Iced

by Karen Marie Moning

  I look at him because of how he just spoke. Soon as I do I understand why he kept stopping and starting. His face is iced solid. It cracks when he adds, “Hurry the. Fuck. Up. ”

  My face isn’t iced. Why is his? I reach out without thinking, like I’m going to touch him or something, and he knocks my hand away. “Don’t. Fucking touch. Anything. Not. Even me. ” Ice shatters and re-forms on his face four times before he completes the sentence.

  Embarrassed, I whiz away, snap my mind up tight and focus on the details. I have no clue why I almost touched him. There’s no explanation for my behavior. I think he put some kind of spell on me with his application.

  What’s happening at these iced places? Why is it happening? Is some inhumanly cold part of Faery really bleeding through? I understand why Ryodan thinks it is. At each scene, nothing appears to have been taken. I see no common denominators. Nothing was eaten. No one was harmed. Then why did it happen? I consider each of these iced scenes a crime. People are dead. Crimes require motive. I whiz back and forth, trying to discern some inkling of a motive, a hint of a sentient mind behind this. Looking close, for tiny injuries, say from something like needle-thin teeth. Are they drained of bodily fluids certain sick Fae consider tasty? The thought makes me think of a few Fae I should have killed. If I had, everything would be fine between me and Mac. She’d never have known. Still don’t know why I didn’t. Wasn’t like I wanted to get caught.

  I see no signs of harm or foul play of any kind.

  Then I see her and it’s an instant heart punch.

  “Aw, bugger!” I say.

  I don’t mind so much when adults get killed because I know they had a life. They lived. They had their chance. And hopefully they died fighting. But kids … well, kids just slay me. They didn’t even get to know what a crazy, wonderful, amazing place the world is! They didn’t even get to have hardly any adventures.

  This one didn’t get any adventures at all. She never even got passed the “Gee, I’m glad I got milk” stage.

  One of the women is holding a baby girl with a halo of curly red hair just like mine, nestled in the crook of her arm. She has a tiny fist wrapped around her mom’s finger and is frozen staring up at her mom like she’s the most beautiful, magical angel in the world, which is exactly how I felt about mine before everything got so … yeah, well. So.

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  And something nuts happens to me that I don’t understand, but I’m going to start doing what the rest of the world does and blame everything on my hormones because I used to be the coolest of the cool until I started having periods.

  I get all mushy inside like some kind of wimp that buys into those greeting card commercials, and I think about Mom, and even though she did things to me that other people would think were awful, I understand why she kept me in a cage. There weren’t many choices and she didn’t have much money and she wasn’t always mean to me. She did it to keep me safe. I never blamed her for keeping me in a cage with a collar.

  I just wished she’d stop forgetting me.

  Like she didn’t want to remember me.

  Or maybe she wished she’d never had me.

  But it wasn’t always like that with us. I remember feeling crazy-loved. I remember when it was different. I just never could get it back.

  And all the sudden there’s like this stupid fecking thing so cold at the corner of my eyes on the insides like I tried to cry or something and I don’t fecking cry, and it froze the second it started and my head hurts and I reach out and I touch the tiny fist wrapped around her mommy’s finger and my heart squinches and then I have this horrible pressure in my ears and then something inside me gives with a soft squishing sound, and all the sudden I can’t breathe and I’m so cold I guess it must be like getting dumped naked in space.

  The cold knifes into me, flays me, slays me, glacierizes me.

  Cold takes on new meanings and just about when I think I understand it, like it’s some complex state of being that I could exist inside of, it flips all around on me, and I burn everywhere and I’m hot, and I’m hot, and I’m so fecking unbelievably hot that I start tearing off my clothes and I can’t do it fast enough because I feel thick and slow and stupid and I realize somehow I’ve dropped back down into slow-mo!

  Was it when I touched her? Was that why he told me not to touch anything? Does touching something so cold knock you down from fast-mo? How does he know that, if it’s true? Did it knock him down once somewhere, is that how he knew? Then why didn’t it kill him?

  It’s too cold down in slow-mo, seriously like outer space.

  I try to freeze-frame back up.

  I stumble to my knees. I must have waited too long. Maybe the instant I dropped down was too long.

  God, the floor is cold! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! I just thought “God. ” I don’t use that word. Do I believe? Have I found faith here, on my knees, now, at the end? That seems kind of hypocritical-like to me. Ain’t dying a hypocrite. I start to snicker. I’m not shivering. I’m hot. I’m so hot.

  Even now I try to absorb more details. Curiosity. Cat dying. May as well. It’s a vacuum here. Something’s wrong, something’s missing that I couldn’t feel missing in fast-mo but I don’t understand what. The stuff around me, the people and everything feel … somehow flat, void of an essential ingredient that would give it multidimensionality.

  “Ry—” I can’t get his name out.

  I hear him yelling, but I can’t understand the words and it sounds weird. Like he’s talking muffled into a pillow.

  I try to skinny off my jeans. Need them off. They’re cold, so cold. Have to get everything off. It’s so cold it’s burning my skin. He’s fighting me, trying to keep them on me. Get out of my way, I try to say but nothing comes out. I need them off. If I can get them off I might be okay.

  And all I can think is—

  Help me! I scream inside my head.

  My heart is going. It summons up the energy for one last violent feck-you pump but only manages a soft squish.

  I can’t die like this. I have things to do. My adventure has hardly begun. Everything goes black. I see Death. Ain’t so fascinating. It’s a sledgehammer.

  Aw, shit. I know what rigor mortis is. I know my face is going to stick. I’m choosing how.

  I belly up a laugh from way down deep where I’m always half laughing anyway because being alive—dude!—it’s the greatest adventure in the world. What a ride it’s been. Short but stupendous. Ain’t nobody can say Dani Mega O’Malley didn’t live while she was here.

  No regrets!

  Dani out.

  FIFTEEN

  “Hot child in the city”

  I lose track of them for one minute, distracted by a female Unseelie down in the streets that has what the Highlander in me considers revolting parts but the prince in me thinks are all the right ones. Sex has become bloody weird. Incredible. But weird. She’s a few blocks south of the church, and she’s throwing off pheromones that make my dick go flat to my stomach, and by the time I realize what’s happened to Dani, I have one more reason to hate Ryodan and the whole fucking world, as if I needed one.

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  “No!” I roar as I rush for the edge of the roof. That’s the bad thing about being a half-breed. The Highlander in me wants to take the stairs. The Unseelie in me wants to use wings.

  Too bad I don’t have any yet.

  My heart makes the decision without me and tries to get to her the fastest way possible.

  I jump.

  I curse as I plummet four stories and brace for impact. Contrary to what she thinks, I can’t sift yet so I can’t cut out of this fall. What kind of idiot breaks all his bones at the precise moment his damsel needs him the most? Up to now I’ve been glad I can’t sift yet. I think it’s the point of no return. The day I can blink out of existence and back in at a mere thought, I’m no longer human.


  I twist in midair, trying to land on my feet.

  I’m astonished when it works. I discover new things about myself every day, most of which disgust me, but this is a welcome change. My center of balance has shifted. I pivot and realign flawlessly. My bones seem to have developed an incredible rubbery resilience. My knees bend slightly, bowing in a distinctly inhuman way to absorb the impact. I land like a graceful cat. I stare down at my feet, which are intact and functioning perfectly, and all I can think is bloody hell, I just fell four—

  “Bring her OUT here! NOW, you buggering idiot!”

  My head whips up.

  Some teenage guy wearing glasses is standing outside the church, looking in, screaming at Ryodan. I have no idea who he is or where he came from. But he just said my line, although I’d’ve done it minus the buggering part and with a lot more “fucks. ”

  The kid’s hands are fists and he’s plastered up against the door-jamb of the church. His face and hair are frosted and he’s shivering violently.

  I push past him, shouldering him aside. “She doesn’t need you. Worthless human. Get lost. ”

  He snarls at me.

  I laugh. Looking me in the face and snarling takes major balls. “Kudos to you, kid. Now take yourself off somewhere and die before I decide to cram those big balls you think you have down your throat. ” I shove into the church, so I can rescue Dani and kill Ryodan for taking a hothouse flower into the arctic zone.

  The cold hits me like a brick wall and stops me in my tracks. A solid shell of ice forms on my skin. When I flex my muscles, the ice cracks and falls in a tinkle of crystals to the floor. I take another step and ice, mid-step this time, while I’m still moving.

  I spent a small eternity in the Unseelie prison and never had this problem, and it was inhumanly cold there. I’m half Unseelie prince. I didn’t think there was anyplace too cold for me. How can that dickhead Ryodan tolerate it, if I can’t?

  I take another step, ice again, crack it and step back. It won’t do me any good to freeze up like the tin man and become useless to her. I don’t understand how this is happening. The cold in the Unseelie King’s kingdom iced my soul and made me hate being alive. This is worse. I wouldn’t have believed there was anything worse. There’s something familiar about this place, this scene, this cold. Déjà vu. I despise this cold. It makes me feel bad in the center of my bones. Empty, hollow, somehow … flawed. I narrow my eyes, looking around.

  Dani!

  She’s on the floor and it’s not the cold that takes my breath away. Her jeans are tangled around her knees. She has on a black bra and underwear with little white skulls and crossbones all over them. She’s thrashing her arms and legs and crying incoherently.

  And I can’t get to her. My girl is half naked and dying and I can’t get to her!

  I push forward.

  I ice solid.

  I crack it and pull back.

  Fuck!

  She’s trying to kick off her jeans the rest of the way and he’s fighting her, trying to keep them on. He needs to get her out of there. Why is he wasting time trying to keep her clothes on?

  “Bring her to me!” I demand.

  “Don’t freeze-frame with her!” the kid on the steps bellows. He’s got some lungs. “If you move fast, you’ll kill her!”

  “What the fuck do you know,” Ryodan says.

  “Everything there is to know about hypothermia! And I’m willing to bet neither of you can warm her. Bring her to me if you want her to live! Stop trying to put her clothes back on. It’s not going to help!”

  “Fuck you, kid,” Ryodan says, but he quits trying to dress her and scoops her up. Her jeans fall to the floor. She’s mostly naked in his arms. I can’t see past the red rage in my eyes.

  “Don’t move her any more than you have to! It’ll force cold blood to her heart and she’ll have afterdrop!” the kid yells.

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  Ryodan walks with her real slow and easy.

  She’s stopped flailing.

  She’s not making any noise now either. She’s gone limp. Her arms and legs flop like a rag doll with each step he takes. If he killed her I’m going to beat him bloody and eat him piece by piece, slowly, with steak sauce.

  It’s all I can do to keep my feet rooted where I am and not attack him as he passes. Glorious, beautiful scenes of death and destruction, battlefields and torture chambers, crowd my mind, enticing, sexual, egging me on to smash and crash and raze everything in my path with no care for the consequences because there are no consequences for what I’m becoming.

  When he walks past me, my fists drip blood. But I don’t fight for her. If I fight for her, I could kill her. That would turn me into something worse than an Unseelie prince.

  “You!” The kid stabs a finger at me. “I need sleeping bags, an aluminum blanket, and hot packs. Outdoor store on Ninth and Central. Get me sugar, Jell-O, and water if you can find it. Don’t waste time if you can’t. Same goes for a generator. Now!”

  “I don’t fetch for humans!”

  But I’d cut the fucking moon out of the sky for her.

  When I return with blankets and hot packs, she’s on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from the church.

  The kid with glasses is in his underwear. Apparently dickhead doesn’t wear any.

  Rage chokes me. I fight for control. The human part of my brain knows exactly why they took their clothes off. So they could bundle her in them. She needed everything they had. She’s curled in a fetal ball, packed in their pants and shirts and jackets. The Unseelie part of my brain comprehends nothing but that two male dicks are way too close to something that’s mine.

  The kid is on top of her, on his hands and knees, with his face brushing hers like he’s kissing her.

  Ryodan looks like he’s about to rip his head off. As I get closer, I see the kid is breathing just over her nose and mouth, letting his breath drift up her nostrils. I’m shaking with rage. My hands are fists again, bleeding from clenching them so tight.

  “She keeps curling up,” Ryodan says.

  “Burrowing instinct. Freezing people do it when they’re about to die. ”

  “You let her die,” I say to the kid, “I’ll kill you every way a human can get killed, bring you back and do it all over again. ”

  “Did you get what I need?” The kid thrusts a hand behind him, ignoring my threat. “Aluminum blanket. Now. And easy when you move her,” he says over his shoulder, like he doesn’t even know two homicidal maniacs are watching his every move and want him dead just for being so close to her. “Nothing sudden. ”

  “Why aluminum?” I want to know exactly what he’s doing so I can do it myself when there’s a next time. I’d say that there’s not going to be one, but since the walls fell there’s always a next time.

  “Superinsulation. Traps in heat. Keeps out everything else. ”

  Ryodan and I place her gently on the blanket, then the kid stretches over her again. She’s motionless. I can’t even see her chest rising and falling. She’s pale and still as death. It’s a disturbing turn-on. I’ve never seen an Unseelie princess but I suspect they’re like this: white and cold and beautiful. “Is she breathing?”

  “Barely. Her body is using everything it’s got just to keep her brain and organs functioning. She needs to urinate. ”

  “You can’t fucking know that,” Ryodan says.

  The kid doesn’t turn his head or look at him, just talks straight up her nose. “She eats and drinks constantly. Her bladder is always at least partially full. Her body is wasting precious energy trying to keep the urine in her bladder from freezing. We need that energy directed at her heart. Ergo, she needs to piss. The sooner the better. We need her conscious to do that, unless you have a handy catheter. ”

  “Get her conscious,” Ryodan snarls.

  “You’re not putting a catheter in her,” I growl.


  “I’ll do whatever I need to do to save her life. You. Bloody. Idiots,” the kid says.

  He pops open heat packs and shoves them in her armpits and groin. Then he stretches out next to her. “Roll us up in sleeping bags. ”

  I look at Ryodan and he looks at me and for a second I think we might both kill the kid. Ryodan’s more stone-faced than usual, if that’s possible without turning to concrete, and his fangs are out. I look down. Ryodan’s dick is as big as mine. “Why the bloody hell don’t you wear underwear?” To an Unseelie prince, an exposed male dick is a call to battle.

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  “They chafe. Too small and confining. ”

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  “Dudes. Get over yourselves,” the kid says. “Roll us up. Do you want her to die?”

  “You should never have taken her in there. I’m going to kill you for that,” I say to Ryodan as I help roll up a nearly naked kid with my girl.

  “I told her not to touch anything,” Ryodan says. “I knew it would drop her out of fast-motion. I reminded her at every scene we went to. And bring it on, Highlander. Any time you think you’re ready. ”

  “And we all know how well she listens,” the kid says dryly.

  Ryodan gives him a look that would make grown, armed, psychopathic men shut up. “There was no reason for her to touch anything. ”

  “Obviously she thought otherwise,” the kid says, completely unperturbed.

  “I was right there with her. I figured I could get her out. ”

  “You figured wrong, dickhead,” I say.

  “I didn’t think it would affect her so quickly if she did. It didn’t do that to me when I tried it. ”

  “She’s not like you. And shut up, both of you,” the kid says, and puts his face on hers again, breathing, cupping his hands around their faces to keep the warm air in.

  “Why are you doing that?” I say.

  “Warm air. Hypothalamus. Regulates internal temperature and will help raise her consciousness. I need her conscious so she can piss. ”

  “I would have rubbed her down to warm her. Restored her circulation. ”

  “Brilliant. You would have killed her. Her blood is too cold. It would have stopped her heart. ”

  “I don’t understand why she stripped,” Ryodan says. I look at him. He’s doing the same thing I am. Learning what to do if it happens again. Both of us would have sped off with her, trying to get her somewhere warm. And according to this kid, we both would have killed her.