"Uh, excuse me, but why isn't the chair lift working right now?" I asked.
The guy pul ed his head back out of the box and stared at me.
His bushy white beard made him look like Santa Claus. "We've been having some electrical problems.
Thought I'd take care of it while al you kids were busy playing your carnival games."
"Okay, so when are you going to be done? In a few minutes, maybe?"
The guy shook his head. "Nope. I've got at least another half hour's worth of work here. Probably closer to an hour."
Frustration fil ed me. I knew it wasn't the guy's fault he was doing his maintenance right now, it was just my bad luck.
"Wel , how am I supposed to get back down to the hotel?
I'm meeting someone for lunch."
He shrugged again. "I guess you'l have to walk down the slopes. That's what the other kids are doing." He pointed, and sure enough, I saw a few figures at the very bottom of the mountain, walking through the alpine vil age and heading for the hotel.
Tracks crisscrossed the snow where the other kids had wound their way down the steep slope.
"Thanks," I said.
The guy nodded, stuck his head back into the box, and started fiddling with al the wires inside again.
I should have headed toward the hotel immediately, but instead, I hesitated, my eyes scanning the snowy landscape, looking for the Fenrir wolf. I hadn't seen the monster since yesterday, but that didn't mean that it wasn't stil lurking around the resort somewhere, waiting to pounce on me the second it got the chance.
My phone vibrated again, cutting into my thoughts, and I pul ed it out of my pocket and read the message. Here already.
Waiting 4 U. P.
I bit my lip and put my phone back into my pocket. I didn't want to stand up Preston, and I didn't want to text him some lame excuse about not wanting to walk down the mountain by myself, because there might be a mythological monster after me. He'd think I was crazy. Besides, there were tons of people on the mountain today making tons of noise.
Surely, those things would be enough to make the wolf stay hidden wherever it was.
So I stepped into the tracks the other kids had made and set off down the mountain. Despite the fact the other students had plowed a path, the snow was stil deep, coming up to midthigh on me in places. I floundered through it, doggedly going down the slope one slippery step at a time.
I moved as fast as I could, but it was slow going, and I was just debating whether or not I should text 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 cal iope 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 fol owing 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 myth-history book had given me back at the academy.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, Gwen!
I cursed myself. How could I have been so freaking stupid? I knew I had to stay away from the trees, but I'd been so distracted by the thought of having lunch with a cute guy that I'd practical y wandered over and given the wolf a pat on the head. Here you go, puppy dog. Here's a tasty treat just for you.
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 fel 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, creak-creak-creak ing with every tremor until I thought they might snap off the cables and come crashing down right on top of my head.
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 al 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 fal ing down, down, down into the middle of the earth.
And there was ... there was ... there was something coming down the mountain now. I squinted, trying to see exactly what it 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, al 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?