As Cold As Ice

by Mandy Rosko

  Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? Why couldn’t she just shut her stupid mouth this one time?

  Markus looked at her, a slow turn of his head, and he smiled. The only thing that would make him look more evil was if he replaced the damned Coke bottle with a cigar, and if he had an obnoxiously fluffy white cat roaming around.

  He approached her.

  Soren scrambled to his feet. “No, sir, wait!”

  “Hold him down,” Markus said, not even looking back when three guards rushed to Soren, grabbed him by the arms, and put him flat on his back. One of the three sat on his legs. Soren yelled and bucked, trying to get them off him, but they couldn’t be moved.

  Soren roared and yelled at the men on top of him, but they ignored him. Jessica’s heart ached for him. Her heart never ached for anything, but it was actually hurting in that moment. He probably wasn’t used to not being as strong as he was, and those guards in their stupid white uniforms were holding him down like he was a toddler throwing a tantrum.

  She was going to kill them for what they were doing. She was going to blow so much cold up their asses the first chance she got, and when she did it, she was going to make sure they all froze to death from the inside out. For the time being, however, she kept her eyes locked onto Markus’ as he approached.

  She didn’t move. She didn’t sneer at him—which she really wanted to do—and she didn’t lean back when he took a lock of her hair into his hand and twirled it around his finger.

  Yeah, just like every creepy, overachieving villain hiding behind a self-confidence problem. That little smile would totally vanish from his stupid mouth if she told him that. Especially if she added in that he wasn’t that good-looking and probably had a tiny penis.

  “Do you know what else is a rare thing?”

  “What?” Jessica asked.

  “Paranormals who can control the elements. You have ice, the woman Jack Marilla vanished with has fire—a very beautiful fire, by the way—and the man your brother was chasing after could control electricity. Usually, the people who come to this building have some small amount of psychic abilities, or they’re vampires, werewolves, man-eating wendigoes—the usual dangerous creatures the public doesn’t want to deal with. Someone like you, however, could be a real asset.”

  “What?” Jessica’s tone was flat. She had a pretty good idea of where this was going, and she didn’t like it.

  Her eyes almost flicked over to Soren, who had gone quiet, but she managed to refrain. Best not to give Markus any more ammunition than he already had.

  Markus continued. The eerie thing about all of this was the fact that he sounded perfectly serious. There was nothing in his voice that suggested he was messing with her, that he was just playing around or making her some bullshit offer because he thought she was stupid enough to take it. Despite all the guards and handlers and recruits standing around, it was almost as if he was talking to her like she was a real equal.

  “If I can get a team of powerful paranormals—and not just vampires and werewolves, or even the gargoyles and mermaids—what I mean is that I want creatures so rare and so held up in high esteem to the community, to the world, to show their support for this cause. If I can make that happen, then all this talk about paranormals in politics, the protests, peaceful and otherwise, will all come to a stop. Now, I want you to think about that before you respond,” Markus said quickly, just as Jessica opened her mouth.

  “All right, what would be the upside to this? Is this why you have Soren working for you? Get him to act all nice and friendly on camera like in your shitty sitcoms?”

  Markus didn’t appear to take any offense at her insult. “Something like that, but one dragon isn’t enough, and neither are the gargoyles and the psychics. No one takes them seriously anyway. Mermaids and centaurs and fairies, well, they’re helpful, people like them well enough thanks to Disney movies, but I only have one man who can breathe under water, and he can’t make a tail. He just has more webbing on his hands and feet, so that doesn’t help me too much. I can’t get the vampires and the werewolves to work with me to save my life. Not that the public likes them too much anyway, and they certainly don’t like me.”

  Good. Jessica didn’t want anyone liking Markus, or working with him.

  “But if I can get a good group of paranormals to work with me, people of real power who can gain the trust of the public, who are respected even by the people of this great country, then just imagine that. I can see the way the wheels are turning in your head, so just think about this before you respond. There would be less violence on the street. Fewer paranormals on the run who have to steal from convenience stores and people walking down the street just to be able to eat or have a place to sleep. Fewer paranormals dying because they feel they need to run instead of coming into The Head Office for Paranormal Containment and Study. Do you have any idea how many paranormals, hunters and collectors are injured and sometimes pay for their lives with this entire thing?”

  “I bet the number of paranormals who get killed or injured is a lot more than the hunters and collectors.”

  Jessica didn’t need to bet, though; she knew it firsthand. As a hunter—a former hunter—she’d seen exactly how many other hunters and collectors were injured. In the years she’d worked for Head Office, there had only been one hunter death, and a handful of injuries to both hunters and collectors.

  Markus glared at her, turned around, and started to pace. “Stubborn, stubborn. Don’t know whether I like that or not.”

  Whatever.

  The death of that hunter had caused a media shit-storm. Sympathizers all over the country had flooded their support to Head Office, especially the family of the hunter who had been killed.

  That family was still a strong voice in politics, wearing their buttons that asked people to remember the brave injured and dead who worked to get the dangerous paranormals off the street.

  Anyone who tried to work toward equality and fairness for paranormals in politics always had to answer to them, as that family was the first to be brought on television by all the stations. Everyone always wanted their opinion. They—the parents, siblings, husband and children of the dead hunter—were always solemn-faced and angry that anyone could ever spit on the memory of their loved one by suggesting that paranormals—vampires, werewolves, and everyone else fitting into that category—could ever safely walk the streets like a normal person.

  Markus wagged his finger at her. There was a smile on his face, but it was strained. “I like you. I like your spirit. I really do, but I just need to channel that.”

  “I thought you were going to stick me on that Proxy Project, or whatever it was,” Jessica said, the spot where she’d received her injection suddenly itching.

  She looked behind Markus to see Soren had been put on his knees. He looked roughed-up, but not too bad. When Charles quickly rushed over to him, dropped to one knee and injected Soren’s arm with a big, thick-ass needle of his own, Jessica winced in sympathy pain.

  She also wanted to kill the lot of them.

  “I don’t think that will be a good idea anymore, now that I know this one’s been trying to help you get out. Tell me, what did he tell you about me? About how this place works?”

  “He didn’t give away anything incriminating,” Jessica said immediately. “He said I was going to be put onto your new project, and that was when I was going to try and make my escape, when you let me and several other paranormals out of the building. That was it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jessica didn't exactly expect Markus to look convinced, so she wasn't sure why her stomach quivered when he didn't eat up her words.

  "Hmmm," Markus bit his lips together, shaking his head before pointing a finger at her. "Close, but that's not quite right, either. Soren was going to try to get you out of here before it got down to that. Before I could put a tracker inside you, right?"

  "No," Jessica replied immediately. An instant denial didn't help anything, of c
ourse. Weirdly enough, at least to her own ears, it made her sound all the more guilty.

  "Yes, I'm pretty sure that was the plan," Markus said. He walked over to the large square piece of concrete, where the door leading outside was hidden, and put his thumb onto the small, almost-hidden black glass panel.

  He also leaned down and let the thing scan his eye. Maybe something had come out of the glass and nicked his thumb to get the blood sample it needed, because then the little piece of square glass opened up, revealing a tiny hidden compartment.

  It was too bad that the concrete door didn't slide out of the way. Jessica would've probably taken her chances and started fighting right then and there, no matter what the odds were.

  Of course, then she would likely get shot and dragged to a cell.

  Yeah, it was probably better that she didn't see the giant cement door open.

  Jessica wasn't sure if there was something more Markus needed to do in order to open that door. Was there a keypad for a password hidden in there, as well? On top of everything else? It was kind of annoying to think that he had so many things standing in the way between her and freedom, but he didn't punch in a code. He reached into the tiny space and pulled out what looked like a USB key stick.

  Markus turned back to her, the black glass closing back over the hidden compartment, and he wiggled the key stick at her.

  Jessica groaned inside of her head, having a pretty good idea of what he was about to say.

  "Do you know what this is?"

  "A USB stick?"

  "Don't be cute. Tell me what you think is on it," Markus said.

  From the corner of her eye, Jessica could see the way Soren's eyes widened, how his face drained of all color.

  Yeah, they were a little bit screwed.

  "I'm guessing that, despite what you told some of your other employees, you actually do have surveillance down here," she said. "And you were watching Soren and me fucking."

  There were a couple of chuckles from the many men standing behind her, mostly from the recruits, in all probability. She ignored them. She didn't care about them.

  Markus shrugged. "You would be amazed at what you can learn about people when they think no one's watching them. I'm not just talking about your average off-color sexist or racist jokes, either, but about loyalty.

  "Do you have any idea how many business deals I've managed to close because of this little thing? It's not even new, or that good. There's almost no picture, and I can't watch anything happening from my computer on the top floor. The part about how nothing wireless down here will work is actually true. No cell phone will ever receive reception down here, and I don't have anything wired up to my computer, or any hard drive upstairs. That's just inviting trouble, what with hackers and what have you. The last thing I need is for some idiot politician, or former employee, to go making claims that I'm doing something that's not quite on the right side of the law, and then have the police come into my building to do a search of all the computers."

  "Right, that's inconvenient," Jessica said.

  She was fairly sure Markus caught the sarcasm, but again, he pointed at her and smiled, like she understood him in ways no one else did.

  "You're exactly right. That's just right. It's also inconvenient to have to come down here myself from time to time to pick this up and have a look at what might be on it, but it's worth it. The information I can get off some shitty picture quality that doesn't even span the entire room, and some good audio, is fucking priceless. More than worth the trouble of taking the elevator all the way down here."

  Jessica wanted to be sick. That basically meant Markus had heard everything Soren had ever told her when they were down there. He'd also seen a good chunk of what they'd been doing, as well.

  She looked to the metal table, how it lined up with the square of black glass. Any camera hidden behind there was in full sight of that. Even if Markus couldn't exactly see her with her legs spread being fucked against a wall, that didn't make it any less embarrassing that he'd heard her, or that he'd seen some of what Soren had been doing to her.

  That fact that he knew she'd destroyed his leather chairs on purpose was kind of a nice thought, however. She had to admit she liked that.

  "So, what now?" Jessica asked, doing her best to not make it completely obvious how she was looking around the room, trying to gather a proper scale of how many men were down there. How many people she needed to fight to get away.

  She was so completely outnumbered that there was no way she was getting out of this. No way Soren was getting out, either.

  Markus put his hands behind his back, walking casually around the room, not a care in the world, nothing sinister going on. Normal, normal, normal. "Now, I would like to know how Soren was planning on getting you out of here. I can't figure that out. He wasn't going to put a tracker inside of you. I found a couple of broken trackers upstairs. My men have told me the lights will switch on, but they won't reveal a signal on any computer. I'm positive he was going to inject you and maybe a few others with the tracker. Perhaps the hunter who was going to be sent undercover with you, to prevent her from leading anyone back to any safe houses she happened to find.

  "Or, maybe he wasn't going to put a tracker in you at all. Maybe the broken ones were only for the people to be released, so the ones unaware of the project wouldn't inadvertently lead my team back to their hidey holes. I do recall that Soren said you wouldn't be here long enough to be sent out with them. I want to know how he was planning on smuggling you out."

  “How?” Jessica asked. Her voice shook a little.

  Markus smiled. “Yes. Tell me how.”

  She had no idea how. That was the biggest problem she faced. She had no fucking clue how Soren was planning on getting her out if he wasn’t going to just wait for her to leave when the other paranormals were let go. Because of that, she couldn’t even lie about it, couldn’t make something up about any other way to leave the building.

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

  Quietly, but still loud enough that her voice had carried.

  Several fast clicks and a snap sounded. Jessica looked to the side just in time to see Charles, who had whipped out a nightstick from his pocket. He pulled his hand back, and with all the force in his body, he slammed the end of the weapon into Soren’s stomach.

  The immediate rush of air that left Soren’s mouth, followed by his slow descent back to his knees, was horrifying. He clutched at his gut, eyes wide, body shaking. His choked noises, as if he couldn’t suck back any air at all, increased the ice in Jessica’s blood.

  “Stop that!” She didn’t make it a single step before she was reminded of the hands holding onto her, keeping her back.

  Soren still couldn’t seem to catch a breath.

  Jessica had been punched in the stomach before. It was one of those things that tended to happen from time to time in her line of work as a hunter. Sometimes, fugitive paranormals happened to catch her off-guard when trying to get away from her.

  She knew that pain. It wasn’t even just the object slamming into her stomach. It was the way her abs contracted too late to try and take some of the force, how her lungs reacted, as if they were immediately closing for business, and it was all Jessica could do to keep the doors open so she could breathe.

  The lack of breath was the absolute worst. All kinds of sympathy pains welled up inside her as she watched Soren struggle to breathe.

  “You want to try that again?” Markus asked.

  Still with that same, weasely, smarmy look on his face. The kind of man whose hands looked so soft he’d probably never been in a fight in his entire life.

  He was going to hit Soren again if she told him she didn’t know. At least, he would tell Charles to hit Soren again, but it was the same damned thing. It didn’t matter. Markus was still the one doing it, and he was the one Jessica wanted to kill.

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know, you fucking unoriginal bastard. You hitting a man who’s help
less to fight back doesn’t change that. It just makes you look like every comic book villain to ever exist, ever. Why don’t you start going off on this huge monologue about how you’re secretly planning on taking over the entire city while you’re at it? You stupid asshole.”

  Markus’s eyes were just a touch on the wide side when she finished. She imagined that he’d had men swearing at him before—he was still running a business, after all—but she doubted anyone had ever said to him anything quite so stupid as she had just then.

  Soren looked absolutely horrified. Jessica was horrified with herself. She knew the kind of things Markus could do to her, and it terrified her. At that point, her mission was to just keep that from showing on her face.

  Which she was totally failing at. There was no way in Hell Markus didn’t smell the fear dripping from her as he smiled and stepped forward. Her body wouldn’t completely cooperate with her to hide how she was really feeling.

  The tiny tremble in her fists, the way she couldn’t stop swallowing—hell, even the way she refused to so much as blink as Markus approached—were probably a giant giveaway that something was amiss.

  “I like you, I really do,” Markus said, and there was a hint of something in his eyes that Jessica really hated. It made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck and forearms tingle, and goosebumps started to pimple all over her skin. Markus didn’t touch her, and he didn’t do something as lewd and obvious as roll his eyes up and down her body, but there was something in what he’d said that made her skin crawl. She was rarely wrong about these things, and she didn’t think she was wrong then, either.

  “Be honest with me, Ms. Frost—and I do have my doubts that is your real name. I’m not asking for much. I just want to know how he was planning on getting you out?”

  “And then what?” Jessica asked, not bothering to point out that Frost really was her last name, whether he believed the irony or not.

  “And then I will give you a spot on my team. You can become a hunter again. The fact that you worked as one to begin with must prove that you found some usefulness in the program. You will be paid higher than anyone else on my staff.”