Biting Cold - By Chloe Neill Page 0,16

ageless skin. We do what we can. Sometimes we do it with magic.”

Paige led us down a well-trodden path across a small pasture and through the gap in a split-log fence. The next field was furrowed, the remains of yellowed cornstalks stumpy along the ground.

“You grow corn here?” Ethan asked.

“Keeping up appearances,” Paige said. “There’s the entrance to the silo.” In the middle of the field, which had to be three hundred yards across, sat a small cube of concrete. “The missile bay doors are hidden under the topsoil.”

“The Order definitely picked a hard-to-reach location,” Ethan said.

“The armed forces picked it first. We’re in the middle of the country,” Paige said. “It was a great place for missile defense, if you want maximum protection from the enemy.”

We crunched across the frozen ground to the silo entrance, which didn’t appear to be more than a concrete box with a utility door. Paige unlocked and opened it, revealing a small metal platform.

“Climb aboard,” Paige said, pulling off her cap and revealing a tangle of red curls. “The bunker is thirty-two feet down. The platform’s on a scissor lift, so it will take us to the bottom.”

The “platform” consisted of a plank of corrugated metal—the kind you could see straight through—and a few strips of railing. Below us was only darkness.

Paige joined me and Ethan, then punched a red button on a giant metal box that hung from one side of the railing. Slowly, and with a metallic screech, we began the descent.

I wasn’t much for dark, confined spaces. I could feel my chest tightening as claustrophobia took hold. The dim light that glowed beneath us didn’t do much to diminish the lingering sense of doom.

After a few seconds, we hit the bottom floor. The platform stopped with a jerk, revealing the end of a long concrete hallway.

“Basement,” Paige said, “ladies’ accessories and hosiery.”

We followed her off the lift and into the hallway, which was cold and silent but for the steady hum of machinery we couldn’t see. The air was warm but smelled musty, like the same air had been recycled since the silo had been built. The walls were the glossy, pale green of hospitals and antiquated DMV offices, and they were broken intermittently by more closed utility doors.

Paige pointed at them in turn as we walked to the other end of the hall. “These are all living quarters. When the silo was operational, it was staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There were at least two men here at all times—and they were always guys back then.”

“Heaven forbid the ladies should accidentally launch a PMS-driven missile,” I snarked.

“Precisely,” Paige dryly agreed. “We’re strong enough to birth children but hardly trustworthy when national security’s on the line.”

“Is the missile still stored here?” Ethan asked.

“No. It was removed when the silo was decommissioned. But the tube remains. And that’s what’s helpful for us.”

The hallway ended in a giant sliding concrete door. Paige pushed it sideways along its tracks.

“This is the silo,” she quietly said, and led us inside.

The room was enormous, a concrete circle with cavernous holes in the middle of the floor. Panels with thousands of small, sharp-cornered buttons lined consoles along the walls beside brightly colored warnings not to touch the buttons without authorization.

I had to curl my fingers into fists to keep from pressing them just to see what might happen.

And the gaping concrete hole where a missile had once stood? Big enough that I had trouble wrapping my mind around the scale of it. I stood at the railing that bound the gap and looked down. The shaft was well lit, and it was lined with steel supports I assumed would have supported the missile.

“The silo itself is one hundred and three feet tall,” Paige said, her voice echoing in the vastness of the room.

“And we’re roughly thirty feet down,” Ethan said, “which means there’s seventy more feet of hole below us.”

“Correct. The concrete is three feet thick on all sides. Quite impenetrable.”

“It boggles the mind,” Ethan said, staring down into the abyss.

She pointed to a metal staircase across the room. “There are floors above and below. They hold tanks and more operational controls.”

“And the Maleficium?”

She walked to the railing and pointed down into the silo. “It’s at the very bottom on a pedestal, ironically or otherwise. You can just see it.”

I looked down. Sure enough, I could see its red leather cover. It didn’t glow or vibrate or give off a weird vibe. It