Iced: A Dani O'Malley Novel (Fever Series) (11 page)

“Why should I do that?” He’s turning erotic, like the other UPs. My used-to-be best friend Mac calls them death-by-sex Fae because they can kill with sex. And that’s the best-case scenario. Worst case? They turn you Pri-ya like they did Mac. They leave you alive, totally addicted to sex, insatiable and out of your mind. The other UPs corralled me once, kept me between them, and did things to me I don’t like to think about. I don’t want sex to be that way. Like you’re some kind of helpless animal. I’ve had helpless animal up to my eyebrows already in my life. What Christian is throwing off isn’t a tenth of what the other UPs have, but it’s bad.

“I’ll never hurt you, lass.”

“Says the Unseelie prince.” But I lower my sword, prop it against my leg. I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to be able to hold it up anyway.

The muscles in his face ripple, like they’re competing to shape an expression, and rage is looking like the victor, and I get the feeling calling him an Unseelie prince might just have been a tiny error of judgment on my part. Been making a few of those lately.

“Say my name, lass.”

I cover my ears and look at him like what the feck? His voice just came out as big as a house.

“Say my fucking name!” Thunder rolls in the sky. I wrap my arms around my head to mute his voice. Times like this, I hate my superhearing. I look up. There’s no storm moving in. It’s him. Influencing the weather, just like Fae royalty. I look back down. A veneer of ice coats the sidewalk around him, a shimmer of crystals dusts his black boots and frosts halfway up his jeans.

“Christian,” I say.

He inhales sharp, like something hurts in him somewhere just from me saying his name, and closes his eyes. His face ripples, goes smooth like Silly Putty just out of the egg then ripples again. I wonder if I touched it, I could mold it into shape, maybe stamp some funnies from the comic section of the newspaper on it. Cracking myself up again!

“Say it again, lass.”

If it keeps him from turning all UP on me, fine. “Christian. Christian. Christian.”

He smiles faintly. I think. Feck if I can figure out what’s going on with his face. No more than I can figure out how he keeps sneaking up—

“Holy flour chunks!” It dawns on me. “You can
sift
! You really are turning total UP. Like with all the superpowers. Dude! What else are you getting?”

If it was a smile, it just disappeared. He doesn’t look as happy as I’d be if I was getting all that juice. I bet
his
fuel tank doesn’t run out of gas. I’m so jealous I could spit. But that, too, would require energy.

He moves forward, steps from the shadows, and I see he’s carrying a box under his arm.

“I’m going to kill Ryodan,” he says.

I unwrap my arms from around my head. We’re doing normal conversational tones again. I tuck the sword beneath my coat.

“Good luck with that. You figure out how to, you let me know, okay?”

“Here, take this.” He shoves the box at me.

I fumble for it, clumsy from hunger. It’s slippery with a coating of ice. I catch it as it hits the ground. Sloppy! I recognize the color and shape now that it’s in my hands, and light up like a Christmas tree. “Christian!” I beam. I’ll say his name however
many times he wants. I’ll crow it from the top of water towers. What the feck, I’ll compose a jaunty ditty for him and sing it as I whiz around Dublin!

He just handed me a whole box of Snickers! I rip open a wrapper, break the half-frozen bar in half and cram it in my mouth sideways.

When I toss my hair out of my face and look up to thank him around a mouthful, he’s gone.

Three candy bars later what just happened sinks in.

I sit on the curb, stow the candy bars away in my pockets and pack, and say, “Aw, bugger.”

Christian knew how bad I needed food. He watches me. I wonder why. I wonder how often. I wonder if he’s out there right now, looking at me from somewhere and I don’t even know it. Dude, I got an Unseelie prince spying on me. Great.

Tank full again, I swing by Dublin Castle. Three days was a long time to be out of commission. I got a job to do. A beat to walk. A superhero’s work is never done. Between patrolling my city, printing and distributing the
Daily
, slaying Unseelie, keeping an eye on Jo and the other
sidhe
-seers—and now working for Ryodan all night every night—there aren’t going to be enough hours in the day!

“Where the bloody hell have you been?” Inspector Jayne says the instant he sees me. “I’ve got Unseelie spilling out of every cage. We agreed that you would come by three times a week and slay them with the sword—and that’s barely enough as it is. I haven’t seen you in five days! Five bloody days! If you won’t take your responsibilities seriously, my men will relieve you of that weapon.”

He stares at the pucker of leather, where my sword’s tucked
beneath a long coat that brushes the laces of my high-top sneakers. It’s May and almost too warm to be wearing my favorite black leather. Soon I’m going to have to sling the sword over my back and deal with everybody staring at it, coveting it. At least now lots of folks don’t know I have it. Then again my rep
is
starting to precede me. Jo said I was a legend!

“You just try that, dude.” I swagger onto the training green, between him and his men. A few dozen of them are in full armor, sweating up a stink-storm. Supersmell is a pain in the butt sometimes. He’s been working them hard. I wonder what’s with that. It’s night. He usually has his men out hunting at night, patrolling, keeping the streets safe.

We glare at each other.

He softens. He always does. He has a hard time looking at me and staying mad. He sees his own kids in my face. Jayne’s got a supersoft spot for children. He and his wife have been taking in orphans left and right. I don’t know how he feeds them all. But Jayne’s no dummy. I suspect he’s got stores stashed away, too. Till tonight, it seemed like most of us were playing by the same rules. Take a lot—but leave some.

No rules anymore. Somebody’s cleaning the shelves. That’s just not civilized.

“Damn it all to hell, Dani, I was worried about you!”

“Get over it, Jayne. I take care of myself just fine. Always have.”

He gets that look in his eyes that always makes me uncomfortable, like he’s about to put a fatherly arm around me or wipe a smudge of blood off my cheek. I shudder. My sword hand’s itching and I’m all about scratching it. “I’m here now. Quit wasting time. Which Unseelie you want dead first?”

“Do you know why we’re not out hunting tonight?”

I don’t like being cued to speak so I just look at him.

“No room in the cages. Go make me all of it. And don’t leave until you have.”

He glances again at the pucker of sword under my coat then does something he does a lot. He looks at his men, and looks back at me again, all cool and speculative-like. He’s not seeing a kid when he does it. He’s seeing an obstacle.

I know Jayne real well. He doesn’t even know he does it.

He’s wondering if they could take my sword. Wondering if he’d let his men kill me to get it. If I told him that, he’d deny it to the end of days. He thinks he really cares about me, and on a level he does. He thinks he’d like to take me home to his wife and make me part of their family, give me the kind of life he’s pretty sure I didn’t have.

But there’s four feet of a shiny metal problem between us, and it’s four feet of immense power. And it changes everything. I’m not a kid. I’m what stands between him and something he wants for all the right reasons. And he isn’t so sure he wouldn’t do something very wrong for all the right reasons.

My sword and Mac’s spear are the only two weapons that can kill Fae. That makes them hands-down the hottest Big Ticket items in—not just Dublin—but the world. A part of Jayne is like Barrons. He wants to kill Fae—and I have the weapon he needs to do it. He can’t help himself. He’s a leader. And a good one. Every time he sees me, he will instinctively assess whether he thinks he can take it from me. And one day he might make a move.

I don’t hold it against him.

I’d do the same.

I see when he decides it’s not a risk worth taking because he’s still not sure I won’t kill some of his men, maybe even him. I keep those doubts in his mind. The subconscious part where all this stuff takes place.

He says something nice to me, but I don’t absorb it. Jayne’s a good man, good as they come. It doesn’t make him any less dangerous. Some folks think I’m a little psychic along with my other superpowers. I’m not. I just see the ways folks telegraph. Pick up on tiny clues other folks don’t, like the way their muscles tense in their fingers when they look at my sword like they’re imagining how it would feel to hold it, or how their gaze darts to the side when they say they’re glad it’s
my
responsibility not theirs. Funny thing to me is how their conscious and subconscious seem to be so split, like they aren’t talking to each other at all. Like competing feelings can’t possibly coexist inside you. Dude, they do all the time. I’m an emotional Ping-Pong ball between paddles: one day I can’t wait to have sex, the next I think semen’s the grossest thing in the world. Monday I’m crazy about Dancer, Tuesday I hate him for mattering to me. I just go with it, focus on whichever feeling I have most often and try to keep my mouth shut when it’s the other. But most folks got Id and Ego living on different floors in their head’s house, in different rooms, and they’ve locked all the doors between them, and nailed sheets of plywood over that, because they think they’re, like, sworn enemies that can’t hang together.

Ro thought the whole subconscious/conscious issue had something to do with why I am the way I am. She said I have the neurological condition synesthesia out the ass, with all kinds of cross regions of my brain talking to each other. Old witch was always psychoanalyzing me (as in she was the psycho and I was being analyzed). She said my Id and Ego are best buds, they don’t just live on the same floor, they share a bed.

I’m cool with that. Frees up space for other stuff.

I take off, tune out, and do what I do best.

Kill.

“W
hat is this place?” I ask Ryodan.

“You got lots of places around the city, kid.”

I don’t say “Yes.” Lately, everybody seems to know everything about me anyway. And he doesn’t say, “Well, I do, too.” When Ryodan wastes words, he does it in the worst possible way. He gets all philosophical. Yawn the feck out of me. There’s observation of fact that keeps you alive like understanding Jayne, and there’s philosophizing. Way different things. The former is my gig.

We’re standing on a concrete loading dock, outside commercial doors at an industrial warehouse on the north side of Dublin. Ryodan drove us here in a military Humvee. It’s parked behind us, barely visible in the night, black on black, wheels and everything, with black windows. It’s something I would’ve driven. If I’d found one. But I didn’t. It’s pure badass. And I thought Barrons’s cars were cool.

I begin my investigation. There are no lights on around the building. “Dude, got Shade protection?”

“Don’t need it. Nothing alive inside.”

“What about the folks that come and go?”

“Only during daylight.”

“Dude. Night. I’m here.”

He looks at me, looks at my head, and his lips twitch like he’s trying not to bust out laughing. “You don’t need that … whatever the fuck it is.”

“Ain’t dying by Shade. It’s a MacHalo.” First thing I did this morning was swing by Dancer’s and grab my stuff.

The MacHalo is a brilliant invention. In Dublin alone it’s saved thousands of lives. It’s named after my used-to-be best friend Mac, the person who invented the bike helmet covered with LED lights, front, sides, rear. I added a few brackets to mine for better coverage in fast-mo. (Though I’ve always wondered if I could fast-mo through a Shade even without it.) It’s the ultimate in Shade protection. I heard they’re going gangbusters around the world. Everybody in Dublin’s got one. For a while there I was making and delivering them to survivors every day. Some folks say the Shades have left Dublin. Moved on for greener pastures. But Shades are sneaky and it only takes one to kill you instantly. I’m not taking any chances.

“What does this place have in common with your club?” I say.

He gives me a look that says, “Dude, if I knew that do you think I’d have enlisted your puny help?”

I snicker.

“Something funny here.”

“You. All prickly and pissed ’cause there’s something you don’t know. Got to call on the megaservices of the Mega.”

“Ever occur to you I’m using you for reasons your inferior human brain can’t begin to understand.”

It’s another of his questions that doesn’t sound like a question. It’s such an irritating tactic, I wish I’d thought of it myself. Now if I start doing it, I’ll look like a copycat. Of course it had occurred to me that he had ulterior motives. Everyone does. Now I’m the one feeling all prickly and pissy. I go into observation mode, ruffle my feathers back down into a duck-coat so I’m more likely to quack up than get pissy. Humor is a girl’s best friend. The world’s a funny place.

I estimate the double doors of the warehouse at thirty feet, with an entrance nearly twice as wide if you slide back all four panels of the doors. The corrugated metal is throwing off such intense cold that my breath freezes a few puffs from my face and hangs in the air like small frosty clouds. When I punch one, it tinkles to the ground in a dusting of ice and my mind attaches a pattern to a pattern: I see the dusting of ice up Christian’s jeans. I consider it for a moment then decide no way. Fae royalty can minorly affect the weather around them. Key word there is “minorly.” This is major stuff. And Christian’s not even full-blooded Fae.

The doors are coated with clear ice. I reach for my sword.

Ryodan’s front is against my back, and his hand is on my hand on the sword hilt before I even process that he moved. I go totally still, don’t even breathe. He’s touching me. I don’t think when he gets this close to me. I just turn on static in my head real loud and focus on trying to get away as fast as possible. Riding in a car with him sucked. Closed compartment. Electrified sardine can. Rolling down the windows hadn’t helped a bit. This is a gazillion times worse.