Page 11 of Polestar (The Global Paranormal Security Agency #3)

ELEVEN

M agnus lunged forward, desperate to separate Ana from his kinsman.

“No!” Kane slipped between Ana and him and shoved him back with such unexpected force that his back hit the wall several feet behind him. “Let her do her job.”

Magnus was startled by a glow in Kane’s eyes he’d never seen before as her voice pinned him in place.

Then he realized she hadn’t physically touched him.

What the fuck?

He snarled at her. “Release me.”

“Not until you understand you cannot interfere.”

He struggled against the invisible bond.

“I know this is harming her and what the risks are, Magnus. We have no choice. She is meant to do this, as are you.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” He couldn’t unpin his spine from the wall or force his arms forward more than an inch or two.

“It doesn’t matter. We need all the information she can get about this sigil, Magnus.”

The raw emotion in her voice took some of the fight out of him.

“Burns and Connor left this morning to meet with Lirikai, Perenga and McLachlan in Iceland. They’re getting closer to the location of the hub. But this sigil changes everything. We have to know more before we move in.”

His gaze fixed on Ana’s kneeling, trembling form. He stopped struggling against Kane.

She released him without another word or movement.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and back through his hair. “We’ve seen it a few times before. Why the concern now?”

“As agents, you’re not kept up to date on all the survivors’ post-rescue.

You go on to the next job, and the next.

” She turned her gaze to Aksel. “Every one of them is still in a disconnected state. That sigil is the only difference between those victims and the ones that we’ve recovered that have healed and are trying to move on with their lives. ”

“So, Aksel might remain like this?”

“Yes. Maybe? We—I don’t know.”

“And how will this affect Ana?” He swallowed the lump rising in his throat.

“I don’t know that either,” Kane said, voice raw.

When she returned his direct gaze, her expression was full of concern, regret and resolve.

There was nothing he or she could do.

It was up to Ana.

A na awakened in a black filmy undertow.

Pulled and pushed in all directions, unable to draw breath.

Trapped. Weak. Disconnected.

Prey to the whispers.

Something tapped against her palm. Her hand closed around the object, grasping at anything she could use as she struggled against the crushing blackness.

It was Gran’s crucifix.

Focus . Feel.

Balance soon followed.

She stopped fighting against the need for air and control, allowing her body to drift with the current.

She surfaced, gasping for air, and opened her eyes to a looming iceberg.

Only the polestar kept it company above the empty sea.

The iceberg’s tip was blinding white and pristine, while the lower section at the water level had veins of black streaking upward, seeking to devour it.

On its face, there must have been a ledge as she focused on the form of a bear, clinging and exhausted.

Ana swam toward it, as much as she could, through the thickening black mire, sucking at her legs to drag her back under.

She trembled against the cold as her body threatened to seize.

Not now! Not now.

“Aksel!” she screamed without stopping.

The bear turned its weary head in her direction but didn’t move.

The downward drag on her body nearly had her below the surface again. Panic flared through her, but the crucifix in her palm reminded her to focus.

Shivering, she focused on relaxing her body, feeling the direction of the water—the actual water not the inky oil slick that tainted it and surrounded the iceberg.

Water was Ana’s natural element. It was her emotional conduit. She sought it now to enable her to reach Aksel.

She opened her eyes when her shoulder bumped into something smooth and solid.

Aksel peered down at her from his ledge.

Her hand slipped off the icy surface as the current threatened to sweep her right past him.

His paw slapped the side of the iceberg, claws anchored in the ice so Ana could pull herself out of the water.

After several minutes of struggling, she climbed his furry arm and collapsed next to him, chest heaving.

“Thanks.”

He huffed.

“I’m with Magnus,” she finally said.

He didn’t move or make any effort to shift in order to communicate with her.

“Are you in bear form to stay warm, or are you stuck like that?”

This time, his huff contained a despondent growl.

His morose state rippled over her.

Pushing herself into a seated position, she placed a hand on his damp, dirty fur. “We’re going to try to help you. But we need you to help us figure out how.”

The next huff felt like a sardonic laugh.

“Where are we?”

He turned his head, leveling his gaze on her, one polar bear brow raised.

“Yeah, fucked if I know too,” she said, uncharacteristically using the ‘F’ word as she surveyed the empty ocean.

“Okay, listen Aksel. We found you aboard a cargo ship, hidden in the engine room, badly beaten and unconscious. That’s all we know.

That and that you have a sigil tattoo at the base of your throat.

We need to know what happened to you and anything you can tell us about the mark.

So, if you could take your human form and explain it all, that’d be totally awesome. ”

The bear stared at her, and she had the distinct feeling he wanted to chomp her head.

“Fair enough, but if you eat me, I can’t help you.”

The next impression was something like, ‘ how the hell can you help me?’

Going with the hunch, she said, “I’m guessing you’d like to know how I’m going to help you.

Well, whether you’re aware or not, we are not physically on this iceberg in the middle of the ocean.

We’re somewhere in your psyche. Your body is in a comfy hospital bed with IV’s hooked up to you.

Magnus is standing by and worried about you. ”

There was no response as she stared the polar bear in the face.

His nose twitched, scenting.

Then he shoved her shoulder with his snout.

Who the hell are you?

How much should she tell him? Could this sigil link somehow convey information back to its originator?

Maybe she’d already said too much.

“My name is Ana. I’m able to reach you through my psychic ability.”

Shaman.

“Sort of, but not really. I don’t have the skills and experience your shaman would.”

She considered what she knew of shamanic wisdom, which wasn’t much, and realized that maybe that’s what he needed—his clan shaman.

“Is that what you want? Do you want us to take you to your shaman?”

He growled.

“Oh, oh dear, okay, that was a clear ‘no’. But why not?”

Why wouldn’t Aksel want to go to the shaman?

She sat next to him, arse frozen to the iceberg as she tried to work through the problems and frustrated that he couldn’t just communicate with her in plain English. Then she realized she didn’t even know if Aksel spoke English, anyway.

But he understood her.

Because they were in his psyche.

And yet, even here, he was trapped in his bear, while his physical body remained trapped in his human.

She dropped her face into her hands. This was way beyond her pay grade. None of this was anything Maeda had ever worked on with her. They’d never gotten this far.

Because usually, she grew tired and lost her connection.

How long had she been here already? Was she trapped here, too?

Oh, dear God, that would be so bad.

Tell me about it.

She popped her head up and looked at Aksel. “You can hear my thoughts?”

He dipped his head with a little tilt.

Her body shuddered against the cold, her hand gripping Gran’s crucifix.

No, she wouldn’t be trapped. But that didn’t mean she should stay here any longer than she needed to.

She had an idea.

From this ledge, they could only see in one direction. Maybe, just maybe, the open ocean wasn’t all Aksel had access to here.

She stood, stretching out her stiffening joints, and flexed her hands against the cold.

Ana tried to find a place to climb. There weren’t many footholds on the face of the ice. Most of it was too slick for her to grip.

“Aksel. Can you help me get to the top of your iceberg?”

He turned his head, looking up to its snowy peak beyond the black veins creeping up from the ocean. Now that she watched them for a few moments, she noticed they continued to creep upward—consuming.

A wave of sudden dizziness overwhelmed her, causing her to stumble as she tried to step onto a more solid spot.

The black, oozing water pooled around her feet, impeding her ability to ascend.

Aksel’s fur was covered in the stuff. Did it weigh him down too?

“We have to try, Aksel. I need you to help me see more.”

If there is anything more to see.

They both thought it.

But he looked down at his paws. The water encroached on him too. He stood and staggered forward.

The water seemed to reach for him, to drag him back.

He looked down at it, then seemed to notice how it coated his fur. He engaged in a full body shake to dislodge the blackened water from his body.

It flew off in a cloudy spray, splattering the iceberg and open water beyond.

Some of it gathered itself, pooling and oozing back toward Aksel’s paws.

He climbed.

Ana struggled to climb alongside him but couldn’t get a grip.

On.

“Climb you ?”

He huffed and repositioned his rear leg and dug the claws into the ice so that she could use it.

“Okay, if you insist,” she said with a last glance at the black puddles that seemed to try to find them through the dips and valleys in the ice.

Once she was on, she gripped his fur in her fists and tried not to put her knees and feet in awkward places to impede his ability to reach the summit.

The higher they went, the heavier the pressure on her mind.

Aksel felt it too.

She felt it in the way he struggled to move ever upward, his sides laboring with the effort.

But finally, finally, they crested the iced peak and Aksel dug his claws in so as not to slide back down to where he’d worked so hard to climb from.

“Oh, my god.” Ana breathed.

Beyond them, the sea was filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of other icebergs of all shapes and sizes and in various states of being consumed by the black water, turning the ice and snow to varying shades of white, gray and black.

There were a few more polar bears occupying other icebergs. There were also humans—many of them. A few other creatures occupied the floating surfaces.

They floated between two visible coast lines, small ports on either side.

The inky water stretched between the two land masses; the land as streaked with black as the ink burrowed like seeking vines.

Then she understood.

They were all connected.

They were all connected by the black, inky magic of this sigil.

“We have to somehow break the sigil.”

But how?