by Kody Boye
“You’re mad with power.”
“And your boyfriend’s turning faster than you can think.”
“If you’re so convinced this is going to work, why not test it on one of your men? Or yourself?”
“Because every number is important when we have so many others to deal with,” Pierre replied. He released hold of my arm and nudged the gun against the back of my head—directly where the robber had in weeks past. “It’s your choice, Guy. Either way, I’ll get what I want out of you. I’d say my deal with the Spaniard went pretty damn well.”
“The Spaniard?” Guy gasped.
No.
“Amadeo,” I whispered.
“Yes,” Pierre chuckled. “Our beautiful little Spaniard. He’s the one who orchestrated this entire ordeal. From slipping the robber a master key, to flushing you out of Austin, to killing the joggers along the lake.”
He’d known where Guy was, had shown such indifference, had paled when offered mention of the murders.
A flash of pain erupted between my eyes.
Crimson flooded my vision.
At first I thought I was bleeding, but when I felt nothing trailing down my face, I realized that wasn’t the case.
Could I be bleeding internally?
A second flash erupted along my conscience, followed by a third which sent a whimper from my throat.
My gut churned.
My arm throbbed.
“Do you see what you’re doing?” Pierre asked. “How you’re torturing him?”
I forced my eyes together to fight the images assailing me.
The blood, the teeth, the excruciating pain—
The overhead moon, the hunt that followed—
The pale-skinned man, so naked in his youth, as he was ripped limb from limb by the savagery of supernatural jaws.
The shiver became violent—to the point where I felt was I in the frigid arctic—and when I opened my eyes I saw hopelessness in Guy’s face. There was no all-knowing look that gave answer all my questions. There was merely turmoil that could not be solved.
“Time’s running out,” Pierre said.
The scuffle of footsteps from the far wall entered my ears and passed through my head as if they were no more than a foot away. Within moments I could sense so many were in the room—to the side, in the shadows, along the wall, even beyond the lab. Their stench of sweat and cigarettes and even fresh blood was tangible to the point where I could taste it on my tongue, and my eyes were taking on a subtle shift that I couldn’t discern at first.
I was changing, right there in front of him.
“Jason,” Guy said, his voice a whisper through the intercom. “Your eyes.”
A brief impression of gold-rimmed eyes entered my awareness before leaving completely.
“Time’s up,” Pierre said.
Even though he was behind me, I heard his finger shift to the trigger.
Without thought, driven by primal instinct, I spun and knocked the gun out of his hand with my right arm.
The weapon discharged and spun across the floor just as Pierre stumbled back, blood coating his face from a gash inflicted upon his cheek.
I lifted my arm.
All five digits on my right hand had lengthened and developed black claws.
“Get him!” Pierre screamed. “Shoot that motherfucker!”
I flung myself over one of the metal autopsy tables and brought my foot down on the end of it just in time to deflect a hail of bullets.
The world was lost in the sound of chaos. Animal instinct helped me detect every life form within the room. The gunpowder was no deterrent. There were several on the wall—three, at least four—not counting the two pressed alongside the door and Pierre, whose presence I could no longer detect. The bullets were another matter. Each discharge could be heard like the drop of a pin, followed by an explosion similar to a car crash in the middle of a quiet street. The number of shots gave me cause to believe that they weren’t firing in succession—it was blind tactics, meant to kill me regardless of loss.
The world was moving so slow.
My head was spinning.
My vision, brightening—
The wink of metal along the floor caught my eye.
I lunged without question.
My speed, far beyond that of any human, delivered the gun into my hand, then me to my feet in an instant.
“GET DOWN!” a voice screamed.
I fired toward the glass entrapping Guy.
Webs splintered across its surface.
The entire magazine was emptied.
The glass shattered and the temperature plummeted.
I threw myself to the ground as the beads of sweat along my body turned to ice.
Faintly, I could just make out the fluctuating temperature clashing between the testing and examination rooms.
Guy stepped from its depths.
His eyes blue, his ancestral mark emblazoned upon his skin—he lifted his hand and guided shards of glass about the air in front of him as if they were a revolving spectrum before firing them throughout the room.
Screams shattered the night.
Blood splashed the air.
A single convulsion forced my back into the air and then back on the ground.
My head slammed against the tiled floor.
My teeth sunk into my tongue and drew blood.
I was barely aware of the ongoing events as the seizure took my body. Forcing tremors throughout every limb, occasionally causing my back to spasm in a mild convulsion, spilling froth from my mouth that I thought would choke me but instead brought forth a sound that sang like the angel’s lips upon the midnight ferry—what little breath I managed to take did little to seep into my brain, for the stars before my vision were falling, exploding, reforming, then falling against.
A single second felt like an hour’s worth of pain.
One moment, everything was chaos. The next, everything was silent.
The fine hairs springing along my arms and the exposed portion of my collarbone stood on end as from the side came a presence.
I tried to turn my head, but failed to do so.
A foot stepped forward.
Swathed in light, his figure illuminated only by the glowing crystals that circled about his body, Guy leaned over my trembling form and took me into his arms.
“It’s ok,” he said, his voice nirvana within my head. “Everything’s going to be fine, Jason. I’ll get you out of here.”
I tried to speak, tried to breathe, tried to cry. Nothing worked.
The flash of pain that had come earlier returned.
This time, it hit me like a truck.
All I heard was my final scream before I blacked out.
EPILOGUE
A cold, hard bang—the sweet tang of rain splashing upon my back.
A run through the woods alongside the pack—barking, snarling, howling.
The taste of blood across my tongue, the tear of flesh between my teeth.
The rain.
The rain.
Why was it so painful?
I opened my eyes to find my vision devoid of any clarity. I struggled focus on my surroundings and found that I couldn’t. The air was cold, the ground hard, yet beneath me was not tile. No. It was… dirt, it seemed—earth: dampened by rain. I was nowhere near that underground place, but if not there, where?
My inclination was to believe that we’d somehow gotten away—that, despite the odds, Guy’s abilities had enabled us to flee the compound.
But was it true?
Had we escaped?
The world came to be slowly and like a fog drifting free of a cloudless sky. Revealed in shades muted and gray, then more vibrantly as time went on, I took in a breath as above the trees were revealed in full. Rain filtered down through their branches, kissing drops to my lips and face. I opened my mouth to take in the moisture.
Slowly, I lifted my arms.
Neither bore the scars of the previous night, nor the monst
rosity I witnessed myself turn into.
I was… human.
“Guy?” I said, the word like a dull knife cutting through my chest. “Are you there?”
The shuffle of feet drew my attention.
Turning my head, I looked at a raised portion of earth to find the Kaldr crouched there, eyes intent and watching me. “Hey,” he said. “You ok?”
“Yeah,” I replied, still struggling to speak. “Are… you?”
“I’m ok,” he said, stepping down off the slight incline. “I’m sorry I had to tie you up, but… I had to be sure, and after what happened last night…”
I looked down. A series of bungee cords and all manner of rope had been secured around my waist and upper body, essentially trapping me to the tree I’d woken against.
“Did I,” I started to ask.
Guy didn’t need to say anything to reply. His nod was answer enough. “Yeah,” he said. “You did.”
“Let me see.”
He raised a piece of glass likely lifted from the nearby house and held it before my face.
As I feared, my eyes were rimmed with gold. They glowed a faint amber in the pale morning light.
Sighing, I bowed my head and allowed the realization to sink in, knowing fully that my options were growing slimmer by the second. First my life had led me to Guy, then from Austin in a desperate fit for survival. Then I’d become a part of the Kaldr only to willingly leave after my lover had been exiled. And now—here, in the wild, with Guy at my side, and with everything I could’ve ever wanted—I’d been delivered the deadliest gift I could ever possibly imagine.
I was a Howler.
There was nothing I could do.
“It’s going to be ok,” Guy said, setting a hand on my face and tilting my chin up. “I told you everything would be.”
“You can’t do anything for me,” I replied. “I’m fucked—screwed.”
“Jason—”
“Can they…” I swallowed. “Control it?”
Guy sighed and shook his head. “No,” he said. “They can’t. And there’s no real pattern to transformation either, so far as I’ve known.”
“But the wolves in the compound—”
“Were what we called the Crazed—the ones who’ve fallen so far to the beast they were never able to change back.”
“What does this mean for me then?” I asked. “For us?”
There was no real answer that could be expected from such a question. I was asking the world—for all its contents and everything in-between. I couldn’t have been any bolder even if I’d walked up to God Himself and asked, “Knock knock, can I come in?” Because that’s what I really was—damned. Just as Amadeo had said. Damned. That lying, conniving bastard. Because only the wicked can be killed by silver. Only the wicked have fallen from true grace.
Guy’s eyes flickered away. His obvious struggles in trying to maintain focus on me while still attempting to control his emotions were painful to behold. I’d never seen anything like it in anyone—not my grandfather when my grandmother had passed, not my parents when my grandfather had finally left, not friends who’d lost their friends. This—this was something else. This was salvation dangling in reach yet always evading whenever one extended an arm to take it.
Lowering his eyes, Guy lifted his hand and covered his face. “Jason,” he whispered. “I… I don’t—”
“Do it.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could think twice.
“Do what?” Guy asked, returning his attention to me.
“What Pierre was trying to make you do,” I said. “If he really believes that the Wendigo is the product of a Kaldr and a Howler, that means you’d be able to turn me into one—that I’d be able to control myself.”
“We don’t even know if that would work.”
“What else are we going to do?”
“You might die, Jason.”
“I’d rather die than live with the knowledge that someday I might kill you.”
Guy’s features softened.
Closing my eyes, I tilted my head back and inhaled the damp morning air.
A pair of hands pressed against my face and guided my head back into a straightforward position.
I opened my eyes.
Guy stared back at me. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “You know that if anything happens… we can’t go back.”
“I know,” I whispered.
Tears slipping down his face, Guy nodded and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I love you, Jason.”
“I love you too.”
“Just open your mouth when I kiss you. That’s all you have to do.”
“Will it hurt?”
“No. It won’t.”
I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable.
Guy’s tongue pressed against my lips.
My mouth opened.
A fine frost slipped inside.
A part of me I never knew existed instantly reacted.
Primeval, born from the time when we were not human and were truly something else—his touch bonded my skin in a strange symbiotic nature before ice began to form between us.
I opened my eyes.
The ice was beginning to cloud my view—but somewhere, deep within its glacial surface, I could just barely make out the thing that looked back at me: the thing with the great stag’s antlers and a wolfish creature’s head.
Even when I closed my eyes, there was no denying what I really was.
Guy had always said his people had been afraid.
Now they had a reason to be.
I was the Wendigo.
Amadeo had started a war.
The story continues in His Kiss of Darkness
Book 2 of the Ice Men Trilogy
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About the Author
Born and raised in Southeastern Idaho, Kody Boye began his writing career with the publication of his story [A] Prom Queen’s Revenge at the age of fourteen. Published nearly three-dozen times before going independent at eighteen, Boye has authored numerous works—including the short story collection Amorous Things, the novella The Diary of Dakota Hammell, the zombie novel Sunrise and the epic fantasy series The Brotherhood Saga. He is represented by Hannah Brown Gordon of the Foundry Literary + Media Agency.
AWKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has been a long time coming. Originally written in 2008 under the title His Touch of Ice, it was written and released when I was a naïve teenager and as such was met with proper scrutiny. However—over the years, people have continued to contact me about it, I still find it distributed online, and my desire to revisit the story has never really faded. For that, I set about to rewrite the novel in 2013, this time with a more Texan (and experienced) flair.
A huge thanks goes out to the following:
My copy and continuity editor, Erin Hayes, whose tireless work on this novel has made it the best it can be.
My cover artist, Claudia McKinney, and my typographer and one of my best friends, Corey Hollins, who created an absolutely stunning representation of the world His Touch of Ice takes place in.
Lori Parker of Contagious Reads, who was kind enough to offer bite-sized feedback on the go and remind me of words that I’d mysteriously forgotten.
And, last but not least, those readers who have continued to contact me about the story. It was you who inspired me to take a better (and, in my opinion, far superior) stab at this story.
&nb
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