Blizzard (Black Ice Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “As I said, do not risk your own life for those who cannot make the trip back beyond riding with you.”

  “I can’t do that!” The young man’s face had reddened, trying to match his fiery hair.

  “Then do what you must, but understand we cannot come back for you, either,” Zachariah responded, silencing the young man. No others had spoken, though uncertain looks were passed around before Zachariah spoke. His words stopped their doubts. “We are not in a position to risk everyone else’s lives because you want to save the world. We do not have such an advantage here, though I understand your feelings, and my pride hurts with yours. There is only so much we can do with our limited resources. Here, we stand a chance to save the greatest number of lives. We will not stop you, but we cannot aid you, either. If you wish to leave and attempt your own search and rescue then go ahead. If you think you can lead a group to do such rescues, then find those people who will help you and do just that.”

  Zachariah’s eyes were callous, his tone hard, and his body spoke of confidence the young man had not yet earned. Zachariah waited and watched the young man scan the faces around him before the red-headed fury turned away and left the group. None followed, and my heart ached in kind for what he felt, but I knew the truth well enough to know where I belonged. My role had been set since birth, and looking to Thedryk, I found his hard glare fixed squarely on me. I returned the glare, unyielding. Perhaps I was being childish in the moment, but he had hurt me in a way I wasn’t fully understanding, and the anger was only growing.

  I finally cast my eyes aside as Xavier and Zachariah set to dividing up the groups of men to their locations, and my mother pulled me aside.

  “Work on calming yourself.” She was using magic. I could feel it, hear it, and almost see it as she spoke to me.

  “I am calm,” I retorted bitterly.

  She clamped her mouth shut in her brief shock. “All right, so you are calm. Thedryk is accompanying us, you know…” She let the words hang in the air, and I did nothing to tie them back together. “And five other men. Xavier and Zachariah—”

  “My father,” I corrected without hesitation.

  My mother paused, her expression softening ever so slightly. Her obvious relief that I had not cast Zachariah aside as my father filled her eyes with a glisten, a promise of tears she quickly commanded back down.

  “Your father will join us as soon as they can. Perhaps it’s best if you not speak to Thedryk during this trip to the village or back but save your words for after we have returned safely.”

  It irked me that she was trying to be delicate with the subject at hand, with me at all. Still, I stifled my irritation as best I was able. “Yes, Mother. I assume you’ll relay the same.” I turned to find my father already speaking with Thedryk in earnest; I could read their expressions from their side profiles.

  “That is already being handled. Let’s go.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder, and I accepted the comfort begrudgingly.

  “You must tell me everything when we’re back.” My demand was a whisper, to which she only squeezed my shoulder tightly.

  The horrors we found overwhelmed my capacity. The light scent of smoke was the first indicator things had gone wrong as we crossed the first field. It grew and thickened, darkening the fading evening skyline. Next, death was carried on the wind. Fresh, a pungent metallic scent that I knew was blood. Too fresh. It carried across the field and through the small forest directly before us, giving us notice that what lay beyond was worse than we were seeing.

  Then came the bodies the odors accompanied. None were spared. Mothers clutching their newborns and children and men trying to stop the onslaught had been dismembered, and among them all were demons. They had not made their advance without losses of their own. Pitchforks stuck through their bodies, bludgeoned heads with the black blood that oozed out of the wounds and poisoned the soil. Their odors made me gag, sulfurous and rotten. Collapsed heads of both, chest cavities, intestines strewn across from the people who had tried to escape only grew in number the closer we got to the village. Thedryk and my mother were on each side of me as we rode, but I stopped at the sound of a small child. I dismounted, though I did not recall the action, and ran directly to the source. A demon was matching me in pace to reach the noise. It was a crude beast, a large lumbering frame that could have been mistaken for a boulder. Graying skin seemed wet, muscular in build but not smooth. It was fast, I found. Faster than me, but not fast enough to escape my throwing knives.

  I threw two that were strapped to my thighs, shining metal that reached the target but were repelled by skin too thick to be penetrated. While I did not harm the demon, I did draw its attention. Thedryk’s and my mother’s voices barely reached me as I stopped abruptly, prepared to take the demon head on, but I was not surprised when instead it met Thedryk’s long spear from the side of its face. His spear pierced through the hardened flesh with far more ease than my throwing knives. Landing heavily, disrupting the hardened land, it created a wave of frost bitten ground stopping just feet from where I stood, ready and willing to fight.

  “Kareese, are you insane?!” Thedryk was yelling, the veins in his neck bulging.

  “The child…”

  He had left his spear in what little brains the demon held to stalk up to me, trying to grab my arm, but I evaded him. Only silence answered my concern, as I turned to find smaller demons had already reached the child. Then the other sounds struck my hearing, shrieks of people and those inhuman from all around. Thedryk had retrieved his spear, angrily ripping it from the demon’s head, but nothing mattered when I felt the draw from beyond where Thedryk stood, cursing in every possible manner.

  I took flight, leaving Thedryk and my mother behind for mere seconds before they took after me. People were alive, but dying swiftly, all around us. Yet what I felt pulled me from all those I wanted to save. The demon from my nightmare was coming; I could feel it.

  “Kareese, you’re getting too far ahead!” My mother was calling me, but I could not stop.

  We passed through a line of trees between the two fields. The small forest was covered in the billowing smoke the wind was dragging along.

  “Wait, the others are not far behind. We should wait for them before we go any further.”

  I knew what Thedryk yelled made sense, but a force was at play that I could not deny. From my soul it pulled, and I followed with a fevered frenzy of desire. They caught up to me only when I slowed a little at their words. To my left, Thedryk’s imploring green eyes searched mine, the trees of the forest reflected in them, and to my right, my mother watched me with hers filled with fear behind their clear, blue veil. It was a moment in time that I imprinted on my heart, two of the people I held dearest trying to stop me though they intrinsically knew they could do no such thing.

  We were through the tree line to other side almost immediately and there sat the small field beyond the forest. Beyond this field had been another great forest and the base of the mountain. Now it had become a graveyard. The village was not much farther away, but the bodies amassed in the small field that continued into the next edge of forest were evidence there were no survivors to be found here. Only death, and there death came in the shape of a man. The Devil incarnate stood in the middle of the massacre, waiting.

  I knew instinctively this was the demon I had seen in the nightmare, though his outside appearance was different. This Devil was terribly handsome with dark brown hair, hair that mimicked my own in color and thickness, accompanied by dark skin and teeth a white that snow would envy. Even so, that dark skin had been tattooed with red rune markings across his chest, arms, and legs. Though covered in his black garb, I could see the runes beneath, almost glowing. An insidious aura enveloped the entire area, and it was being produced from him. His amber eyes locked onto mine, and his smile spread; though there was no joy, there was a deviant pleasure within.

  “They’re all dead.” My heart and soul shook from the reality; we had come far too late.r />
  “Kareese, we cannot help them now. We need to wait for the others, just a few moments more.” Thedryk was pleading with me, his hand grabbing my arm and squeezing.

  I felt nothing but a numbness overwhelming my body; something else was tearing me apart from within, shaking my body in light tremors that grew the longer they went on and began to shake the soil beneath my planted feet.

  “You must control yourself, Ka—”

  I was gone; in an instant I was across the small field, daggers drawn, and attacking the Devil. My mother’s warnings did not reach me in time. The time it took them to cross the field was nothing compared to the assault I unleashed upon the Devil known as Reegan, my true father.

  “You are quite skilled,” Reegan teased. “But I should not be surprised, you are my daughter, after all.” A vicious laugh tore through the clouded sky as his words drove me beyond my limits.

  I was pulling, calling to all elements I had mastered and those I had not. Fire, ice, nature, air, and light and the darkness that had been waiting patiently. Vines shot from the earth; seeds that had not sprouted burst to life and wrapped around Reegan’s legs and arms. He broke free with ease, amused and laughing all the more. He attempted to deflect each of my dagger slashes, his delighted expression disappearing as I left cuts across each arm. His voice echoed across the small field, stopping all the demons from their present activity to take notice.

  Leaping back swiftly, I saw blood in a streaked trail from his right arm, following his movements. I looked from his arms to the daggers in my hands, certain I had landed blows to both arms, and I found each blade tinted a different color. The left had become a warm color of orange, and the right paled blue. I flicked each up into an arc, catching them by their handles as they came down, watching with a sense of awe as small flames flickered and flakes of ice shivered from the blades. Thedryk and my mother finally caught up as I refocused my attention on Reegan, determination my one resolve to kill him.

  “Stop.” My mother grabbed my arm before I could bolt, leaving her and Thedryk behind again. “He’s toying with you, Kareese.”

  “But I drew blood! Look what I have done!” I whispered, but I pointed one dagger his way emphasizing the trail of blood.

  “Yes, you surprised him, but you have just come into your gifts with no real practice. He has had years beyond yours; trust me when I tell you this. We must attack him together, as a group, and you must be careful not to hit us by accident.” My mother’s grip bit into my arm, bringing me a little closer to my senses.

  “He backed off when we were too close for his comfort, Kareese. It was a momentary distraction.” Thedryk’s words made some sense, but their truths hurt my pride some.

  I thought I had truly landed blows, maybe catching up to his pace, but as I looked back to him I saw that smile had returned. Suddenly he was beside my mother, twirling a loose strand of her white-blonde hair in his fingers.

  “It’s been too long, Eliza. Are you three busy planning your counter?”

  My mother turned in a flash of movements, the blade from her sword glinting from the distant fires burning. Darkness had quickly descended as a curtain falling across the only window in a room. Her blade only met air, though.

  “We will stop you!” my mother nearly screamed into the night air as we began to lose all visuals. Only the sporadic fires that burned gave any guidance to what was nearest, and those were mostly rotting corpses and a growing number of demons.

  “Try, try if you can.” His voice was a dark, curling whisper through the blackness, just next to Thedryk before a clashing of metal rang out. Sparks flew between Thedryk’s spear and a long sword Reegan held, a brief illumination to what he was becoming in the darkness. Parts of his face had begun to lose their flesh, as I had seen before. “I see you have been busy training the boy, as well. How considerate, if not wasteful, of you. Such a shame to lose such talent.” Another clash and spark erupted just before my face, knocking me back.

  “Kareese!” Both Thedryk and my mother cried out my name in unison.

  I snapped up from my fallen position, forcing myself from the fear that crippled me. I recognized my mother’s voice just moments before, chanting. A spell for illumination. I needed no chanting, only wished it and light burst through the darkness, so blindingly bright even Reegan fell back in shocked pain. Only I stood with my eyes unshielded and could see we were surrounded, completely. The demons we had seen as we came upon the first and second field had created a ring, closing in upon us.

  The darkness I felt drove me to my next moves; my words were slipped into the wind and carried only to Thedryk and my mother, guiding them forward. Reegan was not entirely unaware; as my mother claimed, he had trained for far longer than I had been alive. Under my guidance Thedryk thrust out first, straight forward to which Reegan was able to side step, barely missing the tip of the blade, followed by my mother advancing with her own set of thrusts that Reegan weaved in and out of, but he wasn’t prepared for my attacks. As I continued to guide Thedryk, forward thrust, back, upward angle swipe, pulling straight down, and my mother to overstep his downward strike to provide her own spiraled attack once, twice, three times, all of which Reegan continually avoided, I returned the darkness, but more complete. I had stopped all the fires during their assault, so no light could penetrate the depths of black I had veiled across the night.

  The moment the transition occurred was when I finally attacked, Reegan’s runes a bright red beacon, the only exception to the darkness, guiding me to his vital points. I had gotten behind him, and I cut behind his knees into his tendons. He stumbled, falling to the ground, but was quick enough to dodge my attacks at stabbing his arms. I was able to catch only his right arm, this time with the iced dagger. I rolled away but was caught by Reegan’s blade as he swung out wide, cutting across my side.

  My mother shouted my name as she heard my cry, and I heard her own cry of pain, drawing my attention to the direction her cry came from. Thedryk had been keeping the monsters at bay with the wide, open arcs of his spear to its fullest extension before he let out his own shout of pain. With one more command to Thedryk and my mother to shut their eyes, I lit the area again with the brightest light I could muster and found Reegan only inches away. It was only a moment, and I knew it was too late. I saw my mother, bleeding down her right arm, three claw marks dragged across her shoulder and down the arm, and Thedryk with a demon latched onto his leg, biting through the calf, shredding the tissue.

  Rather than stop Reegan, I stood still, allowing his blade to cut through the soft flesh of my skin, piercing my stomach and exiting out my back. It was just close enough for me to push both my daggers through his heart, up to their hilts.

  Time stopped, every moving, living, breathing creature ceased to exist as Reegan’s eyes met mine, shocked. He tried to blink away his disbelief. “Quite…the monster…I made, my daugh…ter.”

  “No,” I growled the word between clenched teeth. “I have never been your daughter.” I was fighting back tears as he released the handle of his sword. “Die.” Stepping forward, I pressed the blades in beyond their hilts and watched as he fell away. Time had not moved a second, though.

  Reegan’s body hit the hardened soil, ash from the fires puffing out from beneath his fallen frame seeming to glimmer in the light. “I will always be your father, and so long as you are that light, the brighter you shine, the more shadows you cast. Know—” He coughed, blood sputtering from his darkened lips and fleshless face, and a few seconds of motion, sound, and scent skipped past before stopping again. “I will always be waiting for you. What I am you can never rid this world of. When you’re gone I will remain and take—” another cough and time skipping by— “that which I have fought long and hard for.”

  I considered his words a few moments, watching his eyes as he gauged me from his inevitable deathbed, before collapsing to my knees next to him and bringing my fists down upon the blades. His life snuffed out immediately, and time resumed entirely.r />
  The air filled with a cacophonic sound of tormented moaning, not screams but tortured moaning as my light disappeared, so did the ensuing darkness that had fallen upon the night. Dawn splintered across the sky instead, revealing the demons as they melted away. Their skin and tissue fizzled and steamed, bubbled and soaked the ground beneath as though oil, leaving a nauseating odor. Even their bones collapsed and turned to dust the moment the sunlight touched a single speck of their frame. I finally fell to my side, the blade still holding its place in my abdomen.

  “NO!” My mother’s voice cried out, echoing across the morning air.

  Thedryk slid up beside me on his knees. I could see from my peripheral vision his hands uncertain of where to touch, how to help. My mother’s one clean hand cupped my face gently, tears pouring as a waterfall.

  “It’s time,” I whispered.

  “No-no-no-no!” She was shaking. Blood caked with ash had matted to her beautiful skin, her cheeks and arm.

  “I…” My breathing had become labored, pain as poison spreading from the wound. “I know what to do now. It’s time. It will all work out.” I tried to comfort her, though my own tears had begun to drop.

  “ELIZA! KAREESE!” My father’s familiar voice was shouting; he had found us too late. The sound of the horse’s hooves grew to an unbearable thundering in my ears when they came to a sudden halt. Footsteps, running, my father and Xavier and several others. My father was lost between my mother and me before Xavier stepped forward.

  “Lady Eliza.” Xavier examined her wounds, carefully, as she turned her crushed expression to his face. “Let me see Kareese. Zachariah, her wounds need mending immediately.” He did not immediately move, so Xavier physically guided him over. Kneeling over me, he gently felt around the sword. “Kareese…” His words were heavy with sadness. “I must say, this is by far the worst injury you have ever granted me the chance to tend.”

  I could only manage a small laugh that I regretted instantly. “Poison,” I whimpered.