“Why me? I’m a damn bookseller. I collect Firefly figurines!”
A spark of panic arced in his chest. His Wash bobblehead was in the mail. He couldn’t die now, not with that to live for.
“You’re a creature of destiny, laddie. I’m no Brother of Solstice, but I know one when I see one.”
Jack made to speak, found he had no words, and collapsed back against the dumpster. “I see.” He shrugged helplessly. “Suppose you’re wrong.”
“Not possible. The rules are the rules.”
Jack cursed under his breath, realising he was about to go along with whatever this mad fool wanted. He squeezed the bridge of his nose.
No way left to go but forward now, Jack. Go along with it until you see a chance to run. Just pray you don’t lose the last of your marbles before it’s over. Or get your guts ripped out.
Is he hearing this? He read my mind before.
He waited a beat, but the man merely waited.
A selective mind reader. Who is this freak?
“Who you calling a freak?” the man growled.
Jack scowled.
“Why are you here?” he groaned.
The man slapped him on the back, with such force that all the wind was pounded right out of him. “The first good question you’ve asked, because now I get to sound like a real badass.” He grinned, revealing his tattooed teeth in all their otherworldly glory, set against tangled masses of beard and glowing crimson eyes. “I’m here to save the bloody world.”
He held the pose for a moment, and Jack nodded slowly, grinning a smile he felt obliged to pull, lest the head-case get upset.
“What’s your name?” Jack said.
The man’s eyelids fluttered, and his dramatic pose disintegrated. An irked twitch in the corner of his mouth. “Barry.”
“… Barry?”
His face twitched more violently. “What, you think that because I’m from another world, I’ve got to have some stupid nonsense name? I hate that crap. Go ahead and call me Jaeverick or something, if you want. Whatever. But Mum had a wicked sense of humour, so it’s Barry.”
I touched a nerve.
“Sorry,” Jack said lamely.
Barry shrugged, turning to survey the alley. “We done with the frickin’ introductions and exposition, now?” he said, eyeing the people at the end of the street with frank curiosity. Arms akimbo, he cocked his head. “You people… blind to the world around you. None of you have a clue in all hell what’s coming. Now, you tell me, anything weird happened today around these parts? Freaky stuff?”
Jack resisted the urge to laugh hysterically in his face. “I might have seen a thing or two, yeah.”
Barry grinned and Jack’s will broke. They laughed together for a single, insane moment, two men from two worlds.
Then the moment was over, and Barry’s fist connected with the side of Jack’s head in a hail of stars and singing pain.
Jack’s vision blurred and melded like melted ice cream. Threads of crimson light mixed with bleak concrete-grey. A demented groaning blared somewhere amidst a high-pitched ringing. As his vision settled and the ringing died down, he realised the groaning came from between his own lips.
The bastard nearly killed me, he thought wildly. A bolt of fear tugged him back to reality, and he scrabbled back against the dumpster. He’s strong, too strong. No man could do that. He could have taken my head clean off.
Another voice answered from deeper down in his mind: He dragged you through the streets like a tote bag full of marshmallow, after appearing in a cloud of ice and blue glowing light from another dimension, sweetie. He’s probably not a man.
Jack fought a bought of nausea, checked his head for blood, and gasped. “What the hell did you—”
“We ain’t got time for you to be a smartass. You’ve been sent to give me a hand, and by god you’re going to play your part, or I’ll have you hanging upside down from your danglies before you can say ‘Oopsie daisy’. The Weaver might have sent you, but that don’t mean I have to leave you in one piece. So let me ask you again. Did you see anything freaky, Jacky Boy?”
“No! I was busy being a pathetic loser, like always, before you showed up. Happy?”
“There we go, some progress. Nothing at all? No news on your TV, your internet, your gossipy old ladies at the salon? Whatever? Nothing strange at all?”
Jack gritted his teeth. “No!”
Barry’s brow twitched again, more violently than last time, a full half-inch, such that obscured his eye. “Every time, they send some blubbering idiot who doesn’t know a damn thing. Why can’t I get a bonafide hero, for once? I like a bit of Hollywood.” He huffed, blowing a stray strand of twisted beard from between his lips. “Why do you people always have to be so normal?”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Jack muttered. He decided he didn’t want to know how the other-worlder knew about Hollywood. He thought of running for it again. “So I’m not any good to you, why don’t you just let me go, and get on with… whatever it is you’re doing.”
“I’m on a mission,” Barry said distractedly. “Saving the world and all. Y’know.”
“So I can go?”
“Nope. You couldn’t even if I wanted to let you. You’re awake now.”
Jack sighed, sagging, defeated.
What’s the point? I’m probably hallucinating, anyway. Why won’t it stop?
“Like I said, creatures of destiny,” Barry said. “The crazy stuff I said was coming? Sorry, kid, you’re bound to it, and that’s that.”
“I don’t want any part of any crazy. I want to go home.”
Barry laughed again, a huge, roaring guffaw. “There it is!”
Jack flinched as Barry slapped him on the back, but still the air sailed from his lungs.
Barry wiped a tear from his cheek. “Gets me every time. Funny; no matter where you go, everyone starts out from the same place. We all just want to go home.”
The laugh died with a sudden bitter note, and his face descended into a haunted grimace. “Now what do you say we get out of this alley and get on with it? If they haven’t showed their faces yet, they’ll be around here somewhere. Destroying worlds is addictive.”
3
Milton Harper waited for the last of the stock-room staff to run screaming out into the street, then slammed the door marked STAFF ONLY and tore off the handle. For a moment he sighed and leaned against the frame, cursing under his breath.
Fools. Incompetent idiots. Everything was set up, it was perfect. All they had to do was follow the plan. Now everything might go to hell.
There was no stopping what was coming. That much was for sure. But there was a hell of a lot that could go wrong. If all the vaults didn’t receive full complements, the logistics would be all off. And if they weren’t sealed, they’d lose all the equipment, the weapons, the supplies. All of it.
Once the Frost took care of all these vermin, this world would be theirs. But there might be survivors, and Harper needed to be able to scrape away any stragglers.
He unsheathed twin five-foot claws on each of his forearms, thrusting out from just below the elbow.
The whine of the motorcycle outside died. The Build-A-Bear shoppers were long gone. The guy was probably ex-special forces, moving over the store-front floor like a leaf drifting down-river. But to Milton’s ears, each clack of his boots was signposted in reverberating glory.
In any case, he didn’t need his hearing. He could see the hunched figure outlined in shimmering light through the door, slinking between stands and displays, an automatic rifle tucked tight against his shoulder.
Harper lurked behind the door like a heron poised over an unsuspecting perch, then thrust his clawed hand clean through the door so fast his flesh became a blur. Hot wetness enveloped his wrist. Harper smiled as a watery gasp reached his ears, the glowing aura visibly shifting colour.
Green. Pain, and fear.
Patiently, Harper p
eeled the door away in splinters with his free hand, and greeted his pursuer with a curt nod.
It was an impressive specimen, a solid two-fifty-pounder with shark-like eyes and a neck as thick as a tree bough. There was no shock in that gaze at the sight of Milton’s hand embedded in his abdomen, nor his clawed arms. He had known what he had been chasing.
A fellow predator. Harper felt a glimmer of kinship with the pathetic creature hanging off his wrist.
Urgh. Is that how long I’ve been here? Sympathy for this... thing?
The man was wide-eyed and pale already, with Milton’s hand gripped around his spine. To his credit, Harper was impressed to see him still trying to raise the muzzle of his rifle.
“I’ll take that, thank you,” Harper said, plucking the gun from the man’s shoulder and pinching the barrel through ninety-degrees with a flick of his index finger. He cleared his throat and lifted the man through the doorway, bringing them face to face.
“Give me a little information and I’ll make it fast,” he said.
Lies. He never let them go easy. But the humans always turned into little children when you made them hurt. They became naive, hopeful, calling out to gods and angels. No matter how tough they got, they were all the same underneath. If only they knew what kind of creatures the divine really were.
They would never stop screaming.
“Go to hell,” the man gargled, then wrenched himself upon Milton’s arm, pivoting to impale his shredded torso further. Something vital spewed hot blood onto the floor.
Before Harper could scowl, the man’s eyes glazed over, and his light winked out. Harper rolled his eyes and let the man slump to the ground.
Son of a bitch could have ruined my suit. This thing is cashmere.
He massaged his forehead and grated his teeth. How many decades had he spent outcast here, sliding his fingers into governments, organisations, criminal networks, everything—without once indulging himself in all that power. He had kept hidden, a name, a shadow, a rumour to all but a handful.
Billions of dollars, decades of work—entire lifetimes to these short-lived rodents—had all come down to this one day. And now it was all about to go down the drain.
A low growl emerged from deep in his throat. He had to deal with this before any more damage could be done. In any case, he couldn’t do his work here until the other vaults were locked down.
Something had come through the Exit, delivering some meddler just across the street. A playmate come just for him.
Despite his rage, he felt a thrill rustle in his chest. So long had he been here, alone, a castaway on this lonely barren island at the edge of the Web. Now, finally, he sensed a glimmer of All Where peeking through the curtain of this thin, bleak reality.
At last he felt power close by. Real power, rich and glimmering, filling the air with technicolour. Through the concrete wall he could make out a faint vapour trail of glowing crimson, heading off down the street.
Harper licked his lips slow and steady, sweeping across the storeroom floor amidst hundreds of staring beady-eyed Teddy Bears. He imagined them cheering him on, his minions, all screaming “Kill them. Kill them all!”
Yes, evil teddies, he thought, giggling. Thy will be done.
He stepped back onto the street, smoothing the creases of his suit. Despite his anger, there was a skip in his step as he followed the glowing trail. “Let’s see who’s come to play.”
4
“What was that back there?” Jack called. He and Barry cut through the crowds on Fifth Avenue, weaving back and forth between people heading for shows or a couple of cold ones. The sun had fallen below the skyline, and the clouds began their long decline through the spectrum towards pink and purple.
Barry turned to speak over his shoulder. “Eh?”
“The ice, the light… you.”
“It’s called the Frost. It’s a mark, like a fingerprint.”
“Of what?”
“Of something that don’t belong in these parts of the Web.”
Jack put on a spurt, side-stepped a scowling tramp, and drew level with Barry with some effort. He seemed to cover more ground than each step should have taken him, almost hurtling over the sidewalk. It sent Jack’s head spinning.
“You want me to go along with this? Fine. But you’re going to tell me why you’re here.”
Barry’s eyes twinkled with something not quite amused, maybe dangerous. “Am I now?”
Jack hoped being so public would save him from that predatory glint. It wasn’t a strong hope. “Considering what I just swallowed, I think I deserve a bone.”
Barry squinted sidelong at him, then shrugged. “Fair. I gotta say, most of your lot go stark raving bonkers when they catch sight of us.”
“So?”
Barry stopped so abruptly that Jack ran ten feet ahead before he could dart from the crowd and join Barry at the edge of the sidewalk. Barry was already gesturing to the city with a sweep of his arm. “Imagine all this, all of it—everybody you’ve ever known, loved, met, or passed in a hallway—gone.” He snapped his fingers, somehow louder than the hubbub of the crowd, and Jack flinched. “Every person on this poor little rock just suddenly… not, vanished in one blink of your eyes.”
Jack shivered, a full body jerk that welled up at the base of his spine. “That’s coming?”
“The end of the bloody world, like I said. Today.”
Jack swallowed with difficulty. His throat suddenly arid as a desert. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit. So let’s get going, what do you say?”
Jack mouthed wordlessly for an instant, then groaned. “Fine, let’s go.”
Then they were moving again, walking this time, but still Jack had to jog to keep up with Barry’s striding pace. Every step of the way, Barry’s gaze swept the streets, the skyscrapers, the sky, the pavement, his eyes darting back and forth ceaselessly, apparently seeing things Jack was blind to.
Looking for something.
“What do we do?” Jack said.
“Shut up and keep a lookout.”
“For what?”
“Whatever’s there to see.”
“All I see is a lot of people.”
“Do you ever do anything but ask stupid questions?”
“How the hell am I supposed to—” He stopped dead, a lurch rising in the base of his stomach. “Wait.”
Jack loved Loony Tunes, especially the little curved hook that snaked in from off-screen and snagged Porky Pig during the credits. ‘That’s all, folks!—whoosh!’
The tug in his stomach was just like that; like some intangible shepherd’s staff had looped around his insides and tugged them three feet to the right. His body reacted to it even as his mind processed the sensory oddity, as though on autopilot.
It was knowledge of some other place. Something he couldn’t know or sense or feel—shouldn’t—yet did.
“Up there.” He heard his own voice from a great distance, but it didn’t sound anything like him, breathy and rumbling. He sounded almost like Barry. He turned to his inter-dimensional compadre, shocked not only to find his hand wrapped tight around Barry’s bicep, but also by the Scot-but-not’s uncertain expression.
Almost as though he wasn’t quite sure of being able to shake Jack off. A moment ago, Jack was sure Barry could have peeled the skin from his bones if the Scot-but-not hadn’t been careful.
“What is it?”
“There’s something over that way. Moving fast. I can… I can’t see it, but something else. Ugly and… bad and not there, like a void in the world.”
“Stop talking pretty and tell me what the bloody hell’s happening to you.”
Jack frowned, squeezing his eyes shut, focusing hard on the odd new sensation.
“I don’t know,” he muttered.
“Come on, out with it!”
“I don’t know what I feel… It might be gas.”
“It’s no gas.”
; “Reading my mind again?”
“No… I can’t see a thing right now.” Barry sounded a little uncomfortable. “Looks like you’ve got a touch of something extra, after all. Told you, the Web always sends the right ones for the job. Creatures of destiny.”
That tug lurched once more, stronger this time, evolving in constant flux. It seemed to filter in from all of his senses, yet none of them. Dark sludge filled his pores; rancid horse manure ran in his veins.
“Let it in. Don’t fight it,” Barry sighed, his voice laced with thinly-veiled impatience. “What do you feel?”
“Like I’m a human divining rod for something that shouldn’t be here.”
“Not the worst trick I’ve heard of. That’s it, then: you’re my guide.”
Jack swallowed hard, opening his eyes and expecting to see the world turned inside out. Instead, the bustle and honking and crowd-weary faces tumbled past just like before.
“Come on, let’s go,” Barry said, taking a bounding step forward.
I just saw something without seeing, felt it without touching, Jack thought wildly. What’s happened to me?
Not only did he feel the ugly new sensations, but also an all-pervading chill deep in his bones, identical to what he’d felt back in Barnes & Noble. The same power that had brought Barry here.
The Frost.
“It’s not possible,” he breathed.
Barry’s lips grew thin, his gaze caught somewhere between exasperation and intrigue. “And why the bloody hell not?”
Feeling childish, Jack muttered, “There’s magic in the grown-up world.”
Barry whistled. “Life’s broken you, Jackie Boy.” He shook his head, genuine disappointment filling his gaze. “I admire this place. You people get a bad lot. But this world has a nasty habit of standing all over its own power. There’s magic in you people stronger than any I’ve got here, if you’d but bloody embrace it.”
He stepped closer and bowed his head to look Jack in the eye. “Now, if you’re done with your little existential crisis, we’ve got a monster on the loose trying to end the world. How about we do something about it?”
Frost Page 3