Текст книги "Iced"

Автор книги: Karen Marie Moning

Соавторы: Karen Marie Moning
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“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.

Nine

And it all goes boom, chicka boom, boom-boom, chicka boom

“What 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.

“Dude.” I pump up the volume on my static station.

“What are you doing, Dani?”

His face feels real close to my neck. If he bites me again, I’m going to kick his ass. “I was thinking about poking the ice, seeing how thick it is.”

“Two and one-sixteenth inches.”

“Get off me.”

“Get off your sword. Or I won’t continue to let you keep it.”

Fecker can take my sword away like Jayne never could. Like only the UPs can. One more reason I can’t stand Ryodan. “Can’t get off my sword till you get your hand off mine. Pressure much?” I say testily.

We both sort of let go at the same time. I glare at him, or where I think he is, but he’s not there. I find him twenty feet away, near a small, normal-size door. He opens it. His face instantly frosts. “Ready?” he says.

“You don’t move that way in front of Jo.”

“What I do with Jo is none of your business.”

“You better not be doing nothing with Jo. I’m staying in line like a good little soldier.” And fecking-A does it ever chafe. Report to work at eight P.M. Gah. Report. Like I don’t have plans of my own. Like I didn’t spend hours hunting for Dancer and I’m not two Dani Dailies behind and haven’t spent most of my fecking day working on one, after whizzing out to the abbey to make sure Jo’s okay. She had some seriously sick scoop for me about the new, segmented Unseelie, but other than that she hadn’t wanted to talk much. I think she’s pretty upset with me. Nothing new there. If there weren’t any sidhe-sheep upset with me, I wouldn’t know who I was, or if the Earth was still orbiting the sun. “I’m behaving. She’s safe. You just leave her alone.”

He smiles faintly. “Or what, kid?”

“You know something, dude, if you don’t put a question mark at the end of your questions, I’m not answering them anymore. It’s rude.”

He laughs. I hate it when he laughs. It tries to put me right back on the porno level of Chester’s and that just grosses me out, so I do the static-thing in my head again.

I freeze-frame past him so fast his hair blows straight up. I make sure to go through a pile of dust, and give it a little extra twist with my heel as I whiz by so it shoots straight up his nose (a trick I perfected at the abbey!). He sneezes. Just like a real person. I’m half surprised to find he actually breathes.

The cold slams into me like a brick wall and for a second I can’t inhale.

Then I feel him at my back, an inch from my figurative rear tire like he’s drafting off my freeze-frame. It sets my teeth on edge. Makes my temper hot and breathing is easy again.

Like the first scenario he showed me, a frozen hush fills the space like those mornings in fresh, new-fallen snow when no one else is awake and the world is stiller than you ever thought it could be until you take that first step that squeaks in the drift. I always wanted to have a wicked snowball fight with somebody on mornings like those but nobody else has ever been able to keep up. Lobbing snowballs at folks is like picking tin cans off a fence with a BB gun.

I flash through the warehouse, checking it all out, fascinated in spite of being ordered here and bossed around. I love a good puzzle. What’s freezing these places and why?

A few dozen Unseelie are iced in the entry bay.

Ryodan has lower-caste grunts working for him. There are lots of Rhino-boys iced in mid-action. Like the subclub in Chester’s, the place is killingly cold. It makes my heart feel dull and tight. I don’t stop moving, won’t stop moving for anything.

Rhino-boys are frozen loading and unloading pallets and crates, gray skin coated white, shellacked by a clear layer of ice. Whatever happened to them happened fast. They had no warning. Their frosted expressions are completely normal.

Well … as normal as Unseelie ever look. I think.

I whiz around two beefy ones, studying their bumpy rhino faces, gashed mouths bared on tusks, analyzing that thought.

It occurs to me that maybe their expressions aren’t normal. I’m basing my assumptions on what I know of humans, of how our faces react. Christian is proof that I can’t do that. I can’t even figure out when Christian is smiling.

Logic demands I eliminate my assumption that the Rhino-boys had no warning. Can a Rhino-boy look terrified? I don’t know. Perhaps they show fear by something so small and weirdly Fae as a tiny rainbow-hued glint in their beady little eyes, and the white frost is concealing it. I’ve never noticed what their faces look like when I kill them. I’m usually too busy looking at the next one I plan to stab. I’m suddenly looking forward to finding one tonight and performing a test. Any excuse to kill an Unseelie is an awesome one.

What would do something like this?

And why?

It has to be a Fae because I just can’t see a human managing to build a freeze-ray gun that works on this scale only to go vigilante.

Then again.… I can’t eliminate that possibility either.

So far, both places I’ve seen iced are exactly the kind of places I would ice myself. If I had such a wicked cool weapon.

Most folks wouldn’t believe that someone who can move like me, fight and hear like me, could exist. Ergo, I can’t rule out the possibility that someone else might be so smart they figured out how to build a massive freeze-ray gun that’s capable of reducing the temperature of places to the frigidity of objects in space. Given enough time, I think Dancer could manage it. He’s that smart!

Bugger. I have facts and no connections. I can deduce nothing. Yet.

Suddenly I see past the frozen figures.

The warehouse is packed full of boxes, crates, and pallets, piled everywhere. There’s a pie of iced electronic stuff that looks like audio equipment of some kind. I guess maybe for the club. Crates are stacked to the ceiling, and more stuff was being brought in when whatever happened did.

I make one crystal clear deduction: Ryodan’s the dude emptying the stores! Preying on humans just like the Unseelie. Stealing our ability to survive so he can sell it back to us at whatever cost he decides to demand.

It’s all iced. Every bit of it.

I wonder if any of the edible stuff can be thawed and saved. People are going to die because he’s such a greedy pig.

I’m so pissed that I smash open a crate as I go whizzing by. “Oops,” I say, all innocent and accident-like. Wood splinters, two-by-fours, go flying in all directions.

Automatic weapons explode from the wreckage and skid across the iced floor, where they smash into frozen Unseelie who shatter like little glass goblins.

Okay, so that crate had guns in it. It just means I kicked open the wrong crate. I’m so sure he’s the prick stockpiling the food that I kick another, not even pretending it was by accident this time. More guns.

I go on a smashing rampage. Each time I smash a box or crate open that holds ammo or guns, I get madder. Figures he’d hide the food from me before he brought me here. I’m about to kick open my fifth crate when Ryodan suddenly has me hanging in midair by the collar of my coat, manhandles me into potato-sack-girl over his shoulder again, superspeeds me out the door, slams me into a telephone pole and says, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” at the precise moment the whole building blows up.

“Dude, are you arming these places to blow?” I say on the way back to Chester’s. “Is this another of your stupid tests? I have to solve your little mystery in the whopping three seconds I get to study it before the scene gets blown to smithereens?” The whole building had exploded outward, for a city block. We’d barely freeze-framed from the shrapnel zone in time.

“I lost a great deal of personal property in both explosions. I sacrifice nothing that is mine from which I might profit.”

“Which translates into as long as I’m useful, since you think I’m yours, I’m not going to get the—” I drag a finger across my neck.

“Kid, you might just annoy me into killing you.”

“Right back at you, boss.”

He smiles and I feel myself starting to smile back and it pisses me off so I look out the window and get real intent on what scenery I can make out in the pinkish moonlight, which isn’t much because the Shades took everything worth looking at out here. Got three hidey-holes down this way and a big stash. Didn’t know Ryodan was holing up here, too. I’ll vacate this district as soon as I get time to relocate.

“Observations,” he says.

“Four imperial Unseelie guards were the only commonality I was able to isolate endemic to both scenes.” They’d been standing, armed, at the dock doors, overseeing the delivery.

He gives me a sidewise look. “Wow. That was, like, a whole sentence. With nouns and verbs and connective tissue. Endemic. Fancy word.”

“Sloppy, dude. Should have omitted the connective tissue part.”

“Nothing else.”

I give him a look. I hate his statement-questions. I’m not answering them anymore.

He laughs. “Nothing else.” His voice rises on else about one one-hundredth of a note higher than the word “nothing,” a concession only someone like me with superhearing would ever be able to pick up. Still, it’s a concession. From Ryodan. Rarer than water in the desert.

“The ice was layered the same. Maybe hoar frost. Definitely hard rime. Clear ice on top of it all. The hard rime’s weird. White ice comes from fog freezing. What’s fog doing inside both these buildings?”

“How did the place blow?”

I think back. It happened so fast and we were outside, and he was blocking my view, and I was more focused on getting him off me than anything else. I hate to, but I admit, “I can draw no conclusions, circumstances being what they were.”

He looks sidewise at me again.

“Talking like you, dude, thinking it might get all this stupid fecking stuff over with sooner. Communication is hard enough when everybody’s trying.”

“Isn’t that the truth. Give me your hand.”

“No.”

“Now.”

There’s no way I’m giving him my hand.

He says something soft in a language I don’t understand. My arm jerks up. I watch in horror as my hand passes to his side of the Humvee, palm up.

He drops a Snickers in it, murmurs something, and my hand is my own again. I wonder when, how, and why my fecking appetite became everyone else’s business.

“Eat.”

I think about throwing the candy bar back in his face or out the window. I refuse to let my fingers close around it.

But I sure could use it.

He brakes, comes to a stop in the middle of the road, turns toward me, grabs the collar of my coat, pulls me across the expanse between our seats and leans in. Locks eyes. We’re maybe eight inches apart, and I think the only reason my nose ain’t touching his is because one of the brackets on my MacHalo is just about touching his forehead. My butt’s no longer touching the seat.

I’ve never seen such clear eyes as Ryodan’s got. Most folks are crammed full of emotions, with lines around them like battle scars. I can tell by looking at grown-ups if they’ve spent their years laughing or crying or resenting the whole world. I hear moms say to their kids when they make faces, “Careful, your face will stick like that.” And it really does. By middle age most folks wear whatever they felt the most in their lives smack on their kisser for all the world to see. Dude, so many of them should be embarrassed! It’s why I laugh so much. If my face is going to stick, I’m going to like looking at it.

Looking at Ryodan is like staring the devil in the face. It’s obvious what he’s felt the most – nothing. Ruthless. Cold dude.

“I won’t ever hurt you unless you make me, Dani.”

“You being the one who gets to decide what constitutes the definition of ‘make.’ Big fat lot of wiggle room in there.”

“I don’t need wiggle room.”

“Because you annihilate.”

“Another of those fancy words.”

“Dude. What did you just do to me?”

“Gave you what you needed but were too stubborn to take.” He closes my fingers around the candy bar with his. I can’t shake him off fast enough. “Eat, Dani.”

He drops me back into my seat, puts the Humvee in gear again and takes off.

I munch the candy bar despite the sour taste in my mouth, thinking how I used to be invisible.

“Superheroes are never invisible,” he says. “They’re just deluded.”

Turning my head toward the buildings flashing by, I screw up my face and stick out my tongue.

He laughs. “Sideview mirror, kid. And careful. Your face’ll stick like that.”

I head out into the streets with boxes of freshly printed dailies (I love the smell of new ink!) in a battered grocery cart the minute my time is my own again. I can run with a cart and slap my papers up on poles faster than I can do it on my crotch rocket. My bike’s for pleasure, for pure downtime, when I got nothing else weighing down on me, like always saving the world. I don’t get to ride it much.

Ryodan’s reminder that I’m to report to work every single night at eight P.M. on the dot is still ringing in my ears, making me nuts. What the feck can he possibly have to torture me with every night? Is he icing these stupid scenarios himself just for an excuse to mess with me?

I head west and begin my usual route. It’s a little after midnight. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple hours, then I’ll start hunting for Dancer again. I’m getting a little worried about him. Most times he goes somewhere else without telling me, he’s only gone a few days. I don’t know all his haunts any more than he knows all mine but I’ll keep checking those I do.

I’ve got certain posts and poles and benches that folks frequent, like regular newspaper stands, waiting for my latest updates. Folks have probably been a little worried with my paper being late and all. I’ve got important info to share tonight.

I glance down at my rag, proud of it. The ink is crisp and clean, and it looks real professional.

The Dani Daily

May 21, 1 AWC

New Unseelie Caste!

Update your DDD Manual!

BROUGHT TO YOU EXCLUSIVELY BY TDD YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR THE LATEST NEWS IN & AROUND DUBLIN!

Dudes, I discovered a brand new kind of Unseelie hanging at Chester’s!

Calling this one Papa Roach, and I don’t mean the band! Take notes: it’s three to four feet tall, with a shiny brownish-purplish segmented body, six arms, two legs, and the smallest head you ever saw, like the size of a walnut, with little fish-egg eyes. It can break down into segments that are the size of roaches that crawl inside your clothes, and get under your skin – LITERALLY!

If you see this thing coming, run like heck because I haven’t figured out a way to kill it yet. You want to carry a can of hair spray or fill a spray bottle with gas and always have some matches on you (I got a blowtorch myself). That way if you get cornered, you can spray them and set them on fire. It doesn’t kill them but it sure keeps them busy while you run.

I’ll keep you posted, Dublin!

Dani out!

I don’t tell them the worst part is what Jo told me this morning – that some of the waitresses at Chester’s encourage the bugs to get under their skin. I don’t want to give them any ideas. This Unseelie has a specialty: it feeds on human fat. Presto – tiny waist! Hello bug – goodbye cellulite! Don’t like those dimpled thighs? Bug up. The walls haven’t been down long enough for folks to get dystopian-thin, and with the amped-up sexuality of so much Fae royalty walking around dangling the promise of potential immortality, the focus on fashion and beauty has never been more extreme.

Jo told me that a couple of the waitresses are real proud to have one. It’s becoming a status symbol or something, like hair extensions or boob jobs. Jo said the waitresses claim they don’t kill humans, they just eat their fat, and they can hardly feel them in their skin at all.

I think that’s bull. I think they hitch a ride because they’re getting more from humans than fat. I think they experience everything their “host” experiences: pleasure, pain, whatever. The Unseelie are bugging us and we let them. They invade our bodies and gather intel from the inside, then report back to Papa, who probably reports back to the Unseelie princes, the better to prey on us. What do these idiot waitresses think? That the bug will eventually return to its own body and leave them all pretty and thin, no harm no foul?

Dude, it’s an Unseelie! There’s always a catch.

I zip around the corner to my first pole, grocery cart rattling.

When I see one of my papers from last week still hanging up, gleaming pinkish-white in the rosy moonlight, it surprises me. Folks always take them down, and take them home, wherever that is. Darn few get left behind.

As I get closer, I realize it’s not my paper.

What the feck? What’s on my pole? Folks know to leave me notes at the General Post Office.

I slip into fast-mo, get nose-to-nose with it.

I’m so flabbergasted my jaw about hits the pavement.

The Dublin Daily

May 20, 1 AWC

YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR CREDIBLE NEWS IN AND AROUND NEW DUBLIN BROUGHT TO YOU BY WECARE WE BRING YOU ALL THE NEWS THAT MATTERS.

WE WILL HELP YOU SURVIVE!

WECARE

“Gah, dudes! Plagiarize much?” I pluck the offending matter from my pole and almost drop the thing, my eyeballs are so freaked out. “The Dublin Daily not The Dani Daily? Like, maybe they could have an original thought? Holy mimicking monkeys, they aped my intro! Hardly even changed any fecking words!”

I scan it, quick-like.

Don’t be fooled by IMITATION dailies. The Dublin Daily is the ONLY daily you’ll ever need. We can help you TURN YOUR POWER AND WATER BACK ON!!!

Join us now!

Unlike IMITATION dailies, WeCARE delivers all the important news direct to your door, no matter how difficult your “door” is to reach.

DON’T subject yourself to terrible threats in the streets in order to read OVERINFLATED JUVENILE BOASTS that advise you to indulge in DANGEROUS fireworks and battles!

WeCARE will come to YOU.

WeCARE will fight your battles FOR YOU.

WeCARE will keep you safe and IN THE LIGHT.

Who cares about you? WE do.

WeCARE.

“Buh!” It’s all I can come up with. “Buh!” I say again. I can’t even stand to keep reading. I ball it up and crush it into a tiny hard wad. Finally I manage, “Imitation?” I’m so perturbed I can’t even cuss. I can barely talk. “Overinflated? Who’s writing this drivel?”

I been keeping Dublin safe and in the light since last October! Months of delivering food and supplies to folks too scared to leave their hidey-holes. Months of fighting monsters, of finding and collecting little kids that got orphaned on Halloween when their folks were out celebrating and never came home because they got devoured by Shades or some other Unseelie. Months of rounding up people and taking them to Inspector Jayne so they could learn to fight.

Nobody else ever bothered to step forward and help folks survive.

Now this?

I’m getting dissed by some paper that’s pretending I’m the pretender?

“There is some serious ass-kicking going to happen,” I mutter. As soon as I find out who the feck We-the-feck-Care is.

I spend the next few hours whizzing around my city, tearing the stupid things off my posts and putting up The Dani Daily.

They used my posts. Couldn’t even find their own places to put them up.

Reaching out to MY market by taking MY posts. Stupid fecking copycats. I’m so mad, I’m steaming. If anybody was watching from above, all they’d see is a blur of motion leaving two plumes of pure pissed-offedness trailing out of my ears.

I figure tomorrow’s got to be a better day.

Lately, it seems all I ever figure is wrong.