by J. P. Rice
My heart broke as a man dragged himself through the blood-drenched snow to retrieve the lower half of his left leg that had been severed just below the knee. He yelped in agony through his erratic breathing, trying to not pass out from the shock as he closed in on his lost appendage. I tried to focus on stopping the ice monster again.
The frozen bastard reached for the little girl’s arm. No. I was almost there. Just a few more seconds. Ice Heart grabbed her hand, twisted his wrist, and the precious little girl wailed in agony. It stirred a visceral reaction inside me as the sick bastard let go of her hand, laughed and took two steps back. I raced in and slid on my knees to position myself between the child and the monster.
“He’s not going to hurt you anymore,” I promised the child and jumped into a crouched position, ready for a brawl.
The winter creature stumbled away, apparently looking for someone else to attack. Why wasn’t he coming after me?
While keeping one eye on Ice Heart, I pushed the hysterical girl’s amber curls back and wiped away her burning tears. I said, “You’re being very brave. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of this monster and get you some help for your arm. Okay?”
She nodded sharply, tears spilling from her red, glossy eyes. The monster surveyed his damage with a smug look on his chiseled facial features, directing his attention away from us. I remained ready, knowing he could strike at any moment.
I whispered so not to disturb the beast, “Titania. Keep your eyes on him. If he even thinks about making a move, yell.”
The dragonfly whispered back, “You got it.” Nodding her big head, she rose in the air and hovered about five feet from the ground.
I ripped off my leather jacket and wrapped the girl in it, making sure to account for her injured arm, then I gently pushed her under the safety of the metal merry-go-round. Taking into consideration the fact that the cops would show up and start firing, I set a protection shield over the girl that would stop errant bullets if necessary.
I could only set one shield at a time, so I would be naked from here on out. Even if I got hit or killed, it would be a good tradeoff if it kept this girl safe.
“Try not to move your arm, you brave big girl. I’ll take care of this,” I promised her again.
She looked me right in the eyes, glistening tears streaming down her freckled face. Her lips trembled as she fought the pain like a brave little soldier.
Tears raced to my eyes but didn’t quite spill onto my cheeks. They just welled in my eyes, threatening to break the levy and blurring my vision momentarily. I pushed a pile of snow in front of the girl’s face. She didn’t need to see this action.
I rose to my feet. “Titania. Let’s do this.”
“Time to wreck this icy jerk,” she said, staring at Ice Heart. Then she spoke with indecision, “So...uh...what is the plan?”
“We’re going to have to be really careful. The cops are going to show up any second now and we have to make sure they know we aren’t in cahoots with Ice Heart. So you know...” I didn’t want to say the rest.
Her huge compound eyes bounced back and forth from Ice Heart to me. “Dodge bullets. That’s what you are saying. Look, my name isn’t Boris the Bullet Dodger.”
“Relax. You heard the police on the radio. They know it’s the ice monster. We just have to make sure they don’t think we’re with him. Besides, you have a slender body. You have nothing to worry about. Look at my big butt,” I said and slapped my rump. “Let’s get focused.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Titania asked as she tugged on her burgundy sports bra with the big golden T printed on the chest. I called it her superhero outfit.
Ice Heart was wandering around in a circle, but it was only a matter of time before he went on another rampage.
I instructed, “I’m going to conjure up a fireproof bag. I need you to start shooting your strongest fire into it. Napalm style. When you fill it up, let me know.”
“You go it, boss.” She gave me a sharp nod and her orange stinger started to glow.
I conjured up a clear bag about the size of a normal backpack. I tied it around the frame of the swing set, punched out an opening, and Titania went to work. I went over the pyro distribution spell in my head as I focused back on Ice Heart.
He lumbered up to a port-a-potty and lifted it with one hand on the top and one on the bottom. He raised it above his head like a trophy. I waited for the piss and shit to spill out onto his head.
He spun in a half-circle and heaved the nasty receptacle through the air. The white door flew open in mid-flight and the contents showered down onto the snow. The port-a-potty slammed into a basketball hoop, breaking the orange rim off the backboard and sending a sonorous ringing sound through the park and surrounding neighborhood.
The portable bathroom crashed to the ground and the white backboard wavered like Shaq had just served up a monster dunk. With the cops closing in, it was time to make my move.
I screamed to get the beast’s attention, “Hey, Donkey Kong. When you’re done throwing barrels around, why don’t you take on a worthy opponent?” I turned to the swings and Titania was still filling the bag with her intense fire. It wasn’t ready quite yet.
Ice Heart wheeled around to face me, and an evil grin formed on his defined facial features. Two jets of breath clouds poured from his nostrils. As soon as they disappeared, two more jets replaced them in a steady pattern as his chest heaved in and out.
I had to be careful of his cryokinesis. He could freeze anything that contained water.
My brain and heart were about seventy-three percent water and my lungs came in at eighty-three percent. However, freezing those organs was extremely difficult through mind force. Ice Heart usually enveloped his victims in one of his enchanted breath clouds, turning them into Popsicles.
His chest heaved out as he inhaled, and I saw that he was getting ready to huff and puff and blow me away. I moved to my right into the baseball outfield to make sure his magic attack wouldn’t hit the young girl or Titania. The blaring sirens meant that the cops and paramedics were already here or really close. The ice monster kept drawing in a breath.
To counter his attack, I drew on the fire inside me, going straight to my dragon reserves. A few scales developed on my arm. My inner dragon thought I was about to shift. With law enforcement closing in, I couldn’t go that route because they would open fire on me and put the people at risk.
Every half-assed hero wanted to slay a dragon. Instead, I stayed in human form and stared at the monster’s lips.
As soon as they parted, I released the fire from my belly. The flames raced up to my throat and I opened my mouth. Ice Heart’s argent breath cloud barreled toward me, expanding as it went. My counter flames coalesced in my mouth and sprang from my lips.
Our magic collided with the impact of two semi-trucks ramming each other at one-hundred miles-per-hour. An orange-white flash almost blinded me, and my knees buckled from a pulse of energy coming from the impact point. Then the harsh crackling started.
Fire versus ice. A primordial battle that stretched throughout history and continued into the present.
Both forms of magic squared off against each other. My intense fire cooked the little pulses of energy in his spell as silver sparks jumped off the impact point, streaming in every direction. The sparks fizzled into nothing when they got about six to eight inches away from the stress point. I ran out of fire and wondered if I had done enough to stop the enchanted cloud.
As I moved around, I realized I had lost some feeling in my arms and legs. Fook. I hadn’t stopped his spell completely and some of it had entered my body. I was in trouble now.
Ice Heart sauntered up to the festering clash of magic and held his open hands out at his sides. He clapped his hands together, slamming the magic in between them. It caused a pale orange and white explosion that instantly dissolved into nothing before hitting the ground. It was like some sort of a Creamsicle clap.
As a cruel grin developed on
his face, he took two steps closer, and the gunshots rang out. Bullets pinged off the ice monster’s side and I prayed that none of the deadly projectiles would hit me. A high-stress situation coupled with the freezing conditions didn’t bode well for shooting accuracy.
As bullets smacked off his body, I moved to keep him as a shield between the cops and me. I saw shards of ice falling behind him, but the bullets did little to slow him down as he paced toward me purposefully, ignoring the gunfire blistering his body. I kept backing up until I almost hit the merry-go-round.
I peeked down quickly and noticed the girl poking her head out of the snow. I saw a dent in the shield I had placed around her, right in front of her forehead.
As the bullets kept flying recklessly across the icy plain scattered with trails of blood, dead bodies and screaming victims, I wished they had brought a flamethrower. The bullets weren’t doing anything but pissing off Ice Heart, who belly laughed demonically.
He trailed off, away from me and headed toward a huddled family scared out of their minds. No way. I wouldn’t let it happen. “Titania. How we doing?”
“Just about full,” she yelled over the constant gun reports. I wished they would run out of bullets or realize their actions weren’t having any impact except endangering innocent lives. There were only so many times one could slap death across the face before one had to face the final consequences.
I felt like my luck was running out. Out of breath, Titania announced, “It’s all full.” I hadn’t realized the process would drain her.
The feeling in my arms and legs returned and not a moment too soon. The mother and father were using themselves as body shields to protect their children from Ice Heart. I went over the spell in my head again. If I screwed this up, I could kill everyone in the area and set some of the adjacent houses on fire.
I had to inject enough power for the fire to spread out instantly, but also provide enough delicacy for immediate evaporation, so it didn’t burn everyone to death. With Titania’s compact bag of fire, that would be an extreme challenge. Her fire was like napalm and stuck to things, which was exactly what I wanted to avoid.
This wouldn’t be easy. I shuffled my feet over to grab the fire bag. “Great job, Titania.”
“Thanks. I don’t know how much help I’ll be from here on out,” she stated, leaning against the pole for the swing set.
“Don’t worry. I can take it from here. To be safe, fly up to about ten feet.” I untied the bag from the post and wrapped the top securely to trap the fire inside. Ice Heart reared back, his hand tightening into an icy fist, ready to smash the innocent family to pieces. The rippling energy in the bag ran up my arm as I twisted it in a circle to tighten the top.
“Fire to fight my enemies. Fire to help my friends. Right now. Right this second. This shit ends,” I added my own flair to the spell. I wound up, pulling the bag behind me and raising it above my head. Then I slammed it down into the icy snow below. The explosion jolted my eardrums, and, stopped the endless stream of gunfire.
My ears burned as the hiss of a million angry snakes filled the suddenly warm air. The compressed fire raced away from the impact, spreading out in every direction. The snow dissolved as soon as the fire kissed it. The snow also extinguished the fire so that it wouldn’t burn anyone, just melt the snow. The fire started in a small circle, then spanned out across the entire baseball field and basketball courts.
The chemical reaction of a solid turning into a gas appeared as tiny silver droplets that looked like mercury. They zipped through the air in a twisted, corkscrew pattern. And in an instant, the silver globules were gone, taking the fire and ice with them. Brown grass and the concrete basketball courts appeared.
My chest heaved in relief. The spell had worked exactly the way I’d wanted it to. The citizens were safe, and Ice Heart was fooked.
Without snow or ice beneath his feet, the melting Ice Heart panicked and ran toward me. His head panned the area searching for any frozen molecules around him. The warmth beneath my feet told me that he wouldn’t find relief. He continued melting into a puddle, exposing his core. A tiny, wrinkled man covered in gray hair started to take shape.
Blinking rapidly, the blue-eyed man peered around assessing the situation. Now would be a good time for the shooting to commence again. But the police stood there, apparently stunned at the unfolding events. It was up to me. I called fire to my hands and planned to melt his frozen heart.
I went to launch my attack and noticed the puddles around him had turned to ice. Oh shit. Then I saw ice crystals start to form on the surrounding blades of grass. Within a few moments, the crafty bastard had formed a track of ice that was expanding by the second.
Using his cryokinesis, the old man slid on the newly formed ice track, and the sudden movement jerked his body to the left. There were people surrounding us, and my fireball attack could hurt an innocent bystander. I couldn’t take the chance, and dissolved the flames from my hands. The hoary man continued surfing across the ice track that was forming in front of him.
He streaked across the basketball court like he was on skis and headed for the snowy hill behind it where my spell had stopped.
As he continued toward the frost, the ice reformed around his body, quickly taking shape. His ice track came to an end when he cleared my melt zone and stomped gleefully back into the fallen snow. His solid frame grew back to his original size, and I thought he might rush us again. I brought back the fire to my palms and we stared at each other.
“Make a move, Frosty,” I mocked him.
His icy blue eyes stared menacingly at me, and he pointed. “I’ll be back for you.”
Ice Heart turned his back to me and took off down the hill. He vanished before I could line up a fireball. Several cops chased after him, disappearing into the high brush of the woods.
With that menace taken care of, I ran over to the merry-go-round. I scooped the child up and carried her toward the flashing lights coming from behind the baseball backstop. As I took a heartbreaking gander at the utter destruction, I palmed the back of the girl’s head and hid her eyes in my shoulder. She was already looking at a life of traumatic memories. She didn’t need any more.
We passed the football. It was normally an innocuous symbol of a carefree game. I could envision the smiles on everyone’s faces before that bastard had showed up. Today that pigskin represented the worst this world had to offer.
A noble endeavor had been destroyed for no damn reason at all. The families would never be the same. I knew a little bit about Ice Heart, but I needed to learn a helluva lot more. Why would he do this?
I carried her up to an ambulance and set her down in front of a paramedic, who started checking her out. He told her, “You’re going to the hospital, but you’re going to be just fine.”
“I want my momma. Where’s she at?” she asked, her head swiveling around. “I want her to go with me.”
I leaned down closer to her face. “No problem. You stay here and I’ll go get your mom. What’s your name?”
“Alexis,” she uttered through her sniffling.
“All right. I’ll be right back.”
I asked a few people, but in the mayhem, nobody seemed to know what was going on. It wasn’t unexpected given the situation.
A woman with blood coming from her nostrils passed me. I said, “Excuse me. Have you seen Alexis’s mother?”
The woman turned around instantly, her eyes glistening with tears. She opened her mouth, but words failed her. She smashed her trembling lips together and shook her head slowly in silence. Then, she turned back around to receive medical treatment.
I felt hollow. It was obvious that Alexis had lost her mother during that horrific event. And she didn’t even know it. How could I explain that to the precious child? My numb legs somehow carried me back over to Alexis.
The little girl stared up at me with snot pasted to her face and tears running down her flushed face, hoping that her mother was coming. And it was the most gu
t-wrenching thing I’d ever seen. My heart shattered into a million pieces as I leaned down and hugged her. I pulled her in close, being mindful of her injury. As I lightly massaged the back of her neck, I whispered in her ear, “Your momma is hurt so I’m going to ride with you to the hospital.”
Alexis hugged me tight around the back of my neck and pressed her face against mine. “Okay,” she said as her tears and snot smeared onto my cheek. I didn’t care or even bother to wipe it away.
Another paramedic helped her into the back of the ambulance. I got in and sat down next to Alexis. I put my arm around her.
“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of your daughter,” the woman promised and patted me on my shoulder.
I opened my mouth to explain that it wasn’t my daughter, but nothing came out. A rare occurrence. If she only knew how cruel those words were. I’d saved this girl, but I hadn’t been able save my biological daughter. Life served up cruel reminders on a regular basis.
Chapter 2
The gust of wind attacked like an assassin at night. Invisible. Silent. Deadly. Short days of sunlight were being swallowed by the darkness. Nothing more than a sullen prelude of the long and lonely nights. It was the winter of discontent in Pittsburgh. A winter caused by malcontent.
A devil had learned to play a harp. But not just any harp. The Dagda’s Harp could control the seasons. And it was in the possession of the demons of the Red Cavern. The demons were in control of the weather in my city. Retrieving the Harp would be almost impossible.
Without the Harp, winter would never end. It could stretch on forever. Unless the demons exercised mercy on the humans, which had never happened before.
Human lives had been lost. Many more were destined to be lost. The winter that wouldn’t stop didn’t discriminate. No mercy for anyone. Loving grandmothers. Cute babies. Pregnant women. The weather was cruel. Unjust. Preying on the most precious elements of humanity. Dragging each one to an icy death.