He vaults over the overturned car with a massive leap, arms swinging down with sword in tow, hammering down at the outstretched appendage. It looks more like a tentacle than an arm with the way it moves, but the hard slippery shell shouldn’t be that flexible, that’s not fair.
“Dra—” Deborah starts to yell again, then stops, stunned, seeing him land on the other side of the car, shining broadsword in his hands. He aims for the outstretched arm, but the damn thing is fast, dodging to the side. At least he’s bought Deborah a couple seconds. “Deborah! Get out of here, fast as you can!”
Usually, running away is the right choice for humans. For all the big talk of bravery in popular fiction through the ages, Drake knows very well that there are things in the world—most of them, really—that it’s just better to run away from.
Whatever the hell this thing is, he’s ninety nine percent sure it’s one of them. “Hey!” he shouts, running around to the thing’s other side, spreading his arms to present a bigger target, no matter how it strains his muscles to hold the broadsword one-handed. “You come here for me? I’m right here.”
From this angle, he has a better view of the thing, and vehemently wishes he didn’t. It’s tall enough that the hunch of its back brushes against the streetlights, with a perfectly round, un-segmented body. The curve of its chitinous shell makes for a totally spherical body, shimmering sleek black in the streetlights, reflecting the red and green of the flashing stoplights in the intersection. The legs are another thing entirely, shooting up to hold that oddly round body ten or so yards above the ground, moving fluidly around as though only vaguely connected to the body proper.
Drake swallows hard. Whatever this thing is, it’s nothing he’s faced before. For a moment, he can’t help the thought that it would be really nice to have a certain man at his back, guarding his weak side, or even just encouraging him while they pelt headlong into danger together, but he squashes that thought. He’s been fine on his own for years now. And he’s got the scars to prove it, he thinks sourly, and dodges just in time to avoid a swipe of those eerily silent legs.
Too late, Drake realizes that he’s more hampered by the lack of sound than he’d thought. No matter how fast he avoids one arm, the thing has another coming at him, not even whistling through the air as it strikes him in the back. It fastens on to him, even through his clothes, and something sharp stabs him in the spine, slender as a needle’s prick and infinitely more painful.
Far more disturbing, he feels another attack, more subtle, more dangerous, the kind of thing he hasn’t felt in years, seeping into his body from that tiny stab wound. For a moment, everything is silence, and he can see his body from behind, a pathetic human thing, facing something a hundred times larger than himself, slowly going limp. The silence steals over everything, quieting the ever-present pain, the guilt, the anger that’s so much a part of him it just feels like background noise.
Then, the sword in his hand blazes. The light shocks him, intensely, offensively bright, hurting him even in his spirit form, worse still to the spherical creature. It shrieks, a horrible soundless cry that reverberates through everything nearby, rattling his bones. He snaps back into his body with a shock, hand tingling where it grips his sword, and he spares a quick moment to send up a prayer of thanks.
It’s the only polite response, after all.
Feeling oddly energized Drake leaps forward, launching himself with a fierce bellow as he swings, and has the satisfaction of hearing that arm break, shattered and torn by the sword’s sharp edge.
He starts to grin, but stops. There’s no one to grin at.
The creature shrieks again, yanking its severed arm back towards itself in obvious pain, scuttling awkwardly on its five remaining legs off to the side.
“I see now,” Drake mutters, loud enough for the thing’s benefit. “You’re not some new import from Fae. You’re not an escaped pet of some stupid mage. You’re just a big ugly bug.”
He can almost hear the jokes his own stupid mage would make—would have made, he reminds himself, and even having the thought makes him angry enough to leap at the bug again, scoring a long line down another thick arm, snarling savagely as oddly pink blood gushes forth.
It runs, dashing down the streets faster than a creature of that size should be able to, and Drake thinks for a second that it’s all flailing limbs in pain, before he hears a breathy, high-pitched shriek.
The arm wrenches away from Deborah’s back, something ephemeral and oddly blurry in a way real objects aren’t, and Drake’s heart clenches. He sees her drop, lifeless and uncaring, to the ground.
Drake sheathes the sword on his back, taking the time to at least prop Deborah’s body up in the remains of the car, checking to see that yes, she still has a pulse.
“Don’t worry,” he promises, “I’ll get it back. I’ll make sure you don’t have to live like this.”
No matter who she is, what his personal feelings, she doesn’t deserve this. No one does.
He straightens up, mutters, “Please, guide my feet,” and takes off at a dead run, long legs carrying him through the unnaturally dark streets, courtesy of the broken streetlights.
Damned if he’s going to let someone else lose a soul because of him.
First Interlude
Nine Years Earlier
Shane can’t help but laugh as he tosses power around, swelling with the heady exhilaration of it, of feeling so unstoppable. “Finally,” he calls, giddy under the thunderstorm that rages all around them, “you’re putting up something like a fight!”
Drake grabs his shoulder, sheltered with him in the eye of the storm artificially created by Shane’s shields. “Don’t get cocky,” he warns before slicing down one of Kaliga’s minions, putting a sword through his chest and a bullet through his head when he reanimates in a flash of white. “He still might have another trick up his sleeve. Remember to kill him twice.”
There’s a big part of Shane that just wants to ask who cares, when no one can stop them, when no one’s been able to even dent them for years.
Then, up on the hill, in the light of a flash of lightning, a figure tumbles to the ground. “Kaliga!”
“Go!” Drake shouts, shoving him hard in the back. “I’ll hold them off here. Get him while he’s summoning the next wave!”
“We’re not getting paid nearly enough for this,” Shane calls over his shoulder, winking.
“We’re not getting paid at all for this! I took it pro bono!”
“You bastard, I’ll give you pro bono!”
Drake just blows him a kiss.
After that it’s all running and dodging, weaving past the obvious traps and the lurking armies, until Shane reaches the bedraggled figure of an emaciated yellow-and-red skinned figure on the hill, some creature of the underworld that’s clawed itself up with an army and a name and a plan. “You know,” Shane remarks, drawing back his hand for a final strike, “you take-over-the-world types never pay as well as people who kidnap a single child. What do you think that says about the world?”
Kaliga sneers at him, eyes at least twenty-five percent of his face, and screeches, “I will rain blood down upon—”
Shane swallows his distaste and lets fly, blasting the creature’s head from its body to land in several tiny pieces. He hates it, killing with magic, killing at all, but there’s no reasoning with Kaliga’s people, whatever they are. They haven’t existed in the world for long enough to name, only long enough to murder several town’s worth of people in the Midwest.
He watches the corpse for long minutes, but Kaliga doesn’t reanimate like the rest of his army. Wearily, Shane turns back to the valley, trudging down the hill to find Drake giving him a tired thumbs-up. “Good day’s work.”
“Yeah. Too bad we didn’t make anything on it.”
“Just think of it like we saved the lives of many future employers.” Drake grins, flashing white teeth, and Shane can’t help but smile along with him.
White flashes beh
ind Drake, and Shane doesn’t even have time to scream before Kaliga plays his last trick, a long blade reaching red through Drake’s chest before Shane pumps him so full of destructive magic that he explodes.
Shane runs faster than humanly possible, hitting the ground without realizing he’d been airborne, managing to catch Drake before he falls. “Baby, baby, stop it, are you okay?”
Drake’s hand twitches weakly toward his chest, an expression of startled shock on his face. “It’s cold.”
Shane tries to heal him, tries to summon the energy but he can’t think, and he’s drained after fighting all day, and this isn’t supposed to happen. “Gonna fix you,” he mutters, ignoring the fact that it’s not working, that goddamn Kaliga must have used some cursed dagger he doesn’t have time to figure out, because his spell isn’t taking. He barely manages to slow the pulse of blood from the wound, seeping out and staining his fingers red and that’s not helping when he’s trying to concentrate.
Drake’s eyes flutter a few times. “Shane.”
“Shut up, don’t you dare talk to me like you’re dying, I’ll kill you myself, baby, just shut up and let me fix you.”
Even as he says the words, the tears start falling because it’s not working. Nothing he does is helping, nothing is fixing him, and Shane’s never felt so helpless in his life, watching Drake bleed to death under his hands. “I’m sorry, baby, I—don’t, please, I’m gonna figure it out, just don’t—”
Drake’s lips twitch into a smile. “Worth it. It was worth it.”
His eyes slide shut.
Before Shane can do something—the tattered thoughts in his mind run to blasting apart the whole countryside, or killing himself, or trying to pick himself up and continue when the last thing he loved in the world is gone—Drake freezes in his hands. He turns to ice in an instant, clear and cold as a white figure steps out of a sudden cyclone of ice.
Shane’s blood goes cold, and not just because he’s holding Drake’s frozen body. He knows exactly who’s come to see him in this godforsaken wasteland. “The Ice King, isn’t it? I’ve killed a few of your men.”
“And more of my creatures. You are a powerful mage, Shane Conell.”
“Why are you here?”
Frozen lips thin, into what could generously be called a smile. “Because this is the greatest opportunity I am ever likely to get. Do you want to save him?”
Shane’s heart constricts. Never in his life has he wanted so badly to unmake something that’s happened, not even after the death of his family. “I can’t. I tried. I lost him.”
“He’s not dead yet. Not quite. I can heal him, and give you power even far beyond what you have now.”
Shane hesitates. A part of him wants to scream at himself for hesitating when Drake’s about to die, could die at any second, but they haven’t lived this long without learning to be suspicious of anyone who wants to help them. “Would he be truly healed? Not dependent continually on you for life, or trapped in a strange limbo, or suffering forever?”
“He would be exactly as he was in the instant before the blade cleft him,” the Ice King clarifies. “No bindings, no bonds. He would be free, just as he was.”
“And me?”
The creature’s eyes narrow slightly. “I think you have some idea already.”
They’ve fought the Ice King’s vassals before, Shane and Drake. The men and women of the Frozen Court are powerful, but cold, long since devoid of humanity in exchange for whatever cheap trinkets the Ice King tossed their way.
Every part of Shane rebels, screaming in horror at the very idea, the thought of having body and soul enslaved to a cold, remorseless creature like this. “No pacts,” Drake’s voice echoes in his mind. “No deals. Nothing that binds us to anyone except each other.”
But I can’t be bound to you if you’re dead.
I can’t be anything if you’re dead.
Drake’s lifeless face looks peaceful, as if he’s sleeping, and Shane is absolutely sick of being helpless. Most powerful mage in the world, and what does it get him? Couldn’t save his family. Couldn’t save his boyfriend. Can’t save himself.
How long will he even last, without Drake to keep him grounded, keep him sane? He remembers the time before moving in next door to the Young household. He remembers the hate, the shame, the anger and sadness that had been his constant companions, knowing he was different, that he was probably responsible for his parents’ deaths just by being himself.
Was it going to be like that from now on, without him?
Drake was wrong. It isn’t worth it, not without Drake there. Wiping his face on one bloody hand, Shane nods. “Yes. Okay. You can have my soul if you fix him.”
With the last feelings he’s ever going to have, Shane looks down at Drake’s sleeping face, then watches the ice melt, the wound close. Drake opens his eyes and grins, sitting up. “That was a close one, huh?”
Shane gives him a smile, the last one he’ll ever feel. “Baby, you have no idea.”
Then the Ice King rips away his soul.
Chapter Three
One of Shane’s boots hits the ground before his car’s wheels have entirely stopped spinning, crunching satisfyingly against the gravel. He shrugs on his coat, a thick leather jacket that has just about no effect on how much cold he feels, and buckles on his swordbelt, then checks his hair in the mirror. Huh. Black today. Maybe he was looking forward to this.
It does feel good, he supposes, to stretch his legs. It’s been a week since the last time he left the Ice King’s fortress, concealed under a wholesale illusion covering an obscure government-sounding office. Even then, he’d only left to get drunk and pass out at Drake’s doorstep—or was that the time he’d crashed service? It’s hard to remember the things that don’t matter. Mostly it just feels cold.
He unclips the GPS from his windshield, palming the little device. He taps it with a finger, flicking it to life. “Hey. Where is he?”
“Turn left. In four hundred feet, turn right onto Seventeenth Street.”
“Who the hell measures in feet anyway?” he grumbles, stuffing it into his pocket along with his hands, strolling off down the street.
“Turn left.”
Shane pauses, then pulls the GPS out to scowl at it. It’s a new model, and should be able to handle the spell he’d put on it for a year, at least. “You said turn right.”
“Turn left,” it repeats, stubbornly.
“Look, this isn’t complicated. Find Roy. How many feet?”
“Your destination is on the left. Right. Left.”
“Fucking piece of shit.” Shane jabs at the buttons, succeeding in changing her voice to Arabic, then Japanese, then Dark Fae, which he’s pretty sure wasn’t included with the regular package at Radio World.
“Snearthen Asghar.”
He’s so preoccupied with snarling every Dark Fae curse he knows at the thing that he doesn’t notice the men creeping up on him until the cold barrel of a gun presses against his temple.
“Your wallet and your keys. Don’t turn around. Don’t fucking look at me.”
Oh, this man wants to be menacing. Shane tries, with limited success, not to smirk. “My keys?”
“You got a sweet ride.” One of the men sneers, pressing closer to him. “Maybe you’d be a sweet ride too, huh, faggot?”
“Well, if you’re offering.”
The wandering hand freezes, then pulls back in obvious confusion. “What the fuck did you just say to me, shithead? You wanna eat lead?”
“Probably tastes better than your dick.”
That does the trick. A thought from Shane freezes the hammer on the gun a split-second before it clicks, leaving one thug cursing at the damn thing as Shane moves, slamming the heel of his hand up into the second man’s nose, hard enough to drive bone splinters into his brain.
“Cheap trick,” he says with a shrug as the dying man collapses to the ground, twitching and bleeding from the nose and ears. “Effective, though. How about you,
big man? You wanna bleed?”
The second thug tosses his useless gun to the ground, hands in the air. “N-no, man, I didn’t—”
He doesn’t bleed. Shane freezes him where he stands, an unguarded touch of his finger lowering the man’s temperature to somewhere that he vaguely remembers from high school only registers on the Kelvin scale. “It’s a cute conceit, that you can unfreeze someone,” he remarks casually, shaking off the ice clinging to his finger. “They come back to life a hundred years later and wake up and say, ‘hey, what did I miss?’ Just like that, their heart starts beating again, and their flesh hasn’t atrophied at all. Why don’t you tell me how that works out for you?”
On second thought, there’s no reason to leave that kind of evidence behind, and there’s enough of his power in the death to make a certain mortician of his acquaintance ask awkward questions. He stoops down, picks up the “broken” gun, and unfreezes the hammer. “This is cleaner. Well. Not for you.”
The shot is loud, as is the sound of the man shattering into a hundred thousand pieces, landing in frozen bits around the alley. Shane flicks a piece off his jacket, then pulls out his GPS, shaking it. “Gonna work now?”
“Snearthen Asghar.”
“If you say so.”
He sets off at a trot, jogging left around a corner, only to see his target lying unconscious on top of a dumpster. “Dumbass. Wake up, Roy.” He accompanies his words with a flick of cold wind, and Roy yelps as he wakes, patting himself down.
“Boss? What are you doing?”
“Tracked you. Shit, how long did it take to wipe the floor with you?”
Roy groans, sitting up and squirming around, grabbing at his own back. “I don’t know, boss. Ten seconds? It’s, uh, bigger than I thought. Tried to suck out my soul.”
Shane laughs. “I hope that’s the only trick it has. Turn over.”
“I—”
“Turn the fuck over, I’m gonna track its signature.”
It’s the work of a few annoying moments to feed the sensory magic he gets from the impression in Roy’s back into the GPS, and the thing stutters hesitantly to life. “Get that?” he asks the spell, pressing a few buttons for the hell of it.
Icebound Page 2