Iced (Valos of Sonhadra Book 10)

by Regine Abel

  “What the hell are you doing, you fucking idiot!” Dave shouted, pointing a gun in our general direction. His eyes flicked between us and the valos, worry plastered all over his face. “Stand down before you get us all killed. That’s his woman!”

  “I’m doing what you didn’t have the fucking balls to do!” Shaun snarled back. “You’re weak. First, you let our people die. Now, you’re letting our women go play cum holes for goddamn aliens.”

  Popping and crackling sounds resonated in the still air as more spikes protruded from the armor of the three valos.

  “Tell those fuckers to turn back into their normal forms,” Shaun yelled, panic creeping into his voice. Pulling me after him, he took a few more steps back.

  Duke roared with such force, the air and ground trembled. Pulling his arm back, his hand like a spear ready to spring forward, he advanced towards us.

  Heart pounding in my throat, I couldn’t breathe as Shaun began shouting in panic, dragging me with him.

  “Stop! Stop, you motherfucker! Fucking stop!”

  “Duke! Stop!” I yelled, the words coming out too late.

  Time slowed as Shaun turned his gun from my temple towards Duke. Three loud detonations left my ears ringing. They all struck true. Duke’s body jerked with each hit, a dark blue liquid oozing out of his chest from the three bullet wounds.

  “NOOOOOOOO!”

  Duke fell to his knees. Something snapped inside me. A primal roar tore my throat to shreds and a surge of energy, born in the pit of my stomach, exploded outwards in a violent cold blast. Snapping my head back in the hope of busting Shaun’s nose, I met something hard followed by a shattering sound. His hold on my hair suddenly let go. Without turning back, I ran to Duke while Millia and Zak charged Shaun and his allies. I barely got a chance to see them raise their right fists, a large ice shield forming in front of them before they ran past me.

  But I didn’t care. Duke occupied my every single thought.

  “Duke!” I shouted, throwing myself at his feet.

  I cupped his face in my hands and his head snapped up to face me. His eyes glowed darker than I’d ever seen, but his expression indicated no pain. Too shocked to speak, I didn’t protest when he rose to his feet, helped me back up, and then pushed me behind him.

  My stunned gaze followed him as he marched towards Shaun. Or rather, what remained of Shaun. My knees nearly buckled as I stared in horror at what I had done to him. The blast of energy that had come out of me had, in fact, been a blast of frost. Shaun had instantly turned to a block of ice and my head-butt had shattered both his face and the hand that had restrained me. The rest of his body stood intact, with his right arm still aiming the gun in our direction, like a broken Roman marble statue.

  People screamed, some of them running for cover while others hugged each other, staring in shock. Duke walked up to what remained of Shaun and brought down a massive fist on top of the jagged remains of his neck. He shattered into a thousand pieces like porcelain. Without sparing him a glance, and despite blood still dripping from his chest wounds, Duke marched towards two of Shaun’s goons. Millia and Zak each restrained one. The third goon had thrown his gun away and dropped to his knees, hands raised in surrender.

  “No one threatens my mate!” Duke yelled. “No one threatens my tribe!”

  Turning a deaf ear to the pleading and begging of the two men held by the Hunters, Duke covered their heads with his hands—large enough in his battle form to swallow them whole—and squished them like overly ripe melons, their skulls cracking like eggshells. Zak and Millia dropped the twitching corpses in a shower of blood and gore. I averted my eyes, gagging, and the retching sounds from the survivors behind me made matters worse.

  The terrified screams of the third man made me look up again. He scrambled backwards as Duke advanced on him with determined steps.

  “I didn’t shoot! I didn’t shoot!” the man yelled.

  “Duke, no! Don’t hurt him!” I shouted, running towards him. There had been too much death already, one of them by my own hand.

  He turned his head around to look at me over his shoulder. Midnight-blue eyes glowing, shark teeth bared, he looked like a demon summoned from the depth of the frozen lake of the ninth circle of Hell. My pleas died in my throat, and my steps faltered. An icy boulder fear settled in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know this Duke, and he scared the shit out of me.

  I took a couple of steps back, my flight instincts telling me to run for the hills. His feral expression slowly gave way to confusion as the madness controlling him ebbed away. Dismissing his intended victim, Duke approached me. Every fiber of my being urged me to flee, but my feet refused to budge, keeping me rooted in place. Deep down, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. But now it became clear that I really didn’t know him. I had fallen so hard, so fast for him that I had forgotten—or been in denial of—the beast that lay dormant within my gentle teddy bear.

  Heart pounding, I watched his armor cover in a thin sheet of frost, capturing the blood and gore from his victims before it shed, erasing all traces of the violence he had wrought. His body shuddered, as if trying to shed its battle form without success.

  “Do not fear me, my Kira,” Duke said, troubled by whatever expression he read on my face. “I would never harm you. My heartstone sings for you. Only you.”

  I didn’t respond, still too freaked out. My head understood that he’d gone feral out of fear for my welfare. Shaun and his minions had brought this on themselves. They would have done horrible things to me had Duke left me behind. Still, Duke and I had blood on our hands... human blood.

  “We don’t want any trouble with any of you,” Dave’s voice said from behind me, snapping me out of my somber thoughts.

  I looked at him over my shoulder. His face strained with tension, weapon lying at his feet, he kept his hands splayed in front of him to confirm he was no threat. The humans behind him all looked ready to take flight.

  “Please don’t condemn us all over the stupidity of these fools. We didn’t support their actions, and they got what they deserved.”

  I couldn’t process Dave’s words, my mind too focused on Duke whose chest wounds hadn’t closed and leaked rivulets of blood. His face now showed signs of pain as he stared down at himself. His heartstone glowed red and pulsated in an erratic pattern.

  “You’re not healing!” I whispered, horrified. He’d told me countless times that valos healed quickly, especially in their battle form, so what was wrong?

  Duke’s body shuddered as he once more tried to shift. His face twisted with pain and blood gushed in three big spurts before resuming its heavy trickle. Zak and Millie closed in on us and stared at his wounds.

  “Expel the projectiles,” Zak ordered Duke, as if stating the obvious.

  “I can’t,” Duke said, his voice laced with pain and confusion. “They’ve scattered inside me and block my regenerative organs. When I try to shift out of my battle form, they slip deeper inside.”

  My chest contracted painfully, imagining the extent of the internal damage the bullet fragments could have caused. He needed immediate surgery, but I didn’t even know what his internal organs would look like. Swallowing down the panic and pain that threatened to rob me of any self-control, I forced myself back into my surgical nurse role.”

  “We need to get him to the medical bay, immediately,” I ordered.

  Duke tried to walk himself there, but Millie and Zak coerced him to lie down on an ice stretcher they summoned. The survivors parted before us as we rushed inside. The same haunted look strained their features knowing that if something bad happened to Duke, there would be hell to pay.

  I ran ahead of the valos to prepare myself for surgery, my throat contracted to the point I could barely breathe. Zak and Millie placed Duke’s ice stretcher on top of the sterile operating table before unraveling it. After washing my hands, donning sterile gloves, and flushing Duke’s chest with a sterilizing solution, I immediately began wiping the blood with sterile ga
uze pads. It took me seconds to realize the scalpels would be useless on the ice plate armor covering his chest.

  He would need to shift, but it will push the bullets even deeper which might kill him.

  Feeling utterly helpless, I cast a desperate look at the Hunters who examined his wounds.

  “We need to crack open your armor to reach your soft tissues,” Millie said.

  “I thought so,” Duke said. “I can’t summon my frost.”

  The breathy, weak sliver of his voice almost undid me.

  “I will be your frost,” Zak said in a reassuring tone. “It is best we remove your heartstone to lessen the pain.”

  I opened my mouth to suggest anesthesia but closed it without uttering a word. Human bullets were wreaking havoc within him. God only knew how our drugs would react with his system. Duke nodded and released the clasps holding it in place. As soon as Zak removed it, the heartstone lost its reddish hue, returning to a less threatening whitish-blue color, but its glow had significantly dimmed.

  His life is fading away.

  Tears pricked my eyes. I blinked them away, refusing to give in to despair. If I faltered now, he might not survive. I needed to be strong for him.

  Millie morphed her hand into a blade and started sawing at his chest. I stopped her, and grabbed a reciprocating saw normally used for sternotomies and cut through the armored ice plates covering each side of his chest, stopping only a millimeter shy of the skin below.

  “Efficient,” Millie said, looking at the device.

  Duke’s face remained impassive as she sliced through the soft tissue attached to the ice armor so that she could fold the plates open for me. I hated that the valos didn’t have vitals that our machines could monitor. Only the blinking of his eyes and his monotone answers to questions let me know he still lived. Zak pushed some of his frost into the skin, which significantly helped reduce the bleeding.

  Without the plates, I could now see where the bullets had lodged themselves near organs that I didn’t recognize. At a glance, only one bullet had fragmented upon impact, but I could be wrong. Using a pair of forceps, I carefully extracted the two most easily accessible fragments. The other bullets would require more invasive incisions to allow me to reach it. Using the scalpel, I made a cut into some kind of fatty tissue that cradled a strange organ located where the kidney would normally sit in a human. As I chased after it, the forceps slipped, losing their grip on the bullet. As it shifted back into place, the jagged edge of the bullet caused more soft tissue damage. Taking a deep, steadying breath, I willed away the tremor in my fingers and went after it again. It started to come loose from what I assumed to be part of a purple-colored organ with no anatomical equivalent in humans.

  The forceps slipped again, but this time, all hell broke loose. Beneath the flayed skin of his chest, a couple of centimeters below the incision, something pulsated, pushing upwards as if trying to break out. Its pressure caused the incision I had made to tear down further in a straight line and white liquid erupted from a pear-shaped organ. Duke’s body shuddered, and his eyes rolled in his head.

  “Oh God, no!” I exclaimed, horrified.

  Zak swiftly raised a hand over the liquid and turned it into ice. Grabbing it between two fingers, he lifted the frozen liquid, exposing the bullet.

  “Take it out! Quickly!” he ordered.

  Ignoring Duke’s heartstone flickering at an alarming rate, I reached out for the bullet with the forceps, but this time, I wouldn’t risk them losing their grip again. Applying the techniques Duke had taught me, I pushed my frost into the blood surrounding the bullet and turned it into a coat of ice attaching it to the forceps.

  This time, I met no resistance when I pulled.

  As soon as the bullet came out, Duke shuddered, his eyes returning to normal. Like a revving engine, his body gradually came back to life. The purple organ inflated while Zak unraveled the frozen white liquid. It didn’t trickle out of Duke’s abdominal cavity but seemed to get absorbed back into the pear-shaped organ that had spewed it out to begin with. Duke’s body expelled the third bullet and another fragment I had missed before shifting out of its battle form.

  “Well done, sister,” Millie said, smiling at me.

  “It’s done? But how?” I asked, confused.

  “The projectile was damaging his regenerative organ and preventing it from functioning properly,” Millie explained. “Did you not notice Duke using his frost again to push out the remaining pieces, when he couldn’t earlier?”

  No, I hadn’t realized he had used it, too frazzled to notice such details. I’d been too relieved to see the fragment and last bullet coming out.

  “Is he going to be okay, then?” I asked, not daring to hope.

  Zak inserted Duke’s heartstone back into his chest. “Ask him yourself.”

  Only three blueish-grey bruises marked the bullets’ entry points. In a day, maybe even hours, all traces of this near tragedy would be gone. My shaky fingers traced the marks before resting on his heartstone, pulsating with a healthy glow. Duke’s hand covered mine, his eyes filled with tenderness.

  “Thank you, my Kira. My beloved Snow Spirit.”

  “I thought I’d killed you. Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” I said, my voice shaky, and carefully wrapped myself around him.

  He caressed my hair, whispering soothing words in my ears. His fresh scent, the familiar coolness of his embrace, and the swishing sound of his heartstone slowly appeased me.

  WE ONLY MANAGED TO force Duke into two hours of rest before he demanded we return home. As we prepared to leave, I explained to the survivors that the valos did not hold them responsible for the actions of the four renegades. We left it to their discretion how they would handle the one that had been spared. Dave audibly sighed with relief when I assured him the trade agreement between the Northern Valos and the human city still stood. They had access to nuts, fruits, and roots that didn’t grow near E’Lek, not to mention human technologies that might be of use to us at some point in the future.

  I hadn’t commented on them naming their city Utopia, but in my mind, I was eye-rolling something fierce. However, I could understand them not wanting to give it a name related to Earth, like Terra. Our homeworld had forsaken us.

  As we began to leave, a man requested to join the six humans that were leaving with us. After the incident that had just occurred, I expected the valos to turn him down. In fact, I had thought they would have rescinded their agreement with Scarlet and the others. To my surprise, they welcomed him. With eleven of us, the survivors’ bags and blankets, my own bags containing some poached pharmaceutical goodies and food for our journey home, and the one-hundred-and-eighteen casings, the valos had to build a much bigger boat to carry us all. It still baffled me that such a massive block of ice could float so well, but then, cruise ships and icebergs floated, so why not this?

  Waving goodbye to the survivors, I felt an odd sense of pride and happiness. For all its dangers, Sonhadra had truly given us, the pariahs of Earth, a second chance. With the rotten apple culled from their midst, these former criminals now had a real chance of building a thriving human city in the most unlikely of locations. If I could get word to Lucie and Amber, I had no doubt the Fire Valos would also provide these new settlers with great assistance. Would the other valos cities agree to help as well? Had they encountered humans of their own?

  Despite the boat’s heavier load, we flew down the river at a good speed. Our guests huddled at the other end of the boat, wrapped up in their blankets to keep warm from the cold of the ice boat, and away from the frost aura the valos generated to keep the four of us cool under the increasing late morning heat.

  We slowed down as we approached the second wreckage. Dillon—Scarlet’s father—thought he might be able to repair the damaged 3D printer. It was well worth a try. With the long distance remaining before we reached E’Lek, we decided to simply stop long enough to pick it up. Dillon would attempt repairs once back in the safety of the
frozen city.

  With Duke shadowing me, I led Dillon to the printer. After a quick look at it, he felt fairly confident he could fix it. The electric power could prove tricky but he had a few ideas on how to wing it. Worst case scenario, we could come back here to rip out some of the solar panels, but he hoped to piggyback on whatever energy source the valos used in E’Lek to power the stove and other electric devices the Creators had built.

  As we approached the exit of the wreckage, the terrified scream of a woman turned my blood to ice. We rushed outside to see the humans running away from the ice boat while the valos struggled to both cover it with an ice dome, and repel what looked like the same rimurak that had pestered us on our way out of here three days ago. The humans stopped on the bank of the river, out of reach of the monster.

  The creature used its tentacles to partially hoist itself onto our boat, its blind, gaping mouth of a head seeking prey to feast on. Millia was trying to lure it away from the boat so Zak could finish his task. With its weight on one edge, the creature seriously threatened to tip the boat over, and with it, all of the survivors’ meager possessions and the heartstone casings.

  After putting the printer down on the ground, Duke dashed forward, morphing into his battle form in the process. Instead of heading straight for the rimurak, he ran left, opposite from the direction Millia was attempting to lure it. As he got closer, he fired ice shards at the creature. It recoiled and edged away from the source of the pain and towards the female Hunter. She continued summoning ice spikes in the water to its left, in an effort to bump it right. For a second, I wondered why she didn’t summon the spikes to impale the damn thing, but I soon realized that, despite the creature’s gelatinous body, its scales allowed sharp objects to glance right off of it, slipping alongside it rather than penetrating the flesh. Even Duke’s shards mostly bounced off, but a few found their mark.

  We need to help them...

  The question was how, without getting in their way.