I study it, absorbing the details.
This scene’s not so cold. Brutal, but nothing like the church or the subclub at Chester’s. More like the laundry scene. I figure being outside, the frosted vignettes warm up faster. Piece of cake!
I take a couple of deep breaths, locking everything down on my mental grid, psyching myself up to freeze-frame in.
Just as I’ve nearly got it perfect, right exactly when I’ve almost got everything snapped into precise place and I’m preparing to shift gears smooth and easy, folks start shouting behind me and guns start going off.
Bullets can hurt me. I’m not that superhero. It spooks me and I startle into freeze-frame before I mean to. That’s even more dangerous than leading with your head!
I blast off wild, and try to get control of myself, but it’s hard to do once I’m moving so fast. I whirl dizzyingly like a drunken Tasmanian devil and smash into the side of the iced car.
It knocks me out of freeze-frame but either doesn’t catch me so much by surprise this time or the cold isn’t as deadly as it was in the church or a little of both, because I manage to shove myself right back up into freeze-frame almost as fast as I dropped down. I can’t get my feet under control, though, because I didn’t get off on the right foot to begin with, and I slam into the car again and this time the people inside it blow like supercharged grenades into a gazillion shards of ice and I get sprayed by icy pink shrapnel.
Diamond-hard splinters of frozen flesh pierce every inch of my exposed skin. A thick dagger of ice as big around as a hot dog punctures my jeans and sinks into my thigh, and another impales my shoulder.
I get knocked out of freeze-frame again and push myself back up, and when I do, the ice splinters shove deeper into my body from the pressure of how fast I’m moving and it hurts so fecking bad that I drop back down instantly without thinking. Reflexive, just trying to stop the pain.
I start to freeze to death.
I push back up.
Ow! Shit, shit, shit, it hurts!
Down, I’ll die.
Up, I’ll only wish I would.
I stay in freeze-frame, stumble into the stupid car again, bounce back, careen off another car, and give it everything I’ve got in a violent effort to get out of the cold zone. I can’t feel my hands. I can’t feel my feet. Feck, I can’t believe I did this! Who was yelling and why were they shooting?
I push, push, push with all my might!
I collapse facedown in the street. Ice daggers bite deep. But I don’t care. I’m out. I’m back around the corner where it’s warm enough to live. I made it. At least the hundreds of splinters in me will melt now. Either they’re already starting to or I’m bleeding a lot, because something warm and wet is trickling all over my skin.
I’m out of immediate mortal danger. I won’t freeze to death. Now I just have to worry about bleeding to death.
It takes me three tries to manage to roll over on my back, and by the time I get there I’m panting worse than I do when I’ve freeze-framed for an hour, and shaking like a leaf. There’s blood in my eyes. I try to blink it away. Dude, that was a grand debacle! How embarrassing! Glad nobody saw it!
I assess my situation without moving. I’m severely cut up. My skin burns where I can feel myself. The biggest threats to my survival are the holes in my thigh and shoulder, or what will be holes when the ice finishes melting. I’ll need to get them bandaged fast. The problem is, I can’t feel my hands. I close my eyes, trying to focus on moving my fingers. Nothing happens.
“Ah, Dani.”
I look up to see Inspector Jayne bending over me. I’ve never been gladder to see him in my whole life.
“You’ve certainly done it now, haven’t you?”
“C-C-Candy b-b-bar,” I manage.
He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“In m-m-m-my p-puh …” I trail off. I don’t even have the energy to say pocket. I give him a longing, starving look and I know he gets the picture.
He looks across me. I realize I’m surrounded by Guardians. Good, they can carry me to Chester’s and help me get patched up!
“Have you got it?” Jayne says.
“Got it, Captain.”
I go ice cold in a way that has nothing to do with cars or frozen people. I try to lunge to my feet but succeed only in flopping on the pavement like a beached fish. “D-D-Don’t you d-d-d-d-dare—”
“It’s been six days, Dani.”
Six days? How long did I sleep at Chester’s?
“You should have come. If you’d kept your word, I might have continued trying to put up with it. But I won’t allow the fate of our city to rest in whimsical hands. The sword is ours now, for the good of Dublin. We take far more of them off the streets than you do. In time you’ll understand it always should have been this way.”
“Y-Y-You—”
“Don’t try to take it back. Your first warning is your final one. I won’t treat you like a child if you do.”
“K-K-Kill y-you!” I explode. I still can’t feel my hands or feet but I feel my head. It’s about to explode. He has no right. It’s my sword!
“Don’t make it war, Dani. You won’t win.”
I try to tell him he better kill me right here and now because there’s no way they can keep my sword from me. I’ll take it back the second I’m on my feet again. There’s no place on Earth, feck, there’s no place in all of heaven or hell that they’ll ever be safe from me again! But I’m too light-headed to talk. Dizzy. My vision’s getting weird.
“She’s awful bloody, Captain. She gonna live?”
“She’s tough,” Jayne says.
“Maybe we should do something.”
“We can’t help her, not even a little, or she’ll be able to take it back.”
I flop on the pavement, unable to do a thing to stop them. I’m vulnerable, completely at his mercy.
And he’s not having any.
I won’t have any for him when the time comes.
He’s leaving me here, to live or die on my own. I’ll never forgive. I’ll never forget.
They walk away. Just like that they leave me in the middle of a dirty street like a dog that got hit by a car, bleeding and helpless and alone. Dead if another car comes along. I’ll remember that, too, when I see him again. Dude, they could have at least moved me to the sidewalk, balled up a shirt or something for a pillow beneath my head.
Something really bad happens to me then. Worse even than everything that’s already happened to me in the past few days.
I feel woozy and strange and all the sudden it’s like I’m outside of my body, watching me. But the me lying in the street has long blond hair and is looking up at the redheaded me with tears in her eyes and telling me she can’t die yet because she’s got people to protect. She’s got a sister named Mac back home in Georgia and she just left her a message, and if she dies, Mac will come over to hunt her killer because she’s stubborn and idealistic, and she’ll die, too. But I don’t seem to be able to feel anything about what’s happening, and none of it seems real, so I walk away just like Jayne did.
My stomach heaves and I puke my guts out right there in the middle of the street. I can’t even get on my hands and knees to do it. Lying on my back, I get sick all over myself. Not the blond-haired me that’s the ghost of Alina, but the real, red-haired Dani that’s really lying in the street wondering if she’s going to bite it this time. And if there’s something wet on my face that isn’t blood or vomit … Nah. Ain’t.
Eventually I get the feeling back in my hands and feet. I guess they thaw. I fumble for a candy bar. I curl in a ball in the street and eat every candy bar I’ve got and plot revenge.
Don’t make it war, he said, and I won’t.
I don’t have to.
He already did.