Blade and me.
The dagger vanished in a puff of silvery smoke. I stumbled forward in shock, almost losing my footing again.
“What the hell?” I grumbled, regaining my balance.
Daggers didn’t just disappear. Right?
Checking around me to see if I’d dropped it, I found nothing. It really had vanished.
Really?
“What-fucking-ever,” I seethed, forcing myself onward.
Fuck the dagger. Fuck this irritating bollocks. I wanted a hot bath, to be around my plants, and to take a shot of Hal’s cockle-warming rum.
And maybe a shot of him…
I reached Theatre Pier, the whole thing still intact, a sloping path wrapped in curved glass, icicles hanging on its underside. Empty. No frostbrood lurking inside it. Still, I moved cautiously, alert to any surprise attacks.
Clearing the pier, I reached the promenade outside the theatre, my trainers crunching in the snow. I picked up my pace, heading east.
All I had to do was cross Osborne Gardens, stay alive, then figure shit out.
Anger bubbled inside me, the heat dialing up by the second. People like me didn’t put themselves in compromising positions, especially unarmed. Not to blow my own trumpet, but I liked to think I was a pretty smart cookie.
I should be, after all my training.
Steeling myself against any panic, I carried on, glancing left as I passed the stairs leading up to Central Bridge. Frozen human bodies littered the stairs, half buried in ice, twisted into all sorts of positions like something from a nightmarish painting. Long-dead victims from when the frostbrood first arrived here, unable to escape, locked forever in the ice.
No. Not forever. Soon they’d be laid to rest properly.
I’ll make it happen,my thoughts echoed in my head.
First the vamps, then the icy scum. Because there was always a way to make something happen if you prayed to Aidan hard enough.
Put your faith in Him, and all things were possible.
One dead guy reached for the sky as if begging for mercy, his hands gnarled into claws.
“Rest easy,” I told him and all of them, hoping their souls were in the heavens with Aidan. Our blessed deity would look after them.
Fucking vamps. Their invasion gave the frostbrood access to our world. They’d brought them over from their rotten realm by accident, the frosty fuckers a pain in their arses too.
Wherever that realm was. Apparently, King Silvanus had severe memory loss, which meant they were all affected, seeing as he was their source of life.
Take him down, end them all.
Some said the vamps were from Hell, or from some place they’d drunk dry, no more blood available, Quintrealm the next best thing.
So many theories, but no definitive answer. And it didn’t matter. They were scum, end of.
Passing under the bridge, the cold air burning in my lungs, I veered left toward the gardens. Despite my determination and resilience, the cold would start getting to me soon. I had about twenty minutes, I figured.
In the name of Aidan, I wouldn’t die here. This rotten place wouldn’t be my grave.
Hard pass, cheers.
“Move it!” I hissed, picking up the pace again.
