Iced

Fifteen

I lose track of them for one minute, distracted by a female Unseelie down in the streets that has what the Highlander in me considers revolting parts but the prince in me thinks are all the right ones. Sex has become bloody weird. Incredible. But weird. She’s a few blocks south of the church, and she’s throwing off pheromones that make my dick go flat to my stomach, and by the time I realize what’s happened to Dani, I have one more reason to hate Ryodan and the whole fucking world, as if I needed one.

“No!” I roar as I rush for the edge of the roof. That’s the bad thing about being a half-breed. The Highlander in me wants to take the stairs. The Unseelie in me wants to use wings.

Too bad I don’t have any yet.

My heart makes the decision without me and tries to get to her the fastest way possible.

I jump.

I curse as I plummet four stories and brace for impact. Contrary to what she thinks, I can’t sift yet so I can’t cut out of this fall. What kind of idiot breaks all his bones at the precise moment his damsel needs him the most? Up to now I’ve been glad I can’t sift yet. I think it’s the point of no return. The day I can blink out of existence and back in at a mere thought, I’m no longer human.

I twist in midair, trying to land on my feet.

I’m astonished when it works. I discover new things about myself every day, most of which disgust me, but this is a welcome change. My center of balance has shifted. I pivot and realign flawlessly. My bones seem to have developed an incredible rubbery resilience. My knees bend slightly, bowing in a distinctly inhuman way to absorb the impact. I land like a graceful cat. I stare down at my feet, which are intact and functioning perfectly, and all I can think is bloody hell, I just fell four—

“Bring her OUT here! NOW, you buggering idiot!”

My head whips up.

Some teenage guy wearing glasses is standing outside the church, looking in, screaming at Ryodan. I have no idea who he is or where he came from. But he just said my line, although I’d’ve done it minus the buggering part and with a lot more “fucks.”

The kid’s hands are fists and he’s plastered up against the door-jamb of the church. His face and hair are frosted and he’s shivering violently.

I push past him, shouldering him aside. “She doesn’t need you. Worthless human. Get lost.”

He snarls at me.

I laugh. Looking me in the face and snarling takes major balls. “Kudos to you, kid. Now take yourself off somewhere and die before I decide to cram those big balls you think you have down your throat.” I shove into the church, so I can rescue Dani and kill Ryodan for taking a hothouse flower into the arctic zone.

The cold hits me like a brick wall and stops me in my tracks. A solid shell of ice forms on my skin. When I flex my muscles, the ice cracks and falls in a tinkle of crystals to the floor. I take another step and ice, mid-step this time, while I’m still moving.

I spent a small eternity in the Unseelie prison and never had this problem, and it was inhumanly cold there. I’m half Unseelie prince. I didn’t think there was anyplace too cold for me. How can that dickhead Ryodan tolerate it, if I can’t?

I take another step, ice again, crack it and step back. It won’t do me any good to freeze up like the tin man and become useless to her. I don’t understand how this is happening. The cold in the Unseelie King’s kingdom iced my soul and made me hate being alive. This is worse. I wouldn’t have believed there was anything worse. There’s something familiar about this place, this scene, this cold. Déjà vu. I despise this cold. It makes me feel bad in the center of my bones. Empty, hollow, somehow … flawed. I narrow my eyes, looking around.

Dani!

She’s on the floor and it’s not the cold that takes my breath away. Her jeans are tangled around her knees. She has on a black bra and underwear with little white skulls and crossbones all over them. She’s thrashing her arms and legs and crying incoherently.

And I can’t get to her. My girl is half naked and dying and I can’t get to her!

I push forward.

I ice solid.

I crack it and pull back.

Fuck!

She’s trying to kick off her jeans the rest of the way and he’s fighting her, trying to keep them on. He needs to get her out of there. Why is he wasting time trying to keep her clothes on?

“Bring her to me!” I demand.

“Don’t freeze-frame with her!” the kid on the steps bellows. He’s got some lungs. “If you move fast, you’ll kill her!”

“What the fuck do you know,” Ryodan says.

“Everything there is to know about hypothermia! And I’m willing to bet neither of you can warm her. Bring her to me if you want her to live! Stop trying to put her clothes back on. It’s not going to help!”

“Fuck you, kid,” Ryodan says, but he quits trying to dress her and scoops her up. Her jeans fall to the floor. She’s mostly naked in his arms. I can’t see past the red rage in my eyes.

“Don’t move her any more than you have to! It’ll force cold blood to her heart and she’ll have afterdrop!” the kid yells.

Ryodan walks with her real slow and easy.

She’s stopped flailing.

She’s not making any noise now either. She’s gone limp. Her arms and legs flop like a rag doll with each step he takes. If he killed her I’m going to beat him bloody and eat him piece by piece, slowly, with steak sauce.

It’s all I can do to keep my feet rooted where I am and not attack him as he passes. Glorious, beautiful scenes of death and destruction, battlefields and torture chambers, crowd my mind, enticing, sexual, egging me on to smash and crash and raze everything in my path with no care for the consequences because there are no consequences for what I’m becoming.

When he walks past me, my fists drip blood. But I don’t fight for her. If I fight for her, I could kill her. That would turn me into something worse than an Unseelie prince.

“You!” The kid stabs a finger at me. “I need sleeping bags, an aluminum blanket, and hot packs. Outdoor store on Ninth and Central. Get me sugar, Jell-O, and water if you can find it. Don’t waste time if you can’t. Same goes for a generator. Now!”

“I don’t fetch for humans!”

But I’d cut the fucking moon out of the sky for her.

When I return with blankets and hot packs, she’s on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from the church.

The kid with glasses is in his underwear. Apparently dickhead doesn’t wear any.

Rage chokes me. I fight for control. The human part of my brain knows exactly why they took their clothes off. So they could bundle her in them. She needed everything they had. She’s curled in a fetal ball, packed in their pants and shirts and jackets. The Unseelie part of my brain comprehends nothing but that two male dicks are way too close to something that’s mine.

The kid is on top of her, on his hands and knees, with his face brushing hers like he’s kissing her.

Ryodan looks like he’s about to rip his head off. As I get closer, I see the kid is breathing just over her nose and mouth, letting his breath drift up her nostrils. I’m shaking with rage. My hands are fists again, bleeding from clenching them so tight.

“She keeps curling up,” Ryodan says.

“Burrowing instinct. Freezing people do it when they’re about to die.”

“You let her die,” I say to the kid, “I’ll kill you every way a human can get killed, bring you back and do it all over again.”

“Did you get what I need?” The kid thrusts a hand behind him, ignoring my threat. “Aluminum blanket. Now. And easy when you move her,” he says over his shoulder, like he doesn’t even know two homicidal maniacs are watching his every move and want him dead just for being so close to her. “Nothing sudden.”

“Why aluminum?” I want to know exactly what he’s doing so I can do it myself when there’s a next time. I’d say that there’s not going to be one, but since the walls fell there’s always a next time.

“Superinsulation. Traps in heat. Keeps out everything else.”

Ryodan and I place her gently on the blanket, then the kid stretches over her again. She’s motionless. I can’t even see her chest rising and falling. She’s pale and still as death. It’s a disturbing turn-on. I’ve never seen an Unseelie princess but I suspect they’re like this: white and cold and beautiful. “Is she breathing?”

“Barely. Her body is using everything it’s got just to keep her brain and organs functioning. She needs to urinate.”

“You can’t fucking know that,” Ryodan says.

The kid doesn’t turn his head or look at him, just talks straight up her nose. “She eats and drinks constantly. Her bladder is always at least partially full. Her body is wasting precious energy trying to keep the urine in her bladder from freezing. We need that energy directed at her heart. Ergo, she needs to piss. The sooner the better. We need her conscious to do that, unless you have a handy catheter.”

“Get her conscious,” Ryodan snarls.

“You’re not putting a catheter in her,” I growl.

“I’ll do whatever I need to do to save her life. You. Bloody. Idiots,” the kid says.

He pops open heat packs and shoves them in her armpits and groin. Then he stretches out next to her. “Roll us up in sleeping bags.”

I look at Ryodan and he looks at me and for a second I think we might both kill the kid. Ryodan’s more stone-faced than usual, if that’s possible without turning to concrete, and his fangs are out. I look down. Ryodan’s dick is as big as mine. “Why the bloody hell don’t you wear underwear?” To an Unseelie prince, an exposed male dick is a call to battle.

“They chafe. Too small and confining.”

“Fuck you,” I say.

“Dudes. Get over yourselves,” the kid says. “Roll us up. Do you want her to die?”

“You should never have taken her in there. I’m going to kill you for that,” I say to Ryodan as I help roll up a nearly naked kid with my girl.

“I told her not to touch anything,” Ryodan says. “I knew it would drop her out of fast-motion. I reminded her at every scene we went to. And bring it on, Highlander. Any time you think you’re ready.”

“And we all know how well she listens,” the kid says dryly.

Ryodan gives him a look that would make grown, armed, psychopathic men shut up. “There was no reason for her to touch anything.”

“Obviously she thought otherwise,” the kid says, completely unperturbed.

“I was right there with her. I figured I could get her out.”

“You figured wrong, dickhead,” I say.

“I didn’t think it would affect her so quickly if she did. It didn’t do that to me when I tried it.”

“She’s not like you. And shut up, both of you,” the kid says, and puts his face on hers again, breathing, cupping his hands around their faces to keep the warm air in.

“Why are you doing that?” I say.

“Warm air. Hypothalamus. Regulates internal temperature and will help raise her consciousness. I need her conscious so she can piss.”

“I would have rubbed her down to warm her. Restored her circulation.”

“Brilliant. You would have killed her. Her blood is too cold. It would have stopped her heart.”

“I don’t understand why she stripped,” Ryodan says. I look at him. He’s doing the same thing I am. Learning what to do if it happens again. Both of us would have sped off with her, trying to get her somewhere warm. And according to this kid, we both would have killed her.

“Blood vessels widen. She thought she was hot. Hikers get found all the time dead in the mountains, naked with their clothes folded nearby. They get confused. Brain tries to make order out of chaos.”

“How do you know all this?” I despise that he knows it and I don’t. Makes him the better man for her in this situation. I want to be the better man for her in every situation.

“Mom was a doctor. I nearly died of hypothermia in the Andes once.”

“I almost killed you,” Ryodan says.

“She can’t hear you,” the kid tells him.

“I wasn’t talking to her.”

“Give me more hot packs,” the kid says. “Bugger, she’s cold!”

“A few weeks back. I almost killed you.”

The kid gives him a look. I think, what the fuck gives a kid this young the balls it takes to snarl at me and give dickhead a look like that?

Ryodan says, “I stood in the shadows of an alley you were walking down. You wouldn’t have seen me coming. She would have died tonight if I’d killed you.”

“Is that, like, an apology?” I mock.

“Does she gasp in horror every time she sees you, Highlander?”

I unfurl wings that aren’t there yet and hiss.

“You both talk too much,” the kid says. “Shut up. Don’t make me tell you again.”

We shut up, which I find hysterically funny.

I suddenly see us from above. I do that all the time now. I think it’s because I’m losing my humanity and it’s my way of marking my descent into hell. I observe that there’s only one human male at this scene and it’s not me.

I see a radiant woman-child who has more curves under her clothes than I guessed, and from the way Ryodan is looking at her, he didn’t guess it either. She’s bloodless, blue-tinged, rolled up tight in the arms of a half-naked teenager that could have been, should have been, me. Keeping vigil over her are two monsters of very different breeds but monsters just the same.

Death on her left.

Devil on her right.

The kid looks like I did at his age, except for the glasses and a few inches of height he has on me. Dark hair, great smile, wide shoulders, the kid’s going to be good-looking.

If he survives past next week.

At the moment I’d wager strongly against it.

He’s in a sleeping bag with her, holding her. She has skulls and crossbones on her underwear. It charms me beyond reason.

The way I see it, if it’s not Ryodan in that next dark alley, it’s going to be me.