Iced Read online

  Ro thought the whole subconscious/conscious issue had something to do with why I am the way I am. She said I have the neurological condition synesthesia out the ass, with all kinds of cross regions of my brain talking to each other. Old witch was always psychoanalyzing me (as in she was the psycho and I was being analyzed). She said my Id and Ego are best buds, they don’t just live on the same floor, they share a bed.

  I’m cool with that. Frees up space for other stuff.

  I take off, tune out, and do what I do best.

  Kill.

  NINE

  And it all goes boom, chicka boom,

  boom-boom, chicka boom

  “What is this place?” I ask Ryodan.

  “You got lots of places around the city, kid. ”

  I don’t say “Yes. ” Lately, everybody seems to know everything about me anyway. And he doesn’t say, “Well, I do, too. ” When Ryodan wastes words, he does it in the worst possible way. He gets all philosophical. Yawn the feck out of me. There’s observation of fact that keeps you alive like understanding Jayne, and there’s philosophizing. Way different things. The former is my gig.

  We’re standing on a concrete loading dock, outside commercial doors at an industrial warehouse on the north side of Dublin. Ryodan drove us here in a military Humvee. It’s parked behind us, barely visible in the night, black on black, wheels and everything, with black windows. It’s something I would’ve driven. If I’d found one. But I didn’t. It’s pure badass. And I thought Barrons’s cars were cool.

  I begin my investigation. There are no lights on around the building. “Dude, got Shade protection?”

  “Don’t need it. Nothing alive inside. ”

  “What about the folks that come and go?”

  “Only during daylight. ”

  “Dude. Night. I’m here. ”

  He looks at me, looks at my head, and his lips twitch like he’s trying not to bust out laughing. “You don’t need that … whatever the fuck it is. ”

  “Ain’t dying by Shade. It’s a MacHalo. ” First thing I did this morning was swing by Dancer’s and grab my stuff.

  The MacHalo is a brilliant invention. In Dublin alone it’s saved thousands of lives. It’s named after my used-to-be best friend Mac, the person who invented the bike helmet covered with LED lights, front, sides, rear. I added a few brackets to mine for better coverage in fast-mo. (Though I’ve always wondered if I could fast-mo through a Shade even without it. ) It’s the ultimate in Shade protection. I heard they’re going gangbusters around the world. Everybody in Dublin’s got one. For a while there I was making and delivering them to survivors every day. Some folks say the Shades have left Dublin. Moved on for greener pastures. But Shades are sneaky and it only takes one to kill you instantly. I’m not taking any chances.

  “What does this place have in common with your club?” I say.

  He gives me a look that says, “Dude, if I knew that do you think I’d have enlisted your puny help?”

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  I snicker.

  “Something funny here. ”

  “You. All prickly and pissed ’cause there’s something you don’t know. Got to call on the megaservices of the Mega. ”

  “Ever occur to you I’m using you for reasons your inferior human brain can’t begin to understand. ”

  It’s another of his questions that doesn’t sound like a question. It’s such an irritating tactic, I wish I’d thought of it myself. Now if I start doing it, I’ll look like a copycat. Of course it had occurred to me that he had ulterior motives. Everyone does. Now I’m the one feeling all prickly and pissy. I go into observation mode, ruffle my feathers back down into a duck-coat so I’m more likely to quack up than get pissy. Humor is a girl’s best friend. The world’s a funny place.

  I estimate the double doors of the warehouse at thirty feet, with an entrance nearly twice as wide if you slide back all four panels of the doors. The corrugated metal is throwing off such intense cold that my breath freezes a few puffs from my face and hangs in the air like small frosty clouds. When I punch one, it tinkles to the ground in a dusting of ice and my mind attaches a pattern to a pattern: I see the dusting of ice up Christian’s jeans. I consider it for a moment then decide no way. Fae royalty can minorly affect the weather around them. Key word there is “minorly. ” This is major stuff. And Christian’s not even full-blooded Fae.

  The doors are coated with clear ice. I reach for my sword.

  Ryodan’s front is against my back, and his hand is on my hand on the sword hilt before I even process that he moved. I go totally still, don’t even breathe. He’s touching me. I don’t think when he gets this close to me. I just turn on static in my head real loud and focus on trying to get away as fast as possible. Riding in a car with him sucked. Closed compartment. Electrified sardine can. Rolling down the windows hadn’t helped a bit. This is a gazillion times worse.

  “Dude. ” I pump up the volume on my static station.

  “What are you doing, Dani?”

  His face feels real close to my neck. If he bites me again, I’m going to kick his ass. “I was thinking about poking the ice, seeing how thick it is. ”

  “Two and one-sixteenth inches. ”

  “Get off me. ”

  “Get off your sword. Or I won’t continue to let you keep it. ”

  Fecker can take my sword away like Jayne never could. Like only the UPs can. One more reason I can’t stand Ryodan. “Can’t get off my sword till you get your hand off mine. Pressure much?” I say testily.

  We both sort of let go at the same time. I glare at him, or where I think he is, but he’s not there. I find him twenty feet away, near a small, normal-size door. He opens it. His face instantly frosts. “Ready?” he says.

  “You don’t move that way in front of Jo. ”

  “What I do with Jo is none of your business. ”

  “You better not be doing nothing with Jo. I’m staying in line like a good little soldier. ” And fecking-A does it ever chafe. Report to work at eight P. M. Gah. Report. Like I don’t have plans of my own. Like I didn’t spend hours hunting for Dancer and I’m not two Dani Dailies behind and haven’t spent most of my fecking day working on one, after whizzing out to the abbey to make sure Jo’s okay. She had some seriously sick scoop for me about the new, segmented Unseelie, but other than that she hadn’t wanted to talk much. I think she’s pretty upset with me. Nothing new there. If there weren’t any sidhe-sheep upset with me, I wouldn’t know who I was, or if the Earth was still orbiting the sun. “I’m behaving. She’s safe. You just leave her alone. ”

  He smiles faintly. “Or what, kid?”

  “You know something, dude, if you don’t put a question mark at the end of your questions, I’m not answering them anymore. It’s rude. ”

  He laughs. I hate it when he laughs. It tries to put me right back on the porno level of Chester’s and that just grosses me out, so I do the static-thing in my head again.

  I freeze-frame past him so fast his hair blows straight up. I make sure to go through a pile of dust, and give it a little extra twist with my heel as I whiz by so it shoots straight up his nose (a trick I perfected at the abbey!). He sneezes. Just like a real person. I’m half surprised to find he actually breathes.

  The cold slams into me like a brick wall and for a second I can’t inhale.

  Then I feel him at my back, an inch from my figurative rear tire like he’s drafting off my freeze-frame. It sets my teeth on edge. Makes my temper hot and breathing is easy again.

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  Like the first scenario he showed me, a frozen hush fills the space like those mornings in fresh, new-fallen snow when no one else is awake and the world is stiller than you ever thought it could be until you take that first step that squeaks in the drift. I always wanted to have a wicked snowball fight with somebody on mornings like those but nobody else has ever been able
to keep up. Lobbing snowballs at folks is like picking tin cans off a fence with a BB gun.

  I flash through the warehouse, checking it all out, fascinated in spite of being ordered here and bossed around. I love a good puzzle. What’s freezing these places and why?

  A few dozen Unseelie are iced in the entry bay.

  Ryodan has lower-caste grunts working for him. There are lots of Rhino-boys iced in mid-action. Like the subclub in Chester’s, the place is killingly cold. It makes my heart feel dull and tight. I don’t stop moving, won’t stop moving for anything.

  Rhino-boys are frozen loading and unloading pallets and crates, gray skin coated white, shellacked by a clear layer of ice. Whatever happened to them happened fast. They had no warning. Their frosted expressions are completely normal.

  Well … as normal as Unseelie ever look. I think.

  I whiz around two beefy ones, studying their bumpy rhino faces, gashed mouths bared on tusks, analyzing that thought.

  It occurs to me that maybe their expressions aren’t normal. I’m basing my assumptions on what I know of humans, of how our faces react. Christian is proof that I can’t do that. I can’t even figure out when Christian is smiling.

  Logic demands I eliminate my assumption that the Rhino-boys had no warning. Can a Rhino-boy look terrified? I don’t know. Perhaps they show fear by something so small and weirdly Fae as a tiny rainbow-hued glint in their beady little eyes, and the white frost is concealing it. I’ve never noticed what their faces look like when I kill them. I’m usually too busy looking at the next one I plan to stab. I’m suddenly looking forward to finding one tonight and performing a test. Any excuse to kill an Unseelie is an awesome one.

  What would do something like this?

  And why?

  It has to be a Fae because I just can’t see a human managing to build a freeze-ray gun that works on this scale only to go vigilante.

  Then again. … I can’t eliminate that possibility either.

  So far, both places I’ve seen iced are exactly the kind of places I would ice myself. If I had such a wicked cool weapon.

  Most folks wouldn’t believe that someone who can move like me, fight and hear like me, could exist. Ergo, I can’t rule out the possibility that someone else might be so smart they figured out how to build a massive freeze-ray gun that’s capable of reducing the temperature of places to the frigidity of objects in space. Given enough time, I think Dancer could manage it. He’s that smart!

  Bugger. I have facts and no connections. I can deduce nothing. Yet.

  Suddenly I see past the frozen figures.

  The warehouse is packed full of boxes, crates, and pallets, piled everywhere. There’s a pie of iced electronic stuff that looks like audio equipment of some kind. I guess maybe for the club. Crates are stacked to the ceiling, and more stuff was being brought in when whatever happened did.

  I make one crystal clear deduction: Ryodan’s the dude emptying the stores! Preying on humans just like the Unseelie. Stealing our ability to survive so he can sell it back to us at whatever cost he decides to demand.

  It’s all iced. Every bit of it.

  I wonder if any of the edible stuff can be thawed and saved. People are going to die because he’s such a greedy pig.

  I’m so pissed that I smash open a crate as I go whizzing by. “Oops,” I say, all innocent and accident-like. Wood splinters, two-by-fours, go flying in all directions.

  Automatic weapons explode from the wreckage and skid across the iced floor, where they smash into frozen Unseelie who shatter like little glass goblins.

  Okay, so that crate had guns in it. It just means I kicked open the wrong crate. I’m so sure he’s the prick stockpiling the food that I kick another, not even pretending it was by accident this time. More guns.

  I go on a smashing rampage. Each time I smash a box or crate open that holds ammo or guns, I get madder. Figures he’d hide the food from me before he brought me here. I’m about to kick open my fifth crate when Ryodan suddenly has me hanging in midair by the collar of my coat, manhandles me into potato-sack-girl over his shoulder again, superspeeds me out the door, slams me into a telephone pole and says, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” at the precise moment the whole building blows up.

  “Dude, are you arming these places to blow?” I say on the way back to Chester’s. “Is this another of your stupid tests? I have to solve your little mystery in the whopping three seconds I get to study it before the scene gets blown to smithereens?” The whole building had exploded outward, for a city block. We’d barely freeze-framed from the shrapnel zone in time.

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  “I lost a great deal of personal property in both explosions. I sacrifice nothing that is mine from which I might profit. ”

  “Which translates into as long as I’m useful, since you think I’m yours, I’m not going to get the—” I drag a finger across my neck.

  “Kid, you might just annoy me into killing you. ”

  “Right back at you, boss. ”

  He smiles and I feel myself starting to smile back and it pisses me off so I look out the window and get real intent on what scenery I can make out in the pinkish moonlight, which isn’t much because the Shades took everything worth looking at out here. Got three hidey-holes down this way and a big stash. Didn’t know Ryodan was holing up here, too. I’ll vacate this district as soon as I get time to relocate.

  “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 forehea
d. 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. ”

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