Biting Cold (7 page)

His gaze went fierce, and he lifted my chin with his finger and thumb. “I know you love her. I have no doubt of it. But if it comes down to a choice between you and her, my choice is already made.”

“Ethan—”

“No,” he said, crystalline green eyes boring into me. “
You
are my choice. I told you before—you are mine, by blood and bone. I won’t let her come between that, no matter how sick she is.”

Maybe seeing the panic in my eyes, his expression softened. “I don’t wish it,” he said. “I don’t want it to come to that. But the decision is made. It is and will be.”

“We’re not doing this to punish her,” I reminded him. “This is
a rescue mission. We find her, and we bring her home, safe and sound. All three of us, safe and sound. She brought you back to me, Ethan. I can’t forgive her for what she’s done, but I can’t forget that, either.”

He wrapped himself around me, his mouth on mine so suddenly it took my breath away. Then he captured my face with his hands and kissed me with an insistence that left no room for question, or doubt, about who I was to him.

We began as enemies, Ethan and I. He saved my life but was unwilling to accept me for who I was—or I, him.

We grew as colleagues but fought our attraction to each other. And when I was ready to give in to his advances, he let fear lead him away.

He gave his life for me, and I finally admitted the depth of my feelings for him.

And by a miracle—a miracle by a blue-haired girl intent on destroying the world around us—he was back again…and she was still the obstacle between us.

Paige’s voice echoed up the stairs. “Ready if you are!”

Ethan stepped back and rubbed a hand across his jaw. “We should get downstairs.”

I nodded back at him, unsure how to begin again.

Worry heavy in my heart, we met Paige on the first floor. She looked ready for work in heavy pants, black boots, and a short plaid coat with a matching cap and earflaps, her red curls gleaming beneath it. She might have been out here alone, but this girl was serious about her job.

We followed her outside into the crisp fall air. It was a lovely night for late November, the chill in the air just cool enough to be refreshing instead of toe numbing. Paige led us around the
farmhouse and into the field behind it, where the grass was short and yellowed. The moon shone high and white in the sky.

“So, Paige,” I said, “if you’re the only one here, how do you keep an eye on everything?”

“I have friends. The prairie may be empty of sorcerers, but it’s not empty of sups. I also have potions. You’ve heard of Sleepytime tea? I’ve invented the opposite—a magical pick-me-up. I call it Wakeytime tea. It gives me the energy to keep an eye out.”

“That’s what you were drinking earlier?”

“No. That really was Sleepytime tea. I took the day off since you were here, too. It made me feel better to have someone else in the house, even if you were unconscious. It was the first time I’ve slept in days.”

I was impressed that she looked so good on so little sleep. I’d have looked like a plague victim on a bad hair day. “You look fantastic.”

“Not all of us are vampires with ageless skin. We do what we can. Sometimes we do it with magic.”

Paige led us down a well-trodden path across a small pasture and through the gap in a split-log fence. The next field was furrowed, the remains of yellowed cornstalks stumpy along the ground.

“You grow corn here?” Ethan asked.

“Keeping up appearances,” Paige said. “There’s the entrance to the silo.” In the middle of the field, which had to be three hundred yards across, sat a small cube of concrete. “The missile bay doors are hidden under the topsoil.”

“The Order definitely picked a hard-to-reach location,” Ethan said.

“The armed forces picked it first. We’re in the middle of the country,” Paige said. “It was a great place for missile defense, if you want maximum protection from the enemy.”

We crunched across the frozen ground to the silo entrance, which didn’t appear to be more than a concrete box with a utility door. Paige unlocked and opened it, revealing a small metal platform.

“Climb aboard,” Paige said, pulling off her cap and revealing a tangle of red curls. “The bunker is thirty-two feet down. The platform’s on a scissor lift, so it will take us to the bottom.”

The “platform” consisted of a plank of corrugated metal—the kind you could see straight through—and a few strips of railing. Below us was only darkness.

Paige joined me and Ethan, then punched a red button on a giant metal box that hung from one side of the railing. Slowly, and with a metallic
screech
, we began the descent.

I wasn’t much for dark, confined spaces. I could feel my chest tightening as claustrophobia took hold. The dim light that glowed beneath us didn’t do much to diminish the lingering sense of doom.

After a few seconds, we hit the bottom floor. The platform stopped with a jerk, revealing the end of a long concrete hallway.

“Basement,” Paige said, “ladies’ accessories and hosiery.”

We followed her off the lift and into the hallway, which was cold and silent but for the steady hum of machinery we couldn’t see. The air was warm but smelled musty, like the same air had been recycled since the silo had been built. The walls were the glossy, pale green of hospitals and antiquated DMV offices, and they were broken intermittently by more closed utility doors.

Paige pointed at them in turn as we walked to the other end of the hall. “These are all living quarters. When the silo was operational, it was staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There were at least two men here at all times—and they were always guys back then.”

“Heaven forbid the ladies should accidentally launch a PMS-driven missile,” I snarked.

“Precisely,” Paige dryly agreed. “We’re strong enough to birth children but hardly trustworthy when national security’s on the line.”

“Is the missile still stored here?” Ethan asked.

“No. It was removed when the silo was decommissioned. But the tube remains. And that’s what’s helpful for us.”

The hallway ended in a giant sliding concrete door. Paige pushed it sideways along its tracks.

“This is the silo,” she quietly said, and led us inside.

The room was enormous, a concrete circle with cavernous holes in the middle of the floor. Panels with thousands of small, sharp-cornered buttons lined consoles along the walls beside brightly colored warnings not to touch the buttons without authorization.

I had to curl my fingers into fists to keep from pressing them just to see what might happen.

And the gaping concrete hole where a missile had once stood? Big enough that I had trouble wrapping my mind around the scale of it. I stood at the railing that bound the gap and looked down. The shaft was well lit, and it was lined with steel supports I assumed would have supported the missile.

“The silo itself is one hundred and three feet tall,” Paige said, her voice echoing in the vastness of the room.

“And we’re roughly thirty feet down,” Ethan said, “which means there’s seventy more feet of hole below us.”

“Correct. The concrete is three feet thick on all sides. Quite impenetrable.”

“It boggles the mind,” Ethan said, staring down into the abyss.

She pointed to a metal staircase across the room. “There are
floors above and below. They hold tanks and more operational controls.”

“And the
Maleficium
?”

She walked to the railing and pointed down into the silo. “It’s at the very bottom on a pedestal, ironically or otherwise. You can just see it.”

I looked down. Sure enough, I could see its red leather cover. It didn’t glow or vibrate or give off a weird vibe. It just sat there, minding its own business, holding within it the power to destroy a city and a friendship.

“It’s the most secure point in the facility—six concrete doors to get through, assuming you could find your way down there. This place is a maze.”

Difficult to maneuver unless you could fly straight down the silo and nab it. Thank God sorcerers didn’t actually use broomsticks, although the thought of Mallory in pointy black witch’s shoes riding a push broom did a lot to perk up my mood.

“You’ve done a masterful job making it difficult to get to,” Ethan said.

“It’s not just to keep people out,” she said. “It’s to keep the evil in. The world used to be a much harsher place. The sorcerers who created the
Maleficium
thought they were creatively solving a problem—lock evil away and everything’s just hunky-dory. As it turns out, a magical book is pretty porous.”

“Evil seepage?” I wondered.

“Yep,” Paige said. “The mechanism isn’t perfect. It’s just the best mechanism we have, though, so it’s worth protecting.”

“Point made,” Ethan said.

My stomach picked that moment to rumble impolitely. In the cavernous space of a missile silo, it wasn’t exactly a quiet sound.

Ethan shook his head. Paige smiled. “Let’s head back upstairs,
and I’ll start getting a real meal together. You two can explore the property a bit, get the lay of the land. It’s a big acreage—a square mile in all, and it’s bounded by the roads on all four sides, so if you reach gravel, you’ve gone too far.”

Ethan nodded. “Thank you. Having a feel for the place might come in handy.”

Undoubtedly,
I thought. The question was, when?

The platform carried us to the surface again. Paige made her good-byes, pulled on her cap, and relocked the door as we stepped outside. The wind had picked up and the air was brisker. I zipped up my jacket.

Paige walked back toward the house, a lonely silhouette in the dark emptiness.

“I wonder if she’s being punished—sent out here all alone by the Order,” I said. “They have a history of punishing their members.” Or in Catcher’s case, kicking them out altogether.

Ethan put his hands on his hips and scanned the empty field. “Like this is an island of misfit witches?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Paige seems to take her job seriously. She doesn’t seem like the punished type. Unfortunately, even if she was faking it, I’m not sure we’d know. I’m beginning to doubt there’s a single sorcerer or sorceress in existence capable of telling the entire truth about anything.”

“Bitter much?”

“With good cause,” he said. “Catcher was in denial. Simon was an idiot. Mallory is addicted to something that has the potential to destroy her, and Paige has been stationed out here alone. Neither the Order nor its representatives inspire confidence at the moment.”

He gestured toward a line of trees on the other side of the field.

“There’s not a lot of visibility over there, and I find that makes me uncomfortable. Let’s take a look.”

As we walked toward the stand of trees, the sound of moving water grew louder, and the crunch of spent cornstalks gave way to the crunch of dead leaves.

The trees, maybe fifty yards deep on each side, lined a small, rocky creek that flowed into the distance. The trees were old and gnarled, their crabby black branches reaching for the moon-bright sky.

Winter was steps away, and if the sudden biting cold was any sign, it wasn’t going to be a nice one. The air had become frosty enough to suck the air from your lungs and bring tears to your eyes.

“It’s getting colder,” I said.

Ethan nodded. He took my hand, and we followed the stream for a bit in the quiet dark, then crossed through the trees to the edge of another field. This one was bounded by a fence and held a scattering of cows.

“I think I prefer woods to empty fields,” I said. “Trees seem safer somehow.”

“I suppose,” Ethan said quietly. He dropped my hand and rubbed his temples.

“Another headache?”

He nodded, then took my hand again. We made it only a few more steps before he wrenched his hand from mine and began scrubbing his hands across his arms.

“Christ almighty,” he swore.

“Ethan?” I tentatively asked. He was obviously in pain, but I had no idea how to help. And when he looked at me, there was fear in his eyes that made my blood run cold.

“Is it Tate again?”

He shook his head.

“Is it the accident? Did you hit your head?”

He reached out for a nearby tree, bracing his arm against it. “You told me Mallory said her need for the dark magic was uncomfortable. An irritation.”

I nodded, fear squeezing my chest tight.

“I think I feel that itch beneath my skin.”

My eyes widened. “You can sense what she’s feeling?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and balled his fists on his forehead like he was holding back a scream. “It’s infuriating. Like fire beneath my skin. Like things are wrong.”

“When did it start?”

“Just now. This is the first time…this has happened.”

But was it? Ethan’s rebirth hadn’t been unicorns and rainbows at first. He’d managed to walk through smoke and fire back to me, only to collapse a few minutes later.

“On the midway, you collapsed. You fell down right after she resurrected you.”

“I don’t remember that,” he said.

I thought back to that moment, looking for some fact that might link what had happened then and what he was feeling now. “You walked across the grass. Jonah saw you first.”

“Where was Mallory?”

“She was unconscious. Catcher had knocked her out.” She’d passed out, and then he had, too. I worked to keep my voice steady. “Do you think you’re connected to her somehow?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Had the familiar spell been completed, I certainly would have been. But she didn’t manage to finish it.”

“Maybe what she did finish was enough,” I said, and the fears
began to pummel my brain.
Please,
I silently prayed,
please
don’t let her turn him into a zombie.

He squeezed his eyes shut and grunted, his face contorted. “It hurts. If this is what she’s feeling, I get it. I understand the pain.”

I felt a sudden sympathy for her—not for what she’d done, but for the demons she’d had to fight along the way. They didn’t excuse her behavior, but if this was what she was feeling, they certainly explained it a little: better to destroy the world than to let it drive you completely crazy.