Iced: A Dani O'Malley Novel (Fever Series) (51 page)

Me, Jo, Dancer, and Christian are joined by six of Ryodan’s dudes. Every time Jericho Barrons doesn’t walk into the room with me, I heave a sigh of relief. One of these days it’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. And one of these days it will probably be with Mac at his side. S’cool. I’ve lived most of my life under threat of “one of these days” for one reason or another. Superheroes do.

Ryodan sends three of his men down to the club to keep order, and sends the other three into the icy day to track what noise they find and shut it down. Jo tempers his orders with: “And bring any people you discover back to Chester’s so we can keep them alive.”

I watch him real careful when she adds to his commands like she has the right. Like she’s his girlfriend and they’re a team, out to save the world together or something. We’ll see if his dudes obey her. If they come back with a band of ragtag survivors, I
might just be impressed. I can’t read his face. It’s like he’s got it totally closed to me.

He refuses to let me fire up a press and get a
Dani Daily
out. I argue but Jo makes a point: nobody is venturing out unless they absolutely have to anyway, so the time wasted printing and posting would be better used bringing everyone up to speed so we can make a plan. When did she become Ms. Voice of Reason? Oh, and Glam Girl! When she slips off her coat and unwinds her scarf, her boobs aren’t sparkly but she’s sure got a push-up bra on!

“Sound Slurpees? Dani, what’s going on?” Jo says.

“It’s being drawn by music,” I say. “At first I thought it was attracted to singing, but it’s not. It’s a component of music it’s after. Sound waves. Frequencies. Who knows, maybe a single note. And the sound doesn’t need to be made by a person. It can come from a stereo, a musical instrument, church bells, a car radio, even an Unseelie screaming a note high enough to shatter glass.”

“Like at Dublin Castle, the night it iced the cages,” Christian says. He’s been quiet but I can feel temper rolling off the dude. He’s barely keeping his cool.

“Exactly. Or it could be drawn by the chiming of crystal bowls.”

“The fitness center,” Ryodan says.

“Right. Or playing a washboard, banging on a pot and singing.”

“The Laundromat folks,” Dancer says.

“And the weird wire contraption around the dude’s head wasn’t a medical device for an injured neck. It was a harmonica holder,” I say. “With their primitive band, the small family managed to make whatever noise draws the Hoar Frost King.”

“The band in my subclub must have made it, too.”

“So why didn’t it ice the entire club?” Christian says.

“I’m guessing it’s drawn to a specific sound. The same way I like Life cereal but not Chex. They’re both little squares of crunchy goodness but they sure as feck ain’t equal to my taste buds. And all the audio equipment in your warehouse must have been hooked up and turned on. At the church where I almost died, they were singing and playing the organ. At all the underground pubs there was a band or a stereo playing.”

“The WeCare folks were singing and playing the organ, too,” Dancer says.

“So how do we figure out what noise it likes?” Jo says. “All the scenes got blown up, didn’t they?”

“I don’t think we need to,” Dancer says. “We just need to set up somewhere and make an enormous variety of sounds. Wait for it to come.”

“Great idea, kid,” Christian says. “Then we all bloody get iced!”

“Not necessarily,” Ryodan says.

“What do you mean? What are you thinking?” Jo’s sloe-eyed puppy-dog expression says she thinks he’s the smartest person she’s ever met. Gag me! Dancer’s the smartest person she ever met, and I’m second.

When he tells us I just shake my head. “It won’t work,” I say.

“Actually, Mega,” Dancer says, “it might.”

“Bull-fecking-crikey. He’s assuming a lot of things.”

“I think it’s worth a try,” Dancer says.

“Are you defending him?” I say.

“Only the idea, Mega.”

“Are you sure you can pull this off?” I ask Ryodan. “You know how many things could go wrong?”

Ryodan gives me a look.

Jo’s gone white. “You’re crazy. You’re talking about setting one monster free to destroy another.”

“The world is turning to ice,” Ryodan says to Jo. “If this continues, the Hoar Frost King will finish what Cruce started: the destruction of the world. Sometimes you plug the hole any way you can, and worry about fixing the boat later. If the choices are sinking today or tomorrow, I’ll take tomorrow.”

Him and me think alike a lot of times. I’d never tell him that.

To me, he says, “You and the kid get what we need. I want to be ready by nightfall.”

I am blasted by the crimson complexity of Margery’s rage.

She surges to her feet to demand my immediate resignation as Grand Mistress, but before she can incite the hue and cry upon which she so thrives, one by one heads bow and hands rise. White flags of surrender are hoisted until each woman has her arm above her head save one. My cousin reclaims her seat in the pew, fists clenched in white-knuckled balls on her lap.

I open myself with a tight, narrow focus. Her fury is bottomless, directed in its entirety at me. She believed she was his only one. She castigates
me
for the wanton ways of our enemy. She is a fool in too many ways to number: in affairs of infidelity, if a man strays, it is not the fault of the woman with whom he lays. A worthy heart eschews temptation, despite the magnitude. Clearly my heart is not worthy.

I dismiss her and regard my girls with regret and resolve.

In my silence, I failed my charges. It was not merely myself I isolated. I cut them off from one another.

“Did any of you tell someone else?”

I hear no replies and need none. I can tell from their faces that
not one of them spoke of it. We became a group of close-huddled islands in our shame, eating and working and living side by side, in complete disconnect. For more than a month each of us waged the same hellish battle, and rather than sharing that burden, suffered it alone.

“We permitted him to separate us,” I say. “It was exactly what he wanted. But it is over. We have called his bluff and are now united against him.”

Cruce’s enormous wings rustle. It is the only sound I have ever heard the projected image of him make. Oh, yes, our enemy is gaining strength with each passing day!

Again I wonder if it is Cruce or the presence of the IFP that causes the grass to grow. If it is the IFP, might its location above Cruce’s cage also be weakening the integrity of those icy bars? I have not permitted myself to visit his chamber since last Sean and I made love. Failing my soul mate to anchor me, I risk nothing.

Did this clever, clever prince devise a way to summon a fire-world fragment to set him free? Were I to make the long descent into the bowels of this abbey today, what would I find?

Darkness, moss, and bones?

No bar where once one was?

“Must we leave the abbey?” Tanty Anna exclaims. “Is it the only way to escape him?”

“It’s our home! We can’t leave!” Josie protests.

“Where would we go? How would we get there? Dog sleds?” Margery says.

“There aren’t any dogs left. The Shades ate them all,” Lorena says.

“That was a joke. The point is we can’t leave,” Margery says. “Under any circumstances. This is our home. I will let no one drive me from it!”

Again I turn a tight focus on her. She wishes we would vanish, doesn’t care the how or why of it, so long as she gets him to herself. She has been in no way dissuaded by the fickleness of his affection.

I dab at my neck, my brow. The temperature in the chapel is rising. I smell blossoms, spicy and sweet.

I cannot move Cruce. But I can and will do something about the IFP.

I must find a way to contact Ryodan and his men. He already has my Sean. What more can he thieve from me?

We will move the fire world, send it back the way it came, and I will have my answer, if the grass dies. Fire world or ice prince; which is overheating our home? Did the Fates cackle when they stitched together the tapestry that froze our greatest enemy in our basement then parked a heater above it?

I do not believe fragments of Faery are one-way.

If it can be tethered, surely it can be towed.

O
ur exodus from Dublin is a somber one.

It isn’t easy to leave the city. It takes a small army of us to battle our way out.

Before we go, we set up sound decoys at the north, south, and west edges of the city, in abandoned neighborhoods where nobody hangs anymore. Dancer hooks them up, broadcasting from a central radio source. Even Ryodan is impressed, making me über-proud Dancer is my best friend! Hopefully it’ll be enough to keep the Hoar Frost King from being drawn to all the noise we have to make in order to escape the snowy prison Dublin has become.

I make a quick pit stop in the Cock and Bull tavern and take something off the wall I been dying to have ever since Dancer mentioned it. It’s the only place I could remember seeing a whip, mounted like art next to a set of giant bullhorns. I got no doubt it’ll come in handy somehow. And if not, so what? I can’t resist making something move faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms are
so
going to be me!

Truck engines roar, scraping a path so Humvees and buses can lumber between snowdrifts piled in enormous banks, iced solid as rock. Streets are impassable with the stuff, and still it falls, landing thick on our windshields. We got dudes up front driving snowplows and trucks that scatter chunks of salt. I got no clue where they found the equipment. We don’t get this kind of snow. Knowing Ryodan, he’s got all of it tucked away in a warehouse somewhere, prepared for any and every eventuality, even the seemingly impossible.

Got to admit, I like that about him. I’m used to feeling like I’m the only one sees the hard things coming, and I’m always angling to skew the odds in my favor. It’s nice to know somebody else is preparing, too.

He’s right. The hole has to be plugged because the boat is sinking. Another few days and I’m not sure our exodus would be possible. We’d be iced in. I hate the plan we’re about to put in motion but we got to do it. Sometimes when all hell’s breaking loose the only thing to do is to break more hell loose.

Before it’s too late.

When we get to the abbey and tell her what we’re going to do, Kat’s going to have a total meltdown.

Night brings a violet aurora borealis to our home. Aubergine and gentian flames flicker on shiny ice-capped snow as if on the swells of an alabaster ocean.

We gather at the windows of the common room to watch the dance of violet vapors. I am appalled to realize how much time I’ve spent in my chambers the past month, so as not to betray Cruce’s visitations. I did not see we were all going off alone for similar reasons. Our abbey had become hauntingly quiet and
lonely with me, their leader, unaware. I will never again permit myself to forget that isolation is the first step to defeat.

Tonight our unwanted visitor is conspicuously absent. It is the first evening in weeks he has not dogged my step. He knows we are angry and his appearance would only further rile us. Margery, too, is absent. I will confront the wasp in our nest come morning. She and I will reach terms or she will leave.

Tonight we break into our precious stash of corn sealed airtight in jars late last summer, popping it with oil over flame. We make the evening a celebration, warmed by the last of the cider scalded over a fire, spiced with cinnamon and clove. Communion, warmth, good scents in the air, contribute to a feeling of thanksgiving and hope, and we reconnect into the family we once were with new appreciation. Now that we all know Cruce was plying his seduction upon each of us, we are no longer divided by guilt.

When I hear the roar of engines approaching the abbey, I fear for the safety of my girls and bid them retreat to the cafeteria while I see to the door. Three of those who served in the Haven, Rowena’s inner circle, refuse to leave, and another three step forward to join them, Tanty Nana at the forefront, her eyes wise in twin nests of wrinkles. They infuse me with courage. I begin to understand the purpose of the chosen inner circle.

The seven of us bundle into cloaks, scarves, and mittens, and step out into the snow. Lavender lights wisp across a twilight terrain, evoking a surreal, dreamy ambience. We watch as trucks with enormous blades carve their way up our white-capped drive followed by four Humvees and two buses.

When Ryodan steps down from the driver’s seat of one of the trucks, for the briefest of startled moments I think: But how serendipitous, I can ask him to tow the IFP away!

Common sense asserts itself and my heart grows chill.

Yes, I wanted to see him. But for this man to come here tonight, for him to use machines to bulldoze a path through mountains of ice to reach our home, means we have something he wants.

Badly.

Through narrowed eyes, I regard him. Lack of visible cloven hoof, tail, or horns does not disguise the devil at my door. He glides, long-limbed and sure-footed, through the snow. He is a beautiful man but unlike my Sean the impression is of animal grace, something not human. Coupled, of course, with the fact that he is not really here! No man stands where he walks. I sense nothing. It is shocking. It is sensational in that it is the very antithesis of sensation. Loath though I am to admit it, it is such a relief! I get nothing from him. Never have I been around anyone that affords me such blissful emotional silence.

He takes both my hands in greeting and leans in to kiss my cheek. I turn my face, press my lips to his ear and say softly, “You can’t have it. Whatever it is, you’re not taking it. The answer is no.”

His breath is warm on my ear. “I have come for something of which you’d like to be quit.”

I wonder if he always speaks in the manner he is spoken to. The devil is the master of assimilation. It is how he gains entry: he makes himself appear a friend.

“Again, no.” I think perhaps we have something to trade. Perhaps I will give him whatever it is he wants for moving the IFP. But best to deny from the onset.