Iced

Twenty-Four

Cruce came tonight as he always does, stealing my sleep, parting my lips and thighs, leaving me near dawn in tangled bed linens, soaking with sweat from sex and shame.

In the few moments of rest I snatch before rising, I have a terrifying dream.

I walk to the hidden entry of the catacombs with the shuffling, mindless gait of a woman dead and risen from the grave.

Margery blocks the door of stones that looks like any other wall unless you are privy to its secret. She is voluptuously nude, hair and eyes wild, smelling of him — a scent I know too well. A banshee, she shows sharp teeth in a cackle and tells me he is gone. I am too late.

With violence of which I did not believe myself capable, I shove her aside, and when she slams into the wall, she slumps down it and is still. Blood blossoms behind her head, staining red daisy petals on the wall.

Bemused by the hostility in my heart, I pass through the door and shuffle on.

The tunnels are pitch, forcing me to feel sightless passage along damp stone walls. This is not the Underneath I know: dry and well lit, with everything in its place. In this dark, moist maze, moss grows thickly on walls and bones crunch beneath my feet. The odor of decay couples with some fecund scent on the breeze. There is nothing down here to generate wind unless a thing stirs that cannot possibly be stirring.

I pull my wrapper closer and thrust myself forward on hobbled feet with stunted, stumbling steps, blind in eye but not purpose. I pray, and with the whimsy of dreams the gold cross I wear upon my neck begins to glow. I do not deserve such comfort in this dark night of my soul!

I shuffle for time uncounted through darkness, until finally I reach the chamber wherein the erotic, deadly prince is iced.

There, no darkness preys, no moss grows, no water trickles. There are no bones in this forbidden place. Only flesh. Extraordinary, exquisite flesh.

The walls have been gold-leafed in my absence. The chamber is radiant with brilliant light.

Cruce is still caged!

Nude, towering, wings unfurled, he snarls with animalistic rage.

Iced solid.

I weep with joy. My fears were for naught!

Upon trembling legs I hurry to his cage, celebrating that it holds.

One of the bars is missing.

“Stop. Vibrating.” Ryodan plucks a paper out of the air and slaps it back down on his desk.

I wonder if he cleans it. How many tushes have been on that thing? I’m never touching it again. “Can’t help it,” I say around a mouthful of candy bar. I know what I look like: a smudge of black leather and hair. “It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate.”

“Now there’s a thought,” Lor says.

“If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again,” Ryodan says.

“Just saying, boss,” Lor says. “You can’t tell me you didn’t think it, too.”

Five of Ryodan’s dudes are in his office and it’s like standing in the middle of heat lightning, closed in with them. Jayne is here, too, but I’m totally ignoring him because, like, if I didn’t, I’d have to kill him with my bare hands and that would get messy, then Ryodan would probably make me mop his fecking office.

I never understand half of what these dudes are talking about and don’t care. “You can touch me if you want to,” I say to Lor magnanimously. I’m so pumped on adrenaline and excitement that I’m feeling downright sociable. I poke one of my shoulders toward him. “Check me out. It feels really cool.”

All heads swivel my way, then they look back at Ryodan.

“He doesn’t own my fecking shoulder. Why you looking at him?”

Lor guffaws but doesn’t reach for my shoulder.

I don’t know why. I like touching myself when I’m vibrating like this. It vibrates me twice. If I was really cold and started to shiver, I’d be vibrating three times! “So, what the feck are we going to do to stop this thing?” I beam. We got plans to make and implement. I thrive on times like these! They bring out my best! I’m a riser-to-the-occasion kind of girl. I’m feeling so excited and generous about having such a wicked cool adventure to live that I’m finding it hard to be mad at folks right now. We got an enemy that’s bigger and badder than anything I’ve seen. Fecking-A, it’s good to be alive! ’Cause, like, for a sec there by the dock, I wasn’t sure I was going to be. I wasn’t sure any of us were!

Speaking of back by the dock …

My mood shifts and I glower. I still don’t have my sword. It got iced. The warehouse is now filled with iced Unseelie, the ceiling covered with stalactites, the floor deep with stalagmites. My sword got frozen in a stalactite way up high, and the place was way too deadly cold for anyone to enter, like freeze-you-to-death-instantly cold. We had to leave it stuck there, in an enormous icicle. Lor ordered Kasteo and Fade to stand guard until the scene thawed enough to retrieve it. Last I saw, the two Unseelie princes were still hanging around, too. If Christian was there, he was staying out of sight. No sign of Dancer. I didn’t want to leave but Lor threatened to potato-sack me over his shoulder, and seeing how he can do it as easily as Ryodan, I didn’t see any point in making myself miserable.

“It’s your fault,” I tell Ryodan. “You should never have let Jayne keep my sword. Now who knows what’s going to happen to it! If the scene explodes like the others …” I trail off because I can’t stand the thought of my sword blowing up into alabaster smithereens.

“That’s the least of our problems,” Ryodan says. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Lor just told you,” I say crossly. “What else do you want to know?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

I tear open another candy bar and around mouthfuls repeat most of what Lor said about the fog and the slit widening. The feeling of panic we all experienced. How all the sudden none of us could hear a thing, like we’d gone deaf. “Then this … this … thing that was twice the size of your office sailed out.”

“Thing.”

“Dude, Lor didn’t describe it any better. I mean, come on, ‘dark mass about the size of two semis, side by side’?”

“Try.”

I frown, thinking, then brighten. “Did you ever see the movie The Blob? It was like that. Only it was oblong. And I don’t know if it was slimy and it levitated instead of rolled. And I don’t know if it was dense. But it didn’t look like a Shade. It was nothing like a Shade.”

“The Blob.”

“Old movie, from way back in silent movie times.”

“It’s not that old,” Jayne says. “I saw it when I was a kid.”

“Which was like, way back during silent movie times, right? You shouldn’t even be talking to me. Don’t talk to me. You shouldn’t even be here. I should kill you. You’re lucky I’m not killing you right now. You left me for dead.” I look at Ryodan. “And you let him. Feckers. All of you.”

“I went straight to Chester’s and told Ryodan where you were,” Jayne says. “I wasn’t going to let you die. I didn’t like leaving you. I needed the sword. I couldn’t afford to pass up the chance.”

He told Ryodan where I was? “I said don’t talk to me. And that worked out real well for you, didn’t it? How many years do you think it might have taken you to kill a few hundred Unseelie?” I glare at Ryodan. “And you didn’t say nothing about him telling you where I was. You didn’t come neither.” Didn’t he care that I might’ve died?

“Boss sent me for you the second Jayne showed up,” Lor says. “You were gone by the time I got there. I was following your blood trail but it disappeared.”

“Texture,” Ryodan says to me.

“You mean did it have any? Not that I could see.”

“Then what happened.”

“It moved into the warehouse, all ponderous-like, and belched white fog out everywhere and we couldn’t see a thing. It iced the whole place, worse than anyplace we’ve seen yet. I mean, dude, the ceiling sprouted stalactites and the floor is covered with stalagmites so thick you can’t even walk in there! We never seen anything like that at the other scenes.”

“Postulate on why it got iced worse.”

I’d pondered that on the way back. There was only one significant difference I’d been able to isolate. “There were a lot more people and Fae at this scene than any we’ve investigated. There were hundreds of Unseelie in cages and they all got frosted. It’s possible more ice was necessary. Or maybe the thing had more juice today for some reason. We got iced, too, but it was only a thin layer, and once we moved, it cracked. We kept re-icing the second we stopped moving so I started doing jumping jacks and, like sheep can’t think for themselves, everybody copied me, then there we were all standing in the street doing jumping jacks. I got worried the commotion might make it turn around and come after us but the thing never even noticed us. It was like we were fish and it wanted chips. Or maybe we weren’t even noticeable as food. Then it vanished. Another of those slits opened inside the warehouse, all the white fog got sucked into it and the thing followed. Once it closed, we could hear again. Sort of.”

“Clarify.”

“There wasn’t any noise. Nothing. You’d think the ice on all those Unseelie might have popped or cracked a little like ice does when it settles because they were warm before they got iced but they didn’t. When we walked, our shoes didn’t sound right on the pavement. When we talked it was … flat. It was worse than flat. There was a feeling to the silence. A really bad feeling.”

“Elucidate,” Ryodan says.

“I just did. I think you mean speculate.”

Lor snorts. Ryodan gives me a look. Don’t even know why I bother answering him sometimes. Maybe I like to hear myself talk. I’ve got a lot of interesting things to say. “You know how sound is really movement, and vibration is what makes noise? Which is, like, total contradiction to its effect on things because when the world went dead quiet, it was still moving while making absolutely no noise. But what I’m saying is, after it departed, things never got back to normal. It’s like things weren’t vibrating all the way. Or maybe the sound waves weren’t bouncing off things the way they should. Or maybe the things the waves were bouncing off weren’t right.”

“Narrow it down.”

I shrug. “Got insufficient data to form conclusive deductions.”

“How long from the time it appeared to the time it disappeared.”

“That was the weird thing. It felt like it was happening in slow-mo but I figure two seconds from start to finish. It came. It iced. It vanished.” Sometimes I don’t have the most accurate sense of time because I’m in a kind of in-between fast-mo and slow-mo and don’t even realize it, which makes things around me seem to be happening more slowly. I’m pretty sure when it came, I was so wound up I was half freeze-framing. I look at Lor, who nods.

“Two to three seconds at most, boss. The fog rushed out, the thing came, the fog sucked back in and it was gone.”

“I assume it was Fae,” Ryodan says.

“Unequivocally,” I say.

“You’re a sidhe-seer. That means you should be able to get a read on it like Mac did with the Sinsar Dubh.”

“I could to a degree.”

“Intelligence.”

“Enormous sentience. Stupefying.” I wish I’d felt the Unseelie king. I’d have something to compare it to.

“Emotion.”

“None discernible. No malevolence. I got the impression destruction was a by-product, not a goal.” I notice everyone’s looking at me funny. “Dude,” I add and flash my best street-urchin grin at the room in general. “Fecking-A, was it ever cool!” Got to watch my tendency to geek out when I get excited.

“You think it had a goal.”

“There was … I don’t know … purpose to what it was doing. I could feel it. Some Fae feel simple when I focus on them with my sidhe-seer sense. They’re dumb, acting on instinct, capable of random destruction. Then there are things like Papa Roach, that Fae that breaks down into little parts,” I remind him, in case he missed that especially scintillating edition of my Dani Daily. “Papa feels … structured. It has plans. So does the Ice Monster. But there’s a big difference between Papa and the Ice Monster. Papa has a beady little mind. This thing is … vast in construct and purpose.”

“Motive.”

I sigh. “No clue. Just that it had one.”

“No idea why it chose that place, or why it ices things.”

“None,” I say. “It didn’t even touch anything, as far as I could see. It just kind of hovered above it all. Unless the fog is like its fingers or something and it sucks folks’ life force up with it and inadvertently ices them in the process. No way around it, I need more time with it. Got to feel it out longer.”

Jayne starts cursing and says nobody is going to be spending more time with it because it’s too dangerous, and even Lor looks disturbed by the idea of another encounter with the Iceman. Which reminds me …

“Why were you afraid?” I say. “I didn’t think anything scared you dudes.”

Lor gives me a cool look, like I didn’t see what I saw, and says, “What are you talking about, kid? Only thing I was worried about was how pissed Boss was going to be if the thing killed you.”

Bull. I know these dudes. They don’t care about anything but themselves and he was freaked, which means it was a threat to him somehow. I want to know how. I want to know what Ryodan’s Kryptonite is. I know a few universals like: he who can destroy a thing controls it. Not that I get off on destroying things but when you get backed against a wall, coming out with both guns blazing is pretty much your only choice. I want enough power to void a contract, enough to quit my job, permanent-like. I’m ready for retirement. I want enough leverage to get Jo out of the kiddie subclub, assuming she ever wants to leave.

She will. The day he chooses someone else.

In my estimation that won’t be long at all.

Half an hour later I’m outside Chester’s, skidding holes in the rain-slicked pavement, pacing in hyperspeed, munching power bars to keep myself juiced. I’m waiting for Ryodan to get done with whatever the feck business he said he had to take care of that couldn’t wait, so we can get on with our investigation. He told me to sit tight inside the club, but me hanging around inside Chester’s without my sword ain’t real likely and he should know better than to expect it.

Then again, without my sword I’m not straying far either. I hate waiting for backup but I want it. The Unseelie princes freaked me out. I got a major thought brewing about them, an idea I despise but have to consider for its end result. Right now I’m keeping it back-burnered where it can’t burn me too much.

I got so many other thoughts exploding inside my head that I expect a few are poking out my ears. One second I’m so excited to be living in these times I almost can’t stand it, the next I’m a nervous wreck because my people are out here in these streets and they don’t have any clue we got a big scary Ice Monster turning parts of our world into a deep freezer! I got to get the word out fast, but what do I tell them? If you see a shimmery spot in the air — run? That’s assuming they even notice the shimmery spot before they’re iced!

Trouble is, I know folks. You can tell them to run all you want but there aren’t a lot of people that will, until they believe they’re in major danger — which is usually too late. They gape like cows, and if you don’t know it, cows gape a lot. There used to be a big herd out by the abbey where I tested my speed and navigating abilities after Ro took me in and I was drunk on my new freedom. The cow pasture was a great place to practice freeze-framing on a dime because (a) cows move and are unpredictable, therefore hard to map like the real world, and (b) if I hit a cow it usually hurt me more than the cow. I had a riveted bovine audience the entire time. They’d chew their cud and swing their big heads back and forth, watching me like I was cow TV. If all I had to do was chew regurgitated food and watch other cows all day, I’d be riveted by me, too. Heck, that bored, I’d be enraptured by a fly battle on a cow pie.

But back to folks, shimmery spots aren’t terrifying enough to make them flee. And there are some folks, like the see-you-in-Faery chicks that hang at Chester’s 24/7, sporting new Papa Roach bugged-sized waistlines, trading sex, competing with each other to see who can eat enough Unseelie to turn immortal and get to hang with the Fae first, that would deliberately linger if they saw a shimmery spot, just because it was, like, pretty. Gah, some chicks should be shot. Put out of everyone else’s reproduction pool.

I need a couple of pictures to put in my daily, to show peeps the gruesome finality of what the Ice Monster does. I need to get over by Dublin Castle, shoot a few frames. Then I need to get to TDD headquarters and fire up the presses! I love printing my dailies. I got double the reason to get one out fast now. After seeing the Unseelie Princes WANTED posters, folks are no doubt worrying their butts off about me! I need to reassure them, let them know I’m still on the job.

“You must be Dani!”

I turn.

And pop up on my heel and keep turning. I’d turn all the way to bum-feck-China if I could. I spin in a full rotation so she’s at my back again and stand there, trying to compose myself. I don’t want to look at her. I don’t want her to see my face. I didn’t expect this. Wasn’t ready for it. Feck, I’ll never be ready for this. It’s one thing to know she’s out there somewhere, along with Mac. It’s another thing to have to face her.

Feck, feck, feck.

I paste on a mask, turn around and begin the pretending game.

“And you’re Rainey Lane,” I say. Same beautiful blond hair as her daughters, even though they were both adopted. Same pretty demeanor: classy feminine Deep South. She’s walking around in chilly, gloomy-ass late afternoon Dublin, dressed like somebody’s going to care she’s color-coordinated and accessorized. I guess Jack Lane does. Unlike most married folks I’ve seen — not that I’ve seen a lot — they seem to be crazy about each other. I saw them in Alina’s photo albums. I saw them in Mac’s. I’ve seen pictures of this woman holding her daughters when they were small. I’ve pored over photos of her beaming at their sides when they were grown.

Like she’s beaming at me now.

Like she doesn’t know I killed her daughter. I guess she doesn’t. I guess the last time Mac talked to her was before she found out it was me that took Alina to that alley to die.

For a second I get this stupid vision of how she’d be looking at me right now if she knew, and it kicks the breath right out of my lungs and leaves me standing there dumb. I have to clamp down all my insides so I don’t puke. She’d hate me, despise me, stare at me like I was the most disgusting, horrible thing on the face of the Earth. She’d probably try to claw my face off.

Instead of this … this … mom-love-bullshit thing glowing in her eyes like I’m her daughter’s best friend or something, not her other daughter’s murderer. I thought Mac was the worst thing I’d have to face one day on these streets.

I’m smothered in a hug before I can dodge it, which shows how discombobulated I am. On a good day I can dodge raindrops! I forget myself for a sec, because she’s got soft mom arms and hair and a neck you want to cling to. Worries melt on mom bosoms. She smells good. I’m enveloped in a cloud that’s part perfume, part something she baked lingering on her clothes, and part some indefinable thing I think are mother-hormones that a woman’s skin doesn’t smell like until she’s raised babies. It all combines to make one of the best scents in the world.

After my mom was dead and Ro took me to the abbey, I used to whiz by the house every couple days. I’d go into Mom’s bedroom to smell her on her pillow. She had a yellow pillowcase embroidered with little ducks along the edges like my favorite pajamas. One day the smell was just gone. Every vestige of it vanished without a trace. Not one tiny little sniff left for my supersniffer. That’s the day I knew she was never coming back.

“Get off me!” I eject myself violently from her embrace and back away, scowling at her.

She beams like one of Ryodan’s supercharged flashlights.

“And stop beaming at me! You don’t even know me!”

“Mac told me so much about you that I feel like I do.”

“Well that’s just stupid on your part.”

“I read the latest Dani Daily. Jack and I hadn’t heard of those bugs. You’ve been doing a wonderful job keeping everyone informed. I bet that’s a lot of work for you.”

“So?” I say suspiciously. I hear a “but” coming.

“But you really don’t need to anymore, honey. You can relax and let the adults take over.”

“Yeah, right. Weren’t adults in charge when the walls fell? And haven’t they been in charge since? Doing a real bang-up job, aren’t you all?”

She laughs, and the sound is music to my ears. Mom laughter. Melts me like nothing else can. Guess because I heard it so rarely from my own. I think I made my mom laugh three times. All before I “transported” for the first time. Maybe it happened once or twice after that. I tried. I’d memorize funny things I saw on TV while she was gone. I’d watch musicals, learn cheery songs. Nothing I did was right. Rainey Lane is looking at me with more approval than my mom ever did.

“Go. Away. No, wait. Don’t. You can’t be out here alone. I’ll find somebody to take you back wherever you go. What are you doing walking around Dublin alone? Don’t you know nothing? There’s all kinds of monsters in the streets! It’s going to be dark soon!” Somebody needs to knock some sense into her.

“Aren’t you the sweetest, to worry about me? But you don’t need to. Jack’s just around the corner, parking, honey. There’s too much debris in the streets to park any closer. I keep telling Mr. Ryodan he needs to clean up outside his club but he hasn’t gotten around to it yet. I suppose we may have to help him out with that. He’s a busy man, you know, a lot on his plate.”

“Crime is time-consuming, isn’t it?”

She laughs and I get my first suspicion she might just be totally clueless. “Aren’t you funny? Mr. Ryodan a criminal. That nice man.” She shakes her head, smiling like I’m just the funniest thing. Yep, clueless. “Dani, honey, I’ve been hoping to run into you. Mac has been, too. Why don’t you come have dinner with us tomorrow night?”

Yeah, right. Skewered Dani on the menu, served up with a side of veggies. Not. Would all three of them take turns beating me to death, once Mac ratted me out?

“There are some people I’d love for you to meet. There’s a wonderful new organization in the city that’s been doing fabulous things, bringing about some real changes.”

I shoot a big, melodramatic, beleaguered look at the heavens, then back at her. “You can’t be talking about WeCare. Please tell me you’re not talking about WeCare.”

“Why, yes, I am. You’ve heard of us!” She’s beaming again.

“Us? Gah! Please tell me you’re not part of them! You can’t be part of them! Do you know they hate me?”

“No we don’t. WeCare doesn’t hate anyone. We’re all about rebuilding and helping. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“We.” She’s slaying me. Is Mac part of them, too? “Dude, like, maybe the way they copied my paper, took over my posts, and printed all kinds of lies about me.”

“I happen to know for a fact that top individuals at WeCare are eager to meet you. They think as much of you as Mac does.”

Gee, great, so they want me dead, too. Top individuals. Lovely. They can get in line behind Christian. Who’s behind the Unseelie princes.

“They think you could be a tremendous asset. I think so, too.”

I give her a look. “You might want to recheck your facts. I think you’re missing a few. Folks in charge of organizations don’t consider me an asset. Never have, never will.” I hate organizations. Folks got to be free, able to breathe, and make up their own minds about stuff, not be fed a party line. Ritual numbs the brain. Repetition is grass for sheep.

“Mrs. Lane, so nice to see you again,” Ryodan says, and I almost fall over. Not only didn’t I hear him approach us, he’s being polite. Ryodan is never polite.

I squinch up my face, studying him. “Dude, you feeling okay?”

“Never better.”

“Why are you, like, pretending to be nice?”

“Mr. Ryodan is always nice. He was a lovely host while we stayed at Chester’s.”

“You didn’t stay at Chester’s, you were hostages.” What is wrong with everyone that they can’t see things for what they are?

“He and his men were keeping us safe, Dani. The Sinsar Dubh was targeting people Mac loved.”

“Was the door to your room locked? Dude, that makes you a hostage,” I say.

“Our door was never locked.”

Huh? “Yeah, but did you even know how to get out? He’s got those tricky panels.”

“Mr. Ryodan showed Jack and me both how to operate the doors.”

Huh? “Yeah, but there were guards outside. Keeping you in.”

“For our protection. We were free to come and go. We chose to stay. The city was dangerous when the Book was loose. Jack and I are very grateful for Mr. Ryodan’s help during those difficult times.”

I scowl at Ryodan, who’s wearing a smug-ass smile. He probably worked some kind of spell on them, like the kind of thing he did to me in the Hummer when he forced me to take the candy bar from him by muttering strange words. He makes people puppets. Empty-headed slaves. Not me.

“Do you know he’s forcing me to work for him by holding Jo hostage?” I tell Rainey. She needs to wake up and smell the coffee.

“You mean that lovely young waitress? I’ve seen the way she looks at him. She’s crazy about him,” Rainey says.

And that pisses me off even more. Mac’s mom can tell Jo’s stupid crazy about this psychopath just by looking at her? Gah! Just gah! On top of it all, said psychopath has Rainey so fooled there’s no point in even talking to her anymore! Not that lack of a point would shut me up. “Do you know he has private clubs under Chester’s where—”

“I just spoke with Barrons,” Ryodan cuts me off. “Mac’s on her way to meet you, Mrs. Lane. She should be here any second now.”

I give him a suspicious look. He’s probably lying. And he knows perfectly well I won’t risk finding out.

Rainey gives me a warm smile. “Dani, she’ll be so glad to see you! She’s been looking for you for weeks.”

I’m sure she has.

I lock down my mental grid to freeze-frame, make like folks on Gunsmoke and get the feck out of Dodge.