The Bounty Hunter's Trilogy: Chosen By Fate

Chapter 16. The Search Goes On

I woke up the next morning and there was at least seven inches of snow on the ground with more falling to lay on top of it. But instead of being upset and dull like I normally was recently, the snow made me feel relaxed, happy, and kind of nostalgic. The sight of the snow gave me a sudden craving for hot chocolate and candy canes.

Christmas was about a week ago and I wanted nothing more than to be at home right now with my mom. This would be my first Christmas without my family, and it was hitting me hard. No more special chocolate chip cookies. No more of my mom's homemade Christmas mints. Man, I could really go for some of those right now. But worst of all there would be no more Christmas carols around the family piano. Instead, I'd be celebrating it from now on with this new group I was a part of. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd just rather have everybody here.

I summoned some snow into my hand and levitated it so it wouldn't melt. The few flakes I had were standing still in mid air as I studied them. The six pointed pieces of ice were slowly starting to melt from the heat coming out of the van, so I let them fall out of the air and into my hand, where they came together in a small pile the size of my palm.

"You like snow?" Lucas sat beside me and took some of the soft, cold flakes from the little pile in my palm with his good arm. He popped it into his mouth and swallowed.

I smiled, nodding in response to his question. "I love snow. It makes everything stand still. It silences everything and makes it seem like time itself is frozen. It's beautiful. And I wish it was around forever." I put the rest of the snow back outside where it belonged and Henry stopped the truck. I got out with the emergency gas container and he opened the cap. "Is everything okay?" He shook his head as he looked in the small opening.

"The gas is freezing up. It's way too cold up here." I went over underneath the gas and warmed up my palms a little then held them under the tank. The slushy gasoline softened into just the liquid and we kept going.

But the trip quickly turned into having to warm up the gas tank every few minutes before finally we just gave up on it. The gas was frozen solid and we were in the middle of the northern part of East Canada trying to get to Craig Harbor. There was a boat we could get on to get to Greenland through Etah. There was no civilization anywhere near us, with well over two feet of snow on the ground at this point and no way to make our truck run.

"Daniel, can you make the wheels turn?" Henry asked.

"What?"

"Hypothetically, if you were to use your ability to move the wheels, we can keep going." I tried but for the first few minutes, nothing happened. The rubber wasn't moving at my will. So instead, I tried to move the metal part of the wheels and felt a tiny lurch in the truck. I then forced it really hard and we shifted forward. It was slow at first, but after getting the wheels to turn at a steady pace, I sped them up gradually. Thankfully it worked well enough to get us the last few more hours to the harbor and on a boat to Greenland.

The entire time on the boat was a snooze fest for us. I only woke up when I heard the boat docking. Travis had us cloaked so we didn't have to worry about getting through customs. We got off of the ferry and then continued north for about an hour before we came to a civilized place. We bought some hot drinks and some food at a gas station and went on our way. After we drove north for about five more hours we were finally close enough that Lacy could see the island. Only ten more miles and we'd be there.

"Stop the truck." I sighed in relief. I don't care what anybody else's version of the story is, it was hard work. The truck stopped and I nearly passed out on the floor. Travis dug around and pulled up part of the floor to open the cache. He pulled out a helmet for each of us. The face of it was a triangle of black glass pointing downwards toward the pointed chin of the helmet. The back went up in a point behind the top of the head and hugged close to the shape of where the wearers head would be. A few of the helmets had symbols on the side of them already, matching the people he handed them to. Lacy was having difficulty putting hers on because of her injury so I helped her. Travis had to help Lucas with his as well. We all got ours on and the first thing I noticed was how dark it was. But then the helmet seemingly vanished as if somebody took it right back off. Nobody else was wearing theirs either.