Iced

Two

Since I sleep like the dead, I come to hard. It doesn’t matter whether I’ve fallen asleep or been knocked out. I’m always broody at first because I can’t shake off slumber as fast as most folks. My dreams get tangled up with the real world and it takes a while for them to melt away, like icicles dripping off gutters in the morning sun.

Not this time.

I come up from unconsciousness like a live wire: flat on my back one second, the next on all fours, then I’ve got my sword at Ryodan’s throat.

He knocks it away. It flies out of my hand and crashes into the wall of his office.

I lunge after it and crash into the wall myself, but who cares? My sword’s in my hand again. I spine up to the wall, blade straight out in front of me, never taking my eyes off him, waiting for him to try to take it from me again. It’s going through his heart if he does.

“We can do this all day if you like,” he says.

“You knocked me out,” I say through clenched teeth. I’m spitting mad, my face is throbbing and my teeth hurt. It’s a wonder I have any left.

“Correction. I got in your way. You knocked yourself out. I told you to watch where you’re going.”

“You’re faster than me. That means you’re supposed to yield right of way.”

“Like we’re cars. Cute. I don’t yield. Ever.” He hooks a foot around a chair and kicks it toward me. “Sit.”

“Feck you.”

“I’m stronger than you, faster than you, and lack the human emotion that drives you. That makes me your worst nightmare. Sit. Or I’ll make you sit.”

“I can think of a couple worse,” I mutter.

“You want to play games. I don’t think you’ll like mine.”

I think it over. I’m worried because of earlier, when I stalled. What if it happens again and he figures it out? I’m double worried because he knocked me out cold, mid freeze-frame. It’s obvious I can’t escape if he doesn’t want to let me go. I’m in Chester’s, on his turf, with all his men in the vicinity. Even if Barrons is around, he’s not going to help me. I’m pretty sure TP has him hating me now.

I take stock of the room. I’ve never been in his office before. LED screens serve as cove moldings, lining the entire perimeter of the ceiling, flashing from one zone to the next. From here Ryodan watches everything. I’m in the guts of his club.

“How’d I get here?” There’s one possible answer. I’m just trying to buy more time to orient myself. Gingerly I touch my nose, feel the tip. It’s alarmingly bulbous and squishy.

“I carried you.”

It makes me so mad I almost can’t breathe. He knocked me out, picked me up like a sack of potatoes, toted me through the streets of Dublin and hauled me through the middle of all the skeevy folks and fairies that hang at Chester’s, probably with everybody staring at me and smirking. I haven’t been helpless for a long time.

Fact: he could do it again if he felt like it. Over and over. This dude standing in front of me could chain me down worse than anything my mom or Ro ever did to me.

I decide the wisest thing is to humor him until he lets me leave. Then I’ll eat everything I can get my hands on, test myself, make sure I’m working right, hole up somewhere safe and lie low for a while. I’ll spend my time in hiding, working on getting faster and stronger, so I never have to put up with a moment like this again. I thought these kinds of days were gone for good.

I sit.

He doesn’t look all smug like I would have. He gives me … like a look of approval or something.

“Don’t need your approval,” I say irritably. “Don’t need anybody’s.”

“Stay that way.”

I scowl at him. I don’t get Ryodan at all. “Why am I here? Why’d you bring me to Chester’s? Get to the point. I got stuff to do. Busy schedule, you know. I’m in demand.”

I look around. The office is made of solid glass, walls, ceiling, and floor. Nobody can see in, but you can see out. It’s freaky walking on a glass floor. Like the bottom’s dropping out of your world with every step you take. Even sitting, you feel a kind of vertigo.

I look down. There are acres of dance floor beneath me. The club has multiple tiers, maybe a hundred subclubs on split levels, each with its own theme. Seelie, Unseelie, and humans hang together and strike who knows what kind of deals. Here in post-wall Dublin, anything you want can be had at Chester’s, for a price. For a second I forget he’s there, fascinated by watching it all between my high-top sneakers. I could sit here for days, study stuff, get smarter. Itemize every caste of Fae, spread the word around the city, what they are, how they can be defeated, or at least escaped from or restrained until I can get there to kill them with my sword. That’s a big part of the reason I’ve been so determined to get inside Chester’s. How can I protect my city if I can’t warn everyone about all its dangers? I got a job to do. I need all the intel I can get.

There’s a Seelie male on the dance floor, blond and beautiful like V’lane was before he dropped his glamour and revealed himself as an Unseelie. In the next subclub over is a lower caste of dark Fae that I’ve never seen before, shiny wet and segmented, with— Ew! The many segments are coming apart and scurrying off into a hundred different directions like roaches! I hate roaches. They begin to disappear up people’s pants legs. I pick my feet up off the floor and sit cross-legged on the chair.

“You watch everything.”

It’s not a question so I don’t answer. I look at him, fold my arms and wait.

There’s that smile again.

I poke out my lower lip defiantly. “What am I? Like a walking joke to you? Why do you always smile when you look at me?”

“You’ll figure it out.” He moves to his desk, opens a drawer, pulls out a sheet of paper and hands it to me. “Complete and sign this.”

I take it and look at it. It’s a job application. I give him a look. “Dude. Post-apocalyptic world. Who does job applications anymore?”

“I do.”

I squint at it, then him. “What are you paying me?” I angle.

“Dude. Post-apocalyptic world. Who does money anymore.”

I snicker. First sign of any sense of humor he’s shown. Then I remember where I am and why. I wad it up and throw it at him. It bounces off his chest.

“You’re wasting time, kid. The sooner you do what I tell you, the sooner you can get out of here.” He goes to his desk, gets another and hands it to me with a pen.

I relax. He plans to let me leave. Maybe even soon.

I skim the application. It has the usual blanks: name, address, date of birth, education, prior job history, places for signature and date. Fanciest application I’ve ever seen, with the name CHESTER’S worked into an ornate border that frames the page.

Everybody clings to something when the world melts down. I suppose Ryodan likes having his business details all squared up, no matter the chaos at his door. It’s not like it’ll kill me to fill out the stupid thing, agree to do whatever he wants, then get the feck out of here and go into deep hiding. I sigh. Hiding. Me. I pine for the days when I was the only superhero in town.

“If I fill this out, you’ll let me leave?”

He inclines his head.

“But I have to do some kind of job for you?”

He inclines his head again.

“If I do that job, are we through? For good? Just one job, right?” I have to make this convincing or he’ll figure out I plan to disappear.

Once more he gives me that imperial nod that’s hardly a nod, like he’s stooping to acknowledge my puny existence.

I don’t ask him what the job is because I have no intention of ever doing it. I’m never going to be anyone’s solution to folks’ problems again. I crossed lines for Ro. Big lines. Deep lines. She’s dead. I’m free. Life starts now. I study him. He’s perfect stillness, with the light behind his face as usual, features in shadow.

Cats get still like him. Before they pounce.

Something’s going on here, bigger than I’m seeing.

My face hurts. My eyes are puffy and the left one’s trying to swell shut. “You got any ice?” I need to buy time to figure out what’s going on. Plus, if he leaves for ice I can snoop through his office.

He gives me a look I’ve seen men do before, especially to women: chin down, looking up from beneath his brows, with a faintly mocking smile. There’s something in that look I don’t get but the challenge is unmistakable. “Come here,” he says. “I’ll heal you.” He’s sitting behind his desk, watching me. Still, so still. It’s like he’s not even breathing.

I look at him. I don’t know what to make of him. Part of me wants to get up, go around that desk and find out what he’s talking about. “You could do that? Make my bruises and cuts go away?” I’m always beat up and my muscles are constantly strained from overuse. Sometimes I burn through my shoes and scrape the skin right off my feet. It gets old.

“I can make you feel better than you’ve ever felt in your life.”

“How?”

“There are some secrets, Dani O’Malley, that you learn only by participating.”

I consider that. “So. You got any ice?”

He laughs and presses a button on his desk. “Fade. Ice. Now.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

A few minutes later I’m sitting with an ice pack on half my face, squinting around it to fill out Ryodan’s stupid application. I’m almost done and ready to sign when I get the strangest feeling in my hand, the one holding the page.

It’s my left hand, my sword hand, the one that turned black a little while ago, the night I stabbed a Hunter through the heart and killed it. Or rather, the night I thought I killed a Hunter. Truth is, I’m not actually sure I did but I’m not about to print a retraction. The public needs to believe in certain things. When I went back to take pictures of it for The Dani Daily to show folks it was gone, completely. Not a trace remained. Not a single drop of black blood anywhere. Barrons says they can’t be killed. After the incident I thought I was going to lose my hand. My veins turned black and my whole hand went cold as a block of ice. I had to wear a glove for days. Told the sidhe-sheep I got poison sumac. Rare around these parts but there used to be some. Don’t know if the Shades ate it all. Wonder if they did, if they got itchy bellies inside.

Now it’s all tingly and weird. I study it, wondering what might go wrong with me next. Maybe stabbing the Hunter did something to me. Maybe that’s why I stalled. Maybe there are worse things on the horizon.

That is so not me! Optimism is me. Tomorrow’s my day. You never know what grand adventures wait around the next corner!

“Kid, you going to sit there all day daydreaming, or sign the fucking thing.”

That’s when I see it. I’m so stunned my mouth opens, and hangs there catching flies for a minute.

I almost signed it!

He must have been sitting over there, laughing his butt off inside, congratulating himself.

My head snaps up. “So, what exactly does the spell in the border of this thing do?” I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen a lot of spells. Ro was a pro at them. Some really nasty ones. Now that I’m seeing it, I can’t believe I missed it. Cleverly tucked into the ornate black border are shimmering shapes and symbols, slithering, in constant motion. One of them is trying to crawl off the page and onto my lap.

I wad it up and throw it at him. “Nice try. Not.”

“Ah, well. It was possible you would sign. It was the simplest solution.”

He’s completely unperturbed. I wonder, does anything shake him up, make him lose his cool, get hot about something, scream and yell? I can’t see it. I think Ryodan glides through life in the same coolly amused mood all the time. “What would it have done to me if I’d signed it?” I ask. Curiosity. I have it in spades. Mom swore it was going to be the death of me. Something’s got to be. There are worse things.

“Some secrets—”

“Yeah, yeah, blah blah, participating and all that bunk. Got it.”

“Good.”

“Didn’t want to know anyway.”

“Yes you did. You can’t stand not knowing things.”

“So, what now?” We’re at an impasse, him and me. I suspect his “application” was really a contract. A binding contract, the kind that knits up your soul and tucks it in someone else’s pocket. I heard of them but never believed they were real. If anybody had a way to sew up a soul in a business deal, it would be Ryodan. Jericho Barrons is an animal. Pure lawless beast. Not so Ryodan. Dude’s a machine.

“Congratulations, kid,” he says. “You passed my first test. You may just get the job yet.”

I sigh. “This is going to be a long day, isn’t it? You serve lunch around here? And I’m going to need more ice.”

A door I didn’t even know was there in the glass wall of his office opens, revealing a glass elevator.

Chester’s is way bigger than I thought. As we ride the elevator down, I’m riveted by the view.

And a little worried.

That he’s letting me see so much means that whether I signed his stupid application or not, he thinks he has me buttoned up.

Ryodan’s glass office isn’t the only place he can watch things. It’s the tip of the iceberg, and, dude, I do mean iceberg, as in megatons of stuff hidden beneath the surface. The central club part of Chester’s — the interior half, a dozen levels the public sees — is barely a tenth of it. That main part where everybody hangs out and dances and makes deals with the devil is constructed inside a much larger structure. Ryodan and his dudes live behind the walls of that club in what’s beginning to look like a vast underground city, from where I am. All the walls are two-way glass. They can go to any level, by elevator or catwalk, and watch anything that’s happening at any time. Serious thought went into designing this place. There’s no way they built it all since the walls fell last Halloween. I wonder how long it’s all been here, beneath the polished, glitzy, glamorous Chester’s that used to exist, hot spot for movie stars and models and the überrich. I wonder if, like our abbey, their underground world has been beneath a changing exterior for millennia.

I couldn’t be more impressed. It’s so brilliant I’m jealous. This is snooping elevated to a whole new techno-nerd level of expertise.

“Like what you see, kid.”

I pick at my cuticles, pretending to be bored.

The elevator stops and the doors swish open. I figure we must be at least half a mile beneath Dublin.

First thing that hits me is the cold. I pull my coat tighter but it doesn’t do a lot of good. Love the look of leather. Hate the insulation of it.

Second thing that hits me is the quiet. In most parts of Chester’s you can hear faint strains of some kind of music or conversation, 24/7. At least some kind of white noise. This level is still as death.

Third thing is how dark it is.

Ryodan is waiting for me outside the elevator.

“Can you actually see out there?” Does he have another superpower on me? I see good in the dark, but not in pitch-black.

He nods.

I hate Ryodan. “Well, I can’t. So, turn on some fecking lights. Besides, Shades much?”

“They don’t bother me.”

The Shades don’t bother him. Shades eat everything. They don’t discriminate. “Bully for you. They bother me. Lights. Pronto.”

“The lights aren’t working down here.”

Before I can dig one out, he removes a flashlight from his pocket and hands it to me. Coolest one I ever seen, shaped like a bullet. It’s tiny, sleek, silver, and when I turn it on lights up the hallway beyond the elevator like the sun came out.

“Dude,” I say reverently, “you got the best toys.”

“Off the elevator, kid. We’ve got work to do.”

I follow him, my breath frosting the air.

I used to think there were only six levels in Chester’s. Now I know there are at least twenty; I counted on the way down. The level we’re on holds three very different subclubs. I glimpse things through the open doors of clubs that no fourteen-year-old should see. But then, that’s been the story of my life.

The cold is getting worse the farther down the hall we go, as we make for a pair of tall doors. It slices through my long coat, cutting into my skin. I shiver and my teeth start to chatter.

Ryodan glances at me. “How cold can you get before you die.”

Blunt and to the point. That’s Ryodan for you. “Dunno. I’ll tell you when I think I’m pushing it.”

“But colder than most humans.”

As usual with him, it’s not a question, but I nod anyway. I can take more of everything than most humans.

Still, by the time we stop outside the pair of closed doors at the end of the hall, I’m hurting. I’ve been stamping my feet with every step for fifty yards. I begin to jog in place, to keep the blood from icing in my veins. My throat and lungs burn with each breath I take. I can feel the cold pressing at the other side of those doors like a presence. I look at Ryodan. His face is frosted. When he raises a brow, ice shatters and hits the floor.

I shake my head. “Can’t.” No way I’m going in there.

“I think you can.”

“Dude, I’m awesome. I’m even All That sometimes. But I have limits. Think my heart’s getting sludgy.”

Next thing I know his hand is on my chest like he’s feeling me up.

“Get off me!” I say, but he’s manacled his other hand around my wrist. I shake my head and slant my face away like I can’t even stand to look at him. I can’t stop him. Not with words or actions. I may as well let him do it, and get it over with.

“You’re strong enough.” He drops his hand.

“Am not.” It’s been a rough morning. Sometimes I like to test myself. Now isn’t one of them. Not after my earlier stutter.

“You’ll survive.”

I look up at him. Weird thing is, as mad as he makes me, as unpredictable as he is, I believe him. If Ryodan thinks I can take it, who am I to argue? Like he’s infallible or something. Figures I’d put more faith in the devil than any god.

“But you’ll have to do it at your top speed.”

“Do what?”

“You’ll see.” The double doors are tall and ornately carved. They look heavy. When he touches the knob and pushes the door open, his fingers are instantly encased in ice. When he takes his hand away, chunks of frozen skin are left on the handle. “Don’t stop once you’re in there. Not even for a second. Your heart will last only as long as you’re moving. Stop and you’re dead.”

He could figure all that out from a palm on my chest? “And I’m going to go in there why?” I can’t see a single reason to take such a risk. I like living. I like it a lot.

“Kid, Batman needs Robin.”

Dude. I go all soft and melty inside and swallow a dreamy sigh. Robin to his Batman! Superhero partners. There are lots of versions where Robin gets way stronger. He could have had me at hello if he’d said that first. “You don’t want me to work for you. You want a superhero partner. That’s a whole different story. Why didn’t you just say so?”

He steps into the room and I hate to admit it but I’m awed that he can do it. I couldn’t and I know it. The blast of killing cold coming through the open door makes me want to cry from the sheer pain of it, makes me want to turn and run the other way as fast as I can, but he just pushes forward into it. He doesn’t move fluid, as usual. It’s like he’s shoving himself into concrete, by sheer force of will. I wonder why he doesn’t go fast, the way he’s telling me to.

That he can do it at all provokes me. Am I going to be a chicken? Let myself be outdone? This is Ryodan. If I’m ever going to be able to beat him, I have to take risks.

“What am I looking for?” I say through chattering teeth, psyching myself up to freeze-frame. I really don’t want to go in there.

“Anything and everything. Absorb all details. Look for any clue. I need to know who did this to the patrons of my club. I guarantee protection. I deliver it. If word of this gets out …”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to. It can’t get out. Chester’s has to be safe ground with no exceptions or he’ll lose business. And Ryodan isn’t one of those men who will ever tolerate losing anything that’s his, for any reason. “You want me to play detective for you.”

He looks back at me. His face is coated with ice. It cracks at the seam of his lips when he speaks. “Yes.”

I can’t help but ask. “Why me?”

“Because you see everything. You aren’t afraid to do what it takes and not breathe a word of it to anyone.”

“Talking like you know a thing or two about me.”

“I know everything about you.”

The chill I get from those quietly delivered words is almost worse than what’s coming out of the club. I know people. Ryodan doesn’t talk big. Doesn’t blow smoke up other people’s tushes or bluff. He can’t know everything. No fecking way he knows everything. “Quit talking. I need to concentrate if you want me to put both my superbody and my superbrain to work at the same time. That’s a whole lot of Mega-nitude.”

He laughs, I think. The sound is flat and tinkles like ice in his throat.

I shine my flashlight into the darkened club. A hundred or so humans are frozen, mid-gyration, mid-sex, mid-dying, mixed in with a caste of Unseelie I’ve only seen a time or two: the caste that served as the Lord Master’s imperial guard. The room is decorated in tribute to their rank, all red and black, with frosted red velvet drapes and ice-dusted black velvet chaises, red leather sofas and padded racks and lots of chains on every piece of furniture. Leather straps. Sharp blades. There are puddles of black ice on the floor. Human blood.

Torture. Murder. People slaughtered.

It sinks in and I just stare a second, trying to get a grip on my temper. “You let this happen. You let people be killed by those monsters!”

“They come here of their own volition. The line into my club last night wrapped around two city blocks.”

“They’re confused! Their whole world just melted down!”

“You sound like Mac. This isn’t new, kid. The weak have always been food for the strong.”

Her name is a kick in my stomach. “Yeah, well Mom taught me not to play with my food before I ate it. Dude, you’re a fecking psychopath.”

“Careful, Dani. You’ve got a glass house of your own.”

“I got no place like Chester’s.”

“It’s a famous quote.”

“Not too famous if I don’t know it.”

“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Maybe you want to talk about your mother.”

I look away. I’ll pocket my stones for a little while. At least until I know for sure exactly what he knows about me.

I turn my attention back to the room and my tension melts away, replaced by an anticipatory thrill. I love mysteries. Way to test my brain! Dancer and me do logic puzzles. He beats me sometimes. Dancer’s the only person I’ve ever met that I think might be smarter than me. What’s with this place? What happened? “You got cameras in here?” I say.

“They stopped working while everything was still normal.”

As if anything was ever “normal” in this torture chamber. Now it’s even weirder.

Each person and Fae in the room is frozen solid, silent, white, iced figurines. Twin plumes of diamond-ice crystals extend from many of their nostrils; exhales frozen. Unlike Cruce, who is contained inside a solid block of ice, these folks look like they somehow got frozen right where they stood. I wonder if I pinged one of the Fae it would shatter.

“You think it was the Unseelie King did this?”

“No reason I can see,” Ryodan says. “He’s not the kind to waste time on small stuff. Hurry up, kid. Standing in here is no picnic.”

“Why are you?”

“I take nothing for granted.”

He means he thinks it’s possible one of them isn’t completely frozen. “You’re watching my back.”

“I watch all my employees’ backs.”

“Partner,” I correct, and I don’t even like that. I was flattered when he called me Robin to his Batman, but I’m over it already. This is who he is: someone who runs a place where humans get killed for the amusement of the Fae.

I save them. He damns them. That’s a gulf between us no bridge will ever span. I’ll look into this. But not for him. For humans. Sides have to be taken. I know which one I’m on.

I go all cool inside, thinking about how many folks in Dublin need a little help to survive, and just like that I’m perfect and on fire and free, and I slip sideways into freeze-framing like gliding into a dream.

Moving like I do makes seeing things a little difficult. That’s why I stood at the door, looking in so long, collecting observations from a distance. Even freeze-framing, the chill causes intense pain in every bone in my body. As I whiz past him I say, “What’s the temp in here?” planning to get the answer on my way back around.

“No thermometer can take it,” he says by my ear, and I realize he’s freeze-framing, too. He’s right beside me. “Don’t touch anything. It’s too cold to risk.”

I circle a Fae guard at top speed. Around and around, looking for clues. If the Unseelie King did this, why would he choose here? Why ice his own guards?

“Is this the only cl-club that g-got iced?” I stutter with cold.

“Yes.”

“Wh-When?” I stamp my foot in hyperspeed, pissed that I’m stuttering. Doesn’t matter that it’s from the cold, it makes me sound pansy. Next thing you know, I’ll lisp.

“Eight days ago.”

A few days after Ryodan cornered me on my water tower. I cock my head. I just heard a sound in a completely frozen room. I whiz back to where I was when I heard it and go in tight circles, listening hard.

Silence.

“D-Did you hear th-th-that?” I manage to spit out. My face is going numb and it’s getting harder to move my lips. I circle a human woman, frozen mid-coitus. It’s not hoar frost that turned her white. She’s covered with hard rime, the kind of ice that builds up on a cold foggy night. Over it all is a layer of clear ice a good inch thick.

“Yes.” Ryodan flashes past me. Warily, we circle the room on opposite ends, watching everything real careful-like.

It’s hard to listen good when you got so much wind in your ears from moving like we do. Ryodan and I have been practically shouting at each other the whole time we’ve been talking. “Like a high-p-p-pitched whine,” I say. I’m not going to be able to stay in the room much longer. There it was again! Where was it coming from? I whiz though the subclub faster and faster. Ryodan and I do figure eights between the frozen figurines, trying to isolate it.

“You f-feel that?” I ask. Something’s happening … I feel a vibration, like the floor has the tremors, like everything is … changing.

“Fuck!” Ryodan explodes. Then his hands are on my waist, and he’s tossing me over his shoulder like that stupid sack of potatoes again, and moving faster than I’ve ever managed to move in my whole life.

That’s when they begin to pop, going off like firecrackers. Fae and humans explode, filling the air with icy, flesh-colored shrapnel.

One after the next, they blow violently, and with each new explosion, the next one blows harder. The furniture is popping now, too. Sofas erupt into icy splinters of wood and rock-hard chunks of stuffing. Racks get blasted into smithereens of metal shards. It sounds like a thousand machine guns going off.

A pair of knives whiz by, chased by a dozen ice picks.

I bury my nose in Ryodan’s back. My face has taken enough of a beating for the day. I’m not in the mood for anything sharp in it. Something slams me in the back of my head and I wrap my arms around my skull. I hate being over his shoulder but he’s faster than me. I tense, pelleted by chunks, waiting for one of those nasty-looking blades or picks to sink into me.

We’re halfway down the hall, almost to the elevator. The other two clubs have begun blowing up, too. I hear an enormous, deep, rumbling sound and realize the floor is cracking beneath us.

Chunks of ceiling begin to fall.

At the elevator, Ryodan flings me from his shoulder into the compartment in one smooth motion.

I explode right back out. “Fecking thing is going to blow and you want me on it?”

“It’ll last long enough to get you out of here.”

“Bull-fecking-crikey! I give you fifty-percent odds I’ll make it!”

“I’ll take them.”

I’m in the air, over his shoulder, slammed back into the elevator again. The whole ceiling of the hallway is coming down now, crown moldings, drywall, steel girders. He’ll be crushed. Not that I care. “What about you?”

His smile is fanged. Creeps me out. “What, kid, you care?”

He slams the doors closed with his bare hands and I swear he gives the thing a push from below.

I shoot up into Chester’s.