The Frozen Witch Book One

  Chapter 6

  I expected to get some training. Something. Anything. Even if it was just a manual on how to use a magical gun and track down a hitman.

  I got nothing.

  After my short meeting with Vali, I headed back to my room, because I had absolutely no other option. The corridor outside Vali’s office seemed to only lead in one direction, even though I twisted to the right instead of the left. It still led back to my bedroom.

  I walked inside, the door clicking open and swinging shut behind me.

  I fell down to my knees, the sound thumping through the room.

  I brought a hand up and covered my eyes. This time I didn’t wait for this stupid nightmare to end, because this time I understood it never would.

  This was my life now.

  I felt so cold, so very cold. I’d never felt colder in my life. Every muscle, every bone, every tissue felt like ice. I wasn’t human anymore. I was a storm, a blizzard come to life.

  Slowly, I stumbled to my feet. I began to pace back and forth, back and forth, clutching one sweaty hand into a fist over and over again.

  More than once, I brought my attention down and locked my gaze on my bangles. I was terrified of them. As I tentatively touched a finger along their smooth metal, dread washed down my back. And yet, at the same time, I couldn’t deny the urge to take them off. I wasn’t an idiot. Take them off, and Vali would kill me. So instead I settled to staring at them.

  As I continued to pace, the sun, which had once been high in the sky, began to set. I had no idea when I would be let out of here for my so-called first mission. All I knew was with every dying ray of dusk that moment was coming closer.

  Finally, I heard a click behind me as the door unlocked.

  I whirled on my foot to face Vali’s secretary, Megan. She was decked out in a stunning white silk dress, a beautiful sapphire pendant hanging down her throat. Her hair was curled and set up in an elegant bun.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” My curiosity got the better of me.

  “Because I’m going on a job with Vali tonight,” she snapped.

  “A job?”

  “We’re tracking down a target. A high-level target,” she added primly. “Now, follow me.”

  I didn’t question. I simply took up step a meter behind her as I followed her out of my room.

  Somehow, the corridor beyond was different. It didn’t lead in an unending line to Vali’s office. Instead, there were doors on either side. There were also people. So far, the only two people I’d seen since I’d woken up this morning were Vali and Megan. Now I saw others, and they looked weirdly normal. They came from a great cross-section of society: from teenagers to senior citizens. A few were guards in blue uniforms, but the rest seemed to be wearing ordinary clothes.

  I stared at them with complete confusion crumpling my brow, and they stared back with obvious curiosity. I heard a few comment that Vali “Had another one. Another sinner.”

  That word… every time I heard it my hands would clench into bloodless fists.

  Vali was absolutely right: I had not yet accepted the fact I was a sinner, and I had not embraced my responsibility, as he’d put it. And I never would. The first chance I got, I would get out of here. And hey, maybe that chance would come tonight.

  As soon as I thought that, my common sense got the better of me. I was indentured to the god of revenge. Where exactly could I run?

  With that disappointing thought shifting through me, my shoulders loosened and my hands dropped limply to my sides.

  Without a word, Megan led me into some kind of armory. There were lots of people about. What was more, they were doing magic.

  My gut reaction was to scream, turn, and run the hell away. Instead, I stood there, wide eyes bulging as I watched two men attack each other with what looked like magical glowing swords.

  No matter how many times I blinked my eyes and tried to rub them clear, every time I opened them the magic remained.

  Megan walked me up to a wall and swiped her hand to the left. A second earlier, it had been nothing more than a simple, drab, gray concrete wall. Now weapons appeared – a massive, long row of every weapon you could imagine, from guns to nunchucks to a glowing samurai sword.

  As soon as I saw them, I took a nervous step backward, cramming a hand over my mouth.

  Megan looked thoughtful as she shifted forward and grabbed a small handgun. She checked it, yanking out the magazine and staring at the glowing bullets within. When she was satisfied, she turned and shoved it against my chest.

  I did not grab it. Instead, I jerked back with a gasp.

  “Take it,” she snapped. “We don’t have much time. Well, you don’t have much time,” she clarified primly.

  I stared at her then gathered the gumption to bring up a shaking hand and grab the weapon. It was strangely light. It didn’t tingle, either, didn’t send charges along my fingers as if I’d just grasped lightning. It felt like nothing more than a plastic gun.

  “You point, you shoot,” she said, and then she turned to leave.

  “Really? That’s it? That’s my introduction? I’ve never fired a weapon before. I was just a waitress, for god’s sake. I have no idea how to track down a magical hitman.”

  She turned sharply on her heel, the pointed end scratching against the concrete floor. “You’ll learn. Like I said before, either you reach forward and embrace your responsibility, or you don’t, and you die.” She walked away.

  “Wait. Wait! Where the hell am I meant to go? Where do I track down this John Lambert?”

  Megan flicked a hand behind me and gestured to one of the other men in the armory. “Take her to a waiting car.” With that, she was out of sight.

  Spinning. Freefall. My mind felt as if it had been pushed into terminal velocity. Every belief, every feeling, every thought – they were all spinning as if I’d been thrown out of a plane.

  With one hand, I clutched the gun warily to my chest. With the other, I covered my eyes.

  “Come with me,” the man said.

  I had no option but to follow, several steps behind him. He led me down the corridor into a large elevator then down into a basement.

  It was a carpark, but I could tell from one glance it didn’t belong to the public. Nope, it had every kind of vehicle you could imagine. There were even one of those submersible, deep-range submarines they use on scientific expeditions.

  The only thing I could do to keep from screaming that this was insane was to clamp my teeth together. My jaw became so stiff I was sure I was going to strain a neck muscle or crush one of my vertebrae.

  The guy led me to a van. I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to point out I couldn’t drive, but a second later, I realized the van had a driver.

  “You get in. He’ll take you to the right place. You find your man; you capture him. It’s that simple,” the guard said as he turned sharply and didn’t even bother to nod. He strode off.

  Get in, find my guy, and bag him. That simple, ha? Sure, it was so simple I could cry.

  I didn’t get the opportunity to cry. The driver grumbled at me, and I jumped into the van, sitting in the back. The door closed of its own accord, and there I remained, a magical gun pressed carefully into my lap, my eyes as wide as the magical disc I’d seen Megan use before. Thoughts ran riot through my mind. They felt like a mob tearing at my sense of self, undoing every belief I’d ever had about reality.

  I sat there, one hand crumpled over my mouth as I stared at the city flitting past through the window. It was night now. Dusk had given way to impenetrable gloom. Though I saw plenty of city lights flickering outside and the headlights of passing motorists, they couldn’t touch the darkness that now swelled around me. Nor the cold. For the cold had never left. It simply sat there, growing, that grain of ice above my heart so dense it felt as if I’d swallowed a black hole.

  Though I rubbed and rubbed my chest, there was nothing I could do to dislodge the sensation.

  I shook as I kept one
hand steadily locked on the gun. Though I was terrified of it, I was more terrified to let it go. Megan had said it was simple: I point and shoot. But it couldn’t be that simple. This wasn’t an ordinary gun. I didn’t know anything whatsoever about it. This… none of this was fair, and yet there was no one I could complain to.

  Finally, I heard the van come to a shuddering stop.

  My heart exploded in my chest.

  “We’re here. Get in, get out. I’ll be waiting,” the driver said in a gruff voice as he turned around in his seat to face me.

  The door to the van opened itself. I heard it grate back against its mechanism. And though the sound was loud, I swore it blared louder than a bellow between my ears.

  Pressing my hands into the seat below me, slowly I rose. I almost lost hold of my gun, almost let it clatter to the ground, but I caught it just in time, a thrill of terror chasing up my back.

  I moved to get out of the van.

  “Click the safety on and shove it into the back of your pants, for god’s sake,” the driver said, “you’ll draw too much attention. And if you let people see you practicing magic, you’re done for,” he warned.

  I shook. I brought the gun up. “Is this the safety?” I asked, pointing to the mechanism at the back of the barrel.

  He let out an unkind chuckle. “You’re gonna die. But yes, that’s the safety. Now click it on.”

  I did as I was told. Then, reluctantly, I shifted around and tucked the gun into the back of my pants.

  I had never been a bad girl. Yes, okay, so I’d stolen some things in my youth. But I’d never done it to hurt others. It had always been to define myself away from my oppressive family. I had absolutely no experience with tucking a gun into the back of my goddamn pants and heading into a nightclub to rough a man up. But experience or not, I didn’t have any option.

  With one more rattling breath, I jumped down from the van.

  The cool night air hit me – hit me as if I’d just been transported to the Arctic. To everyone else, it seemed like a balmy night, as all the passing women were wearing tiny dresses and the guys were in nothing more than shorts and shirts. It felt like subzero to me.

  I latched a hand on my collar and drew it up, trying to nestle further into it. Suddenly, I remembered my gun and tugged my jacket down with all my strength.

  “Oh god, I can’t do this,” I muttered to myself under my breath.

  Before I’d left, Megan had handed me a written note. It contained all the information I would need on John Lambert. Apparently, he was meant to be at this nightclub tonight. All I would have to do was wait for him, follow him, and capture him. Sure, why not ask for a miracle while I was there? Why not ask for the heavens to be split from the earth, for the stars to fall from the sky? Because I had about as much chance of that happening as seeing this mission through.

  As that thought struck me, I realized I was going to die tonight. Either John Lambert was going to kill me or Vali would.

  As soon as I thought that, some part of me disagreed. It was the same part that had seen that deep, deep coil of goodness trapped within Vali’s gaze – a glimpse of something beyond the god of revenge.

  “Pull yourself together. You can do this. You have to do this,” I muttered to myself under my breath.

  I was terrible at stressful situations. And as I’d already mentioned, I never rolled with the punches. I fell with the punches. Now, with nowhere else to turn and no one to save me, all I could do was rely on myself. So I gathered what courage I had – what little courage remained in my frozen heart – and I straightened my back.

  I found the line into the club, and I joined the back of it. I tuned out the conversation of the other patrons, their lilting laughter, their drunken slurs. I tuned it out as I focused on one task: get in, get out. Get in, get out. It became a mantra as I reached the front of the line.

  The bouncer let me in with one cursory glance, obviously assuming that my sweaty brow and sickly expression were a result of too much alcohol and not because I was indentured to a magical god.

  Get in get out, get in get out. I held onto that phrase with all my might as I entered the club and started my first mission.