The Frozen Witch Book One (6 page)

“How do you answer for your
crimes?”

The fear – the total fear that had seen me
riveted to the spot abruptly twisted and turned into a pulse of
anger. “Let me go, you bastard. Let me out of here. Someone,
anyone, please, help me!”

“There is no one to help you. You have
angered the gods, and now you will pay.”

“Angered the gods? You’re crazy. Oh god,
you’re mad—”

He let out another distinct chuckle.

“Gods don’t exist. This can’t be
happening. It can’t be happening.”

“It is happening. And the symbols on your
arms beg to differ – gods do exist.” With that, he returned the
book to the table, closed it neatly, then patted his hands down his
front, smoothing his jacket.

He reached behind him and produced something
from his back pocket.

My attention was riveted on him as I saw a
flash of metal.

It was a gun.

Oh god, it was a gun.

Tears ran down my cheeks, bathing my
shaking face as I sobbed wildly. “What’s going on? Who are you?
Please, if there’s any way—”

He stopped. That flash of metal I’d seen in
his hand somehow disappeared. He took a step towards me. I saw him
outlined in full this time, even though no one had stepped into the
room and handily turned on the lights.

His body… it was almost as if it began to
glow. That, or the symbols along my hands and down my arms suddenly
became all the brighter.

Stacy had been right, and even though this
was a terrible time to pause and note it – Franklin Saunders was
impossibly good-looking. With emphasis on the impossible. He just
seemed… realer. Even the darkened room behind him seemed to drop
off into insignificance compared to him.

It wasn’t just that his body was large, his
muscles practically rippling under his tight suit. It was way more
than that.

I caught sight of the flash in his eyes.
And I do mean flash. For, in an instant, it looked as if his irises
turned into torch beams, or someone shoved a candle behind them and
lit them up from the inside out.

If I’d shaken before, it was absolutely
nothing compared to the convulsions that tore through my body now.
My shoulders banged against the wall so quickly and with such a
rapid beat, it would have sounded like somebody playing a drum.

“Finish your question,” he demanded, voice
gravelly.

“What?”

“Finish your question,” he said once more
through a growl.

“What question?”

“You were about to beg me. You were about
to ask if there is anything you can do to save your life. Now,
finish your question.”

My heart stilled. It wasn’t that I calmed.
It was like my heart was about to give up.

I was way beyond terrified now. Way beyond
simple fear.

There was a man with glowing eyes staring at
me and threatening me in the dark.

I wasn’t stupid enough to pinch myself in
case I was dreaming.

This was no dream.

A point that was proven as he took another
step towards me, his body once more seeming realer than everything
else I had ever seen. Every man, all of them, seemed nothing more
than a mere image smeared across reality compared to Franklin
Saunders.

“Finish your question,” he growled once
more.

My jaw practically unhinged as it opened
with a jolt. “Is there… is there….” I couldn’t push it
out.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t the kind of
girl to deny a torturer what they were looking for. The exact
opposite, in fact. I didn’t have a backbone. Sure, sometimes I had
a loud mouth, but I wasn’t courageous. Never would be.

And yet, despite the fact this guy was
ostensibly offering me a lifeline, I couldn’t clutch it. Because I
couldn’t push those damn words out of my mouth.

Again he leaned down. I watched him latch
two hands onto his pants to pull them taut to offer his knees room
as he knelt down beside me. On his haunches, with his arms propped
on the top of his legs, he faced me, little more than a ruler’s
length from my face. It offered me the perfect perspective as I saw
his lips press open once more. “Finish your sentence,” he said,
each word a blast of air against my sallow, tear-streaked
cheeks.

Something in me snapped. “Is there
anything I can do?”

“To save yourself,” he
prompted.

“What?”

“Say it,” he bellowed, voice bottoming out
with such a resonant clap it was as if a bolt of lightning had
shaken through the wall behind me.

I whimpered. “Is there anything I can do…
is there anything I can do… to save myself?”

There, I’d said it.

I waited – waited as he continued to assess
me. Several times, his luminescent eyes darted down and locked on
the symbols still playing across my flesh.

They were brighter than ever. In fact, with
every passing second, they became lighter and lighter, the runes
moving more frantically like flames being pushed around by darting
wind.

Again he reached down and picked up my
wrist. Though I stiffened and tried to jerk back, his grip was
stronger.

Finally, he let my hand drop. Then he
faced me once more. “Yes, Lilly White, there is something you can
do to save yourself. To redeem yourself,” he added, voice punching
out with a guttural bellow.

I shook back against the wall.

He reached a hand into his pocket. I could
see another flash of metal, and as my body locked in rigid fear,
preparing me for my end, I watched him pull out… a document.

No… it wasn’t a document; it was a scroll.
It couldn’t possibly have fit in his pocket. From end-to-end, the
scroll was at least a foot and a half long. It was also one of the
strangest objects I’d ever seen. The parchment was yellowed and
tattered, and looked like it was hundreds of years old. And the
wood that held the scroll in place? It was so delicately carved
with intricate runes and symbols, it looked as if it belonged in a
museum.

“What… what is that?” There was something
so mesmerizing about the scroll that it gave me the distraction I
needed to push my question out.

“Your lifeline,” he answered simply. He
reached a hand around and drew something from his back pocket
again. It was the same flash of metal I’d seen before.

This time as he whipped it out and brought
it around, I saw what it was.

It was no gun. It was a knife. A dagger
carved with three finger holes and a long, curved blade. Blazing
down both sides of the knife were two little channels of light.

“Oh god, please. I said what you wanted me
to say. Please—”

“Cut your thumb and seal the scroll,” he
demanded as he held the knife out towards me.

I was locked with fright as I trained my
gaze on the tip of that flashing dagger.

When I didn’t move, he snatched up my wrist
and pressed the knife towards me. He did not, however, pluck up my
thumb and slice it clean off with the dagger.

He just waited.

“I’m not going to,” I began.

“You have two options, Lilly White – seal
the scroll with your blood and submit to the process of redemption,
or pay for your crimes.”

“Who the hell are you?” I
began.

He ignored me. “You have two options,
Lilly White,” he repeated, voice even darker than
before.

I crumpled, shaking as I brought out my
hand. He didn’t let me hold the knife – he obviously wasn’t that
stupid. Instead, as I winced, he clutched up my hand and sliced the
tip of the glowing dagger along my thumb.

I expected to feel pain – a bite of agony
twisting down my thumb and hard into my wrist.

…
Except I didn’t feel a
thing. Not a damn thing. I felt the pressure of the dagger as it
was dragged across my thumb, and god knows I saw the blood as it
spilled from the wound and trickled down my hand. The pain? It
wasn’t there.

“What’s going on?” I demanded once
more.

“Seal the scroll,” he said, dropping the
dagger to the floor as he clutched the scroll with two hands and
pressed it before me.

Instantly, my attention locked on the
dagger. It was right there, just by my foot. If I managed to
surprise him, shoved him out of the way, I could pluck it up….

“You have no chance against me. Just as
you have no chance if you try to escape. Succeed, Lilly White, and
you’ll find the world out there is a different place now. One that
will never welcome you again. Your only option is this.” He pressed
the scroll towards me once more.

For the first time, I looked at it, finally
dragging my attention off the dagger next to my foot. And as soon
as I looked at the scroll… I… felt something. Right in the center
of my chest. Exactly the same position where the knot of cold had
rested for the past several months.

It felt like… like a blast of something. A
cold wind, a roaring blizzard. It felt as if my chest opened out
and my body pulsed with a power that was not mine, that was not
human.

“Sign it,” Franklin warned once
more.

Drawn in by the scroll, I brought my
bleeding thumb up and pressed it against the parchment.

The parchment had been blank, nothing more
than cracked cream paper. A second later, as my blood dribbled off
my finger and spilled across the page, writing appeared. It
appeared from my very blood. I felt a wave of nausea as I watched,
horrified.

The same strange symbols that had danced
across my flesh now danced across the scroll in shimmering red.

They alone were enough to help me fight
against the wave of weakness that shot through my body.

Franklin moved. He shifted back, turned the
scroll around, stared at it as if checking something, then rolled
it up and pressed it into his pocket.

He pushed back and rose, his knees
creaking like old trees under an onslaught from a ferocious gale.
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve ever done, Lilly
White.”

I was still staring at his pocket, where
the massive scroll had just disappeared. Finally, however, I jerked
my gaze off it and settled it on his luminescent eyes.

I think I’d noticed them back at the party.
How impossibly deep they were. They weren’t like eyes, more like
doors, like a fire that would never go out.

“What… what happens now?” I forced myself
to ask.

He considered me for several seconds. My
paranoid mind told me he was pondering exactly how to carve me up.
But rather than lurch down, clutch at the dagger, and press it
against my jugular, he shoved his hands into his pockets. He arched
his head towards the door. Somehow, the door unlocked. It swung
open with an ominous creak as it let the light from the corridor
flood into the room.

It was so sudden and so blinding, I jerked,
brought a hand up, and protected my eyes.

But once more I saw the symbols dancing
across my palm and fingers, charging up my wrists, and playing
along my arms. Instinctively, I yanked open the rumpled collar of
my shirt and stared down in horror as I saw the symbols were all
over my chest, too.

With renewed desperation, I tried to rub
them off, even raking at them with my fingernails.

“You will not be able to remove them. They
will remain with you for the rest of your life. A constant reminder
until the day you achieve your redemption.”

“Redemption?” I asked with a shaking
voice.

“Come with me, Lilly White.” He turned
hard on his foot and headed towards the door.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t move. It wasn’t just
that it felt as if I’d lost a liter of blood to that parchment. I
was still practically hyperventilating, sucking in breaths so
quickly it was like I had a leaky throat.

I heard Franklin pause on the opposite
side of the door. “Come,” he demanded once more, voice
low.

I ignored him as I brought a hand up,
pressed it over my brow, and blinked hard into my palm. Another
wave of nausea struck me, and this time I fell hard against the
wall.

I couldn’t… couldn’t slow down my breathing.
It was getting faster and faster. I just couldn’t… couldn’t suck in
enough air!

I heard him shift, and once more he
appeared in the doorway. His large, broad form was outlined by the
light filtering in from the corridor. I watched as he crossed his
arms. “Calm yourself,” he demanded.

What was the point?

Either I’d died and gone to hell, or….

My mind began to shut down. As I
hyperventilated, my thoughts fractured like broken glass swarming
through my mind, shredding what remained of my consciousness until
I fell back. I slid down the wall and crumpled against the concrete
floor for the second time that night.

Before I lost consciousness, I watched
Franklin sigh. He walked back into the room, and after a single
moment of hesitation, leaned in and picked me up. I felt his arms
wrap around me, felt him lift me up with the ease of a man carrying
nothing more than light.

He carried me from the room as I crumpled
against him.

I awoke… in a bed.

Problem was, it wasn’t my bed.

It didn’t take long at all to remember what
had just happened. In fact, as soon as I opened my eyes, the memory
struck me right in the middle of my skull.

I jolted, a large, soft pillow tumbling out
from behind my head and striking the cream carpet below me. Filled
with panic, I swiveled my head as I assessed the room.