Cold Spell

there? Air is raw and sharp in my lungs, I push the ignition forward again, again, try not to see Mora’s face in my mind.

I push the key forward again, hold it this time as the engine sputters, struggles, and finally kicks to life. I crank the heat knobs to all the way on and all the way red, push the car into drive. The car doesn’t move, locked in by snow and ice. Damn it. The heat is kicking in, burning then thawing me as I glance in my rearview mirror—

Eyes. Bright eyes staring at me from behind the car, a man’s shape in silhouette. My breath stops; I can’t look away, but I reach over, lock the door—

I scream, because there’s another man just outside my window. He has thick, wavy hair; a smooth face; and thick lips. The man at the window waves his fingers at me, and something about the motion isn’t right. Something about him isn’t right. I can’t look away—

A scratch at the passenger door. I wheel around instinctively. There’s another man there, then one by the front tire, two more behind me. They’re everywhere, surrounding me, and I can’t slow my heart down—

The man at my window smiles.

It isn’t a real man’s smile. It’s the smile of a man in a costume. A smile I’ve seen before, on another face. A smile that terrifies me. What’s worse is the recognition in the man’s eyes—he knows that I know what he is, and his face gleams over it. I see him look to the back of the car; his gaze falls on Mora’s coat. He frowns.

“You alone out here, miss?” the man says, his voice a hiss that somehow pours in through the closed window. I swallow. Go, go, go—I slam my foot down on the accelerator.

The tires spin uselessly, kicking up snow. I hear laughter from the men behind me, my lungs are shrinking, too small for my body. Every story Grandma Dalia ever told me about beasts is rushing through me, along with a feeling of certainty that this, this is how I’ll die. I swallow.

The man at the window chuckles under his breath, a dark and raspy sound.

And then I can’t stop screaming.

His eyes yellow, becoming smaller. His shoulders hunch over, and I hear a sound like celery stalks snapping—his bones are shifting, lengthening. With a resounding crack, his face juts out and becomes a muzzle. The noise is happening all around me—they’re all changing. Sticky and wet-looking fur bursts through their skin; their fingers bleed as nails thicken into claws. They breathe out long clouds in the cold, and they’re smiling—smiling—wickedly through mouths that are human, human lips, human skin breaking, tearing apart and bleeding.

My foot is pounding on the gas, the brake, anything, please, please, please, please. One of the beasts with a still-human arm reaches forward, punches at the back window of the car. It shatters, and the others howl hungrily.

Lights. Something moves; something flashes. I hear tires squealing on gravel, and then, before I can figure out what direction the noise is coming from, I’m jolted forward as the back of the car gets clipped. I bounce, hit the steering wheel. I recover, turn around, and see a sleek red car sliding on the ice just behind me. The beasts are huddled a few dozen yards ahead of it—it’s hit one of them.

I press my foot down on the accelerator again, and now that the car has been knocked around a little, it finds traction. I zip backward, unprepared for the speed; the rear of the station wagon crashes into the front end of the sports car. I cringe, throw it into drive, look in the rearview mirror.

Eyes meet mine—gray eyes, eyes that aren’t a costume. Eyes on a real man. He looks out the window, toward the beasts. Something is happening—the monster lying on the ground, the one he hit, twists to one side. Darkness starts to rush across its body, as if it’s being tied down by black ropes. More and more and more of them, and then suddenly the ropes are skittering away, shadows on the ground, and the monster is gone.

The others turn toward our cars.

The man in the sports car jumps out. I lunge over the passenger side, unlock the door as he jumps over his own hood, slides across mine, and grabs for the door handle. He yanks the door open, leaps inside, and slams it behind him.

The beasts run at us, grabbing for my car with claws and hands and something in between, broken nails and bloody fingertips. They slam against the already broken back window, clearing it of glass, hands are on my hair, my coat sleeve, pulling at me—

“Floor it!” the other driver roars. I bring my foot down, throw the car into drive, and skid around in a circle. They’re chasing us; one monster is still holding on to the back window, bracing himself as we fly away from the rest area toward the interstate. I slap the wheel to the right; it shakes the monster off and he falls away, his yellow eyes raging at me as we break out of the trees and onto the main road.

The other driver is panting, looking over his shoulder, shaken and sick-looking, though he doesn’t seem as close to screaming as I am. My knuckles are white on the wheel, my eyes wide. I’m going to throw up, but I’m afraid to stop—I grab the window knob, roll it down, and lean my head out to empty the contents of my stomach onto the moving road.

“Better?” the man asks.

“Not really,” I gasp, cringing at the taste in my mouth.

“You’ll be fine. We got away. What’s your name?” He extends a hand and, when I’m too flustered to take it, rests it on my shoulder for a moment in an exceedingly awkward way.

“Ginny,” I say. “Ginny Andersen.”

He nods, closes his eyes, and rests his head on the back of the seat. “Werewolf attacks aside, good to meet you. I’m Lucas Reynolds.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

We creep along the interstate, our eyes mostly glued to the car’s mirrors, certain one of the beasts is running up behind us. Lucas turns on the radio, spinning the dial back and forth until the little orange line finds a station not entirely obscured by static.

“… an additional six to eight inches are expected overnight. Temperatures are expected to drop below zero tonight, meaning roads will likely be impassable tomorrow. Be careful, Nashville, and stay home if at all possible. Stay tuned for more on the storm; we’ll be bringing you updates on school and business closings every hour, or you can check our website for the most up-to-date information.”

I inhale, looking at Lucas. “I have a question.”

“Go for it,” he says. Without his coat on, he’s much less imposing—he’s rail thin, and I’m pretty sure I could take him in a fight.

“The things in the woods—”

“Werewolves,” he says. “Just call them what they are. You’ll feel less crazy if you say the word aloud.”

“Werewolves,” I say, and he’s wrong—I just feel crazier, talking about werewolves in a stolen car, in a blizzard, with a stranger. “You know about them?”

“More than I care to. Though I can’t figure out why they’re here right now. They’re not usually around in the winter. Strange that there were so many…”

“Do you know about the Snow Queen, too, then?”

Lucas frowns, shakes his head. “Never heard of a Snow Queen. What’s that?”

I lunge into the backseat, pull the cookbook out, and drop it in Lucas’s lap. He opens it tentatively. “Flip… keep flipping… that page. There.” I’ve stopped him on the pages about the beasts. Lucas looks at them, mouth parting a little as he flips the pages, past spells, warnings, and descriptions of monsters.

“Whoa,” he says when he gets to the map. “Is this all of the Fenris packs?”

“The what?”

“The werewolves,” he says absently. “That’s what this is! I wonder if it’s accurate. I know the Arrow pack is out of Atlanta now, and I think Sparrow is gone altogether. Is this yours?” he asks, motioning to the cookbook.

“No. It’s my friend’s grandmother’s. And there was this girl, who is actually the Snow Queen, and she ran