Iced: A Dani O'Malley Novel (Fever Series) (36 page)

“Oh, I see. As long as you didn’t
kill
her, kill her, then that’s okay.”

“I knew you’d understand,” he says, like I’m not being totally facetious. I’m not sure he gets human nuances anymore. I think he’s too far gone.

“All ears here.”

He shrugs. “There’s not much to tell. We were having sex and all the sudden she was dead.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like. It was the bloody weirdest thing. I don’t even know what I did.”

“Your hands weren’t, like, around her throat or holding a knife or anything?”

“No. That’s why I kept her. I wanted to examine her to figure out what I did so I don’t do it again. It’s not like I can go without sex for the rest of my life. I can barely make it a few bloody hours. One second she was having a great time and so was I, and she was making this really hot noise while I was—sorry, you probably don’t want to hear about that. I’m not trying to make you jealous, lass. Then she just wasn’t moving and you have no idea how disturbing that was. Well, mostly. But not entirely. I think the Unseelie I’m becoming was aroused because once she stopped moving it was like—”

“Too much information! I can’t hear you!” I start humming to tune him out. Jealous? What is he talking about?

“I got distracted and left her on the bed to look at later, then I found you bleeding to death and brought you back to my place. I didn’t want you to see her and get upset. I was going to figure out what I did to her after you were gone.”

“Did you?”

“Still no clue. There wasn’t a mark on her anywhere. I thought I must have been too rough and bruised her from the inside, but if I did, you’d think there’d be external bruises somewhere, and there aren’t any. Maybe you’d take a look at her. I’ve been considering an autopsy but I don’t know any morticians. Do you?”

He asks it like it’s a normal question. Like he’s the person investigating a murder, not the one who committed it. “Nope.” I wonder how crazy he is. “Does it bother you that you killed her?”

He looks aghast. “Of course it does! I don’t want to kill anything. Well … actually that’s not entirely true. I do want to kill things. Lots of things. Especially Ryodan lately. I can lose myself for hours in a soothing haze of murderous intent about that dickhead.”

“Won’t argue with you there,” I commiserate.

“But I don’t. At least I didn’t until now. And if I can’t figure out what I did this time, I can’t stop myself from doing it in the future.”

“Where’s my sword.” I say it like Ryodan, with no question mark at the end. I’m beginning to understand why he does it. It’s a subtle demand instead of a question. Folks answer instinctively, against their better judgment. That’s Ryodan, always playing the odds, stacking them in his favor.

Christian smiles and for a second I see a hint of who he was. Now that his face has completed most of the transition to Unseelie
prince, his expressions are more readable. I guess the muscles aren’t always at war, trying to shape a look. He has a dazzling smile, almost a killer smile, but not quite. It’s the smile of a man who could get any woman he wanted into bed, but might just kill her while she’s there.

“You have to admit, the flamethrower was bloody brilliant, wasn’t it? I blasted the thing right out of the stalagmite and fried Ryodan’s men. They didn’t even think of it. Fucking idiots. You want something, take it.”

“Did you hurt my sword? Wait a minute!” I realize something I can’t believe it took me so long to realize. “You’re not making me feel like I’m turning Pri-ya!”

“I figured out how to mute it. It’s just as easy to turn back on. All I have to do is this.”

Horniness slams into me, and I hear myself making such an embarrassing sound I could die of embarrassment.

He keeps me from sinking to the pavement, physically holding me up, hands around my waist. “Lass, doona be looking up at me like that. On the other hand, do. Yes. Yes. Exactly like that. Princess, you’re slaying me.”

“Turn it off, Christian! I want to choose my first time!”

I collapse on the floor, blinking, dazed.

Christian is gone.

Without his hands holding me, I slumped in on myself like a wet cardboard box. I sit there, looking around but seeing nothing, trying to clear my head. Either he’s completely gone or he’s muting himself again. But the aftereffects linger.

His voice floats down from somewhere in the rafters above my head “First time, is it now? I was fair certain, lass, but I like hearing it from you. I’ll wait. I want you to choose your first time, too. It’ll be chocolate and roses. Music and sweet kisses. Everything a lass dreams of. I want it to be perfect for you.”

I turn beet red. Nobody, but
nobody
talks about my virginity but me! “Butt out of my virginity-losing plans! They’re none of your business.”

“They’re my business and mine alone. But we don’t have to talk about them. Yet.”

I feel like I just got brained upside the head with a frying pan. Is he kidding me? Has Christian decided in his half-mad Unseelie prince mind that he’s going to be, like, my boyfriend and be, like my first? Dude, I’m fourteen and he’s an Unseelie prince! And he’s like ten years older than me! I open my mouth to read him the fecking riot act and set things straight between us when I think about how an Unseelie prince with a crush on me might not be an entirely bad thing to have, and close my mouth again. He might be tricky to handle but all weapons are good weapons, and Christian on a leash would be like, the ultimate weapon. Especially against Ryodan.

The question is: can I leash him? And if I manage to, will I be able to hang on to his collar when it counts?

I choose my words carefully. Prince and a lie detector to boot. If I can collar this dude, I can do anything! It’ll be like dancing on a minefield. I’m fascinated by the prospect. What a way to test myself. “Thanks for understanding, Christian,” I say.

“No problem. Well, it is. But I’ll deal with it. For now.”

“The other Unseelie princes scare me.”

“They should. They’re walking nightmares! You wouldn’t believe some of the sick shit they do.”

The irony that’s lost on him isn’t on me. One second he’s aware of himself as Unseelie prince, the next he acts like he’s the furthest thing from it. I don’t say
Yes I would because, dude, you do sick stuff, too
. Casting aspersions won’t win me any points. “I feel so unsafe without my sword.” I squint up toward the ceiling. The Bartlett Building used to be an old warehouse before it was
converted. They left the steel beams and girders exposed when they moved in. I don’t see him up there anywhere.

Then he’s in front of me, sweeping low in a formal bow.

“Your sword, my lady. I would have razed heaven and earth to get it back for you.” He’s holding it across both hands, presenting it to me. He looks at me and I look straight back, measuring the madness in his eyes. I feel moisture pressing at the corners of mine, like they’re going to start bleeding. I pinch the bridge of my nose, hard. I can’t stop staring at him. It’s like his eyes are made of liquid silver on top of rainbows, like the kaleidoscopic tattoos beneath his skin run like a river at the bottom of them, like I could tumble in and dive down deep. I feel woozy.

“Don’t look me straight in the eyes, lass. Stop it!” He chucks me under the chin, jarring me into breaking eye contact. He trails his fingers across my cheek and when his hand comes away bloody, he licks it. “Never look in my eyes too long. It hurts people.” Then he smiles. “You’ll notice I can touch the hallow. I worried I wouldn’t be able to.”

I look down at the Seelie hallow across his hands, one of four Fae talismans that only humans and those of the Light Court can touch. I could take it, drive the blade through his heart and be free of him forever.

I reach for my sword.

He pulls it back. “A little thanks might be nice.”

“Christian, you’re the Shit,” I say. “First, you saved my life and now you’re giving me back my sword when nobody else would even help me.”

“Dickhead sure didn’t.”

“He sure didn’t,” I agree and reach for my sword again. “Nobody cares about me like you do.”

“Och, lass, you’ve no bloody idea,” he says in a near-whisper. “I see you from the inside.”

“Can I have it now?” I want it so bad my palms itch.

He cocks his head and looks at me then swivels his head just like an Unseelie prince, like his head and neck aren’t put together quite right. It gives me chills. “You wouldn’t be thinking of killing me with it, now would you, lass?”

“Of course I would. But I’m not going to.” Not right now, anyway.

His smile is blinding. “Good, because I have another gift for you tonight. I know you like to save humans, so I’m going to help you. You may consider it one of many early wedding gifts.”

I blink. Huh? Either I manage to mask my astonishment or he doesn’t even notice the look on my face, because he just keeps talking.

“The Unseelie princes know the thing that came through the slit at the warehouse. They called it Gh’luk-ra d’J’hai.”

“What the heck does that mean?” Also, wedding gifts? Has he completely lost his marbles?

“It’s hard to translate. Unseelie have forty-nine words for ice, and there’s a nuance to d’J’hai I’m not sure I understand. Loosely, I’d call it the Hoar Frost King.”

“The Hoar Frost King,” I echo. “What is it? How do you kill it? Will the sword work?” Assuming anyone could even get close enough without freezing to death.

“I don’t know. But I know a place where we might find out. If there are answers anywhere, they’ll be there. Take the sword, lass. I don’t like you being unprotected. And I know you don’t want me hanging around all the time. Not that I blame you with the monster I’m becoming.”

I reach for it with both hands. I almost can’t contain myself. I’m trembling with excitement.

He leans in and lays the sword across my palms.

I close my eyes and sigh with ecstasy. The heft of cool steel in
my hands is … well, better than I think sex must be! It’s like having both arms amputated and thinking you’ll have to learn to live without them, then getting them put back on completely fine again. I love my sword. I’m invincible with it. I don’t know one fecking ounce of fear with this thing in my hands. Deep inside where my blood runs a little stranger than other folks’, gears shift and slide back into perfect alignment. I am one with my blade. I’m complete.

“Och, and there’s the woman you’ll be one day,” Christian murmurs. “Passion enough to rule an army. Not that I have one. Yet.”

I might want an Unseelie prince on a leash but we need to get one thing straight. “I ain’t ever getting married.”

“Who said anything about getting married?”

“Dude, early wedding gifts.”

He looks at me like
I’m
nuts. “Who said anything about wedding gifts?”

“And I don’t want an Unseelie army to rule.”

“Army? Dani, my bonny will o’ the wisp, what are you talking about? I was telling you about the Hoar Frost King. Are you coming or not? It’s a fine night to be alive. We’ve a monster to catch.” He winks at me. “And tonight it’s not me.”

Dude. Sometimes that’s all you can say.

A
good leader knows her world.

I know nothing of my world.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

I know that 152 paces beyond where I stand looking out of Rowena’s dressing room window there is a serene arbor of shaped topiary with a tiled pavilion, stone benches, and a reflecting pool that centuries-dead Grand Mistress Deborah Siobhan O’Connor built for meditation in times of turmoil. Far enough from the abbey to grant privacy, near enough to be used often, the silvery pool was long ago usurped by fat frogs on lily pads, and on a gentle summer night, in my old room three floors above Rowena’s and two to the south, they charmed me to sleep with their lazy baritone
ah-uuups
for many years.

I know also that there are 437 rooms in the abbey, in common-knowledge use. I know of an additional twenty-three on the main floor alone, with more on the other three, and undoubtedly
countless more of which I know nothing at all. The rambling fortress is a hive of concealed passageways and hidden panels, stones and floorboards and fireplaces that move, if you’ve the secret to their operation. Then there is the Underneath. That is how I have always seen the abbey: the Upstairs proper where sunshine glitters on windowpanes and we bake and clean and are normal women, and the Underneath where a dark city twists and turns, with passageways and catacombs and vaults, and the sweet Lord only knows what all. There, those of us in the Haven become something else sometimes, something ancient in our blood.

I know that a quarter of a mile behind the abbey is a barn with 282 stalls where cows and horses and pigs were once penned. I know a brisk walk beyond it is a dairy that housed forty-odd milk cows, with a chilled larder where we made butter and cream. I know that there are seventeen rows of five beds making eighty-five tiered vegetable garden beds behind the dairy that once grew enough to sustain the abbey’s thousands of occupants plus more to sell in the village for a tidy sum.

All these things I know belonged to a different world.

The world I live in is no longer a world I know.

It is four-thirty in the morning. I pull my wrapper more closely around me and stare out the window at gnarled oaks casting long shadows, and moonbeams crisscrossing the lawn through latticed branches. My comforting view of the familiar shaped topiary is blocked by one of those dangerous aberrations of physics Mac calls Interdimensional Fairy Potholes; IFPs for short, an expedient abbreviation. This one has the funnel shape of a crystalline tornado and shines milky-lilac, its dull, faceted exterior reflecting the moonlight. In the light of day those pellucid facets are difficult to distinguish from the surrounding countryside, compounded by their extreme variations in shape, texture, and
size. I have seen IFPs larger than our back field and smaller than my hand. This one is taller than a four-story building and as wide.