Read Dark Frost for Free Online Page B

wounds to try and slow the blood loss. Others slumped against the tall pillars, dazed, vacant looks in their eyes. Still more lay where they had fallen and quietly cried, their shoulders shaking and the tears slipping down their faces and mixing with the bloody debris on the floor.
    “You check on the kids in here,” Logan said in a low voice. “I’m going to the other rooms to see if there are any other survivors—and hopefully to find Nickamedes.”
    I nodded. The Spartan headed down one of the corridors while I stepped back into the main museum space. A few feet away, I spotted Morgan McDougall crouching over a body. Since she was the closest student to me, I headed in her direction, holding Vic and keeping an eye out for any Reapers who might still be lurking in the coliseum.
    “Morgan?” I asked in a low voice. “Are you okay?”
    The Valkyrie looked up at the sound of my voice, and I realized who she was crouching over—Samson Sorensen. The Viking was one of the cutest guys at the academy, but now he was dead, his handsome face pinched with pain, his empty eyes staring up at the ceiling and reflecting back the sheen of the metal discs there.
    “It’s okay,” I whispered. “I’m here to help. Are the Reapers gone?”
    “Yes,” Morgan said in a shaky voice. “One of them ran out of the room you were in. A girl, I think. She shouted something at the others, and they all ran down one of the hallways. They left. They just left. Like they’d finally gotten whatever it was they’d come for.”
    I frowned. I hadn’t seen Loki’s Champion pick up any weapons or artifacts, and the other Reapers who’d come into the room were dead, so they wouldn’t be taking anything out with them. Had the Helheim Dagger been in another part of the coliseum? Was that why the Reaper girl and her friends had gone in such a hurry? My head started to ache from all the questions that I just didn’t know the answers to.
    Morgan turned back to Samson, smoothing the Viking’s sandy hair back from his bloody face. “I really did love him, you know? Even though he was Jasmine’s boyfriend and we were sneaking around behind her back, I loved him the whole time.”
    Back in the fall, Morgan had been hooking up with Samson even though he’d been dating Morgan’s best friend, Jasmine Ashton. What no one had known was that Jasmine was really a Reaper. Jasmine had been so upset when she found out Morgan was sneaking around with her boyfriend that Jasmine had tried to sacrifice Morgan to Loki. She would have, too—if I hadn’t stopped her that night in the Library of Antiquities.
    I started to answer Morgan, to tell her it was okay, that I understood how she felt about Samson, when I noticed a shadow on the floor beside us—one that was creeping closer and closer. Maybe the Reapers hadn’t left after all. Fear flooded my body at the thought.
    I waited a second, letting the shadow get in range, then I tightened my grip on Vic, whirled around, and raised the sword over my head, ready to bring the blade down on whoever was lurking behind me.
    “Gwendolyn! Stop!” Nickamedes barked, taking a step back and holding up his hand. “It’s just me.”
    It took me a second to focus on the librarian—and another one to notice all the blood on his clothes and the sword in his hand. Nickamedes’s suit jacket was ripped and torn, his shirt was untucked, and his tie had been sliced in two, leaving only the knot hanging around his throat. Cuts and scrapes crisscrossed his hands like Xs and Os, and the right side of his face had puffed up with the beginning of a black eye.
    I looked around the room again and noticed that several black-robed bodies littered the floor, along with those of the Mythos students. Nickamedes must have heard the commotion when the Reapers stormed into the coliseum and came out fighting. He would have too, since he was a Spartan just like Logan, with the same fighting skills and killer warrior instinct. Nickamedes had