Dead of Winter (29 page)

“That man could dish out the torture, but couldn't take it, no.” Jack scrubbed a palm over his chin, his scarred knuckles bloodied. “He told us the twins are in a blast-proof bunker.”

“It's over a day north of here,” Aric added. “High in the mountains and accessible only by horse. A place they call the Shrine.”

Milo could be lying. “Can you trust what he says?”

“
Ouais.
I usually got a good sense about these things, and I think he spilled some truths—in between spitting out teeth like yellow Chiclets. Just to be sure, I can confirm.” Jack unclipped a transceiver from his belt. “Got the jammers turned off, me. You ready to ring up the twins' bunker?” I might have been mistaken, but I thought he'd asked me
and
Aric.

“Let's do this.” I held my breath as Jack hailed them.

And released it with dread when we received no answer.

“I can't remember when I last beheld such a show.” In the doorway of our roadside shelter—an old clapboard church—Aric stood silhouetted by lightning. Bolts teemed across the black sky.

Inside, Jack was inspecting the explosives he'd requisitioned from the army. Milo was tied up, fettered to a rough-hewn pew. So I'd joined Aric to watch the fireworks.

After pushing for miles through a brutal squall, we'd found this isolated, still-standing church and rewarded ourselves and our horses with a few hours of rest.

In the nearby graveyard, the tombstones were all crooked and scorched, as dark and foreboding as Aric's armor. When we'd first stopped, he'd breathed in deeply amid the crosses, headstones, and slabs, so at home that I'd raised a brow. “I like churches,” he'd said with a grin. “Graveyards especially.”

Even though he'd named his horse Thanatos and he'd discovered his armor on a corpse in a bone crypt, I'd never thought of Aric as so, well, death-y.

This wasn't off-putting to me. In fact, I found his fascination with deathly things attractive, because it was a part of him.

A particularly fearsome bolt spanned the sky. “I could almost swear
the Tower called this down upon us,” Aric mused. “In past games, he was this powerful.”

“I can barely imagine that.”

Aric's noble face was relaxed. A hint of blond stubble had regrown over the day. Bolts reflected in his amber eyes until his irises appeared on the verge of starlit.

As I gazed up at him, I realized my feelings for him continued to deepen. I might be . . . falling for him.

Really
falling.

“The Tower could throw javelins from both hands, with lightning combusting between them,” Aric continued. “The first time I encountered him, I was awestruck by the spectacle. To my detriment. I was new to the game, just sixteen.”

Right after he'd left his home. After his parents . . . I shivered.

He straightened at once. “You're freezing. Come back to the fire.” He led me inside.

The church's roof had a couple of burnout holes; Jack and Aric had made our fire beneath one. At times today the two had almost appeared to get along.

Without a word between them, they'd dismantled a pew for firewood and secured the horses in an adjoining alcove. Sword and bow raised, they'd cased the immediate area for Bagmen. As if by unspoken agreement, they'd disguised their animosity, presenting a unified front to Milo.

Their dynamic was changing. It had started when they'd stormed the slaver boss's house together. It'd continued evolving with our victory at Azey North. Their mutual scorn of Milo had seemed to blunt their hatred of one another.

Were they still enemies who would murder each other?

Absolutely.

But they might not savor the kill as much as they would've before.

“I didn't mean to take you from the show,” I told Aric.

“I'm keen to get to my translating.” He ushered me to the fire across from Jack.

I sat cross-legged, raising my waterlogged hands to the flames. I could feel Milo's hateful gaze—two pale eyes surrounded by bruises. He twisted his bound hands, as if he longed to strangle me. Good luck with all those broken fingers.

“Obviously, you don't know this, Empress”—his swollen lips and missing teeth distorted his speech—“but you ride with the very one who
killed
you in the last game! He's played you false!”

“Nope, I knew. He decapitated me. Blah.” I sounded blasé. I was anything but about our history.

“Then you're even stupider than I thought.”

Like a blur, Aric was in front of him. “Now, Milo, we talked about this. Remember? You do not speak to her unless you'd like to be castrated by horse hoof.”

“She's about to know agony as never . . .”

Death slowly shook his head with such menace that the man swallowed. That got Milo to shut up—at least to me. The moment Aric left him, the man turned to Jack. “It doesn't matter how many explosives you stole from me, you'll never breach the Shrine.”

“
Non?
You sure sound confident for a man who spent the day hog-tied over a saddle.”

Back at the encampment, the Azey had been delighted to see their former leader trussed up in such a humiliating position. Well, except for the bound loyalists who'd been on their way out to endure their own set of difficulties.

The horse Jack had chosen for Milo was one of the finest the army had to offer. He planned for Selena to use it on the way back.

How confident Jack was that we could rescue her—that she'd be able to ride. Whenever my mind turned to what the twins might be doing to her, I had to shut those thoughts down. . . .

Aric took the chronicles from that waterproof sleeve. He sat near
me, leaning against a wall. With a look of anticipation, he cracked open the pages.

“Thief!” Milo's beaten face grew an alarming shade of red. “You've stolen what doesn't belong to you! You have no right!”

Milo truly believed he was the innocent party. Aric was a thief; I was a treacherous bitch who'd wronged generations; Jack was an insurrectionist.

When the man got zero response from Aric, he said, “Save yourself the trouble—you'll never read them.”

Aric flipped a page without looking up. “Won't I?”

“It's written in ancient Romanian.” Somehow Milo's expression was both frenzied and smug.

“I speak ancient Hungarian, which shares roots with that language.” Another turned page.

Milo's smugness faltered. “You want to know the contents? It's a revenge contract from one generation to the next. We've renewed our hatred of the Empress over and over.”

“I look forward to a little light reading, then,” Aric said. “Know that I'll translate every word of this scrawl eventually.”

“Eventually? You won't live past tomorrow. My children will reclaim our chronicles off your corpse.”

Jack smirked. “So we
are
headed in the right direction then?”

“It doesn't matter that I told you the Lovers' location. You can't breach it.”

“Popping open a bunker woan be as easy as, say, stealing your entire army from you. But we'll figure it out. Tomorrow, we're goan to eat good off your stores, and drink too. I already stole the whiskey from your desk.” He pulled a bottle from his bug-out bag, keeping it at the ready. “Twenty-five years old? Um, um, um.”

“Enjoy it, hunter! Tonight's your last one on this earth.” Veins stuck out in the man's forehead as he grew more frustrated. He was used to terrifying people; I think I'd yawned at him a couple of times in the last hour. “Tomorrow you die.”

“I've never heard that before,” Aric drawled. “And yet . . .”

Jack returned to his explosives inspection, eyeing a serious-looking detonator. “Seems you like to bluster, Milo. The weak ones always do.”

Aric glanced up. “I've seen that trait over and over throughout the years. I remember Philip the Second once wrote to the Spartans, saying, ‘If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta.' Do you know what they wrote back? One word:
If
. ”

Jack paused at that, cocking his head. I'd bet he was committing that story to memory.

“My children will reign over this world as immortal champions. Unlike you, Reaper!” Milo spat a mouthful of watery blood. “What did you do as champion of the Arcana?”

“Hmm.” Amusement. A flipped page. “What should I have done?”

“The entire world could have worshipped death. Cults of it, to pay homage to your deity.”

“Historically, Arcana who reveal their secret gifts fare ill. Even so, I haven't done too shabbily. Everyone has heard of the Grim Reaper. And cults of death? People pray before tombs and crypts every day. Cemeteries are hallowed. Look outside these very doors. What's left standing? Monuments to death.”

“You could have conquered so much more. Ruled over man as a god. Enriched your relatives' line. You could have sown fear as my twins will sow destruction.”

“And in your imaginings, when your spawn win, what would mankind worship?”

“
Love
. It's the most destructive force in the universe.”

Really getting sick of hearing that.

“They'll make over the world in their image, populating it with carnates. Eventually my children will control everyone on the face of the earth. They'll win game after game, never dying!”

“No. They won't,” Aric said. “Because we're on our way to introduce them to death. But I'll be sure to update your chronicles for you.”

Face twisted, Milo sneered, “You've seen how my children love their
innocent victims. Imagine what they have planned for the treacherous Empress, who tortured them.”

My last nerve said, “He's on me!” I glanced around for a gag.

Milo turned to Jack. “They'll love her far worse than they did your pretty sister, Clotile. The little French beggar.”

Jack lunged for Milo; before he could reach the man, Death had used his speed to yank the fiend up, shoving him toward the door.

“You'll pay, Empress!” Milo screamed over his shoulder. “The creature loses its tail but retains its life. You'll see! We are retribution!”

Jack stared after the man, his jaw clenched, his chest heaving.

“You okay?” I asked quietly.

He dragged his gaze from the doorway to me. “I will be.” He inhaled deeply. “Tomorrow, I will be.”

I parted my lips to ask him if he'd ever tell me what happened to Clotile—and to him—but he turned from me, heading to his bag, to that bottle.

He cracked it open and took a long slug, the wrath in his eyes easing a bit.

When Aric returned alone moments later, I said, “What'd you do with Milo?”

“Tied him beside Thanatos. In proximity to sharpened hooves.” He shook out his dampened hair. “I guarantee nothing.”

“We could've gagged him.”

“This is Milo's first night out in the cold since the Flash. I'd like him to experience it.” In a wry tone, Aric added, “Plus, he was setting off your rose scent, which makes it
impossible
for me to relax.”

So now we were going to joke about our clashes in the past? Too soon?

When he headed for the chronicles, I asked him, “How long will it take to translate them?”

“I've read some already.” Book in hand, he crossed to sit beside me. “They know that your powers are collaborative, that a world without green or sun weakens you.”

I gazed out at the night. Endless night. Maybe I
couldn't
fully invoke the red witch, even if I wanted to.

With that bottle in hand, Jack sat on my other side, offering a drink.

To hell with it.
Down she goes. Burn. Gasp.
I handed Death the bottle.

Jack grimaced. “Am I goan to die drinking after the Reaper?”

“Sadly”—Aric took a deep pull—“no.” With a gauntleted hand, he passed the whiskey back to Jack.

In some small way, it was a measure of trust that Jack drank after Death. And of course, the competitive Cajun had to tip the bottle up longer than Aric had.

“Milo's right, though.” Jack handed me the whiskey. “It'll be damn hard to open that bunker. I've got munitions, but a blast door is designed to withstand them. Unless we can wedge the explosive into the metal, it woan work.”

“Why not?” I asked over the rim of the bottle.

“It's like throwing a stick of dynamite at a bowling ball. It'll just bounce off. But if you jam the stick into the ball? Boom.”

“Maybe the twins will answer tomorrow.” All day we'd hailed them by radio and through Aric. Not a blip in response. “They might face us.” Though I hoped they actually gave a damn about their father, I doubted it all the same. We'd even dangled the bait of their chronicles. Still, nothing.

“
Ouais, peut-être
.” Yeah, could be. Jack's expression told me he didn't have high hopes either.

I asked both of them, “If we've overridden all the rules to the twins' ‘game,' why don't we call up the rest of the Arcana to help us?”

Aric surprised me by setting the chronicles away. He was choosing whiskey around a camp fire over study and contemplation? “Because the Fool's rules still apply, Empress. He said the
three
of us must ride to save Selena.”

Strange, I'd forgotten I'd been in fate's crosshairs.

Jack turned to Death. “I like that Spartan story, me. Is it true?”

“That's how I heard it back then.”

Back then. Back in the day. He'd been
alive
.

Jack's sense of curiosity was still vibrant in him, forcing him to ask, “What's it like to live for thousands of years?”

Staring straight into the flames, Aric said, “Immortality is the utterest hell.”

His words hurt me like a blow to the body. To the heart.