Authors: Jennifer Estep
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Action & Adventure, #Survival Stories, #Paranormal, #General
Dark Frost (16 page)
I scrambled to my feet and lurched over to Raven’s desk. The Reaper girl saw what I was doing and raced back over to me just as I drew Vic out of my bag and yanked the sword from his leather scabbard. I always brought Vic with me whenever I came to the prison, since he made me feel a smidge safer. The Reaper girl responded by drawing her own sword from underneath the billowing folds of her black robe.
“Lucretia!” Vic hissed at the sight of the other sword.
Lucretia’s burning red eye narrowed with hate. “Vic!” she snarled right back.
That was all they had time to say before the fight started.
Slash-slash-clang!
My sword locked with the Reaper girl’s, the blades throwing red and purple sparks everywhere as the two weapons shouted taunts and insults at each other.
“Butter knife!” Lucretia crowed.
“Rusty spoon!” Vic snapped.
I tuned out the swords’ chatter and focused on the Reaper girl, trying to anticipate what she would do next, how she would attack me. Behind me, metal clanked and rattled as one by one, Preston opened the locks on his chains—and then he was free.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Preston head toward me, his hands curled into fists and a murderous look on his handsome face. His eyes were glowing even brighter now—that bloody, eerie Reaper red.
I lashed out with my sword, making the Reaper girl momentarily retreat, and then turned, so that my back was to one of the glass cells. I wouldn’t last a minute if I let the Reaper girl and Preston attack me from two sides at once. Logan had taught me that. My heart squeezed in on itself.
Logan
. I wished he was here right now. The Spartan would know what to do—he’d know exactly how to defeat the Reapers. I’d be lucky if I survived another minute.
Logan
. I wished he was here right now. The Spartan would know what to do—he’d know exactly how to defeat the Reapers. I’d be lucky if I survived another minute.
Instead of launching himself at me like I expected him to, Preston stopped short and glared at me.
“Go!” the Reaper girl shouted at Preston. “Go! Go! Go!”
Preston gave me a cruel smile, then raced out of the prison. I started after him, but the Reaper girl blocked my path and raised her sword again.
Slash-slash-clang!
Back and forth we dueled for the better part of two minutes before my sneakers skidded on the smooth stone floor. The Reaper girl took advantage of my slip to punch me in the face again. The force of her blow sent me flying back into one of the cells. My head snapped against the glass, and pain exploded in my skull. Dazed, I slumped to the ground, barely managing to hold on to Vic.
“Gwen!” Vic shouted. “Get up, Gwen! Get up before she kills you!”
But I was too dazed to do that—I was too dazed to do anything. The Reaper girl stood there, her sword in her hand. All she had to do was raise it up, bring it down, and I’d be dead.
Simple as that.
She stood there, hesitating, like that’s exactly what she wanted to do. But instead of finishing me off, the Reaper girl turned and ran out the open prison door.
Chapter 16
I scrambled to my feet and tightened my grip on Vic. Ignoring the pulsing pain in my head, face, and ribs, I darted out the prison door after the Reapers—but they’d already disappeared.
I hurried to the end of the hall and starting racing up the stairs and through all the open doors. Up, up, up, I went, climbing as fast as I could, but I was already too far behind. I didn’t even hear the hollow echo of Preston’s and the Reaper girl’s footsteps ringing on the stairs above my head.
“Come on, Gwen!” Vic shouted in an encouraging voice. “You can catch them!”
Finally, I climbed the last of the stairs, raced out of the math-science building, and skidded to a stop on the upper quad. My head snapped left, then right, as I stood there panting, but Preston and the Reaper girl were nowhere to be seen. Neither was Metis. Kids milled around on the quad like usual, laughing, talking, and texting as they headed for their after-school activities.
A few kids gave me strange looks, eyeing my flushed face and the giant gulps of air I was sucking down, but I ignored them. What would Preston and the Reaper girl do now? Where would they go?
Think, Gwen, think!
Think, Gwen, think!
Then, the answer came to me.
You’d better finish me now, Gypsy. Or I’ll get free one day, and I’ll go kill that doddering old grandmother you love so much
.
.
Grandma Frost, I thought, remembering Preston’s awful, awful promise to me.
Somehow I knew that’s where they were headed. Preston wouldn’t miss a chance to hurt me by killing my grandma—he just wouldn’t. And Grandma had no idea he was coming or the horrible danger she was in.
Terror twisted my heart at the thought, but I forced myself to push past the fear and think. I didn’t know how the Reaper girl had gotten past all the security measures to get down to the prison in the first place, but if she’d been smart enough to do that, then she had to have thought out Preston’s escape as well. She’d get him off campus as quickly as she could, and since the Reapers were leaving the academy grounds, I doubted the sphinxes would try to stop them. And then—and then what?
A car, I thought. She’d have a car waiting outside the academy walls to whisk Preston away, but the Reaper wouldn’t immediately go into hiding. No, he’d stop by Grandma Frost’s house first. I knew he would, which meant that I needed a car, too, if I had any chance of saving her.
I sucked in another cold breath and started to run.
I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket as I ran. Since I couldn’t text, run, and hold on to Vic all at the same time, I settled for hitting the numbers in my speed dial. First, I called my Grandma Frost.
“Pick up,” I panted as I ran. “Please,
please
pick up.”
please
pick up.”
But she didn’t.
The terror rose up in my throat, choking me, but I forced it down. The Reapers couldn’t have gotten to her house yet, so Grandma must be doing a psychic reading for one of her clients. She never answered the phone then. The answering machine clicked on, and I left her a garbled, frantic message telling her about the Reaper girl’s freeing Preston and asking her to call me the second she got this message. I would have kept talking, but the machine clicked, cutting me off.
Cursing, I went to the next number on my list, which was Daphne. But apparently, the Valkyrie was still mad at me and screening her calls because she didn’t answer. I tried Logan next, but the Spartan didn’t answer, either.
Why did everyone have to pick today to be pissed at me?
So I went to the fourth person on my list. For once,
for once,
someone decided to answer his freaking phone.
for once,
someone decided to answer his freaking phone.
“Hey, Gypsy,” Oliver’s smooth voice filled my ear. “What’s going on?”
“I need you to get your car and meet me down by the main academy gate. Right now!”
“Gwen?” Oliver’s voice sharpened as he heard the panic in my tone. “What’s going on?”
“Preston just busted out of the academy prison,” I said in between panting breaths. “I think he’s headed to my Grandma Frost’s house to kill her. I need you to drive me down there, so meet me at the front gate as soon as you can. And bring some weapons. We’ll need them.”
“Gwen—”
I hung up before Oliver could say anything else. I knew the Spartan would help me. That’s what friends did for each other.
I kept running, trying Grandma Frost, Daphne, and Logan again and again—but nobody answered me. I cursed some more. What good were cell phones if nobody picked them up? Finally, just as I was running on fumes, I reached Styx Hall. It took me far longer than I would have liked to yank my student ID card out of my jeans pocket, scan it through the machine, open the door, and sprint up the three flights of stairs to my room, but there was something else I had to do before I met Oliver, another way I could maybe save my grandma.
“Nott!” I said, barging into my dorm room. “Nott, I need you!”
The Fenrir wolf had been napping in her nest of blankets, but she sprang to her feet at the sound of my frantic voice.
“What are you doing, Gwen?” Vic said. “You’re wasting time.”
“Shut up, Vic,” I said, laying the sword down on the bed and shoving my cell phone into my jeans pocket. “I need to concentrate.”
While I’d been sprinting across campus, it had occurred to me that the wolf could run much faster than I could—much, much faster. I was sure that Oliver was racing toward his car right now, but it would still take him time to get it and more time still for us to drive down the mountain.
It was time Grandma Frost just didn’t have.
I dropped down beside the wolf, wondering if my crazy plan was going to work. Maybe Vic was right and I was just wasting time. But I had to try—I
had
to.
had
to.
Metis had told me that I could do more with my Gypsy gift than just touch stuff and see things—that I could make other people see and feel things, too. I just hoped she was right.
Still sucking down big gulps of air, I carefully put my hands on either side of Nott’s massive head and looked into her dull eyes—and then I reached for all the memories I had of my Grandma Frost. All the kindness and caring she’d shown me over the years, all the big and small ways she’d cared for me, especially after my mom had been killed, all the love I felt whenever I held her hand.
I concentrated on those memories, pulling them up in my mind, and then I sort of ... shoved them at Nott. Instead of touching something and letting the images fill my mind, I did the opposite—I took the memories I already had and consciously pushed them out in another direction, into another mind.
Somehow it worked.
The wolf flinched, and I could feel her confusion at the jumble of memories and thoughts that weren’t her own crowding into her brain. After a few seconds, she relaxed when she realized I wasn’t going to hurt her, that the thoughts weren’t going to hurt her. Then, I focused on my grandma’s house and pushed that image into the wolf’s mind as well.
“I need you to go to my grandma’s house and protect her until I get there,” I said. “Please. Can you do that? Do you even understand me?”
Nott stared at me a second longer. Then, she leaned forward, licked my cheek with her tongue, and headed for the door.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, grabbing Vic off the bed and scrambling after her.
I led Nott down the stairs and through the dorm, not caring who saw me or what they thought about it. For once, I got lucky, and we didn’t run into any other students. I opened the back door of the dorm, and the wolf raced outside. In a moment, she’d disappeared from view.
I sucked in another breath and started my own sprint, racing down to the main gate. I didn’t even spare the sphinxes a glance as I slipped through the iron bars to the other side. Oliver had been quicker than me, because the Spartan was already parked across the street in his black Cadillac Escalade.
I ran over to the SUV, yanked open the door, and threw myself into the passenger’s seat.
“Gwen?” Oliver said, putting the car into gear. “Are you sure about this?”
“No,” I said. “But I can’t take a chance with my grandma’s life. Now, drive.”
Oliver peeled away from the curb without another word. I laid Vic across my lap, then pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket. Once again, I tried Grandma Frost’s number. Once again, she didn’t answer. My red-hot panic slowly melted into cold, sinking fear. I had to get to her before Preston and the Reaper girl did. I couldn’t lose my grandma like I had my mom. I just
couldn’t
.
couldn’t
.
“I called Logan and Kenzie to come and help,” Oliver said, zipping down the mountain as fast as he could. “But they didn’t answer me.”
My heart sank a little lower in my chest. I bit my lip and nodded, resisting the urge to scream at Oliver to drive faster. Logan and Kenzie didn’t matter right now. If we didn’t get to the house before Preston and the Reaper girl did, my grandma was as good as dead.
It seemed to take
forever
for Oliver to zoom down the mountain, although he made better time than the bus ever did. He turned onto the street that fronted my grandma’s house and parked outside. I was out of the SUV before the wheels stopped rolling. Oliver cut off the engine, opened his own door, and raced after me.
forever
for Oliver to zoom down the mountain, although he made better time than the bus ever did. He turned onto the street that fronted my grandma’s house and parked outside. I was out of the SUV before the wheels stopped rolling. Oliver cut off the engine, opened his own door, and raced after me.
What I saw on the porch made my blood run cold. The P
SYCHIC
R
EADINGS
H
ERE
sign beside the front door barely clung to the side of the house, like someone had taken a crowbar and tried to pry it off. Even worse was the fact that the door had been kicked in, the frame splintered in at least three places.
SYCHIC
R
EADINGS
H
ERE
sign beside the front door barely clung to the side of the house, like someone had taken a crowbar and tried to pry it off. Even worse was the fact that the door had been kicked in, the frame splintered in at least three places.
“Gwen! Stop!” Oliver hissed, grabbing the back of my hoodie before I could sprint into the house. “You don’t know who or what is in there.”
Even though I wanted nothing more than to race inside, I made myself stop. The Spartan was right. My rushing into the house blind could make a bad situation worse.
So I tightened my grip on Vic and brought the sword up into an attack position. Beside me, Oliver slapped a bolt into the crossbow he’d brought along. The Spartan nodded at me, telling me to take the lead and that he had my back. Together, we stepped into the shadows.
The inside of the house was a disaster. Everything that could be overturned was, from the curio cabinet that displayed Grandma’s good china to the blue sofa to the entertainment center that held the TV. Everything was smashed, stomped, and broken, like someone had taken great glee in destroying every single thing he could.
Preston, I thought darkly, and moved on.
Oliver pointed to another splintered door, and I tiptoed over to it and peered inside the room where my grandma gave her psychic readings. The beaded curtains that hung on the windows had been torn down, and the gray silk-covered table had been split into two pieces. My grandma’s crystal ball had also been shattered, the splintered shards glistening like teardrops on top of the gauzy cloth.
A cold fist of fear wrapped around my heart and squeezed tight. I turned around and shook my head at Oliver, telling him the room was clear. We tiptoed through the rest of the downstairs, stepping over more smashed furniture, before we finally headed toward the kitchen. My heart pounded at the thought of what we might find in there, and I had such a death grip on Vic that my hands ached.
Something crunched in the kitchen. Oliver and I stopped where we were in the hallway—listening. A series of rustles and scuffles sounded, telling us that someone was moving around in the kitchen. Oliver put a hand on my shoulder, silently asking me if I was okay. I nodded, drew in a breath, and eased forward, peering into the room.
The sight there stunned me.
Grandma Frost stood in the middle of the kitchen, a bloody sword in her hand, Nott sitting off to her right, and a dead Reaper at her feet.
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