Crimson Frost (6 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Estep

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: Crimson Frost
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That force tightened around both of us for a moment, almost like arms pulling us close for a comforting hug, before it abruptly faded away altogether. Grandma blinked, her eyes cleared, and she was herself once more.
Nyx jumped up, batting at the silver coins dangling from her scarves, and Grandma laughed and stooped down to pet the wolf pup. She didn’t say anything about what she’d seen, and I didn’t ask. It was difficult for Grandma to have reliable visions about family or friends in the first place, since her feelings for someone could influence what she saw. So she rarely told me about the glimpses she got of my future, claiming that she didn’t want me to make important decisions based on something that might or might not happen. I understood that Grandma wanted me to take my own path in life, but sometimes a little hint about all the Bad, Bad Things that were on the horizon would have been nice.
Grandma walked over to my desk and picked up a metal tin shaped like a giant chocolate chip cookie. “How about something to eat?” she asked. “I’d just finished making some oatmeal raisin cookies for you when Metis called.”
Grandma Frost loved to bake, and she was always making some sweet, delicious treat for me to bring back to the academy and share with my friends.
“I also stopped and got you a sandwich,” she added.
She pointed to a white paper bag on my desk, and I knew she was talking about the Pork Pit, one of my favorite restaurants. But I didn’t feel like eating anything tonight, not even cookies.
Still, I made myself smile at her. “Maybe later.”
Grandma stayed with me the rest of the evening, while I called Daphne and filled her in. I called Logan too, but he didn’t answer his phone. He was probably still arguing with his dad, so I left him a voice mail, saying that I was going to bed and that I’d see him tomorrow morning at weapons training.
Finally, just before the ten o’clock curfew, Grandma got to her feet and said that she’d better go before the dorms locked down for the night. I was on the floor playing with Nyx, and I gathered the wolf pup up in my arms once more and got to my feet. A tear leaked out of the corner of my eye at what I had to do now.
“I think you should take Nyx home with you,” I said in a sad voice. “I don’t want the Protectorate to find her here and take her away.”
“Yes, do please send the fuzzball away,” Vic said in a snarky tone. “All that fur is terrible on my allergies. Terrible, I tell you!”
The sword sniffed as if to prove his point, but I could see the gleam of a tear in his eye. In his own way, he loved Nyx just as much as I did.
Grandma nodded. “That’s probably for the best, pumpkin. There’s a lot going on right now. Better not to take the chance.”
I passed Nyx over to Grandma Frost. She tucked the Fenrir wolf pup inside her coat so Nyx would stay warm on the walk across campus to her car. I petted Nyx a final time, whispering that I’d come see her just as soon as I could. I hugged Grandma tight, and they left.
My room seemed so quiet, so still, so terribly
empty
, without them, especially without Nyx bounding from corner to corner, sniffing, growling, and exploring the room like she hadn’t been living here all her short life. I’d never realized how sad and suffocating the quiet could seem until now.
I wiped away a few more tears and got ready for bed. Taking a shower, putting on my pajamas, getting my books together for my morning classes. Nothing too difficult, but by the time I finished, I was exhausted.
I crawled into bed and snuggled down under my purple and gray plaid comforter. Normally, I would have left Vic on his spot on the wall, but tonight, I laid the sword and his scabbard on top of the bed, right next to me. I’d already lost Nyx—I didn’t want to lose him too.
“Don’t worry, Gwen,” Vic said. “You’ll find out who’s behind all this, and when you do, I’ll be right there to help you deal with the Reaper scum. Why, we’ll slice them to bloody ribbons! We’ll wear their guts for garters! We’ll . . .”
And on and on he went, each fantasy a little bloodier and more violent than the last. Despite the situation, I couldn’t help but smile. So many things had changed in my life since I’d come to Mythos, but Vic was one of the constants. I could always count on the sword to be exactly who and what he was. Something that comforted me tonight more than ever.
“Good night, Vic,” I said when he finally wound down. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”
“Good night, Gwen.”
The sword yawned, his half of a jaw popping in the darkness. His eye snapped shut, and a few minutes later he started snoring.
I reached over and rested my hand on top of the sword, and I didn’t let go of him, not even when I finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 6
To my surprise, I fell into a dark, dreamless sleep until my alarm startled me awake the next morning.
I got ready for the day and peeked out the window at the lawn, but Inari wasn’t in sight. I guess the Ninja had pulled the night shift, and now it was time for someone else to take over the horrible duty of guarding me. Well, I had things to do, and I wasn’t going to wait around for the Protectorate to show up.
I didn’t have to. When I opened the door to my room, I found Alexei waiting outside in the hallway. The Russian warrior was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his lean, muscled chest. A black backpack lay at his feet, and I could see the hilts of two swords sticking out of the top of it.
“So you get to follow me around all day. Yippee-skippee,” I grumbled, looping the strap of my gray messenger bag over my head and chest.
Alexei didn’t say anything, but his mouth twitched up into something that almost looked like a smile. Well, at least someone was amused by my suffering.
I locked the door behind me, brushed past Alexei, and headed down the stairs. He fell into step right behind me, as close to me as my own shadow. Once again, he didn’t make any noise as he walked, not a single sound, not even when he went over the squeaky step at the bottom of the staircase. His eerie, watchful silence made me feel like there was a ghost haunting me. The only difference was that I could actually see Alexei when I turned around.
I made it to the bottom of the steps, walked down a hallway, and stared out the front door of the dorm. The morning was ice-cold, and the frosted grass glinted like thousands of tiny silver daggers, stretching out as far as the eye could see. The sun had barely come up, but the faint rays had already given the frost a bloody, crimson tint. What was the old saying? Something about a red sky in morning being a warning. Yeah, I had a feeling it was going to be that kind of day.
I reached into my coat pockets and pulled out my dark gray gloves, scarf, and toboggan, all patterned with glittery silver snowflakes. When I was all bundled up, I went outside, shoved my hands into my coat pockets, and stepped onto one of the cobblestone paths that wound up the hill to the main quad. Since it was so early, Alexei and I were the only ones outside.
We walked in silence for about two minutes before I looked over my shoulder at Alexei.
“So what’s your deal?” I asked.
“My deal?”
I shrugged. “Your deal. You know, where you’re from, what kind of warrior you are, why the Protectorate would assign a kid my own age to guard me.”
Alexei studied me, as if he couldn’t decide whether or not this was some kind of trick to get supersecret Protectorate information out of him. Heh. If I wanted to do that, all I would have to do was touch him. Unlike me, Alexei wasn’t wearing gloves. His hands hung bare by his sides, instead of being tucked into his coat pockets like they should have been on such a chilly morning. Maybe the cold didn’t bother him. Some of the Mythos kids had magic that made them immune to extreme temperatures.
Even though I’d decided awhile back not to use my magic to pull secrets out of people unless it was absolutely necessary, I couldn’t help eyeing his hands and wondering if I could yank off my gloves, touch him, and flash on him with my psychometry before he realized what I was up to. Probably not without an Amazon’s quickness.
Still, the temptation to try was so
strong
. I wanted to know what Alexei, and more important, the Protectorate, knew about me. I especially wanted to know what they knew about my touch magic—and if they’d realized that I’d killed Preston with it.
I shivered, but it wasn’t because of the chill in the air. A guy’s face filled my mind. Once, it had been a handsome face, but now it was twisted with pain, and his blue eyes were cold, dead, and empty—all because of me. Metis and Grandma Frost had always told me that my magic would keep growing, that I’d be able to do other things with it besides just touch objects and see memories, but I never thought I could actually
kill
someone with it. But that’s what I’d done to Preston. I’d used my psychometry to kill him so that I could live. That was bad enough, but the worst part was that I knew I could do the same thing again—to anyone, at any time. I could feel the magic, the power, the knowledge deep inside me, a dark whisper that rasped along in time to the beat of my heart.
Use me, use me, use me . . .
“I’m from Saint Petersburg, Russia,” Alexei finally said. He must have decided that my questions were harmless after all. “However, I attend the London academy since that’s where my dad spends most of his time with the Protectorate these days. I’m a Bogatyr warrior, and I’m not your age. I’m eighteen, a third-year student.”
I rolled my eyes. Yeah, yeah. I knew that all the academies all over the world had the same structure, with first-year students who were sixteen or so all the way up to the sixth-years, who were around twenty-one. Second-year, third-year, it wasn’t that big a difference.
“I’m here to guard you because my father is a senior member of the Protectorate, and I’m training to be a member too someday. And also because I’m . . . familiar with some of your classmates.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Familiar how? And what’s a Bogatyr?”
“We’re going to your weapons training now, yes?”
I nodded.
“You’ll see.”
And that was all he said. He didn’t explain anything else about himself, who he was, or why he was here. Okay, okay, so he wanted to be all dark, brooding, and mysterious, something that his cool Russian accent definitely helped him with. Whatever.
We walked the rest of the way to the gym in silence. I pushed through the double doors that led into the main space and headed for the bleachers on the far side, but Alexei stopped a moment to look around. I didn’t see what was so interesting. Bright banners dangling from the ceiling, polished wooden bleachers jutting out from the walls, thick mats covering the floor. The gym looked like any other—except for the racks of weapons.
Since Mythos was a school for the descendants of ancient warriors, gym class was a little more strenuous than just running laps and shooting hoops. Here, gym was really weapons training, where Coach Ajax and the rest of his staff taught us kids how to use everything from swords to staffs to daggers to bows. All those weapons and more were lined up in neat rows, their sharp points glinting underneath the lights, just waiting for the students to come and grab them.
Of course, I hadn’t had the lifelong weapons training the other kids had had, which was why I schlepped over to the gym every morning before regular classes started to put in some extra training time with Logan, Kenzie, and Oliver. Since Loki had escaped, Daphne and Carson had started coming too. We all wanted to be ready—for anything.
Everyone except Oliver was already in the gym, and Logan, Kenzie, and Carson were over at the weapons racks figuring out what we were going to practice with today. I put my messenger bag on one of the mats and plopped down on the bleachers next to Daphne. Even though we’d come here to sweat, the Valkyrie looked as pretty as ever in her pink designer yoga pants and matching cropped top. Her blond hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and just the right amount of makeup brought out her dark eyes and the beautiful color of her amber skin.
“I see you brought your shadow with you,” Daphne sniped, watching Alexei wander over and put his own bag down on the mat next to mine.
“Be nice,” I said. “It’s not his fault that he’s stuck with me. At least, I don’t think it is.”
She snorted, but she didn’t say anything else. The guys decided on staffs and passed out the weapons. Logan hesitated, then gave a staff to Alexei, who hefted it in his hands with an easy, familiar grace.
“What’s a Bogatyr warrior?” I asked Logan when he handed me my own staff. “That’s what Alexei said he was.”
The two of us watched Alexei work with the staff. He’d gone through a short warm-up and was now twirling the weapon around and around, moving it from one hand to the other as he executed a series of complicated moves. He didn’t seem to have a Viking’s super-strength, but there was something about the way he moved, flowing from one attack position to the next, that told me he was as dangerous as anyone else at Mythos. The staff kept moving faster and faster in his hands, until it was nothing more than a blur swirling through the air around him. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought him some sort of dancer—he just moved that fluidly, that gracefully.
“Bogatyrs are ancient Russian warriors,” Logan said. “They’re similar to Romans in that they are exceptionally fast, but the way they move . . . it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
“You mean the way he looks like he’s dancing instead of fighting?”
Logan nodded. “I’ve heard Coach Ajax say that a battle is almost like a dance to them, and the longer a fight goes, the stronger they get because they train themselves to always keep moving, to always keep attacking. They have incredible endurance. Most of them also use two weapons at once, one in either hand, like two swords or two daggers. I’m not sure what other powers they have, but Bogatyrs are some of the fiercest warriors in the Pantheon, right up there with Spartans.”
In addition to their inherent warrior strengths and skills, all the kids at Mythos also had other powers, bonus magic as it were, everything from enhanced senses to the ability to heal others to being able to call up storm clouds and control the weather. At Mythos, what kind of warrior you were, what kind of weapon you used, and what kind of magic you had were all just status symbols, along with the kids’ expensive cars, designer clothes, and pricey electronics.
We watched Alexei work with the staff. Carson, who also used a staff, seemed especially awestruck by him. The band geek leaned on his own weapon, his face scrunched up in concentration as he tried to follow Alexei’s quick, complicated moves. Kenzie stood beside Carson, also watching Alexei.
Beside me, Logan drew in a breath and let it out. I looked at him, wondering what was on his mind.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he finally said. “And everything that happened. I still can’t believe that my dad is doing this to you, that he thinks you somehow helped the Reapers. I tried to talk to him last night, but he just wouldn’t listen to me. He
never
listens to me—about anything.”
Bitterness filled Logan’s voice, and his eyes were dark and angry. I reached over and threaded my fingers through his. The Spartan’s emotions washed over me, the way they always did, but as I held his hand, flickers and flashes of other things began to flood my mind, things I’d never seen before—memories of his dad through the years.
Most of the images were the same—Logan slumped over at a table while his dad paced back and forth in front of him, his face stern, talking in a sharp voice.
Do this. Don’t do that. Why can’t you get better grades? Why is your room always such a mess? Why don’t you straighten up and act like a
real
warrior, like a
real
Spartan? Your mother and sister would be so disappointed in you.
The images and fragments of conversation flashed by one after another, faster and faster, until all I could see, feel, and hear was Linus lecturing his son over and over again, each harsh word hurting more than the last. And I experienced Logan’s emotions too—all his anger, frustration, and the aching disappointment in himself that twisted my stomach into tighter and tighter knots.
“It’s okay,” I said, shaking my head to clear away the feelings and memories. “You don’t have any control over what your dad does or what he thinks of me. This is what the Protectorate does, right? Investigate claims that folks are Reapers?”
Logan nodded. “Among other things.”
“Don’t worry, okay? We’ll get through this, just like we always do.”
He wrapped his arms around me and drew me close. I breathed in, just enjoying the heat of his touch, the warmth of his body next to mine, the steady
thump-thump-thump
of his heart under my fingers. I didn’t know what was going to happen from one day to the next, from one minute to the next, actually, but we were together now, and I was determined to enjoy it while I could. If there was anything that fighting Reapers had taught me, it was to appreciate the good times that much more—because you never knew when they and the people you loved could be taken away from you.
“Anytime you two lovebirds are ready,” Daphne called out, twirling her own staff, pink sparks of magic crackling in the air around her. “I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel like hitting someone today—
hard
.”
Carson winced. “Just don’t break my glasses, okay?”
Daphne walked over and kissed him. “Would I do something like that?”
“Well, you wouldn’t break
my
glasses,” he said. “But you definitely would a Reaper’s.”
“And that’s why you love me and my fierce Valkyrie self,” Daphne purred.
Carson smiled and kissed her back. Kenzie laughed.
Logan and I stepped apart. A door at the far end of the gym banged open, and Oliver Hector rushed inside. The Spartan hurried across the mats and slung his bag down with everyone else’s. The Spartan turned and smiled.

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