Supernatural Fresh Meat - By Alice Henderson Page 0,74

more toward the light, his lungs aching for a breath. Panic crept in again, but Dean forced himself to think. He let the snow continue to flip him until he thought he was on his back. He kicked and did the backstroke, letting the snow continue to turn him until he flipped back over onto his stomach. Now he used all his strength to swim up to the surface.

His head broke through into sweet, fresh air. All he could hear was the roar around him, and the sounds of twisting metal as the avalanche picked up cars and shattered windshields.

Then the motion started to slow. Dean kept swimming, trying to free his entire body from the snow. He was still waist-deep when he came to a standstill. At first, he felt relieved, thinking he could just pull his legs out, but the snow had settled into a solid force as impenetrable as concrete. Dean managed to work his hands free and pushed as hard as he could at the snow crushing his legs and hips. He didn’t have the leverage.

The wind howled around him, and for the first time, Dean looked back toward the lodge. What he saw didn’t resemble much of a building anymore. Twisted timber and the empty frames of devastated windows jutted from the ruins of the shattered building. The west wall and part of the roof had managed to stay standing, and Dean saw a door leading to the interior. Snow spilled out of all the broken windows. The east side wasn’t so lucky. The roof had caved in, staircases knocked over. Miraculously, one crossbeam still hung, a massive chandelier swinging from it.

Trying to twist around, he looked to where the howitzer had been set up in the parking lot. There was no sign of it now, and the cars that had been parked out there were completely buried.

“We got someone here!” Dean recognized Susan’s voice, calling from nearer the lodge. “Get a shovel! Anyone who can hear me, turn on your avalanche transceivers!”

As Dean thrashed around again, trying to pull his lower body free, he saw a pale hand sticking out of the snow a few feet away. It waved weakly. Dean knew the person was suffocating and had only minutes to live, if that.

With renewed vigor, he started digging around his waist, desperate to free himself.

FORTY-SIX

Sam shifted sideways on the cliff face, finding a handhold to his left. He dug in with the ice axe, making sure his grip was firm before moving his feet to another section of the tiny lip he perched on. If it weren’t for the axe, Sam had no doubt his hold would rip free of the cliff and he’d plummet to his death, taking Bobby with him.

Below, Bobby hung on the rope, no longer swinging now, but too far out to grab the rock wall himself. He was dead weight, pulling heavily on Sam.

“I can’t get close enough to the rock!” Bobby yelled up. “Do you have a good enough grip for me to swing toward it?”

Sam felt the narrow little lip that his left hand clung to pathetically. He’d crammed his toes into little holes in the rock, but not more than an inch or two. The weight pulling on him made it hard to talk.

“I don’t think so, Bobby. Don’t try it!” he yelled down.

The vampires had moved to a ledge just up and to the right of Sam. The female drew closer, as the male lowered her down. She kicked out, landing a blow right in Sam’s face. Pain exploded in his nose, stars erupting across his field of vision.

She kicked out again, this time trying to dislodge the ice axe. Her boot landed solidly on the handle where Sam gripped it, and he felt it shift a little. A rain of pebbles cascaded down from where he’d driven it into the rock. She kicked it again, and Sam searched to his left for another place to move to. He found a hole about two feet away, pushed his fingers into the tiny crevice, then felt around with his feet for another perch. She kicked the axe again, and this time it moved outward so quickly that Sam’s heart pounded in his chest. As it slipped out of the crevice, he swung it up and to his left. The toothed end drove into a crack in the rock, but it wasn’t enough to hold Sam’s weight. He strained against the incredible downward force of the