Read Online Chains of Ice by Christina Dodd - Free Book Online

the gold. I don’t care what you think, what your superstitions say. Do you hear me?” She pointed, marking the villagers and the team with her attention. “You all heard what Mariana said. That girl brought us luck. Up here, we need all the luck we can get. So hear me. I want no bad blood. No strife. No unpleasantness at all.”
    Genny knew she was talking about her.
    She just didn’t understand why.

Chapter 7

    L ost. In the forest. A dozen pairs of indifferent eyes watch her strive to save the world’s last lynx. Darkness falls, and one pair of eyes begins to glow red . . .
    The door slammed open. The light flashed on.
    Sweaty and frightened, Genny jumped out of her nightmare.
    “Sorry,” Avni mumbled. “Dark in here.”
    “Not anymore.” Genny pulled the thin pillow over her head.
    “Sorry,” Avni said again, and dragged her bag to her cot. “No head for liquor, and that vodka. . . . I’m going to be so sorry in the morning. So sorry . . .”
    The attic was a whitewashed space with a single lightbulb in the middle of the low ceiling, with two narrow iron beds tucked in among boxes and trunks. Genny’s lumpy mattress rested atop rusty springs—but for her tense and travel-knotted muscles, it was heaven; she’d settled in and listened and smiled as the party downstairs had grown louder and more raucous. Yet when she fell asleep, she had fallen right into that nightmare.
    Avni flopped on the bed. Said, “Crap. I forgot to turn off the light.”
    Genny knew why she’d been dreaming about those eyes. What she’d seen today had creeped her out. Those eyes . . . were they John’s eyes? And if they were, did that mean he had known she was coming?
    Genny sat up on one elbow. “Listen, Avni.”
    Avni moaned in response.
    “I want to know more about the yeti.” Genny figured she could ask anything she wanted. There was a pretty good chance Avni wouldn’t remember talking to her tonight.
    “Can you imagine?” Avni sounded dreamy. “Days and days of such great sex that you never want another man?”
    “No, I can’t imagine.” Genny had been busy graduating at the top of her class. She hadn’t had time for sex. “Listen, I want to know—”
    “How he does it. I know. Me too. I know it’s weird, but Halinka said he does things with his mind.” Avni gave a high-pitched giggle that sounded incongruous coming from such a tall woman.
    “‘He does things with his mind,’” Genny repeated, and her heart sank. She might not believe in the Chosen Ones, but evidence was building that John was extraordinary . . . in more ways than one. “What do you mean?”
    “That he can move things and. . . . Listen, it’s silly, really. But the people in Rasputye are so superstitious, you have no idea. It’s all hooey.” Avni struggled her way up onto her elbow, too, and looked drunkenly solemn and sincere. “I mean, what idiot believes in magic?”
    “ You believe that John is so good in bed, a woman never wants to sleep with another man.”
    Avni snorted and giggled again. “That’s why Brandon hates him so much. Brandon knows no woman is ever going to moan for him. Not with that little, teeny weenie.”
    Genny did not want to know that—or how Avni knew. “TMI, Avni. TMI!”
    Avni giggled uncontrollably, and finally managed, “You’re kind of a prude, aren’t you? Listen, that John . . . he’s good in bed. He gives a girl what she wants. That woman I met . . . Halinka. She said there was something about him. . . . He smelled so good, she wanted to lick him all over. She said he cooked for her, massaged her, kissed her, told her she was pretty, that her body excited him. He did everything for her pleasure: spent hours touching her, going down on her, worshiping her.” Avni’s eyes got dreamy. “At the same time, she said, he was a man . You know—a big man.” Avni gestured.
    “I get it.”
    “She said when he was inside her, there were, like, these pulses of power . . .”
    “It sounds like