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Shane’s blood goes cold, and not just because he’s holding Drake’s frozen body. He knows exactly who’s come to see him in this godforsaken wasteland. “The Ice King, isn’t it? I’ve killed a few of your men.”
“And more of my creatures. You are a powerful mage, Shane Conell.”
“Why are you here?”
Frozen lips thin, into what could generously be called a smile. “Because this is the greatest opportunity I am ever likely to get. Do you want to save him?”
Shane’s heart constricts. Never in his life has he wanted so badly to unmake something that’s happened, not even after the death of his family. “I can’t. I tried. I lost him.”
“He’s not dead yet. Not quite. I can heal him, and give you power even far beyond what you have now.”
Shane hesitates. A part of him wants to scream at himself for hesitating when Drake’s about to die, could die at any second, but they haven’t lived this long without learning to be suspicious of anyone who wants to help them. “Would he be truly healed? Not dependent continually on you for life, or trapped in a strange limbo, or suffering forever?”
“He would be exactly as he was in the instant before the blade cleft him,” the Ice King clarifies. “No bindings, no bonds. He would be free, just as he was.”
“And me?”
The creature’s eyes narrow slightly. “I think you have some idea already.”
They’ve fought the Ice King’s vassals before, Shane and Drake. The men and women of the Frozen Court are powerful, but cold, long since devoid of humanity in exchange for whatever cheap trinkets the Ice King tossed their way.
Every part of Shane rebels, screaming in horror at the very idea, the thought of having body and soul enslaved to a cold, remorseless creature like this. “No pacts,” Drake’s voice echoes in his mind. “No deals. Nothing that binds us to anyone except each other.”
But I can’t be bound to you if you’re dead.
I can’t be anything if you’re dead.
Drake’s lifeless face looks peaceful, as if he’s sleeping, and Shane is absolutely sick of being helpless. Most powerful mage in the world, and what does it get him? Couldn’t save his family. Couldn’t save his boyfriend. Can’t save himself.
How long will he even last, without Drake to keep him grounded, keep him sane? He remembers the time before moving in next door to the Young household. He remembers the hate, the shame, the anger and sadness that had been his constant companions, knowing he was different, that he was probably responsible for his parents’ deaths just by being himself.
Was it going to be like that from now on, without him?
Drake was wrong. It isn’t worth it, not without Drake there. Wiping his face on one bloody hand, Shane nods. “Yes. Okay. You can have my soul if you fix him.”
With the last feelings he’s ever going to have, Shane looks down at Drake’s sleeping face, then watches the ice melt, the wound close. Drake opens his eyes and grins, sitting up. “That was a close one, huh?”
Shane gives him a smile, the last one he’ll ever feel. “Baby, you have no idea.”
Then the Ice King rips away his soul.
Chapter Three (#uaf1edef8-3881-5a51-8364-0d3d50bc5ccb)
One of Shane’s boots hits the ground before his car’s wheels have entirely stopped spinning, crunching satisfyingly against the gravel. He shrugs on his coat, a thick leather jacket that has just about no effect on how much cold he feels, and buckles on his swordbelt, then checks his hair in the mirror. Huh. Black today. Maybe he was looking forward to this.
It does feel good, he supposes, to stretch his legs. It’s been a week since the last time he left the Ice King’s fortress, concealed under a wholesale illusion covering an obscure government-sounding office. Even then, he’d only left to get drunk and pass out at Drake’s doorstep—or was that the time he’d crashed service? It’s hard to remember the things that don’t matter. Mostly it just feels cold.
He unclips the GPS from his windshield, palming the little device. He taps it with a finger, flicking it to life. “Hey. Where is he?”
“Turn left. In four hundred feet, turn right onto Seventeenth Street.”
“Who the hell measures in feet anyway?” he grumbles, stuffing it into his pocket along with his hands, strolling off down the street.
“Turn left.”
Shane pauses, then pulls the GPS out to scowl at it. It’s a new model, and should be able to handle the spell he’d put on it for a year, at least. “You said turn right.”
“Turn left,” it repeats, stubbornly.
“Look, this isn’t complicated. Find Roy. How many feet?”
“Your destination is on the left. Right. Left.”
“Fucking piece of shit.” Shane jabs at the buttons, succeeding in changing her voice to Arabic, then Japanese, then Dark Fae, which he’s pretty sure wasn’t included with the regular package at Radio World.
“Snearthen Asghar.”
He’s so preoccupied with snarling every Dark Fae curse he knows at the thing that he doesn’t notice the men creeping up on him until the cold barrel of a gun presses against his temple.
“Your wallet and your keys. Don’t turn around. Don’t fucking look at me.”
Oh, this man wants to be menacing. Shane tries, with limited success, not to smirk. “My keys?”
“You got a sweet ride.” One of the men sneers, pressing closer to him. “Maybe you’d be a sweet ride too, huh, faggot?”
“Well, if you’re offering.”
The wandering hand freezes, then pulls back in obvious confusion. “What the fuck did you just say to me, shithead? You wanna eat lead?”
“Probably tastes better than your dick.”
That does the trick. A thought from Shane freezes the hammer on the gun a split-second before it clicks, leaving one thug cursing at the damn thing as Shane moves, slamming the heel of his hand up into the second man’s nose, hard enough to drive bone splinters into his brain.
“Cheap trick,” he says with a shrug as the dying man collapses to the ground, twitching and bleeding from the nose and ears. “Effective, though. How about you, big man? You wanna bleed?”
The second thug tosses his useless gun to the ground, hands in the air. “N-no, man, I didn’t—”
He doesn’t bleed. Shane freezes him where he stands, an unguarded touch of his finger lowering the man’s temperature to somewhere that he vaguely remembers from high school only registers on the Kelvin scale. “It’s a cute conceit, that you can unfreeze someone,” he remarks casually, shaking off the ice clinging to his finger. “They come back to life a hundred years later and wake up and say, ‘hey, what did I miss?’ Just like that, their heart starts beating again, and their flesh hasn’t atrophied at all. Why don’t you tell me how that works out for you?”
On second thought, there’s no reason to leave that kind of evidence behind, and there’s enough of his power in the death to make a certain mortician of his acquaintance ask awkward questions. He stoops down, picks up the “broken” gun, and unfreezes the hammer. “This is cleaner. Well. Not for you.”
The shot is loud, as is the sound of the man shattering into a hundred thousand pieces, landing in frozen bits around the alley. Shane flicks a piece off his jacket, then pulls out his GPS, shaking it. “Gonna work now?”
“Snearthen Asghar.”
“If you say so.”
He sets off at a trot, jogging left around a corner, only to see his target lying unconscious on top of a dumpster. “Dumbass. Wake up, Roy.” He accompanies his words with a flick of cold wind, and Roy yelps as he wakes, patting himself down.
“Boss? What are you doing?”
“Tracked you. Shit, how long did it take to wipe the floor with you?”
Roy groans, sitting up and squirming around, grabbing at his own back. “I don’t know, boss. Ten seconds? It’s, uh, bigger than I thought. Tried to suck out my soul.”
Shane laughs. “I hope that’s the only trick it has. Turn over.”
“I—”
“Turn the fuck over, I’m gonna track its signature.”
It’s the work of a few annoying moments to feed the sensory magic he gets from the impression in Roy’s back into the GPS, and the thing stutters hesitantly to life. “Get that?” he asks the spell, pressing a few buttons for the hell of it.
“Snearthen Heirge.”
“Cool.” He tosses Roy his keys, already following the directions. “Get the fuck out of here. This is obviously too big for you.”
Roy glares at him, but it’s more wounded pride than anger. “I could have caught you in the rankings.”
“Sure. Out you get, I’ve got to Sneathen Heirge. Tell the King he’ll have its head by tonight.”
“You’re a fucking bastard, boss.”
And you wouldn’t have been anywhere near me in the rankings if I’d bothered hunting a single thing in the last two years. There’s something to fucking brag about.
Sure, it’s nice being on top in the rankings, like it’s nice having the penthouse room, the bank account with nine figures, the cars and the amulets and the place of honor at all the feasts and orgies. Like everything else, it gets boring after a while.
Doesn’t mean he wants to give all that to Roy, though.
“Sneathen Vrache.”
“Watch your language.” He turns obediently right (well, north-east, the Dark Fae have an oddly precise sense of direction-giving) and stops in his tracks.
“Imschalle Trezimon.”
“No shit,” Shane mutters, staring up at the creature. It looms over him, a towering thing of spindly legs (two injured, he files away) and shiny black body, wreathed in eerie silence, and all five of its eyes swivel down to stare at him.
Unbidden, a smirk steals over his lips, because damned if this isn’t the first interesting thing he’s seen in years. Oh, this is gonna be fun.
He starts to run, uncloaking his power as he does, the constant sensation of being tamped down vanishing at last from the back of his mind. It races through him, the magic making his veins sing, his hands tingle, his eyes flicker. He runs towards the creature and then up one of the alley walls, hardly noticing the way gravity warps itself for the turn, and unsheathes his sword as he goes.
One of the Soul-Thief’s arms lashes out at him, and he dodges midair, a gust of icy wind catching him before he falls, bearing him up swiftly enough to wrap a hand around one of the Soul-Thief’s legs.
That’s a mistake.
The thing’s arms are coated in some kind of acid, some gelatinous gloop that starts burning as soon as he touches it, and he doesn’t even retain the presence of mind to swear in an interesting language as he drops it, collapsing to the ground. “Motherfucker, I’m going to kill you for that!”
The acid isn’t just painful. Even as he watches his fingers burn, melt away, corroded by the sticky stuff. His hand withers as the flesh burns away in searing pain, skin falling to the ground, muscles and blood withering to bone.
Wow. That actually hurts.
For a second, it almost feels good, a flare of pain when he’s been cold, unfeeling for so long, but shit, he can’t let this go on, no matter how interesting the sensation.
His eyes blaze, briefly lighting up the alley with blue-white light, and his hand covers itself in ice, hardening, dulling the pain to the point of the usual frozen ache he feels, well, everywhere. He flexes his hand, hearing the ice chip and crack, little pieces of acid-riddled ice flaking off to land on the alley floor. It’ll require a healing—fuck, with how much his hand hurts, it might require a re-making—but for now, he can make do with the ice hand, the decay halted by the quick freeze.
Shane bares his teeth and lets loose with a blast of raw power that knocks the Soul-Thief off its many legs, bowling it over to land against a fire escape. It scrabbles madly at the iron to haul itself upright. “Sorry,” Shane snaps, patience waning drastically after the pain, “bet that stings like a bitch. Hell, if you’re not more polite, I’ll get a can of Raid.”
The Soul-Thief flips over with speed that really isn’t fair, feet clawing at the asphalt with a screech that burns the ear.
With the hand that’s mostly ice Shane draws his sword, transferring it to the still-living flesh of his right hand. “Should’ve stuck to wherever the fuck you came from. Can you even talk?”
The thing screams at him, but it’s wordless, at least as far as he can tell. “Guess not. Maybe if you’d been less of a bitch I’d have just squashed you with a giant shoe, but you’re just asking for pain.”
One of the arms flails at him, something that looks like a needle-sharp stinger extended, and Shane moves so fast the world blurs in front of him, spinning around and striking out with his sword arm, shaving a long slab of armor from the arm, enjoying the way the thing writhes and thrashes as the sword turns every part it touches to ice. “Yeah, well, I don’t like what you did to my arm either. Live with it, bitch. Or bastard.”
Probably not a line of questioning he wants to pursue, really.
Putting far, far to the side the question of whether the Soul-Thief has a dick or not, Shane twists his sword, wrenching it free, and the suddenly brittle arm of the thing shatters into two pieces. Not as effective as it is on humans, then, where a single nick is enough to turn the entire body to ice. That’s all right. It’s no fun without a challenge, and the Soul-Thief is down to three arms.
“Still one up on me,” Shane grunts, narrowly avoiding another swat of the stinger. If it hadn’t been for the way it knocked Roy unconscious, he’d have been tempted to let it try and zap him, just to hear it freak out in surprise. Then again, the noises it’s making are overwhelming enough as it is.
He flexes his newly constructed ice hand, wiggling it around until it more or less settles into the shape of his actual hand, or what his hand would be if it weren’t currently so much damaged bone and sinew.
As a test, Shane tries to freeze the Soul-Thief with a sheer act of will. It’s more difficult than touching something, than letting the cold inside him spill out for a change, but it’s not exactly hard either.
He takes a deep breath, easier said than done while he dodges three acidic limbs whipping around at the speed of sound. Mentally, he forms the power into a lance, a spreading, infectious thing impregnated with all the ice he can muster, and hurls it at the broad center of the great teetering thing.
It has about the same effect as throwing a ping-pong ball at a meteorite.
“Okay.” Shane’s voice wavers a little, his eyes blazing again, hand gripping the hilt of his sword more tightly than ever. “You want to fucking play? Let’s see you dance.”
He drops the tip of his sword to the asphalt, and ice spills out, slicking the ground for a good three hundred yards in every direction. The Soul-Thief slips, legs skittering madly, and fails to catch itself, toppling over to hit the ice with a crack of shattering…body? Ice? Hard to tell.
Shane dashes forward, feeling the wind rip past him even for such a short distance, feet never slipping as he runs forward, sword outstretched, to deal the final blow to the downed, doomed creature.
His sword meets something hard with a blaze of light, so bright it sends him flying back, one arm thrown over his eyes. “Bastard!” he chokes out, blinking furiously as he twirls the sword one-handed. “Playing possum, huh? I’ll—”
His vision clears, and the next words die in his throat as he sees exactly what’s interspersed itself between him and his prey. His mouth goes abruptly dry, and he stammers, “D-Drake, what—”
If he had to put a name to the emotion on Drake’s face, he’d be hard put to think of anything besides weary disappointment. Drake winces, but nods. “Shane.”
I was doing something. Probably something important. “You look good. I like that shirt. Want to rip it off you.”
“For the love of God, can’t you think of anything except—”
“You?” Pain flares behind the smile spreading across Shane’s face, and he welcomes it, embraces it as the best thing he’s felt in years. “Probably not. I don’t try. Say, can we get back to this in like twenty seconds? I’ve got a mark to bag.”
Drake shifts, and just like that, Shane knows, just knows that there’s trouble. “I can’t let you kill it.”
