38. Helene
Helene
Ahollow cone of light hides vague vestiges of movement outside the wrecked car.
Shadows disobey, floating and freezing. One moment, there’s nothing but darkness. Then my vision narrows to that awful pinprick. Like it did the day my mother died.
The world went black then, too.
It was as if someone opened a pit to the center of the universe, and everything and everyone was sucked down into it, to that place with no air or love.
The sensation hits now, a baseball bat to my head, caving me into myself so all the splintered pieces threaten to fall into the same hole.
The tear in my wrist isn’t deep enough to cause pain. Yet. The placement, though, the memory of how much blood can weep from a person if you clip the right vein…
Those roar back in with startling clarity.
The bedroom, walls closing in. No daylight. Only the gloom splaying around the body on the bed and Mom’s eyes blown open. Audra in the living room, happy to separate her medications for the week, one into each box.
The clink of pills on plastic echoed in my head as I tried to blink the scene clear. But the details remained. Incense burning on the dresser and smoke curling like it would ward off evil.
Pillows kicked to the floor, the flat surface of sheets prepared like an altar.
The roaring in my head. I’m trapped in a cyclone, not recognizing anything now except my racing pulse. Mom still hadn’t moved.
The coppery scent of blood somehow penetrated the fog in my head, but the seeping from the gashes in her wrist had stopped.
Wind whips hair across my face as I stare at the open wound of my own. The tiny triangle of glass had sliced a straight line down my forearm toward my elbow.
Audra reaches for my opposite hand and squeezes. A lifeline. A tether to something outside myself, and I come to, breathing hard and seeing spots.
Whatever hallowed words she repeats in a litany under her breath, they’re too garbled to make out.
I suck in a jagged inhale, and my lungs burn with ice, frozen. Maybe soon I’ll wake up from this nightmare.
Or maybe not.
The messy maze of my mind is a trap, like the Toyota. I’ve got no hope of freeing us from either.
I’m going to die here.
“Hel, please. We have to go. Right now!” Audra screams.
A blinding moment of panic overwhelms me.
I’m not dead yet. But we might be if I don’t get my fucking ass moving.
The creature tightens its hold on the car, still smiling. All those jagged teeth. It shattered the windshield and crushed the hood with its weight.
My chest heaves, breathing made harsh by dread.
Crying out for Nicholas scalded something inside me, but I’ve lost sight of him. Labored movements have me reaching for my scarf.
“Look out!”
Icy claws puncture through metal and curve, pushing the vehicle onto its side and sending us toppling together. Glass cracks and sends chunks of diamond into the car. I throw myself over Audra in blind horror, our arms and legs tangling with luggage and crutches.
The car rights itself and bounces on bald tires, tossing us haphazardly back toward the creature. Bitter cold air jets straight inside.
“Helene.” Audra sobs my name.
I wrap the scarf around my forearm, pulling the knot tight with my teeth to stifle the bleeding gash.
I’m not my mother. I stayed. I got stronger instead of weaker until the nightmares held no sway over me.
What had I done with the troll? No thought. No plan. Only action.
My body knew what to do, and I let my mind step aside to give it room to move, to attack. The only difference now is the snow. And Audra, trapped with me. Nowhere to run. In the way.
They came. That’s different.
My arm gives a low throb at the tightness of the makeshift tourniquet.
“Are you all right?” I cup Audra’s face in mine, her lips turning blue.
She’s fine, for now. She has to be.
Her gaze snags on something over my shoulder but this is worse than the scream. She makes no sound.
Something frozen scrapes the back of my neck. I meet her eyes, my chest tightening painfully before a claw hooks my coat and hauls me toward the broken window.
Heart lurching into my throat, I push Audra away from me, grasping at the twisted frame of the car to stay inside.
Desperation, a terrible resignation, and there. A tiny point of something familiar.
Rage.
Because fuck this guy.
The creature pulls to get me out of the car, and outside its interior, Wren, shouts at Nicholas. Where is Forest?
My joints protest the harder it yanks at me, and I lock my elbows and knees to keep from being pulled free.
“Try the handle, Audra!” My words come out in a horrible rasp.
Tears freeze on her cheeks. “What are you going to do? Hel—”
“Get out of here!” I cut her off. “Get out now before it crushes us!”
Another wrenching screech sounds from overhead, and the dent in the roof caves closer. She swallows her gasp, a low chuckle from outside filling us both with terror.
The thing gives another yank at half strength, toying with me, toying with all of us. I grimace against the pain.
It’s going to snap me in two.
“I’m not leaving you!” She reaches out to grab my hips and pull me away from the window.
If this is a game of tug of war, I’m losing. It’s guaranteed.
My mind spins in useless circles for a solution. What the hell do I do? A third tug has me clenching my jaw, the ache in my core and knees enough to have me seeing spots.
I wasn’t thinking with the troll attacks. Either one of them.
Why am I trying to think now?
Plans A through D disappear immediately, and I search the backseat, scrambling for something to break the grasping hand's hold. The talon digs closer to my skin and threatens to tear furrows through me.
A dull roar shakes the car on its tires.
I’ve got nothing.
Audra stops tugging my hips and grabs at her crutches, sliding one through the broken window. It bounces off the icy wrist.
Outside, Wren’s yelling grinds to a halt.
She pounds the crutch against the being. “We can’t do this much longer! Helene.”
Instinct. Gut feeling. Body recall. What would I do without the panic? Without the strain to my knees from trying to keep myself from being flung out of the car?
The creature gives another tug, and my tendons tighten hard enough to snap.
My system has been primed from years of struggle. The burden of existence. So what’s left when you’re out of options?
Eyes watering, I glance around the piles of useless things we’ve packed. The layers of detritus I’ve had on my list to clean for two straight years.
“Helene! Hold on. We’re coming.”
Nicholas and his worry filter away under the throb of my pulse. There has to be something.
I’ve seen Audra succumb to her medical condition most of her life. The disease has robbed her of freedom, of choice, no matter how hard she’s always tried to rise above it.
Even when she fails, even when those seizures get worse and leave her gasping, I’ve watched. I’ve stood my ground.
And now, when she can barely lift her body, she’s still fucking rising above it.
I won’t let anything happen to her.
My gaze sharpens. A short, stinging breath makes it past my frozen lips. There.
The claw gives a fourth sharp tug, my ass and hips out the window. “Audra! The hairspray. The lighter. The fucking lighter!”
Thoughts fly a million miles an hour and blur together. They mean nothing.
My sister shakes her head, her eyes black with worry before the words penetrate. She doesn’t question. She drops the crutch to grab the frigid cylinder of hairspray from the floor.
Clutching it close to her chest, she scrambles for the lighter in the center console, the one nearly out of juice and there for emergencies.
I’m not the kind of girl who begged her parents to let her join scouts, the one who wanted to go camping or to build a little treehouse in the backyard for sleepovers.
I have no gift for those things, and we never stayed in one place long enough for me to try.
Now Audra flings the canister at me, and I thrust my hand out to grab it.
The creature pulls me free another inch and my body hinges at the waist, glass tearing at my jeans and coat.
How does one handle a giant ice wolf who’s stepped right out of their dreams? Something coughed up from the nightmares of Nightshade Hollow?
“Helene, please.” Tears pearl at the corners of Audra’s eyes.
I’ve got one shot.
I lock my knees and hold out my other hand. In the tense seconds before the creature pulls me entirely free of the car, Audra shoves the lighter into my palm. My mouth twists in triumph before a final brutal yank rips me through the broken window.
Bent in half, pain erupts down my spine all the way to my feet.
Those claws toss me away from the vehicle and frigid air burns every inch of exposed skin.
I land hard on my back and blink past the spots blotting my eyesight. I can’t breathe.
It comes down to timing.
Weather omens and frost giants. Scars and shifters.
Someone is screaming, and I can’t move my head.
Through blurred vision the creature stands as massive as a tank and leaning its weight on the car. The vehicle shakes, rattling on frozen wheels.
Dark whirlpools of smoke sift skyward and freeze, blown free by the wind.
I didn’t think it would hurt so much. Instead of a cushion, the snow is as hard as iron, seeping through my coat and jeans to soak me. My forearm throbs, and when I lift my hand, blood has already seeped through the scarf.
Pressure in my skull increases, and the invisible hand squeezing my heart pulls tighter.
My chest caves in between ragged spasms of breath, and my neck is bent at an odd angle to keep the frosted giant in my sight.
The light blue of old ice forms the beast’s body. Four legs, two rooted on the ground, one on the car, and one claw-tipped limb reaching for me.
Runes hum beneath its iced skin, and eyes as cold as the bowels of hell lock on mine.
A voice rumbles from its depths with an accent I can’t understand. They land in my brain, bounce, devastating.
The creature turns to me, and I angle the hairspray canister and press down on the lighter.
Something clicks.
It never catches.
A cry between a scream and a laugh bursts free, and the small measure of hope I’d allowed vanishes. That awful smile stretches, and sharp eyeteeth glints in dim light. Shadows circle near two pointed ears.
Its mouth forms the shape of words.
Audra slumps in the broken window, and I flick the lighter again, useless click after useless click sounding.
No, it can’t end like this.
I keep clicking as shadows stretch and wrap like a noose around the creature’s neck. A flicker of movement from somewhere above shows a glimpse of Nicholas, his trench coat flapping.
The beast doesn’t stop.
“Helene!” Audra’s voice is far away, tempered by the roar in my head.
The lighter only clicks as adrenaline clutches at my nervous system. Shadows pull tight. Another inch, another foot, teeth flashing—
A ball of fire flares out from the can of hairspray and hits the creature dead center between the eyes.
It screeches and flounders. Shaking its head, it knocks into the car, sending us screeching backward. Losing its balance, it reverses course. Those talons wrench the door off its hinges and metal thuds against snow.
The thing stumbles away from the car, clutching the half melted side of its skull and the air fills not with the freshness of running water, but the stench of burned flesh.
What the hell?
How can a beast made of ice burn instead of melt?
I clamber to my feet and press down on the lighter again, my finger holding on the hairspray trigger. Another blast of heat hits the thing in the torso, and it screeches.
“Go, Audra! Go!”
She shoves her way out of the seat, legs tangling with the stupid crutches. She winches again and keeps the groan of pain to herself, escaping the muck of the backseat.
Gripping the carcass of the car, she drops into a snowdrift, pushing toward the rear wheel to avoid the creature’s thunderous footsteps.
The creature screams, knocking into pine trees.
Snow and hail plummet to the ground, burying our escape. Large hailstones pummel the back of Audra’s head.
I stoop beneath a flailing limb to grab Audra and pull her free with one hand. Her feet scrape through ice before the creature retaliates.
With its one good eye shut, it slams a fist down on the car and crushes it.
We duck near the back bumper. The scream of bent metal rattles my teeth, but I lock my jaw and push her deeper into the snow pile, like it will somehow blanket her from anything. Everything.
Whatever pain I’m about to inflict on this thing.
I’m so sorry.
Why did I try to run?
I lurch up with the can of hairspray frozen in my grip and set it at the monster. With a yell, I shove down and send a third jet of fire toward it, in time to watch its icy features twist in a feral grin.
It frees its stuck limb from the car and blocks the attack. Flames hit everywhere except my target. A growl rumbles through me, a struck flint, a spark in the darkness.
“Fuck you!”
Something ancient rises, taking over, encapsulating me and lighting me on fire.
Wherever the men are, they might have come, but this is something I’ll have to do alone. The only person I can trust is myself.
Even if I have no clue how to kill this thing. Tonight, it’s going down.