Chains of Ice by Christina Dodd

a double take.
    Eyes. Pale blue eyes staring at her from the underbrush.
    She rose, her gaze fixed on those eyes in the distance, a man’s eyes . . .
    “John?” she breathed. As she did, the face that went with those eyes . . . faded into the twilight.
    She was alone. She could barely breathe, and all she could hear was her pounding heart.
    Around the bend, the Volkswagen roared to life.
    Genny backed up, her gaze flicking from tree to tree, trying to see where the man—it had been a man; she was sure—had gone.
    She reached the road as the van drove up.
    Behind her, someone opened the door.
    “Get in, Genny! We’re late already.” It was Avni.
    Genny pointed a shaking finger into the woods. “Eyes. Watching me . . .”
    “Oo, the yeti’s been watching her,” Brandon mocked.
    “Oo, she’s scared of the yeti.”
    “No,” she said, “it’s not a yeti. It’s—”
    And a forty-pound female cat with red fur and distinctive black markings strolled out of the brush, posed for a moment, its eyes fixed on Genny, then turned its back on the astonished group and slid back into the forest.
    “My God, Genesis, my dear”—Lubochka’s voice shook with awe and reverence—“you spotted our first lynx of the season.”
    John Powell rose from his blind in the underbrush, stepped out on the road, and watched the Volkswagen van chug away, spewing blue smoke out its rusted tailpipe.
    The girl had seen through his cover-up, and that surprised him. He had been in Special Forces. He was so adept at camouflage that wild animals had bounded over the top of him in the underbrush.
    But then, the girl herself surprised him.
    Every year he came out to look over Lubochka’s new team. He didn’t fool himself about his motivations. He came to make sure none of the Chosen Ones sneaked in to spy on him.
    He wasn’t paranoid; he was realistic. He had signed a seven-year contract to work on a team of Chosen. He had left before his term was completed. There was nowhere on this earth he could run where they couldn’t find him. So sooner or later, they would come and demand his services. Because the Gypsy Travel Agency might serve a higher cause, but its board of directors were ruthless in its pursuit.
    Without modesty, John knew he was one of the most gifted and useful Chosen in recent memory. The power he commanded could lift a huge stone, bring a speeding car to a stop, hold back a glacier . . . when he was in full possession of his faculties.
    It was what happened when his concentration failed that had sent him into exile. He no longer used those powers, holding them back like the ice dam held back the water. Someday the dam would explode. Someday the power would blast him apart. When that happened. . . . Better for him, and the world, that he be here near the rasputye .
    Oh, he was weak.
    Every once in a while, his needs overwhelmed his resolution. Every once in a while, he took a woman and showed her what he could do for her. The tiniest pulses of power, imbued with his passion, could in an instant move a woman from fear to pleasure.
    Did he seduce those women merely as a release of lust and energy building within him? Or was he proving something to himself? He didn’t care to examine his motives too closely.
    He didn’t dare look into his own soul.
    Sooner or later the Gypsy Travel Agency would do what they could to force him to return. But first they would artfully scope out the territory. He figured Lubochka’s team was the Agency’s best chance for sneaking up on him, so with a handful of metal debris on the road and the bald tires on Lubochka’s van, he guaranteed they would break down.
    For the third summer in a row, it worked.
    In past summers, all unknowing, they had talked to each other and he had listened.
    So far no one, by word or deed, was suspicious of him. So far, he’d been lucky and the Gypsy Travel Agency had left him alone.
    Seeing Genesis had been a shock for which he’d been totally unprepared. For the