Iced: A Dani O'Malley Novel (Fever Series) (47 page)

Jo and me look at the folks as we pass.

“Let us in,” they say. “We just want to get warm.”

You can tell there’s heat in the club—and a lot of it—because the area above Chester’s is bare of accumulation. The pavement is an underinsulated roof, and the heat radiating up keeps melting the snow. Even that nominal sign of warmth is enough to keep folks standing around, hoping, waiting.

There’s old people here, with nothing to trade for food or
drink or the privilege of hanging at Chester’s. The big, brawny human bouncers Ryodan uses outside the club turn them back at the door, and a crowd has moved into the snow-free ruin of stone and wood that used to be the club aboveground. They got fires going in cans. They’ve gathered wood from surrounding buildings and piled it up. They look like they plan to stay a good long while. Like until they get let in. They look too defeated to fight. A cluster has begun to sing “Amazing Grace.” Before long fifty voices lift in song.

“Maybe you could talk some sense into your ‘boyfriend’ and get him to let those folks inside,” I say.

“I will,” she says. “Or we could bus them to the abbey.”

“What about WeCare? Don’t they fecking care? Aren’t they supposed to be giving away generators left and right?”

“Even if they are,” Jo says, “some of these people are too old to get out and hunt down enough gas to keep one running. You’ve been gone for weeks. A lot changed in that time. The weather is all anybody talks about anymore. Making it through last winter wasn’t as hard because the stores were all still stocked and the nights were mild. But supplies have been wiped out. We didn’t expect winter in June. All the generators are gone. People are changing. They’re fighting each other to survive. We need a long warm summer to give us enough time to grow and stockpile food before winter comes again. We need to get out and hunt for supplies in other towns.”

“They’re going to die, Jo. If we don’t stop the Hoar Frost King, we’re going to lose the other half of our world.” I look back at the crowd huddled around the fire cans above Chester’s. A mom is helping her kids get closer to one of the barrels so they can rub their hands together over the flames. Old folks that look too frail to be hiking through this ice and snow watch the kids with weary eyes that have seen three-quarters of a century of change but
never anything like what’s been happening since last Halloween. Men that look like they were office workers at desk jobs before the walls fell hold the perimeter, encircling the women, kids, and old folks. They’re all displaced now. No jobs. No paychecks. None of the rules they used to live by. They look exhausted. Desperate. It fecking slays me. They’ve moved on to a new song, another hymn. Folks need faith in times like these. You can’t give somebody faith. They either got it or they don’t. But you sure can try to give them hope.

She gives me a bleak look. “If there was ever a time for you to dazzle us with your brilliance, it’s now.”

“I’m working on it. But I need stuff. Let’s go. We’ll make it back before anybody even knows we’re gone.”

We turn and begin walking down the street. I’m going to have to leave her aboveground. I’m not about to give away Dublin-down’s secrets. But I’ll take her as close as I can and leave her someplace sheltered. The snow crunches beneath my boots twice, as I sink through snow then ice, snow then ice. I hear Jo going through three layers because she weighs more than me. The sky is white with thick flakes swirling down in a dizzying display if you look up at them too long. They melt on my face, the only part of me exposed. We raided Chester’s coatroom before we left, bundling in layers, tugging on hats and mittens and boots. If this weather keeps up, we could end up with ten feet of ice and drifts in the next day or two and it will totally shut the city down. Folks that didn’t think to come out somewhere for warmth will freeze, snowed into their hidey-holes. If the sun doesn’t start shining soon, this stuff’ll never melt. It’ll just keep piling. Time is getting more critical with each passing day. I can’t believe I lost almost a whole month in the White Mansion with Christian! Speaking of which, I look around warily, checking all the rooftops,
making sure the Hag isn’t sitting on one of them, knitting away, or worse, getting ready to swoop down on us. The crazy blood and guts bitch creeps me out. I shiver. “We need to freeze-frame, Jo. Take my hand.”

She gives me a look like I’m deranged. “There’s no way you’re doing that to me! Especially not on ice. Half your face is a bruise and the other half is recovering from one. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“That ain’t because I’m a sloppy freeze-framer. It’s because of stupid jerk-ass Ryodan.”

“Stupid jerk-ass Ryodan is going to break both your legs if you take one more step,” Ryodan says right behind us.

I whirl on him. “Why are you always stalking me?”

“You’re always making me.”

“How do you keep finding me?” Do I have a blinking beacon on my forehead that sends a signal straight to him every time I disobey an order? I refuse to believe since he bit me, he can track me wherever I go. That’s a suffocating thought. It’s wrong and unfair.

“Get back inside. Now.”

“You didn’t find me in the White Mansion.” A lightbulb goes off in my head. I been busy with other worries, or I’d have clued into it sooner. “You can’t track me in Faery!” That’s why he was so mad. I almost punch air I’m so happy. I have a safety zone. If I ever need to hide from him, Faery’s the place to go. “And you’re the one who’s always making me do stuff that makes me have to do other stuff that ain’t what you want me to do. It’s not my fault. I’m just reacting to you.”

“There’s your first mistake. Learn to act, kid.”

“I
am
acting. I’m trying to do something about our problems.”

“And you, Jo,” he says soft, “you should have known better.”

“Leave her out of this,” I say.

“She helped you disobey me.”

“She did not. ’Cause, see, I didn’t disobey you. You said I could leave with one of ‘your people.’ You’re boinking her every day, and if that doesn’t make her one of your people then you need to quit boinking her. Either she is or she ain’t, and you can’t have it both ways. You don’t get to have sex with folks then discount them. So. Is Jo one of your people? Or just another piece of booty in your endless lineup?”

“Dani, stop it,” Jo warns.

“Feck no, I’m not stopping it.” I’m so pissed, I’m vibrating. “He doesn’t deserve you and you deserve so much better!” It doesn’t help that behind Ryodan the fire-can folks have switched songs again and are now booming out a rousing rendition of “Hail Glorious St. Patrick,” clapping their hands and banging on cans with pieces of wood, getting all rambunctious. The louder they sing, the hotter my temper gets. “He’s always pushing everybody else around but nobody ever calls him out on the carpet. I say it’s way past time. Either you matter to him or you don’t, and he needs to say which one it is. I want to know which one it is.”

“She matters,” Ryodan says.

Jo looks stunned.

It pisses me off even more. She’s looking all dreamy-eyed and in love again. Anybody can see she ain’t his type. “You liar, she does not!”

“Dani, stow it,” Jo says.

I know him. I know how he tricked me. He’s splitting verbal hairs. Of course she matters. But he didn’t say “to me.” She matters to the club, for mercenary reasons, because she’s a waitress. “Does she, like, matter to you emotionally? Do you love her?”

“Dani, stop it right now!” Jo says, horrified. To Ryodan she says, “Don’t answer her. I’m sorry. Just ignore her. This is so embarrassing.”

“Answer me,” I say to Ryodan. The hymn folks are really rocking it now, dancing and swaying, and I’m almost having to yell to be heard. But that’s okay. I feel like yelling.

“For fuck’s sake,” Ryodan growls over his shoulder, “can’t they go sing somewhere else.”

“They want in,” I say. “They’re going to die on your doorstep because you’re too much of a prick to save them.”

“The world is not my responsibility.”

“Obviously.” I put twenty kinds of verbal condemnation in the single word.

“She just wanted to find Dancer,” Jo says. “I think it’s important. Sometimes you have to trust her.”

“Do you love her?” I push.

Jo groans likes she’s going to die of embarrassment. “Oh God, Dani, shut
up
!”

I expect him to scoff at me, say something bullying, throw an insult back in my face, but he just says, “Define love.”

I stare straight into those clear, cool eyes. There’s some kind of challenge there. I don’t get this dude. But the definition he wants is easy. I had a lot of time in a cage to think about it. I saw a TV show once that gave the perfect definition, and I say it to him now: “The active caring and concern for the health and well-being of another person’s body and heart. Active. Not passive.” In a nutshell, you remember that person all the time. You never forget them. You factor their existence into yours every single hour of every single day. No matter what you’re doing. And you never leave them locked up somewhere to die.

“Think about what that entails,” he says. “Providing food.
Shelter. Protection from one’s enemies. A place to rest and heal.”

“You forgot about the heart part. But I didn’t expect anything else. ’Cause you ain’t got one. All you got are rules. Oh, and yeah, more rules.”

Jo says, “Dani, can we just—”

Ryodan cuts her off. “Those rules keep people alive.”

Jo tries again. “Look, guys, I think—”

“Those rules strangle folks who need to breathe,” I say, talking right over her. Nobody’s listening to her anyway.

All the sudden he has me by the collar, hanging in the air, my feet dangling off the ground, our noses touching.

“By your own definition,” he says, “you don’t love anyone either. An argument could be made that you only ever do one of three things to the people closest to you: make enemies of them, kill the people they love, or get them killed. Careful. You’re on thinner ice than you’ve ever been with me.”

“Because I’m asking if you love Jo?” I say coolly, like I’m not hanging helpless by my shirt. Like he didn’t just take a mean shot at me below the belt.

“It’s not your business, Dani,” Jo says. “I can take care of my—”

“Pull your head out of your ass and see the world,” Ryodan says.

“I
do
see the world,” I say. “I see it better than most folks and you know it. Put me down.”

“—self just fine.” Jo is sounding kind of pissed now, too.

“And for that very reason, you’re blinder than most,” Ryodan says.

“That doesn’t make sense. Still dangling here, dude.” I try to toe the ground by pointing my foot but I think I’m a few feet above it.

“You don’t see the forest for the trees.”

“Ain’t no forest. Shades ate it. Let me go. You don’t get to just dangle folks in the air when you feel like it.”

He drops me so abruptly I stumble on the ice and almost fall, but he catches me and puts me back on my feet. I shake his hand off my arm.

“There doesn’t need to be love,” Jo says. “Sometimes it’s not about that.”

“Then you shouldn’t be boinking him!”

“It’s my own business who I boink,” Jo says.

“I don’t ‘boink’ anyone. I fuck,” Ryodan says.

“Thank you for that much-needed clarification,” I say with saccharine pissiness. “Hear that, Jo? You get fucked by him. Not even the decency of a boinking. Screwed. Plain and simple.” I’m beyond irate. I’m seeing through a red haze. The fecking fire-can folks are singing so loud they’re hampering my ability to think straight. I want Dancer. Ryodan drives me insane. Jo’s a hopeless case. Dublin’s dying.

I can’t stand things anymore so I punch Ryodan in the nose.

We all kind of freeze for a second and even
I
can’t believe I just hauled off and decked Ryodan with no warning and no real provocation. At least no more than he’s always giving me.

Then Ryodan manacles my arm and starts dragging me back toward Chester’s, looking madder than I ever seen him, but Jo gets my other arm, trying to make him stop, yelling at him and yelling at me. I’m slipping and skidding on the ice, trying to get them both off me.

We stumble across snowdrifts, fighting each other, when all the sudden the day gets foggy and I can’t hear a sound any of us are making. My mouth’s moving and nothing’s coming out. I can’t hear the fire-can folks either. I can’t even hear my breath in my ears. Panic compresses my chest.

Me and Ryodan look at each other and have a moment of
perfect communion like me and Dancer do sometimes. No words necessary. We’re made of the same stuff. In battle there’s nobody else I’d rather be hanging with. Not even Christian or Dancer.

I grab Ryodan and he grabs me and we sandwich Jo between us.

Then we freeze-frame the hell out of there like the devil is on our heels.

Or more precisely, the Hoar Frost King.

L
ike we’re chained together or something, Ryodan and me stop about three-quarters of the way down the block. We go just far enough to escape danger, while staying close enough to get a look back at Chester’s.

By the time we glance back, it’s too late. The temperature where we’re standing just plummeted a good thirty degrees. The Hoar Frost King is vanishing into a slit in the air just above the street about a hundred yards away. The fog sucks in, the dark blob glides into a portal, the slit vanishes and noise returns to the world.

Sort of. Jo’s crying but it sounds like she’s doing it in a paper bag beneath a pile of blankets.

One day, in the field near the abbey, a cow head-butted me in the stomach because I freeze-framed into her and woke her up, startling her. I feel exactly the same way now: I can’t get a breath into my lungs. I keep trying to inflate them but they stay flat as pancakes glued together. When I finally do manage to breathe,
it’s with a great sucking wheeze that sounds hollow and wrong and it’s so cold it burns going down.

I stare bleakly down the street.

They’re all dead.

Every last one of them is dead.