Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked

baby? This is the Cadillac-o-Snowcats.”
    Regin is young, Kaderin reminded herself. Only ten centuries old.
    “Lookit, it’s not like we have much choice about the snowcat, anyway. This is as far as the crew will take us.”
    “I still don’t see why we couldn’t just fly all the way to the mountain range.” Kaderin gazed longingly at the Arktika—even that tin bucket of a whirlybird was preferable. Two soldiers had anchored it down and were keeping it running—it was night in Antarctica in the middle of austral fall, and if the helicopter rotors stilled for even a few seconds, they would freeze that way.
    “You will if the wind starts whipping up,” Regin answered. “Freak katabatic winds aloft. I learned that word today.”
    Aloft or katabatic? Kaderin was tempted to ask.
    “Besides, at that altitude and in this season,” she continued, “the rotors would definitely freeze. And we don’t have an automatic thermoelectric anti-icing system. We’re all manual.”
    As if to illustrate “manual,” two other soldiers were spraying a de-icer on the less intricate snowcat engine, a secret cocktail of calcium chloride that was stronger than any on the market, black or not. The last soldier, the leader, Ivan, was a tall blond of exceptional good looks. He took another swig from a flask of vodka that never froze, then gave a bow to Regin.
    Earlier, he and Regin had been playing slap hands, gloveless, in subzero temperatures, because “it hurts worse in the cold.”
    Regin waved back at him, smiling sunnily even while muttering, “Young, dumb, and hung. Where do I sign?”
    Kaderin pinched her forehead. She had finally decided to ask the coven for help and wound up with the most frat-pledge-esque of the Valkyrie—and the one she’d dreaded facing.
    Regin’s mother, the last survivor of a vampire attack on the Radiant Ones, had been on the verge of death when rescued by Wóden and Freya. She’d been scarred with bites until the day she died, years later. Even on her beautiful glowing face.
    Regin had learned to count by them.
    Kaderin began pacing. “You shouldn’t have come, Regin.”
    “You had two prerequisites.” Regin plopped down on a snowbank. “And I do believe I have Russian ex-mil contacts, and I speak the language—”
    “Oh, come on! I’ve since learned that you do not by any stretch. You think Dostoyevsky is Russian for ‘How’s it hanging?’ ”
    She blinked up at Kaderin as she paced by. “Then how do you say it?”
    “I—don’t—know.”
    “Then how do you know it’s not Dostoyevsky ? No. Really.” She blew a bubble with her gum—possibly the first to do so at this location—but it flash-froze, and she had to crunch it back to gum consistency with her molars. “Obi-Wan, I was your only hope.”
    Regin knew Kaderin did not appreciate Star Wars references. “There had to be someone,” Kaderin insisted.
    “Would you rather Nïx had come?”
    Nucking Futs Nïx. “As a matter of fact, she was on the list of prizes. Or at least, the hair of the oldest Valkyrie was.”
    “No wonder!” At Kaderin’s raised eyebrows, Regin explained, “Right before we took off, Nïx called to tell me she went into the Circle K to get a People and some madman sheared off most of her hair.” She added, “Nïx thinks it’s ‘becoming.’ Kind of like an early Katie Couric or Tennille of Captain and—”
    “Silence, Regin!”
    “ What?” She stomped one of her hyper–pink and purple snow boots. “What’d I say ?”
    “Myst could’ve come.”
    “I told you, she’s busy.”
    Kaderin said, “And you never told me with what.”
    She hiked her shoulders and averted her eyes. “Dunno with what.”
    “Regin, I’ve told you what’s at stake.”
    “I know. And we’re totally going to win the key.”
    Kaderin didn’t miss that Regin had slipped we’re into that sentence. “What is taking them so long? These amulets are decade-long glamours. We’re going to be overrun with trolls and killer kobolds wanting to look human.”
    Regin snorted, she laughed so abruptly. She bent all the way over, elbows past her knees.
    “Damn you, it isn’t funny.”
    Once her guffaws died down, Regin said, “You are the only person on earth who calls them killer kobolds. That’s such a slippery slope away from killer gnome.”
    “Have you forgotten that they took my foot?” She’d just been frozen into her immortality—mere days earlier—otherwise, it would not have regenerated. In