.
I hit the back wall hard but managed to keep my footing. I grabbed the bars, staring at him. “Is this some sort of joke? I don’t have time for more training.”
“Believe me, Ethan. This is for your own good.”
I shook the bars, even though I knew I couldn’t loosen them. Dread mixed with a new surge of adrenaline, making everything sharp. I could smell his cologne, hay from the Pegasus pen, and the rotting fish the troll hid in the corner of his cage. “Dad. Let me out of here.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s better this way. Someone will be back to let you out in a few hours. We need to give Justine a chance to shine.”
I went cold, fingers numb around the steel bars. “Justine hasn’t changed her mind.”
“No, she’s just scared. She needs a push. So does that little girlfriend of yours. A fiery one, isn’t she?”
“What does this have to do with Kia?”
“She has remarkable gifts. I admit I wasn’t entirely sure at first. The wards played havoc with my attempts to get any real evidence, but it was worth it. I saw what I needed to see, and then the firebird confirmed it.”
“You can’t cage her like one of your beasts.”
“She’ll be an asset to the Cabal. She’ll be one of us, son. You might actually have a future together that way.”
“I’ll kill you before I let you make her into one of your monsters.”
“I’m helping to keep her safe, too. A girl like that, powers like that.” His eyes were cold, warning. “She needs to be protected, don’t you think? To be the kind of champion you insist we should be?”
“You can’t lock her up in here!”
He shook his head. “I have no intention of doing that. Really, Ethan, you need to work on strategy. The cage was never meant for her.”
My bones felt like daggers under my skin. If I could have turned myself into a weapon I would have. “What are you talking about?”
“The cage is for you,” he said. “To keep you out of the way. You needed a push, too,” he said before walking away. “Sit tight, my boy. It’ll be over before you know it.”
“Hey!” I yelled after him. “Get me the hell out of here!”
He didn’t look back.
“You can??
?t be serious! Dad!”
He’d tricked us. He was going to try Justine despite her determination to protect Ariel. And he was going to force the Trials on Kia, despite the fact that she was utterly untrained and there was a wendigo out there who’d already tried to kill her. Fury made me feel invincible, completely at one with my stark surroundings. The world was all light and shadows, clean and simple, no complications. Ironically, the training he’d forced on me was about to be used against him. And I wouldn’t just stop the Trials—I’d take down the entire Cabal and burn the forest to the ground if I had to.
Shrieks and growls and cackling bounced off the metal walls of my cage. I tested the door hinges. I hadn’t had a chance to loosen them enough to give me a real advantage. I couldn’t get through the bars or the metal walls. And I couldn’t go under.
So I’d have to go up.
I used my contraband screwdriver to take out all the screws and pry the hinges off the ceiling. My hands were white with cold and scratched all to hell by the time I’d made progress enough to get out. I stuck my arms through the bars in one corner and swung myself up, kicking at the roof. The metal groaned. Guards would be coming out to investigate any minute now.
I kicked harder. Finally there was enough of an opening that I could pull myself through, ripping gouges along my arms and sides. I slid down the back wall and went to crouch behind the generator shed, taking inventory of my situation.
I had a screwdriver for a weapon, plus the knife in my boot. The electric fence was charged and Dad would have switched the security system to accept my code coming in but not going out. I was out of the small cage but still trapped in the bigger one.
The metal grid overhead buzzed with electricity. I didn’t have time to hack the system or break open the gates. Already the silent alarm would be flashing in the guards’ gatehouse. If nothing else, they’d want to see why all of the creatures were freaking out around me. If I let a few loose, it would buy me enough time to short the fencing and get the hell out of here.
I went to the yeth hound pen first. I’d fed him enough raw meat that he was used to me. Occasionally he even pressed again the bars to have his ears rubbed. I unlocked the troll’s cage next, and he was barging through the door before I’d even leaped out of the way. He crashed between the enclosures, roaring. I pulled myself up onto the roof of the nearest cage as a guard followed the troll’s burst to freedom. I leaped from cage to cage, shadowing him.
He found the troll eating buckets of deer entrails from the feeding station. He lifted his rifle and fired two tranquilizer darts. I dropped in front of the guard and elbowed him in the face. I grabbed his tranq gun and used it on the second guard, now shouting at me from the doorway of the gatehouse. When he slumped over, I pushed my way past him to the computers and reinstated my code as the master code. The gates swung open.
Behind me the yeth hound barked at me once, then lifted his leg and peed on the prone guard. I kept running. I passed bags of bloody meat hanging in the trees. The forest was one giant trap, waiting to close around us.
“Ethan.”
For a brief confusing moment, the voice was familiar.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kia
I called Sloane, but by the time we found Ethan, it was too late.
The wendigo had found him first.
Sloane’s teeth elongated and sharpened, her eyes rolling back in her head in pain. The flower in her hair dropped to the ground just before she did. Her hands turned to paws, and fur covered her skin as her clothes ripped at the seams. The change was so primal, so ancient that the hairs on my arms lifted. My heart raced, refusing to reconcile the wild animal in front of me with the girl who wore lace skirts and ate cinnamon buns by the pound.
Especially since Sloane was already bounding away, shedding skirts and sweaters and a pink scarf, racing through the snow in wolf form before I could ask her where she was going.
I followed her eerie wolf howl ululating from the vicinity of where I’d set off the forest fire. I took off through the trees, praying the moss girls were busy somewhere else. I eventually found tracks, which I assumed were Sloane’s. I wasn’t exactly a forest ranger. I forced myself to keep running, the frigid air cramping in my lungs. My fingers started to glow, warmth spreading up my arms. I really hoped the moss girls were busy somewhere else.
When I slid on a patch of ice-encrusted snow, I knew I was close. The trees wore lace gowns of frost and icicles. The large standing stone marker for Summer was in the center of a clearing. Sloane had tracked Ethan’s scent. And his blood.
The scratches on his chest were bleeding through his shirt, splattering him with red. His teeth were bared, and he looked more savage than Sloane did, even with her hackles raised. Icicles hung all around us, making a crystal chandelier of the branches overhead. Sloane paced around them, snarling. “Ethan,” I called. At the sound of my voice, the wendigo turned its head, growling. I knew why it targeted me now, why Ethan’s and my kisses were interrupted that night in the pool. She was jealous.
She still wanted Ethan.
Sloane gave a warning bark when the wendigo shifted, trying to decide what it wanted to do first: rip off my face or concentrate on Ethan. “Kia, get out of here,” he snapped, finally moving. “Sloane, you, too. Back off. This is one of Dad’s traps, damn it!”
“That’s not the wendigo that killed Summer,” I told him. “That is Summer.”
He didn’t shift his attention from the wendigo, but I could see his neck muscles bunch up. His breath trembled when he exhaled. “What?”
“She was infected or turned somehow when it attacked her. That’s why it has her earrings trapped in its fur.”
“And her silver ring,” he whispered, but I didn’t think he was talking to me.
Sloane paced closer, lips lifted off her teeth. The wendigo snarled back. I threw a hunk of ice at its head. It hunched its shoulders, charging at me. Snow swirled around its bare feet. Ethan was faster, grabbing its bony shoulder and throwing it off course. The wendigo punched him in the chest. He fell back a step. Sloane couldn’t help him. Neither could I.
We were a little busy with a new problem—the giant thing lumbering toward us, smelling like rotting meat. “Oh my God!” I yelled. “Now what?”
“Ogre,” Ethan yelled back, still dodging the wendigo. “Don’t worry, they’re stupid. Dad let it out so you could kill it, Kia. You or Justine.”
“Me? What the hell for?”
It might be stupid, but it was also eight feet tall and three feet wide. It was wearing bones and mildewed animal skins, with tiny bird skulls around its neck. And a severed human arm tucked into its belt. I thought of the dead hiker with the missing arm. Then I thought about throwing up.
The ogre licked its lips at me. “Hungry.”
He swung a huge arm my way. Sloane was a sleek muscled bullet, flying low to snap at the ogre’s ankle. He whined like a child, swatting her. I broke off hunks of icicles from the branches and threw them like knives. The first two missed his bulk altogether, but the third caught him under the eye. He howled.
Beside us, Ethan wielded a broken branch, catching the wendigo across the throat. The look on his face was heartbreaking: raw, sad, determined. It gagged on a scream, using Ethan’s grip on the other end as a counterbalance. The branch snapped in two.
The ogre lumbered between us, blocking my view. Flames flickered from my fingertips, turning the snow that fell around me into rain. Sloane was limping. I slipped on a patch of ice and fell, landing on my hip. The ogre was too close now. His shadow fell over me, stinking of rot. A massive hand lowered toward my head. I grabbed for another icicle and drove it into his foot like a stake.
He reared back. An arrow slammed into his chest, another into his eye. Blood splattered. I rolled out of the way just as he tripped and fell, taking down saplings and making the earth tremble. His head landed in the lake, water arcing up. I thought I saw Justine in the shadows, but I didn’t have time to thank her. r />
Ice closed a hundred iron hands over Ethan, trapping him. His feet dangled above the ground, as if he’d been tied to the tree. Snow and ice coated his bloodied face. The wendigo approached, looking almost gentle. Black, misshapen fingers stroked his blond hair. Ice sparkled in his lashes. I already couldn’t tell if it was ice from the wendigo or if he was being turned.
“Summer,” he croaked. “Summer, please.”
The wendigo paused, but only for the briefest, briefest moment.
I broke into a run.
Sloane was faster. She growled, deep and low in her throat, nose crinkling and ears flattening. She was all fur and teeth, streaking through the air. She clamped the wendigo’s shoulder between her teeth and shook it, the way she’d have snapped a rabbit’s neck. The wendigo howled and clawed back frantically. They tumbled into the trees, swiping savagely at each other.
Ethan’s eyes fluttered open, but he still couldn’t move. Panic had him struggling, blood smearing the ice over his chest. I picked up the broken end of the branch and closed the distance between us. Fire danced from my hands up my arms. Even the ends of my hair sparked.
I heard flesh tearing, bones breaking. And then nothing at all. Bile was sour in the back of my throat. The wendigo’s fur was matted with blood. Sloane lay in the snow, naked and pale, wrapped in her long red hair. Her clothes were in shreds back at the cemetery, and the wolf had left her. Everything had left her.
She wasn’t moving.
Ethan was trapped.
And Sloane was dead.
Chapter Thirty
Kia
Ethan wasn’t the only one who was immobilized.
I literally couldn’t move.
Sloane was dead.
The stars watched us, uncaring. The snow continued to fall. The lake glittered. Ethan screamed in his cage of ice.
And Sloane was still dead.
The snow turned to water under my boots, melting right down to the layer of dead leaves. The wendigo turned away from Sloane. The ice grew so thick, so fast that it echoed, sounding like an avalanche. The water under my feet turned slick and treacherous. Even the tears froze on my cheeks for a brief moment before melting away again.