The clammy feeling of a sweat crawled across my skin as I took up position behind Bjorn. I could tell by the twitch of his muscles that he was trying not to look at me as I stood behind him. I lay my discarded glove across his shoulder, and he blanched at the feel of it. It fell to the floor and made a soft plop as it landed. I looked up at Old Man Winter, but he was still on Bjorn, unyielding. I put my gloved hand on Bjorn’s other shoulder, and he looked at it as though a spider had crawled on him. His shoulders were tense, his muscles at full flex, hands still locked behind him.
“Last chance,” Old Man Winter said. “Before she extracts your soul like a walnut, leaving only a broken shell behind.”
Bjorn held his quiet for almost a minute, and finally, Old Man Winter nodded to me. I lay my bare hand on Bjorn’s shoulder, and he tensed once more, as though he could shuffle off the chair and away from me. I felt the stir in my fingers first, as though the blood were running to them. I was warm now, my breathing slow but deep, each exhalation a sweet release. I felt the rush as my skin tingled all over, the sweet, warm sense that Charlie had talked about, desire and pleasure filling my mind as I heard the first scream leave Bjorn’s lips. It was a small howl, not only loud in the physical space, but in my head, through the tie between us created by my touch, the drag of his soul against the bond with his body as my power tore at him, ripping a little bit of him from it moment by moment. Thoughts began to cascade through my mind, flashes of images, faces, emotions, and I held my hand on him for only another second before I tore it away, my breathing turned ragged, painful. My hand shook, and craved what it had held only a moment before, and the rest of me did, too.
I hunched over, hands on my knees, drawing slow breaths and unable to pull myself back up. I turned my head sideways to Old Man Winter, who looked over Bjorn and down at me, the closest thing to concern rimming his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “But if I touch him any longer, he’s going to be a permanent spectator in my life like the others, and frankly, I could use fewer sickos in my head, not more.”
Old Man Winter held his position, towering above Bjorn, far, far above me. “Sienna…you must extract this information from him. He will not tell us. Sifting it out yourself is the only way…and is necessary to begin to gain hold over your powers.”
“I can’t…” I said. “I can’t keep them at bay without chemical assistance. And I don’t want another one in there. Not like this. Not ever.”
Old Man Winter took two steps around Bjorn and knelt to one knee, still almost able to look me in the eye if I had been standing up, which I wasn’t. “You know the dire predictions of what is to come, not only from Omega now, this Stanchion, but of the other warnings, the storms that come for us and all our kind—indeed, all humanity as well. You will be one of their protectors, but to do so, you will need the strength to do what is necessary.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t even control them without chloridamide. I can’t do it.”
“You must,” Old Man Winter said, his voice an urgent hiss that dragged out the word must. “You are vital to our success.”
I stared at him. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?” The cold inside me was almost indescribable, my body crying out for the warmth of Bjorn’s soul, mine for the taking if I only reached out—but from Old Man Winter, for once…it wasn’t cold at all.
“That you are key.” He stared at me, and the iridescent eyes of blue warmed. “But it is all at risk. If you are unwilling to do what it will take to protect even yourself, how can you protect anyone else?” His hand came to my shoulder. “You must learn to control your power. To not fear it.” He looked to Bjorn. “And you must be willing to kill when it is necessary.”
“He’s a prisoner,” I said, and looked past Old Man Winter to Bjorn, whose eyes were open wide but rolled back in his head. His mouth hung open and spittle was rolling down his chin. The smell of fear and sweat filled the cold air in the room. “He’s helpless. Give it time, we’ll break him.”
There was something I saw, a flash in Old Man Winter’s eyes, and he stood abruptly. “Time is not a luxury, and nor is it something we possess in abundance. This Operation Stanchion rumbles closer to fruition, and we remain like children running about in the woods after dark, unaware of the danger about to unfold around us.” He placed a hand on Bjorn’s shoulder. “You will not use your power to unearth his plans?”
I stared at the back of Bjorn’s head. The man’s head was turned, looking back at Old Man Winter, and just far enough that I could see the edge of his eye under his heavy, Cro-Magnon brow. “No,” I breathed, “not like that. Not him, not anyone. I just…I can’t.”
He didn’t even flinch. “Your mother would.”
I, however, did flinch. “I’m not her.” There was a pause. “We can find out another way. He’ll talk.” I drew a deep breath and stood, coming up to my full height. “We’ll break him.”
Old Man Winter closed his eyes, as though pondering something, and then opened them again, now impassive. “You are correct. We will break him.” I felt the temperature in the room plunge, this time no product of my imagination. My skin, once clammy, felt ice form along the wet dampness of it, the freeze crawling up around me as a winter frost manifested before my eyes.
Old Man Winter’s hand glowed where it lay on Bjorn’s shoulder, and a thin sheet of ice was forming around it. It grew thicker, denser, as I watched astonished, the frost crept down Bjorn’s arm to mid-humerus and beyond. Bjorn let out a cry, followed by a sustained scream. “Oh, yes,” Old Man Winter said, removing his fingers from Bjorn’s arm as the air in front of his mouth formed a cloud that was visible against his thick, black wool coat. “He will break.”
With a subtle move, Old Man Winter brought his fingers back down in an open-handed slap that sent a cracking noise echoing through the room. Bjorn’s entire hand dissolved into shards of ice and cascaded to the floor in a pile, no more substantial than a mound of discarded snow. “If it takes losing every limb he has…he will break. And if that fails…” Old Man Winter placed his hand on Bjorn’s chin and held it up, looking into his eyes. “Then we will wait until tomorrow, when he has regrown his limbs…and begin again.”
12.
I was out the door before I realized I was walking, my key card granting me exit. I put my back against the wall in the hallway and listened, but heard nothing from inside, nor in the hall save for the vent fans and my own heavy breathing, sharp, punctuated with a gasp every few minutes as I tried to hold in strong emotion.
The door opened quietly a few minutes later and I averted my eyes to keep from looking inside, and whatever was left of Bjorn. When I glanced, unable to control the instinct to look, Old Man Winter obstructed my view until the door was closed. “You don’t approve of my methods,” he said, stating the bloody obvious.
“You tortured him.”
“He would kill anyone who got in the way of capturing you, harm you in any way it took to get what he wanted.” Old Man Winter made no apologies as he stood there before me. He stood just as tall as he had in the room, just as imposing. “Why would I do any less to protect you from them?”
“They’re a joke,” I said, almost expelling the words as a breath. “Everything they’ve sent, we’ve beaten. To cave to their tactics, to drop to their level—”