Biting Cold

chapter FIVE

GNOME SWEET GNOME

I could hardly form words. “Are you—you’re a—”

“Gnome, yes. Clearly. Obviously.” He sighed with obvious irritation. “Let’s go.”

“Go where, exactly?” Ethan asked.

The gnome rolled his eyes and dropped his shoulders dramatically. “You’re here to help take care of the witch. We’re here to help take care of the witch. And the witch is clearly brewing something up, so we need to take our positions and prepare to kick her ass.”

Okay, the gnome had a potty mouth. Which was an odd juxtaposition.

“Wait,” Ethan said, holding up a hand. “Paige made you to help her guard the book?”

His lip curled in anger, the gnome tottered forward and kicked Ethan in the shin.

Ethan spewed out a curse, but he had it coming.

“No one made me, bloodsucker. I am what I am. We help Paige only because we don’t want the world to go completely crazy just because some stuck-up Chicago sorceress can’t mind her own business. I don’t especially like sorceresses; they don’t get me. Much like vampires.” Then he muttered something under his breath about vampires and arrogance and our being “basically really big mosquitoes.”

“Okay,” I said, “let’s all calm down.” I looked down at the gnome. “I’m sorry for the confusion. We weren’t aware you were working with Paige. And we didn’t catch your name?”

One eye squinted closed, he looked me over, gauging my trustworthiness. “My name is Todd.”

Not the type of name I would have expected for a gnome, but fine all the same. “Todd, I’m Merit, and this is Ethan.”

“Nice to meet you. Now that we’re all buddy-buddy, we should probably deal with that.”

“With what?” Ethan asked.

Todd pointed across the pasture. The scattering of clouds above the field had turned blue, and they were swirling with a speed that wasn’t natural.

I’d once joked with Jonah that we’d find the source of the city’s magical drama when we found the giant sucking tornado that marked the spot. I must have been right.

“Is she controlling the weather now?” I wondered aloud.

“It’s not a real tornado,” Todd said. “It’s magic.”

Visible magic, just like Tate could do, which did not make me feel any better.

Ethan winced, squeezing his hands closed as, I assumed, he battled Mallory back mentally.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“I’ll manage,” he said, but as a harsh, magical wind that smelled of smoke and sulfur began to pour across the land, I wasn’t exactly confident he was going to stay that way.

I looked down at our new ally. “What’s the plan, Todd?”

Todd adjusted his small, conical hat. “We stop this. There are more of us than there are of her.”

His confidence was surprising…and not entirely believable. I couldn’t imagine the three of us were going to be much of a match against a woman who had the power to move heaven and earth.

“Three to one aren’t great odds,” I said.

Todd laughed mirthlessly. “No, but they aren’t the correct odds, either. Guys?”

The forest floor erupted into a carpet of gnomes. They emerged from open splits in nearby trees and what looked like burrows in the ground, and spilled out around us, probably a hundred in all, all in the same primary-colored uniforms and white caps, long beards extending nearly to their belts.

The ground looked like the overstock aisle at a garden accessory store.

Todd put his fingers between his lips and made an ear-shattering whistle. Like troops before a flag, they gathered to attention.

“The witch is nearly here,” he said, “and we know what she’s going for.”

The gnomes nodded in agreement, and there were whispers of “the book” across the sea of them.

“Across the woods and stream is the door to the silo,” Todd said. “She must not reach it or the book. She must not cross the stream. We cannot allow it, or for the evil to fly across the land again.”

Todd pointed at a gnome who was wearing a particularly garish pair of plaid pants. “Keith, take the left flank. Mort, take your crew down the right. Frank will cross the stream and keep an eye on the rear, and I’ll lead my crew head-on.”

Those orders given, Todd began discussing specific strategies with his troops. It was an amazing thing to behold, and I was ashamed I’d doubted him and assumed he was any less of a soldier because of his stature. He ordered his troops around with the aplomb of a seasoned general and the adeptness of an expert tactician.

Unfortunately, not even Todd was entirely sure what Mallory would do—and I wasn’t, either. I knew she could work a spell, and I knew she could throw orbs of magic that hurt like hell when they made contact. (I’d had orb-avoidance training with Catcher.) We all knew what she wanted, and we knew she was intent on doing whatever it took to get it, regardless of how many people she hurt along the way.

When the gnomes began to take their positions, I looked to Todd. “What do you want us to do?”

“What can you do?” He didn’t sound confident he’d be impressed by my answer.

I tapped the pommel of my sword. “We’re both good with steel. Also, I know her. I could help with distraction.”

“How so?”

I looked around. “If the goal is keeping her on this side of the trees, maybe I can distract her so your troops can surround her? It might help your flanks get better position.”

“That’s not a horrible idea,” Todd said, but Ethan wasn’t impressed.

“You will not use yourself as bait,” he gritted out.

I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but he probably wasn’t too far off base. And I knew he meant it protectively, but my safety was secondary. Our first—and only—priority was keeping Mallory away from the Maleficium.

I faced Ethan. “I still stand Sentinel of Cadogan House,” I reminded him. “I’ll do what it takes to keep you safe.”

“Merit—”

“Ethan,” I quietly, but sternly, interrupted. “I have to do this, and you know it. I can’t stand around and let other people fight this battle for me. I have more honor than that. You wouldn’t have let me stand Sentinel otherwise.” But was it honorable? I was helping set up my best friend for an ambush. Sure, I wanted to throttle her and scream at her, but I didn’t want her hurt.

“How exactly are you going to stop her?” I asked Todd.

“We’re gnomes,” he said. “Skilled warriors.”

“Could you not kill her? Please?”

Todd blinked at me, that simple action showing me exactly how stupid he thought that was. “We’re gnomes, not humans.” He cast a telling glance at the sword at my side. “Our goal is to keep her out of the silo, not put her in the ground. If we best her, she’ll have no choice but to submit to us. It’s a rule of civilized combat.”

It might be a rule of civilized combat, but I seriously doubted Mallory had taken any classes in that.

Our roles decided, Todd joined his company of troops, and they began to take their positions. Their departure left Ethan and me alone. It took a moment of courage before I could look back at him. I hadn’t exactly given him a chance to speak his piece.

It went pretty much as poorly as I’d expected. His eyes were glassy green, and magic rolled off his body like an angry tide.

I knew he wasn’t angry at me, not really. He was afraid. Afraid that I’d be injured, or that I’d sacrifice myself to save Mallory. I couldn’t eliminate his fear, and I couldn’t prevent the violence that would likely come to pass, but maybe I could remind him that he’d prepared me for it.

“You know, you’re the one who trained me to stand Sentinel. To be a warrior. At some point, you have to trust that I was paying attention.” My tone was lighthearted, and it was precisely the wrong course.

He grabbed my arm—hard. And in his eyes was a sudden storm of fear and anger. “You will not sacrifice yourself because of her.”

I could all but see his temper rise. Was this about Mallory? The overflow of her magic?

My arm ached beneath his fingers. “I don’t have any intention of doing that,” I assured him, wiggling my arm to free myself. But he wouldn’t budge. His fingers tightened.

“Distract her if you must, but let them bring her down. This isn’t your fight. It’s hers, and she has enough to answer for without adding your name to the rolls.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “Now relax and let go of my arm. You’re hurting me.”

His eyes widened, and he froze, then pulled his hand back and stared at me, horror in his eyes. “My God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I rubbed my arm absently.

He looked at me and opened his mouth to speak, but it was too late for more words.

“The eagle has landed,” called out one of the gnomes.

It was like something from The Wizard of Oz. Out of the swirling clouds dropped a giant glowing orb as large as a compact car. It rotated and split open in a flash of light, and just like a good witch, Mallory stepped into the Midwest.

But there were no coiffed curls or magic wand or glittering gown in this story. In fact, I barely recognized her. She looked awful, and an awful lot like an addict in the throes of a bad craving. I’m not sure what the Order had done or what she’d been through since she left, but she seemed to look even worse than she had the last time I’d seen her. Thinner and sadder. Her hair, once blue, had lost its color and luster. It now hung blond and limp at her shoulders. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her cheeks looked gaunt.

But her appearance didn’t faze the gnomes. It took only a second for them to launch their attack. As the cows scattered to the other side of the pasture, they revealed long wooden bows and began showering Mallory with a spray of feathered arrows.

I winced on her behalf but shouldn’t have wasted the effort. She might not have looked her best, but the girl had undeniable skills. She threw out a volley of magical sparks that incinerated the arrows on contact. The air glowed like the Fourth of July…if it had commemorated a battle against a self-interested witch.

I glanced behind us. Where was Paige? All things considered, this was really her fight. She should have been out there by now, fighting back with the magic that we didn’t have.

Another unit of gnomes stepped forward, springing a net of vines hidden in the dirt beneath Mallory’s feet. She was pulled up and into its grasp, but she quickly recovered and blasted the net into a thousand tiny wicks. The net collapsed and dropped her to the ground again with a thump.

She looked pissed.

I had been surprised by Mallory’s appearance, but that emotion paled in comparison to the shock I felt at what she did next. Without any warning to the gnomes, and without any apparent hint of remorse, she threw out an orb of magic that whipped the gnomes back like rag dolls. They hit the ground, obviously unconscious, if not worse.

And she didn’t stop with one. She threw orb after orb until she’d cleared a twenty-foot circle around her.

It was time to go for broke. I looked at Ethan, who nodded. With swords in our hands, we stepped out of the trees and prepared to do battle.

“Mallory Carmichael!” I called out. “Stop this right now!”

She rolled her eyes with the arrogance of a self-absorbed, sadistic teenager. “Walk away, Merit, or bring me the Maleficium and we can all leave together like one big happy family. I know you don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

She was right, but it wasn’t as if giving her the book would actually save lives. She’d already thrown aside a dozen gnomes like they were nothing more than scattered leaves.

On the other hand, if she wanted me to bring the Maleficium to her, maybe she wasn’t entirely sure where it was. We could work with that. I stalled, giving the gnomes time to regroup a bit.

“We’ve talked about this before,” I said. “Releasing evil isn’t going to fix you. You’ve put supernaturals and humans in danger, wreaked havoc across Chicago, and you’re AWOL from the Order. Give this up so we can all go back to our lives.”

“You know I can’t do that,” she said, and that’s when I could see it—the regret in her eyes. She knew what she was doing was wrong, but she was doing it anyway. Doing it despite the damage she’d caused and would keep causing.

“This book won’t help anything,” I pleaded with her. “It will only make things worse.”

“Really? It helped you. You got Ethan back.”

She was simultaneously right and wrong. “I’m glad he’s back, but you didn’t do that for me, and you didn’t do it for him. You used him to get what you want—and you used me to get his ashes out of the House. If he thought destroying the city was the cost of bringing him back, even he wouldn’t have paid that price.”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“I shouldn’t be dramatic? I’m not the one who landed in Nebraska to steal something that doesn’t belong to her.”

“Do you have any idea what I’m going through? What I’m feeling right now? It hurts, Merit! Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. The only thing that will make it better is balancing the magic in the world.”

I could see the pain etched into her face. And as she faced her pain, Ethan screamed out and fell to his knees, clutching his head.

They were connected. Tied together, somehow, as a result of her magic, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My heart skipped a beat, watching him there in pain and knowing I was helpless to intervene. But I could be brave and face her down, and so I stepped forward.

“This ends now, Mallory.” I stepped forward, katana at the ready. “You’ll get the Maleficium over my dead body.”

She looked back at Ethan, and I thought for a second I’d finally gotten through to her, that she was actually considering the consequences and implications of her actions.

But I was doubly wrong. She hadn’t been looking at Ethan…she’d been looking at Keith, the gnome of the horrendous plaid pants.

She rolled together another ball of magic, then pitched it at him. He screamed out as the shock of magic hit, but then froze for a moment.

As we all watched in horror, we realized Mallory hadn’t meant to kill or even stun him.

She meant to change him.

Keith began to stretch and expand. His shoulders widened, and his arms grew into tree limbs. His torso tripled, and his legs lengthened until his head rose over us to horrific proportions, from a smiling two-foot-tall gnome to a twenty-foot-tall lumbering beast. He looked down at me and grinned menacingly through domino-sized teeth, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile.

Mal hadn’t just made him larger; she’d made him meaner.

“Oh, that is just wrong,” I muttered.

I swallowed down fear, took a defensive stance, and held up my sword, preparing for battle.

Keith stumbled toward me, hands extended as if he meant to swipe me up off the ground. The gnomes might have been spritely in their original size, but stretched and expanded like Silly Putty, he lumbered about. Of course, he was throwing a lot more weight around.

I felt miserable about striking back at him; it wasn’t his fault Mallory had turned him into a monster. So I tried other tactics. It didn’t take much effort to run around and avoid him. Although I’m sure the sight was comical—sword-bearing vampire being chased around a cornfield by a twenty-foot-tall garden gnome—I hoped I might be able to wear him out before he could do any real damage.

Todd was a little more optimistic.

“Keith, stop this!” Todd ran in front of him, arms waving. “Snap out of it, man. This girl is on your side. You don’t want to hurt her.”

I instantly forgave Todd for the kick on the shin. But if there was any bit of Keith that remembered Todd or anything else of life before Mallory, I couldn’t see it. His eyes—oversized and shaded by his giant white cap—were empty. Not just dazed, but completely void of emotion or recollection or any intellect at all.

Poor Keith.

And goddamn Mallory.

Even if we brought her back from the brink, I’m not sure I could ever forget, or forgive, what she was willing to do to get what she wanted. But that problem assumed we would survive to bring her back, so first things first…

Keith swiped at Todd, knocking him off his feet. I held my breath, but he sat up a moment later and signaled the gnomes. They launched another attack, this time on one of their own.

While I helped Todd stand again, the gnomes peppered Keith with rocks and their few remaining arrows, but Keith was big enough to ignore the few pricks that made it through. He howled out when an arrow caught him in the shin, yanking it out and tossing it to the ground, and then stomping around to try to catch the gnome who’d gotten the lucky shot.

The battlefield silenced for a moment, and Todd’s eyes went cold. He looked up at me.

“He is gone,” Todd said. “Perhaps if we knocked him out, magic could be worked?”

I didn’t waste time arguing. I ran toward the middle of the field, where Keith was throwing clumps of dirt—and probably some chunks that weren’t actually dirt—at the gnomes around him.

“Keith!” I called out, facing him with sword extended.

He looked back, then stomped toward me.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, and when he swung down a meaty hand to knock me off my feet, I slashed out with the katana.

I caught the back of his hand. Blood splashed the ground, and Keith yelped in pain, a horrible sound that probably woke the few remaining farmers who hadn’t already been awakened by the giant garden gnome tromping around their neighbor’s land.

I paused for a moment at the sight of blood, afraid I’d be overtaken by the need to drink. But there was nothing remotely palatable about the smell of it. It smelled of dirt—not dirty, but damp and mineral. Not an altogether bad scent, but nothing I wanted to drink.

Not that Keith would have given me the opportunity to do so. Monstrous teeth bared, he wrenched in the other direction. I hit the ground to avoid the swing of his palm, but I wasn’t far enough to avoid the swing of his fingers. They hit me like tree logs, tossing me ten feet across the field. I landed facedown with a bounce that echoed through my body and radiated pain through my limbs.

There was no time to rest. The earth shook as Keith moved closer. I winced at the stabbing pain in my ribs—another rib broken, I guessed—and slowly got to my feet.

A bundle of gnomes came again to my defense, but they were soon out of weapons. Keith tossed them away like irritating gnats, then turned his gaze on me again.

He bounded toward me. Ignoring the pain in my side, I two-handed my katana and drove it into his foot. He howled with pain. When he bent over to clutch at his injury, I pulled my sword away and ran through his legs.

Before he could get his bearings, and before I had time to think better of it, I jumped onto his back and scrambled upward. My weight distracted him from the pain, and he stretched and twisted back and forth, trying to throw me off.

It was like the world’s strangest amusement ride…but all good things must come to an end.

My broken rib hardening my heart against the violence, I climbed to his shoulders, adjusted my sword, and thrust the butt-end of the sword handle into the pressure point behind his ear. Hard.

Keith froze, then began to fall toward the earth. I jumped away to safety, rolling across the ground while he hit the earth like a fallen tree.

The night was silent for a moment.

I brushed hair from my face and stood up again, looking around until I found Mallory. She stood nearby, her expression suddenly horrified, her gaze on the giant gnome on the ground. He was out cold.

I wiped the mud from my katana on my pants and walked toward her, stopping ten feet away.

“Any more minions you want to create, or are you ready to face me on your own?”

When she didn’t answer, I moved closer.

“It’s me and you,” I said, only inches away. “Are you ready for that? Are you willing to kill me to get what you want?” I rotated the sword in my hand, hoping I might intimidate her at least enough to let her guard down.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“That’s funny, because I’m afraid of you. I’m afraid of who you’ve become and who you’re going to be if you finish this the way you want to. I’m afraid you’ll never come back from it.”

“I’m not afraid,” she repeated, but there was clearly fear in her eyes. As much as she wanted the Maleficium—as much as she believed she needed it—she was scared.

Good. Maybe the Order had managed to talk a little sense into her in those few hours before her escape.

Thinking I was making progress, I kept pushing. “Look at what you’ve done. You’ve hurt people, Mallory, for a spell you think is going to make your life better. But if that was true, wouldn’t the sorcerers have done it by now?”

“They don’t understand.”

“Then make them understand. But with words, not by turning our lives upside down.”

No response.

“Please,” I quietly said. “Just come home with me. You can see Catcher and talk to the Order. We can try to get you back on track. I know it will be hard, but you can do it. I know you. I know who you are and what’s in your heart.”

Silence. And for a moment, I thought I had her. I thought I might have convinced her to give up her misguided quest for peace of mind and go back with me to Chicago.

But it wasn’t to be. She suddenly looked up, like a deer scenting a predator in the woods, then looked at me.

“This isn’t over,” she said, then disappeared in blue light of her own making.