Iced Read online

  He sounds a little too eager. Like homicidal maniac eager. “Don’t need no stinking help,” I say crossly. My eardrums hurt. “I mean not that your help is stinking or anything. Your help is totally cool. I just want to do it myself. ”

  “Would you come out from under there, lass?”

  “Would you, like, never yell again? You’re slaying me. I got superhearing. ” I poke my head out. “Where am I?” I’m in a cloud of down pillows and comforters, in a high bed, in the corner of a huge room.

  “My place. ”

  I look around. Cool digs. He’s holed up in a rehabbed industrial warehouse, one of those kinds with a giant living area that has no walls except for the ones you make with furniture and stuff. There’s lots of brick and wood floors and exposed heating ducts, tons of light spilling in tall windows and a massive flat-screen 3D TV in front of a ginormous comfy-looking couch. There’s a pool table and some old video game machines and an awesome bar, a kitchen with stainless steel appliances, and no racks or torture instruments visible anywhere. It’s just the kind of place a college guy would die for—too bad he’s not one anymore, but hey, we all have the things we need to pretend. No scary-looking knife collections. No red, no black, their favorite colors. The place is totally not Unseelie prince.

  A shaft of rosy light is shining on me and I look up. The bed is under a skylight, the sun’s setting and it’s got one of those new, strange Fae hues to it, brilliant orangey pink. I could sprawl in bed and watch the stars at night. I like it being pushed in the corner, giving me wall at my right and back, leaving only two sides to defend. Feels snug. Makes me think about rearranging some of my own rooms. I’m fascinated by the way other folks live, and love to look in other people’s houses. “Aw, man, you ever move out, I’m moving in!”

  “Like it, do you, lass?” he says, and his voice sounds funny. Thick and weird.

  I look down at him and jerk. “Something on my face?” He’s staring at me hard, eyes intense, and what’s looking out of them doesn’t look like it belongs in this place of brick and wood and sunshine at all. It belongs in the dark somewhere, with razor blades, about to do something real nasty.

  “No. Your face is lovely, lass. The sunset looks good on you. ” He reaches a hand out toward my face and I go real still.

  “Dude, you’re scaring me. ”

  He looks at me but it’s like he’s not seeing me at all, so I sit there with his hand about an inch from my face and look back and think about wild animals. About how they’ll attack if they smell fear, not that I feel it, but when you’re staring at an Unseelie prince, even though you know he started out human, it’s kind of hard to predict what might happen next. This isn’t a scenario I can lock down on my mental grid and freeze-frame through. This obstacle course has too many unknown variables.

  He drops his hand without touching me, pushes up from the bed and goes to the kitchen. He braces his fists on the island and leans there with his back to me. He’s bigger than he was when I first saw him up on my water tower. The back of his shirt is stained with blood and his spine presses knobby and weird against it. It’s creepy.

  I scoot to the exit side of the bed, thinking I’ll just be moseying along now, when I realize I’m not wearing enough to get up. I only got on a bra and underwear. I sink back down and tuck my knees up. Not that I want to draw attention to the fact, but looking around yields no results. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Destroyed. ”

  He undressed me! He must have washed me, too, because I’m not covered with blood. Holy high wire! An Unseelie death-by-sex Fae that’s having all kinds of temper problems undressed and cleaned me up. “Do you, like, have any other clothes I could wear?”

  “Don’t use that tone with me. ”

  “What tone?”

  “The one that thinks I’m some kind of freak predator that molests children. I’m not a freak and you’re not a child. I undressed you, lass. I cleaned you up. I healed you. I will never hurt you. ”

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  “How did you heal me?”

  “Fed you my blood. ”

  My gag reflex is instant and uncontrollable. I retch dry and noisy. Unlike a lot of other folks I know, drinking blood doesn’t sound cool to me at all. It grosses me out. Same with eating Unseelie flesh; I’ve never done it and never will. I’m staying an Unseelie-flesh virgin all my life. I’m not even tempted by the possibility that it could make me stronger and faster than I already am. Dude, you got to draw your lines in the sand somewhere and hold them. It’s especially important when the sand keeps shifting beneath your feet.

  “It’s potent. Works better than Unseelie flesh. A few drops in your mouth and …” He turns around and smiles at me. I think. Tattoos rush beneath the skin of his face, shadowing the planes and valleys, making it hard to decide just what that twist of his lips means. “There’s really only one question: would you rather have died?”

  That’s an easy one for me. I’d never rather that. Not under any circumstances. I’ll take survival at any price. Always. “No. Thanks for the blood, dude. Means a lot. ” I hate admitting this next part but I’m pretty sure it’s true. “You saved my life. I won’t forget it. ” I smile back at him, then I just sit there trying not to gape at his reaction. He totally changes and I see the Highlander he was. His eyes go brown and playful and he looks college-guy hunky again; the tattoos recede from his face. Even his muscles change, smooth, and suddenly his body is more human.

  He tosses me a candy bar. I catch it, rip it open and munch it, and begin making plans to get my sword back. I know Jayne. He knows if I survive I’ll come after it, so he’ll take it somewhere he thinks I can’t get to it. He won’t want to waste too many of his men guarding it because he wants them out on the street, fighting. I waste a couple secs trying to figure out where he’d take it, then realize I don’t have to. All I have to do is spy on him and follow him back to wherever he takes the Fae he catches to be slaughtered. I can’t believe he’s so stupid he really thinks he’ll be able to keep it!

  “Stay there and I’ll get you some clothes,” Christian says.

  He lopes off, moving long-limbed and easy, not gliding in the weird way the princes do. Down the other end of the long room he rummages through an armoire, and comes back with a pair of flannel pj bottoms with a drawstring waist and a huge cream fisherman’s sweater.

  I suit up under the covers, tying off my waist tight and rolling up the legs and arms about a hundred times. When he tosses me a pair of balled-up socks as he heads off to the kitchen, I’m distracted, still thinking about Jayne, and miss them. They go sailing past me, hit the wall and fall down in the crack. I roll over and reach down, rooting around for them.

  It takes me a second to figure out what I close my hand on.

  Hair. Attached to a head. There’s a head in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. I freeze, totally horrified and massively grossed out.

  I jerk my hand back and just sit there, swallowing the creeped-out sound trying to claw its way out of my throat, then look over my shoulder at him. He’s humming a weird song under his breath that sounds a lot like the music they play at Chester’s and disappearing into a pantry off the kitchen.

  I force myself to reach back down and pat around, never taking my eyes off the pantry door. “I’m hungry, Christian,” I call. When he answers, I can make a good guess at how deep the pantry is, how far in it he’s gone. How much time I have to figure out what the feck is going on here.

  The head has a neck attached to it, and sure enough there’s a body, too. It’s naked and female and human. She’s stiff with rigor mortis and ice cold.

  I barely let myself breathe. I hear boxes being moved around on shelves.

  “Sorry, lass, I’ll have more for you in a second. I thought I had some Snickers in here but so far I’m only finding Almond Joy. ”

  I yank my hand out of the crack and scoot back to the middle o
f the bed, and when I answer him I sound relaxed, playful. “Aw, dude, keep looking. You know how I love my Snickers. ”

  The boxes stop moving. “Something wrong, lass?”

  There’s a dead woman wedged between Christian’s bed and the wall. Normally I’d say that’s a whole lot of wrong and I’d get real vocal about it, but I’m in the killer’s apartment, wearing his pjs with no shoes and I got no fecking sword that kills Fae because that fecker Jayne took it, so I’m in no hurry to do that right now.

  There’s no way I tipped him off. My delivery was perfect. “No, nothing. Just starving out here!” Another flawless lie. I may not do it often but I shine at it like I do most things.

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  He steps out of the pantry and looks at me. The Highlander is gone. He’s full Unseelie prince, iridescent eyes tinged with crimson. “Och, lass, Mac never told you, did she?”

  “Told me what?”

  “I’m a walking lie detector, Dani, my darling. ”

  “Nobody is. ”

  “It’s inherited, like your sidhe-seer gifts. ”

  “Which I’m going to use to kick your ass from here to next week. ”

  “And that was one big fat fuck of a lie. You found her, didn’t you? I knew I should have put her away. But you were here, and bleeding so much, and I needed her off the bed. Saving you was all that mattered. ”

  “So you shoved her off the side of the bed and thought I wouldn’t notice? You stuffed her in a crack!” My hands are fists. The ignominy of it. Dead and disposed of like a used condom. If I hadn’t missed the socks, I’d never have known. I’d have left thinking Christian was wicked cool for saving me and not been one ounce the wiser that I’d been in bed next to a dead woman, eaten and dressed without even seeing her two feet away. “Dude, you are one sick feck. ”

  “Och, Dani, my love,” he says, gliding toward the bed, “you’ve really no idea. ”

  NINETEEN

  “I stand alone”

  I kick up into freeze-frame without even thinking. I don’t lock one thing down on my mental grid. I hope I do a lot of damage, break everything I hit and just don’t knock myself out, because I have a feeling if I do, I’ll wake up strapped down to a rack with an insane ex-Highlander about to do seriously fecked-up things to me.

  If he can sift, I’m dead meat.

  I make it to the door but he’s there in front of me, arms spread, crouched low, looking like he’s about to bum-rush me and take me off my feet. His face is contorted with anger, kaleidoscopic tattoos rush beneath his skin. His eyes are full black. Only thing that’s missing to complete the Unseelie prince picture is a radioactive torque and huge black wings spreading, getting ready to crush me in a deadly embrace. I backpedal frantically and he lunges.

  Then I’m on the floor and he’s on top of me, and I know the second he hits me that Christian is so much stronger than me that I don’t stand a chance of taking him. I can’t believe the strength I feel in his body! The Unseelie part of him has kicked in with a vengeance. It’s not just power oozing off him. He’s turning into pure sex just like the rest of them. I shake my head, trying to keep it clear. I think about horrible things like the dead woman stuffed into the space between his bed and the wall, and how I don’t want to end up like her.

  I’m flat on my back and he’s got my wrists and he’s stretching my hands above my head. I curse and struggle and kick but it’s like fighting a concrete wall. Nothing, and dude, I do mean nothing, seems to have any impact on him. I head-butt him. He laughs and drops his face into my shoulder, and sniffs me!

  I bite his ear, try to tear it off his head. Blood fills my mouth, gagging me, and I let go.

  “Dani, Dani, Dani,” he says like he doesn’t even feel it. “Don’t fight me. You don’t need to fight me. I’ll never hurt you. Not you. You’re my brightest shining star. ”

  I ain’t nobody’s bright shiny nothing! He’s a certifiable lunatic! “Get off me!” Up close the death-by-sex Fae part of him is doing wicked bad things to me. Things I don’t like feeling. My mouth is dry and I’m seeing those graphic images plastered inside my skull. Christian. Naked. Doing the things I seen Ryodan doing. And I want to watch and I don’t want to watch and I have to get the feck out of here now! “Can you even feel? Or are you as dead inside as that woman? Why did you even bother saving me? So you could kill me slower?”

  “It’s not like that. Would you hold still and listen to me for a second?”

  “There’s nothing you can say that matters!”

  “It’s hard to talk to you when I’m touching you. ”

  “Dude, quit sniffing me! That’s just rude. Get off me!”

  “I can’t. You’ll run. ”

  “If you really didn’t kill her, you’ll let me go. You’ll trust me to come around. Give me room to breathe. ”

  “If I let you go, will you sit down and hear me out, lass?”

  He’s relaxed since we’re kind of negotiating but he’s a lie detector and I know I can’t answer that last question, so I take my best shot and knee him in the balls with everything I’ve got. There’s no such thing as a dirty fight when you’re fighting to win.

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  He roars so loud my head just about blows apart. Then he’s off me and curled in a ball, howling. I’ve kneed a few dudes before. Got to out there on the streets sometimes. Never seen one react so bad. I wonder if it’s because he was hard as a rock when I hit him, so I had to twist really hard to get to his balls and I came up on them from underneath and probably mashed his … uh, yeah, Mega, now’s a good time to run.

  I blow out the door so hard I blast it off the hinges.

  This morning when I left Chester’s after almost dying and coming back to life—I think it was this morning, I spend so much time unconscious lately that I’m never sure if I’ve been out for a few hours or a couple of days—I was trying to decide what to do with the rarity of a whole day of free time. But then I nearly got killed again, this time by exploding frozen people, then Jayne took my sword, then I passed out from blood loss, got cleaned up by an Unseelie prince and drank his blood, found a dead woman practically in bed with me, and now I’m out on the streets again and feck if it’s not time for me to report to work again!

  I can’t decide which of those things is the worst.

  Dude, sucky day. Free time, my ass. I barely survived it.

  I bounce from bare foot to bare foot, freeze-framing with all I’ve got, skinning up my heels something fierce, waiting for Christian to sift into the spot in front of me. Knowing if he does, I’m going so fast I’ll knock myself out cold on him and probably wake up dead. Knowing I don’t have the one weapon that would protect me from him because Jayne took it.

  Mac has one, though.

  Bet I could take her.

  Way I see things, I got three options.

  Go to Chester’s, use Ryodan as a shield against Christian while making him help me get my sword back.

  Go straight after Jayne myself, knowing Christian is hot on my heels.

  Go after Mac and take the spear. Barrons might be in the way. Who am I kidding? Barrons would definitely be in the way, and even if he wasn’t and I took her spear, he’d come after me. Then I’d have Christian hunting me, Ryodan pissed at me for missing work, and Barrons breathing down my neck.

  A day in the life of me. The stuff I have to put up with.

  I’m always thinking things are as bad as they can get and they get worse. I nearly crash into something in the street, one of those fecking variables that move off my predicted grid, like people, animals, and Fae.

  “Stay out of my way, human!” it hisses.

  I want to drop out of freeze-frame and kick this monster’s ass all the way to dead. I haven’t seen her since the night Mac saved me from her, and forced her to give me back my good looks. I almost died that night, too. I almost die a lot. Superheroes do.

/>   “You stay out of mine, you ugly old bitch!” I hiss back at the Gray Woman.

  Then she’s gone on her way and me on mine. She’s off to hunt and kill and I’ve got an itch I can’t scratch. My hand closes on nothing at my waist.

  I need my sword like I need to breathe.

  I detour into a sporting goods store, jam shoes on my feet, grab an oversized fleece pullover to pull on over my sweater because its fecking cold for May, and dash off again, heading for my best shot at success. Trying to take on Jayne and his men with Christian trying to kill me is a weak shot. I don’t have any idea where he’s taken my sword. There are times, like Ryodan said, when Batman needs Robin. Well, I don’t need Ryodan, but he sure will make it easier. He can watch my back like Mac used to. I’ve got no time for pride. I want results and I know how to get them. He’s always telling me to ask. Tonight I’m asking.

  I feel naked without my sword.

  I feel exposed. It’s throwing me all kinds of off balance like I don’t even know who I am anymore without it.

  When I blast into Ryodan’s office, I’m going a million miles a minute, feet and mouth. Every one of his dudes scowls at me on the way in, even Lor, and I have no idea why. Guess Ryodan told them to be pissy to me or something. You never know what’s coming next with him.

  I blurt out what happened with the frozen car and Jayne and tell him how we have to go get my sword back like right now, like this very instant.

  “Drop down, kid,” he says without raising his head from his stupid paperwork. “You’re messing up my office. ” Papers are flying around his head.

  I drop down from hypermode and he looks up. He’s looking at me weird. Takes me a sec to figure it out. It’s like he’s looking at a stranger. One he doesn’t like and is thinking about killing. Why the feck is he mad at me?

  “You reek of Highlander. The whole club can smell him on you. You’re wearing his clothes. ”

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  I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk so soft. “Dude, who cares? Didn’t you hear anything I said? Inspector Jayne took my sword!”

  “Explain why you’re wearing his clothes. ”

  Softer still. If I wasn’t so hot with temper I’d get a chill. I don’t understand him. What does what I’m wearing have to do with anything that’s actually, like, relevant? How could it possibly matter? I don’t even understand why it registers! But I can tell by the look on his face he’s not budging until I explain, and if I don’t get my sword back soon, I’m going to go crazy. I also know if I tell him Christian killed some woman and I was next, he won’t pay any attention to the problem of my sword, he’ll go after Christian, when I need him to go after Jayne. I’m not sure he can take Christian. Not with what he’s turning into. But with my sword, I know I can.