Preston to let him know I'd be late when I heard the sound I'd been dreading-the low, throaty growl of the Fenrir wolf.
The ominous sound slithered across the snow to me, and I froze, wondering where it had come from. I'd trudged about halfway down the mountain by this point, and the chair lift and the Winter Carnival were up and off to my left. Happy shrieks of laughter mixed with the loud calliope music on that side of the slope.
Okay, the wolf definitely wasn't over there. That only left one other option.
I slowly turned my head to the right, and there the creature was-crouched down in the snow just inside the tree line, like it had been yesterday when I'd first spotted it next to the bunny slope. I'd been so focused on meeting Preston and getting down the slope as fast as I could that I hadn't been paying attention to where I was going, just blindly following the tracks, and I'd drifted over toward the thicket of pine trees that covered this side of the mountain — and the Fenrir wolf.
It looked the same as I remembered-a big, powerful body covered with shaggy, ash-colored fur and burning crimson eyes that seemed to glow with a particular hatred for me. The wolf's lips drew back, exposing its many, many teeth, and it licked its lips with its long, red tongue before its chops drew back in something that looked like a supremely satisfied smile-just like the smile the drawing in my mythhistory book had given me back at the academy.
I cursed myself. How could I have been so freaking
Before I could worry too much about the wolf and whether or not it was going to leap out of the trees and tear me into bite-size pieces, a tremendous roar ripped through the air, and the ground shook, like the mountain was the epicenter of a violent earthquake.
I fell on my ass in the snow and just sat there, stunned, while the ground bucked and heaved beneath me. Above my head, the chairs on the lift swung back and forth at sharp, crazy angles,
As suddenly as it had started, the intense shaking stopped, and I shook off my shock and scrambled to my feet. I shielded my eyes against the dazzling glare and looked up. Something must have exploded on top of the mountain, because I could see bright orange flames up there, licking at the sky like they wanted to burn all of the blue out of it.
I let out a tense breath. Whatever was going on, it was happening at the top of the mountain and not down here where I was at….
That's when the rumbling started. This deep, violent, intense rumbling that rippled through the whole mountain, the roar of it drowning out everything else. I half expected the snow to split open under my feet and for me to start falling down, down, down into the middle of the earth.
And there was… there was… there was
My breath caught in my throat, and I realized what the rumbling was.
The explosion that rocked the mountaintop hadn't just started a fire-it had also dislodged the snow. Thousands and thousands of tons of it, all barreling toward me, until the towering, white, shadowy wave of it blotted out the sun.
An avalanche was tearing down the mountain-and I was right in the middle of its path.
Chapter 13
It took my brain maybe half a second to realize what was going on. That, yes, there was an avalanche on the mountain, that the snow was crashing down on itself with tremendous, unstoppable force-and that it was getting closer and closer with every breath I took.
I might not be the outdoorsy type, but I'd seen enough nature programs on television to realize I had two choices: stay where I was, get swept away by the avalanche, and die or make a run for the tree line and hope that the gnarled, knotty pines would shield me from the snow. Of course, the only problem with option number two was that the Fenrir wolf was waiting in the trees to rip me into bloody bits. Not much of a chance of me surviving either way, but the odds were slightly better with the wolf. People survived getting attacked by grizzly bears. A Fenrir wolf couldn't be much worse than that-right?
I was going to find out.
I picked up my feet and raced across the snow, running as fast as I could through the powder and heading straight for the tree line. The roar of the avalanche grew louder and louder until it drowned out everything else, even my own desperate, panicked breaths and the erratic
And then there was the wolf. It paced back and forth inside the thicket of trees, looking at me and then up at the snow that was probably going to bury us both.
I didn't have time to tiptoe around the creature or keep it from attacking me, so I threw myself into the trees and scrambled forward, trying to get into the very middle of the thicket. The wolf stayed where it was, watching me with its burning red eyes. They grew brighter and brighter as the snow rushed toward us and the landscape darkened.
I plopped down on my ass in front of the thickest, strongest tree I saw, ripped off my silver ski jacket, wrapped it around my waist, and used the sleeves to tie myself to the trunk. Then I curled my arms and legs around the sturdy trunk, ignoring the sharp, sticky needles that scratched my face and the pinecones that snagged in my hair. I anchored myself to the tree as best I could.
I was two feet away from the Fenrir wolf-well within killing distance. All it would have to do would be to lean forward and snap its jaws around my neck, and I'd be dead.
Instead of leaping on top of me, the wolf watched me all the while, its pointed ears laid back flat against its
