Chains of Ice (7 page)

She waited while everyone removed their bags and the equipment; then she dragged out her duffel. The team was traipsing into the only two-story building on the town square, and she lagged behind, peering around.

She couldn’t see much. There were no streetlights. But the quarter moon showed a tiny hamlet, a throw-back to the nineteenth century. Squat stone buildings with tin roofs were built around a village square. In the middle, a woodstove glowed dimly red. Dirty patches of snow hugged the houses and ice crunched underfoot.

In the daylight, she suspected this place would be quaint. Now, with the forest looming close and darkness crouching beneath its boughs, the village felt foreign. Not Russian-foreign. Not I’ve-never-been-here-before foreign.
Foreign
as if . . . as if at any moment, the twins from that long-ago legend of the Chosen Ones could stroll out and carry Genny away, too.

Because someone was watching.

Again the hair on her neck lifted.

What had been spooky in the daylight was terrifying now. With a gasp, she hurried toward the inn, from which light, warmth, and voices spilled forth.

She descended six steps—the bottom floor was half dug into the ground—and stepped into a large taproom filled with the team, their baggage, and two dozen strangers. Lubochka stood between two long, laden tables directing traffic. “The girls get the attic. You men—you can fight for the regular rooms.”

Brandon groaned.

Obviously, he was low man on the totem pole. Genny hoped he had to sleep hanging on a hook.

“Misha and I will take the front bedroom,” Lubochka finished matter-of-factly.

Lubochka and Misha? In the same bedroom? Genny had the impression that Lubochka, big and deep voiced, played for the other team.

Surprise made her careless; she tripped on the uneven wood floor and stumbled.

Every person sitting along the length of the two oak tables turned to stare, and every voice hushed.

Genny froze in embarrassment, and stared back.

The big room was longer than it was wide, with stone walls covered by rough plaster. A huge stone fireplace yawned in one wall. Bottles and kegs lined another. The lighting was dim; nothing more than a few naked bulbs hung from the ceiling with pull chains dangling beneath them. Mismatched mugs and glasses studded the bar, and a huge polished brass samovar bubbled on one end.

A female stood next to Lubochka, and it struck Genny the two women were photographic negatives of each other. Both exuded strength of will. Both were the same height, the same age. But this new female had a tanned face, pale blond hair, and blue eyes. Where Lubochka was strong boned and strong featured, this woman was delicate, with the shape of a supermodel.

In fact—Genny looked around—none of the locals in the inn looked like Genny’s idea of a stereotypical Russian. They were all tall, thin and tanned, with blond hair and blue eyes. They gawked at Genny without an ounce of delicacy; gawked as if incredulous about something.

Genny looked down at herself. Was her zipper open? She touched her upper lip. While she was asleep, had Brandon used a black felt-tipped marker to draw on a mustache?

But no. No one was smiling. Slowly, one by one, the villagers stood and retreated from the benches around the table.

Lubochka looked around at the locals and scowled. “What’s wrong, Mariana?”

The supermodel lifted a pitcher off the table with the kind of competence that marked her as someone who knew her way around the barroom. With a nod toward Genny, Mariana said, “That one will bring . . .” She hesitated.

“Trouble . . .” The faintest whisper floated from the back of the room.

“No!” Mariana shook her head. “Not trouble. But change.”

Genny didn’t like this attention, didn’t like the signs of wide-eyed recognition from people she’d never met before. “I, uh, am not here to change anything.”

“She saw the first lynx of the year,” Lubochka said.

And the first yeti.
Genny bit her lip on the comment.

Mariana smiled, her eyes looking deeply into Genny’s eyes, sending a message Genny didn’t understand. “Then she has already brought luck. More is sure to follow.”

Dropping her bag on the floor, Lubochka gave Genny a shove toward the stairs. “Go to bed.”

“But I . . .” She thought she should remain down here with the others, bond with the rest of the team.

“Are you hungry?” Lubochka asked. “No? I thought not. So go to bed. You have first shift. Tomorrow at six, I will take you to your observation post and you will watch for the Ural lynx.”

“Okay.” Genny smiled, so exhausted and excited her eyes filled with tremulous tears. “I can’t wait.” Turning, she fled up the shadowy steps, then paused on the landing.

A man spoke in Russian, quickly and with a local accent that was hard for Genny to follow, but she understood one word, repeated over and over.
Trouble
.

During the ominous silence that followed, Genny sat and, keeping to the shadows, slid down the steps far enough to see Lubochka dominating the room with her strength of will.

“You listen to me. All of you.” Lubochka’s voice was low and intense. “Up here, the flowers die too soon. The snow stays too late. The soldiers come and stomp around in their big boots. The big cats barely cling to existence. I bring my team to you while we track the Ural lynx. We pay you for our lodging, our food. We bring you prosperity, money until the crops come in, until you can mine the gold. I don’t care what you think, what your superstitions say. Do you hear me?” She pointed, marking the villagers and the team with her attention. “You all heard what Mariana said. That girl brought us luck. Up here, we need all the luck we can get. So hear me. I want no bad blood. No strife. No unpleasantness at all.”

Genny knew she was talking about her.

She just didn’t understand why.

Sweaty and frightened, Genny jumped out of her nightmare.

“Sorry,” Avni mumbled. “Dark in here.”

“Not anymore.” Genny pulled the thin pillow over her head.

“Sorry,” Avni said again, and dragged her bag to her cot. “No head for liquor, and that vodka. . . . I’m going to be so sorry in the morning. So sorry . . .”

The attic was a whitewashed space with a single lightbulb in the middle of the low ceiling, with two narrow iron beds tucked in among boxes and trunks. Genny’s lumpy mattress rested atop rusty springs—but for her tense and travel-knotted muscles, it was heaven; she’d settled in and listened and smiled as the party downstairs had grown louder and more raucous. Yet when she fell asleep, she had fallen right into that nightmare.

Avni flopped on the bed. Said, “Crap. I forgot to turn off the light.”

Genny knew why she’d been dreaming about those eyes. What she’d seen today had creeped her out. Those eyes . . . were they John’s eyes? And if they were, did that mean he had known she was coming?

Genny sat up on one elbow. “Listen, Avni.”

Avni moaned in response.

“I want to know more about the yeti.” Genny figured she could ask anything she wanted. There was a pretty good chance Avni wouldn’t remember talking to her tonight.

“Can you imagine?” Avni sounded dreamy. “Days and days of such great sex that you never want another man?”

“No, I can’t imagine.” Genny had been busy graduating at the top of her class. She hadn’t had time for sex. “Listen, I want to know—”

“How he does it. I know. Me too. I know it’s weird, but Halinka said he does things with his mind.” Avni gave a high-pitched giggle that sounded incongruous coming from such a tall woman.

“‘He does things with his mind,’” Genny repeated, and her heart sank. She might not believe in the Chosen Ones, but evidence was building that John was extraordinary . . . in more ways than one. “What do you mean?”

“That he can move things and. . . . Listen, it’s silly, really. But the people in Rasputye are so superstitious, you have no idea. It’s all hooey.” Avni struggled her way up onto her elbow, too, and looked drunkenly solemn and sincere. “I mean, what idiot believes in magic?”

“
You
believe that John is so good in bed, a woman never wants to sleep with another man.”

Avni snorted and giggled again. “That’s why Brandon hates him so much. Brandon knows no woman is ever going to moan for him. Not with that little, teeny weenie.”

Genny did not want to know that—or how Avni knew. “TMI, Avni. TMI!”

Avni giggled uncontrollably, and finally managed, “You’re kind of a prude, aren’t you? Listen, that John . . . he’s good in bed. He gives a girl what she wants. That woman I met . . . Halinka. She said there was something about him. . . . He smelled so good, she wanted to lick him all over. She said he cooked for her, massaged her, kissed her, told her she was pretty, that her body excited him. He did everything for her pleasure: spent hours touching her, going down on her, worshiping her.” Avni’s eyes got dreamy. “At the same time, she said, he was a
man
. You know—a
big
man.” Avni gestured.

“I get it.”

“She said when he was inside her, there were, like, these pulses of power . . .”

“It sounds like she was screwing a light socket.”

“You’re a
sarcastic
prude.” Avni squinted at Genny.

“Doesn’t the idea of a big, hot man do anything for you?”

“A big, hot, hairy yeti?”

“Apparently he’s not hairy
there
.”

“How would you know that?”

“I asked!”

“Was there anything you didn’t ask?”

“Hey, Halinka was more than willing to talk about it. She was telling anyone who would listen.” Avni fell backward on the cot. “Which is probably why none of the men in Rasputye like John Powell. Because according to her, when her time was over, she was exhausted from coming so much. But she would do it again in a minute.”

“So John Powell is crazy, and he’s good in bed.”

“That about sums it up.” The springs squeaked noisily as Avni turned her back to the room. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go to sleep and dream about . . .” Her words slurred. She snored.

Genny got up, turned off the light, then groped her way back to the bed. She knew she’d found it when she banged her toe on the steel frame.

No wonder Avni had “forgotten” the light. The moon had set, and Genny stared into a night so dark it pressed like a weight on her eyes. In the city, there was always ambient light. Here . . . everything was foreign, and she wondered what she’d done, taking this job in this strange place . . .

Why didn’t the people of Rasputye like her? Why did Lubochka feel as if she had to threaten the townspeople to make them behave? How could Genny’s hope of saving the world become so twisted and tangled with whispers of danger, a pagan promise of sexual ecstasy, and a pact to reason with a madman?

Lost in the forest in the darkness, sprinting away from an unseen menace only to encounter a pair of glowing red eyes. Screaming for help. Screaming for John Powell to save her. He stepped out of the woods. She ran to him. He kissed her on the mouth, on the throat . . . His hands around her waist, he lifted her, nuzzled her shirt aside . . . She closed her eyes as his mouth covered her nipple. She wrapped her legs around his waist. She held his head to her chest and whimpered in need, and whimpered as he suckled at her, then bit hard enough to make her jump. She looked down in protest . . . and screamed.

Because he looked up at her, and it was
his
eyes that glowed with that peculiar, disturbing light.