Veins of Ice Read online

  “Karena, any ideas?” Isabel asked.

  The question shattered her musings, making them scurry away, which annoyed her.

  “Not yet,” Karena said. Rachel waved at her to come over, so she returned to them.

  Rachel asked, “Lily, Ian, Isabel, what are your ideas? Right off the top of your head. Go.”

  “Water themed,” her mom said.

  “Ice cave,” her dad said.

  “Flowers,” her sister said.

  Karena had done one that had been centered around ice, and of course, something obnoxiously frilly, like flowers. Her sister liked repeating themes each birthday. It was either a sparkle party or a pink party for her.

  “I want something fresh,” Karena said.

  “Like an after-the-storm kind of fresh feeling?” Rachel asked.

  “Or in her case, after-a-devastating-tsunami kind of freshness,” her dad said.

  “Really?” her mom gasped, her hand going to her chest before she pushed him with it.

  “What?” her dad said. His eyes twinkled as he beheld her in them. “This is our little warrior here. She beat Asher in the duel.”

  Karena rolled her eyes at the “little” part. She didn’t bother to correct them or else they would see it as an opportunity to reminisce about raising her.

  “I want something new,” Karena said. She stuck her hands in her pockets.

  “I’m sorry dear, but you’re going to have to give me something more to work with. Everyone tells me these things,” Rachel said.

  Fishing for ideas, Karena said, “It’s just that I know everyone from the Water and Earth districts who are within my age group. I’ve gone to school with them, had sleepovers with them, or we’ve gone camping in the mountains together. I would like to interact with them as though we are strangers for once. I don’t know how to explain it, except that I want a fresh start and a fresh look on the people that I’ve known for so long.”

  “Are you thinking about something romantic or casual?” Rachel asked. Her hand rested against her chin, and her index finger tapped the side of her cheek.

  “Yes, romantic, and yet new and exciting.”

  “Like a princess party,” Isabel said, her eyes lighting up.

  “No. I want to feel as though I’m meeting everyone for the first time,” Karena said. This didn’t seem to be going anywhere. She wondered if she would need to spend more time trying to hopelessly figure out what the theme would be for her birthday party, or whether she should just skip having one to save her the aggravation.

  “I got it!” her dad said. “A masquerade party!”

  “That’s perfect! Why didn’t I think of that?” Karena said. It was old-fashioned, but brilliant.

  “What’s a masquerade party?” Isabel asked.

  Her mom explained, “It’s where everyone dresses up in fancy clothes from the old days, and people wear masks.”

  “Because they’re ugly?”

  Her mom’s mouth dropped. “Isabel, that’s not an okay word to say. No one is ugly. The masks are worn to add mystery and to give an air of subtle flirtation,” her mom said.

  “I like the idea. Great job, dad,” Karena said. She liked the idea, and now could breathe a sigh of relief because they had come up with a theme that few, if any, had used for centuries. Full ballroom gowns weren’t often worn anymore, except to plays and operas.

  Her dad grinned. The age lines on his face scrunched together like heavily wrinkled fabric around his eyes and corners of his smile. He put an arm around her mom.

  “And that’s why it’s a good idea to bring family or friends along,” Rachel said, and jabbed the air with her pen.

  She jotted down the idea in her notebook.

  “I would’ve brought Hadrian, but he manages to sidetrack me with his jokes,” Karena said.

  Rachel asked, “Now what will the color scheme be?”

  “Blue and purple,” her mom said.

  “What about purple and silver?” her dad said.

  “I like pink,” Isabel said.

  It didn’t surprise Karena in the least. “We know you like pink,” Karena said.

  Isabel said, “It’s the best color in the world.” She hopped up and down a couple times from excitement.

  “I have to say as a man, I doubt that and the idea scares me,” her dad said.

  “I want white, raspberry-red, and cherry blossom-pink,” Karena said.

  “Red? But that’s a Fire’s color,” her mom protested.

  Karena repressed a sigh. She said, “Only if it was paired with black.”

  Rachel said, “What an unusual color choice. This is going to be fun. We will need balloons, décor, lounge furniture, music, food, and whatever else that has to do with this theme. We will need to come up with the dress code. Traditional ballroom gowns, I presume?”

  “Yes. Is there anyone who can make the masks?”

  “I know of several people who are talented with crafts of that nature,” Rachel said. “Is there anyone in particular I should send a private invitation to? A boyfriend? What about a crush?”

  “No.”

  “No? Now there must be someone.”

  Karena shook her head. Her cheeks warmed, but there wasn’t a way to cool them, even with her ice powers.

  “Alright then, I’ll send out a general invitation to everyone in the Water and Earth district who might be interested in coming. Perhaps someone will catch your fancy at the party. Who knows, maybe you’ll connect with someone you didn’t go to high school with because they were a few years older than you. Or maybe someone recently moved to the city and might be the one you’ve been waiting for. There’s always someone out there waiting to be known, Karena, and this party will be perfect to meet that Mr. Right.”

  Now that she knew the theme, Rachel rattled on about her ideas. She was in her zone. Karena kept nodding, unable to find fault in any of her suggestions. No one had come up with a masquerade birthday party yet, and she was breaking out of a rut of ones that centered around the element of water, and focusing on something new, yet old and romantic with a mysterious twist. Just like she had wanted, it was fresh, like a crisp breeze drifting into a stale room.

  Chapter 3

  Karena walked into work, leaving behind the pounding rain and the slick stairs. It had been raining hard for two days straight. It was as though the sky was pouring its heart out because of some kind of misery that had befallen it. Hopefully, the storm would move on soon.

  She strode through the pillared entrance of the Archelm City Cryptid Hunting Headquarters. She nodded and said hello to the receptionist behind her desk made from fossilized wood, and continued through the atrium. Halls and rooms fanned out from the atrium. In one such room that she whisked by, a lecture was being given to a group of pest-plagued people on how to effectively conduct pest control measures themselves. They were owners of homes, businesses, and farms that had been visited by cryptid hunters over six times in a year, which was why they were being coached. It wasn’t necessarily their fault, everyone knew that, but their help would be crucial in keeping the number of pests down and letting the cryptid hunting teams attend to other assignments.

  Behind her, Karena heard booming steps from someone larger following her. Her boots thudded against the mosaicked flooring with its images of warriors fighting off hydras and awakened demons from the deep. Her hand went out to the discreet employee door near the far corner of the atrium. The spell on the door flashed its complex, interlinking runes at her in white, which meant that it recognized her. Bolts clicked as they withdrew inside the door, allowing her to push it open. She did so with her weight. The door closed behind her.

  She counted. Three seconds later, the employee door opened and shut. Whomever it was, they were almost on her heels. Her steps quickened through the granite hallway. To her left, early as always to work, scientists were testing serums, analyzing dead cryptids they hadn’t ever seen before, and documenting their findings. Their expansive laboratory was like a
glass fortress. They were oblivious to her walking by, as they were to the world itself for most of the day.

  On her right, cat-eyed, cathedral windows studied the teary city with detached interest. The rain careened through several stone griffins above the windows. She often wondered if the stone griffins were merely decorative water spouts, or if they had a hidden purpose like other statues in the city did. On the street below, people in their steampowered cars and trucks inched along. They seemed to be wading through the streets, rather than driving through them. All throughout the city, drains had backed up, and the streets had turned into swimming pools.

  Her hallway split, and she took the left hallway to head deeper into the building. The footsteps behind her did the same.

  “I never got a chance to congratulate you on your victory,” a deep voice said behind her.

  She knew it was Asher. She had seen him get of his truck just as she had gotten out of her car. Her breath exhaled in frozen clouds. The elemental essence in her veins pulsed, asking to be let out.

  “I don’t need to be congratulated by you,” Karena called back to him. She didn’t bother turning her head to acknowledge him.

  “Very well then. It was a clever move by the way. I don’t receive hugs like that too often. Usually, people as cold as you don’t give hugs.”

  Karena whirled around, taking him by surprise. He bumped into her before he could come to a stop. She glared at him, hating him with a passion.

  “As cold as me? I’ll show you how cold I can freeze something.”

  The temperature in the hallway plummeted, soared, and then plummeted again. Moisture beaded the stone walls. Their hatred for each other consumed them and leaked into tangible, elemental form.

  “With your temper, I could mistake you for a Fire,” Asher said.

  His eyes flashed gold. He sneered at her, baiting her, tempting her to unleash frozen hell on him. Finish him. Let’s do it. Free us the elemental essence in her blood whispered to her. It rattled the bars that held them in check.

  “A Fire, eh?” Karena said. She detected a slight sound behind her, and clammed up.

  “Are you two playing nicely?” a booming voice said behind her.

  She had been wise to hold back her powers. Ever since the competition, there had been tension between both sides. Captain Valmar, head of the cryptid hunting teams, had already issued out a lot of basement assignments. Basement assignments were punishments for not leaving the feud out of the workplace environment. They involved cleaning taxidermy creatures, dusting out drawers of bones, cleaning off jars filled with organs, and scrubbing down the floor and walls. It wasn’t pleasant work, but the scientists enjoyed their contributions.

  She had been given a basement assignment before and had learned her lesson. So even when provoked by a Fire or an Air, she waited for the provoker to slip up first in order for them to receive such a loathed punishment. And Captain Valmar always seemed to show up when a discourse was about to happen or had just happened, to the point that it was uncanny. Somehow, he could sense when trouble stirred.

  “I am,” Karena said.

  She turned around. Captain Valmar stood at the end of the hallway. Tall, thickset, and bullnecked, but nerdy when he wore his glasses, he fused intelligence with strength. His shirt, as usual, was sleeveless to accommodate his muscled arms. When he became irritated or angry, his muscles swelled. She and other coworkers had asked him about his lineage before, since it was obvious that he wasn’t fully human, but he never offered an answer to their questions.

  “And what are you doing Asher? Did you follow her in?”

  “I…. I came in at about the same time as her.”

  “Bullshit. You need to give people their space. I’ve already given out eight basement assignments this week. I can hand out one more,” Captain Valmar said. He folded his arms against his chest.

  “I’ll give her and everyone on the Water and Earth side more space next time. I’m just irritable today. My basement flooded.”

  “As has everyone else’s. I don’t care if you come in late to work due to the weather outside, or if you can’t come in at all because you need to take care of your house or other people, but what I do care about is you and everyone else leaving behind that stupid feud when you come to work. When you step through that employee door, you’re not a Fire or a Water or an Earth or an Air, you’re a cryptid hunter of Archelm City. The feud doesn’t exist. You help each other out, and if you don’t want to, then leave each other alone. Do I make myself clear for the thousandth time to you pigheaded people?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now I want you to retrace your steps, go out to your truck, get in, and then get back out again, and come in with a better attitude,” Captain Valmar said.

  Asher nodded, not about to mess with Captain Valmar. No one messed with Captain Valmar. Asher turned on his heel, and walked away with his cloak swishing behind him to do as Captain Valmar wanted, no matter how silly it was or would look.

  Captain Valmar pointed at Karena. “And you, I suggest you leave the feud behind too. Now get going to the locker room to change,” he said.

  Karena walked past him, through the doors, and into the circular room they called the Warren room. In the Warren room, along the southern wall, were rows and rows of books that reached clear to the ceiling. All of them were reference material related to cryptid hunting.

  On the eastern wall was a huge map of the city. Captain Valmar’s assistant, Eve, was pressing thumbtacks into it. Each thumbtack represented the location of an assignment. Using colored string, which had no correlation to elemental colors, she strung together individual routes, which a team would loosely take. Karena had long since suspected that the strings were magical in some way, but didn’t know for sure.

  There were two sets of teams, the morning teams, and the afternoon teams. There was a special team they never saw called the Nightguard, which roamed the streets at night just like graveyard police officers did. They were nocturnal hybrids and shapeshifters, so the night-time didn’t bother them and the lack of people suited them well. Karena and everyone else guessed that they were werewolves and the like. Though the Nightguard didn’t actively take assignments, they were there when people needed help. On their patrol, they often deterred or even killed dangerous cryptids to keep them from harming and disturbing the sleeping population.

  On the northern wall was a bulletin board that was crowded with complaints of cryptids and ghosts, reoccurrences, notes, and whatever else. It was for Captain Valmar and Eve to attend to and sort out. Karena was glad she didn’t have to deal with such a mess.

  Along the western wall were plush couches and chairs to sit on and read reference material from the book shelves on the southern wall, or to discuss various things. Stained glass lamps perched on table ends next to drink coasters.

  In the center of the Warren room, wide desks formed a circular pattern. This was where they sat after they changed into their work uniforms. They sat respective to where each district lay in the city. The Fire teams took the northwestern set of desks, the Air teams occupied the northeast desks, the Waters sat at the southwestern most desks, and the Earths always took the southeastern desks. The desks radiated outwards in a layered circle. There were quite a few teams. A dozen or so coworkers were already sitting at some of them.

  Tristan walked out of the men’s locker room. The entrance of it was squeezed between the bulletin board and the map on the eastern side. Karena rushed to the women’s locker room in the southeastern corner of the Warren room, hoping Tristan wouldn’t see her.

  “Karena! Good morning!” Tristan shouted to her.

  Karena groaned, feigned a smile, and waved at him. She quickly disappeared into the women’s locker room. She rounded the bend in the short entranceway, and walked by the sitting area where a group of Airs talked as they touched on some makeup. Karena rolled her eyes. It would only wash off in the rain. She went to her locker. A Fire named Eralis with flaming-orange ha
ir changed into her work uniform nearby. Eralis flicked her eyes to her, and promptly ignored her. Karena did the same, and kept her focus on what she was doing.

  Karena pulled on her black leather pants and top. They smelled like lemongrass. After being deposited in the laundry bin the day before, they had been cleaned, folded, and placed back into her locker by the laundry staff. Her locker number was on the inside of every garment she had, just like everyone else’s.

  After she changed, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She strapped her holstered taser gun, knife, and a mini first aid kit to her belt. She left the locker room, and sat down next to Hadrian at one of the Water tables.

  “We’re going swimming today,” he said, and cracked his knuckles.

  “Again,” she said.

  “You’re supposed to like the water. You may get wet, but not cold.”

  Though their suits repelled water and had a hood, the rain still managed to find a way to make her miserable. She was impervious to the cold, but not to the uncomfortable feeling of wet leather rubbing against her bare skin, which was what happened when the rain got inside of her suit.

  Tristian leaned in from the other side of the table, his eyes alight. He pushed his limp, black hair off of his forehead. He said, “I talked to the weather gurus, and they said that this isn’t a normal storm. It blew in from the east, where the swamplands are, which goes against the normal jet stream. They don’t know what would cause it to do that, except a major disturbance of some sort.”

  Karena said, “I don’t know what disturbs me more, your excitement about that or the fact that the storm might have been artificially created somehow.”

  “They have their theories, and they range from—,” Tristan said.

  “Amarine, should we take any special weaponry with us today?” Karena asked, cutting off Tristan.

  Amarine was usually the lead hunter of the day, or the alpha as they were sometimes called. The lead hunter made the important decisions for the team.

  “We need to make sure we stock up on nets, catch poles, and venom sticks. We should use our tasers lightly due to the rain and the possibility of tasering ourselves from using it in wet conditions. I think Hadrian learned his lesson about that yesterday,” Amarine said, squinting at Hadrian.