Domenic whipped around, scanning every shape and shadow for a monster. But that was only his panic fooling him. Unseasonable or not, it was still Summer.
Again, a wind blustered, and its cold seared through the flimsy cotton of his button-up. As other pedestrians ducked toward the buildings for cover, Domenic shielded his eyes with his hand and twisted around to where Caldwell still hovered bythe stop, her hair whipping across her face. They locked gazes. Their shock mirrored each other. Their breaths fogged in the air.
Between them, flurries of snow whirled, glittering in the many lights of Mercester Square.
Until, with great groans of failing generators, the bright storefronts blackened. The traffic lights cut out. The headlights of cars sputtered and died.
Domenic staggered toward Caldwell, only a silhouette in the dark.
“Th-this doesn’t make sense,” he gasped through chattering teeth. “It can’t be.”
And yet Caldwell looked away from him and followed the direction of the wind. In the lane ahead of them, the snowflakes coalesced into a vortex. Into a form.
“You know what this is, right?” Caldwell whispered. And while Domenic couldn’t bring himself to answer, she drew her training wand from her purse. Domenic recognized her expression well, so grim and resolute. He’d seen Hanna wear it once before. “This is a winterghast.”
IVELLERY
SUMMER
Freezing wind stung Ellery’s bare arms and face, threatening to wrench her training wand from her grasp. Cold seeped through her, and a disarming power tugged deep in her chest, faint yet oddly familiar.
Around the square, people bolted from the Winter magic whirling in the street. The ghast within was still half-formed, hunched low and curled in on itself. Fractals of ice circled it in a deadly, impenetrable vortex, snapping into place atop jagged limbs and a crudely arched spine. Its silhouette grew with every heartbeat. They had a minute, maybe less, before the monster finished spawning.
Ellery swore and glanced around. Cars skidded to a halt as their passengers joined the fleeing crowds, leaving behind stagnant vehicles belching exhaust. For seemingly the first time in history, Mercester Square had gone dark. Ellery cast a light and shouldered against the tide of people as she rushed not away from danger, but toward it.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Barrow gasped, stumbling after her. His freckled cheeks and nose already gleamed with frost.
“We have to kill this monster as soon as it wakes. Before it can summon a winterscurge.”
“But Gallamere’s NDC patrols—”
“Are on leave for Summer. By the time they show up, we’ll all be dead.”
Winterghasts slaughtered with impunity, not for sustenance, but with a cruel, unceasing violence that could only be stoppedby violence in return. And their storms could annihilate countless lives if left unchecked.
Barrow’s eyes bulged. “You mean it’s up to—to us.”
Ellery recognized his fear. After the fall of Nordmere, she knew it well. But when she’d arrived in Gallamere after losing everything, the Order had promised it was safe. No winterghast had breached the city limits in centuries, not since the Thirty Years’ Chill.
Until now.
Ellery’s own fear crept up inside her, as brutal and paralyzing as the cold. But she’d faced a winterghast before. She could face one again. And based on Barrow’s reputation, she’d likely be facing it alone.
No sooner had she pointed her wand at the maelstrom than it burst apart. The fully formed winterghast rose onto its hind legs until it loomed above them, then unsheathed twin sets of claws.
All ghasts bore different animalistic appearances, and this one resembled a mutated bear carved of ice, with a narrow, hideous face and shards bristling like fur down its back. Blue eyes beamed at them like floodlights, and silver Winter magic emanated from its body, casting the abandoned cars and blacked-out buildings in an eerie glow.
Bile rose in Ellery’s throat as its jaw unhinged, wide, too wide, revealing rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth.
She readied an attack, but before she could cast it, a powerful burst of nature magic shot at the creature’s chest.
Stunned, Ellery twisted around to glimpse Barrow clasping his wand with two hands. Again and again, his spells blasted at the beast, glittering white. The gusts tore a hole through its stomach and the monster roared, flailing back.
Maybe Barrow had more skill than she’d given him credit for. But he’d clearly still skipped some crucial classes.
“Wind will only delay it,” she called out. The winterghasthunched over the curb, its wound already sealing. “Use heat. Light. Fight Winter with Summer, yeah?”
At first, Ellery wasn’t sure he’d heard. He only stared, stricken, at the monster. Then Barrow nodded and widened his stance. “Got it.”
