Read Lissa Kasey - Dominion 3 - Conviction Online
Authors: Lissa Kasey
“Like you were dealing with stuff?”
“I’m okay.” He glanced my way again. “We’re okay.” I fought to keep my sigh to myself. Tanaka, his mother,
made him this way. She was so reserved about emotion she’d inflicted fear into Sei about expressing himself. Kelly was good for him in that way, since the guy was pretty open about everything he felt. Except now. Something had changed, and Sei followed his lead, which meant harder times ahead for Gabe and me.
He frowned now. “But it’s our vacation. We’re supposed to do family stuff.”
“And you hate the cold and snow. We should have gone somewhere warm.”
“Then I couldn’t spend much time with Gabe.”
But Kelly wouldn’t be trembling like a willow tree in the wind, and Sei wouldn’t have that tight set of his shoulders when he thought people were staring at him. Which that tall tattooed guy was doing now as he stood near the stairway. Gabe could have rented an island or something.
The main lodge door opened, and Hans came in looking cold and distressed. He stopped at the counter to talk to his wife for a few minutes. I caught the words “sled” and “frozen.” That didn’t sound good.
I brushed Sei’s shoulder. “How about you go and nap with Gabe for a while. You look tired.”
“I am a little tired.” To have him admit it meant he was more exhausted than he appeared to be.
I walked him to the stairs, watched him disappear toward his room, and then I headed for Hans. If we had a chance of getting out of here, I would do what I could to make that happen. My bones ached with a familiar pain that made me think something was seriously wrong, and we just hadn’t figured it out yet. With Kelly and Sei safe upstairs, I could search for a way out of the hills and valleys of northwest Minnesota and back to where I could guard them with ease.
washing away the day from my skin and dressing in clean, warm clothes, my stomach rumbled. I found my way back down to the lobby, thankful that Con was nowhere around, and tried to find Jamie and Sei. We still had to talk about that horrible storm.
“The little one went back up to his room,” Mrs. Gossner said when I asked. “The older one is out looking at the snowmobiles with Hans. None of them will start, and we can’t find Ron. He usually does all the maintenance.”
I wondered if the sleds had been full of gas before the storm hit. If they’d been low, the lines could have frozen. Or maybe the batteries just needed a boost.
The lodge looked so empty. How many other guests were trapped with us? The sun setting in the distance meant it had to be close to four in the afternoon. Gabe would be up soon. The cold that had gotten to me yesterday didn’t seem to be rearing its head yet. Maybe it was just a fluke.
I crossed the lodge and headed out the door, hoping to find Jamie and learn just how stranded we truly were. Being at the lodge made the storm seem less intimidating. There were strong walls around us and other people affected too. It just didn’t seem as big of a deal. I hoped I was right.
The garage door was shut tight against the increasing wind, so I had to rush across the very-snowy lot. Good thing I’d put my Docs on before coming down. The cars were just heaping mounds of snow. I couldn’t imagine how bad the roads were. Out here in the great open north, whiteout conditions were a real threat. Hopefully the sleds worked and we could get to a ranger station for supplies or rescue.
The wind groaned in crazy bursts through the barren trees, throwing loosened snow at me the whole way across the lot. I stepped inside the garage and shivered. The lights were on, and it was warm, though not the friendly heat the fires at the lodge gave off.
Jamie hunched over one of the sleds, hands wrapped somewhere in the core of the machine. Hans peered in the gas tank of another. “It looks like they all were,” he said.
“Shit,” was Jamie’s reply.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Jamie glanced back my way. “You shouldn’t be outside
without a coat.”
“I’m inside now.” I gave him a mischievous smile. “You’re almost as bad as Sei.” Though his tone made it
I moved up beside him and stared down at the sled. The metal glistened with condensation, and frost covered a good portion of the lines. “That doesn’t look good. Water in the lines?”
The uneasy feeling the storm had left me last night came back in a quick shudder. Having never lived in a hurricane state I couldn’t equate to that. But if I could imagine, and my imagination was really good, whatever had hit us last night had been somewhere along the lines of a low level hurricane of snow. Lots of wind, water, and pressure, creating a whole soup of bad.
My eyes refocused on the lines, and I looked up to find Jamie watching me curiously. “What?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Are the radios working yet?” Maybe I should have grabbed my coat. The temp in the garage couldn’t have been more than forty degrees.
“We got a short CB message through to the ranger station, but no response.” Hans pressed his hat down further over his gray hair. “Can’t find Ron anywhere.”
Jamie got up and shrugged out of his coat, handing it to me. I shook him away. “I’m fine.”
“You’re shivering.”
“You need that more than me. There’s more of you to heat.”
He growled, much like the bear he became on the new moon, and wrapped the coat around me. “What is it with people not taking care of themselves? Doesn’t anyone train their kids to be self-sufficient?”
When he put it that way…. “I’ll run in and get my coat.” “Take that one with you. Just bring it back when you come in again. It’s only two or three degrees above freezing.” Jamie went to the next sled, digging into the engine like an old pro. Was there anything he wasn’t good at?
I turned away, letting myself out but making sure the door was firmly shut. Hurrying across the yard didn’t keep me any warmer, Jamie’s ginormous coat around me or not. Snow had blown heavily around the doorway, and when I pulled on the doors they wouldn’t even budge. What the hell?
Tugging harder, I tried pushing and pulling both doors. Neither moved. The huge wooden slabs didn’t have any glass to look through, so I pounded on them. Was it the cold, or had someone locked us out? I followed the wall around the opposite side of the house to see if there were other entrances. They must have a fire exit or something. Maybe a delivery entrance.
The right side of the building didn’t have as many trees, so the drifts of snow towered above me, pressing against the building. I picked my way through the snow, sinking several feet in with each step. The top of a door was visible. Without gloves or a hat I was already shivering. Trying to brush the snow away made only minimal progress. The drift was probably four or five feet wide. If the door swung outward there was no way it was going to open.
A press of moisture began to fill the air again. I cringed against the cold and that feeling of something wrong that kept digging down inside of me. Had Jamie told Seiran about the storm? Even if he had, there were no working phones, so it wasn’t like he could call the Dominion for help. I was a level five water witch. Did they have someone more powerful they could send to put a lid on the magic?
Pressure began to build in my head again, making me shut my eyes for a moment to block out the light. Finally, I sucked in a deep breath and climbed up the pile, trying to push everything away from the door so I could open it. The cold stung and froze my fingers when I slipped and plunged into the snow. My feet stopped somewhat further off the ground than I had expected. I dug through the drifting white mass until I found the red plaid of a flannel shirt. Everything beneath it was hard, solid, and unmoving.
The blue set of flesh was not something I’d ever encountered before. I even dug a little further, thinking I was seeing things. But the flannel led to a jacket, which lead to an arm. My heart pounded like a freight train. Dead bodies only happened in the movies. I was so not ready to be the next Sherlock Holmes.
Pulsing cold and fear made all logic unattainable. My heart hammered in my chest as I turned and ran back to the garage, slipping and gasping for air like the fish out of water that I was. I slammed the door open and stumble-slid to a stop in front of Jamie.
“Guy in the snow. Frozen!” I wheezed, lungs cinching tight.
Both Hans and Jamie blinked at me. Obviously they didn’t get what I was saying.
I waved my arms at them and motioned in the direction of the lodge. “Side door. Dead guy!” The weight of the water rising in the air closed in on me. I suddenly felt lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. Must have closed my eyes, because when I opened them again Jamie was there, arm around me, holding me up.
“I’ll go check the kitchen door. Get him inside. There’s another storm blowing in,” Hans said to Jamie while he headed out the door into the whipping wind.
“C-coat?” I asked Jamie, offering it back.
He shook his head. “You have asthma?”
I nodded, though it’d been years since I’d had an attack this bad.
“Where’s your inhaler?”
“Room,” I rasped.
Jamie scooped me up and raced through the cold to the main door. He tugged at it, and it didn’t budge. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He set me down beside the door and reached out, funneling his magic into the wood. The door began to warp and move beneath his hand until it split in the middle and spit the lock out like it had a bad taste. Jamie kicked the door open, picked me up, and raced up the stairs. “Which one?”
I pointed to the one at the end of the hall to the left. Dark dots began to pour into my sight as I struggled for air. Jamie fumbled around in my pockets, yanking out the key and opening the door. He set me on the bed and looked around the room in a panic. I leaned across the bed and pulled my inhaler out of the bedside drawer, taking several long puffs before some of the tightness eased.
Jamie finally took a long, deep breath himself and fell to his knees beside the bed. I lay on my side, staring at him while I forced my body to draw even breaths.
“I’m a whole world of angry with you right now.”
“Why?” I whispered, happy the black dots had gone away.
“You never told me you have asthma. How many times have we done something that could have set off an attack?”
Was that all? “I grew up with asthma. I know how hard I can push myself. I run and swim, remember? Lots of awards.”
He threw his hands up in exasperation. “You’re just like Sei. Hiding the important stuff. He won’t take his anxiety pills without me reminding him, but he needs them. Without them, he’s a quivering mass of jelly.”
“That he is.” It felt so much better to breathe again. I sucked in heavy lungfuls of air and watched Jamie pace the room like a caged tiger.
“Okay, Yoda.” He began to pick up things and put them away. Everything had a place, which was a motto that came from spending lots of time with Seiran’s OCD. “Better now?”
“Yes. But there’s still a dead guy by that side door. Frozen, I think. He was hard as ice. I hope to never see that again.” I closed my eyes while Jamie still moved around the room.
“Why don’t you tell me these things? Don’t you trust me?”
I popped open an eye to stare at him. “I do trust you.”
He folded his arms across his chest, face pinched like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. I let my body relax into the mattress and must have fallen asleep since all sounds disappeared for a while. Never felt Jamie grab his coat off, pull the blankets around me, and leave.
was going to make my heart give out. I’d driven him around for months. Had hundreds of meals with him, walked him to class, and spent a lot of time watching movies beside him on the couch, only to find out he’d been hiding a serious illness from me. How many times had we gone running or swimming, or even now on the ski trip, and he could have had an attack? God I hated that helpless feeling.
I didn’t even realize I’d stomped to Gabe and Sei’s room, and I’d pounded on the door until it opened to an alarmed looking Sei, whose clothes were disheveled. Gabe relaxed on the bed, shirt half unbuttoned, soft smile on his face and gold hair glowing in lamp light.
“Everything okay?” Gabe asked quietly as Sei stepped aside to let me in.
I felt the flush burn my cheeks when he buttoned his pants and straightened his shirt. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Nothing we can’t continue later.” Gabe adjusted his shirt, rose from the bed to kiss Sei on the forehead, and motioned me to the chair beside the table. I sat, feeling heavy and oddly betrayed. Was it because Kelly had obviously not trusted me enough to tell me about his asthma? Or was it more?
“What’s wrong?” Sei asked, wringing his hands in that worried fashion he’d only started a few months ago. “Something’s wrong. Jamie doesn’t ever look like that,” he said to Gabe.
How did I look? I tried to steel my emotions to keep Sei from becoming more concerned. He had his own problems to deal with. Gabe’s eyes met mine, and there was a question in his, but now was not the time. “Kelly found a body outside. It might be the missing maintenance guy.”
“A body?” Sei seemed to collapse on the bed. Gabe wrapped his arms around him and stroked his hair.
“He probably got lost in the storm and couldn’t get inside in time. I’m going to go and try to examine him.” And get my mind off Kelly. “As soon as this storm ends I think we all need to get out of here.”
“Water and air are at play,” Gabe said. Both Sei and I looked at him. He shrugged. “There was nothing on the radar before the storm yesterday. I’d been keeping an eye on it on my phone. The storm came out of nowhere. It showed up on the radar just seconds before the link went out.”
Kelly had said the storm had been unnatural. “You don’t think that Kelly might be….”
“No,” Sei said. “I trust Kelly.”
But if he were bitten like Sei had been a few months ago, he could be doing it against his will. That could be why he had been trembling so badly. He had so much power pushed into the storm that it was wearing at him.
Gabe got up from the bed, gripping Sei’s hand. He must have had the same thought as I had since he said, “Let’s go check on the body. I will be able to tell if a vampire is involved in his death.” Gabe and I would work it out. Create a plan. Keeping Sei and Kelly safe were the most important things.
I nodded. Gabe must have been on the same page because he led Sei to Kelly’s room. I opened the door, hoping I wasn’t leaving my little brother alone with a thrall.
“Be back in a while, beautiful,” Gabe whispered to Sei, lips finding his in a soft kiss. I looked away and let them have their moment before assuring myself that Sei was safe inside my room. Once the door was closed and we were headed outside, Gabe asked, “So what else is wrong?”
“All the sleds were sabotaged.” Though the words nearly killed me to say, he had to know. “Water in the lines.”