Spartan Frost

  “What is this place?” I whispered.

  “Part of an abandoned ski resort,” Sergei whispered back. “The bank foreclosed on it before the season ever started, so it’s been sitting here empty all fall and winter.”

  “All of which made it a perfect place for the Reapers to take over and use,” Inari added, his dark eyes fixed on the structure.

  “Well, it looks like someone’s home, with all of those lights on,” Dad murmured.

  “So what are we waiting for?” I asked. “Let’s go say hello.”

  My voice was dark, harsh, and ugly—as dark, harsh, and ugly as I’d felt ever since that day at the auditorium. I didn’t want to talk to the Reapers—I just wanted to kill them.

  The Mythos Academy Series by Jennifer Estep

  Touch of Frost

  Kiss of Frost

  Dark Frost

  Crimson Frost

  E-book novellas

  First Frost

  Spartan Frost

  SPARTAN FROST

  A Mythos Academy Novella

  JENNIFER ESTEP

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  “What is this place?” I whispered.

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Copyright Page

  As always, to my mom, my grandma, and Andre,

  for all their love, help, support, and patience

  with my books and everything else in life

  And to all the readers who wanted a Logan story,

  this one’s for you

  Acknowledgments

  Any author will tell you that her story would not be possible without the hard work of many, many people. Here are some of the folks who helped bring Logan Quinn, Gwen Frost, and the world of Mythos Academy to life:

  Thanks to my agent, Annelise Robey, for all her helpful advice.

  Thanks to my editor, Alicia Condon, for her sharp editorial eye and thoughtful suggestions. They always make the story so much better.

  Thanks to everyone at Kensington who worked on the project, and thanks to Alexandra Nicolajsen and Vida Engstrand for all their promotional efforts.

  And, finally, thanks to all the readers out there. Entertaining you is why I write stories, and it’s always an honor and a privilege. I hope you have as much fun reading about Logan’s adventure as I did writing it.

  Happy reading!

  Chapter 1

  I was going to kill her.

  I wanted to kill her—more than anything else.

  “Logan. Stop! It’s me! Your Gypsy girl!”

  Gwen Frost said those words to me over and over again. Cajoling. Begging. Pleading. She shoved her wavy brown hair back off her face, then stretched out her hand as if she could stop me just by touching me.

  I frowned and paused the vicious attack I’d been about to unleash on her. Maybe she could, given her psychometry magic, the strange power she had that let her learn about people and objects simply by touching them. Maybe all it would take to free me from this horrible, pounding agony in my head was a mere brush of her cool fingers against mine.

  An angry snarl rose in the back of my throat, and my fingers tightened around the hilt of my sword, my hand wrapped so hard around the metal that it felt like a spike digging into my palm. Well, I wasn’t going to find out. I didn’t want to find out. All I wanted to do was kill her.

  Gwen’s lips pulled up into a soft smile, as if my not immediately attacking her was some sign that her silly, stupid, tearful pleas were actually working. I made myself smile back at her, although I could feel how terribly twisted my face was, as though I was wearing a rubber mask stretched tight over my own skin.

  Gwen crept a little closer to me . . . and then a little closer still . . .

  Her sneakers squeaked, and the wooden floor of the stage creaked as she kept easing toward me one small, careful step at a time. For a moment, I stared past her, looking at the rows of padded seats that ringed the stage and wondering why the auditorium was empty. There had been plenty of people in here earlier. My dad. My uncle Nickamedes. Coach Ajax. Oliver. Kenzie. Carson. Daphne. Professor Metis. Students who were members of the Mythos Academy band. I remembered seeing all those people and more.

  My eyes swept over the seats once again, but they were just as empty as before. For some reason, everyone else had vanished, leaving me alone with her.

  “Logan,” Gwen said, so much love, so much sympathy, so much hope in that one soft whisper.

  My gaze snapped back to her. She gave me another tentative smile, then stretched her hand out toward me again—

  I swung my sword at her, trying to take her head off with one blow.

  Gwen jerked back at the last second, the blade barely missing slicing into her neck and shoulders. The hopeful smile slipped off her face, and sadness sparked in her violet eyes.

  For a moment, I almost felt what she did. I almost felt her disappointment. I almost felt her deep, aching sadness. I almost felt how wrong this was. But the emotions seemed like smoky whispers that I couldn’t quite hear, and the more I concentrated on them, the softer and more indistinct they became until they faded away altogether.

  Then, the thing inside me rose up once more, clawing its way to the surface of my mind, ripping and tearing and shredding through all my fight, all my resistance, all my attempts to stop it.

  No, not it, not a thing—Loki.

  The evil Norse god of chaos. The powerful being whose soul was invading my own body. Corrupting my own soul and eating away at everything I was. Replacing every single thing that was me with all of the foul things that were him.

  That was the last coherent thought I had before the rage took over.

  Rage that this . . . this girl was still alive, despite all of my many, many attempts to kill her, to kill her mother and grandmother, to wipe all of her ancestors off the face of the earth. But no matter what I did, no matter what I ordered my Reapers to do, no matter how I schemed and plotted and manipulated, the Frost family always managed to survive. She always managed to survive, along with that stupid goddess she served—Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. My nemesis.

  The rage rose up in me again, boiling and bubbling like lava in my chest. Everything in my field of vision slowly took on an angry red tint, as though a bloody fog was sweeping through the auditorium. The rows of empty seats. The wooden stage under my feet. The sword in my hand. Even Gwen’s jeans, T-shirt, and hoodie turned that glorious shade.

  Her eyes stayed that same violet color, though—that soft, twilight shade that I hated more than anything else in the world.

  “Logan. Stop! It’s me! Your Gypsy girl!”

  Gwen repeated her pitiful words. Her weak pleas made my fingers slowly clench and unclench around the hilt of my sword. Anticipation surged through me, hotter and more powerful than even the rage, and my heart thrummed in a quick, familiar rhythm. Spartans weren’t known for being kind to their enemies, and I had no sympathy and no mercy right now—especially not for her.

  I let out a fierce yell and charged at her again, but once more, she managed to avoid my vicious, slashing blows, all of which were designed to kill her where she stood. Gwen ducked under my last slice and whirled around, raising her own sword up into a defensive position in one smooth move. I let myself admire her technique for a moment. She’d gotten so much better at fighting these last few months. But it wasn’t going to save her—nothing was.

  Not from me.

  “That’s no
t Logan right now,” another voice advised, this one low and harsh and colored by an English accent. “And he won’t stop until one of you is dead. Do the Spartan a favor, Gwen. Put him out of his misery.”

  I recognized the voice as belonging to Vic, Gwen’s talking sword, the weapon she was wielding right now. I nodded my head in approval. Vic had the right idea. He always had the right idea, since the bloodthirsty sword wanted to kill Reapers more than anything else.

  And right now, I was the biggest, baddest Reaper of them all—Loki himself.

  Thinking about the Norse god made the thing inside me burrow a little deeper into my heart, and I felt more and more of myself falling away, as though I was being charred to ash from the inside out. Sweat streamed down my face and slicked down my neck, and I could hear the angry sizzle, spit, and hiss of the salty drops as they trickled onto the collar cinched around my neck. The gold circle was tight, but more than that, it was hot—so terribly hot, as if it might ignite and engulf me in flames at any second. Somehow, I knew there was only one thing that would stop the heat, the pain, the agony—killing Gwen.

  So I raised my sword and went on the attack again. And this time, I didn’t stop.

  I chased Gwen around and around the stage, swinging my sword at her over and over again.

  Clash-clash-clang!

  Clash-clash-clang!

  Clash-clash-clang!

  For a while, she parried my blows, and we moved back and forth, stomping over the stage, each footstep louder and harsher than the one before, until the wood threatened to splinter under our smashing feet. But while my blows grew quicker, harder, and more vicious, fueled by my rage and this unbearable burning inside me, hers grew slower, weaker, and softer, until she was barely managing to parry my attacks.

  She stared at me, her violet eyes wide. The sadness had vanished, replaced by shock, surprise, and, most important, fear. That’s what I loved—that look of utter desperation when my enemy finally realized there was no winning this fight—and no chance of stopping her own death.

  I slammed my sword into Gwen’s, knocking hers away. The blade went sliding across the stage, sending up a shower of purple sparks before it dropped off the edge and clattered to the auditorium floor. I could hear Vic screaming at her and me too, but I didn’t care. I quickly twirled my weapon in my hand, then brought it up, around, and down into her heart.

  For a moment, all I felt was . . . satisfaction. Cold, cruel, triumphant satisfaction that I’d finally killed my mortal enemy, the one who had stymied me time and time again, the one who was such a threat to me.

  Then, Gwen reached out, her bloody hand brushing mine, even though her fingers were already going cold and still with death. Her touch was as soft as a snowflake falling onto my skin, but the emotions that went with it were anything but. Her sadness, agony, and heartbreak slammed into me, cutting me to the core, just like my sword had rammed into her heart.

  Too late, I realized what I had done—that I’d just killed the girl I loved.

  Gwen finally screamed, and I screamed right along with her—

  I rolled over and over, thrashing in the soft, flannel sheets that covered the king-sized bed. For a moment, I flailed against the empty air, my fists lashing out in hard, fierce arcs, fighting enemies that weren’t really there. A second later, I hit the floor.

  The sharp snap-snap of my left shoulder and hip banging against the cool wood jolted me out of my dream.

  I lay there on the floor for a few seconds, my face mashed against the wood, waiting for my heart to slow down, for my breathing to go back to normal, and for the tremors to leave my body. When I felt able, I pushed myself up and leaned back against the side of the bed. I let out a long, tired sigh and ran my hands through my black hair, making the sweaty locks stand straight up.

  No, not a dream—a nightmare.

  One that was all too real. Because I hadn’t just attacked Gwen in my dreams—I’d done it in real life too.

  It had all happened a few weeks ago during the winter band concert at the Aoide Auditorium, when my stepmom, Agrona Quinn, had finally revealed herself to be the head of the Reapers of Chaos, the evil warriors who served Loki. Before I realized what was happening, Agrona had snapped a gold collar around my neck, one that was studded with Apate jewels, named after the Greek goddess of deception. With the help of the jewels, a book, and some other horrible magic, Agrona and the Reapers had tried to put Loki’s soul into me, so the god would have a young, strong, healthy body, instead of his own gnarled, twisted, broken one.

  But Gwen had used her psychometry to break through the Reapers’ magic and the terrible hold that Loki had on me, and remind me who I really was to her—Logan freaking Quinn, fierce Spartan warrior, the guy she loved enough to sacrifice herself in order to try to save me.

  Oh yes, my Gypsy girl had been there when I’d needed her the most. And in return, I’d stabbed her in the chest with my sword, just like Agrona had ordered me to.

  Gwen had saved me, and I’d almost killed her. I would have killed her, if Professor Metis and Daphne hadn’t been there. I could still see the horrible scene like it had just happened a moment ago. Gwen crumpled on the stage, blood all over her chest and even more pooling underneath her body, her eyes closed, her chest still, Vic sheathed in the scabbard hanging off the belt around her waist. Me, Oliver, and everyone else gathered around her. Me screaming at Metis and Daphne to do something, to help her, to save her. The golden and rosy glows from Metis’s and Daphne’s healing magic focused on Gwen’s heart and the deep, ugly wound that I’d left there. The minutes ticking by, each one longer and more unbearable than the last. And then, finally, thankfully, the small, choking sound Gwen had made as she rasped in a breath, and I realized that she wasn’t going to die, that I hadn’t killed her after all.

  But the awful memories didn’t stop there. Because I remembered something else from that day—the way that the other students had hurried to back away from me, staring at me with frightened eyes, like I was going to go all Reaper and attack them again at any second....

  I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to block out the horrible memories, trying to forget the horrible thing I’d done to the girl I loved—

  A sharp knock sounded on the bedroom door.

  “Logan?” my dad’s voice drifted in through the thick wood. “Are you okay? I thought I heard a noise.”

  It took me a moment to push away the rest of the memories and find my voice. “Yeah, I’m all right,” I called out, hoping he wouldn’t hear how low, harsh, and strangled my words were. “I just, ah, dropped something.”

  Silence.

  “Well, okay,” he replied. “Breakfast should be ready soon. Come on downstairs, when you want.”

  After a moment, he shuffled away from the door, his footsteps slow and steady, as though he was still listening and ready to come running in here at the slightest sound or sign that I was in trouble.

  But I wasn’t in trouble—I was the trouble.

  I didn’t want breakfast. I didn’t want to eat, and I certainly didn’t want to go back to sleep and have another nightmare. I didn’t want to do anything but sit in the dark and try to forget everything I’d done.

  But that was the one thing I couldn’t do. Because, like it or not, life went on, especially for warriors like me. You waged the battle, killed as many Reapers as you could, licked your wounds, and then geared up for the next fight. Besides, my dad was trying to make things better between us, finally trying to fix our problems, and I figured that I owed it to him to try just as hard.

  So even though I didn’t want to, I untangled myself from the sheets, got back up on my feet, and went into the bathroom to wash up and face the day.

  Chapter 2

  I took a long, hot shower and threw on some jeans, along with a white T-shirt, a heavy blue sweater, and some wool socks and thick boots.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror over the dresser as I combed my hair out. Black hair, blue eyes, nice smile, mu
scles in all the right places. More than one girl had told me that I was cute, handsome, dreamy even, and I’d used my looks to my advantage. A slow smile, a sly look, a low laugh, a whispered compliment, and most girls melted in my arms—except for Gwen. She’d told me to get over myself. Her sassy sarcasm was the first thing I’d noticed—and liked—about her.

  But I didn’t look cute anymore. Not handsome and especially not dreamy. Not unless raging, murderous psycho was your idea of the perfect guy. I snorted and threw the comb down on top of the dresser.

  Oh sure, my features were the same as always, right down to the crooked quirk of my mouth and the stubborn cowlick that I could never quite flatten out. But I couldn’t help but lean forward and peer into the mirror, trying to see if an ominous red spark was shimmering in my gaze. Oliver Hector, one of my best friends, had told me how my eyes had gone completely Reaper red when I’d been connected to Loki at the auditorium. I searched and searched for any flicker of color that shouldn’t be there, but my eyes were the same pale blue they’d always been. Still, the sight didn’t make me feel any better.

  I’d always liked the fact that girls thought I was cute. What guy wouldn’t? But now, I just felt ugly—inside and out. Dirty. Tainted. Corrupted.

  “Logan.” My dad’s voice crackled through an intercom set into the wall by the door. “Breakfast is almost ready.”

  I went over and hit the button so I could answer him. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I opened the door, left the bedroom, walked to the end of the hall, and headed down the stairs to the first floor. The wood creaking under my weight reminded me of how the stage had made the same sound in my dream—my nightmare. I winced and quickened my pace, grabbing hold of the railing and jumping down the last three steps.