“Right. So if I’m like Tore, shouldn’t I be able to pick up this ice climbing thing pretty easily? I don’t want to hold you guys back.” I stamped my feet to fight off the cold. Even though it was daytime, it still felt like the inside of a deep freezer.
“We’ll help you out this one time, Allie.” Mack passed out the spiky footwear. The guys slid them over their boots and clicked them into place. Not wanting to stick out, I copied their movement, and soon had my own pair of ice shoes. Sweet. “Next time you’re in Jotunheim, you’re on your own.”
“Thanks,” I said, and I meant it. As much as I didn’t want to be that girl, the odds of my keeping up with the guys while scaling my first multi-hundred-foot ice wall were slim to none. And if that oversized bluish beast came back while I was scrambling up a frozen fall, well . . . what was the theory? You only had to be the second slowest to survive an animal attack? I was pretty sure I couldn’t make that cut . . . and I didn’t want to be jotun fodder that day. Or any day.
Tore tossed his gear to Bodie, who added it to his back. My friend now carried two backpacks and a snowboard, while Tore’s back had an open vacancy.
“Hop on, Allie.” Tore patted his shoulders.
“You sure you can carry me up that thing?” I asked.
“You questioning my strength?” Tore raised one snow-dusted eyebrow.
“I’m questioning your sanity,” I corrected. “First, that ice wall is huge—it’s going to be hard to get up with me on your back. Second, your girlfriend’s going to be pretty ticked you gave another chick a piggyback ride. And she seems like the revenge loving type.”
Bodie, Mack, and Johann took a very sudden, and very intense, interest in their shoes.
Seriously, Allie? You pick now to turn into a girl?
“What are you talking about?” Tore stared blankly.
It was so embarrassing to have to spell it out, but I didn’t want to just sit by and let him snuggle me all night, then pull me up the ice wall while he was dating another girl. “Synna,” I said awkwardly. “She can’t be happy about any of this.” Me snuggling you in the snow cave, me snuggling you up the mountain . . . Now that I thought about it, it had been a banner day for snuggling.
“Synna and I aren’t together. We haven’t been for months.” Tore’s nostrils flared. “Gods, did you think the other night—that we . . . oh, that wasn’t what happened at all, Allie.”
“Whatever,” I shrugged. “I don’t care.” But the smirk on Tore’s face let me know he was on to me. Dang it, Allie. Couldn’t you play it cool just this one time?
“Talk later.” Bodie poked me. “Climb now. The weather’s not looking so great.”
“Hop on,” Tore repeated, this time with a gleam in his eye.
“If you’re sure.” I wrapped my arms around Tore’s neck and jumped awkwardly onto his back.
“This can’t be your first piggyback ride,” Tore chided. “Come on, squeeze me with your legs.”
“That’s what she sa—”
“Shut up, Bodie.” Tore gripped my thighs and pulled them around him. “Like that.”
“I’m afraid I’ll cut you with my knife-shoes,” I admitted.
“The crampons? It’s fine. Just squeeze with your thighs, and keep your feet tucked against your butt. Or crisscross your legs, but keep them tight to my chest. We’ll have to hug the ice in parts of this trek, so try not to get the, uh, knife-shoes stuck on anything,” Tore instructed.
“Got it.” I pressed my hands to Tore’s chest so I didn’t pull on his neck. The last thing I wanted to do was choke the guy on our way up a frozen waterfall. “Giddy-up,” I called.
“Careful, Pepper, your life is in my hands.” Tore took a small curved ice pick in each hand and stepped up to the waterfall. “Here we go.”
“We’re going straight up this thing freehand? No ropes?” I tried not to black out.
“Trust me, Pepper. I got us,” Tore said.
Tore dug one pick, then the other, into the ice. He scaled the wall with ease, relying almost entirely on his upper body strength to pull us up. Occasionally, he dug his feet into the ice to redirect our course, but he ascended the first obstacle as easily as if he’d just climbed a ladder. I kept my eyes squeezed firmly shut until we were back on solid ground. And even then, I was reluctant to release my hold on Tore’s insanely firm backside. The guy was a rock, from his smooth, hard shoulders all the way down to his otherworldly butt. Wrapping my legs around that thing took sexy to a whole new level. If we were in any other situation, I’d—
“Bodie!” Tore’s cry pulled me out of my reverie. “Allie get off.” I jumped onto the snow as Tore launched himself at the ledge. I could barely make out Bodie’s gloved hand struggling to grip the slippery surface. Tore stretched his arm down with a grunt. “Hold on to me. I’ll pull you up.”
Tore dug his elbow into the snow and pulled. A few seconds later, Bodie’s arm appeared over the ledge, followed by his head. He threw a leg over and climbed up, panting.
“Takk, man,” Bodie huffed. “My pick slipped off. I hope it didn’t hit Johann on the way down.”
“It did.” Johann’s irritated face poked over the top of the wall, Bodie’s ice pick in one of his hands. “I could have lost an eye.”
“I’m sorry.” Bodie offered a hand and helped pull Johann up. Together they peeked over the edge. “You okay, Mack?”
“Never better.” Mack’s hearty voice called up. When he joined the rest of my protectors on the narrow ledge above the ice wall, he wore an ear-to-ear grin. “That was fun.”
“Glad to hear it.” Tore took his board and backpack from Bodie, then pointed to the top of the mountain. We were nearly halfway there, and we’d need to traverse a few hundred yards of narrow ledge before we got to a trail wide enough to allow us to walk two wide. Jotunheim was intense. “Let’s get a move on. We need to scout the summit before that storm blows in.”
“What storm?” I scanned the horizon until I spotted the dense, grey clouds to my left. “Oh.”
“Move out,” Tore turned and headed along the narrow ledge. I could see now that the greenish trigger alarm only stretched up the first hundred feet of the mountain. Up here, we were free from its reach. Whew. I followed behind Tore, with Bodie, Johann, and Mack bringing up the rear. It took a tremendous amount of focus to not think about the multi-hundred-foot drop hovering twenty inches to the left of my knife-shoes.
“Hey, Allie. Do you still sense the blackness at the summit?” Tore spoke over his shoulder.
Without closing my eyes because, narrow ledge, I opened my energy and sent it to the top of the mountain. It quickly recoiled, pinging back to me like it had been burned. “Yup,” I surmised. “It’s less dense than it was before, which either means there are fewer bad guys up there, or . . . well, I guess that’s what it means.”