FORTY-TWO
“Try to set the night on fire”
I think the reason I didn’t feel panic preceding the Hoar Frost King’s arrival this time is because I was already feeling too much panic for more panic to penetrate. The Crimson Hag butchering sidhe-seers had me so frantic, I forgot why we were even out in the snow to begin with.
Like, to summon the Hoar Frost King.
And he’s here.
And somebody’s got to cut that fecking tether because if we don’t turn the IFP loose, the Hoar Frost King is going to ice the speakers and vanish and it’ll all have been for nothing! Worse still, if it’s as smart as I think, it won’t fall for the same trick twice. The sentience I feel rolling off it is gigantic. This is no simple-minded Unseelie. I don’t know ’cause I haven’t seen them all yet but it could be the most complex one the King ever made. I wonder if he maybe swirled a dash of himself into its beaker.
What happens next feels like it happens in slow-mo though I know it doesn’t take any time at all.
Ryodan and Lor vanish, fast-mo-ing it to the other end of the field. I look from the sidhe-seers to the slit that’s opening, stymied, trying to figure out how to protect the sidhe-seers and cut the tether at the same time. Do I save the women I care about who are standing right next to me or do I save the world? I may be a superhero but I got everyday Joe feelings.
I see Christian and he’s looking at me hard. He says without making any sound at all, You can’t do both, Dani, my love.
I know that, I mouth pissily.
It’s me she’s after.
Your point?
He vanishes.
I can’t find him anywhere for a sec.
Next thing I see is him standing, just standing there in the middle of the field between me and the other end, with his arms spread wide, head tossed back, wearing a “come and get me” expression.
What are you doing? I scream, but not a peep comes out.
The Crimson Hag swoops.
I jerk violently, like I’m the one that got stuck when she guts him.
She doesn’t flay him, though. She pierces him with one leg like he’s a shish kebob and draws him up toward her skirt. As she folds him into her dripping embrace he gives me a look. I can’t make sense of it. I don’t get it. Why did he do that? I don’t get it! Why would anybody do such a stupid thing!
As he vanishes up into the sky, clutched in her hideous legs, I shut it out. Refuse to process what he did. I can leave the sidhe-seers behind now in relative safety. I’ll think about what he did later.
Assuming there is a later.
I freeze-frame toward the Hoar Frost King. It’s major weird not being able to hear a sound. I’m not feeling any vibrations either. At least deaf people can feel vibrations. This is worse than a sound deprivation chamber, it’s a sensory deprivation world with the HFK in it.
As I get close, I see Lor and Ryodan are pushing toward the black box in what looks like slow-mo. Both of them are covered with thick white ice that keeps cracking when they move. It’s cold like the night I died at the church.
The Hoar Frost King is hovering silently over the mountain of speakers, icing them one by one. It’s lingering longer than usual, I guess all those decibels make the food source richer, and I think maybe it’s licking chocolate off its fingers.
When I freeze-frame in behind Ryodan he turns and roars silently: Get the fuck out of here!
Icy needles spear my lungs with each breath, my heart labors to pump. My head feels heavy and I realize it’s ’cause my hair has iced. I toss it, and the stuff shatters, white crystals rain from my head.
You’re not going to make it in time! I yell back, eyeing the distance between ice monster and IFP. When it opened its slit and glided into our dimension, it appeared in the worst possible place—between the IFP and speakers, not between the speakers and the abbey. Although it didn’t ice the IFP, it’s too fecking cold in the vicinity of the box for us to get there to cut the tether.
I look at Ryodan. He can survive this cold like I can’t. I don’t know why. Guess it’s something to do with him surviving a gutting, too. He’s always been able to get closer to the iced scenes than me.
But I can freeze-frame in faster for some reason. He gets bogged down when he gets closer to the center of the cold. Like he’s trudging though concrete.
I don’t pause to think. It’s possible, it’s the only plan I got, and there ain’t no time for second guesses.
I blast into Ryodan’s back and force him forward. As we go fast-mo-ing toward the black box, he totally gets my wavelength: I’m his locomotive and he’s my shield. I can push us, but he’s got to steer and slice.
I feel him yanking my sword from my coat and drive us forward. He ices, and cracks a half-dozen times, shaking off the crystals like a dog shaking water. I die a thousand icy deaths and come to life again. My lungs feel bloody and raw with each breath so I hold it. My bones hurt. I swear my eyeballs have iced in my head. My vision is getting all fractal-like.
Still I push us into the pain because this is my world and no fecking Fae is taking it from me. My mouth is open on a silent howl. Ryodan shakes violently as I force us to the icy epicenter.
He slices down with the sword and cuts the tether.
We’re expecting the IFP to move real slow.
Based on the rate of movement Kat documented when the sidhe-seers had been tracking its progress toward our home, it takes about a minute between cutting it loose and the fire-world fragment hitting the far wall of the abbey. Giving us plenty of time to retether it, because according to her figures, we really had at least two minutes.
Her figures were wrong. Way the feck wrong.
Like a redlined supercar with stockpiled torque, the IFP explodes free and smashes into the Hoar Frost King.
I fast-up as fast as I can go so things transpire in the slowest motion possible.
The fire-world fragment swallows the Hoar Frost King.
It engulfs it.
Sound returns.
I hear ragged breaths. Gasping. Somewhere, folks are crying.
It’s gone.
The Hoar Frost King is gone.
Just like that.
It worked so well I almost can’t believe it. I stand there stunned, feeling wary. I’m not the only one out of sorts. Ryodan’s got his eyes narrowed suspiciously. Lor is kind of hunched like he thinks the sky is going to fall on him. I’d snicker—because, dude, it’s pretty sad when you can’t just take a happy ending for what it is—but we still got major trubs. The IFP is devouring the mountain of iced speakers and heading straight for the abbey.
Kat, Dancer, and the other sidhe-seers are running toward us. “Cruce is below the abbey!” Kat screams. “You’ve got to stop it!”
Ryodan and Lor begin chanting but I can tell from the look on Ryodan’s face he’s got no expectation of finishing in time. The ten or twelve seconds we got before it hits the wall isn’t the thirty he needs to do the job.
Kat starts screaming at Ryodan because he’s not going fast enough, and Jo starts screaming at Kat for screaming at Ryodan because he’s doing everything he can. Then all the sidhe-seers get in on it, and since Ryodan and Lor are looking down at the totem cord they’re trying to ward, nobody’s looking at the IFP and I’m the first one to see what’s happening.
I knew it died too easily!
Ice is forming at the base of the fire-world fragment.
The bottom of the funnel is turning blue, crusted with white hoar frost.
The IFP sure swallowed the Ice Monster, but now the Ice Monster is icing the fecking IFP!
As I watch, frost spreads rapidly upward.
“Uh, guys,” I say.
“Are you bloody kidding me?” Dancer explodes. “It’s coming back out?”
Lor looks up. “Aw, shit.”
“Motherfucker,” Ryodan agrees.
The Hoar Frost King freezes the IFP from the inside out.
I don’t know if the fire world is a roaring inferno that makes the sound the HFK likes to eat or if they just had a big battle of fire and ice, and ice won.
But the IFP cracks and hisses, steams and pops, as superfire gets supercooled.
Ice weighs it down and it slows to a stop. As the giant funnel gains substance, it becomes too heavy to drift and crashes thunderously to the ground like an icicle dropping from a gutter, lodging in the snow.
We all just stare at the giant ice funnel rooted in the ground, trying to process the sudden reversal of events. First, the Ice Monster was dead but the abbey was in danger. Now the abbey is safe but the Ice Monster isn’t dead.
We didn’t succeed in killing it, and virtually everyone standing here that can’t freeze-frame is going to die the instant it comes back out.
The walls of the IFP begin to shiver and shake like the Hoar Frost King is trying to find the weakest point to hatch from its icy eggshell.
I narrow my eyes.
Eggshells are delicate. Fragile. But it’s not a shell. In fact, the entire interior of the fire world must be solid ice right now.
Which means, at the moment, the Hoar Frost King is completely encased in one of its own ice sculptures.
Trapped in a moment of perfect vulnerability.
Perhaps the only moment of vulnerability it has ever known.
I know what happens when an iced scene gets vibrated.
It explodes.
“Dancer,” I shout, “use the whip! Make sonic booms!” To Ryodan and Lor I say, “Freeze-frame around it!” To the sidhe-seers, “Dudes, get the feck out of here now!”
Then I freeze-frame in myself, moving as fast as I can on a nearly empty gas tank.
Dancer cracks his whip and we freeze-frame like maniacs.
The frozen IFP trembles and the surface suddenly blossoms a million tiny fissures.
The ground shudders, then there’s this rumble like galaxywide thunder rolling inside the IFP.
All the sudden I hear the most awful noise ever, like maybe all the sounds the Hoar Frost King ever collected erupt in one huge dissonant, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard belch and then—fecking-A, I love being a superhero!—just like I thought they would, the fused monsters explode!