A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (19 page)

At the far end of the girls'
wing, glass shattered. Kara heard screams. Doors banged and as they descended
the stairs, the storm seemed to rush in behind them, snow whipping through the
second floor, a blizzard filling the hall and blowing out from the landing,
sweeping into the stairwell.

Miho slipped and fell backward
onto the stairs, crying out in pain as her back hit the steps. She slid and
tumbled the last few stairs to the landing between floors. Kara crouched by
her, fear racing through her at the thought of Miho hurt, or dying.

"I'm all right," Miho
said. "Go!"

Even as the girl spoke, her
glasses frosting over, she struggled to stand. Pain etched itself across her
face but she started down toward the first floor. Kara glanced up at Ren and
Sakura, saw they were all right, and beyond them she noticed the ghosts in the
swirling snow, untouched by the wind, unmoved by their plight.

The lights flickered and she
froze.
No, no. We need light. Please not the lights
.

But the wavering light glinted
off of something around Sakura's neck and then Kara remembered the wards Kubo
had given them. Her hand flew to her throat and she touched the round, smooth
stone that hung from the thong around her neck. What had the old monk said? Demons
didn't see faces, they recognized essences. Something like that. She and Miho
and Sakura were hidden from Yuki-Onna for now, but they had to hide Ren as
well.

Kara slipped and nearly fell. She
caught herself on the railing and her fingers froze to the metal in an instant.
Skin tore away as she pulled her arm back and she cried out, swearing loudly as
she kept going. Injured hand tucked under her arm, she turned to Sakura.

"The ward Kubo gave us for
Hachiro! Do you have it?"

Understanding flickered across
Sakura's eyes, following by regret. "It's back in my room!"

The long cathedral window in the
landing shattered at last. Storm-driven glass shards sliced the air around
them, blown in with snow and sleet, wind whipping at them, stinging as much as
glass splinters. A jagged piece slashed Kara's shoulder, and she stared in
shock as blood began to seep from the wound. She was so cold she could barely
feel it.

"Where are we going?"
Sakura shouted to be heard over the howling wind.

"Not outside!" Miho
said. "That would be insane!"

Kara faced them . . . and beyond
them, through the shattered window up the stairs on the landing, she saw
Yuki-Onna hovering in the air, swaying with the wind. Her white kimono seemed
to dance with the snow and her long white hair flowed around her.

Don't look!
Kara thought,
remembering the stories, knowing that Yuki-Onna could freeze her with a glance.

"This way!" she
called, racing down the next flights of steps toward the basement level. As she
did, she realized that the White Woman had not been staring at her, but at Ren.
Kubo was right. She can't see us!

The others had not seen
Yuki-Onna, but they felt the storm moving in, the temperature dropping, the
storm thickening around them. They all had cuts from the flying glass, but the
air was so cold their blood barely dripped at all. Their fear drove them on,
and Kara knew they had only one slim hope.

"Where are you going?"
Ren called.

Kara hurried down the steps to
the basement. "Somewhere with no windows!"

The others pursued her, and she
saw realization ignite hope in their eyes. Behind the cafeteria was a kitchen
with heavy wooden doors and no windows. A bank vault would have been better,
but they had very little to choose from.

"It isn't going to work!"
Ren said.

Kara shot him a hard look.
"It has to!"

Other students were coming out
of the cafeteria now, loudly complaining about the cold. The real storm reached
them now, snow and sleet whipping around them, wind roaring into the cafeteria,
blowing the doors in, scraping tables across the floor, and people started to
scream.

Kara led her friends through the
screaming and the chaos of the storm. Another scream cut the air, but this was
different, and when she turned she saw Yuki-Onna glide into the room, ice
forming on the walls around her, crystallizing the floor and the nearest tables.
A girl in a ponytail had looked at her and now stood frozen as Yuki-Onna
approached, then bent to kiss her.

The kiss seemed to go on an
eternity, though it was only a brush of lips. When it ended, the girl had been
transformed, her body coated in ice, a statue carved of winter and death.

"Kara!" Sakura
shouted, grabbing her roughly and pulling her along.

Then they were barging into the
kitchen. But as her friends set about slamming and locking doors, sealing them
inside, Kara could not get the image of the frozen girl out of her mind. She
thought of Sora, who had died the same way, and of Hachiro.

Just a kiss.

When Ren embraced her, she didn't
resist. The four of them huddled together for long seconds, the fog of their
breath combining into a cloud, their body heat all that was keeping them from
freezing completely.

Then ice began to crawl and
spread on the inside of the kitchen door, just a few feet away from them, and
Kara knew that they were out of places to run.

Rob Harper raced down the
corridor, windblown snow stinging his face. He had to fight against the cold,
which weighed him down. His arms and legs felt like lead, but he forced himself
to run. He had left Yuuka and Mr. Yamato back in the dorm room shared by Wakana
and Mai, protecting the girls and themselves. They were safer there, behind
closed doors. The windows and the door were rattling in their frames but the
storm in the corridor was much worse.

He had seen the smoke-serpent
form of the demon Hannya, and its more monstrous, solid form as well. He had
seen a ghost, at least once. His daughter had told him stories of worse things,
of blood-drinking monsters and evil spirits and curses. But he had never
imagined anything like this.

How is it possible?
he
thought. This wasn't just a blizzard gusting in through broken windows, but a
storm raging inside the dormitory. The wind barreled through the halls with its
own momentum, churning the air, leaving ice and snow everywhere.

He slipped, barely catching
himself before his feet could shoot out from under him. Students cowered in the
hall. Others poked their heads out of their rooms. Through one open door he saw
that the windows had shattered and a bloody girl sat sheltered by her desk,
pulling shards of glass from cuts in her arms.

As he reached the stairs at the
center of the building he shielded his eyes from the storm and looked around. Kara
and her friends had been going to visit Ren. His room was up ahead, in the boys'
wing. But even from here Rob could see the shattered door that had blown off of
its frame. It jutted, half-buried, from a snow-drift in the hall.

"Harper-sensei!" a boy
shouted to be heard over the wind. "In here!"

Rob looked up to see a familiar
face, one of his students, leaning out of an open door. The boy was gesturing
for him to enter the room to get out of the storm in the hall. But Rob barely
registered the kid, focused on the ruin of the door ahead. He slowed to a walk,
struggling against the gusting wind.

"Kara!" he shouted.

"She's not there!" the
boy called over the wind.

Rob spun to look at him. "You
saw her?"

The boy pushed his too-long hair
away from his eyes and pointed back at the stairwell. "They went down!"

One glance at the steps told him
the descent would be treacherous. The arched, cathedral window had shattered
and the wind funneled in from outside, battering the walls, driving sleet and
snow in. He gritted his teeth against the cold as he tore off his jacket. The
cold cut right through his clothes, biting deep, but he forced himself onward. At
the top of the stairs he threw his jacket over the railing, using it to keep
his flesh from touching the metal as he started down.

The soles of his shoes skidded
on the steps but he managed to steady himself on the railing. Broken glass
crunched underfoot as he rounded the corner of the landing and descended to the
first floor.

"Kara!" he called, and
he listened for a reply.

No one was in the foyer and for
a moment hope withered in his heart. Then he glanced down the next flight of
stairs toward the basement and saw a dark figure there, huddled in the corner
of the stairwell. The storm had dusted over any tracks they might have left
behind, but maybe this kid could tell him something. Rob rushed down to the
landing between the first floor and basement.

"Have you seen —"
he began, but then he snapped his mouth shut.

Ice crusted the dead boy's face.
The corpse's eyes were open and staring in terror. Something had gone down the
steps past him and frozen him to the spot. It could only be Yuki-Onna. The
moment the impossible storm had begun, he had known that the Woman in White had
come down from Takigami Mountain, but now he knew that the demon was hunting.

Professor Harper shouted his
daughter's name again as he rushed down the last few steps. His skin burned
with the cold and his bones felt brittle, as if they might snap at any moment.

The cafeteria doors hung open,
one torn from its hinges but pinned to the wall by the storm. Snow coated the
floor and walls, and drifted in corners. A shape that might have been a body
lay under the layer of white and he tore his gaze away, refusing to believe it
could be his daughter. A dead girl stood frozen solid less than ten feet away. A
boy, alive and terrified, had curled up beneath a cafeteria table. Rob could
hear him whimpering.

On the far side of the room, the
Winter Witch stood in front of the thick, wooden door that led into the
kitchen. The door was coated in ice and had cracked down the middle, and Rob
could hear girls screaming on the other side. Yuki-Onna gestured with her hand
and a gust of wind swept through the cafeteria and slammed against the door,
shoving it open further, widening the crack. The girls were on the other side,
trying to keep it closed.

Rob stared at Yuki-Onna. He had
never seen anything so beautiful. Her kimono and her hair were both of the
purest white. The curve of her neck and the line of her jaw, even at this
angle, were incredibly sensual. She moved with the grandeur of angels, an
otherworldly thing, and looking at her stole his breath away.

Then he heard his daughter
scream again, and he wanted to kill the witch. Only then did the emptiness of
his hands occur to him. How could he fight her? He had no weapon to attack her.
But he could not allow her to kill Kara.

A metal chair had been blown
against the wall and upended. Half-covered in snow, its legs thrust upward. Rob
picked it up, brushed it off, and rushed at Yuki-Onna, raising the chair over
his head. The snow crunched underfoot as he cocked it back and began to swing.

Yuki-Onna turned and stared at
him. With a flick of her wrist the wind gusted and the chair was torn from his
grasp, clattering onto a table a dozen feet away. Her eyes were totally black. If
there had ever been color there, it had been entirely eclipsed. Those gleaming,
oil-black eyes stared at him and then the beautiful creature smiled at him,
showing a mouthful of tiny, jagged shark's teeth.

"Are you one of the cursed?"
the Winter Witch asked, her voice the mournful howl of the storm.

The wind shoved him from behind,
lifted him off of his feet, twisted and swirled him over to fall in a heap on
his knees before her. Yuki-Onna bent, studying him with those soulless,
eclipsed eyes.

"You feel like one of them,"
the witch said, frowning. "But you're not, are you?"

"Leave them alone!"
Rob shouted.

Yuki-Onna smiled that dreadful
smile again. "Oh, I think not," she said. And she lifted Rob off of
the floor as if he were a child's plaything, pulled him close, and opened her
jaws. Those shark teeth darted toward his throat . . .

"Dad!" Kara shouted.

The door had split in two. They
had been trying to hold it back, knowing that it would be only seconds before
the storm drove the splintered halves aside and Yuki-Onna swept in. Now Kara
saw the demon — vampire, witch, whatever the hell the ice queen truly was
— and she acted.

Thrusting her fingers into the
crack in the door, she pulled inward.

"What are you doing?"
Sakura shouted.

"Her father! It's . .
." Miho started, but she could not find the words.

Ren helped Kara, pushing his
fingers into the gap and hauling the door open. Sakura and Miho got out of the
way, now that they saw the horror unfolding just outside the door. Kara's hands
were numb, with no feeling in her fingers. She could barely move them and only
knew they were doing what she wanted because she could see them. Her nose was
clogged with ice. Tears had frozen on her cheeks.

Yuki-Onna sank her teeth into
her father's throat and Kara screamed.

Blood squirted, but only a few
drops. The Winter Witch's tongue darted out and licked it up and then she began
to suck. Several crimson spots appeared on that pure white kimono, and then
faded into the cloth as though absorbed from within.

Kara lunged at the demon. Yuki-Onna
did move. Kara passed right through the witch's body as if it were part of the
storm itself, mist and snow puffing out and then reforming. Kara hit the floor,
her mind still working, still raging to rescue her father, but her body would
not work. She began to tremble and then to shake.

Is this a seizure?
she
had time to wonder, and then her head began to slam against the floor. Only the
snow that had piled up around them saved her from caving her own skull in.