Loss of the Ice Queen Nick Armbrister

 

Loss of the Ice Queen

Nick Armbrister

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Loss-Ice-Queen-Nick-Armbrister-ebook/dp/B08JCV1CSB 

 

 

She walked on numbly through the trees. Gently sloping ground went on for a mile or so to the hilltop. She came to the top and the trees thinned giving a breathtaking view of the landscape below but it didn’t lift her oppressive mood. Oh hell! Looking ahead she saw in the distance a row of mountains, snow covered, clouds brooding just above them. It was coming towards her, slowly bringing snow. The lake was beyond the mountains through the distant snow. She looked back and saw her tracks in the frost covering the forest floor. Soon it would re-freeze and hide her tracks. Still pausing, she thought back to when she was a member of the Satanic church, of the evil things they did, of five young boys kidnapped in the night, tortured and sacrificed to Satan. A blood sacrifice. A tear came to her eye as she remembered them, so young and innocent and now all dead. Only aged 10 to 12 years of age, what right had her Satanic brethren to murder in cold blood? Even now, two years after the evil deeds, she felt a guilt and pain and regret that she had been part of it. The High Priest Gjoran had ordered it done, for Satan, he had said. She was guilty because she was part of the group. She never held the knife that had killed them but she had been there and had worshipped Satan and thanked him for this pointless death sacrifice. She had also partaken drinking the slaughtered boys’ blood at each ritual sacrifice and eaten some of their still warm flesh, raw, as was ordered by their mad leader. Madness bred madness.

This episode of the Satanic church, her home for eight years until then, had changed her mind; she decided to leave, but how could she? She pledged her own life to Satan and even her soul. She daren’t leave, couldn’t leave, for they would come after her, find her and kill her just like the young boys. So she had stayed another two years, waiting for a chance that she thought would never come. Yet it had come and now she had left them, she was free. Even if only briefly, she was free.

Pilot

She remembered meeting him, the English pilot who had force-landed his plane on the beach, seeing him climb out of his damaged aircraft when she strolled down the beach. She remembered how it was raining, of how she saw him look at her and pause long enough to know her beauty. Then he returned to the task of destroying the stranded warplane. She noticed large holes in the fuselage that shouldn’t be there and the small rear cockpit with broken glass and blood everywhere. Another crewman was still inside, obviously dead. She gasped in shock when the pilot fired a flare into the open cockpit. With a sudden bright glare the petrol ignited in a fierce roar. He soaked the cockpit with a single five-litre can of fuel which was now cast aside on the beach. He leapt off the wing and raised his hand, back! back!, before the plane blew up. She stared at him then turned and ran ten yards away and hid in the tree line near the beach. He followed her and was there in a few seconds. He shouted in a foreign language that she struggled to understand: “Get down! She’ll blow in a second!”

She realised he was English, from England, across the North Sea. She had never met anyone from there before. A huge roaring sound shook her out of her thoughts and her eyes focused onto the plane that exploded with a massive sound. The fuel tanks had exploded. Bits and pieces of metal were thrown far and wide. Some fell near enough for her to flinch. Flames crackled and roared, taking hold of the smashed metal structure that was once an aircraft. Black smoke billowed up into the gloomy drizzle. She looked at the man and noticed he was young, a little older than her. He smiled at her and she frowned because of the strange sensation she felt at this equally strange situation. Then she returned the smile and said, “Welcome to Norway.”

Everything else after that was a blur. Things had moved so quickly after the crash. His arrival was the catalyst for her leaving the church, the magic circle and the cult of death. She hadn’t done it straight away but planned it carefully. When she talked to her new love, her soulmate, told him everything that happened, about being caught up in evil, both acted. He helped her and together they headed for the border, to Sweden. She had to be careful, for if caught she would be sent back to her church and punished – she knew she would be killed in the end. For a long time she lived a lie, to herself and the others, not wanting to be found out, having a foreign lover, a soulmate who was their enemy and she was sheltering him at her small home in the village. She was successful in this, this fact gave her courage and hope that it could be done – hope that they could escape away to safety and to another country. For a while they had been safe but in the end they were caught.