Iced: A Dani O'Malley Novel (Fever Series)

by Karen Marie Moning

  Mac has one, though.

  Bet I could take her.

  Way I see things, I got three options.

  Go to Chester’s, use Ryodan as a shield against Christian while making him help me get my sword back.

  Go straight after Jayne myself, knowing Christian is hot on my heels.

  Go after Mac and take the spear. Barrons might be in the way. Who am I kidding? Barrons would definitely be in the way, and even if he wasn’t and I took her spear, he’d come after me. Then I’d have Christian hunting me, Ryodan pissed at me for missing work, and Barrons breathing down my neck.

  A day in the life of me. The stuff I have to put up with.

  I’m always thinking things are as bad as they can get and they get worse. I nearly crash into something in the street, one of those fecking variables that move off my predicted grid, like people, animals, and Fae.

  “Stay out of my way, human!” it hisses.

  I want to drop out of freeze-frame and kick this monster’s ass all the way to dead. I haven’t seen her since the night Mac saved me from her, and forced her to give me back my good looks. I almost died that night, too. I almost die a lot. Superheroes do.

  “You stay out of mine, you ugly old bitch!” I hiss back at the Gray Woman.

  Then she’s gone on her way and me on mine. She’s off to hunt and kill and I’ve got an itch I can’t scratch. My hand closes on nothing at my waist.

  I need my sword like I need to breathe.

  I detour into a sporting goods store, jam shoes on my feet, grab an oversized fleece pullover to pull on over my sweater because its fecking cold for May, and dash off again, heading for my best shot at success. Trying to take on Jayne and his men with Christian trying to kill me is a weak shot. I don’t have any idea where he’s taken my sword. There are times, like Ryodan said, when Batman needs Robin. Well, I don’t need Ryodan, but he sure will make it easier. He can watch my back like Mac used to. I’ve got no time for pride. I want results and I know how to get them. He’s always telling me to ask. Tonight I’m asking.

  I feel naked without my sword.

  I feel exposed. It’s throwing me all kinds of off balance like I don’t even know who I am anymore without it.

  When I blast into Ryodan’s office, I’m going a million miles a minute, feet and mouth. Every one of his dudes scowls at me on the way in, even Lor, and I have no idea why. Guess Ryodan told them to be pissy to me or something. You never know what’s coming next with him.

  I blurt out what happened with the frozen car and Jayne and tell him how we have to go get my sword back like right now, like this very instant.

  “Drop down, kid,” he says without raising his head from his stupid paperwork. “You’re messing up my office.” Papers are flying around his head.

  I drop down from hypermode and he looks up. He’s looking at me weird. Takes me a sec to figure it out. It’s like he’s looking at a stranger. One he doesn’t like and is thinking about killing. Why the feck is he mad at me?

  “You reek of Highlander. The whole club can smell him on you. You’re wearing his clothes.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk so soft. “Dude, who cares? Didn’t you hear anything I said? Inspector Jayne took my sword!”

  “Explain why you’re wearing his clothes.”

  Softer still. If I wasn’t so hot with temper I’d get a chill. I don’t understand him. What does what I’m wearing have to do with anything that’s actually, like, relevant? How could it possibly matter? I don’t even understand why it registers! But I can tell by the look on his face he’s not budging until I explain, and if I don’t get my sword back soon, I’m going to go crazy. I also know if I tell him Christian killed some woman and I was next, he won’t pay any attention to the problem of my sword, he’ll go after Christian, when I need him to go after Jayne. I’m not sure he can take Christian. Not with what he’s turning into. But with my sword, I know I can.

  “The explosion cut up my clothes. He gave me some of his.”

  “You were together at the explosion.”

  “He found me after.”

  “And you changed in the street.”

  “Huh?” Stymied is me. This isn’t where I expect the conversation to go at all.

  “Elucidate upon where you changed.”

  “What the feck does that have to do with anything?”

  “Answer me.”

  “I ducked into a convenience store. That’s why they call them that. So they can be, like, convenient.”

  His gaze shivers up and down me. “If ice splinters tore up your clothes so badly that you needed to change, I’d think your injuries would be greater.”

  I gape at him, baffled. Somebody took my sword and he wants to talk about what I’m wearing and where I got dressed, and that he doesn’t think I look hurt bad enough!

  “He healed me. I was bleeding a lot. Holy hurrying hurricane, how’d you get next to me so fast?” Ryodan isn’t behind his desk anymore. He’s standing practically on my toes. I didn’t even see him move. Or feel a breeze or anything! “Give me some personal space!”

  He drops his head forward and smells me. “Healed you how?”

  What is the deal with everyone sniffing me? If Dancer starts doing it, too, I’m so out of here. “I drank his blood. Got a problem with that?”

  “Three.”

  “Huh?”

  “I have three problems with that.”

  “That was a rhetorical question. Maybe you can’t hear me talking or something so I’ll say it again: Jayne has my fecking sword. I’m in deep shit without it and need it back. You going to do something or not?”

  Just like that he’s back behind his desk, head bent over his paperwork, all but ignoring me. “No.”

  I’m incredulous. “What? Why? You know I’ll go after it myself! Is that what you want?”

  “Jayne stopped by a few hours ago.”

  “That took a fecking lot of nerve! He left me for dead. In the middle of a street. Wouldn’t even give me a fecking candy bar. Did he tell you how bad off I was? Why didn’t you come help me?”

  “You look fine to me.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “He told me why he took the sword, and agreed not to kill any Fae within five blocks of my club. That’s more than you do.”

  “Why would he agree to that? Jayne hates all the Fae!”

  “He knew you’d come to me and ask me to help you get it back.”

  “And you’re on his side?” How dare Jayne predict my moves and avert them while I’m busy dying and then being chased by a homicidal maniac! All of which was his fault to begin with!

  “Truth is, kid, I prefer you without it.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t kill my patrons. And now maybe you’ll start exercising caution. Or at least learn how to spell it.”

  I glare at his bent head. “I’m asking for your help here, boss. You keep telling me to, and I’m asking.”

  “I also said how you treat me is how I’ll treat you.”

  “What am I doing wrong?”

  “The answer is no.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I tap my foot hyperfast, hoping maybe I’ll crack his stupid floor.

  He doesn’t say anything. Just keeps working on whatever it is he works on.

  “You know what, dude? If you don’t help me get my sword back, you and me are through! You solve the ice mystery yourself,” I bluff, not about to give it up. “I’m not working for you. You don’t help me, I don’t help you.”

  “Jo.” He doesn’t even raise his head. Just murmurs her name.

  “I don’t care if you keep boinking her! Just get me my sword back! And don’t be making any more deals with folks about me behind my back!”

  “That’s not our arrangement. You signed a contract. Jo’s life is only one of many prices should you renege. There are repercussions for your actions. You can’t walk away from me, Dani. Not tonight. Not ever. You’re not the one cal
ling the shots. Sit down.” He’s standing again, and again I didn’t see him move. He kicks a chair at me. “Now.”

  Sometimes I think everybody else in the world knows something I don’t know. Like they’re all in on some kind of conspiracy and if I just knew that one secret thing, too, the things adults do that baffle me would make perfect sense.

  Other times I think I know something extra that the whole rest of the world doesn’t know and that’s why nothing they do makes sense. ’Cause they don’t know it and all their actions stem from flawed logic. Unlike mine.

  I told Mac that once and she said it wasn’t something everyone else knew; the missing ingredient was that I didn’t yet understand my own emotions. They were new and I was just learning them for the first time. She said I was never factoring other people’s feelings into things, so of course everything grown-ups did seemed mysterious and weird.

  I said, dude, you just said I don’t understand them, so how can I factor them in?

  She said you can’t, so just accept that teenage years are a great big clusterfuck of insecurity and confusion and hunger. Try to survive them without getting yourself killed.

  A-fecking-men to that. Except for the insecurity part. Well, without my sword, plus the insecurity part.

  As soon as I sit down, Ryodan says, “Get out of here.”

  “Bipolar much?”

  “Go take a shower and change your clothes.”

  “I don’t smell that bad,” I say crossly.

  He writes something, then turns the page in whatever-the-heck-stupid-thing he’s reading.

  “Dude, where do you want me to go? I can’t go anywhere without my sword. I can’t outrun the sifters. Every Fae in your club has a hard-on for killing me. You want me dead? Just do it yourself and get it over with.”

  He stabs a button on his desk. “Lor, get in here.”

  Lor blows in like he was plastered to the other side of the door.

  “Escort the kid to clean the fuck up and get that stench off her.”

  “Sure thing, boss.” He scowls at me.

  I scowl right back.

  Lor points through the glass floor. “See that blonde down there with the big tits? I was about to get laid.”

  “One, I’m too young to hear that kind of stuff, and two, I don’t see you carrying a club to knock her over the head with, so how were you going to accomplish that?”

  Behind me, Ryodan laughs.

  “You’re ruining my night, kid.”

  “Ditto. Ain’t life at Chester’s grand.”

  TWENTY

  “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier”

  I am not the Sinsar Dubh, Kat. He has tricked all of you. You will need me to save you.

  Each night Cruce has taken me into the Dreaming, he has made the same claim. His lies hold the polish and consistency of truth. If my emotional empathy works on Fae—a test I’ve not yet had the opportunity to perform to my satisfaction—I get such conflicting signals from him that my gift is of no avail.

  Now, wide-awake after another night of diabolical dreams, I pass through double doors a hundred feet tall, several feet thick, with unfathomable tonnage, but do not afford them a second glance. My eyes are only for him. It does not seem odd to me we cannot close such doors. The oddity is that we were ever able to open them: tiny mortals tampering with chariots of the gods.

  I find myself in the position the Meehan twins recently occupied, hands fisted on the glowing bars of Cruce’s cage, staring in at the iced vision.

  He is War. Divisiveness. Brutality. Heinous crimes against humanity. As an event on the battlefield, and the personification of it in a cage, he is all that and more. How many humans fell before the murderous hooves of this sly horseman of the apocalypse?

  Nearly half the world’s population, by last count.

  Cruce brought down the walls between our races. If not for him, it would never have happened. He arranged the players, nudged them where and when necessary, set the game in motion, then galloped about the board in the guise of an avenging angel, agitating here and stirring up there, until World War III began.

  I should not be here with him.

  Yet I am.

  I told myself white lies as I made my way beneath the abbey, deep into our hidden city, picking through a misleading maze of corridors and crypts and dead-end and pigtailing tunnels. I told myself I must ascertain the cage is secure and he is still in it. That I will see him and realize he is but a pale imitation of my dreams; that I will gaze upon him and scoff at the thrall in which his dream-self holds me. That somehow coming down to check on him might set not him—but me—free.

  My knees tremble. Desire parches my mouth and thickens my tongue.

  There is no freedom for me here.

  This close to him, I long to strip where I stand, dance wildly around his cage and keen the notes of an inhuman melody I do not even know how I know. This close to him I must bite my tongue to prevent myself from moaning with need.

  This close to him I feel like an animal.

  I stare at my hands on the bars, pale and white, with slender fingers clutching the glowing columns, and in my mind’s eye I can only see them wrapped around that part of Cruce that has made of me an adulteress. Curled as they were last night and the night before and the night before. I see the curve of my lips as I smile. I see the soft roundness of my mouth as I take him inside it.

  I find my fingers dancing lightly over the pearl buttons of my blouse and snatch them away. I see a shameful vision of my girls discovering their new Grand Mistress cavorting naked around Cruce’s cage. It is erotic. It is horrific.

  Freedom terrifies you because you never permit yourself any, Cruce said last night in my dreams. I am not the only one in a cage. The shame you feel is not about me but that you know you stand in a cage, too, and it is of your own making. You have felt the darkest emotions of others since you were a child, you know what monsters crouch inside them, and you confuse your passions with their monsters. They are not the same, my beloved Kat. Not the same at all.

  He says I repress passion. That I do not permit myself to feel any of it. He says my love for Sean is a lie. That I seek comfort and safety and do not know what love is. He says I choose Sean because he, too, feels no passion. He says we are not running toward each other in love, but away from things in fear. Set yourself free, he says. Come to me. Choose me.

  God help me. I walk in a valley of darkness and I need your light to guide me.

  I unwrap my hands and back away. I must never come here again.

  I will build a blockade of mental tricks in my mind, as I did when I was young and needed to protect myself from the wild, hurtful emotions of my family.

  As I turn away I hear a noise so small I nearly overlook it. I don’t want to turn back. It is nearly impossible for me to force myself to leave this place.

  Yet I turn. I am the Grand Mistress here. The cavernous chamber, lit by a skein of torches on the walls, appears empty. There is nothing in it but a stone slab, Cruce’s cage, and me. If I share this chamber with another, they are either behind the slab or on the far side of his cage. Hiding. Quiet. Waiting for me to leave.

  Cognizant of my position at the abbey, I avert my gaze from the iced prince and sedately walk the circumference of his cage, head straight, shoulders squared.

  I turn the corner. “Margery,” I say. She is directly opposite where, moments ago, I stood. Had she made no sound, I would have left none the wiser.

  “Kat.”

  Hostility buffets me in hot waves. The emotions of others have temperature and color, and when intense, texture as well.

  Margery is red, fevered, and complexly crafted as a honeycomb, with hundreds of tiny deceits and angers and resentments tucked into each small nook. I know a thing about resentment: it is a poison you drink yourself, expecting others to die.

  I’ve been classifying emotions into categories all my life. Navigating the hearts of those around me is a minefield. There are people I stand
near a single time and skirt forevermore. Margery’s emotions are deeply conflicted, dangerous.

  I wonder if I could feel my own, I would also be hot, red, a honeycomb of lies and resentments. But I do not want to lead! my soul is crying.

  “I was wondering if we overlooked something about the grid,” she says. “I fear he is not securely contained.”

  “As was I. As do I.”

  “Great minds.” She offers a tight smile. Her hands clench the bars, white-knuckled.

  I do not add the cued “think alike” because she and I do not. She hungers for power. I long for simplicity. I would have made a fine fisherman’s wife, in a cottage by the sea, with five children, cats and dogs. She would make a grand Napoleon.

  We assess each other warily.

  Does he visit her?

  Does he make love to her?

  I cannot ask if she is dreaming of him and if that is what has brought her down here on this rainy, cold morning. Whether she is or not, she will claim she is not then tell the entire abbey that I am, that I am being corrupted and must be replaced.

  She will use anything against me to take control of the abbey. At the very core of my first cousin Margery Annabelle Bean-McLaughlin is a great, sucking need. It was there when we were children, playing together, and she broke the knees of my dolls and stole small treasures from me. I have never understood it. I observe her white knuckles. She clenches the bars of his cage as if she is squeezing the life from something. “Your thoughts?”

  She moistens her lower lip, looks as if she’s about to speak, then stops. I wait and after a moment she says, “What if the King took the book? I mean, took it from Cruce before he iced him.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?” I say, as if it’s a perfectly reasonable question. As if I don’t know in that instant we are both being fed the same lies.

  She looks at Cruce then back at me. Her eyes are billboards, advertising her emotions. She regards Cruce with tender, private communion. She looks at me as if I could not possibly begin to understand the first thing about her, him, or the world we live in. “You are not gifted,” she hissed at me when we were nine and she heard her parents praising me for saving the family from a traitor in the endless plots and plans and betrayals that were our life. My parents used to take me to “business” meetings with Dublin’s seediest, and watch me carefully to see who made me most uncomfortable. “You are cursed and flawed and no one is ever going to love you!”