Iced

Thirty-Nine

I ain’t never been to a heavy metal concert though I seen some on TV. Dancer’s been to all kinds of shows. Growing up in a cage had serious disadvantages. By the time I got out, there were so many things I wanted to do that I couldn’t get to them all. Now all the good bands are dead, and tonight is probably as close as I’m going to ever get. The violet lights flickering in the sky are perfect for a rock concert, like having our own laser show! I seen some on TV and they were über-cool.

It’s crazy how many speakers and cables and stuff Dancer and me picked up. We might have gotten a little carried away. But the music store we looted was untouched and crammed full of equipment, with no windows broken, and a full cash register. I guess in times of war nobody’s thinking, Gee, I want to go steal a stereo. In the end we filled both buses, figuring the louder the better.

We set up the sound stage close to the abbey, between the wall and the IFP.

It’s freaky working close to it, knowing if anybody jostles you into it, you’re instantly dead. Creeps me all kinds of out but I got a job to do hooking up speakers while Dancer gets everything else up and running. The long, wide, scorched black trail behind it is a constant reminder that it would char me to cinders if I so much as touched it. Although the IFP emits no actual heat, no snow accumulates on the barren soil, as if where it passed it has left the earth antithetical to cold.

The faceted funnel is taller than the abbey, at least a hundred feet wide at the top, and tapers to forty or so at the base — more than big enough to swallow one Hoar Frost King. The earth beneath it is baked to a slick, shiny black finish, though the fire-world fragment doesn’t throw off heat. A ribbon of glowing wards twist around the base, securely tethered to a black loop on a black box etched with symbols about twenty feet away. I skirt the IFP, eyeing the black box suspiciously, thinking how the feck is that tiny thing that is roughly the size of a Rubik’s cube keeping an IFP from drifting? It can’t weigh more than half a pound. I kick it gently to see how far it moves and just about break my toe! I can’t resist trying to pick it up.

I can’t even budge it on the snow!

“What? You got some kind of ultradense metal I ain’t never heard of?” I say grumpily, but if he hears me he doesn’t respond. How does Ryodan always have the coolest stuff? Where the heck does he get it?

I look back up at the funnel. It’s eerily beautiful, crystalline planes and angles reflecting the dazzling purples of the aurora borealis. I will a silent thought to the universe: Let this work. We’ve all had a tough gig lately. Let there be no casualties tonight.

Kat’s outside again, watching us. Ryodan told her she has to move the sidhe-seers out into the snow once we begin. It almost made her nuts! She took it as the equivalent of him saying the abbey was an accepted casualty, but I know him. He wasn’t saying that. He just takes the possibles into consideration and knows that trying to move nearly three hundred women in the middle of a crisis is a nightmare. I’ve tried to move them during times of peace and quiet and had the luck of a broken mirror nailed beneath an upside-down horseshoe with a ladder nearby that a black cat just walked under. Like sheep, sidhe-seers herd by nature, until you want them to go somewhere. Then they’re all fluffy bottoms and broken legs.

Since we’re just about to start, I guess they’re all inside bundling up. Freeze-framing the equipment into place is the only thing keeping me from shivering. Well, that and nervousness about overshooting my mark and ending up a crispy critter might be heating me up, too. Some of Ryodan’s dudes are getting fires going, and a few sidhe-seers begin to straggle out and gather around.

I look at Kat walking toward me from the abbey. She looks so slight with her hair blowing back from her face and her body like a reed that could be too easily broken. I worry about Kat. I know she didn’t want to run the abbey but everybody insisted. Kat exudes something peaceful and strong that makes you feel at ease even when you probably shouldn’t. She says faith is a rock and as long as you have your feet planted firmly on it you can’t falter.

“Dani.”

“Hey, Kat.”

“It’s too close to the abbey. Set it up closer to the IFP.”

“Can’t. When the Hoar Frost King comes, if the IFP is too close to the speakers, the funnel could get iced before we can cut the tether and use it.”

“If it’s not closer, the Hoar Frost King could appear, ice, and vanish before the IFP even gets to it.”

I don’t say nothing. I already took that into consideration when Dancer and me did our time calculations.

“Do you really believe this has any chance of working?”

I plug two speakers into a generator and begin piggybacking the connections. “Which part of it?”

“Any.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure we’re going to end up drawing it here. I don’t know the exact sound it’ll come for, but we’ll make it eventually. By the time Dancer’s done, the music is going to vie with arena-rock for sheer decibels. We shut everything down in and around the city and Dancer dropped the signal to our decoys once we got here. If sound is the Hoar Frost King’s Scooby-snacks — and I’m not wrong about this — it’s going to be starving and we’re leaving it only one source of food. I give attracting it ninety-nine percent odds.”

“And destroying it?”

I ponder that. I been pondering that all the way out. “I hear the IFP incinerated everything in its path, even boulders and concrete buildings and stuff, right?”

She nods.

“The IFP is part of Faery so it’s not like we’re trying to incinerate a Fae monster with human fire. We’re trying to burn it in fire from its own world. I think that increases the odds substantially.”

“But who says fire will win over ice? You said it’s not even made of ice. What if it’s made of something fire has no effect on? What if you summon the Hoar Frost King here and it ices the IFP?”

I been trying not to consider that possibility. “Then we’re all in a world of shit and probably dead, Kat.”

She gives me a look.

I flash her a gamine grin. “But then at least we got rid of the IFP!”

She gives me another look.

I spread my hands, palms up. “What do you want me to say? I’m not going to lie to you. You’re like Christian. You know anyway.”

“You do realize it will require impeccable timing. You have to draw it to a precise location, cut the tether holding the IFP, and hope the Ice Monster gets trapped in the few seconds it’s in our dimension. And whoever cuts that tether might get iced.”

“Dude, a few secs are all we need! Most of us can freeze-frame and Christian can sift. We’re darned fast! We’re setting up practically on top of the IFP. The instant the Hoar Frost King appears, we cut the tether, and both sound stage and Ice Monster get swallowed.”

Her gaze spans the fifteen yards between the sound stage and the perimeter wall of what used to be Ro’s chambers but are now hers. “And so does the abbey.”

“We’re going to retether it before that happens!”

“Again, that’s going to require impeccable timing.”

“Again, dude, we all freeze-frame. ’Sides, I heard the IFP wasn’t moving all that fast. Ryodan says as long as he’s got thirty seconds and gets it done before it enters the abbey, it’s a no-brainer.”

“And if it reaches the abbey?”

“It won’t.”

“If it does?” she presses.

“Look, we got at least a minute before it hits the abbey wall. We ain’t going to let it take the abbey.” I’m not about to tell her that Ryodan said if it entered the abbey he’d be unable to ward it off until it came out the other side. Something about a containment spell only working if you completely enclose on all four sides the object you want contained.

“One minute,” Kat says quietly. “Do you realize if it destroys this place, we will lose everything our order has spent millennia gathering? All our books and sacred objects, our history, our home. Do you see the grass and flowers growing up against the wall? Do you realize if the IFP breaches the abbey, it may very well melt Cruce’s prison and set him free? The Sinsar Dubh will be loose in our world, walking around in the body of an Unseelie prince!”

“Look, Kat, I ain’t saying it’s a perfect plan. But if you don’t have any better ideas, get out of the way and let us do our job.” I look around at the swells of snow, the iced trees, the piles of crusted drifts. “How much longer do you think we’ll survive like this?”

She sighs and says, “That’s the only reason I haven’t stopped you.”

“You haven’t stopped us because you can’t!” I say heatedly. “You’re just one person and we’re all superheroes!”

“I won’t let it take my abbey, Dani. I won’t let these women be ripped from the only home they’ve ever known. Like you, I’m willing to risk a great deal for those things in which I believe.”

I watch her as she walks away and think she’s starting to worry me a little.

It’s nearly eight when our concert begins. We laid out sheets of plywood on the snow to hold the audio equipment and made a second platform a short distance away for the generators we’re using to power it all, then a third platform for the music source and so our tushes don’t get cold. We put that one far enough away that we don’t get iced when it shows up. We build a couple fires and stack wood nearby. My hair and clothes smell like outdoors and wood smoke, and for a sec it makes me feel like I’m on a family vacation or something. All these folks, including six that are fast enough — and I still don’t get to have a decent snowball fight!

Me and Ryodan, Christian, and Jo gather on the platform, ready to dart in and cut the tether when it comes.

“Jo shouldn’t be here,” I say. “She can’t freeze-frame.”

“I’m not leaving,” she says.

“Make her leave,” I say to Ryodan. “Unless you want to be responsible for getting her killed.”

“Ryodan won’t let anything happen to me,” she says.

I roll my eyes. “Dude,” I say to Ryodan. “Get her out of here.”

“She’s her own woman,” he says. “She can make up her own mind.”

Jo glows.

I just about puke. “Fine. It’s on your head.” Bugger it all. Now I’m going to have to watch out for Jo and worry about everything else, too.

Kat, the sidhe-seers, and a couple of Ryodan’s dudes are at the opposite end of the abbey, down by the lake, with fires burning, sitting in total silence. Conversation is forbidden. They’re to make no noise whatsoever.

I get a bad feeling looking at them. “You sure they should be so far away?” I ask Ryodan.

“We need to be split up so, worst-case scenario, we don’t all get iced.”

“Are we ready?” Dancer walks up and joins us on the platform.

“Get out of here, kid. You got no fucking superpower,” Ryodan says.

“Sure I do,” Dancer says easily. “I’m the one who saves her life when you guys would have killed her. Remember?”

“If Jo stays,” I say, cutting off my nose to spite my face, “Dancer stays.” Great. Now I got two people who can’t freeze-frame that I have to watch out for.

Dancer and me settle back against a couple of extra speakers we stacked up for something to lean against. “Crank it up,” I say. “Let’s get this party started.” I hand Dancer my iPod, loaded especially for tonight’s show. I got almost ten thousand songs on it! Motorhead to Mozart, Linkin Park and Liszt, Velvet Revolver to Wagner, Puscifer and Pavarotti and everything in between. I even got show tunes and cartoon soundtracks!

Ten minutes later Lor says, “What is this crap? Who let her load the iPod?”

“Nobody else brought one,” I say. “I chose awesome music.”

“Where the hell is Hendrix on this thing?” Lor takes it out of the sound dock and scrolls through it, looking pissed. “By whose definition is this music?”

Jo says, “Did you get any Muse? I love Muse.”

“If I’d known you all had such crappy taste in songs, I would have brought more earplugs,” I say. “Dissing my taste. Like Hendrix is even listenable. And Muse is something you do.”

“Well, Disturbed,” Jo says, “is something you are.”

“And Godsmacked is something you get,” Dancer says. “But hopefully not tonight.”

“Don’t you have any Mötley Crüe or Van Halen?” Lor says. “Maybe ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’?”

“How about some Flogging Molly,” Christian says. “Dani, my darling, how could you not like the ‘Devil’s Dance Floor’? And what about Zombie?”

“I got ‘Dragula’ and ‘Living Dead Girl,’ ” I say defensively.

“Bloody hell, ‘Living Dead Girl’ is one of my favorites!” Christian says, and grabs the iPod from Lor and starts scrolling to it.

I snatch it and hold it behind my back. “Don’t mess with my lineup. Nobody else thought to bring an iPod. That means I’m in charge.”

Ryodan takes the iPod from me so fast it’s there one sec, gone the next.

“Hey, give it back!”

He scrolls through the playlist. “What’s the deal with all the Linkin Park, for fuck’s sake.”

“Dudes, we need noise. Quit taking the iPod off the dock.” Dancer snatches the iPod from Ryodan and puts it back on the dock. “And Mega has a crush on Chester.”

“I do not!”

“Do too, Mega.”

“He’s like, old!”

“How old?” Christian says.

“Like at least thirty or something!”

Lor laughs. “Fucking ancient, ain’t it, kid?”

“Dude,” I agree. I like Lor.

“You got any Adele?” Jo says hopefully.

“Not a single song,” I say happily. “Got some Nicki Minaj, though.”

“Somebody kill me now,” Ryodan says and closes his eyes.

Four hours later I’m getting a headache.

Six hours later I am a headache, my butt hurts, and I’m low on candy bars.

Eight hours later I’m sick of Nicki Minaj.

Nine hours later I’d give darn near anything for five fecking minutes of silence.

Me, Christian, and Dancer been passing around a bottle of aspirin and it’s empty. I got earplugs in my pack but we can’t use them because we might miss something and screw up.

Across the drive, way down at the other end of the abbey, the sidhe-seers are wrapped in blankets. Dozing. Because, like, the music down there isn’t rattling the bone plates in their skull! I’m so jealous I could spit. Dejected, I eat another fecking candy bar. I hate candy bars.

“You said you were sure this would work,” Jo says testily.

I’m beat. I haven’t slept in days. I rub my eyes and say irritably, “We may have to stick with it for a while.”

“Like, how long?” Christian says, and his voice is weirdly guttural. I look at him. He’s staring down past the abbey at the sidhe-seers and the look on his face is pure, sex-starved Unseelie prince. Kaleidoscopic tattoos rush under his skin. His jeans are … wow. Okay. Don’t look there.

I realize nine hours is probably the longest he’s gone without sex in months. “Don’t you be looking at my friends like that,” I say. “They’re off-limits to Unseelie princes, dude!”

He looks at me and I have to shift my gaze away fast. He’s throwing off power like a volcano about to blow. I feel the wetness of blood on my cheeks from a bare glimpse at his eyes.

“How long?” he says hoarsely.

“Well, it only ever iced one of the clubs in Chester’s. That must mean most music doesn’t make whatever sound it’s after. If you need to leave and find somebody to … you know, go. But try not to kill anybody, okay?”

He gives me a look. I’m not even looking at him and I can feel it.

“How is that even possible? We’ve been listening to some of the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard,” Lor says pissily. “How can this thing not want to kill it? It should have been here hours ago! My head hurts. I don’t get headaches.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you’re safe,” Christian says to me, real quiet.

“Isn’t that quaint. The chivalrous Unseelie prince with the dick of death,” Ryodan mocks.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Christian says.

“I’m getting fecking sick of everybody picking on my music!” I say.

“Fine, then I’ll just change it,” Lor says.

“You touch my iPod, I’ll break every one of your fingers!”

“Knock yourself out trying, honey.” He scrolls to a new song.

I stick my fingers in my ears. “Gah, I hate Hendrix!”

“Then why do you have it on here?”

“I don’t know! I just thought ‘Purple Haze’ was a cool title, then I listened to it and ain’t had time to delete it. Who writes such stupid lyrics? ‘ ’Scuse me while I kiss this guy’?”

“Sky,” Jo corrects.

“Huh? That don’t make no sense either. What the feck is purple haze anyway?”

“She’s going to delete Jimi,” Lor says disbelievingly. “Sacrilege.”

Dancer nudges the volume. Up.

“Traitor!”

“Sorry, Mega, but I have to agree with him on this one.”

I look at Ryodan like I’m expecting him to help me out or something but he’s just sitting there and I see that Jo’s sort of snuggled into him under one of his big shoulders and his cuff is gleaming silver at her throat ’cause his arm is around her neck and it almost makes my head pop off and I don’t even know why. Like he’s a real person or something, with a girlfriend, instead of some savage beast that would pick his teeth with her bones if he felt like it, and she’s falling for it and … Oh! I just can’t even stand looking at them no more! “This ain’t no fecking campfire and cuddle!” I say.

Ryodan gives me his vintage permanently amused look.

I’m so mad I stand up and turn away.

“Don’t worry, Mega,” Dancer says. “We baited the trap right. The monster will come.”

He’s right.

Just then it does.

Too bad it’s not the one we wanted.