Frostbitten: The Complete Series (63 page)

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN
URBAN DISTURBANCE

It was the most freeing night of Michael Fenner’s life. Finally, he truly understood what his father meant when he said “a good man always forgives”. It was such a
simple
notion—but so hard to truly believe and follow through. He’d spent the past few years looking forward to the day he would get back at Matty Bremkin, the hockey player who ended his hopeful career. For the past week, he meticulously plotted the revenge he would get on his father’s killer. The instant he learned to let it go, he understood that every action has its circumstances—circumstances that can’t always be understood by everyone.

That most freeing night of his life, he lay happily on the fur rug with the sleeping Brittany in her arms. He looked down at his beautiful lover. On her face was the most stunning smile—a most peaceful gleam in the flickering firelight.

Sleep was out of the question that night. For nights, Michael couldn’t sleep because of his inhibitions: his anxiety and his anger. This time, he didn’t sleep out of choice, freewill. Sleeping through such a fulfilling moment in his life seemed like such a waste, such a travesty.

He wanted to revel in the moment.

Parched, Michael carefully transferred Brittany from his arms to the warm comfort of the fur rug. After he gently placed her head down onto the ground, he stood up.

Unsure of where in the house the kitchen was, Michael began to quietly wander the house.

Each room he walked through was as empty as the last. Each room had been lathered with a  fresh coat of white paint, and the floors had all been bleached. Brittany’s house was surprisingly large—far too large for a single occupant. Each room had, at one point or another, served a specific function. There was the piano room, the library, her father’s wood-paneled office, her mother’s bright windowed office, the drawing room, the television room, at least half a dozen bedrooms and half a dozen bathrooms, the garden room, a massive storage room, and then finally: the kitchen. Most of the rooms hadn’t been used in fifteen years. Most of the rooms were lost under half and inch of cold dust. Every room was empty, except for the storage room, which contained the contents of the entire home.

Far from the warmth of the living room’s fireplace, Michael entered the large, dark kitchen. He searched through the many cupboards for a clean glass. His topless body quickly became covered in goose bumps as a draft swirled across his exposed skin.

He pulled a cup down from the cupboard and walked the glass towards the sink. He filled it up with water.

An excruciatingly sharp pain stung Michael’s back, rippling through his whole body. His thick muscles immediately tensed up around the pain, causing him to drop the glass of water onto the floor. The glass smashed at his feet.

The pain persisted, burned, worsened. Michael began to cough. He raised his hand to his mouth and wiped his lip:
blood.
He reached around his back to the source of the unbearable pain. Something long was stuck in his back, and he could feel its sharp point pressing into the front of his chest.

Nearly paralyzed with pain, Michael turned around.

Standing in a dark corner of the kitchen was Kane, with his crossbow in hand. Before Michael could get a word out, Kane shot another silent stake into Michael’s chest.

“Michael?” Brittany’s voice called out through the cold darkness.

Michael tried to open his mouth to call back—to tell Brittany to run. But before he could, Kane released a third stake into Michael’s body.

With impressive resilience, Michael remained on his feet, bleeding profusely in three separate spots.

Michael began to lumber towards Kane.

Kane quickly loaded another stake into his crossbow. Wasting no time, he fired yet another stake straight into Michael’s heart—stopping him only briefly.

Kane’s eyes widened and he stumbled back as he fumbled to load another stake into his crossbow. Before he could get another shot off, Michael grabbed onto him, and with impressive force, Michael slammed Kane hard into the wall.

Kane yelled in pain, dropping his crossbow onto the ground. By all reasonable logic, Michael should have been dead. No one had ever survived a single stake through the heart, never mind four stakes through the heart. Kane tried desperately to pry Michael’s powerful hands loose. He grunted as he struggled.

Michael pulled Kane across the room and slammed him awkwardly into the granite countertop, eliciting a loud crack as one of Kane’s ribs shattered. Kane screamed out loud.

Michael’s face was draining quickly, becoming blue and ivory. Blood was seemingly pouring out of his body by the gallon. No human could continue to function with that level of blood loss. As Michael lifted Kane’s body up once more, his injuries caught up with him. He froze in his place and his muscles became weak. He began to cough up more blood, letting go of the vampire hunter.

“Michael!?” Brittany yelled again, this time closer.

On his hands and knees, Kane scrambled towards his crossbow. He picked it up and he began to stumble up to his feet, watching as the powerful giant faltered, swaying from side to side as be battled death .

“Michael!?” Brittany yelled again.

“Get out of here! Run!” Michael yelled out before plummeting to the cold floor.

Brittany stopped herself from running into the room as she watched Michael’s body fall to the floor. She couldn’t see the culprit, but she didn’t need to. She knew it was Kane.

Brittany crouched down, turned around and scanned the room for somewhere to hide.

“Brittany?” Kane called out. His cover was spoiled.

Brittany quietly ran to the next room and hid around the corner. There was nowhere to hide in the large empty house.

“Brittany! I just want to talk!” Kane called out. “I know you’re a vampire, but I don’t care!” he yelled. “I just want to talk to you.”

Brittany knew Kane was lying. She also knew that running was pointless. She wasn’t interested in a lifetime of running—a lifetime of fear. She needed to deal with Kane. Closing her eyes, Brittany tried to summon her thirst and her vampiric powers.

“C’mon,” she muttered under her breath. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t rouse her fangs or her vampiric strength. Her house was deathtrap: full of the rats’ blood, the symbols, the Latin phrases—

Brittany didn’t realize that Kane had her sunstone with him—the very sunstone that she had previously relied on to suppress her thirst. Of all placed, her home was where she was most defenceless.

With held breath, she listened for Kane’s footsteps, but she couldn’t hear anything except for the cold whistling of the wind against her boarded up windows.

“I just want to talk,” Kane’s voice called out again, calmly.

Brittany looked around for a place to hide. A flash of bluish-white LED light moved past the doorway as Kane scanned the adjacent room. Brittany had to move. She stood up and, on the tips of her toes, she ran towards the next room.

After another cold exhausting trek through the record-breaking blizzard, Hanna arrived at Connor’s house. Without knocking, she let herself in and immediately hurried towards Connor’s bedroom.

“Connor!” she called as she ran through the house.

The house was cold and dark. There were no snowy boots near the front door, no tussled coats on the front hanger. Connor’s house was empty, long abandoned.

Hanna stopped in the center of the living room. A sick feeling filled her gut. She was out of leads, out of ideas, helpless, and scared.

Then, she noticed a glimmer in the corner of her eye: Across the street, a faint flicker glowed through the crack between the boards of Brittany’s windows.

“Maybe Brittany can help,” Hanna thought.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN
THE MARTYR OF SNOWBROOKE

Tarun’s parting words lingered in Peter’s mind. He had difficulty grasping what Tarun was telling him, but something about the speech struck a chord inside of him. He was overwhelmed with a restless feeling—a feeling like there was something Fate was telling him to do.

Standing up from his cold cot in his cold cell, Peter walked through the dark and desolate prison. The floor was covered in spilled blood, blackened shotgun casings, and the occasional corpse.

Hours earlier, when the electricity went out in the new wing of the prison—the computer operated wing—the prisoners took advantage. They overpowered and murdered the few guards on duty. In the process, a few prisoners were shot—some killed instantly, some died later from blood loss and the unforgiving cold.

Another set of freshly killed bodies lay near the prison entrance—the remnants of a desperate escape. Peter stepped over each of lifeless bodies, doing his best not to disturb the dead.

Once out the door, Peter found himself alone in the cold darkness, amidst the relentless blizzard. There was ten miles between Peter and the town of Snowbrooke—half a marathon in the frigid snowstorm. Committing to the trek meant hypothermia, frostbite, and a good possibly of death. Peter had nothing to lose. He began to walk.

Peter walked for three cold, painful hours towards the town. On the way, he walked over more than a few prisoners—Prisoners who, in their thin orange jumpsuits, couldn’t bare the frigid journey.

After the first hour of his walk, the snow was up to Peter’s knees. His toes were completely numb—dead pieces of his living body. By the second hour, his feet were as good as dead, his hands were void of feeling, and the intense burn on his face subsided as the flesh had died.

Fate herself guided Peter to a particular house. Somehow, that scarred and brain damaged son of a banker found himself on the doorstep of the Clarkson residence.

Throughout his imprisoned life, Peter had heard more tales than anyone else about the infamous “Clarksons”. During his time in juvenile hall, Peter personally beat the faces of nearly a dozen Clarkson “descendants”. Peter remembered Tanner and his brother Jacob, as well as a slew of other kids. Generation after generation of the Clarksons’s foster children ended up locked up. Peter was more aware of the Clarksons’s tyranny than the children the horrible couple ruined.

Peter reached for the knob and tried to open the door. It was locked. Disinterested in finding another entrance, Peter stepped back and then kicked in the door. A large plume of cold snow blew into the house and swirled around the front entrance. Peter stepped into the house of the Clarksons.

The warmth from the working heaters quickly penetrated Peter’s thin orange jumpsuit. Feeling slowly returned to some of his body—all of the parts that weren’t killed by the remorseless cold outside.

“What was that?” Peter could hear a voice say upstairs.

Peter wasn’t rattled by any nerves. He didn’t second guess his intuition. He simply looked around the house and located the kitchen. Through one of the doorless doorways, he spotted a fridge. Peter walked towards it, and found himself right where he wanted to be.

The whole house was beautiful—recently renovated thanks to their questionably-earned taxpayer money. Everything the Clarksons owned was expensive, brand name. Nothing was cheap. The cupboards were filled with expensive bottles of wine, as well as the cheapest boxes of cereal—the kind that tastes so bad, you are better off eating the cardboard box. In the fridge, there was a pair of beautifully butcher-cut T-bone steaks. Next to the steaks was an old yellowish tub of leftover oatmeal, for the adopted children.

Peter wasn’t interested in the wine or the cereal, the steaks or the oatmeal. Peter was interested in one particularly long and particularly sharp kitchen knife.

“Hello?” the same voice from before called out.

Peter turned back towards the entryway and began to walk with the knife concealed behind his leg. As he entered the room, he came upon an older-looking man in silk pyjamas and plush slippers.

The man froze and his eyes turned wide as he saw the tall, prisoner standing in his house, with his facial scars and his badly damaged, frostbitten skin.

“W—Who are you?” the man asked.

“Clarkson?” Peter asked.

“Yes? What is this about? Who are you? I demand you get out of here right now, or I’ll call the police!”

Peter needed nothing more. In one quick motion, he swiped the knife towards the homeowner, slicing his arm. Clarkson fell down to the floor and began to squirm backwards.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you insane?!” Blood began to trickle down from. Clarkson’s fresh wound.

Totally calm, Peter bent down over the abusive tyrant.

“Get away from me!” the Clarkson man said.

Peter stabbed Clarkson in the center of the chest. The penetrating blade rendered the horrible foster-father speechless, paralyzed. Peter pulled the blade out. A fountain of blood followed.

Cold and expressionless, Peter stood up. The man of the house struggled and gargled for air on the ground as Peter walked over him, destined for the man’s wife. He began to walk up the stairs.

“What is it?” Peter could hear a feminine voice call out. “What’s going on down there?”

Peter reached the top of the stairs, the second floor, and he scanned the hallway. A series of closed doors led the way to an open one—one which glowed with a luring warm light. Peter walked towards the inviting glow.

“If you don’t answer, I’m going to call the police!” the woman’s voice called from the open door. “This better not be you dumb kids playing some stupid joke! I swear, you’ll all be grounded for a week—a month!”

In his freshly blood-soaked orange jumpsuit, Peter entered the room and found himself face to face with an older woman—the woman who could only be Mrs. Clarkson. In her luxurious white cashmere housecoat, she froze and her mouth fell open.

“Clarkson?” Peter asked.

The woman was in too much shock to reply.

“Clarkson?” Peter asked again. His weapon was not concealed. By this point, in intentions were obvious.

“W—Who are you?” Mrs. Clarkson asked.

“Clarkson?” Peter asked again. He scanned the room for some useful evidence. The beautifully soft cashmere robe that draped the woman’s body was embroidered with a golden cursive “C”. That was enough for Peter.

He stabbed the woman in the gut, eliciting a loud, glass-breaking shriek.

Her body went limp and her knees slammed into the floor. Her piercing cry persisted. Peter looked down at the knife in his hand. He watched as blood fell from the blade, onto the floor. He sunk down to his knees and, spinning the tip of the knife, he carved two little holes into Mrs. Clarkson’s neck, trying his best to imitate what he assumed the notorious Vampire Killer’s victims looked like. His version was much sloppier—much rougher, but he was sure it would pass.

Peter dropped the kitchen knife onto the floor and he walked back out into the hallway.

Standing at the end of the hall was a familiar face: the grown up face of Peter’s sister, Vanessa Riley. She had a blanket wrapped around herself, and cheap cotton pyjamas on her body.

The two recognized one another immediately.

“You—You killed them?” Vanessa asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Peter stood and considered the question for a moment. “I don’t know.”

“How did you get out of prison?”

Peter quite honestly didn’t remember. His understated brain damage took a toll on his short-term memory.

“Now what do I do?” Vanessa asked.

“Is it just you here?” Peter asked.

“No. There are five of us. Zelda and me—The others are just toddlers Peter, how am I going to explain this to the kids?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said.

“Don’t you feel bad? Don’t you feel anything?”

“No.”

“How can you feel nothing, Peter?” Vanessa asked as her eyes began to fill with tears. She didn’t care for the Clarksons. She cared about her brother’s terrible mental illness.

“I don’t know.”

“They’re dead, Peter. You killed them. How do you not feel anything? Please tell me—I need to know. It’s been killing me my whole life.”

Peter opened his mouth but hesitated, knowing the answer wasn’t what his sister was looking for. “I don’t know,” he said. “I want to know, but I don’t know.”

The issue wasn’t that Peter felt nothing. The issue was that Peter didn’t understand his feelings. Peter did feel something that night: he felt confused. He was positive that he had done something good until Vanessa’s tears told him otherwise, and that left Peter downright perplexed.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said.

With caution, Vanessa walked up to her big brother. She looked up into his dark, seemingly expressionless eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said again. His body was tense. He was afraid. He was a monster—that much, he knew for sure. Unfortunately, he did not understand why he was a monster.

“Just say why, Peter. You don’t have to tell me what I want to hear, you don’t have to make excuses. Just tell me why you did it—why you keep doing it?” Vanessa said.

“I—I don’t know.”

Vanessa looked down at her feet and sighed.

“I wanted to help,” Peter said.

Vanessa looked back up.
Finally
, Peter had a reason—a motivation, albeit a confused one. “What?” she asked.

“I thought it would help. Doesn’t this help?”

Vanessa stared at her brother. “They’re going to kill you—the police—they’re going to put you in The Chair.”

“I was already going to get The Chair.”

“So you thought you had nothing to lose?” Vanessa asked.

“No,” Peter replied. “I had something to lose.”

The warmth of the house was long gone—dissipated out through the open front door, into the infinite frigid snowstorm.

Vanessa wrapped her arms tightly around her cold body. “What?” Vanessa asked. “What did you have to lose?”

Peter smiled and reached forward, rustling up Vanessa’s hair. “You’re free to go now,” Peter said.

Peter’s intentions were not Misguided. Solving the Clarkson’s reign of tyranny could have been solved diplomatically. It could have been disputed in court, with lawyers and testimonies. Peter did what he could with the resources he had available. Peter had taken lives away in his past. For once, he’d saved a life—at least five lives, and a countless future of lives.

“Go and get the police.”

Vanessa’s heart skipped a beat. “What about you?”

“I’ll wait here.”

“But—But they’re going to kill you.”

“That’s fine.”

“You’ll be in every paper.”

“That’s fine too,” Peter said. It’s what he wanted. Peter was the ultimate martyr. His crime not only liberated a house full of imprisoned children, but also took Tarun off of the hook—off of police radar. “Go get the police,” he said again.

Vanessa wiped the streaming tears from her cheek. She lifted herself up onto her tippy toes and gave her brother a kiss on the cheek. Then, she turned and ran down the stairs. She got dressed in her warmest coat, and then began to run to the nearby police station.