The Winter King (26 page)

He smiled reassuringly. Poppy placed her
bare hand over the white frozen lock and closed her eyes. She began
to speak, giving voice to a kind of magic that slipped into the
smallest cracks, infiltrated the most secret spaces, and twisted
things around. The air around Poppy became agitated. There was a
popping sound, a thunk, and what sounded like metal sliding against
metal.

Poppy opened her eyes and took a deep
breath. “We’re in.” She reached for the handle, but Kristopher
stopped her with a hand over hers.

“
Remember the
wards.”

“
Oh. Right,” she said
again, letting her arms drop.

Kris pulled her a few feet from the door,
and his eyes lit up. He began to whisper ancient magic of his own
in a language she didn’t recognize. She watched his blue eyes take
on an eerie, wicked glow, and suddenly blue-white runes began to
appear around the Svalbard doorway. They floated in the ice as if
floating on water, but as Kristopher’s words rose in volume, they
unwound from their initial shapes, floated around some more, and
re-shaped into new runes.

Kris opened his eyes and stopped speaking.
The runes vanished, fading back into the ice and concrete. “It’s
safe.”

Poppy reached for the door handle and pulled
the door open. It swung outward just like any door to any building,
and the two stepped inside.

Just as he’d described, the interior of the
vault was quite plain and very simple. Directly before the front
door was a long hallway. Built into the hallway were three metal
doors, two on the side, and one at the end. Each door would lead to
a separate room containing stored seeds.

The feel of the place was cold and hard.
Poppy could imagine that if anyone spent any real length of time
here, depression would set in. It reminded her of a prison cell
with its white wall on one side and locked doors on the other, and
nothing else for the eye to see but the gray of the concrete
ground.

Something was amiss, however. She couldn’t
put her finger on it exactly; the place just felt disturbed. “Where
are your guards?” she asked. Kris had told her he employed more
guards to protect the seed vault as well as Yggdrasil.

Kristopher’s expression was grim. “That’s
exactly what I was wondering. They would have remained invisible to
human workers, but I don’t even see them.” He moved to the second
door on the side, which was effectively the middle door. “This
way.”

But when they approached the door and were
afforded a closer look, Poppy could immediately see what was amiss.
The lock on the door was not frozen as the other two were.

“
Someone has been here,”
Poppy whispered, speaking quietly on the off chance that whoever
had been there was there still. “It would have had to be very
recently.” The temperature in the vault was cold enough to ice
things over in minutes flat.

“
Stand back,” he told her,
keeping his voice low and motioning for her to step out of the way.
By his stance, Poppy could see that he fully planned on breaking
the door down, probably to catch whoever was on the other side by
surprise.

“
Wait,” she said. “I have a
better idea.” He looked at her questioningly. “Breaching magic is
something I happen to be very good at,” she told him. She glanced
back at the door down the hall that they’d just come through, and
raised a brow.

“
I see,” Kristopher said,
and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Let me deal with
the ward, then.” Just as he had done for the main vault door,
Kristopher drew the protective runes of his ward out of the
building’s construction and rearranged them. When he was finished,
he gestured to the door. “Your turn.”

During their lessons, Lalura had often
muttered to herself that if she didn’t keep Poppy on the straight
and narrow, one day she would wind up working for someone as a
world class thief. Dahlia, on the other hand, was good at summoning
magic. And Violet had been good at improvising. They all had their
talents. Right now, Poppy was pretty happy this happened to be
hers.

This particular spell was one of Poppy’s
favorites, and truthfully, she hadn’t thought she’d ever have a
chance to use it. It was sure to draw attention here on the mortal
realm. It took a lot of strength to cast it.

She stared at the door and the wall around
it and imagined that they were pervious, made of something like
bubbles or water. As she imagined this, she felt her body change.
One second, she was standing before the door, fully formed and
solid. The next second, she looked like a ghost of herself,
transparent and wavering.

Kristopher looked her up and down, and his
smile broadened. “Impressive,” he admitted.

She wasted no time, however. There was no
telling how long the spell would last. She grabbed ahold of his
hand, making sure that rather than force her hand to be solid, the
contact instead forced his hand to become transparent like hers.
With a bigger push of her magic, his arm took on the same
transparency – and then his entire body.

At once, Poppy was stepping through the
door, passing right through it and on to the other side, Kristopher
in tow. She felt Kristopher’s initial hesitation beside her, but
then his trust won out, and they were both through.

As it turned out however, there was no one
on the other side to surprise.

Up against the opposite wall were metal
shelves. Stacked three-high on each shelf were small metal and
plastic boxes. Poppy assumed these contained the seeds Svalbard was
famous for. Hanging on the wall adjacent to her were hooks with
parkas, rubber gloves, and hard hats. The storage space was boring
and nondescript, just as was the hall outside. The only thing out
of the ordinary, in fact was the massive hole and rubble directly
in the center of the room – and the dead body lying four feet away
from it.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“
Gargoyles,” Kristopher
muttered after feeling the body for a pulse. There was none. The
man had been dressed in the same jacket and gloves that were
hanging on the wall. Clearly, he’d been one of the humans in charge
of taking care of the seeds.

“
I thought they were all
dead,” said Poppy. “Except for some kids?”

“
Clearly the Entity thought
to ‘save’ a few for himself. No doubt, they’re working as his
slaves now.” He stood up, shaking his head. “It makes sense that he
would use them here. By coming up through the ground, they were
able to bypass all the wards I placed on the walls. I didn’t even
think about warding the ground.”

Poppy felt strange inside – squishy. It was
hard to describe, but it was not a good feeling. “Did he get the
seed?” she asked.

“
No. I’d originally hidden
it amongst the potato seeds here from Ireland. It’s no
longer
here
, but
I can feel that it’s still in the vault, somewhere nearby. My guess
is one of my guards moved it before they disappeared to wherever
they disappeared to.”

“
Can you find
it?”

He nodded. “Yes. It’s a part of Yggdrasil,
so we’re connected. Give me a few seconds.” He closed his eyes and
turned slowly in place. Then he opened his eyes and nodded at the
door.

From their side, it was unlocked, so they
simply turned the handle and stepped back out into the hall beyond.
“It’s down there,” he said, nodding at the door on the far end of
the hallway. They moved quickly but cautiously, as if every step
they took might blow up underneath them. They had no idea where the
gargoyle was that had killed the human. For all they knew, he could
still be there, in the walls or ground, watching them.

They reached the door, where Poppy did her
thing with the lock and Kristopher dispelled the wards, and they
turned the knob and went in. It would have been wise for them to
proceed through this third door in the careful manner with which
they’d gone through the other doors, but they didn’t. So Kristopher
took the full force of the punch the gargoyle threw at his face
when he came through the other side.

Poppy screeched and tumbled to the side as
Kristopher’s heavy form flew past her and out into the hall beyond
the storage room door. She watched him hit the ground, but then
turned her attention immediately to his assailant.

“
Freeze, asshole!” she
yelled, raising her hands in an offensive warlock’s position. He
was in human form, dressed up as a man of medium height and medium
build, and his disguise even wore a pair of glasses. But she knew
better. She knew he weighed a ton, his punches had the force of
heavy stone behind them, and that there was practically nothing she
could physically do to that stone to bring it any harm.

The gargoyle faced her.
There was really no point to waiting. She’d only told him to
“freeze” to make him
think
she was going to wait to attack, and to give her
that extra half second lead on him.

She funneled her power,
pulling it in like Luke Skywalker harnessing
The
Force
,
and felt it infuse her hands to the tips of her fingers.
“
Lapis ut carnem!
” she yelled, releasing the magic all at once.. A pulse of
thick, dark power escaped from her palms and slammed into the
gargoyle.

The gargoyle was surprised by the sudden
attack, but he didn’t go flying backward as Kris had. Instead, he
looked down at his chest, where the spell had struck him. Shimmers
of dissolving magic cascaded over his chest and then fizzled out.
The gargoyle’s brow furrowed. He looked back up and shook his head,
smiling darkly.

“
Well, it was pretty,” he
said. “I’ll give you that.”

Poppy smiled right back. “Wait for it.”

The gargoyle’s smile slipped a little. He
blinked, clearly trying to figure out what her game was. But then
his eyes grew very wide, his skin rippled as if there were bugs
underneath it, and he opened his mouth to scream.

No sound came out; it was choked with pain
as his skin gradually shifted from flesh toned to the gray of stone
and finally back again. When it had finished moving and switching
through the color spectrum, the gargoyle stumbled backward and hit
the wall, breathless. He slid a little, his knees buckling under
him, and stared wild-eyed at Poppy.

“
What the hell did you do
to me?” he cried desperately.

“
I leveled the playing
field,” she said. She walked toward him.

“
Poppy, step away from
him,” commanded Kristopher, who stood in the doorway, looking as
though nothing had hit him at all except for the fact that his eyes
were glowing again.

Poppy smiled reassuringly from where she
stopped a foot away. “Why? We’re good here,” she told him. Then,
without looking back at the gargoyle, she raised her leg forcefully
and kicked him square in the balls.

The gargoyle went down like a sack of
potatoes, unconscious before he hit the floor. Poppy stepped back
to allow the man’s sleeping form to sprawl. For a moment, she
wondered if she’d done serious, permanent damage. She even wondered
if she’d killed him.

She started to kneel in order to take his
pulse, but Kristopher’s fingers slid around her wrist, holding her
back. She stood up and faced him.

“
Well done, blossom. Just
promise me you’ll never try that trick on me.”

“
That trick wouldn’t work
on you, your majesty,” she said with a smile. “It was a stone to
flesh spell.”

Kris’s blue eyes slowly lost their glow, but
his smile was predatory through and through. “You’re right,” he
said. “It wouldn’t work on me.”

Poppy swallowed hard. She hadn’t missed the
entendre. His hand was very warm and very firm on her wrist.

She forced herself to look back down at the
fallen man and cleared her throat. “It’s not permanent. So we
should get going.”

“
Fine. But if you think I’m
going to let you fight all my battles for me little one, think
again.”

Poppy stared him down, a
hard smile on her lips. Screw being demure. “If I recall correctly,
you said you wanted a
queen
as your mate. And the queen is the most powerful
piece on the board.” She glanced at his lips and then back at his
eyes. They were that impossible light turquoise-aqua color, like
clear icebergs. Yet his body was very warm so close to hers.
“Remember? Without me the game would be lost?” she said, repeating
the words he’d told her not an hour earlier.

“
Oh I remember,” he said.
His tone had lowered. He gave a gentle but firm tug on her arm
where he had her, and she was forced to move up against him. He
kept her there as he leaned in closer, and she held her breath.
“And I meant it,” he said. “Thank you for reminding me…
my queen
.”

The words were said with a
ringing that could no doubt be heard throughout the multiverse. It
was final and resounding. The Winter King was naming her, claiming
her, and worshipping her, all at once. And if they didn’t have a
Valkyrie to confront, Midgard Serpent to stop from destroying the
world, a gargoyle passed out a few feet away, and a seed to fucking
plant, she was betting he would have shown her
exactly
how much he meant it – right
there on the floor of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Chapter Forty

They had the seed, which looked to Poppy
like a massive uncut diamond. It was tucked safely into the inner
pocket of Kristopher’s leather jacket. Their next stop was
Jotenheim, the land of the giants.