In a few seconds, he’d be out of the room, along with the Miksani children, leaving me with nothing but cultists. I tensed and began to gather my energy.
And then Clint’s reddened, work-roughened, clammy-cold hand shot into the confessional and seized my throat. It caught me off guard, and the sudden pain as his fingers tightened and he shut off my air supply was indescribable. He lifted me and, without hesitating for a second, began to slam me left and right, against the walls of the confessional, each impact horribly heavy, with no more passion than a man beating the dust from a rug.
My head hit hardwood several times, stunning me. My knees went all loose and watery, and suddenly the Rave and the Boom Box were gone. The next thing I knew, I was being dragged by the neck toward the altar. Clint walked up onto it and threw me down on my back on the holy table. I blinked my eyes, trying to get them to focus, and realized that the cult was gathered all around me, a circle of tentacle-mouthed faces and dead eyes.
Carlos and the kids were gone.
Good.
“It isn’t a mortal,” Clint said, somehow speaking through the tentacles, albeit in a creepy, inhuman tone. “See? It’s different. It doesn’t belong here.”
“Yes,” the captain said.
“Kill it. It cost us our sacrifice.”
“No,” the captain said. “You are new to the mortal world. This creature’s blood is more powerful than generations of the Miksani and their spawn.” The tentacles thrashed more and more excitedly. “We can drain her and drain her. Blood more powerful than any we have spilled to pave the way for the Sleeper. Our Lord shall arise!” The captain’s eyes met mine and there was nothing behind them, no soul, nothing even remotely human. “And he shall hunger. Perhaps …”
“Perhaps you should think about this,” I said. I think my sibilants had gone slushy. “Walk right now. Leave this island and don’t come back. It’s the only chance you have to survive.”
“What is survival next to the ascendance of our Lord?” the captain asked. “Bow to Him. Give yourself of your own will.”
“You don’t know who I am, do you, squid-for-brains?” I asked.
“Bow, child. For when He comes, His rage will be a perfect, hideous storm. He will drag you down to his prison and entomb you there. Forever silent. Forever in darkness. Forever in terrible cold.”
“I am Lady Molly of Winter,” I said in a silken voice.
The thrashing tentacles went abruptly still for a second. Then the captain started to shout something.
Before he could, I unleashed power from the heart of Winter into the cathedral, unrestrained, undirected, unshaped, and untamable. It rushed through me, flowed through me, both frozen agony and a pleasure more intense than any orgasm.
Ice exploded out from me in swords and spears, in scythes and daggers and pikes. In an instant, crystalline blades and points, a forest of them, slammed into being, expanding with blinding speed. Ice filled the cathedral, and whatever was in its way, living or otherwise, was pierced and slashed and shredded and then crushed against the sanctuary’s stone walls with the force of a locomotive.
It was over in less than a second. Then there was only silence, broken here and there by the crackle and groan of perfectly clear ice. I could clearly see the cult through it. Broken, torn to pieces, crushed, their blood a brilliant scarlet as it melted whatever ice it touched—only to freeze into ruby crystals a moment later.
It took the captain, impaled against the cathedral ceiling, almost a minute to die.
And while he did, I lay on the holy table, laughing uncontrollably.
THE ICE PARTED for me, opening a corridor perhaps half an inch wider than my shoulders and the same distance higher than my head. I walked out slowly, dreamily, feeling deliciously detached from everything. I had to step over a hand on the way out. It twitched in flickering little autonomic spasms. I noted idly that it probably should have bothered me more than it did.
Outside, I found Carlos and the Miksani children. They were staring at me in silence. The sleet made the only sound. Few lights glowed in windows. Unalaska was battened down against the storm, and other than us, not a creature was stirring.
I closed my eyes, lifted my face to the storm, and murmured, “Burn it down.”
Carlos stepped past me without a word. I felt the stirrings of power as he focused his will into fire so hot that the air hissed and sizzled and spat as he brought it forth. A moment later, warmth glowed behind me, and the crackle and mutter of rising flames began.
As we walked away, one wall was already covered in a five-foot curtain of flame. By the time we got the children back to the fish market, the cathedral was a beacon that spread an eerie glow through the sleet and spray. A few lights had come on, and I could see dark figures and a couple of emergency vehicles near the pyre, but there would be no saving the place. It was set a bit apart from the rest of Unalaska, in any case. It would burn alone.
Cormorants had begun to circle us, their cries odd and muted in the dark, and the children looked up with uncertain smiles. When we reached the market and went in, Aluki and Nauja were waiting for us. Nauja let out a cry and rushed forward to embrace the smallest girl, a child who cried out, “Mama!” and threw her arms around the Miksani woman’s neck.
Cormorants winged in from out of the night through the open door, assuming human form with effortless grace as they landed. Glad voices were raised around the children, and more parents were reunited with their lost little ones. There were more hugs and laughter and happy tears.
That, I thought, should probably make me feel more than it does as well.
Carlos watched it with a big, warm grin on his face. He shook some hands and nodded pleasantly and was hugged and clapped on the shoulder. As I watched him, I felt something finally. I was admiring his scars, the memory of his skill, his courage, and I had an absolutely soul-deep need to run my fingers over him.
No one came within five feet of me—at least, not until Aluki crossed the room from the bier where her husband still lay, and faced me.
“I assume you wish the tribute now,” she said in a low voice.
I felt dark, bright eyes all over the room, focusing on me.
“I need rest and food,” I said. “I will return when the storm breaks, if that is acceptable.”
Aluki blinked and her head rocked back. “It … Yes. Of course, Lady Molly. Thank you for that.”
I gave her a nod and turned toward the door. Just before leaving, I looked over my shoulder and asked, “Carlos? Are you coming with?”
“Ah,” he said, and his smile changed several shades. “Why … why, yes, I am.”
BY THE TIME we reached Carlos’s hotel, the storm was raging.
And the weather had gotten worse, too.
Neither of us spoke as we reached his room, and he opened the door for me. It was a nice hotel, far nicer than I would have expected in such isolation. I walked in, dropping my coat to the floor behind me. It hit the ground with the squelching sound of wet cloth and crackles of thin ice breaking. Layers of shirts joined it as I kept walking into the room, until I was down to skin.
I felt his eyes on me the whole way. Then I turned slowly and smiled at him.
His expression was caught somewhere between awe and hunger. His dark eyes glittered brightly.
“You’re soaked and frozen,” I said quietly. “Get out of those clothes.”
He nodded slowly and walked toward me. His cloak and coat and shirts joined mine. Carlos Ramirez had the muscles of a gymnast, and his body was marked here and there with scars. Strength. Prowess. I approved.