Chains of Ice Read online

  “Like how much?” They were both chatting quickly.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I just finished my degree in wildlife studies, so I’m trained to the job; plus I’m good at what I do, and my father had to pay twenty-five thousand for me.”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars?” Genny was horrified. “American dollars?”

  “American dollars,” Avni confirmed. “How much did it cost to get you here?”

  “I don’t know. It was a graduation present. But do you think it was more than twenty-five grand?”

  “I don’t think. I know. I listened in on a little conversation between Lubochka and Misha and twenty-five is the least they’ll take, and for that you have to have training and/or experience.” Avni flushed the toilet. “So they may have taken Brandon the first year for twenty-five because he’s got the degree and experience in wildlife observation. But the little jerk doesn’t need employment—”

  “Wealthy family?” Genny had to jiggle the handle to make it work.

  “And big trust fund.” Avni washed her hands in the rust-colored water. “So he goes from study to study being a pain in the patootie until they decide he’s not worth whatever he’s paying them. Which is a bundle.”

  “What about Thorsen? He’s an amateur, too.” The water was gritty. The bar of soap was yellow, old, and cracked. Genny was glad she didn’t bite her nails anymore.

  “He’s good at observation—plus he writes a big check every year to the cause, so he can do no wrong in Lubochka’s eyes. In the last two summers, he came through at least once a month and stayed a few days every time. He usually comes in his helicopter.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  As they headed for the door, they clearly heard footsteps, a zip, and a guy on the other side of the wall using the facilities.

  “See? Thin walls.” Avni headed into the airport lobby and then out the door into the chilly sunshine. “It’s a four-hour drive to the village on lousy roads that just get lousier. Don’t drink anything—they won’t stop. There aren’t any seats in the vehicle, so try to catch some sleep or you’ll get carsick.”

  Genny stared at the faded yellow sixties Volkswagen van parked in front. “I already feel a little sick.”

  Avni followed her gaze, and laughed.

  Lubochka sat in the driver’s seat revving the engine. Its muffler was a long-ago memory, and billows of blue smoke belched from the tailpipe. Misha sat beside her, polishing his glasses and looking irritable. The windows in back were held shut with bungee cords, and inside, they could see the men moving bags around.

  “Look at it this way. Once you get to Rasputye, nothing else can be as horrible.”

  “Not even the yeti?” Genny waited for Avni to laugh again.

  Instead, she shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m not going to admit it to Brandon, but the guy is scary.”

  Taken aback, Genny said, “You mean there is a yeti?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen him come into the inn for his mail. The villagers are all scared of him. He’s a hermit, and he’s got, I don’t know, PTSD or combat fatigue. Or he’s just plain crazy. The guy is feral.”

  “Feral? What’s he done?”

  “He was in some kind of Special Forces unit, and he went nuts and killed his whole group. They say he’s violent. I know for a fact that thing about the women is true.”

  “What thing about the women?”

  “He gets in the mood where he wants a woman. He picks one out. And he watches her, stalks her, takes her to his cabin and he . . .” Avni waved a helpless hand.

  “He rapes her?” Genny was more and more horrified.

  “No! No. Wow. No. Apparently not.” Avni’s eyes gleamed. “No, he seduces her. Gives her the best sex in the history of the world. When he’s done with her, other men just don’t measure up.”

  “Pull the other one!” Genny laughed.

  “I’m not kidding you.” Avni tried to grin, but it looked wilted and lopsided. “Last year, I met one of the women. Halinka was on her way out of town because she couldn’t stand it anymore. She said she wanted to see the world and forget about John.”

  “John?” For the first time, the ridiculous tale had a face, and it was the face of the photo in Genny’s backpack. “John Powell?”

  Lubochka honked the horn, loud and blaring. Misha opened the door and in his heavy Russian accent, shouted, “Get in! We’ve got to get there before dark!”

  “We gotta go!” Avni was all too eager to abandon the subject.

  Genny caught her arm and held her in place. “Is his name John Powell?”

  Misha yelled again.

  Avni broke away. As she headed toward the van, she called back, “How did you know?”

  Chapter 5

  “Another flat tire? Why does this happen every year?” Lubochka slapped the side of the aged Volkswagen van.

  The bumper flapped.“Because the tires are so thin, you can see the air through them,” Thorsen said in his distinctively Danish voice.

  Misha knelt in the dirt, examined the rusty rim and ragged tire, and muttered Russian swear words.

  “I thought I gave money for four new tires?” Thorsen asked.

  Lubochka stood watching, her large hands planted on her hips. “I bought two. But we needed a new low-light Flip Video camera to set up at last year’s lynx trail.”

  “Of course, foolish of me to think the money would be spent as I directed.” Thorsen knelt in the dirt beside Misha.

  “I make the decisions,” Lubochka said stolidly.

  Reggie gave a shout of triumph as he located the tire iron under the driver’s seat.

  “Hey, how come the men have to do the work?” Brandon groused loudly.

  During the four-hour drive up into the mountains, Genny had come to realize he did everything loudly, and every sound exacerbated the pounding of her headache.

  “It’s not like you’re doing anything.” Avni cast Brandon a dark look as she helped Misha place the aged and feeble jack under the fender.

  Genny didn’t even think Lubochka knew she was standing behind her, gulping fresh air, until she said, “Genesis, sit down. You’re green.”

  Great. Lubochka had eyes in the back of her head.

  “Really, Miss Valente, go for a walk.” Reggie handed the iron to Thorsen. “We have enough hands. You’ll feel better with some fresh air.”

  Thorsen grunted as he loosened the lug nuts.

  “I can go with you.” Brandon looked her up and down. “In case you faint or something, I could give you mouth-to-mouth.”

  “No. Brandon, you stay here,” Lubochka commanded.

  “I’ll be fine.” Genny gave an embarrassed smile and fled up the narrow, winding mountain road.

  “She’ll get lost—wait and see,” she heard Brandon say.

  “Don’t go too far!” Lubochka shouted.

  Genny waved a hand and walked around the curve.

  They were three-quarters of the way to Rasputye. Twilight turned the light a grayish blue, and it would be dark when they got there. But as far as Genny was concerned, the flat had been a godsend.

  She had, disgracefully, been the one who got carsick on the trip. She hadn’t tossed her cookies, but the dust of the road and the smell of the exhaust combined with the bumpy ride had nauseated her. Brandon had mocked her, of course. Avni had patted her hand. The men had offered encouragement. Lubochka had tersely told her not to vomit on the equipment.

  Now Genny made her way to a fallen log a few feet into the woods, sank down, and wrapped her arms around her knees.

  All about her, tall trees lifted their branches to the sky. The forest was tall, deep, and dark—and somehow Genny thought it smelled old . . . so old. Something drifted down to the ground, and Genny half expected to see some of Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs. But it was a pine needle . . . no, two . . . no, three . . . shaken from the trees by the barest wisp of wind. Then the breeze died, and the silence was profound; the soil and trees swal
lowed every sound.

  And someone was watching her.

  The hair at the base of her skull lifted. She froze. Warily she looked around.

  She saw nothing. Nothing in any direction. This feeling was her imagination . . . It had to be her imagination . . . The stuff that Avni had told her had clearly been working on her mind.

  She did a double take.

  Eyes. Pale blue eyes staring at her from the underbrush.

  She rose, her gaze fixed on those eyes in the distance, a man’s eyes . . .

  “John?” she breathed. As she did, the face that went with those eyes . . . faded into the twilight.

  She was alone. She could barely breathe, and all she could hear was her pounding heart.

  Around the bend, the Volkswagen roared to life.

  Genny backed up, her gaze flicking from tree to tree, trying to see where the man—it had been a man; she was sure—had gone.

  She reached the road as the van drove up.

  Behind her, someone opened the door.

  “Get in, Genny! We’re late already.” It was Avni.

  Genny pointed a shaking finger into the woods. “Eyes. Watching me . . .”

  “Oo, the yeti’s been watching her,” Brandon mocked.

  “Oo, she’s scared of the yeti.”

  “No,” she said, “it’s not a yeti. It’s—”

  And a forty-pound female cat with red fur and distinctive black markings strolled out of the brush, posed for a moment, its eyes fixed on Genny, then turned its back on the astonished group and slid back into the forest.

  “My God, Genesis, my dear”—Lubochka’s voice shook with awe and reverence—“you spotted our first lynx of the season.”

  John Powell rose from his blind in the underbrush, stepped out on the road, and watched the Volkswagen van chug away, spewing blue smoke out its rusted tailpipe.

  The girl had seen through his cover-up, and that surprised him. He had been in Special Forces. He was so adept at camouflage that wild animals had bounded over the top of him in the underbrush.But then, the girl herself surprised him.

  Every year he came out to look over Lubochka’s new team. He didn’t fool himself about his motivations. He came to make sure none of the Chosen Ones sneaked in to spy on him.

  He wasn’t paranoid; he was realistic. He had signed a seven-year contract to work on a team of Chosen. He had left before his term was completed. There was nowhere on this earth he could run where they couldn’t find him. So sooner or later, they would come and demand his services. Because the Gypsy Travel Agency might serve a higher cause, but its board of directors were ruthless in its pursuit.

  Without modesty, John knew he was one of the most gifted and useful Chosen in recent memory. The power he commanded could lift a huge stone, bring a speeding car to a stop, hold back a glacier . . . when he was in full possession of his faculties.

  It was what happened when his concentration failed that had sent him into exile. He no longer used those powers, holding them back like the ice dam held back the water. Someday the dam would explode. Someday the power would blast him apart. When that happened. . . . Better for him, and the world, that he be here near the rasputye.

  Oh, he was weak.

  Every once in a while, his needs overwhelmed his resolution. Every once in a while, he took a woman and showed her what he could do for her. The tiniest pulses of power, imbued with his passion, could in an instant move a woman from fear to pleasure.

  Did he seduce those women merely as a release of lust and energy building within him? Or was he proving something to himself? He didn’t care to examine his motives too closely.

  He didn’t dare look into his own soul.

  Sooner or later the Gypsy Travel Agency would do what they could to force him to return. But first they would artfully scope out the territory. He figured Lubochka’s team was the Agency’s best chance for sneaking up on him, so with a handful of metal debris on the road and the bald tires on Lubochka’s van, he guaranteed they would break down.

  For the third summer in a row, it worked.

  In past summers, all unknowing, they had talked to each other and he had listened.

  So far no one, by word or deed, was suspicious of him. So far, he’d been lucky and the Gypsy Travel Agency had left him alone.

  Seeing Genesis had been a shock for which he’d been totally unprepared. For the first time since he’d started observing Lubochka’s female Americans, he’d been attracted.

  No, worse. He’d been enthralled—and he didn’t know why. Usually his women were beautiful, seductive, knowing. They might not choose him to begin with, but once they realized the pleasure he could give them, they flirted, tempted, laughed, met him halfway and more.

  Nothing about Genesis’s appearance gave him reason to believe she was that kind of woman.

  She was pretty. Not beautiful, but with the kind of face that caught and held his attention. A head full of dark curly hair pulled back into a careless ponytail. A beautiful olive complexion, a cleft in her chin, and the most exotic golden brown eyes he’d ever seen in his life. They glowed in her face like coals burning with the kind of rosy hope and enthusiasm he only dimly remembered.

  She couldn’t be for real. She just couldn’t be. Because simply seeing her made him feel.

  Those events two years ago had cured him of emotions. He was hollow, empty inside; and if he started feeling sorrow or amusement or loneliness or joy, it would mean life was returning to his soul, like blood to a limb that had been frozen.

  If there was one thing he understood, it was how painful that could be.

  He didn’t want it. He didn’t want it. His power had been contained for so long. Better that it stay contained forever. He couldn’t trust it.

  He couldn’t trust himself.

  Like a bear fleeing a swarm of mosquitoes, he shook his head and fled into the woods. But for the first time he couldn’t escape his thoughts.

  What was he going to do when the Gypsy Travel Agency sent a representative to demand his return?

  What was he going to do if Genny’s golden eyes mirrored her soul; if she was truly a dreamer, bright and idealistic?

  He didn’t know either answer.

  He wanted her. He wanted to slide his hands through her dark hair, kiss her warm, tanned skin, ravish her, worship her, teach her how a man who had abandoned civilization made love.

  Yet if she was real, if the warmth in her eyes thawed the ice in his veins . . . then he would have to leave her alone.

  Because he would destroy her . . . just like he’d destroyed all the rest.

  Chapter 6

  Someone shook Genny’s shoulder. “We’re here.”

  She opened her eyes, took a long breath of the cold, fresh air pouring through the van’s open side access panel, and sighed. “Thank God.” She’d managed to live through the ride to Rasputye.She waited while everyone removed their bags and the equipment; then she dragged out her duffel. The team was traipsing into the only two-story building on the town square, and she lagged behind, peering around.

  She couldn’t see much. There were no streetlights. But the quarter moon showed a tiny hamlet, a throw-back to the nineteenth century. Squat stone buildings with tin roofs were built around a village square. In the middle, a woodstove glowed dimly red. Dirty patches of snow hugged the houses and ice crunched underfoot.

  In the daylight, she suspected this place would be quaint. Now, with the forest looming close and darkness crouching beneath its boughs, the village felt foreign. Not Russian-foreign. Not I’ve-never-been-here-before foreign. Foreign as if . . . as if at any moment, the twins from that long-ago legend of the Chosen Ones could stroll out and carry Genny away, too.

  Because someone was watching.

  Again the hair on her neck lifted.

  What had been spooky in the daylight was terrifying now. With a gasp, she hurried toward the inn, from which light, warmth, and voices spilled forth.

  She descended six steps—the
bottom floor was half dug into the ground—and stepped into a large taproom filled with the team, their baggage, and two dozen strangers. Lubochka stood between two long, laden tables directing traffic. “The girls get the attic. You men—you can fight for the regular rooms.”

  Brandon groaned.

  Obviously, he was low man on the totem pole. Genny hoped he had to sleep hanging on a hook.

  “Misha and I will take the front bedroom,” Lubochka finished matter-of-factly.

  Lubochka and Misha? In the same bedroom? Genny had the impression that Lubochka, big and deep voiced, played for the other team.

  Surprise made her careless; she tripped on the uneven wood floor and stumbled.

  Every person sitting along the length of the two oak tables turned to stare, and every voice hushed.

  Genny froze in embarrassment, and stared back.

  The big room was longer than it was wide, with stone walls covered by rough plaster. A huge stone fireplace yawned in one wall. Bottles and kegs lined another. The lighting was dim; nothing more than a few naked bulbs hung from the ceiling with pull chains dangling beneath them. Mismatched mugs and glasses studded the bar, and a huge polished brass samovar bubbled on one end.

  A female stood next to Lubochka, and it struck Genny the two women were photographic negatives of each other. Both exuded strength of will. Both were the same height, the same age. But this new female had a tanned face, pale blond hair, and blue eyes. Where Lubochka was strong boned and strong featured, this woman was delicate, with the shape of a supermodel.

  In fact—Genny looked around—none of the locals in the inn looked like Genny’s idea of a stereotypical Russian. They were all tall, thin and tanned, with blond hair and blue eyes. They gawked at Genny without an ounce of delicacy; gawked as if incredulous about something.

  Genny looked down at herself. Was her zipper open? She touched her upper lip. While she was asleep, had Brandon used a black felt-tipped marker to draw on a mustache?