Iced: A Dani O'Malley Novel (Fever Series) Read online

  “Observations,” he says.

  “Four imperial Unseelie guards were the only commonality I was able to isolate endemic to both scenes.” They’d been standing, armed, at the dock doors, overseeing the delivery.

  He gives me a sidewise look. “Wow. That was, like, a whole sentence. With nouns and verbs and connective tissue. Endemic. Fancy word.”

  “Sloppy, dude. Should have omitted the connective tissue part.”

  “Nothing else.”

  I give him a look. I hate his statement-questions. I’m not answering them anymore.

  He laughs. “Nothing else.” His voice rises on else about one one-hundredth of a note higher than the word “nothing,” a concession only someone like me with superhearing would ever be able to pick up. Still, it’s a concession. From Ryodan. Rarer than water in the desert.

  “The ice was layered the same. Maybe hoar frost. Definitely hard rime. Clear ice on top of it all. The hard rime’s weird. White ice comes from fog freezing. What’s fog doing inside both these buildings?”

  “How did the place blow?”

  I think back. It happened so fast and we were outside, and he was blocking my view, and I was more focused on getting him off me than anything else. I hate to, but I admit, “I can draw no conclusions, circumstances being what they were.”

  He looks sidewise at me again.

  “Talking like you, dude, thinking it might get all this stupid fecking stuff over with sooner. Communication is hard enough when everybody’s trying.”

  “Isn’t that the truth. Give me your hand.”

  “No.”

  “Now.”

  There’s no way I’m giving him my hand.

  He says something soft in a language I don’t understand. My arm jerks up. I watch in horror as my hand passes to his side of the Humvee, palm up.

  He drops a Snickers in it, murmurs something, and my hand is my own again. I wonder when, how, and why my fecking appetite became everyone else’s business.

  “Eat.”

  I think about throwing the candy bar back in his face or out the window. I refuse to let my fingers close around it.

  But I sure could use it.

  He brakes, comes to a stop in the middle of the road, turns toward me, grabs the collar of my coat, pulls me across the expanse between our seats and leans in. Locks eyes. We’re maybe eight inches apart, and I think the only reason my nose ain’t touching his is because one of the brackets on my MacHalo is just about touching his forehead. My butt’s no longer touching the seat.

  I’ve never seen such clear eyes as Ryodan’s got. Most folks are crammed full of emotions, with lines around them like battle scars. I can tell by looking at grown-ups if they’ve spent their years laughing or crying or resenting the whole world. I hear moms say to their kids when they make faces, “Careful, your face will stick like that.” And it really does. By middle age most folks wear whatever they felt the most in their lives smack on their kisser for all the world to see. Dude, so many of them should be embarrassed! It’s why I laugh so much. If my face is going to stick, I’m going to like looking at it.

  Looking at Ryodan is like staring the devil in the face. It’s obvious what he’s felt the most—nothing. Ruthless. Cold dude.

  “I won’t ever hurt you unless you make me, Dani.”

  “You being the one who gets to decide what constitutes the definition of ‘make.’ Big fat lot of wiggle room in there.”

  “I don’t need wiggle room.”

  “Because you annihilate.”

  “Another of those fancy words.”

  “Dude. What did you just do to me?”

  “Gave you what you needed but were too stubborn to take.” He closes my fingers around the candy bar with his. I can’t shake him off fast enough. “Eat, Dani.”

  He drops me back into my seat, puts the Humvee in gear again and takes off.

  I munch the candy bar despite the sour taste in my mouth, thinking how I used to be invisible.

  “Superheroes are never invisible,” he says. “They’re just deluded.”

  Turning my head toward the buildings flashing by, I screw up my face and stick out my tongue.

  He laughs. “Sideview mirror, kid. And careful. Your face’ll stick like that.”

  I head out into the streets with boxes of freshly printed dailies (I love the smell of new ink!) in a battered grocery cart the minute my time is my own again. I can run with a cart and slap my papers up on poles faster than I can do it on my crotch rocket. My bike’s for pleasure, for pure downtime, when I got nothing else weighing down on me, like always saving the world. I don’t get to ride it much.

  Ryodan’s reminder that I’m to report to work every single night at eight P.M. on the dot is still ringing in my ears, making me nuts. What the feck can he possibly have to torture me with every night? Is he icing these stupid scenarios himself just for an excuse to mess with me?

  I head west and begin my usual route. It’s a little after midnight. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple hours, then I’ll start hunting for Dancer again. I’m getting a little worried about him. Most times he goes somewhere else without telling me, he’s only gone a few days. I don’t know all his haunts any more than he knows all mine but I’ll keep checking those I do.

  I’ve got certain posts and poles and benches that folks frequent, like regular newspaper stands, waiting for my latest updates. Folks have probably been a little worried with my paper being late and all. I’ve got important info to share tonight.

  I glance down at my rag, proud of it. The ink is crisp and clean, and it looks real professional.

  The Dani Daily

  May 21, 1 AWC

  New Unseelie Caste!

  Update your DDD Manual!

  BROUGHT TO YOU EXCLUSIVELY BY TDD YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR THE LATEST NEWS IN & AROUND DUBLIN!

  Dudes, I discovered a brand new kind of Unseelie hanging at Chester’s!

  Calling this one Papa Roach, and I don’t mean the band! Take notes: it’s three to four feet tall, with a shiny brownish-purplish segmented body, six arms, two legs, and the smallest head you ever saw, like the size of a walnut, with little fish-egg eyes. It can break down into segments that are the size of roaches that crawl inside your clothes, and get under your skin—LITERALLY!

  If you see this thing coming, run like heck because I haven’t figured out a way to kill it yet. You want to carry a can of hair spray or fill a spray bottle with gas and always have some matches on you (I got a blowtorch myself). That way if you get cornered, you can spray them and set them on fire. It doesn’t kill them but it sure keeps them busy while you run.

  I’ll keep you posted, Dublin!

  Dani out!

  I don’t tell them the worst part is what Jo told me this morning—that some of the waitresses at Chester’s encourage the bugs to get under their skin. I don’t want to give them any ideas. This Unseelie has a specialty: it feeds on human fat. Presto—tiny waist! Hello bug—goodbye cellulite! Don’t like those dimpled thighs? Bug up. The walls haven’t been down long enough for folks to get dystopian-thin, and with the amped-up sexuality of so much Fae royalty walking around dangling the promise of potential immortality, the focus on fashion and beauty has never been more extreme.

  Jo told me that a couple of the waitresses are real proud to have one. It’s becoming a status symbol or something, like hair extensions or boob jobs. Jo said the waitresses claim they don’t kill humans, they just eat their fat, and they can hardly feel them in their skin at all.

  I think that’s bull. I think they hitch a ride because they’re getting more from humans than fat. I think they experience everything their “host” experiences: pleasure, pain, whatever. The Unseelie are bugging us and we let them. They invade our bodies and gather intel from the inside, then report back to Papa, who probably reports back to the Unseelie princes, the better to prey on us. What do these idiot waitresses think? That the bug will eventually return to its own body and leave them all pretty an
d thin, no harm no foul?

  Dude, it’s an Unseelie! There’s always a catch.

  I zip around the corner to my first pole, grocery cart rattling.

  When I see one of my papers from last week still hanging up, gleaming pinkish-white in the rosy moonlight, it surprises me. Folks always take them down, and take them home, wherever that is. Darn few get left behind.

  As I get closer, I realize it’s not my paper.

  What the feck? What’s on my pole? Folks know to leave me notes at the General Post Office.

  I slip into fast-mo, get nose-to-nose with it.

  I’m so flabbergasted my jaw about hits the pavement.

  The Dublin Daily

  May 20, 1 AWC

  YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR CREDIBLE NEWS IN AND AROUND NEW DUBLIN BROUGHT TO YOU BY WECARE WE BRING YOU ALL THE NEWS THAT MATTERS.

  WE WILL HELP YOU SURVIVE!

  WECARE

  “Gah, dudes! Plagiarize much?” I pluck the offending matter from my pole and almost drop the thing, my eyeballs are so freaked out. “The Dublin Daily not The Dani Daily? Like, maybe they could have an original thought? Holy mimicking monkeys, they aped my intro! Hardly even changed any fecking words!”

  I scan it, quick-like.

  Don’t be fooled by IMITATION dailies. The Dublin Daily is the ONLY daily you’ll ever need. We can help you TURN YOUR POWER AND WATER BACK ON!!!

  Join us now!

  Unlike IMITATION dailies, WeCARE delivers all the important news direct to your door, no matter how difficult your “door” is to reach.

  DON’T subject yourself to terrible threats in the streets in order to read OVERINFLATED JUVENILE BOASTS that advise you to indulge in DANGEROUS fireworks and battles!

  WeCARE will come to YOU.

  WeCARE will fight your battles FOR YOU.

  WeCARE will keep you safe and IN THE LIGHT.

  Who cares about you? WE do.

  WeCARE.

  “Buh!” It’s all I can come up with. “Buh!” I say again. I can’t even stand to keep reading. I ball it up and crush it into a tiny hard wad. Finally I manage, “Imitation?” I’m so perturbed I can’t even cuss. I can barely talk. “Overinflated? Who’s writing this drivel?”

  I been keeping Dublin safe and in the light since last October! Months of delivering food and supplies to folks too scared to leave their hidey-holes. Months of fighting monsters, of finding and collecting little kids that got orphaned on Halloween when their folks were out celebrating and never came home because they got devoured by Shades or some other Unseelie. Months of rounding up people and taking them to Inspector Jayne so they could learn to fight.

  Nobody else ever bothered to step forward and help folks survive.

  Now this?

  I’m getting dissed by some paper that’s pretending I’m the pretender?

  “There is some serious ass-kicking going to happen,” I mutter. As soon as I find out who the feck We-the-feck-Care is.

  I spend the next few hours whizzing around my city, tearing the stupid things off my posts and putting up The Dani Daily.

  They used my posts. Couldn’t even find their own places to put them up.

  Reaching out to MY market by taking MY posts. Stupid fecking copycats. I’m so mad, I’m steaming. If anybody was watching from above, all they’d see is a blur of motion leaving two plumes of pure pissed-offedness trailing out of my ears.

  I figure tomorrow’s got to be a better day.

  Lately, it seems all I ever figure is wrong.

  TEN

  “Cat scratch fever”

  Four nights he’s come to me, murmuring my name.

  Kat, he says and he makes of that one syllable an exquisite melody with which not even the divine orchestral choir of all the angels in heaven could compete.

  He chimes my name in the language of the Unseelie and it makes my ears ring until my mind is emptied of all thought, until my eyes are incapable of beholding any vision other than him. He is so beautiful that merely looking at him makes me weep, and when I brush tears from my cheeks, my hands come away tainted red by blood.

  He wakes me but doesn’t wake me.

  He takes me to a place that is so perfect and serene and free of worry that I want to stay there forever.

  Kat, he says, my name is Cruce. Not V’lane. I was so weary of wearing his golden shining face. He was never half the Fae I am. I have you in the Dreaming, is it not beautiful? Do you not feel divine here with me? You need not fear me. I am not what I seem.

  I am in danger.

  Terrible danger.

  And I cannot tell a soul because they are all looking to me to lead, to be strong and show them the way.

  I am their hope.

  I am afraid “their hope” will soon be beyond all hope.

  They judged Rowena so harshly! They have no idea what she faced. God knows how many years she withstood similar torment before she succumbed! Who knows what caliber of person she was before the Sinsar Dubh tampered with her mind. Did it happen to her every night like it does to me? Did the darkness beneath our stone fortress beeline straight for her head, her heart, her bed, the moment she lay down and tried to relinquish for a few stolen hours the heavy mantle of rule?

  I cannot help but wonder if this hasn’t been going on for millennia. If the Unseelie king knew when he interred his deadly alter ego beneath our sacred ground and charged us with guarding it then infused our blood with his own to make us strong—or is it that very kiss of evil in our veins that makes us weak?—how much hell on earth he was going to cause. How many women’s lives he would ruin. How many humans would one day die.

  I wonder if thousands of times before me a woman stepped into the position I occupy, assumed leadership of our Order, and was instantly subjected to the harshest test of will imaginable: besieged by the insidious seduction of the Sinsar Dubh.

  Take me, free me, be invincible, save the world.

  Oh, the siren song of power. Even I who care nothing for power am not immune.

  I do not believe it was ever quiet down there. Not for a moment!

  I do not believe any Grand Mistress was ever spared.

  Remarkable we kept it hidden so long!

  He came to me that first night the Unseelie king imprisoned him beneath our home. I slept, and while I was vulnerable, he came to me in my dreams. He has come to me each night since.

  I tried sleeping pills. They only drugged me, rendering me more vulnerable to the pleasures of temptation.

  He shows himself to me, in all his glory. He shows me how much more beautiful Cruce is and always was. V’lane was a pale imitation of the real thing. Cruce is black and white and brilliant and hard and strong and perfect. He wraps velvet wings around me and makes me feel things I’ve never imagined.

  I agree with Margery.

  I want that chamber pumped full of concrete or lead or iron, or anything that might bar the path between him and me.

  I do not know a tenth of the spells Rowena knew. And still she failed.

  I can’t even get the door closed!

  The night the Book was laid to rest, I left the chamber celebratory, with my heart feeling lighter than it had in a long time. The Sinsar Dubh was finally off the streets, and although the method of confinement was not all I’d hoped, I’d envisioned a reprieve. A time of rest and rebuilding, precious, necessary time to come to terms with the many changes in our lives, the endless killing, time to grieve the loss of our many sisters.

  It was not to be.

  He comes to me with his promises and his lies, with his beauty and unchained desires, and he says that I am all that he needs. He says I and I alone can rule at his side and that my special gift of emotional empathy makes me the only woman capable of ever truly understanding him to the deepest degree, on that rare and uncompromising level of emotional bonding an Unseelie prince must have, or will go mad without. He says I am his only possible mate and he has waited an eternity to have me.

  He claims he is being wrongly accused, a
nd we are all being tricked. He says he is not the Sinsar Dubh. He claims the moment he was imprisoned in his block of ice, the King took it all back.

  He says we are being played by a clever, cunning, mad ruler who cares nothing for his children, who never has, who loves only his concubine, and once he had her in his arms again, reclaimed the power of the Sinsar Dubh, too. He says the concubine still isn’t fully Fae, and the King retrieved his spells so he might resume his work, that it was all sleight of hand in the chamber that night.

  He tells me he was made out to look like the villain again so we wouldn’t search too hard for the Unseelie king, so we would worry instead about containing the only prince capable of stopping him when he decides our world is expendable, which Cruce assures me the King will one day do—and not too far in the future.

  He tells me I must be humanity’s savior. When I am ready, he will show me the way to free him. He says that only I am strong enough, level-headed enough, to see the truth when it stands before me, wise enough to make the hard decisions.

  He speaks with forked tongue and I know it!

  And I am still losing the battle.

  I wake in the morning smelling of him. Tasting him in my mouth, feeling his tongue on my skin. Filled with him, as no man has ever filled me: body, mind, soul. He makes love to me and I resist but somehow I’m not resisting. In my dreams I say no but do it anyway and love each exquisite, soul-charring moment of it. I wake up coming over and over again from my invisible lover. Shuddering with heat.

  And need.

  And shame.

  My sisters count on me. I am their leader.

  How will I survive this? How do I stop him from coming to me? There must be spells to block him, wards, runes to place around my bed! Maybe I should leave the abbey, now, before it’s too late. Can I leave my sisters? Dare I leave my sisters? If I don’t leave right now, will I ever again have the strength of will to go, or will I find myself down there one night, trembling hands on the bars, willing to do anything it takes to set Cruce free?