Карен Монинг - Iced

“They come here of their own volition. The line into my club last night wrapped around two city blocks.”

“They’re confused! Their whole world just melted down!”

“You sound like Mac. This isn’t new, kid. The weak have always been food for the strong.”

Her name is a kick in my stomach. “Yeah, well Mom taught me not to play with my food before I ate it. Dude, you’re a fecking psychopath.”

“Careful, Dani. You’ve got a glass house of your own.”

“I got no place like Chester’s.”

“It’s a famous quote.”

“Not too famous if I don’t know it.”

“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Maybe you want to talk about your mother.”

I look away. I’ll pocket my stones for a little while. At least until I know for sure exactly what he knows about me.

I turn my attention back to the room and my tension melts away, replaced by an anticipatory thrill. I love mysteries. Way to test my brain! Dancer and me do logic puzzles. He beats me sometimes. Dancer’s the only person I’ve ever met that I think might be smarter than me. What’s with this place? What happened? “You got cameras in here?” I say.

“They stopped working while everything was still normal.”

As if anything was ever “normal” in this torture chamber. Now it’s even weirder.

Each person and Fae in the room is frozen solid, silent, white, iced figurines. Twin plumes of diamond-ice crystals extend from many of their nostrils; exhales frozen. Unlike Cruce, who is contained inside a solid block of ice, these folks look like they somehow got frozen right where they stood. I wonder if I pinged one of the Fae it would shatter.

“You think it was the Unseelie King did this?”

“No reason I can see,” Ryodan says. “He’s not the kind to waste time on small stuff. Hurry up, kid. Standing in here is no picnic.”

“Why are you?”

“I take nothing for granted.”

He means he thinks it’s possible one of them isn’t completely frozen. “You’re watching my back.”

“I watch all my employees’ backs.”

“Partner,” I correct, and I don’t even like that. I was flattered when he called me Robin to his Batman, but I’m over it already. This is who he is: someone who runs a place where humans get killed for the amusement of the Fae.

I save them. He damns them. That’s a gulf between us no bridge will ever span. I’ll look into this. But not for him. For humans. Sides have to be taken. I know which one I’m on.

I go all cool inside, thinking about how many folks in Dublin need a little help to survive, and just like that I’m perfect and on fire and free, and I slip sideways into freeze-framing like gliding into a dream.

Moving like I do makes seeing things a little difficult. That’s why I stood at the door, looking in so long, collecting observations from a distance. Even freeze-framing, the chill causes intense pain in every bone in my body. As I whiz past him I say, “What’s the temp in here?” planning to get the answer on my way back around.

“No thermometer can take it,” he says by my ear, and I realize he’s freeze-framing, too. He’s right beside me. “Don’t touch anything. It’s too cold to risk.”

I circle a Fae guard at top speed. Around and around, looking for clues. If the Unseelie King did this, why would he choose here? Why ice his own guards?

“Is this the only cl-club that g-got iced?” I stutter with cold.

“Yes.”

“Wh-When?” I stamp my foot in hyperspeed, pissed that I’m stuttering. Doesn’t matter that it’s from the cold, it makes me sound pansy. Next thing you know, I’ll lisp.

“Eight days ago.”

A few days after Ryodan cornered me on my water tower. I cock my head. I just heard a sound in a completely frozen room. I whiz back to where I was when I heard it and go in tight circles, listening hard.

Silence.

“D-Did you hear th-th-that?” I manage to spit out. My face is going numb and it’s getting harder to move my lips. I circle a human woman, frozen mid-coitus. It’s not hoar frost that turned her white. She’s covered with hard rime, the kind of ice that builds up on a cold foggy night. Over it all is a layer of clear ice a good inch thick.

“Yes.” Ryodan flashes past me. Warily, we circle the room on opposite ends, watching everything real careful-like.

It’s hard to listen good when you got so much wind in your ears from moving like we do. Ryodan and I have been practically shouting at each other the whole time we’ve been talking. “Like a high-p-p-pitched whine,” I say. I’m not going to be able to stay in the room much longer. There it was again! Where was it coming from? I whiz though the subclub faster and faster. Ryodan and I do figure eights between the frozen figurines, trying to isolate it.

“You f-feel that?” I ask. Something’s happening … I feel a vibration, like the floor has the tremors, like everything is … changing .

“Fuck!” Ryodan explodes. Then his hands are on my waist, and he’s tossing me over his shoulder like that stupid sack of potatoes again, and moving faster than I’ve ever managed to move in my whole life.

That’s when they begin to pop, going off like firecrackers. Fae and humans explode, filling the air with icy, flesh-colored shrapnel.

One after the next, they blow violently, and with each new explosion, the next one blows harder. The furniture is popping now, too. Sofas erupt into icy splinters of wood and rock-hard chunks of stuffing. Racks get blasted into smithereens of metal shards. It sounds like a thousand machine guns going off.

A pair of knives whiz by, chased by a dozen ice picks.

I bury my nose in Ryodan’s back. My face has taken enough of a beating for the day. I’m not in the mood for anything sharp in it. Something slams me in the back of my head and I wrap my arms around my skull. I hate being over his shoulder but he’s faster than me. I tense, pelleted by chunks, waiting for one of those nasty-looking blades or picks to sink into me.

We’re halfway down the hall, almost to the elevator. The other two clubs have begun blowing up, too. I hear an enormous, deep, rumbling sound and realize the floor is cracking beneath us.

Chunks of ceiling begin to fall.

At the elevator, Ryodan flings me from his shoulder into the compartment in one smooth motion.

I explode right back out. “Fecking thing is going to blow and you want me on it?”

“It’ll last long enough to get you out of here.”

“Bull-fecking- crikey ! I give you fifty-percent odds I’ll make it!”

“I’ll take them.”

I’m in the air, over his shoulder, slammed back into the elevator again. The whole ceiling of the hallway is coming down now, crown moldings, drywall, steel girders. He’ll be crushed. Not that I care. “What about you?”

His smile is fanged. Creeps me out. “What, kid, you care?”

He slams the doors closed with his bare hands and I swear he gives the thing a push from below.

I shoot up into Chester’s.

Under normal circumstances I’d have snooped through Ryodan’s office, but my day hadn’t been normal and I was in a pissy mood.

Two things were on my mind: get as far away from Ryodan as possible while he was busy dying (hopefully), and kill as many Fae inside Chester’s as I could on my way out.

The club “proper” was unprotected. Hoo-fecking-rah.

His dudes had whizzed past me so fast my hair shot straight up in the air five, six, seven times, minus Barrons, who doesn’t much leave TP’s side. No doubt they were heading down to the iced level, to save their boss. Keep him from being crushed. With any luck, the whole club would collapse into a pile of rubble and kill them all.