Three figures stood in the whirl of white noise and frost and ice.
A woman holding a gun, her face hidden beneath the hood of a brown down jacket.
A man in a dark blue uniform and a black beanie hat, his hands cuffed behind his back.
And a second man in a dark grey fleece-jacket, his hair speckled with snow. A huge smile was spread across his face and he was rocking back and forth on his heels with delight, hands clasped behind his back, mirroring and at the same time mocking the posture of the first man.
For a moment no one spoke. Then the man in the grey fleece-jacket let his arms swing forward, raised both his hands and gave the man in the blue uniform a cheery wave.
"Surprise."
The other man gasped, his eyes wide and wild, flickering from the woman to the waving man and back again. A single word escaped his mouth before he could stop it.
"Impossible."
Riddhima had disarmed and handcuffed him within less than a minute, the man apparently too stunned to put up any kind of resistance. Now her eyes were fixed on him and her gun was aimed at his chest, while she carefully slid his gun and knife into her backpack. Vansh was starting to move somewhere next to her, but she didn't need to look at him to know what she would see.
She could practically feel his brain shifting into next gear, knew his eyes were flashing with excited energy, knew the corners of his mouth were twitching, holding back the words she could almost hear tumbling from his mind to his tongue. She knew all it would take to set them free was one more word. And maybe an additional punctuation mark.
"How…"
That one.
And that one.
Showtime.
"Magic!", Vansh whispered with a gasp and a twirl of his right hand. When he saw the sheriff's eyes widen in something close to fear, he shook his head with a chuckle.
I could go all Gandalf on him and he'd buy it, he thought, knowing that he should probably stop feeding the man's delusions, but the temptation to continue, to keep playing, to keep messing, was agonizingly strong.
At least until Riddhima killed it by clearing her throat.
Spoilsport.
"Might come as a surprise to you", Vansh said slowly, stuffing his freezing hands into the pockets of the jacket. "But there is not such thing as magic."
The sheriff didn't seem convinced, instead fixed his gaze on Riddhima, watching her chest rise and fall, her breath steaming in the cold winter air. Alive. Clearly alive. He looked at Vansh accusingly.
"She fell to her death. I heard. She fell. You screamed."
Vansh shuddered, trying to ignore the memory of Riddhima suddenly falling once the ground gave way, of her slipping, scrambling, screaming, her terrified eyes never leaving his own. Worse than the memory though, was the thought of her eyes locked in an eternity of terror, everything that was her, gone from them forever. The image of her lying in a hole six feet deep with a broken neck or being impaled on one of the wooden stakes sticking out from the frozen ground. The thought of what would have happened, if he hadn't caught her wrist in time. His chest tightened and he tried to breathe through the sudden pressure and the equally sudden lack of oxygen in his lungs, forcing himself to focus on remembering what had actually happened instead of imagining what could have.
His breathing returned to normal.
His heartbeat didn't.
To buy a little time, he gave a shrug, at the end of which he pushed his hands deeper into his pockets.
"I caught her before she could fall", he then simply said.
"But… your scream… you… it sounded like…"
Vansh grinned. "Pretty convincing, huh?"
Riddhima flinched. Too convincing. She remembered Vansh throwing his head back and giving that howl, that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside his soul, a sound that carried so much pain and sorrow that when it ended, she found her right hand was firmly clasped around his left.
Only she couldn't remember putting it there.
They had stayed like that for a moment, then he had winked at her and squeezed her hand reassuringly. And she had blushed slightly and let go of him.
Before her mind could go back to a point just a few minutes before the scream and replay another memory that would make her blush right here in the present, she forced it to concentrate on the suspect in front of her.
"It wasn't real?", the man asked.
"No", Vansh said. Riddhima noticed he was avoiding her gaze, instead fixing his eyes on the sheriff, just like she had.
"That wolf hole was a pretty nasty trap", Vansh remarked after a moment. "Did you built it yourself? Or was it one of the weekend hunter-slash-warriors you hate so much?
"Idiots", the sheriff growled. "Idiots built it. Probably while drunk. For a laugh. Felt manly. Then went back home. Doe fell into it, broke its leg. Died a miserable slow death. Not right. Just not right."
"Yeah", Vansh agreed. "Putting a stake through a person is fine, but cruelty to animals… that is just wrong. I see your point."
Bringing his hands out of his pockets again and rubbing them together, he continued.
"This is ultimately all about seeing things, isn't it? You wanted us to see your footprints, hoping to make us chase you without paying attention to anything else but your clear tracks in the snow."
With the other weapons now safely stored in the backpack, Riddhima lowered her gun and stepped towards the man, gripping his arm tight.
"Too bad for you", she said with a nod towards Vansh "that he usually pays attention to everything. At least when he's not too busy gloating. Or being a pain in the neck."
"Thanks.… I guess."
Vansh stepped closer to the man, until he felt Riddhima tense. He stopped. Addressed him from a still safe distance.
"You concealed it well. The trap. But the snow on top was too smooth compared to the surrounding area, plus the footprint right in the middle - nice touch - wasn't as deep as the rest. Because you couldn't put your whole weight on it or you would have fallen into the hole yourself. But hey, stupid city folk wouldn't notice details like that, right?"
Vansh pulled a broken twig out of his jacket pocket and turned it over in his hand.
"What you wanted us to notice, were the broken twigs and branches along the way. We had to assume you were in too much of a hurry to care when you left such obvious clues for us to follow. But…"
Vansh held the broken twig up.
"… if you brush past vegetation it bends in the direction of travel. Doesn't always break, sometimes just snaps back or in winter snow simply gets brushed off it. But it always indicates direction. These were pointing down. No direction of travel. And the force with which they were broken was too much: Hurry or no hurry — you'd have to be a mammoth or an orc to do that much damage in passing."
The sheriff gave an angry huff.
"You can read tracks. I didn't expect that."
Vansh's grin widened.
"Oh, I can read a lot of things, actually. And…"
He pointed at Riddhima.
"… so can the helpless girly city-cop."
The man blinked.
Riddhima smiled at him. "I know how to read tracks. And I know a false trail when I see one. Your footprints were too erratic and the balance was all wrong. You were actually walking backwards out of the dead-end to lure Vansh into it, so you could launch the avalanche and kill him."
Riddhima's grip on the man's arm tightened.
"And I did", the sheriff whispered, staring at Vansh, remembering how he'd seen him, actually seen him look up at him, moving his arm, moving his head, his shoulder. Maybe it was even more true than he'd thought. Maybe this man was AIR. Able to vanish and reappear. Maybe…
"Ah. Well. No."
Vansh laughed, then wrapped his arms around himself, when a sharp gust of wind blew more frost and ice around them.
"Sadly made me lose my jacket though. God, it's freezing. Riddhima, can we head back to the car now?"
Riddhima shoved the sheriff into motion, Vansh walking in front of them, arms still wrapped around him.
"We knew there was no way we would find you if you didn't want us to. You know the area too well. So we had to convince you that you had killed both me and Vansh, so you would come out of hiding and check to make sure."
Vansh slowed down, once the path became wide enough for all three of them to walk side by side.
"But… I saw him die… I saw him being buried!"
"Ah, well. You saw my jacket being buried" Vansh corrected him.
"But… it…" the man gasped again, stopping in his tracks, digging his heels into the ground like a frightened dog, a shiver of terror running through him. "… it moved".
The word came out as a wheeze.
Vansh leaned over to Riddhima and whispered in her ear. "I fear this one is either on the wrong medication or really bat-shit crazy."
He took a deep breath, the word "magic" already back on this tongue, when he caught Riddhima's eyes. And the clear warning in their depths.
He shrugged and rolled his eyes, then waved a hand dismissively. "Well, yeah. I made it move. Easy peasy."
The man tensed beneath Riddhima's grasp. She shot Vansh another look. He raised his eyebrows at her innocently. Then he explained in detail.
"I used it as a dummy. A puppet. Filled with snow and old leaves. With strings attached to the sleeves and the hood and threaded through the inside so you couldn't see them. Nothing even remotely supernatural about it."
He looked at Riddhima like a puppy expecting a treat after obeying a complicated command.
She ignored him.
"The movement you saw, was me pulling the strings to lift the arms and the head. Was convincing enough with the low visibility", Vansh said, shooting another glance at Riddhima.
"But I would have like it to be a little more life-like. I wanted the fingers and the wrists to move, too, but Riddhima thought turning it into a real-life-boy was a little too much."
He stuck his bottom lip out in a small pout.
But Riddhima continued to ignore him.
"The trickiest bit…" Vansh continued "was making the strings long enough, but these outdoor-jackets have almost as much cords as they have pockets and…"
He rocked back and forth on his heels, grinning broadly, then lowered his head slowly and let his eyes wander to his boots. He stopped the rocking motion with his toes pointing up. The tongues on his boots were sticking out, enjoying the freedom they had gained by the clear absence of shoelaces.
"There's always shoelaces. And on these kind of boots there's always half a mile of them."
When he looked up again, his eyes caught a fond smile on Riddhima's face, before she was able to turn her head away and hide it. Happy with the result of his efforts, Vansh returned his attention to the sheriff again.
The man blinked. Then he understood.
"You tricked me."
"Yup, stringing you along, so to speak", Vansh confirmed.
Riddhima, both losing her patience and realising the weather was getting worse, gave the man a rough shove, forcing him to move forward again. He did so without further resistance, stumbling on beside them. After a few steps she heard him mutter.
"But it was supposed to work. I had it all worked out. The wind said it would work. The snow said it would work. The earth said it would work. The elements were with me."
"Well, not all of them. The element of surprise was clearly on our side."
He stared at Vansh in confusion, who continued in a conversational tone.
"You know, for someone with your level of insanity, this was a boringly practical approach. Clever, efficient, but not very imaginative in the end. Right, Riddhima?"
She rolled her eyes, deciding to save her thoughts on the matter for later.
Then they all fell silent. Riddhima was wondering why Vansh wasn't asking him any questions about why he'd killed those people and what it all meant. She contemplated doing it herself, but then decided against it for now. She needed to concentrate on her prisoner and the walk ahead. The wind screamed at them, tossing and twisting around them, visibility dropping with each step they took. She had to narrow her eyes and sometimes even turn her face away for short periods of time when the cold became too much. She could feel her hand on the man's arm starting to become numb, the wind biting through her gloves. She gritted her teeth. At least her hood and jacket were still keeping the rest of her warm. Vansh, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky anymore. Which was probably why he stayed quiet. She felt him move beside her, then speed up his pace, until he was walking directly in front of her, thereby creating a small slipstream that gave her a little protection from the wind.
"We need to be careful now!", Vansh had to raise his voice, shouting over his shoulder against the storm. "I think we're close to the trap!"
Riddhima was about to answer, when her prisoner made his move.
He yanked his arm away, twisting and turning, Riddhima's freezing fingers losing their hold on him.
"No!", she yelled, trying to hurl herself at the man, but her feet didn't find enough grip on the slippery path and instead of tackling the man full speed, she just slithered into him with an uncontrolled bump. She struggled, saw the man's shoulder twitch and the evasive action she managed despite slipping again on the icy ground, led to the elbow connecting with her shoulder and not with her head.
Nevertheless, it hurt like hell.
With a shout of anger she scrambled up and tried again to get hold of the man, but he was faster, more used to manoeuvring on ice and snow and then he was gone. Riddhima's body crashed into the stone wall with a thud, then she fell backwards, rolling into the snow. All air was pushed from her lungs and she was rendered immobile by pain and disorientation and lack of oxygen. Her eyes swam, though she couldn't tell if it was because of the pain or the storm or both. She saw two dark swishes collide somewhere in front of her, one smudge suddenly going down, the other vanishing behind a wall of white. She cursed, then yelled.
"Vansh? Vansh!"
The remaining dark ghost rose. She tried to scramble to her feet and draw her gun, but her legs didn't work properly and neither did her arm, the pulsing pain in her shoulder making it numb, the muscles in her arm not responding to the commands of her brain.
Shit.
The dark ghost crept closer, then finally, after what seemed like an eternity, it turned into the familiar features of Vansh Raisinghania.
Riddhima gave a sigh of relief.
"Riddhima! You alright?" he asked, reaching out a hand to help her up. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her shoulder she let him pull her up to her feet.
"Fine. You?"
"Yeah."
Steadying herself against his side, taking a deep breath, blocking out the pain, refocusing on the task ahead, she shouted. "Lets go, maybe we can still catch up with him."
Before Vansh could protest, acutely aware that she was less than fine and unwilling to risk any further pain or injury, they heard a voice rising above the high pitching noise of the storm.
"I failed, divine teacher! So take me, air! Take me, earth! Take me, snow!"
Then a crashing, ripping, tearing sound.
Then silence.
Vansh felt bile rising in his throat. Riddhima shut her eyes.
"Yes. Definitely bat-shit crazy that one", Vansh said.
They stayed frozen in the storm for a moment, sides pressed against each other in comfort and shock alike. Then Vansh shifted, putting one arm around Riddhima, sliding it carefully under her uninjured shoulder. When she looked up at him, he said softly.
"Come on, lets get out of here."
After a few steps Riddhima felt more steady and untangled herself from Vansh, but stayed close. They moved slowly and in silence. When they carefully slid past the trap, neither of them was able to look into the wolf hole at the shattered body of the man that once had been the sheriff of Barnes Hollow.
Later, Riddhima couldn't recall how long it had taken them to reach the car. She suspected it had been mere minutes. Her body, now slumping against the hood of the car, insisted it had been hours. She felt Vansh's hand coming to rest on the small of her back, then, using tender pressure, coaxing her and her feet to take a few more steps. Her body, now apparently aware of the final destination, made one last effort and slid into the backseat of the car with a sigh of pain and fatigue. She closed her eyes. There was a thud, then the cry of the rising storm turned to a muffled whisper, then screamed one more time, before a second thud cut it off for good.
Riddhima leaned her head against the window. The cool, hard surface of the glass made the skin on her forehead prickle, but it was a good pain, a calming pain. She let out a long breath, enjoying the sensation, while a shiver, an outlet for the last remains of the adrenaline rush, ran though her body. For a moment she felt nothing, thought nothing. Then, with the imminent danger gone and in the relative safety of the car, her brain decided it was time to concentrate on more personal thoughts again.
Which meant that she suddenly felt incredibly stupid.
"Riddhima! Don't!" she heard Vansh yell again in her head. She knew now it had been a warning not to move and had nothing to do with what she'd just said to him before. She felt so stupid. Honestly. How could she have assumed the idea of her going away with Karan would bring that much horror to Vansh's face? That he'd be this upset by the thought of her going away? Looking at her as if his life was ending, as if in this moment the world, his world, would come to an end just because she was maybe moving house?
Plain stupid.
Embarrassment rose into her cheeks, the increased blood flow making her still freezing cold skin burn, like someone was sticking a thousand hot needles into her face.
She wasn't sure if the embarrassment came from her misjudging the scene as a whole or from the strange mixture of relief, joy and fear she had felt, when she thought he actually was yelling at her not to go away. Or from the fact that she was now aware of a considerable amount of disappointment on finding out that he hadn't.
Not daring to even begin to think about the question when and how and why all of this had become about Vansh all over sudden, she drew in another deep breath.
Instead of calming her down, it made her cough.
The cold surface of the glass, soothing before, now added to her worsening headache, the pain in her shoulder returning, pulsing in protest at the rather uncomfortable position she was currently in. She needed to relax her aching muscles, needed to move her shoulder away from the door, her forehead away from the icy window, but had no idea how.
A frown crept into her tired face and she pressed her lips together hard, biting down a small groan that threatened to escape her mouth.
It didn't.
But Vansh had heard it anyway.
She felt a hand touching her uninjured shoulder. The hand rested there for a few moments, then moved down to her arm, fingers brushing softly over the fabric of her jacket. A second hand reached over her, settling lightly on her waist.
Both hands pulled.
Her body shifted.
The hand on her waist let go, moved up along her side over her neck and into her hair, guiding her head carefully to its new resting place on Vansh's shoulder, a much warmer and more comfortable spot than the cold window.
It also smelled better.
She shifted a little, getting closer, moving her head, so her nose was now pressing lightly against his neck.
It was the second time today that she was this close to him.
Which was ironic given the fact that she had spent the rest of it actually trying to avoid him.
She suddenly couldn't remember why that was anymore.
What she did remember now was falling, the world slipping away. How she was sliding down into the trap, trying desperately to hold on, to twist out of the firm hold gravity suddenly had on her. She saw Vansh rushing towards her, launching into a desperate jump, his body hitting the ground hard, his arms sliding towards her, then a gut-wrenching pain, when he grabbed her wrist and pulled, fighting to get her out, trying to haul her body back to safety. She heard him grunt in pain at the effort, but he kept pulling and finally together they won the battle against gravity and she was back on safe ground.
They scrambled away from the edge of the abyss and managed to move into something the was resembling a sitting position, limbs still tangled up together, panting breaths mingling, hearts racing, bodies shaking. She felt Vansh's arms tighten around her, then relax a little. Just when she had decided it was time to draw away from him and get up, he gave a loud sigh of relief and, without warning, let his body fall backwards into the snow.
Since he hadn't bothered to let go of her, she was now practically lying on top of him.
He was still panting hard, eyes closed, trying to catch his breath.
So was she.
The position she was in wasn't really helpful, though.
But when a quick struggle against his grip failed to have any kind of calming effect, she gave up and let her muscles go limp, resting her head on his chest for a moment, listening to his breathing, to his heartbeat, feeling the warmth of his body slowly reaching for her through their combined clothes. He tightened his arms around her again for a moment, like he never wanted to let go.
Which she didn't mind.
Because she found she didn't want to either.
She also found she was surprisingly calm now.
A sudden shiver ran through him, a protest against the cold that had started to seep from the icy ground he was lying on through his jacket and jeans into his back. Still he didn't get up, didn't move, just reluctantly and slowly let his arms fall to his sides. Riddhima was still sprawled across his body, protected from the cold beneath. When he started shivering a little more and before her brain had any chance to process or protest against what she was about to do, she reached out her hands and started to rub warmth into his arms, his shoulders, his chest. His left arm reached back around her, stroking her back.
The last thing she remembered before both their brains had finally kicked back in and they had scrambled back to their feet, was him pressing the smallest of kisses into her hair.
Which, to her own surprise, she hadn't minded either.
To Be Continued.....