Arctic Dawn (The Norse Chronicles Book 2) by Karissa Laurel Page A

Olympic gymnast preparing for her gold-medal routine, I put the steps of my counter attack—one Tre had taught me—through an imaginary dry run. Then I dropped into a crouch and pulled the golem forward onto the balls of his stone feet. Before he recovered, I reversed my trajectory, pushing hard through my thigh muscles, using my legs like posts. I shoved against the golem, twisting my upper body until I faced him. His grip slackened again, and his arms fell around my waist. We must look like couple of middle-schoolers in an awkward slow dance .
    Nate laughed, a hard sound like shattering ice. “She won’t go down without a fight. How admirable.”
    I shoved Nate and the other stone figures out of my thoughts and concentrated on the problem before me. Get free from this trap, and then you can work on getting free from the next one.
    After pushing my shoulder up and out, I pounded a fist into his jaw, to the regret of my poor knuckles. Less punching, more squirming . I braced my forearm against the creature’s neck and used my arm as a lever, creating enough space to finally wriggle free. He lunged for me, but I danced aside, refusing that beckoning, stony embrace.
    “Sorry, buddy,” I said. “I like my men warm-blooded.”
    “Stop her,” Nate ordered in a bored tone. He must have been so confident in the certainty of my capture. I’ll teach you not to underestimate me. The other stone guards shuffled closer, but their movements were indecisive and slow. Nate’s directive not to kill me must have confounded their thought processes, or whatever passed for thought in their stony heads.
    I willed the remains of my fire into a burst of flames, and heat left my body in a momentary but massive energy discharge. I turned myself into the equivalent of a temporary, industrial blast furnace. I released all my inhibitions and gave myself over to the fire. Flames engulfed me, burning away not just my clothes, but the rage and the pain and the fear. The effect lasted a fraction of a second and left me empty, bankrupt, and impotent, and I’d probably stay that way until I got a full night of sleep and a few thousand calories inside me. But the fire bomb had done its job.
    The sprinklers kicked on as promised, but Nate lay senseless and crumpled on the floor, his face red and blistered, the edges of his suit charred. The closest two golems also showed blackened and well-cooked exteriors, but they remained on their feet, animate and threatening. They held their place, their expressions stoic, and their posture suggested uncertainty. Without their master’s directions, they posed no more threat than statuary in a museum. Was Nate dead or just temporarily out of commission? I placed my bet on the latter. No time to waste, then.
    My small victory was tempered when a sudden and unmistakable howl pierced the air. The wolf had arrived, and probably Helen, too. Oh good, because this wouldn’t be any fun if it were easy.
    I looked behind me, desperate for an escape route. On one side of my cul-de-sac, the industrial containers were wedged in a perpendicular configuration that formed an impenetrable wall. On the other side, the gap between the corners of two containers offered a tiny sliver of space, maybe just enough for an exit. I sucked in everything, making myself as skinny as possible, and thrust my hip and shoulder into the gap. With another desperate shove, I squeaked through, scoring and scraping the skin over my ribs in the process. A small price. I would have paid more.
    The narrowness of the crack between the containers meant my brawny babysitters would never fit if they tried to follow me. Perhaps, just that once, luck had taken some pity on me after all. The wolf howled again, and his eerie song chilled my blood. Go, go, go.
    The sprinklers cut off the same moment I reached the warehouse’s rear wall. Dead end. I stumbled to a stop and held my breath, and for a single heartbeat, the world went utterly silent. But then the