Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,81

well. The white rim that encircled the lake was slowly closing the gap that opened into the river. She couldn't see the ice sheet grow, but if she looked down for a few moments and then back, she could see a difference.

"How long do we have?"

"Not long enough." Raven was watching the closing river too. "I'm going to try to slow this down. You're on your own for a while."

He set down his paddle, then bent forward and thrust both hands into the water.

Kelsa looked back at the bikers. They were too distant to shout at her now, but all nine of them were mincing carefully across the ice.

Kelsa swore under her breath and turned her attention to paddling. When she paddled on the left side the canoe swerved right. When she paddled on the right it went left. She could control it fairly well, except when the shifting breeze shoved it sideways or set it spinning.

She thought the ice was growing more slowly, but she couldn't be sure. It hadn't stopped. Every time Kelsa looked up the rim of white had crept farther out, closing the river's gap. She heard a crack and a yelp as one biker pushed his luck a little too far, but no splash followed and she didn't look back.

Sweat slid down her back, despite the cold air that made her lungs burn. Her hands were blistering, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the sweat trickling down Raven's taut face and the two edges of ice creeping out to meet across the river's mouth.

Raven swayed, and a shudder shook him. He sat up and ran wet hands over his face. "I can't stop it. Not alone."

Kelsa had known that for the last three minutes. She turned and looked back. The ice covered more than half of the lake's surface, and the bikers were now closer to the canoe than they were to the shore. They'd stopped a dozen yards from the edge of the ice sheet, sensing - being told? - t hat it was still too thin to bear their weight. They waited in silence now, like the predators they were.

Kelsa took a tighter grip on her paddle. She could stab with the edge and split a skull if she was lucky. She could swing it like a baseball bat, breaking arms and ribs. And with Raven fighting too ... They would be overwhelmed in minutes. Nine men were too many, even if none of the bikers was armed. Which didn't seem likely.

"I'm afraid," Raven sighed, "that it's time to call in some help."

"You think?" In the few moments she'd hesitated a thin skin of ice had formed around the canoe's bow. Kelsa leaned forward and cracked it with her paddle, then turned the canoe back toward the unfrozen center of the lake, working by herself. Raven had turned around on the seat, and now he sat perfectly still in the front of the canoe, his hands and face lifted toward the moon.

Perhaps it was her imagination that the light seemed to gather in his hands, intensifying before it poured into the rippling water. Even when she wiped the sweat out of her eyes, Kelsa couldn't be sure.

All she knew was that eventually a really annoying smirk crossed his face, and he opened his eyes and said, "There. That should do it."

"Do what?" Kelsa's voice was ragged with fury and fear. They'd almost reached the center of the lake. She couldn't go much farther.

Raven finally looked at her, taking in her terrified exhaustion and the ice that walled them in.

"Forget the bikers," he said. "Look at the shore."

It was hard to look away from her enemies as they picked their way carefully closer, but Kelsa dragged her gaze away and focused on the nearest shore, just in time to see dozens, hundreds, of small black dots slither onto the ice. They were so tiny, if they hadn't been moving she wouldn't have spotted them.

"What's that?"

"Frogs."

Kelsa had no idea why he sounded so smug about it.

"Frogs can't fight men, no matter how many there are. We need a wolf pack."

"If a wolf pack shows up we're going to be sorry, because Wolf's on the other side. Frogs are exactly what we need."

"How can frogs help us?"

"Watch," Raven said. "What do you see?"

Kelsa looked at the bikers, who were still waiting for the ice to thicken a bit more so they could close in to rape and kill her. No change there. She looked at