Iced

Twenty-Seven

I think I set a personal best.

I had a lot of incentive. The look on Ryodan’s face was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Worse than when I killed all those Fae in Chester’s and he locked me in his dungeon. Way worse.

While I’m freeze-framing, I think about how he’s been screwing up my life since the sec he stepped foot on my water tower and told me he had a job for me. I think I got him figured out. I think the reason he’s so pissy about both Christian and Dancer is because he’s worried I’ll get a superhero boyfriend who will kick his ass from one end of Dublin to the other and tear up that nasty little contract he made me sign. He doesn’t want any other dudes too close to me because it would interfere with his ability to use me for his own purposes. Christian’s a physical competitor. Dancer could brainiac him dead.

He doesn’t get that I’m not interested in a superhero boyfriend.

I’m going to be the superhero that can kick his ass from one end of Dublin to the other.

“Oh, sweet fecking day,” I sigh raptly around a mouthful of chocolate, anticipating it. Peanuts and chocolate get stuck in my throat and I almost can’t swallow. I been eating too many candy bars lately because I’m on the go so much and it’s all I got handy. I’m having a major salt craving. Sometimes when I eat too much sugar I start obsessing about my mom’s corned beef and cabbage with her fresh rosemary bread and potatoes and chives and — Holy Ashleagh Falls, my mouth is watering!

I whiz into a grocery store. Empty. I head north three blocks to Paddy’s Stop ’n’ Go. Empty. I dash ten blocks south to Porter’s. Also completely cleaned out. What I wouldn’t give for a bag of chips! Useless for an energy punch but a hopping St. Patty’s Day Parade on the tongue! I’m practically drooling I’m so hungry for something besides chocolate. A can of beans. Crimeny, even tuna would cheer me up!

I get over it. Wasted energy. There is no other food right now, and one thing I learned in a cage is you either pretend you have what you want or you don’t think about it. And if you pretend, make it real, milk it for every nuance, every succulent taste, scent, touch. I don’t have time for that kind of indulgence right now. I got a crazy Unseelie prince gunning for me with my own sword. I got a nutty nightclub owner out there who thinks he has a point to make with me and wants to lock me up to do it. I got a bloodthirsty ex — best friend who’s after my ass. I got an Ice Monster killing all kinds of innocents.

I can deal with the first three. Dublin needs to know about the last one!

I got several places in the city I can print a daily. It won’t take Ryodan long to find them all, so I know I don’t have much time. If I can print off even just a thousand and get them up, word will spread fast. Then I’ll get down to the business of figuring out how to get my sword back from Christian.

I head for the old Bartlett Building on the south side of the river Liffey, whizzing over Ha’Penny Bridge, freeze-framing parallel to the water. Stars are twinkling on it, ice crystals on a silver slide. It’s all kissed with the new lavender-metallic shade the Fae brought with them.

A few seconds later I blast in through double doors, dump my backpack on a table, and fire up the presses, blowing on my hands to warm them. I set up my little miniprinter and hook up my phone to print out the photos I been taking all day. My hands are clumsy with cold. I think the Iceman is starting to screw up our weather or something. Usually in May we run a low of forty, high of sixty. And I run hotter because, well, I run everywhere. But I been cold all day. Feels like no more than twenty-five or thirty outside right now. I wish this place had a fireplace like Mac has at Barrons Books & Baubles. I been avoiding that part of town for weeks. Can’t stand the thought of seeing her coming and going, knowing I’m dead to her. Knowing I’ll never step foot inside BB&B again and laugh with her, feel like I fit somewhere. I wish I had a place like Mac has at Barrons Books & Baubles.

“Wishes. Horses. Fecking waste of time.” I was alone a lot as a kid, and at night sometimes there was nothing on TV and the silence would get ten times as big as our house. I used to talk to myself to fill it up. I was scintillating, too, always up on the latest news and stuff because I was stuck in a cage watching it all the time. Maybe that’s where I got my love of broadcasting it. I had so much to say and nobody to say it to. Now I got the whole city! I keep up a running monologue as I work on my rag, mostly venting my irritation with current circumstances.

I don’t have time to write anything real entertaining, something I try hard to do whenever I put a Dani Daily out because any writer worth their salt knows you got to give folks bread and circuses along with the information they need to save their own asses. Otherwise they won’t read it. There was this whole series on TV when I was nine about how to write and keep folks reading and I was riveted by it because I knew I’d be writing my memoirs one day.

I had no idea I’d start running a paper when I was still only thirteen and get a book published when I was fourteen!

NEW MONSTER LOOSE IN DUBLIN!!!!

The ICEMAN slays hundreds!!!

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

AND BY THE WAY I’M NOT DEFENSELESS. DUDES, YOU THINK I’M DEFENSELESS, YOU JUST TRY. BRING IT ON! I GOT ALL KINDS OF SECRET WEAPONS UP MY SLEEVE!

You heard it from me first and nobody else!

There’s some kind of big, bad Unseelie loose in Dublin, icing folks to death. You hardly get any warning that it’s about to be in your space. It’s hit churches, pubs, gyms, warehouses, rural yards, and spots smack in the middle of the street. No place is off its grid! You got to watch for it real careful. At best, if you’re paying close attention, you’ll see a kind of shimmery spot in the air then a slit opens, fog spills out, and the monster comes. In like, just two seconds it ices everything in its path TO DEATH INSTANTLY then disappears.

Lie low, stay off the streets! I’ll keep you posted, Dublin.

Oh, and if you stumble across one of its iced scenes, steer clear — they explode!

“They’re not worth it.”

I just about squirt right out of my skin like a dab of toothpaste in a tube squeezed too tight. I expected Ryodan to find me first.

I freeze-frame.

And slam into Christian.

“I’m a full sifter now, lass. You’ll never outrun me again. It was driving me bugfuck that you could get away from me. No more.” His hands close on my waist and I try to twist free but it’s like I got steel vises biting into my body, clamping down on bone. I look up at him. The faint outline of a torque is luminous at his neck. His eyes are iridescent fire. If insanity has a color, it’s swirling in there.

“Humans,” he says coldly, and his face is like chiseled ice. Pale against midnight hair. Brilliant tattoos rush up his neck, around his jaw, back down his body, a kaleidoscopic storm just beneath his skin. “Puny. Stupid. Frightened of their shadow. Why do you bother with them? Why waste your time? You’re worth so much more than that.”

“Dude. I am one. Give me my fecking sword. It ain’t yours.”

“No you’re not. You’re beyond human. You’re what the race should aspire to be.” He leans in, sniffs my hair and sighs. “Stay the fuck away from Ryodan. I bloody hate it when you smell like him. It turns my stomach.”

I search my brain for a way out of this one. With my sword. Is it on him somewhere? I let my lids drift down, peek at his lower body. Don’t want to telegraph. I don’t see it anywhere. Jeans, hiking boots, cream fisherman’s sweater that strains across shoulders way wider than they used to be. To support the wing structure he’s developing? Does he miss who he was? Is that why he’s dressed like this? No visible sign of any weapons on him anywhere, but then he’s so far past needing a weapon. He is a weapon. There’s blood all over his sweater. I don’t even want to know why. “You’re human, too, remember?” Obviously with some part of his brain he does. The Unseelie princes rarely wear clothing.

“Not anymore, Dani, my sweet darling. You know how I’m so sure? I’m a lie detector. I said, ‘I’m human’ and heard my own lie.” He laughs, and there’s madness in it.

“You are what you choose to be,” I say. All the sudden I can’t breathe because his hands have slipped up over my ribs and he’s squeezing me so tight I think they’re going to crack.

“I would NEVER have fucking chosen this!”

“Ow! Volume control, Christian! And you’re hurting me!”

He releases his grip instantly. “Are you all right, lass? Are your ears bleeding? I made the last woman’s ears bleed. Nose, too. And her … well, that’s neither here nor there.”

“Let me go. I got stuff to do.”

“No.”

“Look, if you’re going to try to kill me, get it over with.” I put both of my fists in front of my face. “Put up your dukes!”

He stares at me. “Why would I do that?”

“Hello — Mister I Keep Dead Women Stuffed Down the Side of My Bed!”

“I tried to explain that to you. You wouldn’t listen. You ran away from me. Why did you run away from me? Don’t I keep telling you I’ll never hurt you?”

“Did you kill her?”

“No.”

I give him a look. I don’t need to be a lie detector to see through that one. It was there in the shifty slide of his eyes. “Try again.”

“Fine. Okay. I killed her. But I didn’t mean to. And I didn’t kill her, kill her.”

“Oh, I see. As long as you didn’t kill her, kill her, then that’s okay.”

“I knew you’d understand,” he says, like I’m not being totally facetious. I’m not sure he gets human nuances anymore. I think he’s too far gone.

“All ears here.”

He shrugs. “There’s not much to tell. We were having sex and all the sudden she was dead.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like. It was the bloody weirdest thing. I don’t even know what I did.”

“Your hands weren’t, like, around her throat or holding a knife or anything?”

“No. That’s why I kept her. I wanted to examine her to figure out what I did so I don’t do it again. It’s not like I can go without sex for the rest of my life. I can barely make it a few bloody hours. One second she was having a great time and so was I, and she was making this really hot noise while I was — sorry, you probably don’t want to hear about that. I’m not trying to make you jealous, lass. Then she just wasn’t moving and you have no idea how disturbing that was. Well, mostly. But not entirely. I think the Unseelie I’m becoming was aroused because once she stopped moving it was like—”

“Too much information! I can’t hear you!” I start humming to tune him out. Jealous? What is he talking about?

“I got distracted and left her on the bed to look at later, then I found you bleeding to death and brought you back to my place. I didn’t want you to see her and get upset. I was going to figure out what I did to her after you were gone.”

“Did you?”

“Still no clue. There wasn’t a mark on her anywhere. I thought I must have been too rough and bruised her from the inside, but if I did, you’d think there’d be external bruises somewhere, and there aren’t any. Maybe you’d take a look at her. I’ve been considering an autopsy but I don’t know any morticians. Do you?”

He asks it like it’s a normal question. Like he’s the person investigating a murder, not the one who committed it. “Nope.” I wonder how crazy he is. “Does it bother you that you killed her?”

He looks aghast. “Of course it does! I don’t want to kill anything. Well … actually that’s not entirely true. I do want to kill things. Lots of things. Especially Ryodan lately. I can lose myself for hours in a soothing haze of murderous intent about that dickhead.”

“Won’t argue with you there,” I commiserate.

“But I don’t. At least I didn’t until now. And if I can’t figure out what I did this time, I can’t stop myself from doing it in the future.”

“Where’s my sword.” I say it like Ryodan, with no question mark at the end. I’m beginning to understand why he does it. It’s a subtle demand instead of a question. Folks answer instinctively, against their better judgment. That’s Ryodan, always playing the odds, stacking them in his favor.

Christian smiles and for a second I see a hint of who he was. Now that his face has completed most of the transition to Unseelie prince, his expressions are more readable. I guess the muscles aren’t always at war, trying to shape a look. He has a dazzling smile, almost a killer smile, but not quite. It’s the smile of a man who could get any woman he wanted into bed, but might just kill her while she’s there.

“You have to admit, the flamethrower was bloody brilliant, wasn’t it? I blasted the thing right out of the stalagmite and fried Ryodan’s men. They didn’t even think of it. Fucking idiots. You want something, take it.”

“Did you hurt my sword? Wait a minute!” I realize something I can’t believe it took me so long to realize. “You’re not making me feel like I’m turning Pri-ya!”

“I figured out how to mute it. It’s just as easy to turn back on. All I have to do is this.”

Horniness slams into me, and I hear myself making such an embarrassing sound I could die of embarrassment.

He keeps me from sinking to the pavement, physically holding me up, hands around my waist. “Lass, doona be looking up at me like that. On the other hand, do. Yes. Yes. Exactly like that. Princess, you’re slaying me.”

“Turn it off, Christian! I want to choose my first time!”

I collapse on the floor, blinking, dazed.

Christian is gone.

Without his hands holding me, I slumped in on myself like a wet cardboard box. I sit there, looking around but seeing nothing, trying to clear my head. Either he’s completely gone or he’s muting himself again. But the aftereffects linger.

His voice floats down from somewhere in the rafters above my head “First time, is it now? I was fair certain, lass, but I like hearing it from you. I’ll wait. I want you to choose your first time, too. It’ll be chocolate and roses. Music and sweet kisses. Everything a lass dreams of. I want it to be perfect for you.”

I turn beet red. Nobody, but nobody talks about my virginity but me! “Butt out of my virginity-losing plans! They’re none of your business.”

“They’re my business and mine alone. But we don’t have to talk about them. Yet.”

I feel like I just got brained upside the head with a frying pan. Is he kidding me? Has Christian decided in his half-mad Unseelie prince mind that he’s going to be, like, my boyfriend and be, like my first? Dude, I’m fourteen and he’s an Unseelie prince! And he’s like ten years older than me! I open my mouth to read him the fecking riot act and set things straight between us when I think about how an Unseelie prince with a crush on me might not be an entirely bad thing to have, and close my mouth again. He might be tricky to handle but all weapons are good weapons, and Christian on a leash would be like, the ultimate weapon. Especially against Ryodan.

The question is: can I leash him? And if I manage to, will I be able to hang on to his collar when it counts?

I choose my words carefully. Prince and a lie detector to boot. If I can collar this dude, I can do anything! It’ll be like dancing on a minefield. I’m fascinated by the prospect. What a way to test myself. “Thanks for understanding, Christian,” I say.

“No problem. Well, it is. But I’ll deal with it. For now.”

“The other Unseelie princes scare me.”

“They should. They’re walking nightmares! You wouldn’t believe some of the sick shit they do.”

The irony that’s lost on him isn’t on me. One second he’s aware of himself as Unseelie prince, the next he acts like he’s the furthest thing from it. I don’t say Yes I would because, dude, you do sick stuff, too. Casting aspersions won’t win me any points. “I feel so unsafe without my sword.” I squint up toward the ceiling. The Bartlett Building used to be an old warehouse before it was converted. They left the steel beams and girders exposed when they moved in. I don’t see him up there anywhere.

Then he’s in front of me, sweeping low in a formal bow.

“Your sword, my lady. I would have razed heaven and earth to get it back for you.” He’s holding it across both hands, presenting it to me. He looks at me and I look straight back, measuring the madness in his eyes. I feel moisture pressing at the corners of mine, like they’re going to start bleeding. I pinch the bridge of my nose, hard. I can’t stop staring at him. It’s like his eyes are made of liquid silver on top of rainbows, like the kaleidoscopic tattoos beneath his skin run like a river at the bottom of them, like I could tumble in and dive down deep. I feel woozy.

“Don’t look me straight in the eyes, lass. Stop it!” He chucks me under the chin, jarring me into breaking eye contact. He trails his fingers across my cheek and when his hand comes away bloody, he licks it. “Never look in my eyes too long. It hurts people.” Then he smiles. “You’ll notice I can touch the hallow. I worried I wouldn’t be able to.”

I look down at the Seelie hallow across his hands, one of four Fae talismans that only humans and those of the Light Court can touch. I could take it, drive the blade through his heart and be free of him forever.

I reach for my sword.

He pulls it back. “A little thanks might be nice.”

“Christian, you’re the Shit,” I say. “First, you saved my life and now you’re giving me back my sword when nobody else would even help me.”

“Dickhead sure didn’t.”

“He sure didn’t,” I agree and reach for my sword again. “Nobody cares about me like you do.”

“Och, lass, you’ve no bloody idea,” he says in a near-whisper. “I see you from the inside.”

“Can I have it now?” I want it so bad my palms itch.

He cocks his head and looks at me then swivels his head just like an Unseelie prince, like his head and neck aren’t put together quite right. It gives me chills. “You wouldn’t be thinking of killing me with it, now would you, lass?”

“Of course I would. But I’m not going to.” Not right now, anyway.

His smile is blinding. “Good, because I have another gift for you tonight. I know you like to save humans, so I’m going to help you. You may consider it one of many early wedding gifts.”

I blink. Huh? Either I manage to mask my astonishment or he doesn’t even notice the look on my face, because he just keeps talking.

“The Unseelie princes know the thing that came through the slit at the warehouse. They called it Gh’luk-ra d’J’hai.”

“What the heck does that mean?” Also, wedding gifts? Has he completely lost his marbles?

“It’s hard to translate. Unseelie have forty-nine words for ice, and there’s a nuance to d’J’hai I’m not sure I understand. Loosely, I’d call it the Hoar Frost King.”

“The Hoar Frost King,” I echo. “What is it? How do you kill it? Will the sword work?” Assuming anyone could even get close enough without freezing to death.

“I don’t know. But I know a place where we might find out. If there are answers anywhere, they’ll be there. Take the sword, lass. I don’t like you being unprotected. And I know you don’t want me hanging around all the time. Not that I blame you with the monster I’m becoming.”

I reach for it with both hands. I almost can’t contain myself. I’m trembling with excitement.

He leans in and lays the sword across my palms.

I close my eyes and sigh with ecstasy. The heft of cool steel in my hands is … well, better than I think sex must be! It’s like having both arms amputated and thinking you’ll have to learn to live without them, then getting them put back on completely fine again. I love my sword. I’m invincible with it. I don’t know one fecking ounce of fear with this thing in my hands. Deep inside where my blood runs a little stranger than other folks’, gears shift and slide back into perfect alignment. I am one with my blade. I’m complete.

“Och, and there’s the woman you’ll be one day,” Christian murmurs. “Passion enough to rule an army. Not that I have one. Yet.”

I might want an Unseelie prince on a leash but we need to get one thing straight. “I ain’t ever getting married.”

“Who said anything about getting married?”

“Dude, early wedding gifts.”

He looks at me like I’m nuts. “Who said anything about wedding gifts?”

“And I don’t want an Unseelie army to rule.”

“Army? Dani, my bonny will o’ the wisp, what are you talking about? I was telling you about the Hoar Frost King. Are you coming or not? It’s a fine night to be alive. We’ve a monster to catch.” He winks at me. “And tonight it’s not me.”

Dude. Sometimes that’s all you can say.