Dark Frost (7 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Estep

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Action & Adventure, #Survival Stories, #Paranormal, #General

BOOK: Dark Frost
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But why would the wolf be outside my window tonight? How would it have tracked me here all the way from the ski resort? And why now?
Then another, more chilling thought entered my mind. What if it wasn’t
my
wolf, the one I’d helped, but instead another one sent by the Reapers to kill me? Daphne had told me that once you pissed off the Reapers, they didn’t stop coming until you were dead. I’d done plenty to annoy them in the short time I’d been at Mythos Academy.
I crouched there by the window and watched, but nothing else moved in the tree, the sky, or the shadows below. I breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever had been out there, it looked like it had left, at least for this night.
Still, it was a long time before I went back to bed—and longer still until I finally fell asleep.
Chapter 7
 
Early the next morning, Grandma Frost drove Daphne and me to Mythos Academy. Normally, I would have just taken the bus that shuttled tourists from Asheville up to the posh suburb of Cypress Mountain, where the academy was located. But after the attack yesterday, Grandma insisted on driving us—and she made me promise her that I wouldn’t sneak off campus to see her during the week like I usually did. Since I didn’t want her to worry, I reluctantly agreed.
Grandma dropped us off in the parking lot behind the gym, joining a long line of limos and drivers who were doing the same. Kids got out of the cars and grabbed their designer luggage before hopping onto golf carts and zooming toward their dorm rooms across campus. By the time Daphne and I got our bags out of the trunk, all the carts were full, so we had to wait for someone to come back with an empty one.
“Everybody’s so quiet,” Daphne murmured, holding her three bulging suitcases in one hand like they didn’t weigh any more than the pink purse hanging off her other arm. “It’s strange.”
She was right—everyone was being quiet. Eerily so. Normally, kids would have been laughing, texting, and gossiping about who’d hooked up and split up over winter break, but this morning, all the kids had their chins tucked down into the tops of their expensive jackets and their hands shoved deep in their pockets, instead of messing with their phones. Even the kids who hadn’t been at the coliseum yesterday were feeling the fear and pain of the Reapers’ attack. It had been a brutal reminder of why we were all here at Mythos to start with.
Finally, a couple of golf carts came back, and we were able to leave. Daphne and I put our stuff in our dorm rooms, and at seven thirty that morning, I once again found myself fighting for my life. But this time, it was only in the gym with Logan and his two Spartan friends, Oliver Hector and Kenzie Tanaka.
Slash-slash-slash
.
I moved Vic through a series of quick maneuvers swinging my sword a little closer to Logan’s head every single time.
“Ha!” I shouted as I flashed the blade at him. “Take that!”
Logan grinned, his blue eyes practically glowing in his face. Nothing made the Spartan happier than sparring—especially since he almost always won.
“Not bad, Gypsy girl,” he said. “You’re finally learning how to attack instead of just defend. But what are you going to do against something like this?”
Clang-clang-clang
.
The Spartan launched into a series of even quicker, more complicated moves, and ten seconds later, his sword hovered against my throat.
“And things were going so well up until now,” Vic grumbled.
“Shut up, Vic,” I said with a smile on my face.
Yeah, Logan had just mock killed me again, but for the very first time since he’d begun training me, there was a bit of color in his cheeks. The Spartan wasn’t breathing hard, but he’d actually had to put a little effort into beating me that time. I was starting to hold my own against him, and that was saying something, considering he was the best fighter at Mythos.
Of course, when I’d kissed Logan a few weeks ago, I’d flashed on him and basically absorbed all of his fighting skills. Using my psychometry magic to see and tap into Logan’s memories and make them my own was how I’d kept Preston from killing us, but I never used my magic or Logan’s prowess against him while we were sparring. I wanted to develop some fighting skills of my own, something it finally seemed like I was doing.
I glanced over at Kenzie and Oliver, who were sprawled across the gym bleachers.
“Time?” I asked.
Kenzie checked his phone. “Two minutes, one second. Up more than a minute from our last session before the break.”
“Looking good, Gypsy,” Oliver said, grinning and giving me a thumbs-up.
I grinned back. Logan and I headed over to the bleachers. We’d been fighting with swords for half an hour now, and it was time to move on to ranged weapons, like bows, something Kenzie and Oliver used more than Logan did. While Kenzie and Logan set up the archery target and decided what kind of bow we’d practice with today, I walked over to where Oliver sat texting on his phone.
“So,” I asked the Spartan. “How was your holiday?”
“Good,” he said. “Lots of food, lots of family stuff, you know, the usual.”
“And did you meet anyone cute over break?”
Oliver looked down at his phone, and a blush started to stain his cheeks. “Maybe.”
I smiled. “Really? That’s great! You’ll have to give me all the juicy details.”
Oliver shook his head and ran his fingers through his sandy blond hair. “I think it’s too soon for that. I mean, I’m not dating the guy yet or anything. Besides, I still have feelings for Kenzie.”
Oliver glanced over at his best friend, who was debating the merits of different types of crossbows with Logan. Kenzie didn’t make my heart pound like Logan did, but he was cute in his own right, with his glossy black hair and dark eyes. Before the holiday break, I’d learned that Oliver had a serious, serious crush on him, though Kenzie, who was not gay, had no idea.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked in a soft voice.
Oliver shook his head. “Nah. I’ll get over Kenzie, really, I will. It will just take some time.” Another grin creased his face. “Maybe
you’d
like to talk, say, about that pretty new necklace you’re wearing? How are things with you and Logan?”
I ran my fingers over the silver strands wrapped around my throat. My gaze went to Logan, who was still talking to Kenzie. “It’s complicated. I mean, we didn’t exactly get a chance to talk yesterday, you know?”
Oliver’s face darkened. “I know. Logan called Kenzie and me last night and told us what had happened. I can’t believe the Reapers attacked the coliseum like that just because they thought the Helheim Dagger might be there. That was vicious, even for them.”
I was about to answer him when one of the doors at the far end of the gym creaked open and three kids stepped inside—two girls and a guy.
They stood in the doorway, eyes wide, peering into the gym like they were expecting to see something really cool inside. I glanced around, wondering what they could be so interested in, but the gym looked the same as it always did. Championship banners in fencing, archery, and other sports dangling from the high ceiling, wooden bleachers jutting out from two of the walls, several racks of weapons stacked up against one another.
But the kids must have seen what they were looking for because the three of them walked forward, their shoes scuffing on the thick mats that covered most of the floor.
“Who are they?” I asked. “And what do you think they’re doing here?”
Oliver glanced over at them. “Some first-year students. I’m not sure what their names are, but I’ve seen them around campus.”
At Mythos, the students ranged from the first-years, who were sixteen, all the way up to the sixth-years, who were twenty-one. The upper-class students mixed and socialized, but nobody had much to do with the first-years, not even the kids in my class, who were only a year or so older.
The three kids tiptoed forward and took seats on the bleachers a few feet away from Oliver and me. Then, they just sat there, staring at us like they were waiting for something amazing to happen. I noticed the guy was carrying a staff in addition to his backpack, while the girls both had scabbards that held swords. Nothing unusual there. Practically all the kids took their weapon of choice to classes with them. At Mythos, your weapon told everyone what kind of warrior you were, what kind of magic you had, and what you could do with it, and the swords, staffs, and bows were status symbols just as much as having the latest phone or laptop.
Logan and Kenzie finished setting up the archery target and headed back to the bleachers. Logan looked at the kids, then at Oliver and me. We both shrugged. We didn’t know who they were or what they wanted. Usually, it was just the four of us in the gym this early in the morning before classes started.
“Do you guys need something?” Logan asked.
“Oh, we thought we would, um, watch you,” one of the girls said. “Someone told us that Logan Quinn trains every morning in the gym. That’s you, right?”
Logan frowned. “Yeah, but why would you guys want to watch me? It’s just weapons training. The same stuff we do in gym class every day.”
“Because you killed Reapers at the coliseum yesterday,” the guy explained, his eyes bright with excitement. “How awesome was it? I mean, actually getting to fight them? I bet it was supercool.”
His words unleashed a flood of memories, and for a moment, I was back at the coliseum. The image of the Reaper stabbing Carson flashed through my mind, while Daphne’s screams echoed in my head. And the blood—all the blood that had splashed everywhere. The coppery stench of it filled my nose. My stomach twisted, and my heart pounded as if it had all just happened a second ago.
“Awesome?” I snapped. “It wasn’t
awesome
at all. It was hard and scary and dangerous, and I thought I was going to throw up the whole time. There was nothing
awesome
about it, and if you think there was, then you’re an idiot.”
The guy’s mouth fell open, and he let out a huff. “Oh, please, you’re just jealous you didn’t kill as many Reapers as Logan did. I heard you just got one, while he killed, like, a dozen.”
A dozen? Where was he getting that ridiculous number from? Logan had only killed two Reapers—not a dozen. Actually, Daphne had taken out the most Reapers, since the Valkyrie had killed three of them.
“Is that little punk impugning your fighting skills?” Vic muttered. “Why don’t we go show him who’s boss, eh, Gwen?”
I gripped Vic tighter, muffling the sound of his voice, but his words only made me that much angrier. So much so that I didn’t realize I’d taken a menacing step forward until I felt Logan’s hand on my arm.
“Gypsy girl,” Logan said in a soft voice. “It’s all right. Calm down. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
I drew in a breath and let it out. “Well, he shouldn’t talk about things he doesn’t know anything about.”
The guy gave me a haughty look that turned into an arrogant smirk when Logan told them they could stay and watch us train. I moved over to the archery target and started shooting arrows with a bow, while Kenzie and Oliver stood off to one side, calling out tips and suggestions.
Maybe it was the fact that we had an audience or maybe it was because the first-year guy had pissed me off, but all my good mojo from earlier vanished, and I missed the target as many times as I hit it. Every miss made me angrier and that much more frustrated.
“Geez,” I heard the guy say after one of my arrows flew past the target and weakly
thumped
off the wall. “How did
she
ever manage to kill a Reaper? She totally sucks.”
The two girls murmured their agreement.
“I don’t know,” one of the girls said. “There’s got to be something special about her, right? Isn’t she the one who survived the avalanche during the Winter Carnival? That weird Gypsy girl?”
“Well, maybe she does better with the weather than she does with weapons. She certainly couldn’t do any worse.” The guy snickered at his lame joke.
My hands curled around the bow, and I seriously considered stalking over to the bleachers and bashing him over the head with it.
“Don’t let them get to you,” Oliver said in a quiet voice, handing me another arrow. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know how great you’re doing, especially considering the fact that you haven’t been training your whole life like the rest of us.”
I knew what Oliver said was true, but it didn’t quiet the snickers that rang up from the bleachers behind me—or soothe my anger. Still, I gritted my teeth and raised the bow up to my shoulder, determined to get through the rest of training time as quickly as possible. I lined up my shot and let the bowstring go.
Another shot, another miss. Behind me, the snickers grew even louder, seeming to echo all the way up to the top of the rafters and back down again.
I sighed. I wasn’t psychic, not like Grandma Frost, but I had a feeling it was going to be that kind of day.
 
After the humilation of weapons training was finally over, I left the gym and stepped outside. The main upper quad was the center of Mythos Academy and featured the five buildings where the students spent most of their time—English-history, math-science, the gym, the dining hall, and the Library of Antiquities. Each one of the buildings sat at a different edge of the quad, reminding me of the points of a star.
From a distance, the structures all looked old and pretentious with their dark gray stone and tall, slender windows. But if you took a closer look, you’d notice how the heavy vines of ivy clutched at the doors and windows like green, bony fingers, while balconies, towers, and parapets bristled out like sword points from the sides and tops of the structures. The sharp angles glittered in the winter sun, and it always seemed to me like the towers were stretching up to stab the sky.

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